Hey everyone thanks for all your responses!! I think the consensus is basically charge what I think is right. Don’t base the accuracy of my pricing off of customer reactions. That makes a lot of sense. Well, funny enough, that same lady who said it was SO high, called me back and had me do her windows lol. And they were super happy. Thanks again everyone.
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Hahaha! Nice developpment. Did you ask her what made her change her mind?
Other high estimate?
Her perceived value of your services?
Other?
some times we charge 3-4 dollars per track and it still takes the guys an eternity to clean them and they don’t always look great because of years of neglect. Also the Screen Magic is $165/ half gallon, so including screen magic and tracks seems like a very good deal at that price not very profitable in Vegas especially since employees make $50/hr and you are the business owner and providing a service that requires drive time and expenses. If I was to charge per pane $6 would be the minimum especially with very large panes being double and including screen magic which we usually request $5-$10 extra per screen, but its different when you have an established client base. I
f you want to give great service to everyone you have to slowly raise your prices, wages go up and quality can not go down, so it only makes sense to raise prices as you go, slowly with inflation and cost of living increases. So there was a time when I would have charged maybe less than that to get work but I was very fast. Now I’ve slowed down enough to enjoy my job and give consistent work and also charge slightly more so we can grow the business and not sell out in 5 years because we get burned out not making a good enough living. The key is to make what you’re worth and pay your employees what they are worth in my opinion.
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$6/pane was 2015 for us. We played with pricing in 2016, but never went below 6/pane. Believe we spent most of the year at 8/pane
Screens - we probably could move the price to $5. - we use screen washers. Screen magic turned the glass phobic so we stopped using it.
Tracks - guys are to spend 2 track.
Employee retention is highly important. Have a great one, work, culture, attitude. Do all you can to retain them
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I start at $6.50/pane in/out with basic glass clean and track wipe. Screens add $3/ea. Add $2/pane/story for higher work. Balcony glass is same $6.50 for both sides. I do a lot of big homes with many windows and harder to reach heights/places so that is just my working pricing to use when I go to price the jobs. At that I usually hit $80 - 100/hr. I did a house in/out for customer last fall and charged about $750 for in/out. She told me the company last year charged $1100!! So their hourly would be ridiculous. But doing some basic mystery shopping around town my pricing seems reasonable.
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Employees on $50 an hour… REALLY???
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Funny thing, that company charging $350 more than you would say your price is ridiculous too.
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There is a book out the $600 hour and we only did that with one caulking job at $25,000 in 3 days . Most time it’s $35.00 a hour route work and $60 s hour with homes . Really depends on your market . Do not feel guilty is they are willing to pay more. Just smile on the way to the bank!
Honestly, this is kind of shame on me for not finding out why she decided to go with me. But I think that after speaking with her husband she thought it was cool. The husband seemed to know a little more about how much this stuff all cost. He even gave me $25 extra bucks lol.
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Hey Dave is that $80/hr with drive time and talk time with the customer? I’ve been puzzled how people do it. I can only hit those numbers if there’s no screens to take out and I’m not detailing the edges with pole work.
You could charge “$10” and someone would still say you’re WAYYYY too high
it’s not your prices, it’s the education and quality of your leads
I think many times people who don’t usually hire services except for maybe a housecleaner charging wages as $12/hour, use that as a benchmark
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“So their hourly would be ridiculous”
If that hourly is being achieved in your service area, why not pursue it instead of bash it?
Service businesses are getting into the $120’s pmh as a standard nowadays
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Whatever number I stated that is once on the jobsite.
Crew leads have made $24-$34/hr based on their work ethic and drive
Try not to view it as hourly (even though you do break it down to that to see how you are doing). View it as charging for the job, and that should be your demeanor(?) and air(?) that you present of yourself.
Starting out, if on the average you find that later when you break it down and your “hourly rate” is woefully low or less than what you need to succeed as a business, then you can judge how much you need to adjust to your pricing.
Bear in mind some people will complain of almost any price. It’s up to you to set your prices, not the person trying to pay less.
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If you charge by the hour you are self employed not a business owner.
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How does this answer the question… where you said employees are on $50 per hour???
$35/hr you’d, take home more working at Costco after a few years of that after expenses. I think working at Costco would be much less stressful sometimes than owning a business.
I’m glad we average much higher than $35 per man hour. For the sake of trying to figure in the hourly rate to stay relevant to the discussion, I like to pay about $18-$20/hr for a good employee, add in employer fees and taxes and other expenses, to make any money as a business owner off of each employee this is how I see it. I figure it costs $25/hr just to run the van and equipment minimum, so $20/hr per employee for labor plus $25/hr for the van, that’s $45/hr in cost, minimum! So at $35/hr I’d be losing money, not to mention its not worth making only a few bucks off of each employee when the cost is so high unless you have Walmart numbers. I think it should be double the cost because you don’t get to keep all that profit, you get taxed on it and you have to reinvest a lot of it into the company.
If I averaged the hourly rate over the course of an average day it wouldn’t quite be that $90/hr range which is where I would really feel like we are making money. But having a good solid helper and cleaning windows regularly is a comfortable place, and I am trying to grow 1 more crew to really take the pressure off and focus on sales and PR. We average about $70/hr per man hour, but that is hustling and being very efficient and hard working. I would say that as a professional window cleaning business in today’s economy with the current cost of living, $70/hr is fair. I’m sure there are companies that average much higher but in my flooded market in Southern Utah I would say we’re doing pretty good. Many people here charging for less than $1/pane on storefront and $4/pane or less for residential and only adding $1 for ladder panes.
Think about this, many mechanics shops charge by the hour, sure they have a nice shop, those mechanics all paid for their own school usually or the dealerships paid for it. Mechanics charge $75-$100/hr most often! And Dealerships charge $90-$150/hr! And they don’t have gas money and drive time in their price, they do have overhead that justifies the higher cost but they do have a sales department and they make money lots of money selling parts and fluffing the hourly bill. So yeah $75/hr is not that great in the today’s service industry. Plumbers electricians and HVAC, all the guys I know make $90+/hr.
Just make sure you are providing a QUALITY SERVICE, and not just slopping soapy water on and off the windows to collect a quick bottom-feeding low-baller check. That is called ruining the market and damaging the industry. Just because you can get work making $35/hr and you might like it better than working a regular job making $15/hr, just remember you may be promoting the low-baller’s mentality. But it still shouldn’t matter there are many clients that appreciate the quality rather than saving a few bucks. Some want both and that’s where being fast and good can separate you from the competition.
If you are providing a quality professional service keep, up with the service industry market and charge accordingly. Do you pay taxes, have insurance, uniforms and company vehicles? That’s all the justification you need to charge like a professional service add in quality, experience, professionalism, customer service, I could go on and on. You can charge as much as your service is worth. Phil no offense sorry for the rant, lol.
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Towards the bottom of my rant I mentioned damaging the industry and ruining the market. You could argue that this helps the market because people get sick of crappy service but I didn’t want to write a book.
The op said $50/hr. I know of many employees making hundreds of dollars an hour (although in many different industries) but anyway, as a business owner, you should be making more than $50 imo.
I was just going off what you wrote about Las Vegas it read from my perspective that most employees in that area were used to being paid $50/hr this is why I was a little shocked as thinking you pay your staff $50/hr.
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