How To Get Your Proposals, Estimates & Bids Out The Door and In The Hands of Your Prospects Faster
This is a trick to get lawn care estimates done faster. If you find yourself sitting in the truck, or if you are at the office late writing up estimates, remember that you’re really a fairly expensive person in the company to be doing that. You need to be as efficient as possible. You should have somebody else, in some cases, put your estimates together for you. This is a trick on how to do that.
Often times what happens is, you take a look at a property and make some notes. A day or two later, when you have time to put together the lawn care estimate, you have forgotten some of what needs to be done or said inside the estimate.
I highly recommend using one of these three options to voice record your estimate notes. First, get a call-in line. There are a lot of options for this where you can call in to a phone number and record a message. Second, is to create a voice memo in your phone. Third, you can get a little mp3 recorder that costs about 60 bucks. I prefer the first two options because you can share your notes with your office team immediately after your notes are recorded.
Even if there’s something you haven’t quite worked out yet, you still talk about the parts. What did the client ask for? What were their selling points? What were their hot buttons? What did you say you would do? What are the services and products that need to go onto that estimate? What are the prices? Just talk it out as you look at your notes. Then you can email it, or if you do the call-in line concept, someone on your office team can pick that up. They can prepare the whole estimate for you.
This, a lot of times, is faster than using an iPad or laptop. You don’t have to worry about getting the wording perfect and if you are in a hurry to get to the next job, you are able to record your notes so that someone else can take care of the estimate for you.
Another person in the office that makes less money than you, can put all the details into the system and get it all prepped for you. That will free you up to move onto the next job. This really speeds up getting estimates out. I’m not saying you don’t do your own estimates ever. But, sometimes it might make sense to do this. It’s a powerful trick to get more production out in the field.
For example, if you can only knock out five estimates a day because of all the prep work, maybe using this approach, you can now do eight. Then, when you get to the office, or at night from you house, you log in and just review it. If it looks good, you can send it. Or, if there were a few things you were still thinking through, you can make those edits then, and send it out to the client.
This will save you some time. Everything in the business needs to be thought of from the standpoint of how you can maximize your time. How can you spend your time on the highest value activities…the things you are best at? If you’re great at selling, spend your time selling…don’t spend your time on typing. Have somebody that’s great at typing and writing and wording spend their time on that for you. That way you can be more productive and move faster.
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