I appreciate the concern to make sure you are pricing things right, and its something I wish people shared more with each other, every time it has come up, we all seem to go about calculating quantities in slightly different ways. And some of you are buying type 1 so cheap, its tempting to run my own tractor trailer from op north down to Surrey! None of us are in competition either, we all live too far apart,
@doobin is probably my closest rival and he is more than welcome to all the grannies around Farnham
There are so many other factors that go into a client choosing you for a job. Don't get hung up on price - that's just race to the bottom stuff. Think about it, there is a reason we buy Honda engines for our small plant, its taken a long time for the Chinese copies to establish themselves as a a viable alternative. We would rather pay more for the perceived quality that the Honda has.
Same goes for your contracting business - no matter what size it might be. In the short time you get to look at the job and discuss the clients requirements, you have to give them the confidence that you are the man for the job. Then when your price is slightly more, you stand a chance of them going with you. There isn't a hard fast way of achieving this as customers expectations vary across the country, and I don't want to tell you to suck eggs, just don't get too hung up on being the cheapest.