Quoting Basics For Gardening Businesses
Written by Uwe on November 12, 2014
Once you’ve decided to start a gardening business you will need to think about a pricing strategy in your quoting I can imagine that at least a hundred questions come to your mind when you think about pricing, such as:
- How to set up the pricing?
- How to set up a competitive hourly rate?
- Am I too expensive?
- Am I too cheap?
- Am I going to earn enough?
I’ll try to guide you through the pricing process and hopefully you’ll find the answers that you’re looking for below. Consider these things when doing quoting for a client:
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1. Decide whether you want to get paid hourly or by task
The gardening business is tricky because you never know exactly how much of your time the task can take.
I suggest you to have both rates set: hourly and by task, because in some situations you’ll see that it’s better if you charge hourly & vice versa.
2. Check your competition
You shouldn’t be scared to approach your competition and ask for their advice. Usually people are happy to help you.
However, if you don’t feel comfortable contacting the competition then you can ask a friend to get a quote from your competitor to see their quoting strategy. Afterwards, you should use this information to set up a competitive pricing strategy.
3. Find out how much the task costs you
You should evaluate every task very precisely, otherwise, you won’t make the optimal amount of money. Add up everything: tools, taxes, insurance, petrol and so on.
Also, calculate the risk of the task i.e. if you have to cut a tree, evaluate the height, the size etc. If a customer evaluates a task as risky, s/he is most likely willing to pay a premium for your services. Obviously, the first time is the most difficult to evaluate everything 100% accurately but you’ll see that it’ll get easier in the future. Practise makes perfect!
Once you’ve decided on all these small things writing a new quote will become easier every time you do.
The simplest way to write a quote is with an online invoicing/quoting software such as InvoiceBerry. Once you’ve written a quote you can change it into an invoice with just 1 click. It couldn’t be easier than that.
At the end of the day, your pricing should make your client happy and still generate enough income for you to value your time and effort invested into the job.
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