How to Bid Landscaping

you've watched a few of my other videos you can tell I prefer to do lump sum quotes 90% of the time when you do a lump sum quote it gives a customer a comfortable feeling about how much they're going to spend on a project they T takes the guesswork out of it and if you bid things the right way you're going to put more money in your back pocket okay not always can you do a lump some quote this job behind me right here is a prime example of when that I'm going to switch to a time and material quote what you see is the Jungle the this homeowner has asked me to come in and clean out this mess and this thing wraps all the way around and then in the front of the house it continues on and then it goes around the side and it's so thick that there is absolutely no way that I can even see what I'm getting into in a case like this I'm going to protect myself by giving him an hourly rate I'm going to give him a generalized idea of what it would take to do the job I can't just say hey we're going to charge $65 an hour and that's it most homeowners they don't like that open-ended feel to it they don't know who you are but if you say hey I'm going to charge you $65 an hour we believe it's going to take probably 20 hours to clean something like this up we believe it's going to take about 20 hours what we'll do at that point is at the 20 hours as we get closer we're going to ask you to come out to the site and make a determination where you want to spend the rest of your time maybe at 15 hours or 18 hours we'll ask you to come out take a look at where we've gotten within the time frame that we've quoted you and if there's any priorities that you want us to wrap up or do you want to extend the time out or how do you want to handle the rest of the job so you can see that you can safely use timed material to protect not only yourself but it'll also help you when you frame it in the right way it's going to to help you land a job you can't just go out and quote $65 an hour that's what we get in this in Minneapolis Minnesota in your neck of the woods it may be 55 it may be 45 it is what it is it doesn't matter the rate itself in this video isn't important but I want you to understand when to lump some and when you're coming into the jungle and you can't see what's going on underneath there you don't know what you're getting into you're going to want to switch over to that time and material quote now you won't make as much profit but you're also not going to lose it's a guaranteed not lose situation unless the customer decides they don't want to pay you for some reason so that's how we're going to handle a project like this here let's just see how this thing looks I mean we I found a buried trailer in this guy's backyard it's flipping insane I just don't I don't know what people how people can let their yards get like this would drive me nuts look at stinging nettle well I call it itchweed but I was told that the correct term is stinging metal I kind of actually want this berried trailer this thing looks cool I don't know what I'd use it for you know just add to my art decorations cuz I don't have enough of that holy crap oh look at this guy's deck is getting Tak an over so I want to compare and contrast the lumpsum quote to an hourly quot quote when I tell you you have a greater chance to have bigger profits on a lump some quote I'm going to actually walk you through a job that we just completed um and here's what the project is I did an out I did a lumpsum quote to go through this retaining wall and to reglue all the caps so I had to have a guy come out here lift each cap up find out if it was glued or if it wasn't glued and then to clean the cap off and then to reglue them reeal them and then to go down to this lower retaining wall where it has this fence on it and then to do the exact same thing all through this wall and the guy had to walk down into the woods it wasn't wasn't an easy job but it wasn't nothing diffic you know complicated Alex is one of my part-time employees schmelling say hi to the world hello world world say hi to schmelling or Alex as we call him he's going to have his first solo assignment how do you think he's going to do we'll check up on him here's what we've got going on Alex the site he's going to be going to today is similar to what we have right here hey [Music] sugar these capstones on the site where he's going actually have a fence attached to them and what's happened is because whoever installed the fence first thing I'm going to tell you he's never installed a fence on top of the actual capstones of a retaining wall okay always go behind it but that's needless to say somebody else actually physically bolted a railing system into the cap Stones so the Caps themselves have gotten loose so now any time a person walks by this fence the whole thing tilts the way that we're going to fix that is we're actually going to pry up the fence so we're going to take a chisel like we have here and we're going to pound it in between the blocks we're going to lift that block up then we're going to take the brushes we're going to clean underneath the block so that we've got a good clean uh space and then we're going to take Landscape adhesive and we're going to reglue the Capstone to the courses below it perfect no but it will hopefully stabilize the fence enough so a little kid won't run through it with that being said let's see how schmelling does on this thing you ready for it schmelling I'm very ready very I love it level of enthusiasm is awesome so we're going to actually head out to the site go over the project take it from there it's an easy cheesy Landscape Maintenance just keeping everything up making sure everything is in good working order project today um we'll go over some numbers later too um so when I put my lump Su quote together for this project I estimated it at six labor hours at $65 an hour and 30 minutes travel time here and 30 minutes travel time back so we had 7 hours total in on this job plus a little bit for materials not much for glue um 7 hours time $65 and hour which is the labor rate that I charge comes up to $455 so that's what their proposal was this job was completed yesterday in 1 hour and one tube of glue so actual expense that I have in this job is around $12 $15 for labor plus $3 for a tube of glue so the proposal is $455 and the actual expense we'll call $15 so we netted $440 on this job that's how a lumpsum quote can bring you more money now if I did this strictly on an hourly basis at $65 an hour you would think oh that's a that's a huge rate you guys are getting and yeah that's but that's for this Market that's average okay it could be 55 or 45 wherever you're at but this job then I would have charged them $65 plus I would have upped probably the you know the glue by you know maybe charge them $5 cost me $3.97 so I would have made $70 on this job my profits would have been $55 cuz I had $15 in actual expense on the project so if I did this job on an hourly basis I would have made $55 but I quoted it on a lumpsum basis and this is an actual completed project uh instead I was able able to make uh 440 some dollars that's a big difference do you see the possibilities the opportunities that exist when you know all the factors that's a huge thing go for the lump suum when you can calculate all of the variables and then what you do is you calculate them on a worst case scenario so you're covered because you got to understand you're also taking the risk when you do a lumps sum quote If this job job here would have taken me 10 hours I couldn't have changed my numbers at that point if this job would have taken me 12 or 15 hours I could not have changed my proposal you just can't you can't do that because you you get a reputation built very fast if you change your numbers after the fact but going into it I did a worst case scenario and we we were able to come in underneath that time frame that's where your profits are going to lie so it's more risk for you don't get get me wrong guys and gals it's way riskier for you to bid these jobs on a lumpsum basis than an hourly basis hourly is safe but hourly isn't going to make you the big money that you're looking for hourly is going to pay your bills right there's nothing wrong with that our is going to pay your bills lump sum is going to buy you that new Porsche or whatever you want I don't care I personally I'd rather have a Jeep myself but anyway that's the scoop uh I hope you've come to understand it get a clear understanding of lumpsum versus time and material and I'd love to hear your stories so hit me up put them in the comments down below please subscribe please share this with your friends as always I hope the very best for you guys so go get them [Applause] [Music]