Pressure Washing for PM's

Joseph Rogers

New member
I need some advice. I had a PM I do work for (carpet cleaning) express interest awhile back in Pressure Washing services. Brought it up with him again yesterday, and we were discussing it. One of the guys who works for him has a Home Depot special, and has offered to do jobs on a per unit price. Don't know the price point yet, but I'd been thinking of doing something similar. He was making noises about how the owners are cheap, Bob gave a price that they'll pay, and he won't do a GREAT job...but it's better than nothing.

This guy manages 270 properties for various owners, most of them houses, or smaller apartment buildings. I want him to use ME. I need this money, this year. How can I get him to see the light? I'm thinking something like 175 for a 1 story, 225 for a 2-story, etc...but I also am not sure how many I'll be able to accomplish per day. At this point, if I could stay busy for the entire spring/summer time frame, making around $500 a day, I'd be freaking thrilled. I'm sure that's not much for some of you, but my business is brand new, and I don't have large equipment payments I have to make every month. 10k-12k a month would be just what the doctor ordered, and would give me some money to sink into presentations, marketing, and the like.

So, what I'm asking you for help with is figuring out how I can sell this to him. I'm gonna try to get an idea of the price point his guy gave him, and if it's too low, I'm walking away...but if you guys can help me figure out how to make this workable...

Tell me what further information you need to understand the situation, and we'll take it from there.
 
Joseph I hope someone can give you good advice, I do not do residential homes. I do know new construction. Sometimes pricing gets tough, I do not know the circumstances your under with costs. I advise never to lower your price because someone else is, I would show this guy the value of your service for more.

Heres a Photo Bucket of a Job where a customer ordered another Service person for half the money. He will be back, because of the economy he was forced to try this guy. The place is now unattractive and he is not certainly going to have more tenants screaming to get in because its dirty.

<div style="width:480px;text-align:right;"><embed width="480" height="360" src="http://pic2.pbsrc.com/flash/rss_slideshow.swf" flashvars="rssFeed=http%3A%2F%2Ffeed111.photobucket.com%2Falbums%2Fn132%2FRonMusgraves1%2FWestern%2520Investments%2Ffeed.rss" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" wmode="transparent" /><a href="javascript:void(0);" target="_blank"><img src="http://pic.photobucket.com/share/icons/embed/btn_geturs.gif" style="border:none;" /></a><a href="http://s111.beta.photobucket.com/user/RonMusgraves1/library/Western%20Investments" target="_blank"><img src="http://pic.photobucket.com/share/icons/embed/btn_viewall.gif" style="border:none;" alt="RonMusgraves1's Western Investments album on Photobucket" /></a></div>

Often people have to be shown this.
 
IMG_1117_zpsf904462e.jpg


Can you see the Demo that was done over Six months ago, if this guy had been using me for a little more he would actually have a place that was clean.
 
Thanks. I'm not looking to drop prices because he is, necessarily, but instead say "If you can get me 50 units, I'll give you a discounted unit price of such and such." That way, I don't have slack days. I've got other stuff going during the summer, and just want to make sure I can keep my days filled, with no down time, and generating revenue all the while. My costs aren't high (no debt on equipment), and in resi work, my prices ARE high because I offer things that other companies don't.

I'm looking at this as more of a stepping stone. He's a cheap PM, his tenants tend to be the ones who are desperate, and as he said, a great job is not really necessary. Just an acceptable one. I've learned over the years that PM's look at things very differently from homeowners, and take that into account. The company I used to work for handles probably 80% of college apartment turnover in the area, and they have to run 4-6 trucks a day to do it from June through late August.

This kind of work is not where I want to focus all my efforts, but it is a market that I know, and have contacts in, as well as my foot in the door, so I figure I might as well exploit it. If ANYONE (not just Ron) can offer advice on how to make it work, I'd really appreciate it.
 
Rons advice is sound.....
On our end we deal with Residential which is always going to be our money train. We also deal with town houses, condo complexes and buildings thru different PM's. That PM your dealing with is pretty slick. He's trying to make is a point that you don't have to do an excellent job so he can get you in as a "Low Baller" it's what some PM's do. That's there job and you have yours.

What I do with PM's is first off on my own I already know my market and what's considered a fair market price. We charge in most cases probably more per house but these customers get the best job done because we don't cut corners. For example every house we do the guys break out the brush and clean and whiten the gutters. Every house wash gets that from us.. There's different ways to go there but that's just an example.

With this PM what I would do is give him a price per house,unit or whatever property he wants a price for. Now if he has for example 10 houses or units etc I throw him a % discount. If he wants 20 houses he gets another discount.... The next step possibly 40 or more houses,units etc.

Thru this because PM's network as well we have 4 that we pretty much use us exclusively for in the residential market with I think about 200 units being the largest one we did last year.

So know your market prices, know how much a day you need to make, work the numbers to see what kind of discount you can give him for x amount of houses,units etc and take it from there.

Commercial end for us is different. The amount times per year also reflects on our pricing structure.

Good luck.
 
Whoever runs this forum needs to install "Like", "Agree", "Disagree", and "Winner" buttons on each post, so that posts with good/bad info can be rated by other professionals.

Clean County PW, love that idea about the gutters. What do you clean them with?
 
I get 2 different 5 gallon chemicals and mix it into a 55 gallon drum. I buy them from a distributor who I attend his Round Table events mostly every year not far from me. It's also cheeper for him to ship me these chemicals like this which is another reason I mix it after I get it.

Go into The forum section here "Ask the Professionals" and look up either Russ Johnson or Pete Marentey. They probably sell some excellent gutter whitener/cleaner as well. Paul K. should be in there somewhere and he also probably sells some excellent cleaning supplies along with the equipment he sells to.
 
I am not a big fan of dropping the price based on a mythical '50 units' because they will many times have you do a few at the discounted rate and then say well we are going to hold off on the rest for a while. I prefer to say ok I will do the first 40 at $XX and the last 10 at $xx less. or better yet throw in the value added service like a free gutter cleaning worth $XX on every property. Let them know your not the handyman with the Home Depot unit you are a professional that only cleans one way and it would be impossible for you to do a poor job for less as it would cost you more to retrain your guys on how to do that and you would not know where to start...

As for pricing you need to charge what you feel is the price you need to make your money. no one knows yours costs better than you (except maybe your wife) and knows what you need to make to stay in business (or married-again your wife). In the end don't give it away sell them the value of what you have to offer.
 
Ok, I just got off the phone with Ron, and he said I may not have communicated what I was trying to say very well in the original post. I'm gonna try to clarify that, now.

I am NOT a PW'er, yet. I have been attempting to wrap my brain around everything you guys do for several months now. I have zero experience...with PW'ing. What I need to understand is, using somewhere between a 4-5.5 GPM machine (heated), how much chemical I can expect to use on the average single size home (as that's the average unit this guy manages), and how long I can expect it to take, given setup, wash time, rinse time, blast time (using pressure to clean bottom four or five feet of brick/siding), and packing up. If there will be a significant time difference for cleaning a vinyl siding home than a brick home, for instance, I'd like to know stuff like that, as well.

General idea is to offer to clean all walls of home, stoop, and gutters for X amount. You assign me 20 for cleaning at one time? I'll give you a discount. You assign me 50 at one time? Bigger discount.

This guy is already a client. I don't have to sell him on me, and my ethic. That got done last year. I cleaned two units for him, he called a couple days later, said "I want you to come pick up a master key. You're doing all my carpet from here on out." I've GOT this guy. I just need to figure out how to make this idea of PW'ing the units palatable for both of us.
 
On average if you downstream the home you could expect to use about 5 gallons of your mix. Time will vary and you will get faster but i would expect you will spend about 4 hours per location when you start and eventually as little as an hour.
 
Joseph, there are a few factors that go into figuring something like this. Feel free to call me w questions and I'll help you sort out.
 
Said it before, will say it again.

Doug Rucker = THE MAN.

I might even get my hair cut like him...:duck:
 
Want an example? We cleaned a 14 k sq ft assisted living facility today. I don't think its been cleaned in 30 yrs. It was pretty nasty. We cleaned pretty much non stop for 4 hrs and went through approx 60 gallons of mix. We kept the mix in the tank at approx 80-20 using Dawn and about 1/4 gallon of sodium hydroxide. Normally we don't use this strong of a mix but this job called for it. The entire job was done by downstreaming and following up with a lite rinse.

The owners were planning on repainting the facility and now are having second thoughts. By the time we finished it pretty much looked like we had come in and repainted it.
 
What material did the walls consist of, and why did you choose sodium Hydroxide? I understand it's used on decks to strip the old stain, but what other uses does it have?
 
Want an example? We cleaned a 14 k sq ft assisted living facility today. I don't think its been cleaned in 30 yrs. It was pretty nasty. We cleaned pretty much non stop for 4 hrs and went through approx 60 gallons of mix. We kept the mix in the tank at approx 80-20 using Dawn and about 1/4 gallon of sodium hydroxide. Normally we don't use this strong of a mix but this job called for it. The entire job was done by downstreaming and following up with a lite rinse.

The owners were planning on repainting the facility and now are having second thoughts. By the time we finished it pretty much looked like we had come in and repainted it.

now thats nice work
 
What material did the walls consist of, and why did you choose sodium Hydroxide? I understand it's used on decks to strip the old stain, but what other uses does it have?

The exterior was stucco. Painted yellow with white trim and white window shutters. The reason I threw some sodium hydroxide in was because the entire place had gutters that were dark green and black with mold. The hydroxide helped to boost the pH level . Their gutters are now nice and white again and I didn't have to brush or scrub them.

Just a side note: Always be careful with using sodium hydroxide in your mix. Some types of painted surfaces and certain colors are not friendly towards it and will bleed the pigment out of the paint.
 
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