The Disco Dancing Elf
Hey All,
This has zero to do with window cleaning. I figured it was time to get on our dancing shoes and do some disco. 
A window cleaner (thanks joe) sent me a video of himself dancing and I thought that is pretty cool. So I visited the site and had some fun. Click the image below to watch the vid:
I wish I had that much get up and go for real. Merry Christmas.
Sincerely,
Steve
When To Increase Your Prices
Hey Steve,
This is Nathan. How are you? I have a quick pricing question for you. What I am wondering doesn’t have to do with estimates, but customers that I’ve cleaned for awhile. After completing a job, I divide the amount I made by my time to figure my hourly average. While not a fine science I usually figure that with the expenses of owning a business and advertising, I need to average 35-40 an hour.
With jobs that are less than that due to various factors, it seems the price should be raised. Obviously I want to balance that with not losing customers, but in my area I don’t think I will lose my customers. I’m more referring to once a year customers than those that are more often.
Anyway, is it necessary to advise them of a price increase or simply present them with a bill that differs from last year’s? I’ve even had customers ask if prices have gone up before paying me, almost expecting that they would have gone up from last year.
I ask because if a repair man comes to repair an appliance, he simply presents a bill. As opposed to them, we present an estimate before doing the work, so then it would seem that we should advise ahead of time of the price if different? What would be your suggestion on the best way to handle those situations? Thanks for your thoughts.
Nathan
My Response:
Hi Nathan,
Good morning. How are you doing today?
Raising prices is always a risky proposition, but it does need to be done if you’ve done a customer a few times and you feel that you’re not making the profits you need to make from that customer.
The only thing I would caution you on is to watch the calculation you do. You mentioned that you divide the amount you make by your time in order to determine your hourly pay. This is ok if you’ve been in the biz for awhile (which means your overall job speed is good) and it’s ok if you’ve done the customer job at least twice.
If you make this calculation too early in your business (in the first 6 months), the calculation will probably be incorrect because as the months go on, you’ll become more adept at the entire window cleaning process from unloading your equipment to packing everything up along with all the tasks needing to be done in between.
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