Mid-Land Blog
Stop Wasting Time and Give Better Quotes
If you don’t have a system in place that helps you give better quotes faster, you are missing out. Time is money, and hours spent quoting a project, make this common phrase painfully evident.
Time spent quoting could be spent completing projects. It’s tempting to throw something together so you can get back to work, but bad quotes can have costly consequences.
Learning to quote a project efficiently will increase your productivity and protect your bottom line. We put together the following tips to help you slash wasted time and deliver better quotes – faster.
1. Build a basic template
A digital template is the best way to streamline your quoting process. You can download a free starter file online or build your own in Excel. Either way, make sure you have a place to input the information that is most relevant to your client’s projects. Each time you are submitting a bid for a new project, the pre-set fields in your template file will keep you on track.
2. Start tracking and analyzing your quotes
This big mistake causes problems far too often. We know, you’ve been delivering quotes to clients for 17 years. You feel pretty confident in your abilities. But, if you aren’t comparing results against expectations, you are costing your company money.
Once you start keeping track, you can look back at the data and ask hard questions. Do you commonly underquote a certain type of project or service? Has the cost of your materials changed? Would it be worth it to sub-contract portions of a project allowing you to sell tools or equipment that are difficult to maintain or don’t get used often? Analyzing this information regularly can reveal optimization opportunities when it counts.
Regardless of how long you have been delivering quotes, you need to keep a record of them and compare against your costs once a project is completed.
3. Standardize your labor hours (and keep updating them)
When you’re just starting out, it can be very difficult to estimate how many hours it will take your team to complete a project. We recommend establishing average labor hours for each project type. Use those averages to complete your quotes, and make small adjustments by examining the results of projects over time. Having solid records to look back on and make comparisons against is invaluable.
We hope these quick tips on project quoting help you to stop wasting time and give better quotes more efficiently. Don’t wait to implement them – start today!