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Contractor estimate close rate, and why yours is two different numbers
Every page on this subject tells you how to close more of them. Not one of them asks what you are dividing by. Until the denominator is settled, your close rate is not a measurement, it is a mood, and the published benchmarks you are comparing it to are worse.
No card. Two scans, then you decide.
What page one argues about
Simpro holds the exact match with a real article on benchmarks and improvement. Behind it: a ContractorTalk thread on close ratio, a sales conversion calculator, a roofing benchmarks page, a piece on how many follow ups it takes, a guide on what is normal and how to fix it, and a contractor sales guide.
Almost all of them are the same argument. Your close rate is a selling problem. Follow up more, present better, build more trust at the table, get from twenty five percent to fifty.
One of them is worth reading because it argues the other way. There is a page making the case that a close rate much above fifty percent is a warning sign, because you are probably leaving money on every quote. That is a fair point and it is honest of them to make it, and it is still about the top of the fraction.
What none of them does is check the bottom. Which is strange, because the bottom is the half you can actually move this month.
Your close rate is two numbers, and you are quoting the flattering one
Ask three remodelers what their close rate is and all three will answer confidently. Then ask what counts as an estimate.
One counts every enquiry that came in. One counts the ones he drove out to. One counts only the written proposals he actually sent. Same shop, same year, same work, three completely different percentages, and all three are true.
That is why the published benchmarks are useless to you. A roofing figure and a remodeling figure and whatever your competitor said at the supply house are all measuring different denominators, and not one of the pages telling you the industry average quotes its own definition. You cannot be behind a number that was never defined.
Count it this way instead
Write down your denominator before you count anything
Pick one. Priced proposals sent is the most useful for most remodelers, because it is the thing that cost you an evening. Then keep that definition for a year, because a close rate only means something next to the same number measured the same way.
Count a second one on purpose
Track site visits as well as proposals. The gap between those two is the one number nobody has: how often you drove out and never even got to a price. On most books that gap is bigger than anybody expects, and it is pure loss.
Date it by when the quote went out, not when the job signed
Otherwise a slow quarter looks good and a busy one looks bad, because the signings land in a different month from the work that earned them. Cohort by the week the proposal left your hands.
Split it by where the lead came from
One blended percentage hides everything useful. Referral leads and a paid directory do not close at the same rate and never have. The moment you split it you usually find one source producing most of your unpaid evenings.
Then stop measuring and look at the list
Read the jobs you lost from last quarter and mark the ones where, honestly, you knew within ten minutes of arriving. That count is your real opportunity, and it is not a selling problem.
Three levers, and everybody writes about one of them
Win more of them
The lever every page on page one is about. Follow up properly, present better, get the decision made in the room. It works and it is worth doing, and it is also the slowest and most personal of the three, because it means changing how you behave at a kitchen table on a Thursday evening.
Produce fewer of them
Same numerator, smaller denominator, higher rate, and you got your evenings back rather than spending more of them. Nobody writes about this one because it does not sound like ambition. It sounds like turning work away. It is not. It is finding out which enquiries are real before you spend an evening on them.
Price them higher and accept a lower rate
The uncomfortable one. If you close three quarters of everything you quote, you are cheapest in the room, and the fix makes your close rate worse on purpose. Worth knowing so you do not chase the percentage as if higher were always better.
Why nobody writes about the second lever
Because until recently there was nothing to write. The only way to find out whether a lead was real was to go and look, and once you had gone and looked you may as well price it. The denominator was fixed by the drive.
That is the part that changed. You can text a homeowner a link, she opens it in her phone browser with nothing to install and no account to make, and she captures the room herself. On a recent iPhone Pro it is measured with LiDAR as she walks it. On any other phone it falls back to photographs plus the room sizes she types in, and the photos upload one at a time as she takes them.
A vision model reads those photographs, a model writes the scope brief, and the scope is priced against your own cost book, line by line, every quantity traceable to where it came from. The price is your arithmetic, not a model's guess and not a national average.
What that gives you is a first pass with no drive in it. The leads that come back real get the visit and the proper measurement. The ones that come back as somebody collecting three numbers for a project she is thinking about for next spring get an honest range and nothing else. Your numerator does not change at all. Your denominator does, and so does your week.
If you want the money side of this rather than the ratio, the drive radius page works through what a quote trip costs and where the line should sit.
Questions contractors ask
What is a good close rate for a remodeler?
Nobody can answer that honestly without knowing your denominator, your lead sources and your pricing position. What is answerable is whether yours is going up against your own number from last year, measured the same way. That is the only comparison that is real.
Is it not better to quote everything? You cannot win what you do not bid.
True, and that argument costs people more than any other in this trade. A proposal is not free. It is an evening, and an evening is the one input you cannot buy more of. Bid everything that might be real, and find out which is which before the evening gets spent.
Will refusing to drive out cost me jobs?
Refusing to drive out at all, yes. Not driving out for the first pass, rarely, because the homeowner gets her number faster than she would have from anybody else. The ones who insist on a visit first still get one.
Does a higher close rate always mean I am doing better?
No, and that is the one thing page one gets right in places. A very high rate usually means you are the cheapest quote in the room. Read it alongside your margin or it will flatter you into a bad year.
How long before the number moves?
A quarter, if you are counting a denominator you defined and cohorting by the week the quote went out. Less than that and you are reading noise.
What does it cost to try?
Two scans free and no card. Solo is 79 a month for one user and 20 scans, Crew is 149 for five users and 60 scans, Shop is 349 for unlimited users and 200 scans. Extra scans are 4 dollars each and nothing locks. A capture one of your own crew makes on site is not metered on any plan.
Shrink the denominator on two leads this week
Two scans free, no card. Pick the two enquiries you are least sure about, send a link instead of booking an evening, and see what you learn before you spend one.