STOP giving away free quotes. START charging for your time.

Andy
Yes. This is absolutely an amazing subject. And you know what? It’s quite controversial actually, as well.

Ange
So, Andy, I wanna start by reminiscing with you. I wanna take you back to the days when you’d actually just started out in Dr. Drip.

Andy
Oh geez. Okay. Well that’s sinking back a bit, but I’ll get the old thinking cap on.

Ange
So when you started Dr. Drip, you were like a chicken with its head cut off, weren’t you? You were like running around trying to rustle up as many jobs as possible, right?

Andy
Yeah. Thinking back, it is a long way back. It was 1999 and back then we had no existing customer base, of course, because we just started the business. So I was doing whatever it took to get leads and customers through the door. So I was pretty much saying yes to anything and everything that came my way and then at times it was absolutely the reverse, where people were just calling up wanting quotes, quotes, quotes, quotes, and more quotes. And sometimes my quotes were filling up my whole day. And the problem was they weren’t always interested in going ahead with the work. So it meant that I wasn’t making any money because I wasn’t charging for my quotes.

Ange
You and every other tradie.

Andy
Yeah, that’s true. And then there’s other times where you know, you don’t have much work going on and you just take any work. And I remember one time a customer asked me to install a garden shed for them. And I’m thinking, what me? I’m a qualified plumber. I don’t install garden sheds. But the customer, you know, when the customer said jump, I’d pretty much back then I’d say, how high? And work was work, so I was happy to take it on. I told them my hourly rate and away I went.

Ange
Yeah. You know what? I think this is the reality for a lot of startup businesses. You just say yes to everything and anything just to make some money.

Andy
Yeah, you certainly do. And looking back on it, that’s a real mistake that a lot of businesses make because you go down the wrong paths and of course, you know you need to make money and you have to pay the bills.

Ange
So eventually something has to give, like actually saying no to putting up a garden shit, right?

Andy
Yes, exactly. You just can’t say yes sometimes when you know it’s terrible work and perhaps it jeopardizes the opportunity to make some good money elsewhere. And you can’t be running around handing out free quotes just like it’s lollies. You know, I realized that my time was money and I was throwing it down the drain with all of these free quotes all of the time.

Ange
So that’s an interesting sentence cuz most trade business owners would say that you can’t possibly charge for quotes. So Andy, what would you say to them?

Andy
Well, I think the old school way, and once upon a time I would have to agree, but the problem is regardless, regardless of where you live, you always have customers that simply just expect to get a free quote. Even when they have no intention of going ahead with the work at all, you know? And that really does irk me, to be honest, cuz it wastes our precious time. And if you knew that upfront, I don’t know Ange, would you go?

Ange
Well, no I wouldn’t, not if they had no intention of doing the work.

Andy
So how do you check that the person on the phone is genuine about wanting work, you know, done the right way by the right tradie and obviously the quality that you provide.

Ange
I don’t know. How do you know?

Andy
Well, you charge for the quote. There is no way a person is gonna say yes to you coming to their house to provide a quote if they have no intention of doing the work, if they have to pay for it. You know what? The way I believe is, go waste some other tradies’ time. I’d say, not mine.

Ange
What? Imagine charging for your time and professional expertise. How dare you?

Andy
Well, that’s it, right? Like, that’s exactly right. Who would even think that it’s okay for a tradie to charge or something like that? It’s almost like the same thing is when you go and see a doctor or you’re asking for medical advice, or maybe you’re going to see a lawyer for legal advice. What’s happening there? Are you paying for it or do you just turn up and say, Hey, I want a free quote! Tell me all the information, and then I might go do it myself.

Ange
Great examples.

Andy
Ah, does my head in.

Ange
So what exactly did you do to start charging for quotes then?

Andy
Well, when I realized that these things needed to change and that I needed to start charging for my quotes, you know, I didn’t outright tell customers at the very beginning that I’m charging for quotes. What I did was I caught a $55 diagnostic fee. I told them that when they go ahead with the work on the day, the fee was waived and it’d be a hundred percent free.

Ange
So you basically said you have intention to do the work, so let’s just do the work.

Andy
Yeah, kind of.

Ange
It’s a script actually that we use called the Call Converter. It’s our nine step process and we follow it in order to take control at that first call stage of the flow of a job. We outlined this process in a free download that we have provided you all, called the call converter. So if you want a copy of that, I’ll leave a link in the show notes or you can head to lifestyletradie.com.au and have a look at the free resources section. So for the purpose of this episode, Andy, how is that received by your customers?

Andy
Yeah, well I had a specific script that we’d use and whoever was answering the phone, they’d absolutely follow that to a T as well. And what it really did was it really weeded out the time wasters really, really quickly. You know, the ones that were like, well, I want a free quote, but I don’t wanna pay for it. Well, if you are, if you’re gonna make me pay for it, I’ll ring another couple of gullible tradies and they can waste their time on me.

Ange
I would say that the positioning of the call also increased your chance of getting the job approved once you were on site, because they actually understood that once they went ahead with the work, they actually didn’t pay for that $55. So what if a customer pushed back and refused to pay the diagnostic fee?

Andy
Well, we’d explain why we have a fee in place, um, in the first place. And it’ll be something like, well, if you go ahead Mrs. Jones, do you want to go ahead with the job? And they’re like, yeah, we want to go ahead with the job. We’ll say, if you do go ahead with the job, it’s free. And then we’d go silent. And, um, and even something, you know, if I was being a little bit more honest and, and the script would go, um, not, not word for word, but it’d pretty much go, well, Mrs. Jones, we need to jump in the car, we need to drive half an hour, we need to come to your house, we need to diagnose what the problem was, we need to work out exactly where it’s at and what’s happening, it could take us a half an hour to an hour to spend time with you. Um, when you think about it, Mrs. Jones, $55, it’s really pretty fair, don’t you think? And I think everyone these days understands the cost of business has gone up, especially with fuel, labor prices, you name it. It has definitely gone up.

Ange
Yeah, that’s true. So people would have to be absolutely out of their mind to think that businesses would be able to survive providing free services in today’s economy. Don’t you think?

Andy
Well, that’s the thing. I mean, even when you charge something as simple as $55, we all know that if you never get any quotes approved, um, you’d go absolutely broke. But the beauty of charging that $55 is we knew the customer was serious, and then when we gave them the quote on the spot, we knew they pretty much were gonna go ahead and if they didn’t go ahead, they had to pay us $55.

Ange
Right.

Andy
Plus they may have booked out a section of their day as well. So it was a bit of a no-brainer for us to make sure that we spent that time.

Ange
Well, I probably would say there are a few occasions where you actually don’t charge for a quote, right?

Andy
Yeah, there were a few occasions, I mean, we’d always say that we’re gonna charge for the quote, but something like a burst hot water system. Like we knew that when we went to that house, they needed to replace that system, you know, so we were like, well, we can wave it at, at this stage if that’s what needs to be done, cuz there’s a really good chance we’re gonna get a good job out of it. Uh, and that’s the same with a block drain where there’s sewer pouring outta the lawn, you know, or outta their floor waste or whatever. They don’t wanna wait around for another tradie. So they’re pretty much gonna get you to come, you’re gonna tell ’em what needs to be done and they’re gonna go ahead because they don’t really have enough time to shop around. And that’s sort sort of almost a bit with emergency work as well. Like when it’s an emergency and it’s flooding, or it’s doing it, they need to fix it now. They’re not gonna wait and try and wait for three other tradies to come over the next week to give ’em a price. They need it done now. So sometimes in that instant we’d say, No worries, Mrs. Jones. Yep. We’ll definitely come out and do that for you.

Ange
So you wouldn’t charge that 55 dollar diagnostic fee. You’d literally just go.

Andy
Yeah, I think you’ve gotta be smart and the dispatcher that’s running your business needs to be smart and understand. Listen, every tradie is out there listening to me right now. You can smell it in the air when that person rings you and they open their mouth and the first sentence you like, here we go, this person is an absolute tire kicker. So I know everyone listen goes, Yep Andy, we know it. I can smell the bullshit from a mile away. This person is a time waster. I, I know you are saying that. So, but the thing is, as us tradies, we get it pretty quick. And I’m not saying that our office staff don’t, but you’ve gotta try and put something in place just to get rid of those D-customers because you, I, I’ve seen it all the time, especially with small businesses, they waste all their time running around doing quotes. Now, let’s face it, Dr. Drip was not the cheapest plumbing company going around, so if I was up against another three quotes, there was a really good chance that we may not have got it on price. We may have got it on service, but it just really depends on how you, you know, you, you run your business and, and how, you know, when there’s a tire kicker or it’s not a tire kicker and, and, um, and how you set that up. But when you’re a bigger business, you know, you need to make sure, cuz you are not going to every job, right? So you need to make sure that you just are not wasting everyone’s time because you definitely will go broke. And it seemed like it was just a rule that every customer out there thinks, oh, I just want a free quote. And it’s like, well, why should you have a free quote? Well, that’s the way it’s been done for years and we’re expected and Oh, so what as tradies, you don’t appreciate the time and the effort and what we need to do? Oh, well no, but we just want a free quote and you know, I get it When people are doing quotes for, you know, 20, 10 grand, 20 grand, a hundred grand, a million dollars. Like when you get that job, you can make some serious money out of it. But when people are ringing up trying to get you to look at some sort of leaking tap or a toilet or something, if you go out there and you give ’em a, a quote for $200 and then they say, no. You almost look at ’em and go, are you serious? You, you are a punter mate. You know, but it’s because you know you are going broke and losing money because of it. And we did all of that to make sure we just got rid of those tire kickers once and for all.

Ange
I, in my eyes, if they’re not willing to say yes to a $55 diagnostic fee, basically pay for your knowledge and expertise to provide a quote, then to be honest, they’re probably gonna push back at every stage of the job anyway and just be a complete pain.

Andy
Yeah. You’re a hundred percent right. And you know, it’s the people that do it, we keep calling tie kickers, right. But what they’re doing is they’re shopping around for the best price. So they go onto Google and they jump in a few chat boxes or they email. I mean, I remember this one, this one email I got, and this customer wanted a kitchen sink mix that changed and she tagged 200 tradies in Sydney.

Ange
No way.

Andy
And sent an email to 200 tradies in Sydney saying, Hey everyone, I was just looking for the best price to put in a kitchen sink mixer. And um, there was a few people that said, Why don’t you just go and eat a ****. But you know, it’s such a like, seriously guys, our time is precious and we need to make sure that we are charging for what we are worth. So I personally believe every single person out there should be charging somehow. You don’t have to say it’s a quote you’re charging for, but somehow charging for quotes and making sure we are getting rid of those people that are just looking for the bottom of the basement prices. And cuz the only ones gonna win those bottom of the basement prices are probably those Billy bum cracks that don’t have insurance running around with their ass crack hanging out and you know, they don’t have the professionalism. Well, if a customer wants that, well good, you can have it. But I think all of us tradies out there. Should be charging for quotes and that goes for bigger quotes as well. Builders, I know builders, you guys waste so much time doing quotes for customers. Yes. When you get ’em, I get it and I understand it, but you just gotta make sure we are charging for our time to make it worthwhile.

Ange
So a great point to probably add in here is going back to that startup phase of business where it’s actually just you perhaps on the tools. So I understand that depending on where you live, maybe like rural areas, you guys might actually say, well, I actually won’t survive if you are quoted for work and you know what, fair enough. You know your area better than us. But I would say for us in big cities, it is an absolute must to charge for your quotes. There’s so much competition here. We don’t wanna be working for people who are just gonna cause us issues. These D-grade clients, it’s not worth your time or your mental effort.

Andy
Yeah, but I think most people too Ange, there’s a lot of tradies out there that have a service call. So they might charge, I’m just gonna say 50 bucks, but a service call of $50 and then there are, you know, say a hundred bucks for the hour. Yeah. So in a way, when a customer rings up and they say for a free quote, they go, well, we charge a service call of 50 and it’s a hundred dollars for the hour. Then the customer goes, but I just want a free quote. Yeah. And that’s when you’ve got it aside. Is this a customer that you’re gonna go to? Or is a bell ringing, ding, ding, ding, and it’s just a big red light going off, going tire kicker, tire kicker, tire kicker. And you’ve gotta make that decision, but you’ve gotta be able to train your team to be able to do that as well.

Ange
So what you’ve kind of been talking about, I would say is working for a market segment, which I call residential or domestic. What happens if you, um, are working for like commercial work, industrial strata, those types of people.

Andy
Yeah, you’re a hundred percent right with that Ange, I was talking more of a domestic style of things because if you’re working for say, commercial sort of work, then a lot of the times it’s just not seen that you can charge for your quote, you know? Um, I’ve always been a believer though, when you’re charging those jobs, Any time that goes into the quote goes onto the job, but you’re just not getting any money upfront to go out there and, and do that style of work. So yeah, it, it, you can’t use it everywhere. Um, and some of those commercial work and government work and all that kind of stuff, if you said you’re gonna charge for the quote, yes. They’re not gonna, they’re not really gonna go down that path. So you’ve gotta be a bit selective of where you’re at and what you’re doing. But I also think that a lot of that commercial work and government work, They’re not actually tire kickers and they actually understand the cost and a lot of these people, it’s not even their money, so they’re not so nitpicky about everything. So, you know, you gotta, you gotta work out where you can do it and what segmentation within your business you can do it with. Some you can and some you can’t. Now, I never charged for quoting when I did real estate work. I never charged for correct quoting. When I did strata work, um, I’d sometimes marry it into the bills, but I never physically said to them I was charging for a quote.

Ange
So, Andy, you mentioned pricing just before and I do wanna touch on that because not every trade business has the same pricing model. So if I reflect on Dr. Drip, we actually used flat rate pricing model or upfront pricing, and we charge $55 diagnostic fees, as you said before, and we take them through this particular script over the phone, and then a particular process whilst on site our team was able to increase conversion and upsells, right? So we increased average dollar sale, and overall it was easy for us to say to the customer, we can’t give you a price over the phone because we actually don’t know what’s involved with the job until we see it, because we generally couldn’t give a ballpark price based on what the customer was telling us. What would you then say, Andy, to the listeners out there who use a pricing model such as maybe hourly rate?

Andy
Yeah, it’s an interesting, interesting thing in what you’re saying there Ange, because you’re right. You know, you get some people that ring up on the phone and they say, I just want a quote and come out to my house and give me a quote. And then you have other people saying, well, I just wanna, I just want a price. Um, I don’t wanna quote, I want a price. And then they would, they would say to you, well, and I, you know, they’d say to you, well, I’ve got a leaking tap, and what’s the price for that? So what they’re trying to gauge is they wanna find out what your price is, then they ring another three people and get an average price and then go, oh, hang on. This person’s cheaper or the last person they ring may not even be cheaper, but it’s in, in the ballpark. They’ll probably just go with them anyway. Um, and this is another problem with giving prices over the phone and I’m definitely not a fan of it. I don’t think it’s good, um, for the industry. I don’t think it’s good for yourself personally, but I know it saves you guys a bit of time. And sometimes that’s your way of getting rid of the tire kickers. But what we did at Dr. Drip is we just knew that we needed to get the tradie to the house and, and part of spending all our money on marketing and everything we did was to get the phone to ring. But the next step that was really important was just to get the tradie to the house. So what we would say, Is we’d say, well, listen Mrs. Jones, we don’t really know the price. Um, it could be a, a varied things we’re not sure. And they’d go, but it’s just a leaking tap. You must know what a leaking tap costs. And we’d trained our team to sort of say, well, what kind of tap is it, Mrs. Jones? And they’d go, well, it’s a tap. And I’d go, well, is it a kitchen tap? Is it a basin tap? Is it a toilet tap? Is it a mini system tap? What kind of tap is it? And they go, oh. They may say they don’t know, or they may say, oh, it’s a kitchen tap. And I go, okay. So if it’s a kitchen tap, is it a quarter turn? Is it a half turn? You know, what kind of tap is it? Or does it have a cartridge? What is the, and they, and you can just see you, you are actually bamboozling them with these questions and they go, well, well, I don’t know. I’m not a plumber. And say, well, we don’t know either unless we’re on site. So the best thing Mrs. Jones is for, we’ll get one of our tradies, he’ll come over between eight and 10 tomorrow. He’ll have a look at the problem. He’ll find out exactly what the issue is. We’ll give you a price on the spot. You can go ahead with the job and then it’ll all be fixed. Would that be okay with you?

Ange
So what happens if you do know the problem? Like you really are that qualified tradesperson that will end up on site and you are the one on the phone.

Andy
Yeah. So for me personally, I used to think that you always needed a plumber answering the phone. Um, and there’s a lot of tradies that still think that you needed a tradie answering the phone. But what I realize is that’s a big no, no. Now, if you’re a one man show, then obviously you’re gonna be answering the phone, but, but as you become a bigger business, I actually found that it’s better not to have a tradie on the phone because, When the tradie is on the phone, what does the customer do? They go, well, what’s the problem here? And what’s this here? And how would you fix that there? And what are you gonna do? And all of a sudden a phone call that would’ve been five minutes, ends up being 15 minutes, 20 minutes, and you are almost running them through the whole job. And then at the end of it, they turn it around and go, well, you know what? I might just wait till my husband gets home. I reckon he could probably do this.

Ange
So he actually knew too much. He told them too much.

Andy
You tell ’em too much and you give too much away. Where if it’s someone in the office and I had an old plumber that used to do work in our office, and I’d see him on the phone and sometimes he’d be amazing. And then sometimes he’d lose the job because he talked too much and gave too much away. And then I realized that having someone in the office that wasn’t a licensed tradie, um, was probably better. Now sometimes, I get this licensed plumber to say, I said, listen, from now on, don’t tell anyone you’re a licensed plumber. He goes, what do you mean? I am a licensed plumber? I said, no, no, no, no. Just act like you don’t know. And he went, oh, okay. So we went through the script. It didn’t matter if it was a girl in the office answering it or himself, or even myself, I’d go, oh, Mrs. Jones, I’m really sorry. I’m not a plumber. So I can’t really answer that. But guess what? We’ll have our tradies come around your house tomorrow between eight and 10, and they’ll be able to run through the whole situation with you. And we worked out with tests and measures that worked out better than spending bigger dollars on a tradie in the office with all the knowledge telling way too much.

Ange
Huh? That’s a classic. So that guy on the phone is such a typical bloke. All they wanna do is solve everything.

Andy
Because we can solve everything.

Ange
But you know what? Seeing the customer face-to-face is so important in building a connection and rapport, cuz you just can’t build the same level of trust over the phone. That’s why we insisted on getting in front of the customer on site.

Andy
And that again, is why we built the Call Converter script, and that’s where it comes in and everyone follows the exact steps at the exact right time. And the whole process in that, um, Call Converter is to get the tradie to the job on time and build that customer rapport.

Ange
Yeah. So as long as you’ve charged to get to site in the first place, that’s where this $55 comes in diagnostic fee. And if they refuse to pay, we won’t go. It’s simple.

Andy
Yeah, all in all is you’ve gotta work out what’s best for you and your business. And as Ange said, you know, if you live in a rural area, in a different area, you might go, well that way, work in my area, but you’ve gotta work out what your time is worth. And if it’s in the next street behind where you live, then it’s not such a big, um, problem. But when you’re living in Sydney and you’re traveling an hour, then there’s a car crash, and now it’s two hours. Then if you are running around doing these free, free quotes, you are dead set, losing money and it’s just not worth it. And I do, you know, obviously we talk to a lot of tradies and that’s the bone in everyone’s side, isn’t it? Just, oh my God, these quotes are just doing my head in. And you know what? It’s just time to start valuing your time and charge what you’re worth. And what goes with that is everyone out there if you can, Start charging for your quotes and get good customers, not the tire kicker, low end gutter dwelling rats. Ooh, that was pretty harsh.

Ange
So what about the project based businesses like landscapers and the builders of the world, for instance, do you think that they should be charging for quotes?

Andy
Absolutely they have the same issue, but worse. You know, they often spend hours, days, weeks, creating these quotes and they’re spent so much time with the homeowner as well, and they don’t charge for any of it. It’s definitely crazy, but that’s the way the industry’s working. But what is worse is more often than not, their sales cycle can be months, even years before the job goes ahead, which means they don’t make any money. For a very long time, and that’s only if the customer goes ahead with them in the end. Now let’s just think about it. You’ve done what, one, three quotes, um, in a week, all free work for what? For absolutely nothing. Now think about how much time you’ve wasted there. So I know it’s the way the trade industry has been for many, many years and our customers all expect free quotes. But at some stage, guys, just like lawyers, just like doctors, we’re tradies. We have learned to be the best of the best. We’re professional like them, and we need to start charging for our quotes. You know, why aren’t we charging this status quote? Why aren’t we charging for these quotes? Why aren’t we making sure as an industry, we all band together? Because, Seriously, if you are one of those ones out there running around doing quotes all day and making no money, or only getting one in five jobs or one in 10 jobs, you know, seriously. I mean, I chatted to this guy the other day and he said to me. Oh, you’ve just done a few quotes. I said, how do you go? He goes, I don’t know. I didn’t ask for the sale. I said, why not? He goes, oh, we don’t do that. And I went, well, you’re a lunatic mate. Why don’t you do that? You just wasted your time, gone in the person’s house. Why can’t you ask for the sale? It’s not really the way it works. I said, so how does it work? And he goes, well, what do I do is I give these quotes. And I said, then what happens? He goes, will they ring me? And I said, what about if they don’t ring you? He goes, well, they don’t want the job done. And I went, well mate, you’re an idiot. How much do you spend on marketing? Oh yeah, I was spending a bit of money on marketing. How much work are you going to do? Yeah. Geez I could do with a bit more work. I went, mate, you need some help, seriously.

Ange
I’m totally on your side. I think they should be charging for quotes. They’ve just never thought that they can.

Andy
Yeah, I know. And I know that some of the bigger, more established businesses do and they’re the ones that have a really strong reputation, a great brand presence in their local area. But if that’s not you, how do you gain the same authority and trust?

Ange
Yeah, that’s a good question too, because even the big businesses had to start somewhere.

Andy
Exactly. So why don’t you be the first, like just, just get out there and give it a crack.

Ange
Yeah. You guys heard it from the boss. Go get onto it.

Andy
Exactly.

Ange
And if you want help getting your systems down pat to help you in the process, then check out our free call converter download. This is the nine step script, in order that we use for Dr. Drip when we answer the phone to increase this conversion of almost every job. No more time wasters, just solid jobs with quality customers. We’ll leave the link in the show notes or perhaps head to lifestyletradie.com.au/free-resources.

Andy
Yeah, that was perfect. I think that was definitely a great topic and something that everyone should take on board.

Ange
Absolutely.

Andy
And that marks the end of season eight for The Tradie Show. Now, normally we take a couple of weeks off to let you guys digest everything you’ve learned and give you a break from our wonderful voices. But this time around we are gonna do something a little bit different.

Ange
Yes we are. Because there are so many of you out there who’ve been giving us awesome feedback on our book Startup Scale Up Sell Up, that we thought we would release it on The Tradie Show as a free audiobook. So from next Monday, instead of us going on a break for two weeks, we’ll be dropping a new chapter of the book every few days.

Andy
Yes. We can’t wait for you to tune in and if you need anything in the meantime, reach out and let’s have a chat. Perhaps it’s time to book a strategy session with me to talk about your current situation in business. If it’s not now, then when is the right time to create change? Click the link in the show notes or head to lifestyletradie.com.au and I look forward to chatting with you soon.

Subscribe to The Tradie Show wherever you get your favorite podcast. Rate and write us a review or for more information about Lifestyle Tradie, head to lifestyletradie.com.au.