I’ve got a little function built in to my estimating program that is what I call a “triage meter“. The program asks you to assign a numeric value to rate the following conditions of the job lead on a scale of 1 to 5 with 1 being the worst or lowest rating and 5 being the highest or best.
- Is the lead in the socioeconomic range the company desires?
- Is the lead interested in buying remodeling in a fairly reasonable time frame?
- Does this lead have a reasonable budget range in mind?
- Is the lead in the geographic area the company serves?
- Has this lead owned the home long enough to build up significant home equity?
- How much competition will the company face in bidding the job?
- Gut rating
- Does this project fall within the companies fields of expertise?
I call it a triage meter in that we use to evaluate and then sort projects we have in our estimating queue based on which ones are the best bets and best fits for our operation. We then approach the estimates based on the order of the rankings. To a degree that is. Any lead that generates an average rating of 1 or 2 we call and let know were not really a fit for their project. That is if we weren’t able to determine that during the initial phone contact.
I’m not sure where or how I came up with that criteria since I’ve been using it since at least as far back as ’97. Probably out of some book I read but I really just can’t recall what one. However there is a much more extensive checklist of client qualification and project criteria for making Bid or No Bid decisions beginning on page 76 in Thomas Frisby’s book How To Survive and Prosper in Construction; Checklists for Success
I’m now working on integrating some better more thorough client and qualification criteria into my software based on what I’ve read in his book and just created on my own over the years.
