One of my emplyees just came back from leave. He's got a new baby girl. This guy can really knock em down fast. Too fast cuz a customer today refused to pay $400 for the job and we settled for $200. He really needs to slow down. But thats another issue. I tried a few guys these past couple weeks and they all suck. Alot of people just cant shift beyond first gear. So Im now offering tnis guy 20% of the tickets and 25% of add ons that he creates. Its a generous raise. Today was the first day. He got 20% of $888.00 and 25% of $400. He made for himself roughly $260.00 after some deductions. He gets a $70 per day helper that he pays 1/4 of the helper and he's responsible for tipping out the helper for OT. He pays any landscape issues. Does not get paid for callbacks. Im borrowing the structure from a very succesful plumbing company a friend of mine owns. Im hoping to get some sales driven techs to take advantage of this. Bring on the feedback.
I need to hire someone else as well, and really like the idea paying a commision for sales/upsells on top of the days wages. I'll follow this thread closely as a result.
I'm thinking hard about biting the bullet and hiring a full timer, mimimum of 40hrs / week. He/she will need to wear a couple of hats though. My current ground technician is very good at what she does, protecting landscaping and looking cute but not much on the job beyond that LOL.
Does this mean you will let this guy give clients a price on other work?? I don't know if I would like that. Somethings are basic and I'm sure the guy would do fine, but what about other things he doesn't know how to price??
I'd be worried that he'd try to do side work at the same house and pocket the money, but I'm a paranoid dude.
Ed, I think it's a good incentive to get guys motivated to work hard and make some money. I don't understand why the customer was fighting you on the $400, if you agreed on that price?
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I think you're a genius Ed. I used to be a slacker type hourly worker, but when I got paid for production, I rocked. As long as your guy has a good work ethic, he'll be the type that if you had a dozen like him, you could cut loose twenty slackers. It looks like you have all the bases covered & you can monitor his chemical usage vs. his production to make sure he isn't pocketing cash on the upsells.
Just remmeber, when this guy is selling he is representing YOU and YOUR company. Make sure he is a good representation. Personally, I prefer my helpers not speak to the customer. What they say falls back on me. I feel it's my job to do all the "upselling" and my helper to "help" me on the job.
And I would never discount my price because I got done sooner than the customer expected. Would he have allowed you to charge more if you hadtaken longer than you expected. Ok myabe I can see 25.00 bucks, but 1/2, no way.
I had a lawn service for years and upgraded all my equipment. I had a lady complain that we used to take a lot longer doing her property and now we were only there 10 minutes. She felt like she was getting robbed. I asked her if she would be willing to pay more if I was to cut her lawn with a pair of scissors and spend a week doing it. She finally understood. We kept her as a customer for years even after a price increase. Would it have come out differently or better had you spent more time? Probably not. They got what they paid for regardless of how long it took. No discounts!!!
I had a lawn service for years and upgraded all my equipment. I had a lady complain that we used to take a lot longer doing her property and now we were only there 10 minutes. She felt like she was getting robbed. I asked her if she would be willing to pay more if I was to cut her lawn with a pair of scissors and spend a week doing it. She finally understood. We kept her as a customer for years even after a price increase. Would it have come out differently or better had you spent more time? Probably not. They got what they paid for regardless of how long it took. No discounts!!!
Larry - my grandmother lives in Florida and years ago she fired her lawn guy for being too fast. You didn't cover the Crystal River area did ya? LOL. He was a retired Army Colonel with top quality equpment and he could fly through that lawn. It looked great too! She fired him anyway.
I get comments from clients occassionally; "Done already?" "That didn't take long" etc. Like most I presume, we sell the end the result; ie the value proposition. I point to my heavy equipment and politely tell the client that we've made significant capital investments for that effeciency. This exact thing happened 2 days ago at an estate home. The lady nodded and said 'it takes money to make money'.
We have cleaned the exteriors of several major hotel chains . Most bids they get are lower than ours but they plan on being there 2-3 and even 4 days.Go figure. Makes no sense. We are always higher but promise the same service and are in and out in one day. They like that and seem willing to pay for it. I don't give nothing back. I have been known to ask for more though.
I haven't been able to respond. I was on a cruise to the bad-ass land of Canada. I'm too cheap to pay for wi-fi. Thanks everyone for the feedback and some great responses. This new structure is part of my quest to "let go". To address Arrons IRS concern, I have a NJ based payroll company. I spoke with them about this. On Monday I call in last weeks pay. On Friday comes the check. That simple. End of year it cost $25/employee for taxes. As far as everything else, of course no one can currently sell and represent like me. That goes for any business like plumbing, electrical, etc. At some point every owner/operator had to let go. This is a chance to create 50k/year positions for the main techs. Also a good chance for employee retention year after year. As for stealing jobs: this will happen! Happens everywhere. Gps tracking for trucks will curb this and close monitoring of chlorine will. When you work by the hour, 4pm comes to slow. With commission, there aren't enough hours in the day. I hope I can get 2 or 3 techs who I can train to make 100k+/yr. My job will be marketing, office, maintenance, etc. And little by little I will try to find someone to replace those positions one by one.
Oh, and the lady who refused to pay Thursday because her husband timed it at 7 minutes and if she'd known it to be this easy she would have done it herself. I told her she should come fill out an application. She didn't find that funny and her lawyer doesn't even charge this much. I'm just going to let it go. I'll take the $200. I'm still learning.
First of all, if you have someone you can trust to work hard and good, they are worth the commission pay structure. Second of all, he cleaned a roof in 7 minutes? Does he use a trash pump or something?