Micromanaging

[sdhen]

Hey gang,

There are dozens of people asking for prices about various yard sizes, with or without inclines, footage for trimming, with or without obstacles, on and on and on.

I am a one man crew with a 48" deck and no sulky to mow with. I trim and blow as does anyone else. I dont break down my times according to mowing, trimming and blowing; they are all combined. I start my time from when I open the door to exit the truck, then I stop the time when I close the door to leave. I call this my work time. No travel time is included because its charged separately according to how many miles from my house I have to travel. I am working in Southwest Michigan. I calculate my work time per minute. You guys with the larger decks can obviously be charging more per minute since your equipment can finish it sooner.

My question is; How much should I be charging per minute given the part of the U.S. I am in? I dont want to be a low baller or price myself out of business. I have been shooting for $50hr average but find it more like $35hr. I am wondering if this is right on, too low, to high ??????

Any suggestions would be appreciated.

[bobkessler]

Bob Kessler

Hey gang,

There are dozens of people asking for prices about various yard sizes, with or without inclines, footage for trimming, with or without obstacles, on and on and on.

I am a one man crew with a 48" deck and no sulky to mow with. I trim and blow as does anyone else. I dont break down my times according to mowing, trimming and blowing; they are all combined. I start my time from when I open the door to exit the truck, then I stop the time when I close the door to leave. I call this my work time. No travel time is included because its charged separately according to how many miles from my house I have to travel. I am working in Southwest Michigan. I calculate my work time per minute. You guys with the larger decks can obviously be charging more per minute since your equipment can finish it sooner.

My question is; How much should I be charging per minute given the part of the U.S. I am in? I dont want to be a low baller or price myself out of business. I have been shooting for $50hr average but find it more like $35hr. I am wondering if this is right on, too low, to high ??????

Any suggestions would be appreciated.

You're doing a great job of managing your time. I wish I was that industrious. But...........time management's goal is efficiency resulting in a better net. I never really tracked my time quite as close as you do. What I did was concentrate on developing more customers in a given area. In many residential neighborhoods I had 6 or seven accounts not exactly all in a row, but within a minimal travel area. You can buy a map from Dolph that has a layover with little squares that I assigned numbers to; each was a grid. When new accounts came in the manager placed each account and assigned it a grid number. It was really effective.
I'm interested in how you account for variables like weather, traffic, equipment breakdowns, cleanup, etc. If you charge by the minute will you be billing them a different amount each time?

[sdhen]

Thanks for responding Bob!!

Your idea of the grid technique is a good one. I have been eyeballing some areas I wouldnt mind picking up a mess of lawns so I can minimize my loading and driving. I am contemplating doing mass mailing in the areas I am targeting.

Right now my service is very small and very part time. I have 10 residential accounts that are kinda spread out in a 8 mile radius. This was perfect for me to get my feet wet and get some experience. When I only had one yard I bid anything just to get five yards. I was limiting myself to that because I knew I was underbidding others and I dont want to do that in the long run; I just needed 5 so I could "practice". The thing was, through word of mouth, I picked up 5 more. I really cranked up the price on those because I didnt care if I got them or not; I still got their business.

To average $50hr on the yard I need to get $0.83 per minute. Right now, with my bidding system, some I get $.95 and others I get 0.50 per minute. The way I figure extra is by how long it "averages" me to drive to their house from mine. Now you know as well as I do that we dont drive home then to the next client, then home, next client, etc. So really I make out pretty good there. Again I charge per minute for the time it takes me to drive from home to do the first bid; that time is what I call my "average" time since I dont factor in traffic hangups or other related variables.

For break downs; well, I eat those but fortunately I have been anal about my maintenance and havent had one. Then again, I dont mow the number of hours and days like many people on this site do either. Cleanups, well, I think I took it on the chin this season. One cleanup took me two hours and I only charged the guy $50; way too low. But, a person lives and learns; I certainly did here.

I have been seeing people trying to charge by the foot and everything else and it just doesnt work very well for me. During my initial bid on a property I actually walk where I will be trimming then multiply my time to increase it by 50% just to figure out my trimming time. Blowing is kinda the same way; I am sure many clients have looked at me and thought I was off my rocker or something.

How much per minute would you charge for your area if you had a 48in walk behind with no sulky; mowing, blowing and trimming all alone? Again, that would be from when you get out of the truck until you are loaded and back in the truck? If I had a 61in rider I would obviously charge more per hour because I could smoke right through a yard. Is trying to get $50hr, alone, with a 48in deck asking too much? I dont want to over price myself out of business nor do I want to be a lowballer. Either way I will lose in the long run.

Thanks for your help.

Steve

I

[GeeVee]

Only someone who has been carging by the nminute can help.

Not me.

Stop.

GeeVee

[bobkessler]

Bob Kessler

Thanks for responding Bob!!

Your idea of the grid technique is a good one. I have been eyeballing some areas I wouldnt mind picking up a mess of lawns so I can minimize my loading and driving. I am contemplating doing mass mailing in the areas I am targeting.

Right now my service is very small and very part time. I have 10 residential accounts that are kinda spread out in a 8 mile radius. This was perfect for me to get my feet wet and get some experience. When I only had one yard I bid anything just to get five yards. I was limiting myself to that because I knew I was underbidding others and I dont want to do that in the long run; I just needed 5 so I could "practice". The thing was, through word of mouth, I picked up 5 more. I really cranked up the price on those because I didnt care if I got them or not; I still got their business.

To average $50hr on the yard I need to get $0.83 per minute. Right now, with my bidding system, some I get $.95 and others I get 0.50 per minute. The way I figure extra is by how long it "averages" me to drive to their house from mine. Now you know as well as I do that we dont drive home then to the next client, then home, next client, etc. So really I make out pretty good there. Again I charge per minute for the time it takes me to drive from home to do the first bid; that time is what I call my "average" time since I dont factor in traffic hangups or other related variables.

For break downs; well, I eat those but fortunately I have been anal about my maintenance and havent had one. Then again, I dont mow the number of hours and days like many people on this site do either. Cleanups, well, I think I took it on the chin this season. One cleanup took me two hours and I only charged the guy $50; way too low. But, a person lives and learns; I certainly did here.

I have been seeing people trying to charge by the foot and everything else and it just doesnt work very well for me. During my initial bid on a property I actually walk where I will be trimming then multiply my time to increase it by 50% just to figure out my trimming time. Blowing is kinda the same way; I am sure many clients have looked at me and thought I was off my rocker or something.

How much per minute would you charge for your area if you had a 48in walk behind with no sulky; mowing, blowing and trimming all alone? Again, that would be from when you get out of the truck until you are loaded and back in the truck? If I had a 61in rider I would obviously charge more per hour because I could smoke right through a yard. Is trying to get $50hr, alone, with a 48in deck asking too much? I dont want to over price myself out of business nor do I want to be a lowballer. Either way I will lose in the long run.

Thanks for your help.

Steve

I

Hey Steve,
Since I never managed my time as accurate as you do I have to say you're the student and I'm the pupil.
However I did tons of direct mail, mainly to commercial accounts though. It's expensive but it does work.
Lists often cost about .10 per name/address etc. Then you have the copy costs that fluctuate according to how many, one or two sides, paper color, etc. The final and most expensive is postage. My tri-folded flyers cost about .17 each (bulk permit) with a minimum of 150 (I think) per zip code. Plenty of times I didn't have the minimum so I had to pay more. I tried to mail my targeted areas quarterly.
I had a lot of fun with my mailers claiming all of my guys could sing, "will work for food" "nude trimming". In one ad I claimed "for some reason our customers experience younger feelings, buy the latest sports cars, and have renewed potency" and this was pre-viagra. I got lots of laughs and nobody but nobody had ads like I did. My entire staff was in on the ads and it was a riot!
To use JP Wrigleys advice who took chewing gum to one of the most profitable prodicts ever ( originally it was given away for free );
Tell Them Quick, Tell Them Often.

Good Luck

[All Lawns & Landcare]

First thing i would do is immediatly get a sulky! because that is something you could do right now and cut the mowing time down almost in half, plus knock time off of all the trimming and such because you wont be so exausted after walking behind that thing. go to ebay and look up "SULKY" you can get one for $100 or so + shipping, then crank that baby in 5th gear and rock and roll!
If youve already raised your rates and still cant meet your $50hr goal then you must cluster up your route by getting ones near your other ones, and increase your efficency by doing the job with faster equipment such as using a sulky, man.