Pricing Services

Pricing services can be really tricky.

These are some of my thoughts based on discussions with business owners, consultants and my own experiences.

• pricing services such as plumbing, electrical repairs etc would depend on what the usual price is in the market where you’re operating, the complexity of the task and most you charge a likely a premium for late night, weekend call outs. Some plumbers in my area don’t charge for night call outs but their hourly rates are higher than the average.
• for painting & decorating, house repairs you could base your pricing on the usual prices in the market unless you want to target people with higher incomes and you can present yourself and your business in a way that is less blue collar and more ‘consulting’ oriented
• for gardening if you just mow lawns and pull out weeds then your prices would be lower than someone who has studied horticulture and is advising what plants to put where, pruning plants, fruit bushes, trees. However just because you’ve studied horticulture doesn’t mean you can/should charge high prices if you’re just mowing lawns and pulling weeds. If you’re landscaping and redesigning gardens then of course your pricing will be higher and you’ll probably charge a fee for advice and some drawings and then a further fee for implementation of the project.
• for consulting and coaching yes you’d look at prices in that sector for that country but you’d also take account of the value to your customer – are you saving them a significant amount of money or enabling them to make a significant income. The latter of curse is difficult to ‘sell’ to a client. I recall doing research for someone wanting to invest in the care sector in Canada who quibbled when i was charging $75/hour but I was fast at research and excellent at sele ting the right resources so overall it was less expensive than taking a student on $25/hour who would have taken a long time and maybe not used appropriate and up to date information. If I’d attempted to price on the the basis of the millions that business venture would have earned him then you can imagine that he would have refused.
• text revisions and translations are usually based on the number of words and will reflect professional norms in that market. When clients are students then the fees are for text revisions are usually per thousand words and much lower. I’ve had a translation and text revision business for many years (GSPimpacts) but I simply don’t accept students as clients as I can’t afford to take work at minimum wage however I do sometimes do so for small registered charities. Usually there’ll be a professional body that issues guidelines regarding fees for text revisions and translations e.g. in the UK the Chartered Institute of Linguists.
• for accountants and tax advisers it would generally be the same – the various professional bodies will usually issue guidelines.
• hairdressers would probably price to the place they’re located in and the situation of their clients. My hairdresser in Trogir (Croatia) charges for a cut and high and low lights half what my hairdresser in the UK charges for just cutting my hair and no she’s not a fancy salon and not in London but a small town in the south west of England. My hairdresser in Montreal is twice as expensive.

There are so many more services and I’ve not covered them all partly so that you – my reader – doesn’t fall asleep reading but also in the hope that you’ll share your thoughts, experiences (as a consumer or as a business owner) in the comments section.