Does anyone have a basic bid scale?

and also sense the Ds and Pucnh have protector built in should i charge for it?

Can you offer it as an acentive? For exampel including the protector the price or maybe say free protector?

Which accounts should i be looking for sense i only have a 175 rotary

I only have a 175 and I do all typs of work with it. Is a Cimex better for doing large comm jobs, sure is, trust me I had two, three, I don't remember (how many Rick)..LOL

I have a tank on my 175 and I use Fiber plus and FP Max along with all Encap products.

Nothing I can't handle. Might take a little more time but nothing I can't handle.

And yes I do resi work as well using my 175, tuways and Pad Cap Pro from John G and sometime I use DS for resi.

Here is a price scale that was suggested by a former poster
of this board. It might help you out.


Encapsulation Carpet Cleaning Rates

UNOBSTRUCTED RATE
Under 500 square feet- .20 per square foot
to 1000 square feet- .19 per square foot
to 2000 square feet- .18 per square foot
to 3000 square feet- .17 per square foot
to 4000 square feet- .16 per square foot
to 5000 square feet- .15 per square foot
to 6000 square feet- .14 per square foot
to 7000 square feet- .13 per square foot
7500+ square feet- .12 per square foot
Stairs
o .40 per square foot- open front
o .65 per square foot- closed front
$65.00 Minimum fee applies for Encapsulation Carpet Cleaning

OBSTRUCTED RATE
Add .02 per square foot

FURNITURE/ITEM MOVING RATE
Add .04 per square foot

HEAVY SOIL RATE
Add .02 per square foot

In our neck of the woods those prices will get you zero jobs.

So true, so true. In NJ I have 10 other carpet cleaners just waiting for me to overbid. LOL

Here's my plan of attack. I tried to make up a "bid scale" in the past. But I could never make it stick in the real world. So here's how I approached it...

I go in with 10 cents per sq ft in my mind. That's the middle ground. And I know that around the country, .10 is still considered an average price for mainstream commercial carpet care.

So here's how I work it...

I use a "Sliding Scale approach and I adjust up or down from .10 per sq ft.

Some of the many factors that affect my slide upward rapidly are as follows...
~ Smaller buildings with less carpet to maintain.
~ Lots of furniture or other items in the cleaning path that we'll have to contend with.
~ An inconvenient building access or inconvenient access to water, etc.
~ Having weird scheduling requierements.
~ Customer being weird or difficult to work with (I call this smelling out a rat).
~ They are not inclined to have it done on a regular routine basis.
~ They only want certain portions of the building cleaned.
~ The carpet is disgusting or the people are slobs.
~ They only have one location.
~ Or any other negative feeling that crosses my mind when I look at the account.

This list is only a partial set of criteria that will cause me to scoot the price up from .10 per sq ft. I'll bring it all the way up into the high .20's depending on what I observe .11 .12 .13 .15 .17 .20 and so on - you get the idea.

Conversely I will also gently nudge the price slightly under .10 per sq ft. Going down is done slowly! 9.9 9.8 9.7 9.6 9.5 and so on. The reasons for allowing the price to nudge below .10 are exactly opposite of the reasons above for raising the price above .10 per sq ft...
~ Large buildings with lots of carpet to maintain.
~ Minimal furniture or other items in the cleaning path that we'll have to contend with.
~ Convenient building access and convenient access to water, etc.
~ Easy to work with their scheduling requierements.
~ Customer is a peach that I'm looking forward to working with.
~ We can set up a regular maintenance contract for routine cleaning.
~ They want to throw lots of work our way.
~ The carpet is in good shape and well maintained.
~ They have multiple locations for us to clean.

This sliding scale approach takes a little time for you to get the feel for, but in no time you'll have a good handle on how to price things according to your market.

Hope this gives you some food for thought.




Rick Gelinas

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Rick makes many great points to consider when bidding a contract.
The biggest thing I look for is how big the job is and from that I try to figure out how many man hours it will take to complete the cleaning.
If I can convert them to a carpet maintenance program I go through the same procedure, only in a program you can build in travel/setup times etc. and come up with your cost for the year, and from that you can come up with your selling cost. Most cleaners are flying by the seat of their pants when you select a price, and quite often they are out in left feild on the big jobs.
You need to know all your costs, plus realalistic production rates in order to bid larger commercial jobs.

Going to make money with a rotary