Going Flat Rate

jpplumbing

hey Guys. I have decided to switch my company over to flat rate. i am looking for tips moslty on the intinal phone call with the customer. How do you go about telling them. Also what do i tell my current customers.

Darwin

Tell them you are implementing a new form of pricing charges to your customers. Flat-fee structured pricing.

Give them the positives on why this would be beneficial to them. Flat-fee vs. Hourly. Also explain that this flat-fee pricing covers just basic install. Other unforeseeables related to the job will be charged out accordingly.

Then compose a Fee Guideline Sheet -- which you can refer to, when giving phone quotes.

If they want an in-home consultation, I would charge a small fee that is deducted from the final bill if your company should get the job.

Mr. Mike

A good way to go about the explaining of the up front charge vs an hourly charge is say:

You have about x amount of hours that this will take me to do the job, what I can do for you is give you an upfront price of $x and this will cover you if it takes us any longer, If this looks good to you we can go ahead and schedule you in.




That would avoid saying that you are changing the way you do business, people will trust you more if you just act like this is the way you always did it the only difference in now and before is that you have done this so many times you now know exactly how long this will take. You could go one more notch further and even say that all of the people you have done this for has thanked you for giving them an upfront price instead of an hourly rate. I bet you land more doing the bid this way than when you charged hourly, I would bet the farm.

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carolinahandyma

I think flat-rate pricing is great. You will from time to time run into someone that will complain that it only took five minutes to do something and they don't think they should pay your flat rate because it was easy to do. When that happens, I usually nicely explain to the HO that if they had the right tools and the experience of doing the task 100's of times that it would be easy for them to do as well.

Chris Johnson

You are now elevating yourself to a chance contractor. You are taking a chance and from 23 years of contract/peace work you are about to make money.

Hourly work and people complain about you stoping for coffee, taking a smoke break, just too much hassle to me. I work piece all the time and it works.

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Chris

Jordy3738

Even though you set a flat rate don't you have flexibility to adjust the price of the faucets and other supplies.

It seems like I was lured in by a plumber who had a reasonable flat rate and then he bamboozled me with an enormous charge for replacing a shower faucet.

I never called the crook ever again.

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Crock

or just do what every other plumber does for gc. do the first two jobs cheap then hit him with a ridiculous bill on the third one.

jpplumbing

thanks guys for the replys. i only do service work and always stayed with the small job repairs. i went one of those psi meetings and it made me do alot of thinking about the way i charge my customers. I asked alot of my friends and family on what they would prefer (t&m or up front price) all said the upfront price. The only drawback is that they didnt liket the idea of a service call fee then i would give them a price to do the work. I told them what if the service fee was waived if i did the job and you only pay the service fee if you dont want to do the work and they all said that was good. what do you guys think doing it this way.

assocplumbers

Go for it and don't second guess yourself. Your clients want it, but don't know how to ask.

DON"T GIVE PRICES OVER THE PHONE not even ballpark prices, because ya'll may not be in the same league.

When you answer the phone get their info, then go into the script that you are a flat rate company and there is a dispatch fee to come out and will be waived if the prices quoted for the work is approved, if not it is owed at that time. Will you be paying by cash, check or credit card.

Collect on every job, commercial included, although this may not always be possible.

There are 2 thoughts on the dispatch fee. Don't waive the fee or waive it if they approve the price for any work to be perfromed. We waive the fee as an incentive to do the work. We will also credit the fee back if the client calls back within 2 weeks to have the quoted work done. By charging the dispatch fee you are essentially prequalifying the client. Last year our dispatch only fees ran about 1.5% of sales. With a closing rate this high we should raise our prices.

If you are turned down don't sweat it, collect the fee and go to the next one.

Your complaints about pricing will go down when you switch to flat rate, since you have given them a price before any work was started. Or at least ours did, eventho we more than doubled our price.

jpplumbing

Guys thank you for the all the input that you have given me.