[MAS.Va]

would you recommend charging for aerating and seeding a yard that is about 1/3 of an acre? I have a few yards that have been asking about it but I am having a hard time pricing it. TruGreen offered my parents aeration and seeding for $700 and their yard is 3/4 of an acre, but I dont know what other services were included in that package. Any help would be appreciated

[Stonehenge]

More important that what any other person would charge for these services, it's more important that you find out what you need to charge for these services to make the money you need to make.

I don't offer the services you mention (we do new seedings, but rarely overseedings), but if I wanted to, this is what I'd do to figure out what I wanted to charge:

Find the cost to rent a good aerator and overseeder/slice seeder. Ask the rental place to estimate how much ground I could expect to cover with each machine per hour.

Estimate the number of hours the service would take. That includes picking up the equipment from the rental shop, driving it to the site, using it, then cleaning it/gassing it up (as required by the rental shop), then returning it.

Hopefully you already know how much overhead you need to recoup for every man-hour of work, so the price per man hour number you should already have.

Add in the cost of any materials you might be using (like grass seed).

If you're also fertilizing, be sure to include the cost of maintaining your app license, the cost of the applicator (machine), etc. But most of that should already be part of your overhead.

Calculate how much money you need to make for the number of man-hours this project is going to take in order for you to maintain your profit objectives for the year (you may already have this baked into your per-man-hour price as well).

If you're unsure about the man-hour estimate, add a little bit of "learning curve" time in there to make sure you don't lose your shirt (but for a project of this size, I doub't you would).

Add all that together, and you have your price, perfectly formulated for you and your company, guaranteed to give you the profit you need to meet your objectives.

This is going to be far better than just finding out what others charge - they might live in markets that require much higher or lower prices, and the given person answering may have vastly different objectives to his pricing than you do. Don't work backwards in your pricing! Don't start from what you can get for a service and calculate your way backwards to a spot where hopefully you make money. Start by pricing so you make money. Then, if you don't get the work, at least you aren't working AND losing money because of it.

Good luck!

[jwholden]

Nice post Jeff!

Many here are landscape contractors because they love landscaping, not because they love running a business. You have to put the time in to learning how to run a business early in the game and develop a business that can support you and your family.

NEVER GET CAUGHT IN THE TRAP OF TRYING TO MEET THE STATUS QUO OF THE INDUSTY! The course your business takes and your pricing methods are 100% unique to your company, no matter how similar you think they are to others.

When you are calculating man hours for a project, calculate realistic man hours. For example, if it takes 20 minutes to drive to the place to get the aerator round that number up to 1 hour round trip to take into account time to pickup the machine and the trip to pick up a gatorade (hey, this is the real world).

If you are going to hire employees, BASE YOUR PRODUCTION TIMES ON WHAT YOUR EMPLOYEES CAN PRODUCE, NOT YOU, your experience and desire to get the job done efficiently will make your production rates faster than your crew.

The greatest thing you can do to help your business is to let your customers see your passion for your work. This will have a far greater impact on DESIREABLE CUSTOMERS WHO ARE NOT SHOPPING BASED ON PRICE. These are the people you want to work for.

If you give a customer a price for your work and they say they can get someone else to do it for less tell them you agree with their decision if they see the services you are offering as equal to the competition.

YOU HAVE TO DEMONSTRATE THE VALUE OF WHAT YOU ARE PROVIDING. My company(I) will return calls promptly, show up to take care of 'little questions' you have, stripe a lawn like no other company out there, provide a unique solution to your landscape needs as opposed to the cookie cutter landscapes most offer.

Hope this info helps some of the aspiring green industy professionals out there.

[MAS.Va]

thanks guys, great advice, I appreciate it