How low will you go ... bidding jobs

[leofry@1966]

i am not sure why i am asking this when i know the answer is wide open to
as long as your happy
as long as your making a profit
depends on how big the job is
depends on bad you you need the work

do you think the larger companies have an advantage over the smaller companies with it comes to giving bids? due to the larger companies are doing volume work,

[David-Hebert]

Live by price DIE BY PRICE

to answer your question sometimes, many companies value service as much or more then price.

[leofry@1966]

true... but a lot do go by price

[DON ELDRED]

Good question Try to do guestimate over the phone, however, if it is a large home with lots of carpet will go and do a written estimate
Commercial-- always go and do a estimate.
The one thing to remember is there is no such thing as a free estimate, in our area it take a good hour to drive and do a estimate, how much does that cost you.

[leofry@1966]

homes, i am not really concerned about .. i will give bid on the phone and my price is my price i know its competitive, its the bigger commercial jobs,

[DON ELDRED]

Big commercial jobs you really need to do an estimate on how much time it will take and than apply your hourly rate to come up with a price.
Caution on big jobs if your normal rate is 100.00 a hour your pricing will not fly.
On one account we have which is almost 600,000 sq ft we are at 35.00 a hour.

[jtmellon]

Live by price DIE BY PRICE

to answer your question sometimes, many companies value service as much or more then price.

In a perfect world this would be true. But I know what it takes to feed my family.

[leofry@1966]

I would be down with the $35 an hour for 600k sq ft, i am just tying to figure out when to start gong down... I kind of thinking I start to go down a penny when you reach 10,000 and then go down a penny every 2k. starting at 10 cents.. mmm

[NJP]

If you can make money a 35 an hour then go for it. I think bigger companies wouldn't go that low due there overhead. JMO

[DON ELDRED]

If you want the big jobs in larger cities and as mentioned above at 35.00 hour is big bucks for carpet maintenance programs, the job I mentioned requires 140 man hours a week. We use part time staff plus a on site supervisor

The big companies charge less than I do however they sub out the work at a percentage of the job. Big commercial jobs are a different ball game than your run of the mill 5000 sq ft jobs.

[leofry@1966]

I just bid a job, and every time i bid a good size job i contemplation about it over and over and over, it would be a lie to say i could not lower it.. of course i can lower it, but should i lower it.. it was about 3k tile and about 6.3k carpet i bid the carpet at .09 cents per sq and the tile at .21 per sq now neither has been cleaned for 2 year an some of the tile may have never been cleaned... i cleaned this the last time... but to me the tile is more than twice as hard to clean... i really worry about this to much...

[Rob D]

I have had customers tell me I don't charge enough for the quality cleaning they get and I have had others say your price is way to high..I think we all do what we have to and stay in the black but I believe in time any quality cleaner can have raving fans that are willing to pay

[NJP]

leofry, I think you did good on the carpet but T&G I wouldn't go any less than .30 sq ft. JMO. Hey what ever your area can bare!

[leofry@1966]

I love hearing that.. am glad you didn't say i was too high on the tile and grout .. believe it or not most of the companies around here ... my main competitor clean tile and grout for the same price...

[DON ELDRED]

After reading some of the above I guess one needs to define what is a big job.

In our world it would start in the 50,000 sq ft range