Need help bidding a lawn.

[davidgolawn]

would anyone be willing to offer to tell me a simple way of doing a quote for grass cutting based on the sq ft and how to price a spring clean up, includes cleaning up all garbage / litter, power raking, aeration,weed and feed i have 38 thousand sq ft property a 17 thousand sq ft property 5000 sq ft , i would like to know if there is a simple formula for this, any help would be greatly appreciated thank you dave

[Steve]

Lawn care business tips

Hi David, Have you played around with the business calculators yet? With the first one you can figure out the time you spend on each property. With the second one you can figure out how much to charge based on that time. Play around with them and let me know how they go.

__________________
- 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.

[turfmaster]

Know your costs . Without knowing your costs you could get in trouble and lose money.Cleanups are probably the hardest thing to estimate. This topic has been discussed on this forum. Make sure you check the property well. Bid hours x your hourly rate for each man. If you want to bid mowing by the sq.ft use the calculator on this site. If you know your equipment and have been doing this for awhile you will be able to walk up to a property and bid it without measuring. Now the bigger stuff like parks and large commercial you'll need to know the acreage and how much trimming is involved.

[swstout]

Originally Posted by davidgolawn

would anyone be willing to offer to tell me a simple way of doing a quote for grass cutting based on the sq ft and how to price a spring clean up, includes cleaning up all garbage / litter, power raking, aeration,weed and feed i have 38 thousand sq ft property a 17 thousand sq ft property 5000 sq ft , i would like to know if there is a simple formula for this, any help would be greatly appreciated thank you dave

My cleanup jobs have been profit iffy. I tent to view them as a loss leader! A good job will lead to upsells. Remember Murphy's 23 law. (it always takes longer than you think)!

Ever hear O'Tools axion on Murphy's Law? " Murphy was an optimist!"

[turfmaster]

Yea, I hate cleanups especially as I get older. After all these years they are still hard to estimate and labor intensive. Hard to find good help to do these also. This year for me the line from the potential customer has been give me a deal on the cleanup and you can have the mowing.

[Steve]

This year for me the line from the potential customer has been give me a deal on the cleanup and you can have the mowing.

What's your view on how to counter this? What should a lawn care business owner do when a potential customer says that?

[turfmaster]

Originally Posted by Steve

What's your view on how to counter this? What should a lawn care business owner do when a potential customer says that?

This is what I told the guy that I signed up last week.
Sir I have different fees for the different services that I offer. I will give you a 10% discount on the cleanup like I advertised in the paper. He then said well if I give you all this work for the season you should be able to cut the price more on the cleanup. I told him that I would work with him on getting his costs as low as I can on the other services without effecting my minimum profit margin.
Bottom line he doesn't know my costs. A lot of haggling going on this year.