Try this again. About 2 months ago I was called to provide a price for a broker who only deals in exclusive high dollar properties. Both properties were in multiple tracts, very remote and other than a small 4 acre parcel had never been surveyed. Both had limited or no access with a lot of hiking stuff in or a 4 wheeler at best and I doubt a 4 wheeler would get to a lot of it so it would be on foot.
So I spent nearly an entire weekend working up what I thought was a fair estimate for the job. I was informed that someone else got them for 3 to 5 times less.
Here are the summaries.
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Would you do it for the WINNING price or would take to begging for change on a street corner instead??ÿ
The lowballers are the ones always bitchin' about how poor they are, and don't know the first thing about business to begin with. Sooner or later they will be out of business or loose their license. I've seen this happen many times in Central FL and I'm sure it will continue in the future. ?????ÿ
I don't know much about Surveying in your area, are hours for research, field work, and drafting? I know you are a solo guy, but having a helper can really reduce the field time.?ÿ?ÿ
I feel your pain. I also feel really happy that I didn't work up a similar price for a project a local municipality recently sent to the office.
Someone will take it for a third of what I would price it at. Basically they will buy the job then struggle to actually do it. I did send them a nice response and gently advise them that the scope should change to make the cost cheaper and still get what they need done.?ÿ
I am not a masochist, this was not budgeted as a solo man job. The field work was budgeted for 2 man crews and 3 man crews. Me and another RLS were going to collaborate.
Here are some thoughts from a non-surveyor--a potential client, in other words, on the Gordon County_Kings Lake survey proposal.
Let's look first at hours and days. Each day works out to be 8 hours, so that's good. What I don't know is whether the work is sequential or whether multiple jobs can be worked on simultaneously. If it's the former, then the project time is the total of the days. If it's the latter, then the total project time is less than the total of the days. I really want to project a completion date, but your proposal doesn't give me the information I need to determine it.
If I'm a go-go developer, I'll gladly pay a higher price to get quicker turnaround. Every day that my houses are not on the market is a day of lost sales that I cannot recover. Every day my store isn't open is a day of lost sales that I cannot recover. In fact, I may want you to work 10 hour days and pay you extra for the overtime.
The guy who beat your price either charges less per hour or uses fewer hours. Or maybe he just said, "Hell, I can do this for $40,000." using a hip-pocket analysis. Either way, the work is likely to be lower quality or not meet the timeline.
Question: Why is the cost per hour for tract 3 so much less than that for the other tracts and why is the cost per hour for tree marking so much more than the cost per hour for surveying?
To me, listing costs for paint and flagging separately is petty. You didn't list costs for gasoline for transportation to and from the site, water for your crew, and other similar stuff. The paint and flagging represent 0.8% of the total; surely you could fold that in somewhere else.
From your point of view, what is the gross margin on this project? Roughly, if you take your cost per hour multiplied by the total hours, plus the direct overhead expenses (transportation, etc.) and divide that by the $119,626 that you're charging, what do you get? For comparison, AECOM is 3.12%; Microsoft is 64%. Is yours closer to a world-wide builder or a software company?
I certainly wouldn't let it go and, unless my price was way out of line with a fair return on my efforts, I wouldn't cut it significantly. What's needed here is salesmanship. You have to sell the increased value that you offer and why you're worth more than the $40,000 dollar guy. That ain't easy and it illustrates why companies see good value in hiring dedicated sales people. Selling a pricey service takes skill and training that are different from what most professionals in other fields have.
As the toughest CEO I ever worked for would say, "Now tweak it and go sell it."
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My feeling is that a good number is likely between the 2 of you, but shaded a little to them.?ÿ But it depends on all the usual local things that only a local person could know.?ÿ You might be right on, and that other guy has bought himself a massive headache.
@mathreacher
"As far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they are not certain, and as far as they are certain, they do not refer to reality. Albert Einstein"
Don't know how Uncle Albert feels but the numbers on my proposals are real. 🙂
I wonder if the company that got the contract is using cheap field hands to collect and pin in the lots, and just trusting they do good work??ÿ I've seen some great subdivisions and had to try and forensically decipher other stuff because clearly all surveyors and companies are not created equally. Just my $0.02
And then there's the fact that prices may have been much closer...
@flga-pls-2-2
I'm sure they are, but there are different realities. AECOM has one, Microsoft has another, and you and I have two more. If you can stand an anecdote, here's one.
Many years ago, my son suffered a torn and detatched retina in a pick-up basketball game. We had two options. One was a local ophthalmologist whose services would be covered 100% by my insurance. The other was at the Duke University Eye Center whose services would be covered at 75%.
We chose Duke and it was a good thing we did. In addition to being torn, the retina was also folded onto itself. Our local guy could not have dealt with that successfully. Duke saved my son's sight in that eye.
Believe me, the numbers were real in both cases, but I wanted a guaranteed higher level of skill, and I willingly paid for it.
The point is, if you want to charge more, you have to offer something extra. Undoubtedly, you, like Duke University, are well-established high quality providers, so your clients know that they're getting good value for the price they pay.
But when you're trying to raise prices, you have to sell the increase. There's always going to be price competition in every market for every good or service. That's just free market economics.
What's important is value added; the perception that you're worth more, and that concept has to be sold.
We let lots of jobs walk because "the other guys said they'd do it for a third of that!".?ÿ Ok, but now you know our price when it goes to court, and you want it done correctly, or you know what your neighbor is going to pay when your poor survey worries him.?ÿ Not that we ever say that, but, boy do we think it!?ÿ When we answer the phone, and folks ask us what we charge to do a survey, we start asking questions like location, size, purpose, if they have deed records already etc...?ÿ It is almost a 100% certainty they will say, "the other surveyor we talked to didn't ask for that, they just said $400".?ÿ I am not sure how some surveyors around here can afford to buy gasoline for how little they charge.
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We do the same thing, I love it when they call back and say, you seem really knowledgeable, and I learned a lot from our conversation, and I want you to do the Survey, however can you do it for the same price as _________. Most of the time they get told No, that is our price, its 50/50 if we get the job after that. Also depends if they are buying or selling the lot.
This was my internal summary and WAS NOT GIVEN TO THE CLIENT. This was just my internal deliberations to keep things in perspective. Some tracts were more labor intensive than others, creeks, rivers, long hikes into remote areas.
Consider it a blessing. Wrong project for a small operation. Much more profitable opportunities out there but you might have to step out of your comfort zone.
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So it's a worksheet, and a pretty good one at that. But, what did the client get, both from you and from the low bidder? Do you do slick proposals that help to inspire confidence in thoroughness and completeness? Did the other guy do that as well?
Some service providers are reluctant to give much detail in their proposals for fear that it will make shopping competitors easier. Perhaps that's true, but it also can help competitors to see the dollars they're leaving on the table and help to raise prices overall.
I really don't understand your market, but I do understand markets overall. There are WalMarts and there are Walgreen's, with a lot of overlapping products at widely different prices. Both do quite well because they are able to justify their positions well enough that the same customers shop both.
I would stay after that project, perhaps giving a little on price, but selling capability and reliability.
I may want you to work 10 hour days and pay you extra for the overtime.
Ah, overtime.?ÿ I used to love overtime.?ÿ What's this??ÿ I can get paid 50% more to do the same thing I was already doing?!?ÿ Sign me up!
I took me a long time to realize overtime is one of the greatest scams perpetrated on working Americans.?ÿ When you work overtime you give the owner/client/whoever an employee for half price while simultaneously making them twice as much money.?ÿ If I had people working for me, hell yes I'd pay them overtime.?ÿ There would be so much overtime it would be spilling out of their eyeballs.
OK, I suppose I should slow my roll a little bit.?ÿ If I was self-employed I think I'd be comfortable working the extra hours.?ÿ I am, after all, making all of the money.
But posing overtime as some kind of bonus or something??ÿ Get out of here with that nonsense.
I’m not sure how you figure the overtime rate is 50% of the straight time rate?
It is 150%.
The killer is the extra taxes.
I don't bid jobs unless I have to.?ÿ 95% of my work is by the hour.?ÿ On something like this I wouldn't get lost in the weeds.?ÿ I'd just figure how many days and figure my hourly rate times 8 or 10 or 12 hrs./day.?ÿ Calculate overtime??ÿ Naa, my hourly rate covers that.?ÿ I charge $120/hr. for a solo so $49000 would buy approximately 10 weeks of work @ 40 hr. work week.?ÿ If I got these jobs year round I'd make about 250k for the year.?ÿ Yeah I can live on 250k.
I was lucky, I married a realtor.?ÿ She told me don't expect to get all the calls.?ÿ If you get 1 in 5 you're lucky.?ÿ
If I don't get the job, I don't get the job.?ÿ There's always another one around the corner.?ÿ
Remember, I'm speaking from the client's point of view. One of my friends owned a steel framework erection business. In the late 90s, a big box retailer was his biggest client. Often, his client and their biggest competitor were building stores in the same city at the same time.
My friend's instructions were always the same: charge what you have to, but get us open before them.
