Commerical Quotes?

[MMYardService]

I have been building my residental business for the past three months, doing pretty good, but would like to get into commerical .. like apartments and condo common areas.. I read a few contracts out here but does anyone know what steps I should take to quote these jobs.. I know when I'm done and we both agree that there will be a written agreement. but: 1) What steps should I take(Measure everything, count bushes?, measure edging) 2) What should the qoute look like? (few pages?, 50 pages, bound, just printed, color or black and white) 3) What kind of time frame should I take? (I know with residental customer time is more important the first time cut price, so I alway do first cut for flat rate so that I can tell them I can come out and cut today for $x and we can talk about future costs after we look at the size and other attributes of the yard.) 4) What is standard services? (Mowing, Edging, Tree trimming, bushes, flower beds, weeds, mulch .....) Anything else that you can think of? Thanks, Matt M&M Yard Service Richardson, Texas (North Dallas Area)

[Steve]

Lawn care business tips

Hi Matt, Welcome to our forum! 1) What steps should I take(Measure everything, count bushes?, measure edging) Ultimately you want to figure out how much time the job will take you. You can figure this out by breaking the job down and measuring everything. How long will it take to mow, trim, edge etc. Use your knowledge of how long it takes you do do these services on the residential properties and then apply it to the measurements you take for the commercial properties. 2) What should the qoute look like? (few pages?, 50 pages, bound, just printed, color or black and white) It should include all the services you are going to perform and then give them a price to do the job. 3) What kind of time frame should I take? (I know with residental customer time is more important the first time cut price, so I alway do first cut for flat rate so that I can tell them I can come out and cut today for $x and we can talk about future costs after we look at the size and other attributes of the yard.) I am not sure what you mean here. The time frame for the job can vary greatly based on the size of the job. 4) What is standard services? (Mowing, Edging, Tree trimming, bushes, flower beds, weeds, mulch .....) Those are all good services to offer. You may find the customer already knows what they want but if they don't you can start with the basic services and then add other optional services as you see are needed and try to make them upsells. Experiment with this and put together a bid for a local commercial property. Then post what you created and we can all review it and give you some feedback. Does this help?

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[MMYardService]

Here is a copy of the quote that I made based on the agreement that I found on this site..

Any suggestions based on experiance is welcomed..

Matt

ps. i also ordered the book from al... hope it has tons of good stuff!

[MMYardService]

Originally Posted by Steve

I am not sure what you mean here. The time frame for the job can vary greatly based on the size of the job.

I'm tring to figure out how much time should i spend working on these quotes.. Seems you can spend way to much time getting all the details and ducks in a pretty row.. But how much is too much?

[Steve]

Could you repost it as a doc file? I can't open docx files.