How do you go about pricing your services for profit?
Communicating cost increases to your clients aren't the easiest yet it has to be done as a business continues to grow. Thoughts?
Forum Discussion
This is one I would love more feed back about. I just went from a 3 person team, me and an installer, to a 5 person team. Now I have a person answering the phone, making the schedule and doing gofer tasks for me as well as an install team that can work without my labor contribution. Now that I am off the tools and the phone I have time to sell way more than I ever have before. However, my payroll cost is way up and my profit has disappeared. I raised my prices today but worried how to tell my long term clients.
3 people; Installer, pt bookkeeper, myself.
Remember that as your payroll went up, your value went up too. Your company is now more responsive ever with a dedicated office staff. More techs on the road means less scheduling glitches when one calls out. more trucks on the road means less hiccups should one break down. You may still offer the same service, but now you do so in a more responsive, reliable, and quicker way. if i was you client, i would pay more for that...
really good points ShlomoS !!
There’s a sweet spot you need to find after hiring full time assistants.
Better customer service will create new customers and with the right protocols and setup you can increase income without increasing your customer service budget. Virtual assistants are a good way to keep that budget down as well. I use virtualsolutionsmb.com
Finding a VA is top of my list right now. Thanks for your answer
I've done similar this year in that I am stepping away as much as I can from the active production side of the business, and like yourself we're seeing payroll really bite, but I think its all part of what you might call growing pains in our industry. You have to find a sweet spot where the ratio of production to non-production staff works for you. I think for a small business like ours the ratio is around 4:1. In practical terms that looks like 8-9 employees on production with non-production being myself (production manager, sales and marketing etc) and my wife (admin).
