Hey guys, I’m starting to get commerial calls and so far I have landed none of them so I’m thinking that maybe my pricing is off. I’m in the middle of bidding a school but it’s too huge to post pics. But perhaps you guys could help me with this office building.
There are 24 windows with one pane at ground level all around the building.
There are 7, 4-pane 2nd story and 7 1st story. These are all larger than doors.
The door cubicle consists of about 60 panes. And the glass wall is another 30 panes. Judging from the photos I’m estimating the top of the highest window is less than 35’ , so I’m hoping wfp (xero ultimate) should work. Not sure about if I’ll need to invest in a pump.
They want in and out, several times a year (I’m going to send them a quote for quarterly and semi annually).
I came up with $450.
Here are some pics excluding most of the 24 small easy windows.
Speaking for myself, if I’m doing it by myself. I’m thinking 2-3 hours on exteriors. Interiors for me would be a pain in the neck, and would take me about another 3.5 to 4 hours easily. So I’d be roughly between 6 and 800 for that job just because the interiors are gonna kill me.
Exteriors only: 400/450 if I can. A solid 350 for sure.
I wouldn’t change the price based on frequency tho. It costs what it costs no matter how dirty they get. The interiors are really the only area that I MIGHT break down on the price for frequent cleanings. But I usually suggest the interiors get done once or twice a year cuz they hardly need it and it saves them money.
That happened to me just today. Forgot to look first, gave the bid, won it…get there this morning and ONLY ONE WATER SOURCE FOR 3 BUILDINGS ON THE SAME LOT!!
Thanks everyone for your feedback! As for your questions…
My residential pricing and storefront pricing seems to be in line with what a lot of other guys seem to charge. I have a formula, but I would say very roughly for resi I’m doing around $12 per double-hung if that’s any indication. Storefront I’m doing the standard $1 per pane per side. I looked at some old quotes that were rejected; one was for four Wendy’s restaurants which I quoted at $100 each for in/out. Another was for an office outside only, which I quoted at $350 for 100 panes, outside only, requiring 33 ladder sets (though I’d proly be poling, of course).
For this job, I just did $1 per pane per side and factored in potential ladder work and charged something like 50% more for the high ones. My commercial pricing is definitely not nearly as refined as my resi pricing and that’s mainly because I still have no experience at all with true commercial work. I suppose that, as it was with resi, it’s just gonna be a learning curve. I just would really like for it to start working out so as to have some better paying jobs that are also steady streams of revenue.
Excellent advice. I naively just assumed “Oh commercial buildings will have water sources all over the place” thinking that must be some kind of building code. I’ll have to cross my fingers on this one and the school!
Steve, I never even thought of that. I didn’t realize that would be appropriate for me to do, but it sure would be helpful to get some feedback. Do you usually call to follow up? The Wendy’s I didn’t get wanted monthly service but then when they got the bid changed to just one-time. I responded that one-time is a different price and they just never emailed back after that. So email seems somewhat unreliable to get feedback I’m thinking.
So how did you handle that?? My heart woulda sank. Similarly to when I first started resi I’m terrified of not being able to successfully deliver if I do get one of these jobs. The magnitude of it all is way out of my comfort zone, but I realize I just hafta forge ahead if I want to succeed.
Daniel, yes I follow up on every bid I give with a call or in person. Sometime your contact will give the reason why you were not given the contract then other times you get no important feed back. It never hurts to reach out to them, sometimes it’s a great learning step.
Daniel, follow up on those bids and every year re send them. It just puts it in front of them, brings it to their attention, never know when you might land it.
By following up You can gain a lot of information which will be helpful for future bids. I usually will ask where our bid compared with what they’ve paid in the past. Many times they won’t say exactly the numbers but you know if you’re high or low.
Yes you can loose bids from being too low, can show inexperience when very low.
Just as you add on to your customer base each year you also have that proposal folder with bids never awarded.
These can be the best leads because at 1 time they were interested in hiring for the services you offer.
I have had bids I would resend annually get awarded a few years later. Simple, use a stamp or email the info never know when it can turn into a customer.
I wait a few days, I submitted a bid yesterday and the customer called me this morning to talk about it.
Reason was when I was at their facility I found the issues the current company of 3 years has been slacking on for the monthly services. Sent pics and said how we would do things different. Made him curious, he called me.
Here’s some of the pics inside at a hospital that was supposed to be getting montly services.
I’m still handling it. My helper can’t help until Monday, and I got a new contract for a high traffic/high visibility building that needs to be done this Sunday and I highly doubt I can finish it on my own with the tools I have, AND be fatigued from my screw up on these buildings I’m on now. Needless to say, follow your own rules, ya put them there for a reason-so guys don’t screw up-even me.
So what I did was got the number for the person in charge of landscaping and he cracked the DaVinci Code, sort of. There were 2 other rain birds near the sprinkler manual shut off’s, you know the green plastic squares and circles? It was buried under about 3 inch’s of dirt and weeds.
He also showed me something new. There was an extra threaded male pipe tapped into the manual sprinkler shut off, and he showed me that the very tip of the female portion of the quick connector (the one in the ground) can be unscrewed and moved to another 1" riser, any one inch riser it appears so long as it has a valve of some sort to shut the water off and on (it would have to have one of course because the part that comes off to be moved does not have the auto shut off when you pull your rain bird out)
Thought it was a cool thing to know, I wouldn’t have even tried it before thinking I’d bust the line and end up in a nightmare…
So, I still had to buy 150 more feet of air hose, and of course the PSI is only 65 at the hose bib, running thru 600’ of hose. Needless to say, its freaken frackin going very slow. I’m shaking that tank like crazy every hour or so, the windows are filthy and everyone is staring at me like a broke fat kid at a candy store.
Oddly enough, I find your story encouraging (although I feel bad for you!). It shows me that even a seasoned pro still can get in over his head, which helps me not feel as stressed about getting things perfect on my first attempts. Thanks for sharing Tory!
