Dhicks<br>Listen to Bill and buy his book. His books are very good resources to have. The man has been there and done it. I will not write a contract agreements without using his books as a guide. I attended one of Bills siminars and I was surely setting myself up for a good screwing doing the business the way I was. Now I write different agreements for each customer depending on what there needs are. The misunderstanding that I use to have been has just about been eliminated thanks to Bill and his pass experiences. The thing with standard agreements is that every customer is different, so how can they fit all the customers. Now that I have become really good at writing agreements, I offer this service to local business in town in my fliers and have had request to write some specs for different business in town. The main reason I started doing this is that I was doing a proposal for a large apartment complex and there was nothing to base my bid on except for what I was told. Well it turned out I didnt get the job. After a couple of weeks I went by this place to see what kind of job these guys where getting. Well I will say they werent getting what I had purposed. Hell I bid it like they wanted the whole nine yards. I decided to talk to the Lady in charge of the property and ask her out right what kind of bid they actually went with. She didnt want to, but she did $11,250.00/ yr. My price $32,400.00/yr. I kindly ask at that point, What was the other LMC basing their bid on? She said she same thing I told you, mow, edge, and line trim and blow. Nothing about hedeges, fert. and how many times? I ask. NO, she said. Now how can you get a competitive bid like that? She said nothing. At that point I ask, How would like me to write you up spec sheet for all your bidders to bid on?<br>Of course you can guess her first question, HOW MUCH? $ 75.00. She said she would get back with me. I said ok. A few days had passed and I get a message about what I talked to her about. It seemed the Assoc. of the apartment wanted to talk to me about the spec sheet. I call and set up a time and place. When we got together and talked over the details for the spec sheet I ended up knocking down a cool $50.00 for my time and $75.00 for the spec sheet. In the end I only made about $ 6.50/hr for my time and effort, but now I am making up for it. On average I make somewhere in the neighborhood of $125.00/ per spec.<br> This is one way to make sure the prices are competitive between the Pros out there. I will not bid a job unless they have a spec sheet. If they dont have one I will ask if they would like to have one prepared for them. 2 out 3 will turn me down, well I didnt need their business anyway. <br>
