ELECTRICAL ESTIMATING STRATEGY: How To Win More Jobs and Make More Money.
Electrical Estimating Strategy
Send your price to all general contractors bidding a job.
When bidding competitive jobs you need every advantage you can get.
You may be invited by your existing (GC) general contractor customer to bid a certain project. Sometimes 5 or 7 or more contractors compete for the same project.
Stack the deck in your favor: Send your price to all 5 (GC’s) general contractors bidding the job. Since the winning GC will have your price, if your price is the lowest, guess what? You win the job! Electrical estimating software helps streamline the process for this.
Get it? Got it? Good!
BUT – Don’t ever go to the prom with one date and leave with another.
If you were invited by your customer to bid a project you want to protect him, meaning, you want to give him the best price.
You will:
Give your customer a slightly lower price.
Mark up the price to all other GC’s slightly.
Do not keep it a secret from your customer that you are bidding to all contractors. Tell them you are going to give them the best price and you will mark up your price higher to the rest of the contractors.
Make it clear to your customer that they are my preferred customer and they get preferred pricing.
That satisfies your customer and still gives you a shot at winning the job even if your customer does not get the job.
Mark up your bids to the other contractors whatever you think is best. 2 %, 3 %, 5% whatever you feel comfortable doing.
Reality check: Bidding to multiple contractors at bid time can be a real scramble. There is a lot of work to do to send your price to all GC’s.
Electrical estimating software allows you to quickly adjust pricing for different contractors so you can get your bid out.
Do this in advance, not at the last minute.
Call each general contractor bidding the job.
Introduce yourself as a person/ company who wants to bid the job.
Get the contact information of the person responsible for bidding that project.
Speak to that person and ask if it is OK for you to send them your price for that project.
Send your bid on time
Follow up with a phone call to confirm they received your number. Remember, The fortune is in the follow-up!
A few major benefits of Red Rhino electrical estimating software are:
It is affordable.
It is online! Available 24/7. You can log on to the software from anywhere, at any time.
You can use it to estimate residential, commercial, industrial, structured cabling, and fire alarm.
Professional proposals will impress your clients.
Online training videos allow you to learn at your own speed.
Red Rhino has material prices built-in for several thousand material items updated monthly.
No more guessing about labor. Red Rhino has labor built in to install conduit and wire, cabling, panels, light fixtures, generators, bus duct, switches, plugs, unistrut and thousands of items.
Proposal has pre-built templates. So, you can build your proposal fast!
Your purpose for bidding to all GC’s is two-fold.
You want to win the project and get the work.
Even more important, you want to develop relationships with other general contractors so you can work with them on future projects.
When you bid to all contractors on a job you dramatically increase the odds of winning more work, plus it helps you develop new business relationships for future growth.
Red Rhino is online so you can log on from any computer with an internet connection.
The Cost of Red Rhino is $99.00/ Month with an affordable setup fee.
Red Rhino Electrical Estimating Software | 14 Day Free Trial
You will immediately get access to our online software. Training videos will guide you step by step to learn how to navigate.
Call us if you have questions.
888- 492-5565 x 1