you wanna new client?

RJTravel

Member
We have several locations which are seriously underbid. We have serviced these for a long time, but would sure like to give them away. Premiums should be double, but it is impossible to justify that to the client. We thought of a generic notice sent to these alone, but owners meet together regularly - if it were discovered that we were 'selecting' these only it would be bad pub and we could then lose desirable clients. A mere $100 increase would not be near enough, and they might remain with us anyway. Any suggestion on how you rid yourself of those which hold no appeal while retaining preferred clients? Seems to be a delicate balancing act.

Richard
 
Unfortunately this happens to me occasionally because I get sales people that think they can make there own decisions.

I then have to call the customer and explain that a mistake was made. I will not do them no matter what.

I have underbid things in the past and had to tell the customer that I need to raise the price in order to make money. Reasonable business people understand that mistakes happen. They also need to be fair.

I told this to a restaurant owner once and the gentleman told me he made the same mistake on a special. He was serving steak at a three dollar lose.

I believe all companies make errors and you need to just come forward and explain. I do realize that you’re worried about the impact from others that know or might be affiliated through this customer. The best policy is the truth.


I dont believe you will have any impact and you might be surprised.
 
Would it be worth it to keep them if you could get a "cost of living increase".

You must be making something on them or you wouldnt be servicing them at all-?
 
RJ,

I have a customer that has 30' feet of hood, 3 medium upblast fans and the duct has 2 45 degree turns to form an offset. And he won't have access panels installed so we won't clean it anymore without the access panels. It takes way to long to clean because we can't get the angle for the scraping.

Too much liability, not enough profit. I hope he is not ashamed to call us back after he checks around, but then again he was a prick about everything and I don't need to be involved with worms like that.

My advice is to have a meeting with them and explain that you are so sorry and you will help them find someone else if they would like you to.

It's just that simple, you will get fired and feel good knowing that you did all that you could for them.
 
My best advise is to either drop the accounts you do not want or raise their price to what it should be. Be firm but fair. Don't stress over how much of an increase it is....just get it where it needs to be.

It is a dirty job but it is important.
Yes you will take a lot of flack for doing this from customers - some of them long time customers.
Yes it may cause an immediate panic in the office cause, "OHMYGOD WE JUST LOST 10 ACCOUNTS THIS WEEK".
No Pain no gain. Not to worry - the office people have no idea what it is really like out there in the land of grease. Its all invoices, phone calls and paper to them.....Ignore their cries. They will thank you when it is all over.

Would you prefer to be busy servicing these old (under bid) accounts or would you prefer to pick up some new ones bid right??

As soon as you rid youself of these accounts you do not want it opens you up for more work to come along.
Or as soon as you raise the price to what it should have been all along suddenly that "problem" account is worth so much more, you do better work out there and the complaints stop too. It's like magic. Trust me.
 
Richard, We did this exact thing a few years back. Got rid of the slow pays and the underbid jobs. Concentrated on taking real good care of our best customers.

Actually what we did:
Raised our rates across the board.
Dropped the slow pays.
As we services these accounts we told them there would be an increase on the next service. Some wanted to extend the service time out. But we werent going to be beatup on that , we adjusted the rate accordingly.
Dropped those who complained about the rate increase. They opted to look elsewhere.
Concentrated on our good customers. Gave them more attention.

Now :
We make more money on fewer jobs.
We can pay better attention to those good clients.
Get referalls for better jobs.
More time to fish and ride.

It used to take 80% of our time to take care of 20% of our client base. This meaning, scheduling , rescheduling, chasing down money, never satisified. Basic PITA. The 80/20 might be exagerated but you understand what I mean. Im in business to make money not swap dollars. Unfortunately the situation didnt happen over night. Those low pay jobs have been getting something for nothing for too long. Let us know how it all turns out.
 
Thanks gentlemen for sound insight. It essentially is what I have considered doing for some time. The problem with this one account seems to have resolved itself. They actually expected more for less! I was polite and offered to suspend service in order to allow them to seek another service provider. More than a month later we now have contact. At this point several locations have gone much too long and do not hold a lot of appeal. They are no longer regular clientele therefore we will accept them as new clients - at approx double the previous rate. Problem fixed.

Richard
 
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