15 Tips to Win More Construction Bids (in 2023)

Do you want to learn how to win more construction bids? Thousands of contractors are using these brand new tactics to take their company to the next level. Here’s exactly how you can join them and start exploding your business.

 

 

We specialize in estimating for busy contractors, so once you implement some of the strategies I’m about to share with you below and you need help estimating, we can help.  Learn more about our estimating service for Contractors and Subcontractors.

 

My name is Daniel Quindemil and I’m the founder of I Am Builders. We’re a construction sales and consulting firm for contractors nationwide.

We’ve been able to compile a list of 15 things that if you can just implement half of these things, you’re going to start seeing your bid ratio and your percentages go up almost instantly.

 

1. Lead Generation Services

Tip number one is to use construction lead generation services. Great lead generation services, such as Building Connected and the Blue Book, help to connect the general contractors with the sub-contractors.

It also connects the general contractors with developers and architects that are looking for people to bid their job.

Let’s say you’re the owner that is searching for GCs and looking to post your job. The researchers doing your lead generation are going to find out about permits and things like that.

With that being said, using lead generation services is the best way to get wind of active projects right now so you can start bidding them.

 

2. Visiting Potential Clients

Tip number two is to invest your time in visiting potential clients. This is going to get your foot in the door, especially when dealing with new clients.

One of the things I always say is “Go on Google, search, and find out who are the general contractors, architects, and property managers. I drafted an article a year ago, 27 Ways You Get More Construction Jobs in 2021, and it is a list that I compiled consisting of 27 different ways and different types of clients that you can go after that will teach you how to get a construction job.

For example, if you’re a subcontractor, most subs think they’re limited to general contractors. Well, guess what? You can actually go to property managers. You can even go to universities and malls and become preferred contractors.

Whenever they have to paint, repaint, or patch something, you’re the one that comes to save the day. Though they might be small contracts and small deals, getting them consistently will get you a lot of money.

If you’re a GC, you can go to realtors. Realtors are a really good source for getting construction jobs because you get your foot in the door in the beginning stages of the construction process.

 

3. Call Everyone on Your List

The next tip we’re going to talk about is to call everyone on your list. The best leads you can possibly get are people that you’ve worked for before, previous clients, people that you’ve bid before, and people that you’ve networked before because they know who you are already especially when it comes to your construction business.

Everybody tends to forget that we are in the people business.

This business consists of two important things:

1. People
2. Sales

When you’re dealing with multi-million-dollar contracts or multi hundred-thousand-dollar contracts, you’re going to hire people you know, that you trust, and that you can have the confidence that they’re going to do the work.

You’re not going to just hire somebody you do not know to bid a job for you. If you’ve talked to them before, if you’ve networked with them before, or if you’ve done a project for them before, call them.

Make a list of people you have had done business with before and start emailing and calling people. You’re going to see some quick opportunities for business once you do this.

 

4. Estimate as Many Projects as You Can

Tip number four is to estimate as many projects as you can, as fast as you can. We are in a numbers game, regardless if you’re in residential or commercial construction.

Pro Tip: The more bids you put out there, the higher your percentages are.

Let’s say my closing rate is 20%. It’s a good closing rate, but I’m only bidding five jobs. I’m maybe going to land one job once a month.

On the contrary, let’s say I’m doing five jobs a month, but my closing rate is 10% and I’m not good at closing because I’m so busy during the day that I don’t do follow up with my bids.

If I were to do 60 bids in that month with a 10% closing rate, I’m going to win six jobs, which is 10% of 60. Do you see the difference? My closing rate might be less, but by sheer volume and force, I’m going to win it.

All these tips are going to improve your close ratio. But by doing what we just talked about will allow you to start winning more bids right away.

The way that you are going to be able to perform all of these estimates for projects that you are bidding is if you hire a company like I AM Builders to perform the construction takeoff for each project.

It’s just a numbers game.

 

5. Follow-Up

Tip number five is to invest time in following up with your clients. The biggest mistake a lot of contractors make is they’ll spend the time to bid the job, they’ll find the client, but once they submit the bid, they just wait.

They say, “I’m going to wait on the architect” or “I’m going to wait on the GC to call me. I don’t want to sound desperate.” Hey, guess what? The people that win the bids are the ones that call and follow up.

I’ve had contractors call me before and say, “Hey, I know I talked to you two days ago, but is there any progress or update?” Those guys give me the sense that they don’t have any work.

But the guys that will call me and say, “Hey, I’m trying to plan my schedule two months in advance, and I have a lot of work coming up. I just need to see where you guys are projects-wise to see if it’s going to take three, four, five, or six months till the next project. I just want to do a follow-up.”

If you could follow up every couple of weeks, that’s going to get you better chances of winning the bids right away.

 

6. Find Out Who Else Is Bidding the Same Job

Tip number six is to find out who else is bidding the same job. If you are a subcontractor, this is a requirement.

Let’s say you’re bidding, and there are three or four other GCs bidding the same job. If your GC doesn’t win, you’re immediately knocked out of the running because some GC that doesn’t even know you won the job and has his own contacts for subs.

What you do is you call the architect or the owner and say, “We’re a painting contractor and we’re interested in bidding on this job because we’re doing it for someone else. Can we be part of the part of your company?” Most of the time, they’re going to say yes.

If there are three GCs, your chances are going to be 300% higher to win the job than if you didn’t do that.

If you are a general contractor, you want to find out who your competition is. If your competition is someone that’s just going to lowball the job and try to undercut to win, maybe you shouldn’t bid that job.

If you know that you’re not a huge GC, have low overhead, and your competitor are these big corporation general contractors, then you probably want to bid in this scenario because you’re probably going to be cheaper than them.

You’re going to win the bid just by your number. Not a big fan of being the low bidder, but sometimes it’s very attractive to get your foot in the door when your prices is really low.

 

7. Invest Time with Those Involved in the Project

Tip number seven is to invest time and become friends with the project managers and the estimators. I call this getting behind enemy lines.

Before I started the company, I was a senior project manager at a commercial construction company. We would go visit clients all the time. We used to invest time in meeting the estimators and the project managers. This became a regular thing that we would do, so we would implement it in our schedules to meet with them at least once a week.

One of the things that I always found out was they were willing to give us all this inside information that a phone call wouldn’t do.

I remember this company called RCC, which was one of the companies we would go visit. They had these two estimators, and every time we would go by, they would open up the spreadsheets and tell us where our numbers were compared to the other guys.

This was a strategy that we would use because they would give us all this inside information.

In addition, they would introduce us to the project managers who are like the gatekeepers. They’re the ones that decide who gets the job.

You want to make sure you visit and meet them, shake hands, and let them see your face so that when you start calling, they can associate your face with the phone call or the email. This is essential in running a successful construction company.

 

8. Do a Great Job on the Projects You Perform

Tip number eight is to make sure you do a ridiculously good job on the projects that you do land so you can get repeat business, which can only be done if you have the proper building cost estimator such as I AM Builders.

In the construction game, if you can invest really hard for a few years in every job that you win, you’re going to hit home runs on them.

Maybe you don’t make a lot of money, but you do them fast. You do them quickly. You’re always staffing the job. You’re under budget, you meet their budget, or you meet their schedule.

You want to do a good job because the clients will call you over and over and over. We’re in the business where most contractors lie, don’t do things right, overcharge on change orders, and a bunch of other things.

What I want to recommend to you is to knock every project out of the park so that you make a positive difference, and everyone knows you’re a different contractor. We call it being like a “seal team contractor.”

 

9. Branded Shirts, Website, Business Cards, etc.

Tip number nine is having branded shirts, a website, and business cards for your construction business, which is essential to know when learning how to start a construction business. Having a nice website doesn’t really matter for the purposes of construction, however, what it will do is speak volumes regarding your professionalism.

If you go up to a contractor or homeowner with branded shirts, some brochures, and with really nice-looking business cards, you’ll give the image of a professional company.

Even if it’s just you in the company, guess what? You could go to vistaprint.com or go to your local print shop that can do your shirts.

You could also have branded paperwork for your contracts, change orders, and proposals just by putting your logo on them.

If you don’t have a logo, you can go to fiverr.com and just hire someone for like $20 and they’ll make a nice logo for you.

 

10. Write Detailed Proposals

Tip number 10 is to make sure all your proposals are detailed. Many jobs are sometimes lost because you might put too many things in the scope of work.

For example, you put in that you’re going need $8,000 in equipment which includes a lift, a scaffold, or something like that, but you come to find out that the GC is already buying it.

Guess what? You’ve knocked yourself out because the other guys might not include that in their bid. So, it’s important that you highlight or put a note that this includes scaffolding for six months.

When the GC, the architect, or the owner reviews your proposal, they say, “Hey, you know what? We’re providing that so can you take that out of your price?” You’re going to start getting better results by just doing that.

It also shows that you’re paying attention to the details of the project. I highly encourage you to write a really good proposal template.

Below, I’m going to put a link to a video that I made that’s going to help you learn more about how to do a proposal template.

Download Proposal Template Here

 

11. Analyze Your Prices

Tip number 11 is to analyze your prices. Prices are constantly changing in the market. Recently, you’ve been able to see that because of COVID and because of shortages and things like that such as the prices of lumber and steel.

Everything has gone up, right? You have to constantly analyze those numbers.

Labor also changes. If the economy is good, then there’s more work out there that the peace workers and the subs want to charge more money for. If things are tough and there’s no work out there, they want to charge less money. Things change all the time.

Also, knowing who your competitor is, is going to tell you if their prices are going to be higher or lower. Knowing this allows you to adjust your pricing.

How do you find that out? You make phone calls, you do visits, and do the stuff that we just talked about. You have to do those things.

 

12. Analyze Your Competitors on Each Job

Tip number 12 is to analyze your competitors on each job.

If you’re a small company, it’s maybe one or two of you in your company, and you’re going against a massive construction corporation that’s bidding the same job, then guess what?

Your overhead is going to be lower because you don’t have project managers. You don’t have accountants. You don’t have bookkeepers. You don’t have offices, all that stuff. Your price is going to be much lower.

On the flip side, if you’re a big company and you’re going against a little guy, then guess what? You have to tighten up your numbers if you want a chance of winning that job because they’re going to come in lower than you.

 

13. Offer Valuable Engineering or Alternative Tips

Tip number 13 is to offer valuable engineering or alternative tips for projects. A lot of times, architects, even though they’re professional architects, are not professional builders.

If there are things that you know since you’re constantly looking at architecture and engineering plans, seeing what everybody else does, and have better ways to do stuff, then you could really offer a lot of help to these engineers and architects because they are not seeing this stuff as much as you are.

They do their work the way they were taught, which is usually the way they’ve done it for 30 years. That’s what they use in their plans.

If you can identify, and I’ve done this a bunch of times, cheaper ways, you know what? Instead of using a TJI Joist, for example, why don’t we do some wood trusses? It’s going to be better and require less labor.

Another example is that if there’s a type of column that’s not needed, a less expensive type of column could be used that does the same thing. Guess what?

You might be able to suggest tips like that so they can go back to their architect or engineer, and they can change the plans because it might be better or cheaper. Those are just things that you can offer to the project that will help you win the job.

If you offer a tip that wins them the job, they’re going to want to give you the job, or they’re going to feel obligated to at least give you the best shot of winning it.

 

14. Start Small and Work Your Way Up

Tip number 14 is to remember when dealing with new clients, you want to start small and work your way up.

We do construction estimating for a lot of contractors, and a big mistake that happens all the time is that one-man contractors get an opportunity from the Blue Book, some big GC, or get a really big opportunity for a huge project, but it ends up costing them a lot of money in time to try to bid those jobs.

The truth is unless your customer knows who you are, you have this very good reputation, or everybody knows your company, they’re not going to give you a big job right off the bat.

I remember when I was working at the commercial construction company and we started off with this one little company and we started off doing these really low-quality jobs, like demo jobs, that were small. We didn’t really make that much money, but then we got a better job, and then a better job, and then a better job.

Before I left that company, we landed a job with them, which had a $4 million contract. They trusted us with the most high-profile job that they were doing at that time. Our contract was about $400,000. We were a subcontractor, so our work entailed complicated ceiling framing with millwork. We had to do all that.

We started with these little jobs to eventually being given their most important job, which framing and drywall are arguably one of the most important parts of the project because it sets up the rest of the project.

Think about that. We started small and we ended up becoming one of their preferred contractors.

 

15. Cut Out Bad Leads and Bad Clients

Lastly, tip number 15 is to cut out the bad construction project leads and the bad clients. You’re going to notice that when you start bidding a lot of jobs, there’s going to be times that you’re going to bid 10, 20 jobs, and they’re not going to give you anything.

They might be shopping your number. Let’s say that you bid them $100k for the project. They will then use your number as leverage to get a lower price from somebody else. They could even then use that lower price to come back to you to see if you would go lower.

Also, you want to see the reputations of the clients because if you’re bidding for what I like to call a “Walmart contractor,” which is one that does a lot of bids and projects, they might have a large rolodex of contractors that they’re getting bids from.

 

Conclusion

Anyways, those are 15 tips to help you win more construction bids. I know that if you do just half of these, you’re going to be better off than most contractors. All these tips can be applied whether you’re a GC or a sub.

We also wrote a blueprint called the Explode Strategy. You can learn more about it on our website.

In our industry, if you just invest in getting leads, talking to the clients, visiting them, bidding a lot of jobs, and then doing the follow-up, that’s it. It’s a game-changer for your company.

So do that. I know it’s going to help you. If you have any questions, feel free to reach out. We’re always here to help you with your construction business.