By Greg Allan, tradesman and creator of Data First Coaching
Why does the customer argue about price while they’re still locked out?
Most locksmiths find the hardest conversation of the week happens on a doorstep at two in the morning, trying to justify a price to a customer who is cold, annoyed and locked out of their own home. The customer pulls out a phone, finds another locksmith’s hourly rate online, and starts comparing instead of listening. The argument is lost before the drill even comes out of the van.
This happens because the price was quoted as an hourly rate plus a callout fee, rather than as one job price. A locked out customer on their own front step at that hour isn’t comparing a fair trade price against a fair trade price, they’re comparing a tradie’s hourly rate to what they personally think a reasonable wage looks like. Whether the job is a tricky deadlock, a digital lock that has lost power, or a straightforward rekey, once the conversation becomes about an hourly number, the locksmith is arguing on the customer’s terms, not their own.
Why does a callout fee plus an hourly rate make it easy to say no?
Cost plus pricing, a callout fee on top of an hourly rate, is easy for a customer to pick apart because every part of it can be compared somewhere else. A property manager, a strata manager or a homeowner locked out after hours can see the components and shop each one, which is exactly what a flat rate structure invites them to do.
Rekey jobs, master key systems and new deadlocks all carry a material cost and a labour cost that a customer can, in theory, break down and question. Once a locksmith’s price is presented as parts plus hourly labour plus a surcharge for the hour, there’s nothing stopping the customer ringing around for a cheaper hourly rate mid callout. A commercial access control job or a security door replacement quoted the same way faces the same exposure, because the customer is pricing the inputs instead of buying the outcome, which is getting back into their own home or business safely and quickly.
What does a locksmith’s own job data actually show about after hours work?
Your own job data usually shows that after hours and lockout work carries a different gross profit margin to daytime rekeys and lock changes, and that margin moves depending on how busy the roster is that night, not just on what time the callout comes in. Memory tells you it’s always been priced the same way; the numbers tell you something different.
A locksmith working alone or with a small crew only has so many after hours slots available on any given night. Looking at actual job data, rather than the price list from last year, usually shows the real driver of a profitable after hours callout isn’t the hour on the clock, it’s how many other jobs are competing for that same slot and how many locksmiths are actually on the road to cover it. That’s a data first way of looking at pricing: the number that tells the truth is the margin on each after hours job against how scarce that slot actually was, not the flat multiplier written on the price list.
How should a lockout or emergency callout be priced so there’s nothing to compare?
A lockout or after hours callout should be priced as one bundled job figure, labour, the lock or rekey, and the after hours loading, all folded into a single number quoted before the work starts. That removes the moment where a locked out customer compares an hourly rate instead of buying the result they actually want, which is getting back inside.
Picture a locksmith who used to dread the questions at trade shows and expos, standing next to a stand full of deadlocks and digital locks with nothing to show a visitor except a price list full of hourly rates and callout surcharges. He needed a way to price jobs and compare options for the people he met walking the floor, so he built his own pricing and comparison tool and used it at a security expo to put prices and options in front of visitors, letting them see a bundled job figure for a rekey, a lock change or an access control upgrade and compare the outcome, not the inputs.
The same thinking applies on a doorstep at two in the morning: price the slot, not the hour, and the comparison the customer was about to make never gets a chance to start. It also applies to real estate and strata work, where a lock change or master key reset after a tenant moves out can be priced as one job figure tied to the property manager’s schedule, rather than an hourly rate that invites a second quote.
What changes when AI agents take on the quoting and after hours booking?
An AI agent, software that does a job the way the locksmith would, using their prices, their wording and their rules, can quote a lockout or after hours callout as a bundled job price the moment the call comes in, instead of the locksmith doing the maths on the phone at two in the morning. That means the bundled price gets applied every time, not just when there’s time to think it through.
AI agents can hold the full price book, including the after hours loading that reflects how few locksmiths are free that night, and quote the right bundled figure for a lockout, a rekey or a commercial callout without the owner working it out under pressure. Van stock, key cutting jobs and standard lock changes can run through the same agent, so the office work of quoting, booking and chasing up insurance paperwork or strata invoices happens the locksmith’s way every time, while the owner and the crew are on the road or on the tools. That frees their time for the callout and the customer in front of them, not for defending a number on the doorstep.
How does Data First Coaching approach this?
Data First Coaching starts by looking at the locksmith’s own after hours and lockout jobs through the Trade Business Intelligence, not at what competitors charge down the road. The numbers usually show where the margin actually sits and whether the current pricing reflects the scarcity of that slot or just an old multiplier nobody has questioned since it was set. Greg Allan teaches that “the time to test it is in the high-demand periods”, because that’s when a locksmith’s price is worth the most and least likely to be fairly compared against a daytime rate. The how, building the bundled pricing and the agents that apply it, is worked through inside the Academy, with members, because the Trade Business Intelligence is powered by every member who is open minded, innovative and willing to share what they learn.
