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What formula do you use to quote a job?
- Thread starter Lau Designs
- Start date
TheSellOut
New Member
Great information Fred...I look forward to reading more!!
I have a question for you, as well as anyone else who might have experience with this! You said "I have fired more than one top level customer" and I was wondering if you have ever sold a customers account to another sign company instead?
I have a question for you, as well as anyone else who might have experience with this! You said "I have fired more than one top level customer" and I was wondering if you have ever sold a customers account to another sign company instead?
Mosh
New Member
Some of these customers I would have payed the other shop to take....I have been doing a "simple" lettering job for a company, name and DOT numbers. Well I have over 3 hours in what was supposed to be simple lettering to get them by the DOT. When we finally got the simple lettering figured out they asked how much and I told them our standard lettering rate and our art charges. they freaked out. 3 hours of work that could have been done in 5 minutes. Well they kept coming back wanting to see the difference between Helvetica and Arial, then Arial Bold, no wait helvetica Cond, no wait......Then the colors....
We offer a custom lettering package and then a "contractor special" that is to just be to get legal for the departmet of transportation (one color simple letters). They went with the special and was really wanting a full custom package...but it is just a sticker they said.
PromoGuyTy
New Member
Fatboy
New Member
I believe the sameSignManiac, Engineers can make good money and I do okay in my eyes. But there is a certian satisfaction in working for your self. My father said that "if you do somthing that you love you will never work a day in your life." Now I know that owning a business is not all roses and is alot of work but if you have a passion for what you do it can make going to work each and every day more enjoyable. Also I make a salary at my job and no matter how hard I work I take home the same income. In working for yourself your the one who determines how much money you make to an extent. Ofcourse there are many factors that contribute to how sucessful you are. But I believe that if you have a passion, drive and desire that you can be sucessful. Yeah some years I may make less and some years more and mabey I will never make what I make as an engineer but I will never know unless I try and life is too short not to try.
Sorry to get off track here on this thread I just thaught that this comment warranted a reply.
SignManiac, Engineers can make good money and I do okay in my eyes. But there is a certian satisfaction in working for your self. My father said that "if you do somthing that you love you will never work a day in your life." Now I know that owning a business is not all roses and is alot of work but if you have a passion for what you do it can make going to work each and every day more enjoyable. Also I make a salary at my job and no matter how hard I work I take home the same income. In working for yourself your the one who determines how much money you make to an extent. Ofcourse there are many factors that contribute to how sucessful you are. But I believe that if you have a passion, drive and desire that you can be sucessful. Yeah some years I may make less and some years more and mabey I will never make what I make as an engineer but I will never know unless I try and life is too short not to try.
Sorry to get off track here on this thread I just thaught that this comment warranted a reply.
He he, been there...done that. I applaud you and best of luck to you. I had a pretty decent seven year (part time for the most of it) run at it, but finally had to call it a day and close up shop.
Difficult customers (the ones that want everything for nothing) are easily swayed into parting their cash when you wave a free banner in their face, or a bit of cut letter from scrap vinyl.
I got a large order of di-bond signs the other week by giving the customer some free T-shirts. Of course the T-shirts had his new logo which we'd designed for him and so he just had to have it on the side of his building.
This loss leader stuff really works. I would much rather dabble in loss leaders than lower my prices like every other sign firm has!
Sure work out your rates / markup but remember it's all about the selling, you need good selling techniques to get the good jobs in this game. You go out and grab the big jobs and let mr cheap down the road do all the crappy £100 jobs that just about cover his electric.
There's loads of creative stuff you can do with large format printers yet I rarely see any sign firms mention it, one example that's been working for us is printed wall paper. You can charge a lot for this. Another thing that worked for us was printed life size figures on MDF then cut to shape. Simple slot in base from wood and you've got a free standing sign. We sold quite a few of these to London restaurants.
I got a large order of di-bond signs the other week by giving the customer some free T-shirts. Of course the T-shirts had his new logo which we'd designed for him and so he just had to have it on the side of his building.
This loss leader stuff really works. I would much rather dabble in loss leaders than lower my prices like every other sign firm has!
Sure work out your rates / markup but remember it's all about the selling, you need good selling techniques to get the good jobs in this game. You go out and grab the big jobs and let mr cheap down the road do all the crappy £100 jobs that just about cover his electric.
There's loads of creative stuff you can do with large format printers yet I rarely see any sign firms mention it, one example that's been working for us is printed wall paper. You can charge a lot for this. Another thing that worked for us was printed life size figures on MDF then cut to shape. Simple slot in base from wood and you've got a free standing sign. We sold quite a few of these to London restaurants.
First determine your market. Do you have a specific niche market that you want to go after?
Determine what materials you think would work best (ask other members what they use). Then determine sq ft costs and ink costs (be sure to pad what the manufacture says).
Determine what you want to make. Will you be working from home? If so, you'll have a great starting point and have the ability to underbid your competition (for the time being). This will really help get your business established and off to a quick start. Just be sure you can handle it. Otherwise you are up for some tough growing pains.
Look into the equipment you're going to buy / lease. Make sure your equipment can handle more then what you are expecting to produce. Thats the first mistake I made. I tried to go into this with a cheaper printer and 4 months later I had to purchase another printer which my sales rep tried talking me into buying in the first place!!! If planned better I could have saved money by getting the bigger / better / faster printer upfront.
Sometimes its also worth creating free offers to make your customers feel more appreciated. I know many of the members on the forum will not agree with me but, for the first year or two it might be worth low balling to get more jobs.. Sure you might not make as much as you'd like but, you'll be busy! You'll learn quicker, and sure you might loose a bit of money at times but, in the end it will all work out. Don't go into this thinking you'll be able to retire in 5 years and stay positive.
Also, try and find ways to produce your products faster and more efficient then your competitors. This is where you might want to hire in a consultant down the road to help you evaluate your process. We didn't hire a consultant but, over the years that I've worked at various print shops and the knowledge of some of my employees and friends we've figured out ways to speed up our production and really crank out the volume per day. Just remember that your biggest cost will eventually be labor... so start finding ways to cut the labor out if you can.
You'll find yourself under cutting the competition and STILL making as much money as your competition.
It's a great feeling
Does anyone else agree?
Determine what materials you think would work best (ask other members what they use). Then determine sq ft costs and ink costs (be sure to pad what the manufacture says).
Determine what you want to make. Will you be working from home? If so, you'll have a great starting point and have the ability to underbid your competition (for the time being). This will really help get your business established and off to a quick start. Just be sure you can handle it. Otherwise you are up for some tough growing pains.
Look into the equipment you're going to buy / lease. Make sure your equipment can handle more then what you are expecting to produce. Thats the first mistake I made. I tried to go into this with a cheaper printer and 4 months later I had to purchase another printer which my sales rep tried talking me into buying in the first place!!! If planned better I could have saved money by getting the bigger / better / faster printer upfront.
Sometimes its also worth creating free offers to make your customers feel more appreciated. I know many of the members on the forum will not agree with me but, for the first year or two it might be worth low balling to get more jobs.. Sure you might not make as much as you'd like but, you'll be busy! You'll learn quicker, and sure you might loose a bit of money at times but, in the end it will all work out. Don't go into this thinking you'll be able to retire in 5 years and stay positive.
Also, try and find ways to produce your products faster and more efficient then your competitors. This is where you might want to hire in a consultant down the road to help you evaluate your process. We didn't hire a consultant but, over the years that I've worked at various print shops and the knowledge of some of my employees and friends we've figured out ways to speed up our production and really crank out the volume per day. Just remember that your biggest cost will eventually be labor... so start finding ways to cut the labor out if you can.
You'll find yourself under cutting the competition and STILL making as much money as your competition.
It's a great feeling
Does anyone else agree?
Just Another Sign Guy
New Member
oy vei...advising ppl to low ball, yikes. from experience i can tell you that this is a flawed plan. when i opened my own shop i had this misguided idea as well...my experience of using this method of low pricing to build a client base was that yes, i was busy (you were correct about that) i attacted the clients that cared about one thing (price), the work that they wanted was not pieces that i would have been proud to put in my portfolio (simple, plain, cheap)...and then when you realize you are not making money or as much money as you should be (we are in business to make a profit correct? and that is not a bad thing...if you are self employed and making the same (or less) money than you would be making working for someone else..why be self employed?...the goal is to make a profit)so when you are forced to raise your prices or if you are lucky and not forced but choose to raise your prices because you realize that working for peanuts is not much fun you will lose many of the clients that you attracted because of your low prices...those customers as a whole are not loyal, they will go where the low prices are.
this can be a very dangerous route to take and came very close to putting me out of business many many years ago. there is another round about way to go about this that is much safer in my opinion than simply being a lowballer as your overall "marketing plan" and that is to utilize loss leaders to bring in customers with a product that you are willing to sell at a lower margin to get them to do business with you so that you have the opportunity to show them what you have to offer and hopefully sell them additional products and services at prices with a normal profit margin.
i would much rather that people took a look at their existing clients and identified who they serve well and work well with, who their most profitable clients are, what type of work you do well and what type of work you enjoy doing and then develop a marketing plan to attract more of those clients.
this can be a very dangerous route to take and came very close to putting me out of business many many years ago. there is another round about way to go about this that is much safer in my opinion than simply being a lowballer as your overall "marketing plan" and that is to utilize loss leaders to bring in customers with a product that you are willing to sell at a lower margin to get them to do business with you so that you have the opportunity to show them what you have to offer and hopefully sell them additional products and services at prices with a normal profit margin.
i would much rather that people took a look at their existing clients and identified who they serve well and work well with, who their most profitable clients are, what type of work you do well and what type of work you enjoy doing and then develop a marketing plan to attract more of those clients.
R08
New Member
And that begs the question: What if, after selling the account...the customer doesn't want to go?
I've taken this approach with my other company. I won't talk about how much we do in sales or the great profit margins but, let me tell you that it works extremely well. The key component is to be able to make the same profit margins as your higher priced competitors but still offer a lower rate. The only way to do this is to think outside the box. You'll make more money in time. (you simply outsell your competitors).
I think it's great when you have the customers that pay the higher prices and get lesser quality then the cheap guys with better quality. I know you guys don't think it's possible but, it really is. It's all about finding ways to automate the business instead of the old fashion way of cutting everything by hand. Labor will be your biggest expense. (eventually)
Do it simpler than all that, Get Estimate software. It has an overhead calculator and has a substrate manager. You can buy plugins for what ever you need to do in this cut throat business. Good thing about it is you can set how much you want to make a year, but greedy people beware setting that level to high will make you whole lot higher than your competetors and you will lose. it also has a profit/loss spread on each job, so it will let you know your wiggle room which comes in handy when you are the cheapest and the big boys try to cut their throat to get your job.......check into that.
sjm
New Member
Thinking you have no overhead? Or if you I think you understand overhead.
S
scarface
Guest
Eh who cares, in the end theres someone doing it under the table for $12 no matter how big or small the job is.
I got $12 from someone who found a guy to do a 20x10" design, 2 color for $12 when asking me how much and i said $30 for 1 color
Screw pricing, everyones looking for the bottom dollar, so take your materials (hardly nothing in cut vinyl) and add $.5 and BAM! you win.
Then you "retire" and get a real job lol
I got $12 from someone who found a guy to do a 20x10" design, 2 color for $12 when asking me how much and i said $30 for 1 color
Screw pricing, everyones looking for the bottom dollar, so take your materials (hardly nothing in cut vinyl) and add $.5 and BAM! you win.
Then you "retire" and get a real job lol
sjm
New Member
Frig i'll pay you $.5 to weed my 1/4" single colour cut vinyl work.
As an additional point to Fred's primer on pricing, remember not to treat your product as a commodity. Know your strengths and weaknesses and craft your business and marketing approach around them and that will help define your perceived value. Competitors can clone your shop but they can't clone you or your staff--play to that advantage. Service, design, whatever, find your strengths and use them to help push the perceived worth of your time and products, don't get trapped into thinking that you are producing a commodity and should price it as such. That game is for suckers.