I get asked how much a person can make as a locksmith. If you work for a locksmith company or as an in-house locksmith (Hospital, University, School Board, etc.) wages range from minimum wage to union wages of approximately $30.00+ per hour. The more experience the locksmith has the higher their salary potential.
Being self-employed owning and running your own locksmith company monthly gross sales range from a low of $3000 per month to $10,000+ per month. Again it depends of the locksmith owner and their experience or how hard do they want to work and where they live (City vs Small Town, economy of where you live).
An industry standard for locksmiths is $10,000 per month per service vehicle. However, I know a locksmith who is very happy with only grossing $3000 per month (he has very low monthly expenses). Another locksmith I know that if he does less than $15,000 per month he is unhappy and another locksmith grosses 25k+ per month is his target for gross sales.
M0st service industries have high profits with cost of sales being approximately 20 percent (before car payments, insurance, advertising, etc.).
LOCKSMITH MARKET ECONOMIC SUMMARY
|
Product/Service |
No. of Businesses |
Total |
Total |
Average Employees |
Average |
|
($millions) |
($millions) |
||||
| Locksmith shop |
403.00 |
1,262 |
71.50 |
3.00 |
0.20 |
| Lock and key services |
80.00 |
214.00 |
11.10 |
3.00 |
0.20 |
| Key duplicating shop |
8.00 |
18.00 |
1.00 |
2.00 |
0.10 |
| Lock parts made to individual order |
2.00 |
5.00 |
0.10 |
3.00 |
0.10 |
| Total/Avg |
493.00 |
1,499 |
83.70 |
3.00 |
0.20 |
Source: Dun & Bradstreet, Marketplace.
Over the years I have found that if you have your own locksmith company with one locksmith service vehicle you should set your minimum goal of working 40 hours per week at billing of $54 dollars which works out to approximately $100k per year in gross sales. Another way of looking at gross sales is one $100 job per day is approx. $3000 per month, three (3) $100 jobs per day is $9000 gross sales per month. However, if you can not make a minimum of $100 per day in your own company re-evaluate how or why you are in the locksmith business.
In my opinion and experience your income as a locksmith is limited to the effort you are putting into your locksmith business. If you have a daily, monthly or yearly business plan and you are not reaching your goals look into your training, advertising or work ethic. (if you are only making $100 per day what are you doing with the other 6 hours in an 8 hour work day).
In conclusion, you must have a business plan with milestones you will achieve and your locksmith business plan must include a monthly gross sales target. Future Blogs I will talk about training, business plans, profitability and accountability (and not working seven days a week, 16 hrs per day).
