Your estimates pipeline: win more bids without working more hours

Many contractors lose jobs not because of price, but because of follow-up. The request came by text, the estimate went by email, and three weeks later nobody remembers who was supposed to call whom. A simple estimates pipeline fixes that.

From request to signed job in five stages

• Request: someone asked for a price
• Opportunity: you visited, measured or reviewed plans
• Proposal: the estimate was sent
• Negotiation: the client is comparing, asking, adjusting
• Won or lost: the decision, with the reason

Seeing every bid in one of these columns tells you instantly where the money is stuck.

Capture every request in one place

Requests arrive through the website, phone, WhatsApp, referrals and general contractors. If each one lives in a different app, some will be forgotten. A single list with contact, address, scope, plans and the date of the request is the start of everything.

Put a value on every bid

Two numbers per bid help a lot: your cost estimate and the proposal value. Add them up per stage and you see your pipeline in dollars. That number helps you decide whether to hire, whether to accept a low-margin job, or whether to push sales this month.

What gets tracked gets followed up. What gets followed up gets signed.

Follow up with a rhythm

• Two days after sending the proposal: confirm it was received
• One week later: ask if there are questions
• Before the decision date: offer a quick call

Learn from the bids you lose

Write down why you lost: price, timing, scope, chose someone else. After a few months, the reasons tell you whether to adjust prices, speed up proposals or focus on a different type of client.

When a bid is won

The won estimate should become a job without retyping everything: client, address, value and scope move straight into the project, ready for schedule, crew and invoices.

Four Built's Build plan includes estimate requests, a visual pipeline with values per stage, RFIs and change orders, and a public form for clients to request a quote from your website.