kdal,
good luck with it all. but until you stop selling on price, you'll never make a good living.
you can't quote a service over the phone. If you want people to pay you $4000 for the job, you need to sell it. Sell yourself, sell you workmanship, sell your service, sell your promptness, sell everything.
But if someone calls you up and says 'how much?' and you tell them over the phone '$1200' all they can base you on is your price. meanwhile the guy they called before you said $1000. Since you are both simply numbers to them at this point, who's gonna get the job?
Go out, look at the job, meet with the customer, tell them $1300 (to cover your time) and you'll see that you'll start getting them.
I can also tell that you have never run your true numbers. If you had, you'd be over $45/hr for residential service. You are trying to price the 'going rate'
if you are not priced high enough to cover your true costs, you are pricing yourself out of business the same as the guy that is too high. the only difference is, you are working WAY harder to get to bankruptcy.
I don't know about you, but I can think of many other things that I would rather be doing on my way to bankruptcy. Wine, Women and Song are 3 that come to mind.
bear this in mind as well. if we do a service upgrade correctly, with good material, it will last the customer 30-40+ yrs. If material cost is $500. You need to 5 services at $1200 to make the same gross as 1 service at $4000.
good luck
[This message has been edited by mahlere (edited 04-30-2006).]
