How is the bidding system of Quoteflare different than the rough quote on Responsibid?
it is far more customizable.
here the houses i target frequently have great rooms with story interior ceilings and complete walls of windows.
so lets say we have 2 house of 2500 square ft. one is a traditional style and could easily be done for $100 outs only $180 in & out
the other
requires a ladder inside to reach at least 18 feet dodging a chandelier in the entrance and moving furniture in the great room.
i played for days with R and Curt tried to help but there was no way to get and accurate price for both styles.
the way i have Q set up atm shows pictures- actual photos- either the stock ones or your own.
so there is a pic of a guy on an extension ladder inside the house and the question do you have any windows that would require a tall ladder inside the house.
if they answer yes they are asked how many. for each one Q adds $3 to the outside only price and $12 to in/out price. i could set those prices and breakdowns any way i want for example each one is priced at those same numbers but the answers to the question how many could be 1-3, 4-5
what ever and this is not the same at all as Rās ladder charge.
this could take ages to fully explain feel free to try it out 30 days for $1 (i have no affilliation but i wish i did) and pm if you wanna talk more and iāll give you my #.
in my area many people donāt understand the word estimate or rough quote means it is approximate they equate it with maximum.
above is the most important customization i wanted but it goes way beyond that.
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Many thoughts from a buzzed man.
Curt is an amazing individual. No one could ever say a bad word about him, it just canāt be done.
I will 100% acknowledge that we do not use RB the way it has been built and intended, which impacts our experience with it. I do not use it the way itās intended cause I, like many in this industry, are technology challenged and stuck in my ways. If I used it they way it was meant to be I would have to change myself, my process etc. Too painful.
So yearly I consider dropping it. Then I look at the portion of clients who use it and crunch some numbers. It ALWAYS pays for itself and more.
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Itās expensive and if Iām not using it to the full because I like other programs for CRM reminders basic is probably gonna be best value.
Just give the people a price.
My problem with RB is not because I had the free version. I kinda feel like @5star Kurt was blaming the difficulties of using the platform on the fact that us cheapo users donāt have enough functionality with the free version when actually the problem for me was what Kyle already stated. (1.) people thought it was too cumbersome to use. (2.) people generally didnāt enter the information correctly so they were pissed when the price was higher (3.) It was incredibly complicated to try to set up so that it gave correct pricing consistently.
I donāt need a follow up manager, a CRM, a proposal maker or anything else, I have all that already. I just want a simple estimating tool for my website. I never upgraded to the paid version because I couldnāt get the free version to work very well, why would I upgrade?
Seriously, just last week I had this: Lady booked a house wash at $249 for the basic package because she said her house was medium sized. Hereās the house:
This doesnāt even show the back side and frankly this should have been a $349 for a basic wash. I compromised and told her that actually her house was XL but Iād do it for $300 and she balked and turned me down. By the way, she insists her house is 2,300 Sq Ftā¦ (My house is 2,900 Sq Ft. and this house dwarfs mine) I drove straight the office and took RB off my site. That was the last straw for me.
So, if thereās a way to make RB work without all these issues, Iāll be glad to hear about it but Iām not spending $950 a year to keep having these headaches.
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Iām sorry if it comes across as me saying anything against the priceā¦ I have just noticed the trend that we have a customer base of really excited fans who use ResponsiBid and premium users always seem to be the most enthusiastic. The basic users tend to be the ones who donāt seem to catch the vision of what ResponsiBid can do.
I know that ResponsiBid can bid houses like the one in the picture and does so every day. Iād be happy to get you a demo to show you some tweaks on how to make things work better.
ResponsiBid has changed a lot over time and is getting ready for some other big changes that weāve been working on. Keep in mind that ResponsiBid works as a bidding system. Itās not intended to be used as just a website bidding tool, but a full-featured bidding software that will help unify the bidding prices. It will allow you to make adjustments to the price and disclaimers to help you account for other factors.
Iām not saying this because I think ResponsiBid works. Iām saying this because it worked in my business and I see it work in so many businesses every day. I get that some people might not be willing to use the ResponsiBid system and might prefer another system. Iām only trying to say that it is a great system with infinite flexibility and can be used so many different ways.
And for anyone who would like help, youāll find that we are very accommodating and will be happy to help in any way we can.
We had 537 bids come through Responsibid. We closed 40% of them, and thats with me pretty much only relying on the follow up emails and only responding to questions or when they want to book. I know that if I put any effort into it at all I could double that close rate. And it doesnt include most of my commercial work or any of my repeat customers.
Yes it takes a little bit of effort to get it dialed in. But once you get it youre golden.
I kinda agree with Curt about ditching the basic package. Once I tried Premium and saw the potential I couldnt walk away. And to be honest, I think I installed the demo in february or March when I wasnt getting any bids come through, I just knew that the lower packages werent for me.
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we had to take āroughā quote off as that is what people naturally gravitated to. For cookie cutter homes it was close to spot on but we have too many homes which are not cookie cutter.
So without āroughā quote potential clients have to spend some time.
OFTEN they just enter numbers without thinking. Twice in one week we had 2 customers enter 600 feet of gutters, both had less than 200 feet but I could not salvage the sale due to sticker shock. I donāt put that on RB
One factor I take into account if RB is worth keeping is how many times people get qoutes (close or not) and immediately tell us our price is too high. The way I see it is RB just saved me at minimum of 1 hour of my time, which I value.
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Alright. Letās talk about the āHouse Size Information.ā
Iād REALLY like to see different āDescriptionsā for each service.
Because my default is along the lines of āHey, Small House has 20 windows and is first floor only.ā
Then my Pwash Small House āDescriptionā is "Small house has 20 windows and is first floor only."
Gutter Cleaning- "Small House has 20 windows and is first floor only."
Roof Cleaning- "Small House has 20 windows and is first floor only."
Janitorial- āSmall house has 20 windows and is first floor onlyā
See where Iām going?
In one year? Thatās 1.5 quotes a day. I had like 20 quotes in one year. Maybe another reason I didnāt get the value of the premium service.
@5star If thatās the case then It makes me wonder why software subscription services donāt put out a guide for the users to follow. When I started using David Allenās GTD method I could download a free guide on how to set it up with Outlook. It took me step by step on how to set up each part of Outlook to function with the GTD system.
Have you ever thought of a downloadable .pdf step by step process guide to setting up RB? Iāll assume you have a bunch of videos but is there anything that takes the user from setting up the system to āadjusting your sales processā as these guys have said to best practices to getting the most out of your software?
Thereās one thing I hate about Housecall Pro is that they are constantly bragging about live chat and āwalking me through thingsā I wonder if it ever occurs to these companies that people might not want to have to connect with tech support or have to comb through endless videos every single time they have a question . A users guide could be helpful.
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I think thereās to many options if I was Responsibid Iād offer premium or basic.
Basic prospects get a price I get a lead and contact info
Premium stay the same the current middle tier offers no value
Itās a fair question. That field is customizable, but you could also try switching to the menu option for house size instead of the graphic option. The reason we canāt have a different one for each kind of bid is that ResponsiBid allows many bids to be given at once so the house size is something that gets āuniversalizedā. If you change the description text to something like number of rooms or square footage that may be helpful. Iām thinking that using the square footage menu (found in form builder) might be better. Hit me up next week if you want to hash some stuff out.
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A lot of users report more success if they are doing all of their bids through the system instead of having a split setup where they do some bids in one way and other bids go through a manual process. Then ResponsiBidās information is more comprehensive, the system can work for you harder, and there will be no confusion because all bids start in the same place. When everything is running through the system it gets WAY easier to use. I think that is what @buzzlightyear was saying when he said to ājump in at the deep endā.
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Sureā¦ that is admittedly one of the harder parts of running this companyā¦ We like to put out updates really frequently and that means that we have to keep updating our equivalent to the PDF youāre talking about (which is something we could really improve on for SURE!). We call it our ādocs siteā which has all of the typed versions of āhow toā and we link to it from the ResponsiBid āhelp areaā.
I know all SAAS companies struggle with this, but having a small team like we do, I need to really focus harder on keeping it totally up to date. We definitely arenāt perfect at it, but it is definitely something we have been working on.
With the update coming out this spring, virtually every image or instruction on that site will be wrong and Iāll need to update almost all of it. Itās the bitter sweet part of an update. But it is vital, for sure! We do have plans to have a training area where you can be walked through the app to be taken on a tour.
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Thanks for the insight, Brian. As I said earlier, we are definitely looking at our plans, and Iām sure something will change, but itās going to be a little ways down the road before we make a final decision there.
