What's your approach to pricing complex or uncertain jobs?

We're seeing an increase in jobs where the full scope isn't clear until we're on-site—older systems, hidden damage, customer uncertainty about what they actually need. This creates tension between wanting to win the work and protecting margin.

I'm interested in how your teams structure pricing for this scenario. Specifically:

  • Do you lead with time-and-materials, or do you find ways to cap exposure while still quoting?
  • How do you communicate uncertainty to customers without undermining confidence?
  • What percentage of your revenue now sits in this "discovery" category?

Our current approach is creating friction between sales and operations. Sales wants to commit; operations wants contingency. I'd like to understand how others have resolved this tension.

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  • We've moved to a tiered estimate model that has helped significantly with this.

    Good: Known scope, fixed price
    Better: Known scope with identified risk factors, fixed price plus 15% contingency line item
    Best: Unclear scope, time-and-materials with hourly rate bands and daily cost maximums

    The key is front-loading the conversation about uncertainty. Our sales team has scripts for this now. "Based on what we can see, here's what we know, here's what we don't, and here's how we protect you from runaway costs."

    We've also started requiring site visits for anything over $5K estimated. Sounds expensive but we recover that in reduced write-offs.

  • Need to implement this. Our team quotes sight unseen and we're eating margin on 30% of jobs.

    Who owns the site visit scheduling in your workflow? Sales or dispatch?

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