The trouble is trying to explain it to your customers. All they will hear is £10.00, and for a window clean that's too expensive.
I priced a house at £9.00 for a 6 weekly clean next to a house I already clean. She slammed the door on me when I quoted the price as her current window cleaner (they told me they didn't have one) only charges £7.00 every 4 weeks. I was also saving her money on her weekly/annual clean - deaf ears came to mind. (But my reasoning is that I wouldn't want them as a customer anyway - if they lied to me about having no window cleaner then what else will they lie about? But that's another topic.)
I personally would suggest you divide your current work into thirds and move one of them (a weeks worth) onto 4 weeks without telling them.
I would then use your newly created spare week to canvass better priced work. Once you fill that week up move another week's work of your poorer paid work onto 4 weekly (or would it be 5 weekly at this point?) and canvass some more. Use your current work as bread and butter whilst you get better established.
In time have a price increase, go for as much as you can on the poorer paid work, expecting to loose some, but at least you have a better base of work to keep you going. Your aim is to replace poorer paid work with better paid work, then raise the prices to what you are happy with, dump or sell.
In the employment world the tactic you use to get a pay increase is to find another job first and then approach your boss for a pay increase. It's called leverage. The same principal applies to window cleaning. You need to dig your trenches to protect your troops before you start firing at your enemy.
Years back we were in the same position with some work we were given. I raised the prices from £4.50 to £6.50 after we had been doing it for a few months. Got a bit of resistence, lost a few but came away with less work for £100.00 more. I then priced all future work prices on the same estate at £7.50 and got quite a bit more in.
Spruce.
