What do you do when a Customer haggles with you about price?

[dgargan]

If there's one thing I walked away with from SFS is "customers preceived value" Steve kept driving that home and it made sense. I thought we had always given great value but that was not the way our customers saw it. When we started to focus on this good things happened.

David

PS

Maybe it's time to attend another SFS class. There is such a wealth of information there.

 

[Steve Toburen]

you mean adding more bull shit to the job description


"Illusion of Control"= more bull shit

you have to think is my price too high

We have got to get you to a Strategies for Success seminar, Terry. All this negativity can't be good for your health. Plus you would add a real "spark" to the class.

Steve "Island Boy" Toburen
http://www.StrategiesForSuccess.com

PS So how many board members think I should offer Mr. Brevik a "Put Up or Shut UP" scholarship to our next Seattle SFS? (August 16-20, 2010) Maybe we should do a poll?

Oh wait, Terry, let me guess- you already have your greens fee paid for those days, right?

 

[Greg Cole]

I vote you give him one Steve!

I have to say I am getting a kick out of this thread. I constantly read people trying to justify their prices by saying that theya re better than the people that B&S someone into paying more. What happened to the days of justifying your high price with high quality work. With your knowledge, experience, repair abilities, etc.? Tell us why are are the BEST not Better than someone you feel is the level of pond scum??

 

[Hoody]

Isn't quality of work still saying the other companies can't clean ? Why not justify your price more on the experience they're going to receive in their home ? Anyone can clean a carpet and get mediocre results where a client will be happy with the clean. But what about all of the background work ?

The experience from when where they pick up the phone, to the booking of the job. Showing up on time, respecting their home and not mucking it up with your equipment/hoses. Being the problem solver for the issues with their textiles and upholstery. The follow up after the cleaning, ect.

 

[Bjorn]

could I have a supply of air sick bags

just depends how the skiing is in august in Bariloche Argentina

 

[Steve Toburen]

could I have a supply of air sick bags

just depends how the skiing is in august in Bariloche Argentina

So Terry, shall I mark you down as a "maybe"? As many here will attest, even if you refuse to learn anything you will be fed like a king.

IB

PS Remember the "Put up or SHUT UP" part of the invitation ...

 

[Jeff Madsen]

O.K. - I'll be the one who is "unsophisticated", "prideful" and full of "ego".

I'm busy - I don't have time for games. I am polite, work hard, stand behind my work 100%. The price is the price, period. I am more than happy to walk away - I have five people after you who would kill for your spot on the schedule. I am booked out for two weeks ten months out of the year. The other two months I'm booked out a week. The price is the price.

 

[Scott S.]

i tell them if they want a cheaper price to just go and try to get someone to beat my price.. some times i cut it a little but i tell them that i dont work for free. and that i am using professional tools and professional chemicals to get their carpet or tile the cleanest possible. hagglers will always complain.. (from my experience) everyone wants something for free..

 

[Bjorn]

I will not be used for SFS propaganda

 

[tmdry]

Terry,

When are you traveling overseas again?

 

[Sticky]

Thanks for all the responses. Steve T. the info you provide on here is really helpful....

I brought this question up because of my last job on Friday....It's a chef at a restaurant that I clean every month.(his father is the owner) He didnt get the keys for his new house until 6pm. I had to drive 30 min away total of an hour to pick up the key. He says, take a look at it then call me with the price. I get to the house do my pre-inspection walk out to the Van and as I'm walking up a police officer is shining his light on me. I walk over to talk to the cop and he tells me that someone on the street is watching the house and NOONE is suppose to be there. I call my customer and put him on the phone with the cop, 45 min later dispatch says its ok for us to clean. I call him with the price which is $280 for a 8ft sofa and 2 rooms hall way and stairs.(WHICH WAS ALREADY A DISCOUNTED PRICE) He starts being loud and begging me to do it
for cheaper. I drop it down to $180 cash. He says I will be there in 45 minutes.

After he shows up to meet a lady to clean the rest of the house, he tells me I forgot to stop at the ATM can you call me tommorrow and you can stop by and get the cash. Saturaday comes and he tells me I can't stop at the ATM with UHaul call me later. I called once later and he didn't answer. Sunday I'm suppose to clean his parents restaurant and I call he says that he didn't have time to stop at the ATM and his dad didn't leave the money for the restaurant. I tell him that I will just come tommorrow night and to make sure he had the money for both jobs.

I jumped threw hoops to get this job done at 9pm on a friday and I didnt get done til 12:30 and he can't take time out of his day to pay me. Really aggrivates me.

It seems like everytime I drop my prices it turns into a fooken nightmere. I should have walked but I didn't want to piss off a monthly account and I'm too new to walk away from $200. I need every dollar I can get.

It's really hard to enjoy carpet cleaning when I just did $16,500 at Victoria's Secret doing a sewage back up in 5 days.

I'm working really hard on building up the restoration side of my business. I need carpet cleaning to fill the time in between restoration jobs.

Thanks for the advice guys....

 

[Ron Werner]

It seems like everytime I drop my prices it turns into a fooken nightmere. I should have walked but I didn't want to piss off a monthly account and I'm too new to walk away from $200. I need every dollar I can get.

There's your answer right there. Every time. When you drop your price you are telling the client that 1. you really are charging more than you need to, 2. that you are "hungry" for the work and they've got you.

When I first started cleaning I dropped my price to get jobs
"I have other places I'll get you to clean"
"Can you do it for less if I give you cash" (Why would I clean a place for $100 cash when I could have made $200 even though I'd paid taxes on it!)

One lady said another company would do it for less. I was a little irked that day so I just looked her in the eye and said, I'm not that company. Didn't trust myself to say anything more.
Normally I'll explain how I out work everyone else, ie all the steps, etc etc.
BUT, I'm ready to walk now. Its not worth the stress, and usually, when cleaning a $100 talk-down-job, you pass up on a $300 job that you now didn't have time for.

"If my price is too high I can refer you to a good budget cleaner" Love that line. Got it from Steve Marsh. Steve's got a lot of answers to that question.

 

[Brian R]

I used to think "if I charge them too much I will never see them again." So in order to keep the customer I would lower the price a little. After awhile, that fear goes away.

First...I am confident that I can get more customers if they are too cheap to come back and it they don't, I really don't care.

Second...They usually come back AND say what a great job I did...not to mention referals.

Third....for every one I DO lose because my price was too high, the higher prices on all make up for it so I lose nothing and gain a bit more peace of mind and body...that sounded spiritual and what not.

Fourth...You probably won't see them again for a year. So the higher price now helps a helluva lot more right now than getting a chance to see them later...and they usually want the same or lower price next time.

There are more reason ...but I gotta get to workin.

 

[Willy P]

Which do you prefer?

OR

:?:

This:

Or this:

 

[Steve Toburen]

I need every dollar I can get. [/color]

There's your answer right there. Every time. When you drop your price you are telling the client that 1. you really are charging more than you need to, 2. that you are "hungry" for the work and they've got you.

I agree 100%, Ron. I think this "debate" (if you can call it that since it has been remarkably civilized and restrained by MB standards) has been mostly about semantics.

I had two different pricing philosophies- one for commercial and the other for residential:

1. Residential- We NEVER dropped our per square foot price on residential. What we WOULD do was creatively lower the price by lowering or changing the scope of the job. This way we still kept our pricing credibility and profit margin while hopefully making a Cheerleader out of the customer. But I found if I wasn't able to somehow give a little bit somewhere and stayed hardline then I never was able to get my foot in the door.

2. Commercial- Here the gloves came off and it was all about just one thing. Could I make my numbers the way the contract was written? Yes? We would do it. No? Fuggedaboutit!

At the end of the day it comes back to "supply and demand". Capitalism at its finest!

Steve "Island Boy" Toburen
www.StrategiesForSuccess.com

PS I will say once we grew out of the "owner-operator" phase my "pricing principles" eroded a little bit simply because sometimes you take on work just to keep your people working. An owner-operator, on the other hand, can just go fishing, skiing or golfing. Works for me ...

 

[Ron Werner]

1. Residential- We NEVER dropped our per square foot price on residential. What we WOULD do was creatively lower the price by lowering or changing the scope of the job. This way we still kept our pricing credibility and profit margin while hopefully making a Cheerleader out of the customer. But I found if I wasn't able to somehow give a little bit somewhere and stayed hardline then I never was able to get my foot in the door.

Thats the best way to lower your price.
Itemize each area on the workorder, then start subtracting. Instead of wall to wall, why don't I just clean traffic areas for now.
or
why not do TA in the bedrooms, and just move things in the LR, and instead of applying protectant everywhere, I'll just apply it to the main TA in the LR and hall stairs.
Work it to meet their budget and they'll love you, because they REALLY don't want that cheap bugger in the valpak ad, they do want to have it WELL cleaned.

 

[Steve Toburen]

Thats the best way to lower your price... Work it to meet their budget and they'll love you, because they REALLY don't want that cheap bugger in the valpak ad, they do want to have it WELL cleaned.

Amen, Ron. Good for you.

IB
www.StrategiesForSuccess.com

PS But Ron and I aren't prmoting lowering your prce. However, your "additonal travel exoenses will catch up to you

 

[Ron Werner]

You aren't really lowering your price, just lowering their cost.
You will still clean at your price, but if they lower it, you will be able to work faster and have time for another job.

Its really nice when you show them an $800 workorder and they so "Ok" and nothing else.

 

[B&BGaryC]

So let me get this straight.

If T refuses to come and see SFS then he will be muzzled in all future SFS posts?