How to Price a Service Job From Your Floor, Not Your Feelings

A plain method for solo service businesses to set a floor price, build a quote above it, and say a precise number without guessing.

"Charge what you're worth" gives you a feeling, not a number. Price the job instead. You need three figures: a floor, a quote set above it, and the exact number you say out loud.

Step 1: Find your floor

Time one complete job from the first message to the final payment. Include the drive, the supply run, the messages, setup, cleanup, invoicing and the late-payment chase. Add direct costs: materials, fuel, parking, platform fees, and a fair share of tools and insurance. Divide what you would have charged by those real hours. That is your floor. Never quote below it.

Worked example (illustration only): You would have charged $400. Real time across the whole job was 10 hours. Floor = $40 an hour. If a buyer can only pay less, shrink the scope at the same rate. Do not keep the scope and cut the rate.

Step 2: Set the quote above the floor

Estimates run over. Clients go quiet. Parts arrive wrong. Your normal price should leave you whole after a bad estimate or a small concession. A quote set right at the floor turns every surprise into unpaid work.

Step 3: Say a precise number first

In negotiation experiments, the side that made the first offer tended to get the better deal, because the first number anchored the result (Galinsky and Mussweiler, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 2001). Say your price first, then stop talking. Precise numbers can also help: in experiments by Mason and colleagues (Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 2013), precise opening offers drew smaller counteroffers than round ones. $385 reads as a calculation where $400 reads as a guess. Use numbers that come from your floor plus margin, and keep them consistent on your page, quotes and replies.

Step 4: Put two packages where buyers can see them

Quoting every job from scratch invites haggling and hides your price until someone has already spent time with you. Two packages named after the result the buyer gets, plus a short list of priced add-ons, filters out buyers who cannot afford you before they take your calendar.

Step 5: Revisit the numbers

If nearly every quote gets a yes, the number is too low. If the calendar fills weeks ahead, it is too low. If every quote gets pushback, check whether the problem is the price or the buyers you are reaching. Those need different fixes.

General information for small service businesses. Not legal, tax or financial advice. No particular results are promised. Example numbers are illustrations, not market rates.