Qualifying enquiries
You drove forty minutes for the measure-up. Wrote the quote at 9pm after the kids were down. Followed up twice. Then nothing. That job cost you half a day — not because you did anything wrong, but because nobody found out it was not a real job until you had already spent the time.
Fig. — what it costs
Talk to any tradie who has been quoting a few years and the story is the same in every postcode. This one is measured in time, not lost jobs.
Forty minutes each way for a job that sounded fine on the phone.
Three quarters of an hour walking a property that is not yours, working out access, taking photos.
Pricing materials, checking supplier rates, writing it up properly because a scrappy quote looks like a scrappy business. Usually at night, because the day was full of paying work.
The lost job is not really the cost — you were probably never getting that one. The cost is the hours you did not spend on a job you could have won, or on the tools, or at home.
Fig. — the honest version
It would be easy to write this page as though customers who ask about price are a nuisance. They are not, and getting that wrong would be a mistake.
Plenty of people who ask roughly what's this going to cost before committing to a full quote go on to be among your best and most loyal. Most people getting work done on their house are careful with money. That is normal.
Someone ready to hire this week and someone still months and two quotes away from deciding can look identical in a first message. Can I get a quote for a new roof tells you almost nothing.
It is to find out which is which before you are standing in their driveway. A five-minute exchange by text can tell you most of what a forty-minute measure-up would.
That is the whole return. Not fewer customers — fewer afternoons spent on work that was never going to happen.
Fig. — the questions
None of this is complicated. It is what any experienced tradie already asks on a good day, when they are not flat out and can think before agreeing to a callout. The value is in asking consistently, before you commit time.
Reroof covers a $4,000 repatch and a $40,000 full reclad. Vague scope is the biggest reason quotes take too long and land wrong. Job type and rough scope up front — even photos and a description — tells you in thirty seconds whether it needs a callout at all.
Someone who needs it finished before winter is a different conversation from someone just starting to think about it. Neither is wrong. A firm timeframe is one of the clearest signals a job is real.
Not an interrogation — just enough to know whether you are in the right ballpark. Someone expecting an $8,000 job to cost $2,000 needs to hear that early and kindly, before either of you spends more time.
A renter whose landlord has not approved it. One partner enquiring without the other. A property manager needing three sign-offs. None are dealbreakers — the job just moves at the speed of whoever says yes.
Long driveway, steep section, gate code, no off-street parking, second-storey work needing scaffold. Knowing before you drive out means you arrive with the right gear.
Not a trick question — most people getting quality work done get more than one. What matters is whether they have had two already and are deciding this week, or you are the first call in a process that has not really started.
A referral from a past customer behaves differently to a stranger off a late-night search. Neither is worth less. It just tells you how warm the enquiry already is.
Fig. — one morning
An overnight enquiry, sorted before you have left the first job.
A form comes in overnight: need a quote for rewiring, three-bed house, Hamilton. That is it. No timeframe, no scope, no idea whether it is urgent or a someday project.
A reply goes out with a few short questions: whole house or part of it, when are you hoping to have it done, and is there a particular reason for the rewire.
They reply: whole house, selling in six weeks, a building inspector flagged it, wants it done within a fortnight.
It is flagged and sent to you with the answers attached. You are on a job, but you glance at your phone at smoko and know exactly what you are looking at — real job, real deadline, real reason.
You ring, confirm a site visit for tomorrow, and go back to the tools. No wasted afternoon and no guessing.
The groundwork happened before your day got touched, not after.
Illustrative example. Timings shown are not a guaranteed response time, and results depend on your market, your rules, and how quickly you follow through.
Fig. — the limits, in writing
This is the part worth being clear-eyed about: the system asks the questions. It does not decide anything.
You know your trade and your customers better than any set of questions ever will. The questions just make sure you are deciding with the full picture instead of half of one.
Fig. — who feels it hardest
This matters more for some trades than others, mostly down to how long a proper quote takes and how far you travel to do it.
The sharp end. A reroof quote can mean an hour on site, photos, measurements, a materials list, and a written quote that takes real time to get right — for a job that might not happen for months, if at all.
See the roofing front deskLess on the small stuff — a power point does not need qualifying, you just go and fix it. On full rewires and larger fit-outs the same problem appears: hours of preparation for a number that may be one of several being collected.
See the electricians' front deskSame split. Emergency callouts qualify themselves. Drainage relays, bathroom and kitchen fit-outs do not — and those are the ones that take hours to price properly.
See the plumbing front deskFAQ
It asks the right questions early and passes the answers straight to you. It does not decide who is worth quoting, it does not rank anyone, and it does not decline a job on your behalf. That call is always yours.
Ask about scope, timeframe, and who makes the decision before committing to a site visit. If someone cannot say roughly when they want the work done, that is often a sign it is not urgent yet — not a reason to write them off, just a reason to keep it to a phone call for now.
Not necessarily. Plenty of tradies do fine with free quotes. What tends to help more is finding out enough about the job first, so the free quotes you do write have a real chance of becoming work.
Getting enough enquiries and getting the right ones are different problems. If you are already flat out driving to quotes that go nowhere, the fix is not more enquiries.
It should not. Someone asking sensible questions about price is not the same as a job that is not real. The questions exist to tell the difference, not to screen out anyone who mentions budget.
No. It gathers the answers and hands them over. You still decide what to quote, what to charge, and what you take on.
Free Front Desk Audit
A good share of quoting time goes to jobs that were never going to happen. You cannot always tell which from the first message — but with the right questions asked early, you can tell a lot sooner than you do now. Book a free audit and we'll walk through where the time is going.
Not shared leads. Not just ads. Not another app. A managed front desk built for trade businesses.