[Adam P]

we have been asked to quote over the phone/email for an office that we haven't seen and are only give a few details. as much as i tried to get a chance to meet with them, they say they are only looking for a ball park figure based on the information we have. i'm not expecting much from this opportunity but it's raised an issue we need to deal with.

one trouble i have is being fairly new dealing with square feet is difficult to imagine and i have no idea what to say. do people have a rough figure they use, e.g. £0.40-£0.50 per square foot until it gets to 10,000 then it goes to £0.30-£0.40 etc?

[Gilbert Sprous]

I would say quoting by square footage is very hard.  The office layout is different in every building.  If they have very tight space and pack the desks in, it takes longer than an open office plan.  It harder to get around with a vacuum, more desks to clean and bins to empty in a tight space.  It could take up to twice as long to clean a compacted office space.  I have found in the past that when someone is trying to get you to quote over the  phone it can be a competitor trying to get your pricing policy, or someone that does not do office cleaning trying to get a quote from you to use in their quote.  If someone was t ask me out right I would help but when they try to get sneaky it annoys me, and shows that they would not help if the shoe was on the other foot.  I have posted on this forum a few times how I figure out pricing, its no secret, lol.  I think a few of the guys here have  posted their pricing policies.  I had a similiar phone call about 3 months ago on my cell phone and when I googled the phone number it was a competitor local to me.  About 6 months ago I recieved an email requesting a very specific quote in a short amount of time for university dorms.  I did not catch it in time but it was another competitor that did not want to put the work in to figure the quote.  When I called to ensure that the quote was recieved, the gentleman (I use the phrase loosely) had his phone forwarded to his home office and it was, sure enough, a competitor.  I went on line and found the guy on their website as a business operation manager.  It made me pretty mad that I went to a lot of work in a short amount of time for their benefit so I sent them an invoice for consultation.  I knew it would not be paid but it made me fell a little better lol.

Long story short, if they will not let you in to see the premises they are probably not going to take you on any way.

Gilbert

[Pristine Clean]

I agree Gilbert.

I had one the other day. However they did not hide their mobile number. If I was calling I would hide the number I was calling from.

They wanted a ball park figure. Their excuse was to see if they could afford it and not waste my time in comming out.

I gave them an estimate, but it was way out. I dont expect to hear anything either. People like that are price shopper.

regards

Dave

[aandm]

In my experience it is near on impossible to quote on square footage without seeing the premises, every building is different with different types of employees. An office that is a call centre that is the same size as an office of proffesionals (eg lawyers) will take considerably longer to clean due to the nature of the people frequenting it and i know this from experience. Also you have to take into consideration toilets, kitchens, etc etc. So in my experience i would say never quote over the phone.

Unless of course you think you can get away with some ridiculous overprice

Regards

Tony

[martin19842]

hi there

i never quote without seeing the site, there are so many variables that change things.

i had a call on friday afternoon, and the chap wanted an idea of a price i explained in about 2 minutes why it would be so much better to visit the site, and that i caould see it as early as he wanted if it was required quickly.

the upshot is that i am seeing it early next week, and once in front or the client you can then start to sell to them, and fin out exactly what that want, but also you can then offer them alternatives if there is anything that you think would make better sense than what they want.

hope that helps

regards

martin

[Nick Vassilev]

I agree that quotes requested over the phone/email (and caller declining your viewing offer) are very likely to originate from competitors. In most cases you can feel it. Especially when they start using industry terms the way only a cleaning contractor would do. 

[Robert Parry]

I agree with all that has been said, density etc of building does indeed affect the price by a big margin!

However, sq footage pricing, along with accurate unit counts does have a place once the building exceeds 50,000 sq ft.

The real trick is to settle on a very tight specification, or else you could quite easily lose your shirt, sq ft pricing is the easiest method of bidding by far, but, you do need to know exactly what you are doing, as contracts this sort of size, have allsorts of penaltlies attached for non performance etc.

Regards,

Rob