Is poor estimating hurting your margins and affecting operations within your contracting business? If so, it may be the right time to streamline your hiring, training, and sales process. We recently spoke with John Kenney, CEO of Cotney Consulting, who has over 45 years of experience in the industry. Let’s take a closer look at our discussion with John and how you can improve your sales operations with better estimating practices.
Eliminate Poor Estimating Practices
It’s common for contractors or sales reps to make errors during the sales process with a homeowner. For example, this includes errors with measurements, estimates, materials, and contracts. And as a result, you are leaving money on the table and costing your business time to clean up these mistakes.
“The number one reason that contracting businesses go out of business is due to poor estimating,” John Kenney told us in a recent webinar. “Usually, people who don’t know how to price correctly are consistently throwing out low numbers. Or their prices are so high because they’re trying to cover what they don’t know. You won’t land any work.”
Pricing mishaps not only cut into your margins, but also affect your ability to build a strong reputation with homeowners in your community. It’s unprofessional to present inconsistent pricing and estimates. And your customers will take notice quickly.
“Bottom line is that your company’s reputation is at risk,” John added. “They are not going to use you again if you have done a poor job right from the beginning.”
These errors will cost you money on the current job and the potential for more work with these customers in the future. That’s why it’s so important to take control over the sales journey and streamline your training to eliminate these errors altogether.
How to Prevent Estimating Errors
According to a survey from Intuit QuickBooks, nearly a third of contractors make less money than expected based on their estimates. In addition, one in four survey respondents said just two or three inaccurate estimates could tank their business.
Therefore, it’s clear that poor estimating can break your contracting business. However, you can prevent these errors by utilizing new technology in the industry.
In fact, sales software gives you total control over your estimates, pricing structure, and contracts. It’s also a great resource for managing all communications you have with a customer, from the initial contact to the completion of work.
Sales automation is helping contractors scale their business and provide better training for their sales reps. You no longer have to spend weeks at a time onboarding new reps. You can plug them directly into the software and have complete oversight of estimates and pricing.
The information is right in front of them, and leaders within the company can implement changes as necessary. If a product is out of stock or prices go up or down, you can make the necessary changes within the software.
Your sales reps no longer have to dig through product sheets and paper materials to figure out pricing. Built-in lists and pricing control within the sales software do all the work for you. And overall, this saves your company loads of time and money during in-home sales opportunities.
Provide Better Estimates with Leap Software
At Leap, we provide contractors with a point-of-sale software that helps create a repeatable and more professional sales process. This innovative application empowers your reps to focus on selling the job instead of worrying about pricing mistakes.
Your company’s pricing structure, materials, and job information is input directly into the application for all your reps to access on the go. You gain control over the pricing while your reps gain more confidence while selling jobs to homeowners.
All communications with the customer are connected to the job as well. Now you can keep track of every schedule and follow-ups.
Moreover, we have partnered with industry leaders to better enhance your entire operations. This includes measurement tools, 3D mapping, aerial imaging, marketing and sales, financing and payments, and major manufacturers. Each of our partners compliment the Leap software to help your business grow and provide a more professional customer experience.
To learn more about Leap, fill out the form below to schedule a quick, 15-minute demo with one of our software experts. Leap can help you drive higher margins and eliminate poor estimating from your business.
