Speed beats polish
The quotation that arrives on Tuesday for work surveyed on Monday wins a great deal of work it had no right to win, because the customer has a problem now and your competitors take a fortnight.
This is almost entirely an operational matter rather than a sales one. If the survey information, equipment details and pricing are in one place, a quotation takes twenty minutes. If the technician's notes have to be interpreted and the prices looked up in three places, it takes a week, and the week is why you lost.
Write for somebody who is not an engineer
Many quotations are written in a register that assumes the reader knows what a TXV is. The person deciding is often a facilities manager, a finance director or a homeowner, and the quotation that gets approved is the one they can explain to somebody else.
Describe the problem in their terms, the proposed work in plain language, and the benefit in terms they care about: reliability, running cost, downtime, compliance. The technical detail belongs in the quotation too, but underneath rather than instead.
Exclusions prevent arguments
The most expensive part of a quotation is the thing that was not mentioned. Access equipment, out-of-hours working, making good, disposal of old equipment, electrical supply alterations, builder's work, permits.
Listing exclusions feels defensive and reads as professional. It also protects the price: an unlisted assumption becomes an expectation, and an expectation becomes an argument at exactly the moment you want to be paid.
Options convert better than a single number
A single price invites a yes-or-no decision, and the easiest answer is to think about it. Two or three options change the question from whether to buy to which to buy.
The structure that works is a straightforward repair, a better option with a clear reason, and a replacement where that is genuinely warranted, each with its own price and consequence. Not a sales trick: an honest reflection that the customer has choices, with the information to make one.
Follow up once, properly
Most quotations are sent and never mentioned again, which the sender experiences as politeness and the customer experiences as indifference. A single follow-up, a few days later, asking whether anything in it needs explaining, converts a meaningful share of work that would otherwise have gone quiet.
It is also a diagnostic. Customers who have chosen somebody else will usually say so if asked directly, and the reason they give is worth more than the job you lost. Over a year, those answers are the only honest information you will get about how your pricing and your proposals are read from outside.
Know your win rate by value, not by count
Counting quotations won against quotations sent flatters a business that wins small work and loses large work. Measuring by value tells you what is actually happening to the pipeline, and the two numbers frequently point in opposite directions.
Split it by work type as well. A company winning most of its maintenance proposals and almost none of its installation quotes has a specific, addressable problem, and it is invisible in a single company-wide percentage.
Make accepting it trivial, and make it expire
Every step between a decision and an acceptance loses some proportion of the work. A quotation requiring a printed signature and a scan will sit on a desk. One that can be accepted online, immediately, from the email, is accepted while the customer is still thinking about it.
Give it a validity period, and mean it. Prices move, particularly on equipment, and an open-ended quotation accepted in five months is a loss you agreed to in advance. Expiry also creates a reason to make contact, which is the most natural follow-up there is.