The Race to the Bottom Has No Winners

You know you’ve hit rock bottom on pricing when a customer calls, you give them your rate, and they say, ‘Oh, that’s it?’—and instead of feeling good about that, you feel a little sick. You didn’t just hit rock bottom. And maybe you found a shovel.

When I first started out, I priced jobs by the room. Two rooms? Here’s your price. Five rooms? A little more, but not a lot more. I kept my numbers low because I thought that’s how you stayed busy. And busy meant successful. That’s what was in my head.

I was working constantly. I enjoyed the work. I was booking every job I could get. At the end of the week, I needed a vacation. My equipment was wearing down with all the work it was doing. And I wasn’t making nearly what I thought I should be. But I figured that was just the deal—more volume, more money. That’s how it works.

Except while it was working, it wasn’t working.

The problem with room pricing

Pricing by the room, especially at low rates, can sometimes (not always) encourage you to undercharge. You start comparing yourself to every flyer in the mailbox and every Groupon you’ve ever seen. And when you’re competing on price, there’s always someone willing to go lower. Always. That race has no finish line. Just a floor. And it’s not pretty down there.

What happened when I raised my prices

At some point, I raised my prices. Just a little bit. Meaningful. And I lost some customers. Interesting. Some of my regulars went somewhere else, somewhere cheaper. For a minute, that might have felt like failure.

But then something interesting happened. The customers who did call were different. They weren’t haggling as much. They weren’t asking me to do five rooms for the price of three or clean the sofa and toss in the loveseat. Or haul in all the floor mats from the cars and the neighbor’s cars. They had nice homes. They treated me with respect. And they actually cared about the results, not just the number on the invoice.

They became repeat customers. They referred their friends. And those friends were just like them.

I was doing fewer jobs, but I was making more money. I had extra time. I didn’t feel like I needed to fill that time with cheap jobs.

Let me say that again because it matters: fewer jobs, more money. Less wear on the truck, less wear on the body, more time to do each job right. More margin to actually invest back into the business. Can you imagine going into a job to clean two rooms, and they want to add a sofa and loveseat, and you say, I have time for that?

Price shoppers vs. value seekers

When you’re the cheapest, you attract price shoppers. That’s not an insult to those customers, it’s just math. If price is the number one factor in their decision, then you win them by being cheap. And you lose them the moment someone else is cheaper. There’s no loyalty there. No relationship. It’s a transaction, and you’re always one flyer away from losing it.

But when you price at a level that reflects real value—your training, your equipment, your process, your results—you attract people who want what you actually offer. They’re not looking for the cheapest. They’re looking for someone they can trust. And we’ve all heard it: you buy from people you trust. You buy from people you like. That can work in your favor.

Earning a premium price

I’m not saying you double your prices tomorrow and hope for the best. There’s work involved in earning a premium. You have to deliver a premium experience. Your communication has to be sharp. Your presentation has to be professional. Your results have to speak for themselves. When those things are in place, your price becomes a signal. It tells the customer: this person is serious.

A simple exercise

Look at your last 10 jobs. Which customers were the most pleasant to work with? Which ones paid without blinking, tipped, referred you to someone else? I bet they weren’t your lowest-paying jobs.

Now look at the difficult ones, the ones who questioned everything, who asked for discounts, who left you a mediocre review even after you bent over backwards. What did those jobs pay?

The correlation is usually pretty clear.

Being the cheapest is not a strategy. It’s a slow exit. Raise your value, raise your standards, raise your prices — and watch what kind of customers start calling.

Now go do good work. And charge more for what you do.

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