More often than not, when I talk to clients about pricing their work, they tell me it’s a bit of a headache.
They know that getting quotes out quickly is important to winning work, but it just takes too long or is too hard to get it done within that prime 48 hour window.
So, we take a look at how they’re doing things.
Generally speaking, they’re listing out all of the costs for the job. The individual materials, quantities, labour, and the price that they will cost them in doing the job. Something they find easy enough after years in the trade.
But where it gets complicated is working out what to charge the client for all of those things.
Some folks keep a sheet at the ready with markup percentages for material types. This goes some way to making things faster and more consistent. Others just pluck markup percentages out of thin air. For most, they’re getting through their markups and at the end of the quote, they see a profit figure they can work with, maybe an adjustment here and there to get a few extra dollars.
Pricing line by line using Markup.
If you’ve read through that, you’ll understand what these business owners are getting at when they say pricing is a headache.
Heck, you might even have thought “that’s how I do things”.
I want to lay it out clearly.
There’s a better way!
When I talk about pricing work, I talk about a simple system. An easy method that will save you time, build confidence, and earn your business more.
It’s using Margin to price your work, and it looks like this.
- You establish all of the costs for the job. Just the same as you do now.
- You tally up the total costs
- You establish a target profit (as a percentage) that you want to make on the job. (let’s use 30% as an example)
- You use that target profit to calculate what to charge the client (Costs / 1 – target profit e.g. Costs / 1 – 0.3)
- Put the sell price on the invoice
- Send the invoice to the client
Pricing with simplicity and better profit using Margin.
No more going line by line, adding a markup to each material.
No more guessing if you’ll make a good profit on the job.
No more late or delayed quotes.
What this does get you is …
- Faster pricing = quotes that go out quickly
- Higher sales conversion
- More time to do other things in your business OR in your personal life (time with the family, or out in the hills)
If you want to make pricing a strength in your business, start using Margin to price your work.
To learn more about building a sales workflow and pricing strategy that works for your business, get in touch.
email: michael@rodiecoaching.ca | Instagram: @coachrodie
