Good, Better, Best: Building Packages

A package is a promise about what you will deliver. If your top tier promises something your operation cannot actually supply, you are selling what you don’t have. And if your bottom tier is a stripped-down version of the job you would be embarrassed to deliver, you have the same problem in the other direction.

A lot of owners quote one price for one thing, and the customer’s only decision is yes or no. Yes or no is a hard decision. Choosing between three clear options is an easier one, and it moves the conversation from “should I hire this person” to “which version do I want.” That is the whole idea behind good, better, best. Treat it as a pricing and staffing structure, because that is what it is.

Build the tiers from the work, not from the adjectives

Start with the job as you do it today. Then ask what the customer could reasonably want less of and what they could reasonably want more of. Less might mean fewer visits, a narrower scope, a longer wait, or a customer doing part of the prep. More might mean faster scheduling, extra attention to detail, added follow-up, or a longer warranty of your workmanship.

Each step up should change something the customer can see and something it costs you to do. If the tiers differ only in names, “Silver,” “Gold,” “Platinum,” customers will pick the cheapest and wonder what they are missing. If they differ in real ways, the customer can tell you which one fits them, and that is a sales conversation worth having. It connects directly to the idea in Product or Service: What Are You Really Selling?.

Check each tier against your costs

Now the arithmetic. Here is a labelled hypothetical, a small landscaping company selling spring cleanup packages. Say the three packages are:

• Good: a standard cleanup with mowing, edging and clearing the beds, about 3 hours of labor, priced at $180.
• Better: the standard cleanup plus pruning the shrubs and re-edging every bed, about 4 hours of labor, priced at $260.
• Best: a full reset with bed renovation, plus a follow-up visit the next week, about 6 hours of labor, priced at $380.

Say labor costs $30 per hour with payroll costs included. Labor alone is then $90, $120 and $180. That leaves $90, $140 and $200 before fuel, equipment and overhead. Notice what the arithmetic tells you. The Better tier earns $50 more than Good for one extra hour, which is a fine trade. The Best tier earns $110 more than Good but takes three extra hours plus a return visit that is not in the labor figure. Per labor hour, Good leaves $30, Better $35 and Best about $33, so Better earns the most per hour before the follow-up visit. If that follow-up costs you a trip and an hour of labor, Best falls to roughly $24 per hour worked, before the cost of the trip itself.

That is the point of doing the math. You might discover your Best tier is your least profitable hour, or that your Good tier barely covers itself. Either is useful to know before you print anything. The gross margin lesson shows how to read those leftovers, and the Pricing Calculator on the Resources page will do the sums for you.

Staff and schedule for the mix you will actually sell

The other question is capacity. If half your customers choose Best, can you deliver six-hour jobs and the follow-ups without missing your other appointments? If most choose Good, do you have enough volume to keep the crew busy? The tier mix you hope for and the one you get are not always the same.

Set a default. Many customers will land on the middle tier when the options are clear, so make that the one you are happiest to deliver all day. Watch what yours actually pick and adjust. Then make sure Good is a job you are proud of, just narrower, and that Best is genuinely exceptional and limited to the number you can do well. It is fine for the top tier to have a waiting list. That is a signal, not a problem.

Before you print anything

Take your most common job and write it as three packages on one page. For each, list what is included, the hours of labor, the price and your gross profit in dollars, then work out the gross profit per hour of labor. Circle the tier you would be happiest to sell twenty times this month. If your pick is not the middle tier, find out why.

What it costs

Three to four hours to design and cost three tiers for one service. It is free apart from your time. Expect to adjust after your first ten quotes; how customers respond will tell you more than any spreadsheet.