When you are starting your lawn care business, how do you find how much you should charge to mow a yard works lawn mowing service? This is a subject that was recently asked to us on the Gopher Lawn Care Business Forums. Here are a few ideas.
First off, if you’ve never done so, log on the lawn care business forum and post your question along with your region. There is a good chance another lawn care business owner in the market can give you the going rate. You could also want to ask yourself, do you have any friends in the service? If so, ask them what they charge per lawn.
Another response that was posted was to make contact with a few local lawn care businesses in your area and get an estimate from them to service your lawn. If there isn’t a lawn then ask a friend to get a few estimates to service their lawn. When own three estimates, you can have a good idea the amount to charge. You will know the price, plus you will get the square footage dimensions your lawn and may do divide that out to find how much to charge per square ft. Individuals . give you a ballpark idea. Keep in mind, the expenses you end up being run your lawn care business can drastically are different from another lawn care business owner’s expenses, so know your expenses.
The next question you might be wondering is should you charge by the square foot or man hour?
Kurt Chance said “The first thing you always want to do, when giving an estimate, can be walk the property and do not be in a rush to get in and out. I did this once and when Received there I was in for a surprise. I couldn’t know there were four ditches in the front lot that would need for you to become manually trimmed and gone around while mowing. Luckily for me it still took the estimated time that I figured and my price still resolved to what I was looking for.”
If you are a new lawn care business owner, you may want to charge based on man hour. Author Joel LaRusic of mowboy.com suggests “you want to quote quality, not time. In short it’s better to say “I’ll perform these group of services, to your satisfaction, for $50” than capable “I’ll spend an hour at your house for $50.” Of course, you should use your hourly rate to base your price on but you don’t wish to pass those pricing precisely to the customer. You should the customer watching the hands of time and as you grasp your job and shave a few minutes associated with it, that should be to your advantage.”
Kurt explained further “What I do when estimating large properties is I figure out how long it’s going to take me. Break it down into smaller sections if I’ve got to. Then I figure my hourly rate or what I must make from the property and put a price together from that. More often than not commercial properties are probably broken up into a few mowing areas, I locate it easier to just uncover the time it needs for each and then figure out the total time plus drive day time.”
Another more advanced technique to charge per square foot based on formulas. Using formulas requires a much more experience, because it important your formulas are effective.