Episode
40
Thu, 15 Oct 2026 12:05:00 +0000
If you run a contracting or home-service business, you’ve probably heard some version of this:
“Your price is too high.”
It’s easy to hear that and immediately reach one conclusion: we need to get cheaper.
But that may be the wrong lesson.
Losing an estimate doesn’t automatically mean your price is wrong. In fact, expecting to win every job can create an entirely different problem: pricing work so aggressively that there isn’t enough profit left when the project is finished.
That’s why contractors need to look beyond the price objection and ask a better question:
Why are we really losing this job?
Before worrying about whether a customer likes your price, you need to know whether the price works for your business.
That means understanding the gross profit of the job.
Revenue is the top-line number, but the job also carries labor, materials, equipment rentals, and other direct costs. Once those expenses are accounted for, what remains tells a much more useful story about the health of the project.
Without a target for gross profit and an understanding of your labor and material costs pricing becomes guesswork.
Knowing your numbers also makes it easier to say no.
A job isn’t automatically a good job simply because the customer accepts your estimate.
This is one of the hardest mindset shifts for many contractors.
A 100% close rate sounds incredible.
But it can also be a sign that you’re leaving money on the table.
If virtually every prospect immediately accepts your price, it’s worth examining whether you’re pricing aggressively enough to protect the profitability of the business.
That means some customers are going to say no.
And that’s okay.
The objective isn’t simply to win the maximum number of jobs. It’s to win the right jobs at numbers that allow the company to operate profitably.
When a customer pushes back on price, discounting can feel like an easy way to save the sale.
But contractors need to understand where that discount actually comes from.
Taking a few hundred dollars off the price doesn’t necessarily reduce the cost of labor, materials, equipment, or overhead.
Instead, that money can come directly out of the profit.
That means a relatively modest discount on the total contract price can represent a much larger percentage of the profit you expected to make.
Before discounting a job, understand exactly what the concession will do to your numbers.
There’s another side to losing jobs on price.
What happened before you gave the customer the number?
Contractors can become so focused on estimating the work that they overlook the sales conversation surrounding the estimate.
Did you ask enough questions?
Do you understand why the homeowner wants the project completed?
Have you uncovered what actually matters to them?
Have you demonstrated why your company is different?
Have you helped the prospect understand what goes into delivering the result they want?
If the first meaningful difference the customer notices between you and another contractor is the number at the bottom of the estimate, price naturally becomes the focus.
A stronger sales process helps customers understand the value behind that number.
Repeated price objections can also point to a problem earlier in the process.
You may be attracting prospects who were never a strong fit for your company.
Marketing and sales are connected.
If your marketing continually generates leads looking primarily for the cheapest option, your sales team is going to spend a lot of time fighting price objections.
That doesn’t automatically mean your prices need to change.
It may mean you need to examine the prospects entering your pipeline and the expectations being established before an estimate ever happens.
Hearing no is difficult, especially when your crews need work.
But winning a project that doesn’t make financial sense isn’t necessarily better.
A profitable contracting business needs the discipline to understand its numbers, communicate its value, improve its sales process, and recognize when a project simply isn’t the right fit.
So the next time a prospect tells you:
“Your price is too high.”
Don’t immediately reach for the discount.
Ask yourself what actually happened.
Was the price wrong?
Was it the wrong prospect?
Did the sales conversation fail to communicate the value?
Did you understand what the customer really wanted?
Or was this simply one of the jobs you were supposed to lose?
The goal isn’t to win every estimate.
The goal is to build a business that stays profitable when you do.
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