How to Price and Market Maintenance Plans

Pricing your maintenance plans can be a challenge, and deciding how much to charge and how much to perform, and then marketing your maintenance plans can also be a challenge. Depending on your clients’ needs, as well as the competition’s offerings, you might need to adapt accordingly. First of all, how much should you charge, and how much should you cover in your plans?

How to Price Your Plans

You don’t want to burn yourself out by offering too much, or offer too little and then get no business. For instance, offer 3 tiers of cleanup services in your maintenance plans, one that is just basic maintenance, one that includes those tasks as well as some malware scans, and one more that includes backup services, and perhaps some network maintenance. Those are all basic starters you can go from, as many clients will have different needs, i.e. server backups, server restarts, and other maintenance tasks.

You can also offer discounted service rates as part of those plans, as an additional bonus. Whereas you have one rate for clients who aren’t on the plans, you can have another that is 85% to 65% less just for clients on the plans. One tactic is to use flat rates, a recommended strategy, and then just discount that flat rate for clients on your plans, which makes it a lot easier than using hourly rates. Calculate how much time you expect to take performing the scheduled tasks, and then match that against your current rate or flat rate, but with a discount.

When you’re setting the price on your plans, make sure you’re not losing money from your offerings by setting up the plans. How much would you charge per service call if you weren’t using any plans for your clients? How much more would you be gaining by putting your current clients on a maintenance plan? I know rates can span anywhere from $20 an hour for some Techs up to over $100, so the prices you set should match appropriate rates for your area.

Plans will guarantee you business with that client, so one tactic is setting your price for the plan lower than your competition, and around 65% to 85% of what you would charge on an hourly or flat rate basis, factoring in transportation costs as well. You need to price it so it’s desirable to your clients, so take that into consideration too. There aren’t any hard and fast rules here, it depends on what they need and on what you can offer and how often they need it.

You could also offer a priority plan that puts that client at the top of your list every day if they ever call in with a problem. They won’t have to wait in line behind other clients on your service call list, and you can promise to be there within a certain time frame as well. This works better if you’re not the only Tech on call with your business, but you can still offer it with whatever flexibility you have, i.e. you’ll be there within 24 hours or less.

How to Market Your Plans

Selling your plans, once you’ve properly written them up, is perhaps the easier task after pricing them and figuring up what you’re going to offer. Emphasize the preventative nature of your plans. For instance, we’ve all heard that eating well, taking in plenty of water, getting good rest, and exercise are all preventative measures to extend your life and prevent health problems.

Everything you’re offering on your plan works towards preventing massive issues later on in the life of the machines your client owns. Having you come twice a year to do things that need to be done more regularly is like exercising two days out of the year. That’s a bit of an exaggeration, but you get the point. By getting on the plan, they’re extending the life of their machines, and saving money.

You can also emphasize that by taking advantage of your plans, they’re saving money. How much would it normally cost for you to come out and work on their machines? How much will potential downtime cost? By giving them the discount mentioned above, it’s actually saving them money, especially when an emergency comes up and you have to perform more work than usual on their machines. It’s almost like a health insurance policy that provides coverage all the time, but when it really shines is when there’s an emergency and the ominous threat of hundreds of thousands of dollars in medical costs is hanging over your head.

Lastly, by getting on the plan, by saving money, and by having you available to offer services at a much lower cost, it offers peace of mind to the client. They don’t have to worry about checking out the competition every time they need someone to work on their machines, because your discounted price will always be lower than the normal service charge of the competition if you’ve planned your pricing out that way. Right now, in this economy, that’s a lot of value to offer to a client, because there’s already enough stress from the workplace and from everything they have to cover every day, and it’s totally worth it.

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If you have any tips on pricing and selling maintenance plans, drop a tip below!