Good, better, best: how to put options on an estimate
Three prices on one page beat one price with a follow-up call. Here is how to build the tiers so the customer picks the middle.
One price gives the customer one decision: yes or no. Three prices change the question to which one. That is the whole reason options work, and it is why every big home-service company trains its techs to present them. It works just as well for a one-truck contractor, as long as the options are built right.
Why it works
People compare. With one price, they compare you to the other bids. With three, they compare your options to each other, and most pick the middle. It is the same reason a menu has a $45 steak: it makes the $28 one look reasonable. The middle option should be the job you would have bid anyway. The top option is the one you would be glad to do. The bottom option is the minimum that solves the problem.
How to build the three
- Good: fixes the problem, nothing extra. Repair the unit, patch the section, replace the part. Priced so you still make money.
- Better: the job you would recommend to a friend. Replace instead of repair, better materials, the related thing that will fail next year done now.
- Best: better plus the upgrades. Longer warranty, premium fixture, the whole run instead of the section, haul-off and cleanup included.
Name them by what the customer gets, not by a rank. "Repair", "Replace", "Replace and reroute" tells them more than "Silver, Gold, Platinum". Two options are often enough. Repair or replace is the most common pair in the trades, and it closes jobs that a single replace price would have lost.
Keep the gaps honest
If Better is $2,400 and Best is $6,800, nobody picks Best and Better starts to look expensive too. Steps of 20 to 40 percent read as real choices. And every option has to be one you would do. A padded Best that you hope nobody picks is a bad habit customers can smell.
Extras are different from options
An option is one of several ways to do the job. An extra is something they can add to any of them: a second coat, the water softener, the gutter guards. Put extras as separate lines with their own price, and let the customer tick them. Extras are where the average ticket goes up without anyone feeling sold.
The mistake that makes options backfire
Making the customer do math. If they have to add lines across columns to find out what they would pay, they put it down. Each option needs its own total, and the extras need to update the total as they are picked. On paper that means three clean totals. On a phone it means the total changes as they tap.
BidWriter Pro lets you put two or three packages and any extras on one proposal. The customer picks on their phone, the total updates as they tap, and they sign the one they chose. The sample proposal shows it.
Free, no account: job price calculator, markup vs margin, hourly rate, and 84 sample estimates.
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