Just wondering, I had another thread going and it lead me to another question. When you raise you shop rate, do you tell you customers, contactors, designers? If so how do you do it? Or is it best to just raise iy? Just wondering.
From contributor ri
Only tell them if you want to loose business. Some use a price increase as a marketing tool, like Festool. "Buy now before the price goes up." But I would consider telling customers that I just raised my rates as business suicide.
From contributor Da
Does your gas station let you know when they raise their prices? How about the grocery store when they do the same?
How about your suppliers?
Just do it, don't say a word about it and don't look back. Start with at least 5% and keep raising it by 5% at least quarterly until you start to see a more than normal number of jobs not coming your way.
As far as a sales incentive for jobs already quoted but not awarded, telling them to buy now or face increased prices next week is a great way to lose those sales all together. I have a 30 day time limit on my quotes for acceptance at the price, terms and conditions in the quote.
You'll wonder what took you so long to make the first price increase.
From contributor La
Unless you are doing T&M work, no one can tell what your shop rate is from a bid price. Most of us are job shops, not catalog sales with fixed prices. We figure quotes based on time of operation for each production step and a cost of that operation. An hour of router time is figured @ $96 based on our costs tracking history. The amount you have to charge could be more or less based on all sorts of input costs. Then there is the SWAG system of guessing how long something will take. Good records reduce the variables but don't eliminate them. Charge what the market will bare. If you are competitive bidding and get 70% of your bids you are too cheap!
From contributor KJ
I know I'm going to show how much I don't know, but SWAG system??
From contributor Al
Scientific Wild A.. Guess
From contributor Al
Instead of the SWAG system accurate
estimators use the Ballpark system which is some combinations of 0-9 with some commas and decimal places as opposed to a very accurate method of plan weight times wind speed times price of gold
From contributor KJ
That's hilarious!
From contributor Pa
As your skill advances you can employee the Carnac method:
