Are we selling ourselves short?

I was chatting with a good customer and found out the rates charged for some services, with guarantees, has fallen to an all time low.

I have to question whether my customers are giving away experience, qualification, training etc by not charging for your true worth.

Case in point:

I got an estimate for different plumbers for some work here, and not surprisingly they all came in relatively the same as far as the charge for labor.

$90.00 an hour plus or minus $5.00.

Call any electrician and ask the same…you’ll find them about in the same neighborhood.

Is the training, licensing, insurance and other business inputs that much different for a PCO?

Vehicles, labor, equipment, advertising, time…not much difference from a PCO to Joe the Plumber.

So why do we see prices down to $9 or $10 a unit, or full house bed bug jobs at $200???

If we do the math, it just doesn’t add up, unless the performed service is less than stellar.

At $9 you would essentially have to do 10 apartments an hour to reach the $90 an hour labor rate.

That’s 6 minutes a unit.

Talk about speed pest control.

If a 3 bedroom house takes 2 hours to inspect, steam, vacuum, spray, set out monitors etc the minimum labor rate is $180 bucks. Then input costs, and pro-rated expenses would nearly double that.

And did you calculate the 10 minutes to answer the call and make the sale? 30 minutes to drive there? Maybe another re-book? There’s another hour or $90.00

Of course you need to charge what is reasonable, fair and what the market will bear.

But don’t sell yourself short.

Food for thought.