Business 101: How to charge more and grow faster

How should field service businesses be setting their prices? How can these businesses increase their earnings? How can field service businesses stimulate growth?

If you’ve ever thought about these questions, then you’ve come to the right place. In this post, we will be providing the answers to these three key questions alongside a good number of useful examples. So let’s get right into it.

How to Set Your Prices

Pricing is a key element in field service businesses because it determines what your earnings are going to be as well as the value of your service that is reflected to your customers. In as much as there is a great deal of flexibility that comes with pricing a service, you have to get your pricing right. That’s why the important things you should be considering when you set your prices include:

1. Business costs: which are the costs involved with providing your service. These include your material costs, labor costs, and overhead costs.

2. Your clientele: Are your clients driven by the prices you charge or the value of the services you provide? Considering this will help you in determining how high or how low you should charge and what is necessary to provide the most value to your clients in exchange for their hard-earned money.

3. Pricing models: Will you be charging an hourly rate, a fixed rate or a flat fee, or a variable fee?

4. Competitors: Considering this will enable you to set competitive prices within your industry.

5. Profit: Profitability is oftentimes what makes or breaks a business. So how much do you need to be charging to, first of all, break-even, and then make a profit?

Related: Messy Pricing: How to rein it down

If you want to know more about correctly pricing your services, we recommend reading Prices All Over the Place? Here Is What You Need to Do. 

How to Increase Your Earnings

Now, you have set your prices. But you certainly don’t want to be charging those numbers forever. Plus, the business economy is exceedingly volatile and costs are constantly on the rise. So if you do not work towards increasing the profitability of your business, the scale can easily be tipped to the other end and you may begin to incur losses.

Fortunately, there is a simple way to protect your business and it involves finding ways to increase its earnings. Higher revenue generation is not only great for your bank account, but it also guarantees your business’ survival during economic downturns—such as was widely experienced in 2020. Here are a few tips and strategies to enable you to increase the earnings of your field service business:

1. Expand and Upsell

Does your business offer all of the services that your customers want? Speak to your clients about other services that they would like or might be interested in. For example, if you run a landscaping company, you can serve your customers better by expanding the service options available to them and including upsells, such as snow removal, hardscaping, yard renovations, and the like to your service list.

Following the addition of new services, you then make sure that you and your employees continuously try to upsell these services to customers. Each client that wants any of your new services will bring even more revenue into your business.

2. Everyone is a Salesperson

Every employee that engages in any kind of one-on-one interaction with your customers should be ready to step into the shoes of a sales representative. From your field technicians to your customer service team, marketers, and even the sales department itself—every one of your employees needs to be trained and equipped with all the right tools and data to be able to pitch your business’ message when they meet a potential client and possibly facilitate a sale in the process.

3. Embrace technology

Embracing technology with arms open wide in your business is one of the best ways to boost your business efficacy and increase your earnings. Tap into e-contracts, electronic receipts, digital customer databases, chatbots or helpdesk software (CRM), and so much more! 

Using the landscaping service example, IoT tech can be implemented to liaise with customers when garden maintenance is required. A time tracking solution will prove super beneficial in tracking the hours that your technicians work on a landscaping or maintenance project; this will help you to know how much to accurately charge for labor costs.

Related: How to love time tracking

4. Brand and Market Your Business

When it comes to effective branding, the factors you should consider include the first things that occur to your customers and partners when they think of your company, what your field service technicians do better than the technicians of other companies, and the areas in which they can still improve. Accreditations, licenses, and certifications for your business or individual employees are also things that will boost your brand’s image. Excellent branding is what will set you apart from your competition and put your business in a better position to generate more revenue.

Good marketing is also extremely important in today’s business economy. Your business must have a good online presence on social networks including Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Instagram, and LinkedIn. Employ cost-effective networking and marketing strategies for your field service business in order to experience growth in your customer base and a subsequent increase in your earnings. A few of these include understanding your target market, being reachable, email marketing, and displaying positive feedback and reviews from customers.

5. Stabilize Your Cash Flow

The best way to achieve a stable cash flow into your business is to encourage your customers to choose recurring appointments or retainer plans by offering them discounted rates. For example, if you charge $50 per hour for a landscaping project, you could offer $40 per hour for a 20-hour monthly retainer plan. Your hourly rate becomes less in this case, but you will be billing your clients a greater total dollar amount and locking them into a longer-term arrangement.

This is also an excellent pricing strategy for securing new clients and even turning them into dedicated ones.

How to Stimulate Your Growth

Whatever you do to increase your business earnings will likewise stimulate the growth of your business. However, it is equally important for the growth of your field service business that you keep the following in mind:

1. You must always ensure that your technicians have all the tools that they need - Your business cannot grow if your service is not optimal. Therefore, your field service technicians must always have all the tools and technology that they need to provide the best services to your customers. 

The field service sector has also gone mobile, so special service apps are a necessity for the provision of optimal services. GPS tracking software enables quick reactions to new service requests. An effective time tracking software enables the accurate calculation of hourly labor rates for each project. There is so much that is possible with the right tools and the right tech! 

2. Focus on customer satisfaction - All your employees should be trained to interact expertly with your customers in a professional yet friendly manner. From there, it will be easy to successfully convince customers to purchase the right services for them. And then when the customers have been satisfied, tactfully encourage them to give public feedback and 5-star reviews which will serve as a highly effective form of promotion.

Related: How to deal with angry clients in field services

3. Optimize your business time - Speed and efficiency are two key factors for the facilitation of growth in any field service business. Customers want their problems solved on time and effectively. Thus, the implementation of a good time tracking solution is important to optimally schedule your projects and ensure that your field workers are always on time.

Are you ready to take your business to the next level? Start now by incorporating Atto into your workforce!