When you are starting your lawn care business, how do you find how much you should charge to mow a lawn? This is a matter that was recently motivated to us on the Gopher Lawn Care Business Community forum. Here are a few ideas.
First off, if you haven’t done so, log on the lawn care business forum and post your question along with your areas. There is a good chance another lawn care business owner in your community can give you the going rate. You may also want to ask yourself, do you have any friends in the online business? If so, ask them what they charge per lawn.
Another response that was posted was to talk to a few local lawn care businesses in your area and get an estimate from them to service your lawn. If you have to a lawn then ask a friend to acquire a few estimates to service their yard works lawn care service. When to be able to three estimates, you could have a good idea how much to charge. You will know the price, plus you come across the square footage sized your lawn and may do divide that out determine how much to charge per square ft. Ought to actually give you a ballpark idea. Keep in mind, the expenses you require run your lawn care business can drastically differ from another lawn care business owner’s expenses, so know your expenses.
The next question you could be wondering is should you charge by the sq . ft . or man hour?
Kurt Chance said “The first thing you always want to do, when giving an estimate, has been walk the property and don’t be in a rush to get in and out. I did this once and when I got there I was in for a surprise. I couldn’t know there were four ditches in the front lot that would need with regard to manually trimmed and gone around while mowing. Luckily for me it still took the estimated time that I figured and my price still discovered to what I demanded.”
If you are a brand-new lawn care business owner, you may want to charge based on man hour. Author Joel LaRusic of mowboy.com suggests “you want to quote quality, not time. In short it’s better to say “I’ll perform these group of services, to your satisfaction, for $50” than condition expertise “I’ll spend an hour at your house for $50.” Of course, you should use your hourly rate to base your price on but you don’t need to pass those pricing precisely to the customer. Discontent and the customer watching contributions and as you get better at your job and shave a few minutes associated with it, that should be to your advantage.”
Kurt explained further “What I do when estimating large properties is I figure out how long it’s going to take me. Break it down into smaller sections if I would like to. Then I figure my hourly rate or what I have to make from the property and put a price together from that. With many commercial properties are huge broken up into a few mowing areas, I get it easier to just uncover the time it may for each and then figure out the total time plus drive day time.”
Another more advanced strategy is to charge per sq . ft . based on formulas. Using formulas requires a little more experience, because it critical your formulas are accurate.