Be honest with them, tell them up front what is happening before you do it. Don’t blow smoke at them. My accountant says this… Blah blah. Tell them your prices are going up cause your running a business , not a hobby. Get your check and move on to the next one. Next thread…
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This is true and it is another aspect of the price increase question. If this is a monthly customer is a price increase worth the potential to upset the relationship? If you feel that the price is just not working out for you at all then of course you have to raise it. I have found though that on several regular (weekly/monthly/quarterly) jobs with relatively low prices, the time it takes to do the job is also much less than on jobs with the same amount of glass that are done less often. I believe it is all about the amount of time that I spend on the work, so I am willing to charge less per pane if the glass is half as dirty and takes half the time to clean. Just some food for thought.
just got to train them
in Jan the current 2015 price is: (whether is every Jan, every other Jan or whatever)
why? CPI consumer price index
if they squawk then perhaps its a client that doesnt really value a professional biz cause inflation is inflation
i think most of the time wc’ers, myself included go thru a period where they have to clean up bad bids, jobs that were bid correctly but other issues throw the price off and not raising prices regularly and consistently over the years, that’s when there’s a lot of squawkin, but once its cleaned up its cleaned up and you have the most resilient left
if one finds themselves obsessing over losing accounts that are lousy, work on marketing and dealflow volume increase and one will find those obsessions melt away pretty quick when you cant fit eveyone in anymore
there just isnt forward progress without the ongoing cleanup
I concur with what Mike and Bruce clarified above. The types of price increases I am talking about are in the 10% range in almost all cases. Usually done every 2 years but there are some exceptions as well. We are strictly residential and the majority are annual will call customers with a small amout that are 2x per year.
I have had monthly customers in the past and those I did not raise. They were paying us to clean glass that was already clean by most customers standards and they were really easy to maintain so they received a pass.
I have heard so many stories of wc businesses raising prices significantly after many years of failing to do so and loosing a large customer base or going out of business altogether.
Update: We’ve implemented our new rates starting last week. Not a great response so far haha! Our first new customer said “Holy crap!” when I gave him the invoice for his home. I assured him the pricing was solid and that we carried liability and work comp for his protection. I should mention he pulled the old, “I have about 20-25 windows” over the phone, when he really had 55 panes (which is why I always explain what a single pane is over the phone, and I remind them of their garage and basement windows, but you know how that goes).
Next, one of our longtime customers called and I scheduled her. At the end of the conversation I said, “This year we have changed our rates to $_ per window pane, we are offering our longtime customers a discount of $_” She hesitantly agreed but sounded like I had just insulted her mother.
Its very hard for me personally, because I’m extremely loyal, almost to a fault, but its something I have to do for our company, and I know the pricing is fair so I’m going to forge on and if I have to hurt feelings then I’ll have to. If they can’t understand that then they can find a worse company with cheap prices.
