Dealers on this site and cheap customers

TOMLESCOEQUIP · Jan 12, 2006

<font color="blue"> ( BX23 Ag tires $8100 FEL$2300 BH$3800 60"MMM$1300.total ) </font> <font color="red"> $15500 </font> You should have gotten it all for $15,000 Obviously you didn't HAGGLE !

DUMBDOG · Jan 12, 2006

More than likely the higher rate has to be charged for all of his time being used to answer questions being asked by the customer. The time has to be paid for by someone, why not the person using it.

LBrown59 · Jan 12, 2006

I owned a housing Co. for over 30 years.
Pricing is a tricky thing.
To high an your ripping them off.
To low and yours is junk - never realizing that your compeators are priced to high instead.

Something I've noticed is there are an awful lot of folks that don't know a good deal when they see it and 90 percent of them will pick the bad deal over the good one.

meledward23 · Jan 12, 2006

Okay my Pricing Design Strategy.

My practices probably would not work if this was my sole income method. I own a horse farm/buisness (my wifes Income/World, my honey to do lists), I have a day job, and I do this part time.

Therefore I am very selective in the clients I sit down with to begin with. Depending on what the client is looking for I charge a ball park $ 350 to $ 750.00 for design. (just like Norm) The design fee is not charged if I do the installation. And is not charged if they use a completely different design BECAUSE what I designed is not what they wanted (yet to happen).

I have had two people in recent memory take the option to price my projects out before giving me the go ahead. In both cases I got the job. So I have yet to actually collect just a design fee.

Part of it is I take what I do as artistic. And I dont just do a design and hand it to a client. I walk them through it and make them see the vision I have for them. Even if you were to buy all the materials and try to put them where I have sketched (btw, my drawing skills leave something to be desired), you would never capture what the homeowner gets when I complete a project.

I am not good at sales in general. But I can take two hours listening to a client and selling on them that I understand their vision. In fact I have had several clients tell me to forget drawing it up, just do it.

I guess in the end since it is more an artisitic opportunity for me than a job, I don't fret over the possibility of being ripped of to many times.

BTW, I dont do the simple work. You know Mrs. XYZ wants a new mailbox flower bed. The smallest project I will do is @ $2,000. Which is not that big. A typicall front foundation planting can be around 5 to 6,000. Backyards are an easy 10+. Last one I did was 12,500.

I would post a few photo's, but I crashed my server last week. Through a complete apathy for any maintenance on the machine. While all my business records were on routine backup, I forgot to include my photo directories in the backupcycles. (Fixed now).