Originally Posted by
BurlyGuys
The way I have it bid would be in payments at certain points of the job, with a 25% deposit to start. Don't think I could get hurt too badly.
I hope it all goes well. It probably will.
I've had a rough time doing bid work since the recession hit. It used to be that 90 % of my customer inquiries for a quote price on a job panned out. Post recession, it flipped the opposite way and 90% of my quotes didn't result in a job.
That makes it difficult because i'll have as much as a day in the office generating paperwork when i could be out on a jobsite somewhere making money.
Not quite sure what's going on there. I know in some cases they're just window shopping. In other cases i suspect they pedaled my quote and went with the guy that said he would do it for a couple of hundred bucks less. It's kind of a race to the bottom where some guys will do it on a break even basis just to keep their men working.
My feeling at this point is that it's like the old advertisement in Travel & Leisure magazine. There was this picture of a really nice high end motor home. The caption below read: If you have to ask you can't afford it.
I've had more luck simply selling skilled carpentry work by the hour. It's not huge profit potential like the quote work, but you pick up a grand here and a couple of grand there. It's nearly clear profit with minimal risk. If you bill out every seven to ten days the cash flow is good as long as the work is there.
The thing i've found is that you tend to get "mission creep" on the jobs where the owner feels most in control of how the money is being spent. When they can see that they are "paying for what they get & getting what they pay for" they seem to relax a bit and aren't quite so concerned about doing everything on the cheap. It becomes a win/win. They feel they're getting the best value for their money. Your jobs tend to "upsell" themselves without any effort because it's coming from the customer's own initiative.
With bid work it seems to be more of a tug of war where one side wins and the other side loses.
Anyway ... Just random stuff for whatever it's worth. The laws vary from place to place so if it's over a given amount there's no other option than to write up a legal contract with a set price for the work. Providing a written estimate & billing T & M every week won't play.
- Gutting a business for pipes...how much to charge?
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