How many quotes do you actually need to send?
Your win rate is the share of quotes that turn into jobs. If you win three in ten, you need to send ten quotes for every three jobs you want. Lift that to four in ten and the same number of jobs takes far fewer quotes, which frees up hours you can spend on paid work or on winning even more.
Ask most tradespeople how many jobs they want next month and they can tell you. Ask how many quotes that takes and you usually get a shrug. It is one of the least tracked numbers in a trade business, and one of the most useful.
Quoting is real work. The visit, the measuring, the pricing, the write-up. When you win the job, that time is covered. When you lose it, it is simply gone.
The unpaid work hiding behind a low win rate
A win rate of 30% sounds fine until you look at what it means: for every three jobs you win, you do seven pieces of quoting work for nothing. Over a month, that adds up to a lot of hours that earn you no money at all.
A worked example
Say you want 12 jobs a month and currently win 30% of the quotes you send. A quote takes you about 1.5 hours and your time is worth $50 an hour. You would like to get your win rate to 40%:
| Quotes needed at 30% (12 ÷ 0.30) | 40 |
| Quotes needed at 40% (12 ÷ 0.40) | 30 |
| Time spent quoting now (40 × 1.5 hrs) | 60 hrs |
| Time spent at the better rate (30 × 1.5 hrs) | 45 hrs |
| Time freed up each month ($750 of your time) | 15 hrs |
Or look at it the other way. Keep sending 40 quotes at a 40% win rate and you land 16 jobs instead of 12. That is 4 extra jobs, worth $2,400 at $600 each, from effort you were already putting in.
What tends to lift a win rate
- Reply quickly. The first tradesperson to respond with a clear quote often has a real advantage.
- Follow up. A short, friendly message a few days after sending catches people who meant to reply and did not.
- Be clear about what is included. Customers say yes to a quote they understand and no to one they cannot compare.
- Be choosy. Quoting every enquiry, including jobs too far away or outside what you do well, drags the rate down and wastes the hours the calculator is counting.
Before you cut a price to win more, check what it does to your profit with the Quote & Profit Calculator. A higher win rate bought with a thin margin is not a win.
Frequently asked questions
What is a good quote win rate for a tradesperson?
How do I work out my win rate?
Should I quote every enquiry?
The takeaway
Quotes are unpaid work until they win, so a better win rate is worth real hours and real money. Track yours, work out the gap, and put effort into the habits that close more of the quotes you already send.