Hello from Troy NY.

[Steve]

Very interesting! Have you found that you needed to develop better sales skills to counter home owners when you give them a higher price and they react negatively to it? Is there any way to pull them back and save the potential job or if a customer reacts negatively to your bid, should you just move on to the next?

__________________
- Subscribe to my Lawn Care Marketing Blog Feed and get daily tips sent to you. Free!
Download your Free trial of Gopher Lawn Care Software.

[Godslapper]

Lawn care business tips

Thanks for asking Steve. First I need to say that the price I give to mow a lawn is never high. In fact on average I tend to under charge. when I use the calclulator on here and compare it to some of the lawns I have. I find that I'm charging less than I should. It's a very usefull tool and we should all be useing it as a guide. For sure you must be somewhat of a salesman, but it's more important that you know how much running your biz really costs. It's not hard to figure it out. Just take last years expences and divide them into all of your potential working days for the following year. For me. I start mowing on April 15th and stop on Oct 31st. I dont count weekends or hollidays. I figure we must work at least 10 hour days. After you do that you will come up with your break even number. For me that's about $ 350 bucks a day. If I wasn't on top of it I'm sure it would be a lot worse. With that number in mind and lots of experience looking at jobs and knowing how far you are from your next closest customer and keeping in mind that you don't really set the price. That's important to remember. (you don't really set the price) the price is set by our economy. There is always a minimum price you have to get to stay in business. Don't be afraid to ask for it. We will always have people that will price shop. Can't do much about that. Most of the time you don't want them anyway. Do a great job every time you mow and you will not have to worry about the price you give. Some of my customers get cards in their door or mail box all the time and have no problem telling me that my compitition will mow for 10 or 15 bucks less. Or more. I have yet to loose one because of that.