How To Raise Mowing Prices The RIGHT Way!

You're sitting there looking at your bank account and you know prices are too low. You know it. You've known it for months. But every time you go to raise them, you freeze up because you're scared half your list is going to cancel on you. So you do nothing. You eat the cost of gas going up, parts going up, insurance going up, and you just keep mowing the same yards for the same money you were charging 2 years ago. That stops today. I'm Will Kelly, the CEO and co-founder of Military Lawn Cuts. We run 3 locations across the North Dallas-Fort Worth market, closing in on 25 team members, and we're one of the fastest growing lawn care companies in the region. We're not stopping at 3 locations either. We are building towards 10 locations, and everything I'm about to walk you through on raising prices we've already done inside of our own company. This is not theory. This is not something that I read, something that we tested personally on our own routes with our own customers with real money on the line. By the end of this video, you're going to know exactly how to raise your prices the right way in the right order at the right time of year without gutting your client list and without living in fear every time you think about doing it. Here's the gap. Most owners think the problem is the price increase itself. They think if they raise prices, customers will leave. That's the story they tell themselves. In fact, I did as well. So they either never raise prices or when they finally do, they do it out of desperation, all at once to everybody in the middle of the wrong season. And then customers do leave and it confirms the fear. But the real problem was never the price increase itself. The real problem was the sequence and the timing. Raise the wrong customer at the wrong time in the wrong order, and yeah, you're going to bleed clients. Do it in the right order at the right time, and you barely feel it. Let's start with timing, because this is where most guys blow it even before they even get started when it comes to strategy. Do not raise prices in the winter or your slow season. I don't care how badly you need the money right now, raising prices when demand is at its lowest is handing your customer a reason to cancel and go find somebody cheaper. And in the slow season, there's a good chance they can actually find somebody. You're basically inviting them to shop around. Instead, you want to raise prices when demand is at its highest peak. For most of us, that is the tail end of spring rush, right when everybody's yard is going crazy and every lawn company in your area is slammed. At that point, if a customer wants to leave over a price increase, hey, good luck finding someone else to start mowing this week. Everybody's booked. That's your leverage, so use it. Before you touch a single price You have to dial in your quality first. This is a non-negotiable and where I see many people fail when it comes to coaching. If you've been cutting corners, missing edges, blowing grass into the flower beds, showing up late, not getting the routes done, and then you raise prices 2 or 3 weeks later, you are literally handing the customer a script to read back to you. They're going to say, you're already not doing good work and now you want to charge me more? That's an easy cancel. Get your quality tight before you ever send that price increase text or email. Make sure every yard you're touching looks like a yard worth paying for more. That way, when the increase lands, there's zero ammunition for them to use against you. Now, here's the actual framework. When we raise prices at Military Lawn Cuts, we do it in stages. 3 stages, not all at once, not randomly, in specific order. Stage 1: You raise the PIBs. We call them that internally. Pain in the butt customers. You know exactly who I'm talking about. The ones who call every single week with a complaint. The ones who are never satisfied no matter how good the cut looks. The ones who eat your team's time and your mental energy for the same price as your easy customers who always pay. Raise them first. If they leave, you're not losing anything. You're actually gaining time and sanity back in your schedule. This is the easiest, lowest risk group to start with, and it immediately filters out the accounts that were dragging you down anyway. Stage 2: you raise the underquoted jobs. These are the yards that got underbid, whether that was 2 years ago, 6 months ago, whatever you were doing. Or a corner lot that's twice the size of everything else on the route, but you're charging the same price. A yard with a bunch of obstacles or hills, tight gates, stuff that makes the job take way longer than what you're charging for. These are the jobs where the math never worked from day one. Go through your route list and find them. These are customers that aren't necessarily problems, they're just underpriced for the actual labor going into them. Raise those next for stage 2. Now stage 3, and only after you've done the first 2, is the mass increase across your entire client base. And when you do this, you rip the Band-Aid off. Do not do some soft 2 or 5% bump. Nobody enjoys a price increase to begin with, so a small one is just going to annoy people without actually solving your margin problem. Go significant, 15 to 20%, whatever your numbers tell you that you actually need. You already know going in that you're going to lose 10 to 15% of your list. Accept that now. The clients who stay are going to make you more money doing less work because you've got fewer stops taking the same total revenue, which means more margin and more time back for you and your crews. Here's the piece that ties timing and strategy together. You want to raise prices when you're at capacity, not when you're desperate for cash. If your truck can comfortably handle 50 lawns and you're sitting at 55 working Saturdays just to keep up, that is your signal. That's when you raise prices. You already know you're going to shed some clients from that mass increase. But because you're overbooked, losing a few actually brings you back to sanity and a sustainable number instead of leaving you short. If you raise prices while you're scraping for work and not at capacity and you lose 15% of your list, now you've got empty slots in your week and less money coming in. Same move, completely different outcome. Completely different outcome, all based on where your capacity sits when you pull the trigger. I want you to drop a comment for me right now in the comments below. Tell me which one of your customers is the biggest PIB, AKA pain in the butt, the one you already know needs a price increase or needs to go. Tell me the first customer that comes to your mind. You don't have to use their name, just tell me what they do that drives you nuts. I read every single comment, and I guarantee half the people watching this are going to relate to whatever you write. Here's what I want you to walk away with from watching this video: raising prices was never actually the scary part. The scary part was doing it blindly with no order, no timing, and no quality behind it. Now you know the sequence. Dial in your quality first, wait for peak season and peak capacity. Raise your PIBs first, then your underquoted jobs, then rip the Band-Aid off with a real mass increase across the board. You're going to lose some clients. It's part of it. That's fine. That was never the goal, to keep everybody happy forever at the same price you charged initially. The goal is to build a business or a side hustle that pays you what your work is actually worth. Go look at your route list tonight and find your first PIB. That's where you start. Thank you so much for watching. Make sure you're subscribed to the channel if you want to grow a more successful mowing business.