[Ian101]

Still only part time until Mid June so I have been pricing high .... or so I thought.

Set a min price of £10 after reading lots of posts on here ref pricing but most big houses I charge £12 (about  £1 a window)

The areas I work have windies doing big houses for £6 which other windies charge £15 for exactly the same type of house (like I say I do them for £12)

however in the last 2 times I have been out quoting / getting work after Ive said the price the customers have said oooo I was expecting xxx amount which is normally a few quid more than what I said.

So I have decided that when I have reached 50 customers my min is going to be £12 and the bigger stuff £15.

btw not undercutting anyone these customers dont have a windy.

decided on 50 as a threshold as want the cashflow early on ...

What do you guys think ??

[Murdie window cleaning]

I've had that a couple of times and it is annoying, in general I'm pretty much the same as other cleaners in my area if not a little bit higher. But you still get the odd one that you maybe get a bit wrong or the customer imagines it's going to be more and you do kick yourself when they say "is that all" or "that's less than I thought it'd be"

[Sunshine/Cleaning]

You would be surprised at how much some people are prepared to pay and how much they value any work done by a tradesman. These are the customers to actively seek out and by the sounds of it you are doing just that. A higher minimum is no bad thing, lets face it if a tradesman turns up to your house for a one-off job they will have a minimum price and most wouldn't bat an eye at £25 for the satellite repair man to fix the dish for his 10 min work. That's the way you should pitch your window cleaning. Esp as you wont have a run of a dozen houses next to each other.
There are also allot who feel it's "like glorified begging" and £4 is the max they will pay! Avoid these like the plague.
I also think that the larger your van the more you can charge!  

[mlscontractcleaner]

The larger your what??

[Steven Shoreditch]

 

[Spruce]

Hi

It could also be a customer taking the Mickie. I do it all the time to sales people - its become a habit. When they give me a price I always say is that all? When I get change back for something I bought I always look surprised and say "and I get some some change as well. Wow."

If you are building a round then you need all the work you can get, reasonably priced, even if you are a little cheaper than some others around. Once you have a a good customer base you can survive on, then's the time to hike you quotation prices and 'play the market.' This becomes the cream. Somebody once said on here that your best gauge of pricing is how many quotes you give are accepted. If you get them all then you are too cheap, get none and you are too expensive. He aimed for between 30 - 40% of his quotes being accepted.

When your round is full, then quote high - if you get it then great, if not then nothing lost. Makes sense to me.

If someone says that they were expecting a slightly higher price, then they could be in line for a price increase in about a year.

Spruce

[wpclean]

Hi

It could also be a customer taking the Mickie. I do it all the time to sales people - its become a habit. When they give me a price I always say is that all? When I get change back for something I bought I always look surprised and say "and I get some some change as well. Wow."

If you are building a round then you need all the work you can get, reasonably priced, even if you are a little cheaper than some others around. Once you have a a good customer base you can survive on, then's the time to hike you quotation prices and 'play the market.' This becomes the cream. Somebody once said on here that your best gauge of pricing is how many quotes you give are accepted. If you get them all then you are too cheap, get none and you are too expensive. He aimed for between 30 - 40% of his quotes being accepted.

When your round is full, then quote high - if you get it then great, if not then nothing lost. Makes sense to me.

SpruceGood advice . Pricing is not an exact science ! Sometimes if I dont like the look of a job I price really high cos I dont want it , and then the customer accepts lol.

[Spruce]

Hi wp

Thank you. Its common in the trades to over quote when you don't want the job, so why should we be any different. There is always the chance that a customer will accept it.

But I do also have a conscience. I don't want to think of myself as a rip-off artist ( I worked in the motor trade for years and saw first hand how obsessed sales managers were to wring the maximum profit from a used car sale by fleecing a customer) - I rather see myself as giving a value for money service. If the job turns out to be easier than I expected then I probably would delay a future price increase, or throw in some other value add on occassionally, such as a quick brush over of a garage door etc.

Spruce 

[Ste M]

i get this a lot as well, the way i look at it is i aim to earn £x an hour or a day an if i get that then im happy, personnaly i like this reply when i get it an i have had customers offer me more for the job but i tell them that the price i have given them is the price im charging, i find that this sort of honesty gets me more work. I love the people on here who say they earn £100's a day an charge £50 for a 10 minute bungalow, dont listen to them, just keep going the way you are an it wont be to long before you are hitting really good money each day you go out.

A lot of people keep mentioning £30 odd an hour on here, well if you can hit that for 8 hours a day thats £240 a day, an over 1k a week. I would love to see someone show me proof of that sort of earnings :

[Platinum]

Ian
How frequent are these cleans?

[jonnyald]

i hear the same said quite often, but bleve thats the best thing to hear in this time of recession. i get far more in tips that way and get loyalty too . if i price at £8 ,will normally get a 2quid tip whereas priced at £10 could get cancelled as its looking pricey !

after a few months on the streets i get a feel of what the going rate is anyway, as long as you pitch in the middle cant go far wrong

what vehicle are you using ian101? i recently changed from an old Fiat car,to a 10 year old van (shiney) . the car raked in endless new work,but my van looks like im going up in the world and hasnt raked in 1 job !

[Sunshine/Cleaning]

i get this a lot as well, the way i look at it is i aim to earn £x an hour or a day an if i get that then im happy, personnaly i like this reply when i get it an i have had customers offer me more for the job but i tell them that the price i have given them is the price im charging, i find that this sort of honesty gets me more work. I love the people on here who say they earn £100's a day an charge £50 for a 10 minute bungalow, dont listen to them, just keep going the way you are an it wont be to long before you are hitting really good money each day you go out.

A lot of people keep mentioning £30 odd an hour on here, well if you can hit that for 8 hours a day thats £240 a day, an over 1k a week. I would love to see someone show me proof of that sort of earningsThe importance of a working' hourly rate like this becomes apparent when you realise that for your 8 hours you are not actually 'working for the whole time. You should price up higher than your needed hourly for the day just to take into account non-working time. So if you want to make £100 in the day, a £12 hourly rate when looking at a single job taking an hour will need to be in the region of £20. I've been at this job for 20+ years and know how it works in the long term. Price too low and you will struggle.
If you have just come from a job paying £10 per hour you need to charge £20 per hour for the same type of 'wage' it's not the same being self employed, that is unless you dont declare everything and have £50k in the bank! :

[Ian101]

@ OP - location?

Work is located north wales / chester area

[Ian101]

Ian
How frequent are these cleans?

Hi Danny .... every 4 weeks .... wont really do anything else

[Ste M]

i get this a lot as well, the way i look at it is i aim to earn £x an hour or a day an if i get that then im happy, personnaly i like this reply when i get it an i have had customers offer me more for the job but i tell them that the price i have given them is the price im charging, i find that this sort of honesty gets me more work. I love the people on here who say they earn £100's a day an charge £50 for a 10 minute bungalow, dont listen to them, just keep going the way you are an it wont be to long before you are hitting really good money each day you go out.

A lot of people keep mentioning £30 odd an hour on here, well if you can hit that for 8 hours a day thats £240 a day, an over 1k a week. I would love to see someone show me proof of that sort of earningsThe importance of a working' hourly rate like this becomes apparent when you realise that for your 8 hours you are not actually 'working for the whole time. You should price up higher than your needed hourly for the day just to take into account non-working time. So if you want to make £100 in the day, a £12 hourly rate when looking at a single job taking an hour will need to be in the region of £20. I've been at this job for 20+ years and know how it works in the long term. Price too low and you will struggle.
If you have just come from a job paying £10 per hour you need to charge £20 per hour for the same type of 'wage' it's not the same being self employed, that is unless you dont declare everything and have £50k in the bank! :

wow i never new that long service in a job doesnt mean you know everything oh and if your clever enough you get compact work that brings in very good hourly rates, and then have you 'out of the way' cream jobs

[Ste M]

You would be surprised at how much some people are prepared to pay and how much they value any work done by a tradesman. These are the customers to actively seek out and by the sounds of it you are doing just that. A higher minimum is no bad thing, lets face it if a tradesman turns up to your house for a one-off job they will have a minimum price and most wouldn't bat an eye at £25 for the satellite repair man to fix the dish for his 10 min work. That's the way you should pitch your window cleaning. Esp as you wont have a run of a dozen houses next to each other.
There are also allot who feel it's "like glorified begging" and £4 is the max they will pay! Avoid these like the plague.
I also think that the larger your van the more you can charge!  

the difference between a 'tradesman' and a windy is that most tradesman have 4 years of training behind them, you wouldnt expect a plumber to turn up and then ask him how he learnt his job and he said 'oh i saw someone doing it and then read the net a bit about it and thought i can do that'!!!!

[Spruce]

Hi Sunshine,

I agree totally with your comments about where your hourly rate needs to be. Ian has just started off and it trying to build a customer base so he has 2 problems IMO.

The first is that it takes time to establish a business and many new businesses won't make a profit for the first few years anyway.

The second is that he will also be slow because of lack of experience and nearly all his new customers will be new cleans which take longer.

But in time those problems will start to sumwhat resolve themselves when he gets through the initial cleaning stage and gets quicker.

When I first started 5 years ago one of the ladies on the street said we wouldn't last long as it took me a week to clean the whole road. It now takes just over a day with more customers than we had in the street to begin with - and we have raised our prices as well.

Area definitely plays a part when it comes to pricing as well as any w/c competition. We have a price perception in the North East and we wouldn't get more that £7.00 a 3 bed semi where we are. We also have a cleaning company that employs groups of 3 cleaners working together traditionally. They charge between £4.00 and £5.00 pounds a house. They are the local port hole cleaners (don't clean into the corners, do frames or detail) - the one up the ladder runs from window to window and house to house with the ladder raised. The second does the bottoms and the third bangs on the door for money, writes out slips and keeps the records. They swear and shout at each other and urge each other on and will do a house back and front in less than 5 minutes. The water in their only bucket looks like sludge. But most of their customers either seem happy with that level of service or are too scared to discontinue with them.

I would never have thought of this setup as competition, but now I do.

Pricing is also linked with what you as the cleaner expect out of life. Will earning a high wage make you a happy, contented person? People on here can take time out to do the things they feel are important with there lives - be with their growing family, religious obligations etc. So their needs will be different to others as they will be happy to just pay the proverbial bills. My monthly outgoings are more than some I know as I have a mortgage, whereas some live in a Council House and don't have the same expenses as I do.

I am 58 and have no chance is competing with the youngsters. When compared to my son, its definitely the hare and the tortoise. I need 5 days to do what he does in 3. So my hourly earn is less than his on exactly the same jobs. I guess it's all boils down to what works for you and your circumstances.

Spruce

[Spruce]

Hi Ste M

Trouble is a guy can become a plumber after a 6 week course now. I often think that as WFPer's, we carry more gear at a higher cost than any plumber does, so I rate our business higher than that of a plumber. We are also more skilled which we have learnt from practise.
I don't think you need much skill to become a gas engineer as most of them are fitters who can't fix a boiler if its broken, but quote to replace it with another. My brother in law is Corgi registered and he says it's easy to get that qualification, but does make you accountable for the work you sign off.
Electricians probably fall into a different catagory as their part 'P' qualifications are time consuming and costly. I know one company that's sold up because of it - the owner is now an electrical inspector and one of his employees has become a window cleaner - much less hassle.

I think the time of long apprenticeships is now over, most of which was a waste of time anyway. (In the motor trade the first 2 years of an apprentice's life was a joke - they learnt hardly a thing in my experience.)

Spruce

[sherco]

Hi Ste M

Trouble is a guy can become a plumber after a 6 week course now. I often think that as WFPer's, we carry more gear at a higher cost than any plumber does, so I rate our business higher than that of a plumber. We are also more skilled which we have learnt from practise.
I don't think you need much skill to become a gas engineer as most of them are fitters who can't fix a boiler if its broken, but quote to replace it with another. My brother in law is Corgi registered and he says it's easy to get that qualification, but does make you accountable for the work you sign off.
Electricians probably fall into a different catagory as their part 'P' qualifications are time consuming and costly. I know one company that's sold up because of it - the owner is now an electrical inspector and one of his employees has become a window cleaner - much less hassle.

I think the time of long apprenticeships is now over, most of which was a waste of time anyway. (In the motor trade the first 2 years of an apprentice's life was a joke - they learnt hardly a thing in my experience.)

Spru
Put a plumber out window cleaning within a couple of day he will be doing an ok job...put a window cleaner in a house fitting a wet underfloor heating system.....bit longer i would say!!!

[formb]

i get this a lot as well, the way i look at it is i aim to earn £x an hour or a day an if i get that then im happy, personnaly i like this reply when i get it an i have had customers offer me more for the job but i tell them that the price i have given them is the price im charging, i find that this sort of honesty gets me more work. I love the people on here who say they earn £100's a day an charge £50 for a 10 minute bungalow, dont listen to them, just keep going the way you are an it wont be to long before you are hitting really good money each day you go out.

A lot of people keep mentioning £30 odd an hour on here, well if you can hit that for 8 hours a day thats £240 a day, an over 1k a week. I would love to see someone show me proof of that sort of earnings :

I charge £30+ per hour. If you want proof you could get a copy of my latest accounts from companies house.

£30 per hour is not that high especially if you are employing people to clean windows. Every cost that you have quadruples (at least) as soon as you employ.

Insurance: Sole trader: £100 With employees: £2500

Vehicle Insurance: Sole trader: £500 With employees: £6750

Professional fees: Sole trader: £500 With employees: £3000

The list goes on.

Plus there are costs that don't even exist for 1 man bands.

Fees for Contracts of Employment: Some folks pay £600  You can get them here for £150:

http://www.lilihunter.com/cart.htm 

28 Days paid holidays per person per year.

How many of you paid yourself for 28 days holiday last year? Not chuffin many I'll bet.

When you work in the hols that takes it down to £27.50 per hour across the year then there is also VAT to consider. That's you down to £22.25, nearly a third gone before you factor in overheads.

In conclusion £30 per hour. Any less is pointless and you will end up losing money.