When you are beginning your lawn care business, how do you find how much you should charge to mow a lawn? This is a question that was recently inspired to us on the Gopher Lawn Care Business Community forum. Here are a few ideas.
First off, if you have not done so, log towards the lawn care business forum and post your question along with your part. 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 yard works landscaping service? If so, ask them what they charge per lawn.
Another response that was posted was to contact a few local lawn care businesses in your area and get an estimate from them to service your lawn. If instead of a lawn then ask a friend to obtain a few estimates to service their lawn. When to be able to three estimates, you may have a good idea just how much to charge. You knows the price, plus you can find the square footage size of your lawn and place divide that out to find how much to charge per square ft. Ought to actually give you a ballpark idea. Keep in mind, the expenses you require run your lawn care business can drastically vary 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 sq . ft . or man hour?
Kurt Chance said “The first thing you always want to do, when giving an estimate, has been 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 set for a surprise. I did not know there were four ditches in the front lot that would need regarding 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 wanted.”
If you are fresh 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 simple terms it’s better to say “I’ll perform these associated with services, to your satisfaction, for $50” than health “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 have a need to pass those pricing precisely to the customer. You don’t want the customer watching the clock and as you get better at your job and shave a few minutes from 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 on to smaller sections if I have to. Then I figure my hourly rate or what I want to make from the property and put a price together from that. Sometimes commercial properties are gonna be broken up into several mowing areas, I locate one easier to just discover the time it calls for for each and then figure out the total time plus drive your time.”
Another more advanced approach is to charge per square foot based on formulas. Using formulas requires a a bit more experience, because it important your formulas are effective.