The quote

Three quotes on the table, and yours said the least.

Published 2026-08-07 11 min read

The short answer

Three quotes that all say the same thing leave the customer one thing to compare: the number. A quote gets accepted when it answers the questions they were too embarrassed to ask — dates, exclusions, clean-up, payment.

You measured up on Tuesday, you sent it Wednesday night after dinner, and then nothing. Ten days later you hear they went with someone else, and the number was about the same as yours.

It is tempting to read that as a price problem. It usually is not. It is a comparison problem, and you handed them the axis they compared on.

Why three quotes turn into a price contest

Put yourself on the other side of it. Somebody who does not do this for a living has three documents in front of them. All three name the same job. All three land within a few hundred of each other. Two of them are one line and a total.

They have to choose. They cannot judge whether your posts go deeper than his, because nothing in front of them mentions posts. So they choose on the one thing that is genuinely comparable — and that is the number, because it is the only thing all three of you wrote down.

Same job, same figure on all three. Two of them gave the reader nothing else to weigh, so the figure is what decides. That is not the customer being cheap; it is the only comparison you left them.

This is the whole thing in one sentence: a quote is not a price list, it is a risk document. What they are actually trying to work out is how much of their life this is going to cost them — how many days, how much mess, how many surprises, how much of the arguing they will have to do.

The questions they will not ask you out loud

Nobody calls a fencing contractor to ask whether he takes the old concrete away. They do not want to sound like they are being difficult, or to reveal that they do not know whether that is normally included. So they do not ask — and the worry stays.

Every one of those unasked questions is a small reason to pick somebody else. Answer them in writing and the worry goes, without either of you having had an awkward conversation.

Most advice tells you the opposite of that second line: split labour from materials so they can see what they are paying for. Both can be true, because they answer different questions. Put the split at the bottom if you want it — it settles am I being overcharged. But the description at the top has to be work, because that settles will this be done properly, and no list of quantities has ever answered that one.

Naming what you have left out earns you the job

This is the part that feels backwards. Writing down what is not included looks like advertising your own gaps. It does the opposite, for a simple reason: they are already worried about it. The exclusion is not news to them — it is news that you have thought about it.

“Not included: taking out the old footings. If you want them out, add roughly a day — say the word and I will price it.” reads as somebody who went and looked. Silence on the same point reads as somebody who will turn up with a surprise invoice.

Both columns are written by us to show what a line does or does not settle. They are not taken from any real company’s quote.
A line most quotes contain	The same line, rewritten	The question it settles
Remove existing fence — 400	We take the old fence out and haul it away, footings included. That is in the price; you do not need to book a skip.	Do I have to get rid of the old one?
Payment terms: 50 / 50	Nothing on the day we start. Half once the posts are set and you can walk the line, the rest when you have seen it finished.	When does my money leave, and what have I got at that point?
Timeline: 3–5 days	On site Monday the 14th, off site Thursday the 17th. If the weather moves it, you hear from me the evening before, not on the morning.	When is my garden mine again?
Materials: pressure-treated timber	Pressure-treated timber, which is the stuff that does not go soft at ground level. It is what I would put in at my own place.	Is this the cheap version?

Jargon quietly pushes the decision back to price

“150 mm MOT type 1 sub-base, compacted in layers” is precise and correct and it is also, to the person reading it, a sentence in a language they do not speak. It does not make them think you are good. It makes them think they are not qualified to judge whether you are good.

And when somebody feels unqualified to judge the work, they fall back on the one thing they are perfectly qualified to judge. The number. Every unexplained technical term nudges the decision towards price, which is the one contest where the most careful tradesman loses.

You do not have to dumb it down. Say the term and then say what it buys them: “a compacted stone base, laid in layers — that is the bit that stops it sinking in three winters”. Now they can judge it, and now they have something other than price in their hands.

What one extra accepted quote is actually worth

Here is the arithmetic, because the instinct when quotes stop landing is to shave the price, and that instinct is expensive. Assume twelve quotes a month, an average job of 4,200, and that materials and labour cost you 3,150 of that — so 1,050 a job stays with you. Substitute your own figures; the shape does not change.

Our own arithmetic on illustrative figures, not measured averages. The assumption doing the work is the 25% that stays with you — put your own number in and the ranking of the three rows stays the same.
What you do	Jobs won	Turnover	What actually stays with you
Nothing changes	4 of 12	16,800	4 × 1,050 = 4,200
Cut the price 10% and win one more	5 of 12	18,900	5 × 630 = 3,150
Same price, better quote, win one more	5 of 12	21,000	5 × 1,050 = 5,250

Read the middle row twice. Discounting your way to one extra job leaves you with less than doing nothing at all, because the discount comes off the only part of the price that was ever yours. The same extra job, won on a better-written quote, is worth a quarter more than the month you are having now.

Speed is part of the document

A quote that lands the same evening is read while they still remember you standing in their garden. One that lands nine days later is read next to two others, by somebody who has forgotten which one you were.

You do not have to be fastest at everything — but the first credible quote sets the shape the others get compared to. If yours is the one that named the dates and the exclusions, the next two get read looking for those lines, and they will not be there.

The whole thing, assembled

Search for a quote template and you will be handed a form: company header, line items, quantity, unit price, subtotal. That is an invoice with the date changed. It organizes your numbers and answers none of the questions above.

So here is the other kind. Not a layout — the words. Copy it, replace what is in brackets, delete what does not apply to your trade. It is deliberately plain; that is the point.

Paste this and change the brackets

The job. [One sentence a neighbor would understand. Not the specification — what they end up with.]
Dates. On site [Monday the 14th]. Off site [Thursday the 17th]. If the weather moves it, you hear from me the evening before, not on the morning.
What that includes. [Three or four lines, each describing work rather than materials. “Posts set in concrete, checked for line and level before anything else goes on.”]
What it does not include. [The one thing they are quietly worried about.] If you want that doing, it is roughly [X] more — say the word and I will price it properly.
If something turns up. [Old footings, a buried cable, soft ground.] I stop, send you a photo and a price, and nothing further happens until you say yes.
When I am finished. [What leaves with you, and what the ground looks like when you go.]
Money. Nothing on the day we start. [Half] when [the posts are set and you can walk the line], the rest once you have seen it finished. [If the materials are a large part of it: “There is [1,850] of materials in this. I order it the week before and would ask for that part then — I will send you the order. Nothing else is due until [the posts are set].”]
Price. [4,200], and that holds until [the 30th].

Read it back as the person at the kitchen table. Eight short paragraphs, no jargon, and every one of the unasked questions already answered. The other two quotes on the table are still a line and a total.

The dull half, and where it goes

Everything above is the half that gets read. There is a second half that nobody reads and everybody needs, and the reason those downloadable templates feel like invoices is that they put it first. Logo, address block, table headings — three inches of administration before a single sentence about the job.

It still has to be in there. Just put it at the bottom, small, where it does its work without being the first thing anybody sees.

The lines that go underneath

Who you are: business name, your own name, cell, email. If you are registered as a company, the registration number as well.
Who it is for and where: their name, and the address of the job if it is not their own house.
A date, and a reference of your own. “2026-114” is enough. It is what you both say on the phone in three weeks instead of “the fence one”.
Whether tax is in the number, said in words. Not a symbol, not a footnote — “4,200, and that includes VAT” or “4,200 plus VAT at the current rate”. See below; this is the one that starts arguments.
Your tax registration number if you have one, and nothing about tax if you do not. Half a sentence either way.
How long the price holds, as a date. It is the seventh line from earlier and it belongs down here with the rest of the housekeeping.

The tax line is worth the two seconds it takes. A household reading 4,200 has budgeted 4,200; if the invoice arrives at 5,040 they have not been overcharged, they have been surprised — and this article is entirely about not surprising anybody. Whether it applies to you at all depends on where you trade and what you turn over, which is a question for an accountant. Saying plainly which of the two it is, is not.

The short version

Two real dates, not a range.
Work described, not materials listed.
What is excluded, said out loud.
Who decides, and at what price, if something turns up.
Who clears up.
Money against milestones a person can see.
A date the price holds until.
Your details, a reference and whether tax is in the number — at the bottom, not the top.

None of that lowers your price. All of it gives the person at the kitchen table something to compare other than the number — which is the only way to stop losing on the number.