Are You Pricing For Profits or

Pricing From Fear? 

All of us want to make more money, but many of us connect being busy with making

more money. The key is in how we price our services.

Learn how to price mowing when you don’t know how to price!

Correctly pricing your lawn care

services can end up boosting your yearly revenue by

more than $60,000.Two ways to maximize your mowing profits.

1. Scope out your market

• Who are your clients and what can they afford?• Who are your competitors and what do they

charge?• Will your clients pay more for higher quality work?

The first question is the most important. You can tell if your clients are

wealthy, but that doesn’t mean they are willing to pay high prices for

high-quality lawn care.

Knowing your market is the most important part of pricing.

If you can’t get answers, take

the time to interview a few of your clients that you know will be honest

with you.

2. Calculate your expenses• Employee Wages• Material Costs• Overhead Costs

Employee wages are how much you pay your team for each job.

You might charge your

clients by the square foot or

by the hour. But you will always

pay your employees for

their time.

Use time tracking tools to keep track of your employees’ time, which also allows

you to track your wages cost.Learn how to figure the most important number in your business.

Material Costs are things like your mowers, blades, mulch,

and edgers.

Keep track of your inventory, and you’re well on your way to keeping track of

your expenses.

Overhead costs are the operational costs that don’t directly make you money.

• Fuel• Uniforms• Office staff• Office supplies• Utilities• Marketing

To figure your pricing per service:

• Add the employee wages and materials costs for that service for a month

• If that service takes 75% of your employees’ time, add in 75% of the monthly overhead costs

• Total the time all jobs of that type took for the month.• Divide the total of all the expenses for this service by

the total time the jobs took.• This gives you a break even cost per hour for that

service

Repeat for each service until you know how much each is costing

you per hour.

Since you know how long most jobs take, you can figure out whether you are pricing

to make money or not.

You might find that some jobs

won’t profit unless you

charge absurdly high rates.

Learn how to raise prices without losing customers.

Cut any services losing money until you can do them efficiently

and profitably.

Your employees will have more

time to perform better-paying

services, which will help you grow faster.

Learn from your mistakes.

Example: After figuring out his expenses, one owner discovered that he wasn’t charging nearly enough to cover his overheads. So, he increased his prices by almost $10, which made a drastic difference. In fact, after that year, he discovered his business earned more than $60,000 from that price increase alone.

Calculate your expenses, know your market, and learn from your mistakes:

these are the keys to getting your prices just right.

Learn more about how to price your services.

Service Autopilot has many tools to help you track your expenses.