As you guys know I’m fairly new when it comes to the window cleaning game.
Most of my newbie experience is with residential work. So I feel comfortable pricing residential homes but not so much smaller commercial work. I’m not even touching big commercial work right now.
So I’ve asked a few people and a lot of people say that commercial is worth less than residential for some reason. One reason was that Residence really want their windows cleaned and business owners and managers don’t care so much for it?
My real question for you guys is
If the pricing of residential work were 100%, then what percentage would be commercial work in regards to pricing? 60%? 65%? 70%? 75%? 80%?
If you don’t understand what I mean, let’s say I charge a resident $10 (just a number) per window, how much would you charge a commercial account for that same window or a bigger window?
I’m in a mid-size town in the Midwest, where prices are lower than the coasts and large metropolitan areas. We average $50-$60 per hour on residential, and are ok going down to $40 per hour on commercial. I think the price difference has some to do with the fact that commercial jobs provide consistent business all year, which makes them more valuable to companies and therefore creates more competition for them, driving the price down. Also, commercial tends to have a lower difficulty level and lower standards to please the customers, so it’s easier for larger companies to service these customers using minimum wage employees.
So we are willing to price commercial work at 60-70% of our residential profitability target. Any less than than, and we don’t want the work.
There is no formula to translate residential to commercial or storefronts.
Commercial can be anything from weekly, bi-weekly or monthly. On average.
Most Residential is once or twice per year. More work more hassle, more money per clean.
Remember that commercial is maintenance, you should be able to get into a routine, become extremely fast and efficient, so you price lower because you can get it done faster, and you will be back next week or the week after.
Residential, you need to charge more because you are not maintaining the windows.
And, with storefronts. Your goal should be to get a bunch of them in the same area. This is really basic stuff.
It breaks down real simple. A service business doesn’t charge any more or any LESS than the market can afford. Personally I do better hourly witness commercial than I do with residential. We do $100 an hour doing store fronts/ restaurants ( mostly restaurants) with 1 worker. It usually takes 2 guys to do $100-150 an hour on residential. That being said I live in a wierd area where there’s high income homeowners but the competition is charging very low rates. I also don’t search for commercial or any work.but when they call I quote them high. Most companies calling me have had window cleaners before and are calling because they’re not happy with them. So a higher price doesn’t scare them, instead it makes sense.
every bucket bob is doing storefront , so it dilutes the price, 90% of bucket bobs can’t get their paperwork to a standard that commercial will tolerate so they are very different beasts. I had a commercial job a few weeks ago with about 6hours of paperwork required.
I price all my work to meet or exceed my target hourly, and adjust according to perceived/comparative value.
Some factors can make commercial work easier and faster, therefore I can price lower per window and still meet or exceed my goal. Some commercial work far outpaces resi due to labor saving factors like the WFP. Monday, for instance, I have a commercial job that will hopefully only take one day with WFP for $1,500. I could never make have never made that washing house windows.
As others have mentioned, there’s no clear formula to convert resi prices to commercial. It takes experience and an understanding of your market, and balance that with what you want/need to make on any given day.
Your Statement or understanding that Residential people care about clean windows and commercial do not, is not particularly accurate. I have done both - have experience at both for many years. Yes they are priced differently. I want to say, though , that making a blanket statement that " Business owners and managers don’t care much ", is NOT accurate and does not reconcile with my experience.
In 25 years my best guess ( with a quick calculation ) is that light commercial and store-front windows account for nearly 2 million dollars worth of revenue. Residential accounts for about 1.5 million.
I don’t know about never. I have a residential that I do in/out with balcony glass for $1,024 after discount that I do in a day every quarter. I have a few others that are yearly that pass the $1k mark in a day, so $1,500 in a day residential? It can be done.
Commercial is generally priced less because there are not as many components to the windows as residential and they generally tend to be done more regular. You more maintaining clean glass rather than waiting for it to get really dirty and cleaning it up each time. This depends on the freaquency of service of course.
Store frint, or point of sale businesses tend to be smaller stores and tend to have higher standards of detail than larger commercial. You can get away with less detail on larger fonmercial jobs. I tend to pay attention to more detail around the entry points on larger commercial. Where as on route work (point of sale businesses) I’m going to be more detailed on the whole job. Pay closer attention to frames and detail the edges and tops as needed.
I actually make the most money on regular larger commercial jobs than on residential or route work.
As for pricing the first time clean on commercial I would change about 25% less than a residential window of the same size simply because their is no screens or tracks to deal with. Plus on the inside it’s rare you need to anything but mop and squeegee even if it hasn’t been done for some time (unless they did remodeling or it’s a construction clean) and because of this you rarely need a ladder for high inside windows. You can simply use a pole.
I had nothing to do with that. That was all you guys! 
