unkept lawns

[coastallawncare]

i had a customer ask me to give him a price on his bus. and home. both of them havent been touched in a while. would it be safe to say that i should charge extra to get then in shape and then drop the price to continue maint?

[mikeslawnservice]

Coastal,
Yes, I would charge them a clean up fee in order to get the property looking nice. After that, just charge them a regular maintenance fee.

In July I did a property that hadn't been cut since last year. You can only imagine how overgrown it was. I live in a big city and most of the homes around here are rowhomes (homes attached to each other for the whole block) Most have no back yard. This particular property was a corner house. He saw me cutting a neighbor's lawn down the block and asked if I would do his. I normally would have charged him $20 for a corner home. Since it was so bad, I very gently explained to him that it would be significantly more. $120 !! He explained to me that he had just moved in 2 weeks ago and the property was not taken care of previously. I knocked off $10 bucks. I did it for $110. It took me all of 1 hour 45 minutes. I trimmed it first to knock all of the grass down to a mowable level, cut it, side discharging, raked it up and cut it again at the EXACT SAME LEVEL.
Trimmed it, did more clean up and moved on to my next customer. Easiest money I've ever made.

He is now a regular account @ $20 per cut and it takes me about 15 minutes to do everything.

[Rustic Goat]

Definitely charge more if it's going to take more time/effort to service for first time.

I'd suggest start at what the normal price would be for each property, then add for additional time you expect to be involved.
Exp.= norm=$35.00 per week
first time fees= $15.00
That $50.00 total for first time, then $35.00 for normal weekly cuttings. Explain to customer the details when presenting the bid. If they won't go for the extra, walk away, it's a sign of future problems to come.

[MortNuke]

I have also had success at proposing the clean-up fee, but then offering to waive it if they intend to become a weekly customer (notice, I stress "weekly"). A long term weekly customer is what I'm after anyway...and we all walk away getting what we want.

Mort

[MAD MOWERS]

We always charge a clean up fee. However Mortnuke has a good selling point, think I will try this one next time. On the props. that are real bad a clean up fee is always the way to go as it usually takes two to three times the amount of time to do as regular service.

[BrianK10]

Never thought about it that way......VERY slick if you ask me. The whole weekly customer idea is genious.