Build a Sales Process Your Team Can Run

Qualifying a construction lead means deciding, before anyone drives out, whether the job fits your business: the right kind of work, the right size, in your area, at a time you can do it, with a budget that’s realistic and the people who decide available. When the owner takes every call, that judgment lives in their head. To hand it off, write it down: a short fit profile, the same questions on every call, and a simple score that says go or no-go.

This lesson shows how to write that fit profile, which questions to ask and what a good answer sounds like, how to score a lead, who on your team should do it, and how to say no without burning the relationship.

A site visit costs real time. Example, made up: an estimator spends 30 minutes driving each way, an hour on site and an hour writing the proposal. That’s three hours for every visit, whether the job is won or not. Ten visits a week to jobs that were never going to happen is almost four working days lost.

If the owner filters those calls by instinct (“that’s too small,” “that’s outside our area,” “they’re not ready”), that instinct doesn’t come with the office coordinator or a second estimator once they start taking calls. Either every lead gets a visit, or the new person guesses. Written fit criteria fix that.

One page that says what a good job looks like for you right now. Example for a remodeling contractor; yours will differ:

Write the size range from your own numbers, not a wish. If your smallest profitable job is $15,000, that’s your floor. The construction profit margins lesson shows how to work out what each job needs to earn.

Update the profile when your situation changes. A full backlog means you can be stricter; a slow month means you might take smaller jobs on purpose.

Each question maps to one criterion. Write down what a good answer sounds like, so whoever takes the call knows what they’re listening for.

Give the budget range yourself. Some homeowners don’t know what work costs and won’t say a number first. A range from your own past jobs (for example, “bathrooms like this have been between $28,000 and $45,000 for us”) answers the question for both of you. If they’re far below it, you’ve saved them a wasted visit as well.

For a shorter version of these questions inside a full sales pipeline, see the remodeler’s sales pipeline.

Score each criterion 0, 1 or 2 right after the call:

• 2: clearly a fit
• 1: unclear, or close to the edge
• 0: clearly not a fit

Then decide:

Made up to show the method.

Lead A gets a visit this week. Lead B is a good customer for someone else: refer them to a handyman you trust. Lead C squeaks into “go,” but with four ones. The office books the visit for next week when both decision makers are home, and the estimator knows the budget is tight before they walk in.

The call notes go on the lead record, not in someone’s notebook, so the estimator arrives already knowing the budget, the timing and who decides.

A no-go lead is still a person who might send you a referral or call again in two years. Be quick, honest and useful:

“Thanks for thinking of us. A repair this size isn’t something we can schedule well, and I don’t want you waiting weeks. Here’s a handyman we trust who does this kind of work. If you ever plan a bigger project, call us.”

Keep a short list of businesses you refer out to: handymen, other trades, contractors who do the work you don’t. Some of them will send work back.

Once a month, compare the score with what happened:

• Close rate by score: do “go” leads with high scores really win more often than the low ones?
• Visits that went nowhere: look at the score they had. Which criterion was wrong?
• No-go leads you’d have wanted: did a rule turn away good work?

If high-scoring leads don’t close better, the criteria are measuring the wrong things. Change one rule at a time.

1. Write your fit profile on one page: type, size, area, timing, budget, decision and property.
2. Turn it into the question table and give it to whoever answers the phone.
3. Score every new lead for the next month before booking a visit.

What to review:

• Lead-to-visit rate, and visit-to-proposal rate
• Close rate by lead score
• Site visits per week that didn’t lead to a proposal

Next lesson: standardize discovery and site visits, so every visit gives the estimator the same information.

A site visit has two jobs. Discovery is finding out what the customer wants, why, what matters most to them and how they’ll decide. Documentation is measuring and photographing everything the estimate needs. When the owner does every visit, both happen by habit. When two or three people do them, each visit comes back different, and the estimate is only as good as the visit behind it.

This lesson shows how to make visits consistent across your team: what to prepare, the discovery questions, what to document, how to end the visit, and a one-page visit summary that hands everything to estimating.

An example, made up to show the problem. Two estimators visit two similar deck replacements in the same week.

Estimator B’s proposal comes in lower and misses the footings, the railing and the access. Either the company eats the difference, or the job turns into a string of change orders and an unhappy customer. Nobody did anything careless. There just wasn’t a standard.

Whoever books the visit sends the estimator a short packet, so they don’t walk in cold:

• the call notes and lead score from qualifying (the previous lesson)
• photos the customer sent, and the address checked on a map
• the budget range already discussed
• who will be there, and who decides
• anything the customer mentioned that matters: pets, parking, a deadline

Confirm the visit the day before by text, and ask everyone who decides to be there.

Ask before you measure. The answers change what you measure and what you propose.

Write the answers in the customer’s words. “Wants it to feel bigger” is more useful in the proposal than “open concept.”

Keep one checklist per job type: bathroom, kitchen, deck, panel upgrade, whatever you sell most. Each one lists:

• Measurements the estimate needs, with units
• Photos that must be taken: every wall or side, existing conditions up close, access, the electrical panel or water heater if relevant
• Conditions to check: damage, rot, old wiring, slope, soil, anything that changes the price
• Access and logistics: parking, how materials get in, where a dumpster can go, working hours
• Code or permit questions to look up before pricing

A checklist the estimator fills in on site means nobody has to drive back for a measurement, and anyone in the office can see what was found.

Before leaving, every estimator says the same three things:

1. What happens next: “You’ll have the proposal by Thursday.”
2. How it will be presented: “I’d like to walk you both through it by phone or in person, about 20 minutes.”
3. A time for that walkthrough, booked before you leave.

A booked walkthrough is the start of your follow-up. A proposal emailed with no conversation can sit unanswered.

Within 24 hours, the estimator writes one page, or fills in the same form every time:

If the person who visits also prices the job, the summary still matters: it’s what the next estimator, the project manager and the crew read when the job is sold.

A standard drifts unless someone checks it:

• Ride-alongs: a new estimator goes on a few visits with an experienced one before going alone, then the other way round.
• Summary review: once a month, the owner or lead estimator reads a few visit summaries from each person and asks, “Could someone else price this job from this page?”
• Missed items: every change order caused by something the visit should have caught goes back into the checklist.

1. Write the discovery questions on one page and give them to everyone who does visits.
2. Write a documentation checklist for your most common job type.
3. Use the visit summary on every visit for the next month.

Free template: a site visit checklist to start your own from is in the contractor templates library.

What to review:

• Visits that needed a second trip or a call back for missing information
• Days from visit to proposal
• Change orders caused by something the visit missed

Next lesson: make estimating consistent, so two estimators pricing the same job get the same number.

A construction estimating process is the set of steps and standards every estimate goes through, from the site visit notes to the proposal that’s sent. In a growing company, its job is consistency: two estimators pricing the same job should arrive at roughly the same number, because they use the same production rates, waste factors, prices and margin rules, all taken from your own past jobs rather than memory.

This guide shows the steps, how to work out production rates from your job history, what to put in a written estimating standard, a worked example of two estimators pricing the same bathroom, and a review step that catches mistakes before the customer sees them.

When estimators price from memory (“a bathroom like that is about a week of tile”), the numbers are uneven. It’s easy to remember the job that went smoothly or the one that went badly, not the average. Each estimator ends up with a slightly different library of numbers in their head.

When the owner wrote every estimate, at least the mistakes were consistent. With two or three estimators, the same job can be priced thousands of dollars apart. One loses work by pricing high; the other wins work that loses money. The fix is to move the numbers out of people’s heads and into a shared standard built from what your jobs actually took.

For the basics of each step on a remodel, see how to estimate remodeling projects in 7 steps, and for what the finished estimate must include, what every construction estimate needs. This guide is about making the numbers behind those steps the same for everyone.

A production rate is how long one unit of work takes your crew: hours per square foot of tile, hours per fixture, hours per linear foot of fence. It’s a key number in a labor estimate, and an easy one to guess.

To set one from your own data:

1. Pick one task and 6 to 12 recent jobs where it was done.
2. Divide the actual hours by the quantity for each job. You need timesheets that show hours by job and, ideally, by phase. Job costing covers how to capture them.
3. Take the middle value, not the best job and not the worst.
4. Separate jobs that really are different: patterned vs. straight tile, remodel vs. new construction, occupied homes vs. empty ones.

Example, made up to show the method: wall and floor tile on six bathroom remodels.

Job 6 is a different kind of work, so it gets its own rate. For straight-lay tile, the middle of jobs 1 to 5 is 0.45 hours per square foot. That’s the number everyone uses until the next review.

Do this for the five or six tasks that drive most of your labor cost first. You don’t need a rate for everything to start.

One document every estimator uses. The values below are examples; set yours from your own jobs:

The margin floor comes from your overhead and profit goal. Construction profit margins shows how to work it out.

A tub-to-shower conversion with 110 square feet of straight-lay tile. All numbers are made up; labor at an assumed $45 an hour. Both estimators have the same sub quotes (plumbing $3,200, electrical $900), the same other materials ($5,400), $1,800 of tile and 48 hours of other labor ($2,160).

Before the standard, the same job was priced $5,240 apart. Estimator A would likely lose it on price. Estimator B would likely win it, then lose money: the disposal is missing, the hours are low and the margin is under the floor.

With the standard, both estimators use 50 hours, 12% waste, disposal and the 32% floor, and they land within a few hundred dollars of each other. What’s left between them is judgment about the specific job, which is what estimators are for.

A second person checks the estimate before the customer sees it. You don’t need to review every one. Set the rule, for example:

• every estimate from an estimator in their first three months
• every estimate over a set amount
• any job type you haven’t done much of
• anything priced under the margin floor

The review is a five-minute checklist, not a re-estimate:

The standard is only as good as the jobs behind it. Every quarter:

1. Compare estimated and actual hours on the jobs that closed, by task.
2. Update any production rate that’s consistently off, and any waste factor that keeps running over.
3. Update the price list, and check that your margin floor still matches your overhead.
4. Share the changes with every estimator, with the reason.

Estimating software makes estimates faster and neater, but it uses whatever numbers you give it. This review is what keeps those numbers right.

1. Pick the task that drives the most labor in your most common job type.
2. Work out its production rate from 6 to 12 recent jobs.
3. Start an estimating standard with that rate, your waste factors, your margin floor and your standard inclusions and exclusions.
4. Have two estimators price the same past job with the standard and compare.

Free tools: an estimate template is in the contractor templates library, and the markup and margin calculator checks a price against your target margin.

What to review:

• The spread between estimators on the same or similar jobs
• Estimated vs. actual hours by task, every quarter
• Estimates sent below the margin floor, and why

Next lesson: build a follow-up process with clear ownership, so every proposal has someone responsible for getting an answer.

A construction sales process is the path every lead follows from first contact to a signed job, with an owner, a deadline and a clear finish line for each stage. When the owner sells every job, the process is whatever the owner remembers to do. Once an office coordinator, estimators or a salesperson are involved, it has to be written down, or leads stall in the handoffs between them and proposals go out with nobody following up.

This lesson shows the stages with owners and deadlines, the handoffs that lose the most deals, how to give every open proposal one owner, the numbers that show where your pipeline leaks, and a 30-minute weekly pipeline review.

Deals are lost on price, and they’re also lost in the gaps:

• a lead that came in on Friday and wasn’t called back until Tuesday
• a site visit with no proposal date, so it took two weeks
• a proposal that was emailed and never discussed
• a follow-up that each person thought someone else was doing
• a signed job that sat for a week because operations didn’t know it was sold

Each one is a handoff problem, the same kind the job workflow course fixes on the delivery side. The fix is the same too: one owner per stage, a finish line and a time limit.

Example roles and time limits; set your own:

Two rules hold it together:

• Every open lead and proposal has exactly one owner, a person, not “sales” or “the office.”
• Every lead has a next step with a date. A lead with no next step is a lead nobody is working.

The remodeler’s sales pipeline shows the same stages compressed into a 7-day timeline.

The last handoff can cause trouble after the sale: a promise made in sales (“we’ll protect the hardwood in the hallway”) that never reaches the crew. The job handoff checklist covers it in detail.

Follow-up leaks easily in a team-run pipeline, because it’s easy for everyone to assume someone else is doing it. Give every sent proposal one owner and a fixed sequence:

Example timing; adjust to your sales cycle. Larger jobs with design work take longer; small jobs move faster. For call, text and email templates, see the estimate follow-up sequence.

Every closed proposal gets one reason from a fixed list:

• Won: price, trust/referral, speed, options, design, availability
• Lost: price, timing, chose another contractor (for what reason, if known), project cancelled, no response, not a fit after all

A fixed list matters. Free text (“customer went elsewhere”) can’t be counted. After a few months the list shows patterns: losses on price to one competitor on one job type, or wins mostly where you got the proposal out fast.

Count each stage for the last month or quarter. Example numbers, made up:

The close rate is the lowest number in this example, but the first leak to look at is visits to proposals: 12 visits never turned into a proposal, and each one already cost an estimator’s time. Looking at those 12 might show estimators too busy to write them, visits to jobs that weren’t qualified properly, or customers who went quiet after the visit because nothing was booked. Each has a different fix.

Track how long each stage takes too. Days from visit to proposal is a number your own team controls.

Same day every week, with everyone who owns leads or proposals:

1. New leads (5 minutes): how many, from where, how many qualified as go.
2. Stuck items (10 minutes): every lead or proposal past its time limit or without a next step. Each gets a next step, an owner and a date.
3. Big open proposals (10 minutes): the largest few. What’s the decision date? What does the customer still need?
4. Wins, losses and capacity (5 minutes): what closed and why, and whether signed work fits the crews’ schedule. If the backlog is full for the next two months, sales needs to know before promising start dates.

Keep it to the list. Detailed deal strategy happens afterwards, between the people involved.

1. Write your stages with an owner, a “done when” and a time limit for each.
2. Go through every open proposal and give it one owner and a next step with a date.
3. Start the weekly pipeline review this week.
4. Add a fixed win/loss reason list and use it on every closed proposal.

Free template: a three-email quote follow-up sequence is in the contractor templates library.

What to review each week:

• Leads and proposals past their time limit
• Days from site visit to proposal
• Close rate, and the top win and loss reasons this month

Next lesson: connect marketing, sales and delivery capacity, starting with tracking where your leads come from.

Lead source tracking means recording where every lead came from, then following each one to the end: whether it became a site visit, a proposal, a signed job and how much revenue. Counting leads per source isn’t enough. The source that sends the most calls isn’t always the one that books the most work, and a growing contractor spends real money and estimator time on every source.

This lesson shows how to set up a source list your team uses the same way, the columns a lead tracking spreadsheet needs, how to read a source report, and how to turn marketing up or down to match what your crews can actually deliver.

A lead costs money to get and time to work: the first call, the site visit, the proposal, the follow-up. A source that sends 60 leads and 3 jobs can cost more, in money and estimator hours, than a source that sends 12 leads and 5 jobs.

To compare sources fairly, you need to follow each lead past the first call. That only works if the source is recorded at the start, the same way by everyone.

Pick 8 to 12 sources that cover where your leads really come from. Example list:

• Google Business Profile
• Website (found you in search)
• Google Ads
• Lead service (one line per service you pay)
• Referral: past customer
• Referral: partner business (designer, realtor, supplier, another trade)
• Repeat customer
• Yard sign or truck
• Social media
• Home show or event
• Other (with a note)

Rules that keep it clean:

• One source per lead: where they first heard about you. If a referral then looked you up on Google, it’s a referral.
• Recorded at first contact, by whoever takes the call or reads the form. A required field, not an optional one.
• Ask, then check. “How did you hear about us?” on every call. If the lead came through a form, ad or lead service, the source is already known.
• No new sources without a decision. Twelve spellings of “Google” make the report useless.

One row per lead. If you use a spreadsheet, these are the columns:

The source comes from Step 1; the qualification and outcome columns come from the earlier lessons in this course. Lead tracking puts them in one row, so they can be counted by source.

Once a month, or once a quarter if your volume is low, total the rows by source. A quarter’s numbers, made up to show the method:

Close rate here is won ÷ proposals.

What it says:

• The lead service sends the most leads and has the lowest close rate (21%): 20 leads per won job. It also takes the most estimator time: 14 proposals for 3 wins. At an assumed 3 hours per visit and proposal, that’s about 42 hours of estimating for $96,000 of work.
• Referrals send a fraction of the leads and a big share of the revenue, at a higher close rate and with larger jobs.
• Google Ads cost less per won job than the lead service in this example.

The decision isn’t automatically “drop the lead service.” It might be the only source that fills a slow month. But it’s no longer a guess: you can cap it, change the job types you accept from it, or put that money into asking every happy customer for a referral.

Add gross profit by source once your job costing is in place. A source that brings large jobs at thin margins is worth less than its revenue suggests.

Marketing, sales and delivery have to move together. Leads you can’t schedule for three months can turn into lost proposals and frustrated customers. An empty schedule next month is a cost you can see coming in the backlog.

Use your backlog, the signed work not yet done, measured in crew-weeks, to set simple rules. Example rules; set your own:

Check the backlog in the weekly pipeline review and the full source report in the monthly KPI scorecard. That’s how marketing spend follows your capacity instead of habit.

1. Write your source list and make the source a required field wherever leads are recorded.
2. Ask “How did you hear about us?” on every first call from today.
3. Fill in the source for the last three months of won jobs, as far as you can.
4. Run the first source report at the end of the month, and set your capacity rules.

Free tool: the Lead Source Tracking Spreadsheet builds the source report from your lead list.

What to review:

• Won jobs, revenue and cost per won job by source
• Leads with no source recorded (that number should be close to zero)
• Backlog in crew-weeks against your marketing rules

Next course: build a team that can take ownership: hiring, onboarding and crew leaders.

You’ve reached the end of Build a Sales Process Your Team Can Run. The course toolkit (PDF) has a worksheet for each of its five lessons in one file, in lesson order, ready to print or fill in on your phone. It comes with one spreadsheet: the Lead Source Tracking Spreadsheet.