Challenges Getting Accurate & Competitive Quotes — Anyone Else?

Question

Hey everyone. Wanted to start a conversation around something I think a lot of us deal with daily.

Getting quotes right is hard. Too high and you lose the job. Too low and you regret winning it.

A few challenges I keep running into:

Translating plans and site conditions into accurate material and labor costs
Material prices changing between quote and job start
Knowing what the market will bear in your area
Finding customers who care about quality, not just the cheapest bid

I've been using Jobber to streamline the quoting side. Building out templates, tracking job history to compare estimated vs. actual costs, and following up on open quotes automatically. It's helped, but the estimating accuracy piece still takes real discipline.

Would love to hear from the community:

What's your quoting process start to finish?
How do you handle rising material costs in your pricing?
Where are you finding your best customers?
Any Jobber features that have helped you quote faster or more accurately?

Drop your experience below — whether you've got it figured out or you're still grinding through it like the rest of us. 👇

anthonysalazar · Answer

Using quote templates has saved me a ton of admin time (a quote that normally takes 10 minutes to create now is only 30 seconds with my templates). But I would say depending on your plan, using Optional Line items has been a great feature we implemented to increase our average ticket per client since we can show them additional services we have (or bulk prepayment options where they will get a small discount for committing to a longer term).

brand · Answer

Pricing too high is misnomer: If you are priced too high, you are not presenting enough value to justify the price. The common scenario is a $20 sneaker or a $200 Nike. Are Nike's priced high or do they have more value? Clearly people buy them because the value is equal to, or greater than the price. We demonstrate the differences of value to justify the cost (estimate) and therefore we are only competing with our own ability to communicate that value to the homeowner in a way that they are willing to pay more to get more.

Additionally, we offer additional services with our products that make it harder for "apples to apples" comparisons from competitors. They are cheaper but they also won't do XYZ.
Rising Material happens every spring for us. We increase our pricing 5-10% every year.
Customers, we are maximizing the potential for the most leads without paying for marketing. We honed in a process to maximize referrals and self gens and will be looking to add marketing next year. (we don't even have yard signs yet and could barely keep up.
The way you write estimates will burn you if you're not careful. We introduced conditional line items in the event that we come across unforseen items. We also do an involved inspection inside/outside to minimize surprises on home when we remodel. If you use subcontractor's find ones that will give you general pricing for common things and/or charge for estimates so you can get people out there for accuracy.

purposefamily · Answer

This is a great discussion because pricing has probably been one of my biggest learning experiences as a newer business owner.

I’ve found that having a consistent process makes all the difference. Every quote starts with a walkthrough, taking photos, measuring the property, and documenting anything that could affect labor or materials. I’m building templates in Jobber so I’m not starting from scratch every time, and I compare completed jobs to my estimates so I can keep improving.

One thing that’s really helped me is partnering with a gentleman who has over 30 years of experience in the landscaping industry. He has top-of-the-line equipment and decades of knowledge. Even though we’re technically competitors, I believe there’s enough work for everyone, and I’d rather learn from experienced professionals and build relationships than try to do everything alone.

My goal isn’t to be the cheapest—it’s to provide quality work, honest communication, and a professional customer experience. I’m also creating systems to simplify customer information, scheduling, payments, and follow-ups so every client has a smooth experience from quote to completion.

I’m still learning every day, so I’d love to hear what has helped everyone become more accurate with pricing while still staying profitable. Thanks for starting this conversation!

hugehomepros · Answer

I've been using Chat GPT to help with my quotes as most of them are custom. My process is:

Upload the most important pictures in to chat GPT.
Use the voice to text to describe the scope of work in detail
Ask chat gpt to use our labor rates to put together a scope of work, an estimate, and a production schedule so I can review and see if it makes sense
Adjust any of those things as necessary till I'm happy with the number
Ask it to make a jobber ready estimate that states what's included and what's excluded in bullet points
Ask it to call out anything like (discoverables) that I need in the contract
Ask it if there's anything we are over looking
Triple check everything
Put it in jobber with pictures in each line item
Make a loom video walking the customer through the estimate
Send off as a package

My quotes are all fairly long and pretty custom to the job. For smaller quotes, my admin does the same but without the production schedule and loom video.

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Challenges Getting Accurate & Competitive Quotes — Anyone Else?

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