Bidding and Pricing Video

Should I Price Cleaning Jobs High to Make Good Money?

What You’ll Learn

Define good money as premium money
Price premium service at a premium rate
Compare the bid to other cleaning companies

Short Summary

Pricing a cleaning job too high can lose the work. Some owners feel their service is great and set a very high price. Good money should mean premium pay for premium service, not an unusually high price. A building owner may get three or four bids from good cleaning companies. If yours costs twice as much, they will notice. A premium rate can work when the service is truly higher and steady. Your price still needs to be in line with other good companies. Compare the bid to other cleaning firms before sending it to the building owner.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is charging a very high price ever smart?

Not an unusually high price. A premium price is fine for premium-level service, but it still must be in line with other good companies.

What happens when a bid is way above the rest?

You may not get the job. The building owner may think the company is charging too much.

How can a business check if a bid is too high?

Compare the bid with prices from other cleaning firms. If the owner would be paying about twice what other good companies charge, it is too high.

Can premium pricing still win cleaning jobs?

Yes. Dan’s company priced as premium and still won a lot of jobs, though not every one. The bid must still look fair next to others.

Should the lowest bid always win?

No. Dan’s company wasn’t the cheapest, but it won enough jobs to make money. Aim for a price in line with other good companies, maybe a little higher for premium service.

Full Transcript

Well, hi there. Welcome back. Dan again from CleanGuru.

So, should I price my cleaning jobs high so I make good money? I’ve heard this from time to time. You may have seen this online in discussion groups. It expresses this feeling when someone says, “I really provide good quality service. I’m going to price this job high so I make good money.”

And the question, of course, is: What do you mean by good money? If by good money you mean premium money, that’s one thing. But if, on the other hand, you mean good money as in kind of outrageously high, kind of ridiculously high, very unusual—maybe a better word is unusually high—well, that may be different. Why?

Well, I had done a video some time ago called “Bid to Retire.” Sometimes you see the price on a bid and you’re working with someone, and it’s as if they suspended reality. They didn’t want to see or hear competition or anything else. And I understand that.

But the thing is, we do live in a world of other cleaning companies. Some of them are good, many are not, but many are good companies, and you’re going to be competing with them.

And so when we bid, and maybe it’s something you want to consider, we tried to price our services and we felt very good about our services: the actual quality, the training, the supervision, the management, the reliability, the customer service, all the additional services. We really thought we had a premium service, and we priced it accordingly.

And the other thing is, when you do it that way, it’s scalable because we landed a lot of jobs. Not every job. We were not always selected. We were not the cheapest around, but we got enough of them that we made money.

And secondly, the other thing is sometimes there are companies that go out to bid once a year or once every couple years. If they bring in three or four proposals and they’ve researched it and they know they’re good companies, and they see that they’re paying twice what they could be paying, well, that building owner has a business to run, too, and they’re trying to keep their expenses in line.

I’m not saying don’t get paid good money, but hopefully make sure that the definition of good money is premium money for premium services, not outrageous money that would maybe leave you either not getting the job or being vulnerable down the road.

Hope that makes sense.

Till next time, remember: you can do this. You really can.