Many small things can contribute to making your quote unattractive and drive away customers - and the biggest turn off is usually not the price.
These are the mistakes contractors make and don’t notice. Offering the lowest price is easy, agreeing to whatever deadline the customer wants is easy… but it’s not easy fulfilling those promises, and by being too eager to please, contractors often drive away customers forever by making mistakes they later can’t fix.
Luckily, these mistakes can be avoided if you know what they are.
Mistake #1: You offer the lowest possible price
Customers absolutely care about the price, but they’re not stupid. They know you want to make the sale and they can easily tell if a pitch sounds too good to be true — which for them spells “desperate.” This mistake might also be translated into “you’re too eager to please.”
Of course getting a job is always a good thing, but by offering the lowest possible bid:
- You won’t have room to negotiate;
- You will bump into extra expenses and lose your profit;
- You will seek lower quality materials and disappoint the customer;
- You will work faster and make mistakes;
Take your time and offer a quote that is fair for you — an amount that pays for your time, materials, and crew. That same quote should sound fair to the customer — most of them will have some idea of the average cost, or will have contacted other professionals in the area.
If asked why you cost more or less than others, you should be able to break down this value (into labor, material, crew, etc.).
Being transparent about your expenses brings a lot of trust, and homeowners will gladly settle for your proposal if it sounds fair to them — even if it isn’t the cheapest.
Mistake #2: You overlook minor costs
Hence the importance of breaking down your costs and writing everything down (which we’ll get to in a moment.)
The best way to prevent this mistake is by visiting the homeowner. Asking the right questions will only take you so far — the only 100% guaranteed way to know exactly what needs to be done is by being there and looking at the site yourself.
The second best way is by being inquisitive. Homeowners might leave out important details when giving you a general explanation of what they want, and might accidentally give you the wrong idea a job will be easy, simply because it sounds easy to them. It’s not their fault, they don’t have the same knowledge you do. Ask all the questions, and if at all possible, pay them a visit.
Mistake #3: You don’t write it down
For sending quotes and invoices, you should always have a template ready to go. It makes your job a lot easier, faster, and customers love when you look professional. Writing things down keeps a record of everything needed for the project, such as costs, deadlines, and so on, making it confusion-free for you and the customer.
To create simple and effective templates, you can use:
- Microsoft Word
- Apple Pages
- Google Docs
Googles Docs is a particularly good method if you don’t know where to start — it’s totally free, easy to use, easy to share, and saves everything in the cloud so you never risk losing your files. Although there are plenty of similar apps and software for invoices, you can also use Docs for that, since it’s free and it already has templates for that very purpose.
But if you’re looking for professional invoice senders that offer clients payment methods on the fly, here are some reliable alternatives:
Mistake #4: You give unrealistic deadlines
Customers often have their own idea of deadlines (“I wanted this done by day X”), but don’t let that stress you out too much. If you can do it, that’s great, but if you need more time, you should have all the tools at hand to show the customer exactly why you need more time, and why it will be better to respect your deadline.
It’s always better to give your deadline and fulfill it than to force yourself into meeting the customer’s deadline and fail.
Here comes the importance of avoiding mistakes 2 and 3 of this list. Overlooking minor costs can already extend your deadline to more than expected, which leads to the customer having to pay more and wait longer.
Meanwhile, writing everything down — that is, breaking down the cost and recording what you told the customer — is helpful to make sure everything is accounted for. When you’re dealing with lots of projects at once and talking to new customers on a daily basis, you will be dealing with an overwhelming amount of information at once. Writing things down helps you visualize every project individually and prevents mistakes like this from happening.
Mistake #5: You don’t visit the homeowner
Paying the homeowner a visit is, as previously stated, the only guaranteed way to get all the information you need.
Being inquisitive via phone will give you a pretty good idea of what kind of service you’re talking about, but a visit is crucial to provide the best possible quote and inspire trust from the customer.
By visiting the homeowner, you will:
- See the project from every angle and look at details that might otherwise go unnoticed;
- Make better plans by understand the layout of the house or job site;
- See eye-to-eye with the customer and understand what they want;
- Inspire trust from the homeowner, who will be much more likely to hire you.
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