How to get the maximum out of your bid on a job

Ya that's always my hope when I pull that line out to them. Its just hard when im looking at what I believe is a $250,000 a year 4 year contract on the vegas **bleep** to not insult them or underbid myself and they say oh OK we will consider you at that price when really im 50k off. Im a new business and ive been doing highrise window cleaning and building maintenance for 20 years. And I have a lot of contacts and my foot in the door with these giant jobs. I maybe should have started smaller till I learned what the real pricing on these jobs are. But so far business is booming. Payroll and the frequency of pay is kicking me. But it just takes time.

I don't think this would be the best approach personally. I think it'd be better to understand what your pricing needs to be to cover your expenses as a baseline then what you need to make the profit margin you need to make for growth then don't worry about what they are willing to pay. If they can't pay what you need to charge to grow your company, it's not a job you should be taking anyway.

It's a good practice to think what kind of assets you will have in 5 years - will you have a shop? will you have a truck? will you have 10 trucks? What would it cost me to have those things? Then price for those right now (within reason). Obviously I'm not going to charge customers for a commercial building I don't have now or the private jet and butler I'll need to go to all my walk throughs, but we should all make our pricing for growth, not necessarily where we are in this moment in time. 

Other things we should be including in our budgets (then ultimately in our pricing are) - continuing education (coaching courses or conferences), education for our staff, employee benefits, good uniforms, wraps for our trucks, marketing, etc. 

This way if they accept the bid they are getting a fare price and you don't feel like you low balled them. 

Ya I agree with that. When im making a blind bid I go by the 3 rule. 1 man hours and that being a third of the bid. 2 window count and difficulty. 3 gut feeling. I take all three and find the middle and that's my number

I’ve run into this situation with property managers. That usually means one of two things:

1. They genuinely don’t know
2. They don’t want to anchor themselves too early

Either way, waiting on their number puts you in a weak position.

What’s worked better for me is flipping the conversation from “what’s your budget?” → “here’s how we price this.”

Instead of chasing their number, I walk them through how I arrive at mine.

For example, in my business (pet waste removal), I’ll break it down based on:

• Size of the property
• Frequency of service
• If they want only the common areas cleaned or if they need their pet waste stations maintained as well
• Problem areas that require extra attention

For window cleaning, your version might look like:

• Number of panes / buildings
• Accessibility (ground vs multi-story)
• Frequency (monthly vs quarterly vs one-time)
• Condition (maintenance clean vs heavy buildup)

Doing it this way positions you as the professional. If they say they don’t know their budget, I’ll say something like:

“No problem, most of the properties I work with aren’t sure upfront either. What I can do is put together a couple options based on what I typically see for a property like yours, and you can tell me what makes the most sense.”

Then I’ll present 2–3 options, not one price:

• A baseline option (bare minimum to get the job done right)
• A standard option (what most people choose)
• A premium option (more frequent / more thorough / higher touch)

This allows you to control the pricing conversation, you anchor the value of your service and you learn what they're willing to pay based on what they pick.