How To Stop Clients Ghosting You After Quotes
Nothing’s more frustrating than putting in time & effort, into a prospect’s quote only for them to go stone cold silent. Here’s what to do.
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It’s happened to the best of us. After attracting a prospective client to your building service, you then invest time, effort, understanding and patience in them.
You’ve probably met with them, educated them, facilitated them, cajoled them, and even refereed their disputes!
You then put several days effort into creating an estimate for their concept, checking regulations, NCC, margins, ever-changing materials costs and getting quotes from subbies.
After all that, you then submit your estimate, and wait…..
A few days go by and there’s nothing but silence…just crickets.
Feeling a little annoyed, you send a follow up email asking if they have any questions. But then….more crickets.
With frustration growing you call them only for your call to be ignored then redirected to voicemail. You leave a polite but clear message explaining that this is a follow up call on their quote, asking them to call you back.
The result?…….more bloody crickets!
How infuriating! Don’t they realise the effort you’ve put in? The time you’ve spent? The favours you’ve called upon to make it happen?
Sadly this occurs to Australian builders every day of the week.
A Solution
The best way to stop feeling like you’re at the whim of these clients is to tweak your process when they first contact you.
That is, before investing too much time & perspiration in their project, make absolutely sure they’re a good fit according to a key criteria.
How? Qualify the heck out of them using these simple steps:
- Check their project is in your sweet spot (think of projects you’ve done well in the past that you enjoyed or want to do – that’s your core ‘project type’)
- Check that you’re comfortable working with them. Are they reasonable, sensible, communicative, engaged, understanding and open to your advice? (Think of clients you’ve loved working with in the past. What did you like about them, what was their demographic, why would you work with them again?) This is your ideal client.
- Check the client can afford their dream. Take 30 minutes to run their concept (or detailed drawings) through ProCalc, the builders price guide (Book a Free ProCalc Trial) to give a market-informed understanding of build cost.
You can do this for free (Book a Free ProCalc Trial).
Now you’ve determined they can afford their dreams BEFORE you put in the hard yards.
As Builders, we can address almost every issue we face by making adjustments to earlier stages of our client engagement process.
You might also like:
- Watch the free Webinar: Work Smarter, Not Harder
- Book a Free ProCalc Trial
Richard Armstrong is a former registered builder who recently interviewed hundreds of experienced Australian builders to identify how they best manage clients, budgets and profitability.
