Giving Ballpark Figures on an Estimate Call

I got a quote to replace my slid­ing back door with a new unit. I asked the guy doing the esti­mate a fair­ly sim­ple ques­tion, and it will sound famil­iar to all you esti­ma­tors out there! ​“I know you have to work up the num­bers back at the shop, but do you think it will cost more than $2k or less than $2k for a ball­park.” Fair ques­tion, right? I did not want to waste his time…as I had a bud­get fig­ure in my head. The esti­ma­tor said loud and clear, ​“Oh def­i­nite­ly under $2,000.” Well that was excit­ing to hear. I thought the price would be well over $2,000. I fig­ured any­thing under $2k from a com­pa­ny I have used before, I’d just sign the pro­pos­al and get it done on the spot. If it was over $2,000, I might wait a lit­tle while, because this door is not used much and is a low pri­or­i­ty for fix it items. Now, when I got the esti­mate a day or so lat­er, there were two quotes. The first was almost $3,000 and the sec­ond was $3,500. The esti­mate was not detailed and did not give me much infor­ma­tion on options or why the quote was a lot high­er than the ver­bal. There was no real expla­na­tion from any­one — just the facts (it is what it is). I reached out to the per­son who sent the pro­pos­al (I am a repeat cus­tomer) to clar­i­fy a cou­ple things. I tried not to sound alarmed, but I was curi­ous as to how it went from a ver­bal of ​“def­i­nite­ly under $2,000” to quite a bit more. As I write this blog, it has been 4 days, and I have not heard back. l was a paint­ing esti­ma­tor for a decade, so I know when a cus­tomer tries to cor­ner you for a price. It does not mean they are being cheap! Get that head trash out of your mind! Yet here is the point I want to make: a sea­soned esti­ma­tor should be very care­ful on how he/​she responds to bud­get fig­ures. If you real­ly are not sure of the price on the spot, don’t give a price –even a ball­park. Instead say some­thing like,

“David, it will prob­a­bly depend on the type of slid­ing door you want. There are a lot of options out there. There maybe a few slid­ers that are under $2,000 and quite a few well over $2,000. Let me do a lit­tle research and see what I can do. What price point were you hop­ing to be at?” 

If the esti­ma­tor or com­pa­ny took a lit­tle extra time to use a sim­i­lar script I wrote above, they prob­a­bly would have sold me. I need­ed to be edu­cat­ed on the price of a slid­er, as I real­ly had no idea. I just got my hopes up when I heard it was going to be cheap and then was pret­ty bummed when the price was nowhere near the ball­park. I’ve seen it hap­pen many a time on paint­ing esti­mate calls. If you don’t know, keep your mouth shut until you know! You’ll win more business.