The Roof Cleaning Institute Of America Training & Certification Forum
"Find A Certified Roof Cleaner Directory"

Roof Cleaning Corpus Christi TX wrote:

---

Dirt E.Gator wrote:

---

Brick city power washing wrote:

---

I gave a customer a bid of $250.00 on his roof which the house is 2500sf and it is a shingle roof, Is this to much??The customer?said I am way over priced. He said if I come down on my price I will get the job, so I told him 200.00, STILL to high. I have some pics of the house and will post them later when I figure out how. I want to see what the averages are before I agree to anything. I am a newbee on roof cleaning and pricing them. Thanks for the help.........Jeff

---

Jeff our area seems to really fickle? on pricing, especially here in gainesville, there are sooooo many fly by night guys willing to undercut anyone sometimes it gets really frustrating, I did a house in McIntosh last month About 3700 sg ft and priced it at 400.00, well they recomended me to a friend here in gainesville in a big money neighborhood, you know 400,000 dollar homes, 4200+sq ft roof and qouted 500.00, they guy got pissed and said he could get it done for 150.00, i went by the house the next few days and finally a guy showed up and was downstreaming out of a 5 gallon bucket, was there two days and the roof still has streaks on it,? It seems like getting 10 to 12 cents so far has been all i can get, maybe as my work gets better known i'll be able to push the price up but as it is???? well???? i get what i can and let my work speak for itself,?

jeff since our areas are close?i wouldnt mind sharing info anytime? just call
Jerry 258-9890

---

Honestly, can you stay in business at those prices? If you are starving and about to lose the house then maybe otherwise you are lowballing and hurting the industry. Time to step up to the plate and look for better customers or get into another line of work.

I am not trying to be an ass here but come on, with prices that low, you will not be able to bring them up.

Customers will always lie to you to get the cheaper deal, you can go broke sitting at home instead of wearing out your equipment and burning gas.

Those customers got what they wanted and maybe realized that they were lied to so maybe next time they will pay more for a better job, if not then you don't want those kind of customers anyway.

Think like this: When you hire an electrician or plumber do you try to haggle with them? Not too many times because they are union and are bound to charge so much or more but not less or they will get into trouble for lowballing either on the record or off the record. Try to run your business the same way, you have more expenses than what you probably think about.

Do this, write out all your expenses like Truck, yellow pages, internet, phone, cell phone, truck insurance, business insurance, chems, maintenance on the truck, office supplies, office equipment, etc..... so when they try to tell you what it should cost you know how much you need to make to stay in business or you will be selling your stuff on craigslist.

Not trying to be harsh here but you need to get some self-respect and don't lowball the other guys or everyone will suffer. When they tell you that someone else will do it cheaper, you will lower your price and then they tell the next guy your price and so on and so on. The guys that fall for it or who don't stick to their prices are the ones that will not last and go out of business.

Either the customer wants the job done by you or not, if not then that is ok because there are a lot more better customers out there that want a quality job at a reasonable price. Don't let one customer dictate if you will be in business next year or not by making you do a job that is below profit levels and hurt your confidence, to them it is like a game to see if they can get you to lower your price then they will think it over and they really are calling someone else to get them to go lower and will mention your name.

If you are doing a good job of educating them, explaining your methods or procedures and instilling confidence in them that you can do the job, then get paid for it, don't lower your price to go out of business.

---

 Chris I agree with all of this. One problem I am running into is a local guy charges about 1/2 - 3/4 of what we do, AND does good work, and has been in business for 5 years. Its hard to compete with that.

Dont get me wrong, we do JUST fine (according to a conversation I had with him recently, we grossed more last year than they did), but when he is cleaning roofs for .7-.10c per square foot and doing a good job, the market soon begins to adopt that price.

I have tried to explain that since we (us and them) are the industry leaders in Houston, we oculd pretty much charge anything we want if we collaborate, and we would BOTH make ALOT more money. The point never gets through though.