My pricing allows me to pay myself for the countless hours I work. I’m truly never “off the clock”.
My pricing keeps a roof over my head and food on my table.
I own a small business. One where the CEO knows your name and truly cares about you.
I am not Walmart (a 500 billion dollar company). I’m unable to provide things at the “lowest price”, order millions of units, and still stay in business.
Im not the “cheapest”. I’m also not “the most expensive”.
My pricing is what it is to allow this small business to keep going which allows me to keep making a positive impact.
I will not apologize for my pricing because I shouldn’t.
Just hanging up works
If they find someone cheaper it’s a win win for them and the other contractor who had the same needs as you, but has found a way to do it cheaper.
Long term, I totally agree with this. He who will win in the end is whoever finds the best balance of price and quality. There’s only so much “quality” difference in what we do. It’s clean or it’s not. Sure, there’s a few add ons you can do to amplify the experience for the customer, but it’s very few, and then it’s all fluff. I’d rather be cheaper at what we’re actually doing than have to babble a bunch of nice sounding phrases to the customer to make them feel like they got their money’s worth. There are people out there who will straight faced think it’s okay to make $750 an hour labor for doing this work. Baffling to me.
No need to get into such deep detail to “defend” it. We have insurance, shop overhead, and pay our guys a solid rate…so the price is the price. We’ll offer a discount for off-season flexibility, which is a benefit to us. The reality is you are not in competition with every other washer in your market, and not everyone in your market is in competition for the same customers. There’s different models of service, and there’s different classifications of customers. Whether you’re at the higher end or lower end of the market in your area, there are people that are just not your customers, one way or the other.
One thing I’ve always learned from doing sales. And I’ve been selling HVAC in Texas for 20 years very competitive
20% - You will Never get
30% - You will Always get
50%- You have to work to get " This is were the money is made"
No need to reply with a snarky rebuttal, I simply tell them ‘I understand’ and leave it at that.
Keep in mind that person could potentially get on Nextdoor or Yelp and really blast you as an a-hole to all their Karen friends with 20 cats. Those 20 friends will tell their friends and so on.
I love when they say the guy last year only charged me $X. When I ask why they aren’t using him again, Oh, I can’t find him anymore, he’s not returning calls or disconnected phone. That’s when I say I’ve been in business for 9 years and fully understand the costs involved to stay in business, that’s why I charge what I charge. I give a short description of the work and some of the small extras that I do and leave it at that. They either say yes or no. If no, I say thank you for your time and leave. I stopped worrying about what the cheap people think a long time ago.
Prices vary a lot around me. I’ve seen the $99 guys up to around $500. I’m not the cheapest by any means, but I’m told my prices are very good and only once was I told directly I was too expensive. Normally you just don’t hear back. For that person that told me I was too much, I nicely said I was sorry I couldn’t help them out, but here are a couple other companies that do house washing, contact them and hopefully they can help you out. I gave two companies that I know for a fact charge some of the highest rates in my area. Figured I’d give her a bit of perspective, lol
