Gardening chargeout rates and mindset management

You are all adding some great stuff and I can tell you that the feed back from members about the site, and members on other members, is so positive and I am delighted it is going so well. I would like to draw attention to this post from Phil Luscombe about charge out rates. I wish that I had written it myself! What Phil writes about having the confidence in yourself and not knowingly selling your labour too cheaply is a fantastic point to make. I am not going to steal Phil's thunder and I think you should make up your own minds after reading the post but I would like to add a caveat. Do not overprice yourself. Do your market research on labour rates in your particular area and sell your skills accordingly. If the going rate for a jobbing gardener is £15.00ph then you certainly should not be selling yourself at £13.00 and if you have a particular skill then be prepared to charge extra for it.

Many thanks for the comment and certainly agree with the caveat. It is a fine line between 'boom and bust' there. After 3 years managing a range of commercial services from training to export and translation products for a well known institution I know i used to under sell on cost and loved to give a bargain(well I got paid anyway) but i knew it was the confidence too. If the cost was say 500, i would always say (mumble infact) 450. I grew in confidence and started saying 'its 500' no one ever quibbled. My boss was even better at it, so I learnt abit about just going for it!

When I started pricing for jobs recently i decided i would go for it for myself and start at the higher, but reasonable price end of what i had heard was the going rate, least there is some room if I am beaten down. At heart , i am a nice guy and love people to be happy, this affected my abilty to price higher and I have since tried hard to be confident and positive when delivering the bad news. (sounds like i am a shivering wreck with no confidence!)

I know i am still missing out on the extras on goods supplied, i need to get better at marking up on certain items. I have one job that has 1000 outlay on materials and i have fallen at the first hurdle by not adding a mark up.(it is a friend, but still) Its early days for me in this game, but my experience from before has certainly helped. Trade accounts and a better knowledge of costs will make this must easier. The old saying 'make hay when the sun shines' is a good one, because someone will always beat you down. If you are going to leave the house to work, you might has well reap the benefits on return.

Replies

Phil Luscombe June 10, 2008 at 4:47pm

Many thanks for the comment and certainly agree with the caveat. It is a fine line between 'boom and bust' there. After 3 years managing a range of commercial services from training to export and translation products for a well known institution I know i used to under sell on cost and loved to give a bargain(well I got paid anyway) but i knew it was the confidence too. If the cost was say 500, i would always say (mumble infact) 450. I grew in confidence and started saying 'its 500' no one ever quibbled. My boss was even better at it, so I learnt abit about just going for it!

When I started pricing for jobs recently i decided i would go for it for myself and start at the higher, but reasonable price end of what i had heard was the going rate, least there is some room if I am beaten down. At heart , i am a nice guy and love people to be happy, this affected my abilty to price higher and I have since tried hard to be confident and positive when delivering the bad news. (sounds like i am a shivering wreck with no confidence!)

I know i am still missing out on the extras on goods supplied, i need to get better at marking up on certain items. I have one job that has 1000 outlay on materials and i have fallen at the first hurdle by not adding a mark up.(it is a friend, but still) Its early days for me in this game, but my experience from before has certainly helped. Trade accounts and a better knowledge of costs will make this must easier. The old saying 'make hay when the sun shines' is a good one, because someone will always beat you down. If you are going to leave the house to work, you might has well reap the benefits on return.