The other day, I was talking to a mobile detailer and fleet car wash business entrepreneur and he told me that it rained in his region quite a bit, and it was hard for him to maintain cash flow if it rained too much, because he was taking days off when he should be working, but no one wanted their cars cleaned when it was raining. Of course, I then recommended that he go out and get some customers and clientele doing various types of cleaning jobs that he could do even if it was raining.
Many folks in the pressure washing sector or power washing businesses are able to get into the restaurant sector, and they can clean the insides of restaurants, all the equipment, stainless steel tables, trash areas, drive-throughs, and whatever else is around such as the awnings, sidewalks, or even children’s playground inside of some of these QSRs or quick service restaurants. Indeed, he decided to go out and try to sell some accounts, and use additional marketing. He found the one large QSR in his are that was interested, it was a chain of fast food restaurants, that was part of a major brand name, but he didn’t know what to charge.
Okay so, let’s get into this for second shall we? I recommend looking at the job, estimating how long it will take you on your first visit, and multiplying that times $60 per hour. Now, eventually after you’ve done it a few times, the job will get easier and easier, plus you will become more efficient at doing it. Therefore before long you could be billing almost $100 per hour for such work on that account. Indeed, that makes the $60 an hour rate a fair price for the business owner, and a very good account for the pressure washing company.
It doesn’t make sense to tell the restaurant owner that you are charging $60 per hour, rather you should give them a price for the job, which is equal to the amount of time you think it will take you based on that rate, without actually explaining that rate.
There are three reasons for this; one, is that they usually don’t like to pay people per hour, because they figure you will just milk the job, do it really slowly, and therefore make more money; two, it would be too easy for your competition to come in and charge $55 per; and three, later as you got better at the job, and you are able to do it in 30 minutes, you’d be making less money if you billed hourly, as you become more efficient, which is actually a disincentive for doing it quickly and effectively. Please consider all this and think on it.