What Is a Good Close Rate for Contractor Quotes? How to Work Out Yours

You spent your week driving around giving estimates. Some turned into work. A lot of them just went quiet. At the end of the month you wonder if that's normal or if you're doing something wrong.

Here is how to find your real number, what's normal, and what to fix first if it's low.

Quick answer

Your close rate is the number of quotes that turned into signed jobs, divided by the number of quotes you sent. If you sent 20 and won 6, your close rate is 30 percent.

There's no single right number. It changes a lot by trade, by how the lead came in, and by whether you charge for estimates. Most small contractors land somewhere between one in five and one in two. If you're winning about one in three on leads that came from a referral, you're doing fine. If you're winning one in three on cold marketplace leads, you're doing great.

The useful number isn't what other people get. It's yours, tracked over a few months, split by where the lead came from.

How to work out your number

You don't need software for this. A notebook works.

Pick a stretch of time, say the last 60 or 90 days. Count every quote you actually sent. Then count how many became a signed job or a paid deposit. Don't count "he said he'd probably go with us." Count only the ones where money moved or a signature happened.

Divide won by sent. That's it.

A few things people get wrong:

Don't count quotes that are still open and recent. If you sent one last Tuesday, it's still alive. Leave it out of both numbers until it's either won or clearly dead. Otherwise your rate looks worse than it is.

Don't count tire kickers who never wanted a real quote. The person who called for a ballpark and never booked a visit isn't a lost job. You can read more about that in should you give a ballpark price over the phone.

Do count the ones that went silent. A quote that got no answer is a loss until proven otherwise. A big chunk of your "lost" jobs are really just unanswered ones, which is the part you can do something about.

Split it by where the lead came from

This is the step that makes the number worth having.

Your overall close rate hides the truth. A referral from a past customer might close at half or better. A lead from a marketplace where the customer also asked four other contractors might close at one in ten. Blend them together and you get a number that tells you nothing.

Make three columns: referrals and repeat customers, your own marketing (website, signs, social), and paid or shared leads. Track won and sent for each.

Now you can see what's working. If shared leads cost you money and close at ten percent, that's a different decision than if they close at thirty. We went through the follow-up side of that in how to follow up on Thumbtack and Angi leads.

What's normal, roughly

Take any published average with a grain of salt. Surveys mix different trades, different job sizes, and different ways of counting. I won't hand you a made-up statistic.

What I can say from how this tends to work in the field:

Small repair jobs close more often than big projects, because the customer decides faster and has less to compare. A $400 fix gets a yes on the spot. A $40,000 remodel gets weeks of thinking and three other quotes.

Leads where the customer called you specifically close better than leads where the customer posted a job and let contractors compete.

If you charge for estimates, your close rate goes up, because the people who pay are serious. Your number of quotes goes down too. That's a trade, and there's no wrong answer. See should I charge for estimates if you're deciding.

So don't chase a magic percentage. Chase your own number going up.

What a low close rate usually means

When a contractor tells me their close rate is bad, it's almost never one thing. But it's usually one of three.

Your price is wrong for the job, or the customer doesn't understand it. Sometimes you really are too high. More often the customer can't see why. A quote that's one line and a total invites the question "why is this so much?" Break it into what they're getting. If you keep losing to cheaper bids, read lost a bid to a cheaper contractor and win more jobs without lowering your price. And if you're not sure your numbers hold up at all, how to price a job is the place to start.

You're slow. The contractor who sends the quote the same day tends to beat the one who sends it three days later, even at a slightly higher price. The customer is excited right after the visit. Wait a week and they've talked to someone else.

You stop after the first message. This is the biggest one, and the easiest to fix. You send the quote, you hear nothing, and you let it go. The customer wasn't saying no. They got busy, or they forgot, or they were waiting for you to check in. Most quotes that go quiet are not dead. They're sitting in someone's inbox.

The follow-up fix is the cheapest one

Think about the math. If you send 20 quotes a month and win 6, that's 30 percent. Say you start following up on the 14 that went quiet, and just three of them come back and say yes. You're now at 9 of 20, which is 45 percent. You didn't change your price. You didn't get better at estimating. You just asked.

That's why follow-up moves the number faster than anything else on this list. If you're not sure how often or how soon, how long to wait before following up and how many times to follow up on a quote have the timing. And for what to say when a quote has gone completely silent, there's customer went quiet after the quote.

A simple tracking habit

Keep one list. Every quote gets a row with the date sent, the customer name, the amount, where the lead came from, and a status: won, lost, or open. When a quote hits 30 days with no answer and you've followed up a few times, mark it lost.

Once a month, spend ten minutes counting. Won over sent, by source. Write the number down. Next month, look at it again.

You'll start to notice things. Maybe your bathroom jobs close at 50 percent and your decks at 15. Maybe quotes sent within a day close twice as often as ones sent after three. That's the stuff that tells you where to put your time.

A short version

Close rate is quotes won divided by quotes sent. Track your own over 60 to 90 days, split by lead source, and don't count quotes that are still fresh. Most small contractors win somewhere between one in five and one in two, depending on the work. If yours is low, check your price clarity, your speed, and whether you follow up. Follow-up is usually the cheapest gain.

The part that slips

The tracking and the follow-up both fall apart for the same reason. You're on a roof all day, and at night you're tired. Nobody is keeping the list, and nobody is checking in on the quote you sent nine days ago.

That's what QuoteChaser is built for. It follows up on every quote that's gone quiet, in your own voice, so more of them turn into answers. When a customer writes back, it pings your phone and you take it from there.

Join the QuoteChaser waitlist and stop losing jobs to silence.