What's happening spreads, it's Stu here from Trial Talk again, I hope you're all keeping well.
In this video today we're going to talk about pricing up jobs, pricing up your plastering jobs.
Do you struggle pricing up your jobs? Do you have your prices rejected by your customers?
Do they tell you your price is too high, you're too expensive, they're going to go with somebody else and so on?
You're not alone, this is something that I see all the time on Trial Talk Plasterers Help Group
which is my community group that I put together on Facebook.
I encourage you to go and join if you haven't done so guys, we've got like over 6,000 self-employed plasterers on the group at the moment.
It's a great place for you to go and have a chat with other like-minded spreads, share your work photos,
ask any questions that you've got around plastering or maybe some struggles that you've got within the trade.
I've also put together a new mentoring group dedicated to self-employed plasterers which I'll come on to shortly.
So why do we struggle to price up our jobs and why do we question our prices?
If we're turning to a community group on Facebook asking other plasterers,
do you think this price is okay, is it too high, is it too low, is it about right?
Or if we're asking the question what's the going rate which is something else I see a lot on the group,
that tells me that we're not doing the math, we're not doing the numbers within our businesses
and we're sort of trying to sort of shortcut the process and ask somebody else to price our jobs for us
which is never a good idea because only we will understand the numbers in our own business.
Every single business out there is going to be unique, different, with different overheads, different running costs and so on.
And what I mean by that is, let's look at your typical plasterer, okay.
What he needs to do in order to get his price accurate and to be confident when he's putting his price in.
First thing he needs to do is he needs to work out what his personal expenses are.
In other words, how much money does he need to bring in per month to put bread on the table, pay his bills, feed his family.
So you get that number right down, okay.
The second thing we need to do is we need to look at how much profit does my business need to make every single year.
Because without profit we're just spinning our wheels, we're just turning money over, paying bills, buying food.
We go on to the next year, we do the same and we're not progressing, there's no growth there.
So we need money but also our business needs money as well.
Even if you're a sole trader, your business needs money.
You need working capital there.
Your van might blow up.
You might want to hire in staff.
You might want to buy some new equipment, okay.
You're going to need some working capital there, guys, within your business to draw on.
You might want to invest in a marketing campaign.
There's going to be things you need to replace, spend money on.
You're going to have to put fires out in your business.
So having money there is vital to do that.
We can't just be earning a wage and, again, paying bills and eating and not making any profit.
So we've got to look at what kind of profit do we need to be making as well on top of our earnings, on top of our wages.
I've said it before, guys.
Wages aren't profit, okay.
Wages is what we need to eat and pay bills.
Profit is what your business needs to survive and grow.
So we look at that.
We look at our personal expenses.
We look at the profit, okay.
Next, we need to look at our indirect costs in our business, not just our direct costs.
What do I mean by that?
Well, your direct costs are things like PVA, multi-finish, beads, plasterboards.
Any material items or things that you're paying for on one particular job will be your direct costs, okay.
Your indirect costs are going to be phone bills, insurances, van repairs, you know, your tax bill.
I could go on and on.
There'll be a big list.
If you've got a lockup, it'll be the rent on your lockup, for example, things like that.
So we look at all that over a year and we divide that against how many jobs we've done.
And that will give us a rough idea of how much we need to be bolting on to each job when we're putting our prices in.
And again, once we do the maths, once we get accurate on these figures,
when we work all this out and we put our price into the customer,
at this point we're so confident and we're so certain about our price
that when they come back to us and say, actually, no, you're too expensive,
we can sort of come back and say, look, I appreciate that the cost might be higher than the other local plastering businesses,
but let me assure you that I've run the numbers twice.
I'm very certain on my numbers in my business and this is the absolute best price we can do.
And I would be, frankly, I'd be concerned if plasters are going in cheaper than this
because it would say to me that they're not allowing the sufficient time that your job needs.
And I've done that. I'm allowing sufficient time to complete your job to the highest standard.
And if you go have a look at our reviews online, you'll see that we've got, you know, 100% track record.
We've got multiple five-star reviews from our customers and we always leave a job absolutely flawless and perfect.
I won't be able to do that if I rush your job and try and do it faster than what I've allowed.
And that's probably why they're coming in a little bit cheaper than myself.
That's typically how I would word it.
Nine times out of ten, they'll go away.
They'll come back and say, you know what, Stu, we've thought about what you said.
We've looked at your reputation online.
We've checked out all your videos, your images, your reviews.
We like how frank and transparent you are, etc.
We'd like to go ahead.
So just because your price is higher than the competition, it doesn't mean that you're automatically going to lose the job.
And that comes down to the customer.
If you're attracting in cheap customers into your plastering business, then it doesn't matter what you do, what you say.
They're always going to be wanting to go with the quick fix, the cheap price.
And it'll always be lowest bid wins.
You want to be in a situation where your customer's choosing you because they like your style, they like your quality, they like your reviews, they like the fact that you've built your reputation and your brand up.
And there's a sense of trust there.
So I've said it before, I've said it a hundred times.
Don't change your price, change your customer.
But first, get your price accurate.
Again, I'll cover all this inside the mentoring group.
And if you're brand new to self-employment and you're thinking, well, that's okay for you, Stu, you've been trading for years.
I don't know what my indirect costs are.
I've just started up in self-employment.
So inside the mentoring group, we do what's called job cost tracking.
And what we do is we track your job costs in real time using some free software.
So that gives you a sort of window to look at any given time throughout the year, to look at your profit that you're making on all the different jobs that you're doing.
And you can pick up your phone, go onto the app, and it will show you at any time of the year how much you're making, whether you're in profit, whether you're not in profit.
You can include all your indirect costs throughout the year within the app.
By the time you get to the end of your first 12 months, you'll have a good, accurate overview of what your indirect costs are costing you.
Not only per year, but how they affect your profit margins as well on your jobs.
So listen, if any of this interests you, if you struggle in these areas, pricing up jobs, you're questioning your prices, you're having your prices rejected, and you're not sure if your prices are right, then feel free to come and join my mentoring group.
It's 80 pence a day.
I can't do much cheaper than that.
It's cancelled any time, so there's no tie-ins, and you pay every month, guys.
So just hit the link, and I'll hopefully see you inside the group.
If you've got any questions at all, just hit the comment.
I'll be happy to answer any questions that you've got.
Thank you.
We'll see you on the next video.
Thank you.