How to write an estimate customers say yes to
Say what you'll do, what it costs, and what it leaves out. Add the date the price holds until and one way to say yes. Then send it the day you see the job.
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Explainer
A no-show policy only works if the customer reads it before the appointment. Keep it short enough for a text, and put it in the booking confirmation and the reminder.
The rule, in the text they read the day before.
Search for a no-show policy, and the advice is about the fee. How much to charge. Whether to let the first miss go. A form to sign at the first visit. All of it assumes the customer knows the rule.
The fee isn’t the hard part. Where the rule sits is. If it lives on a terms page, the customer first sees it on the bill. Then the fee feels like a trap. You drove out to an empty house, and now the bill starts an argument.
Say what notice you need, what a no-show costs, and how to change the time. Keep it short enough to fit in a text. Write it the way you’d say it on the phone.
Here’s an example for a business that goes out to the customer. Fill in the brackets:
“Can’t make it? Reply by [time] the day before, and we’ll find another time. If we arrive and nobody’s home, there’s a [your fee] trip charge. Stuck in traffic? Let us know.”
In the two messages every booking gets: the confirmation and the reminder. The confirmation shows it right after they say yes. The reminder shows it again, while there’s still time to change. Your website can keep the long version.
A fee they read the day before is fair. A fee they find on the bill starts a fight.
Make changing the time easy, too. If moving it takes one reply, they can tell you the day before. That gives you a day to fill the slot. Here’s why a reply works better than a phone call.
A no-show is a job you’d already won, lost that morning. It’s a lead gone cold after it said yes.
In Income Mavericks, the confirmation and the reminder can carry a reschedule link. You set the minimum notice, say 24 hours. Before that, the customer moves the booking themselves.
A few short lines, in the two texts every booking already gets. The fee stays the same. The customer just sees it in time.
Say what you'll do, what it costs, and what it leaves out. Add the date the price holds until and one way to say yes. Then send it the day you see the job.
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Retyping a quote into an invoice is where small things go missing: a fee, the right price, the extra job. Make the invoice from the quote, and the bill matches what they agreed to.
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A late payment often isn't a refusal. The invoice got missed, or nobody knows it was paid. Email it, text that it's there, remind on set days, and stop the moment it's paid.
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