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When you are quoting any service, including roof cleaning, you need to make sure you charge your customers in a way that is competitive, but still covers not only your costs, but also the risk involved. With roof cleaning, there is a lot of risk. One thing to consider is that your insurance costs will be higher if your employees are going on to roofs. You'll also be using ladders, you're using stronger chemicals, etc. so there is significantly more liability in doing roof cleaning versus general house washing. When you quote, you need to take all of those factors into consideration.
Another consideration is that with a roof cleaning you will have a minimum of two technicians on a job. Whenever you have someone going up a ladder, you always want to have two people there. Safety first, always. Never put profits above the safety of your employees (or yourself!)
In our market area, we recommend $500 just to show up at your house for a roof clean. For the risk that it takes, having two employees on site, climbing ladders, safety spraying the roof with chemicals, the know-how to not over spray, the expertise to not kill the customer's landscaping, and to get the job done well, we feel like that is the minimum charge that is reasonable.
We recommend you offer roof cleaning only as part of a package, as opposed to offering it as a stand alone service. Chances are, if they need a roof cleaning, they also need a house wash, because if it's growing on the north side of their roof, their siding is also likely growing something on the north side of their house.
If you offer a package, in our market area instead of getting say $500 for a roof clean, now you're getting $500 + $250 for the house wash. We'll knock a little off of the house wash because it's a package, but we're already there. It doesn't take us a long time to go ahead and do the house wash, the hoses are already out, and you need to water everything down to keep the landscaping from dying anyway, so why not add another service, do a housewash, and make another $250 on top of the roof clean?
Another thing to consider is that if you don't offer packages, you're missing out on selling additional services. Let's say a customer calls you for a roof clean. If that's only offered as a stand alone service, and that's what they have their eye on, chances are that's all you're going to get out of them. But if you mention your different packages, there's a good chance they'll recognize something else you offer as something they could use, and you've just bumped up your sale.
When you are deciding on what packages to offer, we recommend having at least three to choose from, because the fact is that most customers are going to select the middle package. Very few people are going to want to pay the highest price for the top package, but very few are also going to want the "cheap" one either. Your average customer is going to go for the middle of the road and select one of your middle packages.
So Package #1 might be roof clean + house wash. Package #2 you could add another service, so roof clean + house wash + exterior window clean. Your last package you want to add another service, so maybe it's roof clean + house wash + exterior window clean + sidwalk clean. None of those add a huge amount of time to your job, you're already there with the hoses & equipment, why not add on additional services and provide them with an entirely clean exterior while putting some extra money in your pocket?
The number one consideration in pricing a roof clean is the size of the roof, and we primarily look at the square footage of the house. Like I mentioned earlier, we start at $500 in our market area, and this would be for a 1,000 sq ft ranch. We go up around $100 per 1,000 square feet, so a 2,000 sq ft ranch would be $600. But what if it's a 2,000 sq ft two story? That's less roof area, so do we charge less? No. In my opinion the additional risk of going up another story negates any savings you would have by charging less for a smaller roof area. That is why, generally speaking, we charge based on square footage, regardless of how many stories the house is.
The only difference would be if you have these large custom-built ranch homes, maybe 3500 sq ft or higher, we may up the cost a bit because of the quantity of chemicals we are having to use to cover the larger roof area. But those homes are the exception, not the rule, so we can use the square foot rule for the vast majority of our customers.
The nice thing about modern technology is we can pretty easily provide a quote without ever actually looking at the house. We usually start by googling the address and checking the listing on several different real estate sites (realtor.com, zillow.com, etc.). That should give you a good idea of the total square footage, how many stories, etc. Next, we check with the local county. Our county has a Property Valuation Administration that we can look up online and it will tell us not only the total square footage, but how big the deck is, the driveway, etc. So by putting that information together, double checking to make sure it matches itself, we'll know everything we need to know to make an accurate quote without ever stepping foot on the property.
As a business owner, you have to make sure you are charging enough to make it worth your time to provide the service, and there are a lot of factors to consider. You have chemicals, equipment, insurance, wages, gas & trucks to get there, taxes, the list goes on & on. If you're operating as a real business, which I hope you are, you have to take all of this into consideration when you price your services. Be competitive with your market area, but don't give it away. You're here to make money by providing a service, make sure you do.
You can start seeing the leaves here are starting to drop. It's a little late this year. They're probably not gonna fall mostly until November, just 'cause this year we've had a lot of rain in the Cincinnati area through this whole year. Usually, our rain stops about July, and so all the trees are dry. But this year, we've had rain every ... Almost every week we've had rain. Maybe there's been two weeks or three, two-week span, that we didn't have rain this year.
What that means is the trees are full, the trees are green. It's starting to get cold, they're already starting to freeze. And so you can start seeing some of the leaves are starting to drop. It's just part of the great Cincinnati weather how this works.
With that being said, please like and subscribe to my channel. I'd appreciate it very much. I'm trying to grow it to 10,000. I'd appreciate that very much. What we need to know. Here are some factors that we use to quote gutter cleaning. One factor is is it a one-story or a two-story? We do do different gutter pricings on them.
The other issue we may factor in is does it have gutter guards? If it has gutter guards, that's gonna take a lot of time. We gotta remove them or we're gonna try to spray underneath of them and make a mess. If they got gutter guards, that's almost an extra 100 bucks. That's just the fact of it. Your hands are gonna be all tore up. You gotta get a drill up there, and then put them all back and make sure that you don't damage them.
We hate gutter guards. Gutter guards suck and I hate gutter guards. Just 'cause they got gutter guards on them doesn't mean they won't get leaves in them. They still will get leaves in them. I know people on here will upsell gutter guards, and that's fine if you wanna go back and upsell gutter guards. I look at it this way. You can upsell gutter guards or we come clean your gutters out every year. Some people just wanna put gutter guards on. Guess what? If they wanna put gutter guards on, you put gutter guards on.
But that being said. One-story and two. Again, you have to know your numbers so that you can bid appropriately. I've done $79 gutter cleanings when I first started. I used to be 79 and 129 or 79 and 99. I did do that, and you can make a lot of money at that. Most gutter clean outs don't take very long. There are some that do, but most gutter clean outs, you can go up to the downspout, pull out a bunch of crud that's blocking the downspout. A football, a tennis ball. All that good stuff up there that the kids thrown up there. And now their gutters are clean. Of course, they don't wanna get on a ladder. They're scared to death of the ladder. Guess what? You just made 100 bucks for 10 minutes worth of work. That's good money, I can't be wrong. But you can also get more than that out of them.
Last year, we were at 159 and 199. This year, we're even more than that. During off season, we're getting 229 and 269. If they're bigger houses, more than that. Way more than that. Don't think that people won't pay for gutter clean outs -- they will. You gotta quote it. Now, you can out quote yourself, don't get me wrong. If you can't get leads, that's another problem. You need to make sure you got leads coming in. If you're only getting 10 leads, you're probably gonna be at the 79 and 99, because you gotta have lead flow.
Now, how do you get lead flow? By spending money. Or by putting out flyers, which is spending money, 'cause you're gonna have to either take time or you're gonna have to pay somebody to go out and do that. That's all part of your cost. The part of your cost is your gas to go there, your 40-foot ladder, because you're not gonna only be able to get a 28. Sometimes you gotta have that stupid 40 for that backyard, three-story piece of crap lead trees all over it. Sucky trees. That's part of that.
With that, make sure you're charging enough. You don't know if it's a three-story back there, so you're probably gonna charge the $99 or the little bit more for a two-story, and in reality, it's a three-story in the back. Been there, done that.
Those are some things that you need to do. And then on the other thing of lead flow, how are you getting your leads? Are you sending out mailers? Well, that's all cost that goes into how much you need to charge so you can run a legit business. It's about running a legit business, not running fly of your seat, because you know what happens when you run fly of the seat. Eventually, you miscalculate something really bad over and over, and you go out of business. Or you're working a whole lot of hours and not making no money. If you're gonna work a whole lot of hours and not make no money, go work at McDonald's. At least you're gonna make $15 an hour. You're not gonna be up on a ladder and you're not gonna be getting your hands all cut up and all that kinda stuff. Make it worth your time to go out and make money.
I have a tool in this video right here -- I'll put it at the end -- that makes gutter cleaning easy. It's a great video. Make sure you watch it. Also, I'm gonna put a link down here for something else for wintertime that we do, and that's Christmas lights. I started a whole 'nother channel, so I'll send you over to that playlist of that channel. Go over there and watch those videos. Thank you and have a great day.
So that's gonna go to the right to my system and that's the basics of a root pulp.
Now, there is one other thing we can do here. I'm here, and that is Go from My pressure line here from our press on in here, and it's gonna go to a thing called accumulator is, I'll put a picture in it on the video, what accumulator is and what that does is evil, the pressure to build up in there, and it keeps this pump from running so much. We don't use it, but we probably should. I have used it in the past, I just decided that I I don't know, I just didn't do 'em. There are about 100 bucks, and it's one of those things that I probably should be using it, but I don't... With that being said, these pumps here I know people say, "Well why don't you just go to error, why don't you go to booster these come for 200 at the this pumps right here, these tools in a going on cheaper, you can... Don't have to pay a dollar for it, it but I can get a whole lot of these pumps for the same price of the bigger pumps.
You're talking 1800-2000, some more that... And so that's why I can get a of these pumps.
Now, I go through about one or two. A year, so a, you do the next I butt.
So like I said, I... We just got half an is here and then Alan here and, like I said, you can actually take a bill as a flex grill, a garden house and stick on here too, and make a fitting that will actually just pop in here and that with your darkest I hope that helps you out.
I'll do a diagram too, if that might help you out, I'll put it in that I'll have it in my video here. We're all having on the website down below.
Actually that's probably where I'll put it. Is the website down below it'll be pressure. Washington training probably roof claim, and that's where I'll have both how or a roof pump and how to build a roof pump and I'll just put it all on one page, in that way, it'll make it easier that way, but if you have any questions less, I hope you all have a great day. And like I say, I'm here to help you grow and to make your business better and successful if you need any marketing, help.
Check me out. Or signed anything like that? Hope you have a great day, thanks.
