Survey Proposal Quandary

They sent your proposal that you were kind enough to do all the research on and determine a scope of work for the client to your competition who underbid you by $100

My guess is that it is in your ability to close the deal. After you send the written proposal do you follow up with a phone call within 24 hours? Or do you just wait for the client to call back? 

Price over the phone. I send contract one accepted.

The primary difference between talking with someone and giving them a quote and giving them a written proposal like that is you give them too much time to think about it and if they're a shopper, use your quote to beat someone else's price down. If you're going to give them a written proposal you have to follow up quickly. Talking to them you can use a qualifying question such as, 'If I can get this done for this price by this date, should I tentatively pencil you into my schedule? Then shut up. First to speak loses. If they respond yes, follow up with 'I'll forward you and agreement and need 50% down to get this on my schedule, sound good? If they hem and haw, I need to talk it over with my wife, you can say 'That's great. I'm going to go ahead and put you on the back burner, I have other work scheduled already that I need to make my priority and why don't you get back to me when you're ready to make a decision. It's called 'The take away'. People want what they can't have. You have to make it clear that your busy and your time is valuable and not allow them to jerk you around or that's exactly what they'll do. 

My wife covered such a call for me on Monday.  Someone called looking to get a quote on a survey.  She gave them a company to call.  They then said they had already talked with a third firm who had given them a rough quote.  They were then told that company would do further research  then send them a contract for a more accurate amount, which could be HIGHER, based on their research.  The caller was done with that firm because of the contract and the chance the cost could be even higher.  I happen to know that everyone in the area is overloaded and are a minimum of two months out to even think about anything new.

I try to weed out the tire kickers on the phone and only write up a contract if they sound committed. Even so, I'm batting about 0.400 on signed contracts.

Thank you for the responses. I admit I did not follow up properly and I own that. 

Every once in a while I will fire off a number from the hip, usually it's after I've decided they are tire-kickers. Normally, I request a current deed (not an address, not a prop report card, not realtor/title co documents) before providing an estimate. I think that gets rid of some of the ones sitting around a table full of longnecks saying, "I wonder what it would cost to ...". If they accept, I send a Survey Agreement for review, signature, and return. Billed upon competion. THEN they are on the books. I'm at about 40% or so in signed/contacted. 

When someone offered me a competitors price I would always tell them that I would be higher. I didn't play the cutthroat game.

Always went higher and then talked about, "You get what you pay for"

Those conversations were a fun challenge.  If the potential client told me a foolishly low number, I would turn the conversation to ask lots of questions, leading up to me saying that is an abnormally low estimate.  Follow that up with a significantly higher estimate.  If the caller gave a significantly higher number than what I might give as a "from the hip" number, I would turn the conversation to ask lots of questions.  I would point out that perhaps they have worked in that specific area before and are aware of issues that are not known by me.  The best they would get from me is that I would gladly take their job at that price but might end up being less costly if they wanted to take a gamble.  Then, I might come in a little lower than their number, but, close enough to show the other company was being fair with them.  Meanwhile, I would do well and the client almost definitely would get the job done sooner than by using the other firm whose very high estimate signaled they were currently overloaded with work.

When the market crashed in 2008 I had spent many previous years building and recording contact information for clients whom I had good working relationships with.  Many of them became friends.  After being laid off as a department manager I reached out to those clients on my contact list to gage whether or not it would be worth starting my own shop and the feedback was positive.

I reached out to a Leica sales rep that I had been dealing with for years, bought the equipment that I needed, purchased E & O insurance, set up an LLC and called in some talent that either worked beside or under me in the past and took them off of unemployment.  I was up and running in less than two weeks.

As word spread and my realtor friends started contacting me, I never gave pricing over the phone.  I gathered all of the information needed to quote a job, then followed up with a written proposal with payment terms within 24 hours.  If they shopped me and replied that they had a lower number, asking if I could match it, my answer was to go with the lower number, I never negotiated.

My intention on starting the business was to pay the bills and I was doing that better than I was when I was in my former positions, paying my people well and not trying to grow, which ultimately did happen.  Fast response time and quality work kept me from having to market and negotiate.  I would estimate that my rate of success on my proposals was higher than normal because of the relationships I had established in the past and the relatively fast turn around.

The one mistake I did make was doing everything myself on the office end of the work, all of the layout calcs, scheduling, taking all of the calls, doing the payroll and more.  I ended up working 10-12 hour days, 6 days a week just to keep up and not disrupt the schedule.  After five years of that I sold and was able to return to an 8 hour day, 5 days a week.