Pricing your sales and business the right way

[altereddezignz]

So i may not be able to ask this question here bc it is in the free forum and it may only be allowed in the locked subscription sections but ill ask and if it cant be allowed please delete or lock.

I know how i price everything i need to price as in wraps, banners and such.

Whats your take on how to price things? Be specific in how you do it. Actually price out how you do it with real numbers not just fake guesstimate numbers.

If this is even allowed i would like to see the statistics on how you go about this. I know so many that are going to be way off in the way they thing about business expenses. I will imagine that i would learn things as well as i bet a bunch of people will.

Again please remove this if not allowed.

 

[TimToad]

So i may not be able to ask this question here bc it is in the free forum and it may only be allowed in the locked subscription sections but ill ask and if it cant be allowed please delete or lock.

I know how i price everything i need to price as in wraps, banners and such.

Whats your take on how to price things? Be specific in how you do it. Actually price out how you do it with real numbers not just fake guesstimate numbers.

If this is even allowed i would like to see the statistics on how you go about this. I know so many that are going to be way off in the way they thing about business expenses. I will imagine that i would learn things as well as i bet a bunch of people will.

Again please remove this if not allowed.

Do you read SignCraft magazine? If so, your subscription includes an annual pricing guide, which includes an overhead calculating worksheet. Before you can accurately price anything, you need to know how much your total overhead costs are.

We do the worksheet at least once a year to see if we're slipping behind or keeping pace with the previous year's sales and expense figures.

As far as most of our day to day jobs, we've developed some calculations based on a combination of materials x anywhere from 1.5 to 2.0, combined with our best estimate of the total hours needed to accomplish the job.

I find simple per square foot, commodity pricing to be the quickest, but the least respectful to the total picture of what it is we're selling our customers, which is advertising. I try to include a calculation for the intrinsic value of the advertising being sold, but if you work in an area where nobody else takes that into consideration, you'll find yourself on the losing side of too many bids. Just as I was typing this, a guy called and asked for a quote for a car wrap. Period. No details, no car type, no nothing. I start asking him all the right questions and whether or not any photos of dimensions are available, nothing. "I just need a ball park figure."

In the end, its like throwing poop against a wall. I gave him a wide range per square foot of what it could be, but I know he'll likely never do anything.

 

[altereddezignz]

I do not have a subscription to SignCraft. You basically nailed the same way i do it with a few changes here and there.
I was just curious on others thought.

Its funny when you see new shops open that also provide other services outside of the print part and they try and add in the overhead for that AKA business into the mix and price them selves out of the moarket and then soon after close the print side bc they priced themselves out of the game.

I have seen it a couple times around here. A shop will open lets say doing lets say boat installs like audio and all that but then add in a print shop for decals and boat wraps. Well they add all the overhead for basically both business's in and quickly fail bc they look at it as one business not 2.

I hope that made since. lol

Do you read SignCraft magazine? If so, your subscription includes an annual pricing guide, which includes an overhead calculating worksheet. Before you can accurately price anything, you need to know how much your total overhead costs are.

We do the worksheet at least once a year to see if we're slipping behind or keeping pace with the previous year's sales and expense figures.

As far as most of our day to day jobs, we've developed some calculations based on a combination of materials x anywhere from 1.5 to 2.0, combined with our best estimate of the total hours needed to accomplish the job.

I find simple per square foot, commodity pricing to be the quickest, but the least respectful to the total picture of what it is we're selling our customers, which is advertising. I try to include a calculation for the intrinsic value of the advertising being sold, but if you work in an area where nobody else takes that into consideration, you'll find yourself on the losing side of too many bids. Just as I was typing this, a guy called and asked for a quote for a car wrap. Period. No details, no car type, no nothing. I start asking him all the right questions and whether or not any photos of dimensions are available, nothing. "I just need a ball park figure."

In the end, its like throwing poop against a wall. I gave him a wide range per square foot of what it could be, but I know he'll likely never do anything.

 

[Fred Weiss]

So i may not be able to ask this question here bc it is in the free forum and it may only be allowed in the locked subscription sections but ill ask and if it cant be allowed please delete or lock.

I know how i price everything i need to price as in wraps, banners and such.

Whats your take on how to price things? Be specific in how you do it. Actually price out how you do it with real numbers not just fake guesstimate numbers.

If this is even allowed i would like to see the statistics on how you go about this. I know so many that are going to be way off in the way they thing about business expenses. I will imagine that i would learn things as well as i bet a bunch of people will.

Again please remove this if not allowed.

Actually you are confused about the restrictions on this forum that already exist. It can only be read by logged in registered members and is not cataloged by the search bots. The same is true for the Sales, Marketing and Pricing forum which I will move this thread to that forum after this post. It better fits that forum's description.

There is a fairly long but excellent discussion there that should answer a lot of your questions that is stuck to the top of the forum. Here's a link to it. I highly recommend you take the time to read all the way through all 143 replies it contains.

http://www.signs101.com/forums/showthread.php?62708-What-formula-do-you-use-to-quote-a-job

 

[rossmosh]

There is no one best way. Some people price based on only doing 30 jobs a year. Others price based on doing 30 jobs every few hours. There is no one right answer. The best advice I can get for pricing is the following: Look at what the market values a service or product at. Charge that price. Then figure out a way to do the job as efficiently as possible.

I'm baffled when people talk about lowering their price below market value because they get a good deal or can crank out jobs. That's bad business. Good business is rewarding yourself for efficiency by charging what the guy does down the road yet you make more money on the job. I read the other day someone charging under $100 to install a 2 post sign. Their rationalization is they get the job done cheaply by their install guy so they pass on the savings. Instead, they could charge the market value $150-200, and literally double their money on each install without doing a lick of extra work. It's the same backwards thinking when someone spends $150k on a new printer and then immediately drops their pricing. You had enough work to buy the $150k printer but now magically you have to lower your pricing? For what reason?

 

[boxerbay]

I look at his shoes and watch and then price accordingly.