Job Cost Data

Creating better and more accurate landscape bids should be a top priority of your sales team. Accurate and timely bids based on precise job costing data can put you on track to building long-term relationships with your clients—and lead to more profit. Here are six keys to making your next bid a winning one. 1. Be Consistent Bidding better is all about consistency—consistency in the way you’re measuring your job sites and consistency in the job cost data that you’re referencing. Whether you’re heading out and walking to your sites with a hand wheel or using GPS technology to measure off satellites, your consistency and accuracy in counts and measurements is how the bid starts off the right way. If you’re not using job costing software to track your cost data, Excel is the most common tool. If you’re already using Excel, it’s essential that all your estimators use the same spreadsheet and the same version. Whatever your method, the spreadsheet or software should accurately reflect your labor and materials costs. 2. Know Your Costs Know your actual job costs. As mentioned above, the job costing spreadsheet or software you use should include accurate costs for labor and materials. For materials costs, which can fluctuate depending on where and when you’re purchasing, make sure you’re capturing your costs as accurately and as often as possible. A job costing software may have the capability to track how much you’re actually spending, average your costs, and calculate your costs automatically. There are ...