Sign Pricing, Specialize or Focus, and Job Management Questions

How do we determine if we’re pricing our items at appropriate levels, considering local competitors, the current economy and other relevant factors?

Are you making acceptable profit margins on the work you are pricing? It has to come down to that, no matter the competition, economy, tariffs, whatever — for the simple reason that unacceptably low margins and losses on jobs are not sustainable. Inflation remains a problem and with many companies having depleted their pre-tariff inventories, pricing is bound to trend higher. Customers hate rising prices but they cope with them better when signage goods and services are of the highest quality and delivered with superior customer service.

Should smaller sign companies focus on becoming specialists in one type of signage (like vehicle wraps or architectural signs) or maintain broad capabilities? What factors should drive this decision in today’s market?

What a great question — and one we plan to explore in much greater detail in a future article. For now, the main considerations seem to involve in part the factors discussed above: what is the competition, what do/can you do most profitably, what does the future hold for your market(s)? Apart from these and other external factors, one’s personality, especially the capacity to multitask vs. focus more narrowly, as well as how specializing or broad capabilities align with your company and individual principles, should be considered. With no right or wrong answer for everyone, this is a toughie and we’ll get back to you!

We asked the ST Brain Squad: We need a better way to manage jobs and invoicing. Is there anything out there that does not cost a fortune?

QuickBooks was mentioned by six different Brain Squad members, by far the most. Additional software products include the following:

• I use Square to invoice, and spreadsheets to keep track of jobs and costs.
• Cyrious Control has been an effective ERP system; it is not cheap, but has worked pretty well for us in the past 20 years.
• CoreBridge has been a game-changer for us!
• We are currently using Kimco, a pretty typical ERP System; however, it does not plug into QuickBooks, so we utilize two systems.
• We highly recommend ShopVOX. It takes a few weeks to set up, but it will manage operations.
• I am not sure what is considered a fortune. I know that once we moved to SquareCoil our productivity and sales have gone up enough that we know it is worth every penny.
• My response would be to select the best tool and not just look at the price. That said, an integration of Microsoft Office 365 and Teams for job management, coupled with PayPal for invoicing, could be a low-cost solution.