bob,
glenn and les hit it on the head. That really is the essence of every successful business plan. How you reach that target is up for debate. It also varies by your target market.
For example, if you are a residential service company, who's break even point is $125/hr for an 8 hr day. But you are only able to bill 4 hrs in an average day (the rest is travel, supply house, waiting, etc - that's just the nature of residential service) then you need to bill $250/hr for those four hours. I've yet to meet a residential customer who will agree to a $250 hourly rate, (or a $125/hr including travel rate) However, they do agree to fixed prices (contract, flat rate, estimates, etc) that will cover that $250 hourly rate.
Now, if you are a large commercial company, like the one you work for, you make the bulk of your money on the projects. The fitouts, the groundups, the remodels. So a company will usually do the service for cost, so that they can make it up on the larger projects. In addition, the customers like this will keep men busy year round.
Residential is typically a one shot deal. They won't need you again for 4 yrs on average. You won't get the opportunity to make the money back on the next project.
Commercial/industrial is different. You can be in a facility 10 times/month easily. Then do 2-3 larger projects a year.
But to use the same pricing structure and business model for each is bad. You won't have much luck keeping large commercial/industrial customers if you try to squeeze every penny out of them on every trip. Likewise, you won't make much money in residential if you try to cut them a deal so that you can make it up on the big one. By the time they do the 'big one', 4 yrs have passed and they forgot your name.
does that make sense?
