Maybe you have clients who don’t need a preliminary estimate because they’ve proceeded with their architect or designer and have full architectural drawings, engineerings and specs.
That’s great, we just hope that they’ve been educated by you, or their architect as to the likely costs of their project.
If you’re at this stage it’s another great opportunity to qualify your clients by charging them for a Full Tender Estimate & BOQ. Naturally, a Full Tender Estimate & BOQ will cost more than a Preliminary Cost Estimate and if your clients are happy to pay, you will be doing a great job of qualifying them.
Perhaps you can charge a set price for your client of say $4 – $5k, or propose a % of the total cost that the project comes in at. Say .5% of a $1m build, you would charge $5,000. That should be enough to get a professional estimate prepared and leave some change for your time.
After all, you are providing cost consultancy on their project for them and you shouldn’t be doing it yourself – outsource it so you can focus your time on the projects you have under construction. At the end of the day, this is where you should be making your money – it’s your core business product.
Good clients will appreciate your time and be happy to pay. The tyre kickers wasting your time won’t.
If you’re not doing it yet, don’t worry, you are in a great position to start implementing it and it’s easier than you think. After you’ve done it a handful of times, it’ll be second nature and you won’t ever go back to doing them for free.
Let me know if you reckon this could help building your pipeline of work with quality leads. I’ll send you a template that you can use to send to your enquiries.
Cheers.