What Does It Cost You to Win a Job?
Not to build it.
To win it.
Every electrical contractor knows what it costs to build a job.
Material.
Labor.
Equipment.
Overhead.
But before you can build the job, you have to win it.
And that usually starts with a set of plans.
Someone has to do the takeoff.
How much is that costing you?
How many jobs do you bid to win one?
If most of your work comes from contractors you’ve worked with for years, the answer may be:
Not many.
They know you.
You know them.
They send you plans because they expect you to do the work.
That’s a valuable relationship.
But what happens when you want to grow?
Your next customer isn’t your best customer.
At least not yet.
Your established contractors already know what you can do.
A new contractor doesn’t.
You may have to bid several projects before he gives you one.
And sometimes the reason you didn’t get the job has very little to do with your bid.
Maybe another electrician got it.
Maybe your price was too high.
Maybe someone went too low.
Maybe the contractor was checking the price he was getting from his regular electrician.
Or maybe the contractor who asked you to bid didn’t win the project himself.
You can do everything right and still not get the job.
That’s competitive bidding.
What does the industry say?
Published electrical-industry research has reported an average bid hit rate for electrical contractors as low as 8%.
That’s not necessarily your number.
Your established customers may be dramatically higher.
Your competitive work may be higher too.
Different contractors, markets and types of work produce very different results.
The important number isn’t the industry’s.
It’s yours.
How many bids does it take YOU to win a job?
Two?
Four?
Six?
Ten?
More?
Think about the contractors you’ve been trying to develop.
Not the ones who already give you most of their work.
The ones you’re trying to turn into customers.
What’s your number?
Now ask another question.
How long does each takeoff take?
Two hours?
Four hours?
Six hours?
Most of a day?
Longer for a complicated project?
Again, we don’t need to tell you.
You already know.
One more question.
How do you value your time?
$50 an hour?
$100?
$150?
$250?
Maybe you’re the owner and don’t pay yourself by the hour at all.
That doesn’t make your time free.
What else could you be doing?
Managing the jobs you already have?
Meeting another contractor?
Solving a field problem?
Working on pricing?
Following up on receivables?
Finding more work?
Going home?
Your time has value.
Now put those three questions together.
How many bids does it take you to win a job?
How long does each takeoff take?
How do you value your time?
You don’t need our calculator.
You don’t need our assumptions.
Use your numbers.
The answer tells you something important about what it costs your company just to find the work it eventually gets to build.
The bids you don’t win still took your time.
The jobs you do win have to pay for them.
That’s easy to overlook.
You submit a bid.
You don’t get the job.
You move on.
But the hours spent taking it off didn’t disappear.
Someone paid for them.
Maybe you paid an estimator.
Maybe you did it yourself at night.
Maybe another project didn’t get your attention while you were doing it.
However you account for it:
The time was used.
And ultimately, the work your company does win has to support the cost of pursuing the work it doesn’t.
Takeoff time isn’t just an estimating cost.
When you’re growing, it’s part of the cost of acquiring customers.
That changes the way you look at faster takeoff.
If you already have all the work you want from established customers, saving time may simply mean:
Getting the estimate done sooner.
That’s valuable.
But if you’re trying to grow?
You have to pursue opportunities from people who aren’t customers yet.
And you don’t know which one will become the contractor who sends you work for the next ten years.
Growth requires you to afford the search.
What if you could pursue more opportunities with the same estimating time?
That’s where takeoff efficiency becomes more than convenience.
The goal isn’t to bid everything.
Some projects aren’t worth bidding.
Some contractors aren’t worth pursuing.
Good judgment still matters.
But your estimating capacity shouldn’t be the reason you can’t pursue good opportunities.
How many jobs didn’t you bid because you didn’t have time to do the takeoff?
That’s opportunity too.
MEPTrax Takeoff
Spend less time doing the repetitive part of takeoff.
MEPTrax Takeoff is built for electrical contractors.
Work directly from PDF plans.
Count electrical work.
Use your assemblies.
Organize work by room or area.
Review quantities.
Export the takeoff.
The electrician still makes the decisions.
MEPTrax helps make the process of getting there easier.
Takeoff requires your knowledge.
It shouldn’t consume your life.
Try MEPTrax Takeoff Free
30 days free. No credit card required.
And later, there’s an even better question.
Which work is actually worth bidding?
Today, you probably know some of this from experience.
You know the contractor who almost always gives you the job.
You know the one you bid constantly but rarely hear from.
You know the one whose jobs always seem to go well.
And you probably know a few you wish you’d never worked for.
But how much of that knowledge lives in your head?
What if MEPTrax could remember it?
As MEPTrax grows from Takeoff into Quote and Business, the opportunity becomes much larger.
MEPTrax can potentially know:
Which projects you took off.
Which ones you quoted.
Which ones you won.
Who you won them from.
What you expected to make.
What actually happened in the field.
And what you ultimately made.
Now bid history can become business knowledge.
Winning more bids isn’t necessarily the goal.
Winning more of the right work is.
Imagine knowing:
You bid Contractor A constantly but rarely get the work.
You win half of what you bid for Contractor B.
You win almost everything from Contractor C…
…but his jobs consistently perform below estimate.
Meanwhile another contractor gives you fewer jobs…
…but they’re among the most profitable work you do.
Now you can make a better decision about where to put your estimating time.
That’s Operational Awareness.
Not software deciding what you should bid.
Software giving you the information to decide for yourself.
Start with a simpler question.
How many bids does it take you to win a job?
How long does each takeoff take?
How do you value your time?
What does it cost you to win a job?
You probably already know enough to answer.