By Aaron McLeish · 10 min read
I watched a plumber quote a bathroom refit at £3,200 last month. He spent ninety minutes on site, took photos, measured everything, and gave the customer a price.
Two weeks later, the job started. On day three, he found the old soil pipe was cast iron, not the plastic he’d expected. The customer wanted it replaced. He had not accounted for that cost. He also discovered the bathroom had no ventilation duct — building regs now required one. Another £600 in work and materials he had not factored into his quote.
He lost £800 on that job. Not because he was a bad tradesperson. But because he had not asked the right questions to ask before quoting.
This is the job that changed how I think about quoting. It is not about being on site longer. It is about asking better questions before you even write down a price.
Here is what you get from reading this:
A practical fact-find checklist you can use on your next callout or site visit. Not a sales script. Just the specific questions that separate thorough quotes from rushed ones, so you price for what actually needs doing, not what you assumed needed doing.
What questions to ask before quoting will actually change your prices?
Let me explain what I mean by that. Most of the time, when a trades person underprices a job, they are not making a maths error. They are making an assumption error.
They assume the boiler is in an accessible cupboard. It is in the loft, under three feet of insulation.
They assume the customer wants the cheapest option. The customer actually wants the ten-year warranty.
They assume one bathroom. There are two upstairs and one downstairs, and the customer wants all three to work properly at the same time.
Each assumption that is wrong takes you deeper into a job than your quote accounts for.
Consider this: the moment you start asking the questions to ask before quoting in a proper, methodical way, you stop doing jobs you are not equipped for or do not want to do. You also stop quoting jobs at a loss because you did not understand the scope.
A heating engineer I know used to quote boiler replacements in under thirty minutes. He would look at the existing boiler, check it was broken, give a price for a like-for-like replacement, and move on.
Then he started asking three extra questions:
Is the customer planning any building work in the next five years? (A new extension might need more heating capacity.)
Are they staying in the house long-term, or is this a rental property? (Affects warranty priorities.)
Do they have concerns about energy bills? (Might change boiler spec and price upwards.)
His average quote jumped from £2,100 to £2,600 in six weeks. Not because he was charging more for the same work. Because he was quoting for what the customer actually needed, not what he had assumed.
His conversion rate also went up. Customers felt heard.
Why do the questions to ask before quoting matter more than your reputation?
Here is the thing: a good reputation gets you in the door. But incomplete questions get you out the door cheaper than you should be.
I have met dozens of plumbers and heating engineers who are booked solid. They have a six-week wait. Customers call them first. But they are still not making the money they should, because they are cutting through the fact-find to get to the quote faster.
They think speed is the asset. The customer does not care if you take five minutes or fifty minutes to understand what they need. They care if you show up later and find something that was not in the quote.
Picture this: you are three days into an electrical refit. You find an old fuse box that needs replacing before you can do the work you quoted. You have now spent a day on something the customer is not paying for. Or you eat the cost. Either way, you lose.
The reason this happens is that most trades people do not have a system for what questions to ask before quoting. They wing it. They ask what springs to mind. They forget to check the basics. Then they quote from memory and experience, not from facts.
A structured set of questions before you quote takes about the same time as an unstructured site visit, but it catches the problems that kill your margin.
The three-part fact-find system
Here is what we teach in “The Quote Handbook”: every set of questions to ask before quoting should cover three areas.
About the customer. Why do they need this work? Is it urgent or planned? How long are they staying in the property? What matters most to them — cost, speed, warranty, or aesthetics? A customer who is moving house in two months has different priorities to one who is retiring there. You need to know that before you quote.
About the property. How old is the building? What is the layout? Are there multiple usage points? (A heating system serving a three-bathroom house will behave differently to one serving one bathroom.) Are there any building works planned? Is access difficult? A boiler in a loft requires different labour time than one in an accessible cupboard.
About the existing systems. What is broken or failing? What is the condition of what is not broken? Will it affect your work? A new bathroom suite is one quote if the plumbing is good copper pipe. It is a very different quote if you find decades-old lead pipes that need replacing for legal reasons.
Most trades people cover one or two of these areas. The ones who move from busy to properly profitable cover all three.
What happens when you get the questions to ask before quoting right
A roofer I know used to quote roof repairs in under an hour. He would climb up, look at the damage, estimate the materials and labour, and quote based on “feels right”.
One bad quote — a job that looked like two days turned into five because the underlying boards were rotten — and he changed his system.
Now he asks:
How old is the roof? (Older roofs often have hidden damage.)
What caused this damage? (Tells him if there are other weak points.)
Will you need scaffolding access? (Changes labour cost dramatically.)
Are the gutters in good condition? (Related problem while you are up there?)
His quotes are now longer and more detailed. His conversion rate is higher because the customer sees he has actually thought about the work. His profit margin is better because he is not discovering problems mid-job.
He also closes more jobs because he sometimes finds things that mean the customer needs other work they were not planning for. But that work is in the quote. They are not surprised.
That is what questions to ask before quoting actually do. They do not close more sales. They make the sales you do close more profitable.
A simple checklist to start using tomorrow
You do not need a complicated system. You need the right questions. Here are the ones that matter most:
About the work itself:
- What is the main problem you are calling me to fix?
- When did you first notice it?
- Have you had anyone else look at it?
- What is your timeline — is this urgent or are you planning ahead?
- Is there a budget you have in mind?
- What matters most to you about this job — cost, speed, quality, longevity?
About the property:
- How long have you lived here?
- Are you planning to stay long-term?
- What else might need attention while we are at it?
- Is access easy or difficult?
About the existing systems:
- What was installed previously and when?
- Have you had problems with this before?
- What is the condition of related areas? (If a boiler is failing, how are the radiators? If one pipe has failed, what about the others?)
Write these on a card. Laminate it. Use it on every job. The ones that make sense, ask. The ones that do not apply, skip.
The real cost of skipping the fact-find
A plumbing partnership I work with was struggling with their gross profit. They quoted fine, priced well, but every job seemed to lose money once the team got on site.
I asked them to show me three recent jobs where the margin was worse than expected.
Job one: Gas pipe relocation in a kitchen refit. Quoted based on the customer’s description. Took three hours to remove because the customer had an old 15mm copper run that was frozen solid in the wall with calcium deposit. One hour was billable. Two hours were a loss.
Job two: Radiator replacement. Quoted based on the customer saying “my radiator stopped working”. Did not ask which radiator, which room, or whether other radiators were working. Turned out the customer had a bleeding air problem affecting the whole system. A one-radiator quote became a system bleed job, and they had not charged for it.
Job three: Bathroom suite installation. Customer wanted new taps and a new shower mixing valve. Did not ask about the water pressure or what type of shower they had. The existing shower was a power shower with a pump. The new mixing valve was not compatible. Customer wanted the pump removed and replaced. Not in the quote.
I asked them one question: if you had asked five more questions on each of those jobs before quoting, would you have caught those issues?
They went quiet.
I said it another way: do you want to find out about these problems in your quote meeting, or on day two on site with the customer watching?
They changed their system that week. Now their team asks a structured set of questions to ask before quoting on every job. They write down the answers. They build the quote from the answers, not from habit.
Their gross profit went up 8% in the next quarter. Same team, same prices. Just questions.
The takeaway
The difference between a quote that turns into a profitable job and a quote that turns into a loss is usually not the price. It is usually the fact-find.
When you ask the right questions to ask before quoting, three things happen at once. You understand the actual scope of work. The customer feels like you have listened. And you quote for what actually needs doing, not what you hoped needed doing.
You do not need to be a sales genius or a smooth operator. You need to be thorough.
The more time you spend on fact-finding before you quote, the less time you waste on surprises during the job.
Next step
If you want a deeper framework for structuring your fact-find and turning it into stronger quotes, we recommend “The Quote Handbook” — Aaron’s guide to quoting methodology for trades businesses. You can grab it here: https://amzn.to/3WzrTkJ
It covers the full system: how to structure your questions, how to ask without sounding like an interrogation, and how to turn what you learn into quotes that actually reflect the real scope of the work.
For help applying this to your specific business or setting up systems that stick, email us at info@togetherwecount.co.uk or connect with me on LinkedIn at https://linkedin.com/in/aaron-mcleish.
Aaron McLeish, Managing Director.
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