Ron Werner said:
... The 1-2/day is what I am "able" to do in a day. I work alone and don't want to kill myself doing 5 a day. I've a $300+average and do about 300jobs per year for the past 5 years....
Ron Werner said:
...My goal is to make about 600+/day, just want to do that more consistently...
Ron Werner said:
...As it is I've a referral, whole house and sectional job, $1000, she really didn't blink, but that's the only job I'll do that day...
Ron Werner said:
... I'm not over charging by any means, everyone else is undercharging... But work this year has been slower, sporadic, not just for me either...
I could have posted the same thing toward the end of 2007. The last quarter of 2007 work was slower and more sporadic than usual, and not just for me. Then I got killed in 2008. And then I got killed again in 2009. I staggered to my feet in 2010, bloody, bruised, and wrecked.
Starting 2010 and continuing this year I reworked how I delivered my service. I still deliver a high quality clean, and I do so at a price that allows my customers to feel they have received an
exceptional value while I feel I have received a
fair and
equitable compensation for that service - the proverbial "win/win".
Is it possible that your referral customer does not feel like she has scored such a "win" as you are pulling away? I'm not suggesting at all that she is not pleased with your work. In fact, I am
sure that she is. But how
certain are you that
she feels that the service received was commensurate to the price?
Ron Werner said:
... I'm not over charging by any means, everyone else is undercharging... But work this year has been slower, sporadic, not just for me either...
If you are not as busy as you
want to be, and work is getting
slower and
sporadic, then perhaps you ought to re-examine the accuracy of your opinion that you are not "over charging by any means ... everyone else is undercharging." Perhaps, my friend, you are
all overcharging.
For example, my price for a whole house and a sectional is $488 ($289 carpet & $199 upholstery). I can tell you that if your customer hired me instead of you, she would not be able to distinguish her level of satisfaction with
my cleaning from the level of satisfaction she feels with
your cleaning. However, she would undoubtedly feel she had received a
tremendous value from my service. Can you say that she'd feel that she had received the same sense of value with your service?
I know that you feel that there is no other way than for you to carry on as you have been doing. I hope that if you do continue to do so that you do not find yourself experiencing what I had to go through.
My goal is similar to yours, and I too am a one man operation, and I too do not want to kill myself or become a splash and dash hack. I have no desire to be a multi-truck operator. I want to be responsible only to family, my customers, and myself. I want to feel at the end of the day that I did the best thing I could do for my customers and for me.
That "best thing" is a combination of service and price, the nexus of which is commonly called "value." That "best value" is some combination of service and price that rests at a level at which
both you
and your customer are left feeling that you have
both been as fair to one another and as good to one another as it is possible to be. Value is a scale and the highest value is found in a
balance between service and price.
I would suggest that you have not struck that balance, though you likely feel that you have. Steve Toburen would say that you need to put on your "customer goggles" in order to see where that balance might more accurately be judged to be found. You likely do not need
SFS, HP, or JP. You simply need to open your mind to the possibility that you are
both overcharging and over-delivering. In other words, your value scale is out of balance.
It may also be the case that you could effect the same level of soil removal by other means than you are currently using, but you can do so by finding ways to effect it more efficiently and thus quickly. These efficiencies will enable you do reduce price and still over-deliver. Somewhere in that realm you will find value; and so will your customers. Once they do, work will no longer be slow or sporadic.
Good Luck,
David