Guide
If you're winning most of your quoted jobs, that's not always good news. Here's what a healthy win rate looks like by job type, and how to tell if yours is too high.
A lot of contractors ask this question expecting one number back. There isn't one. A 30% win rate on kitchen remodels is fine. A 30% win rate on emergency call-outs is a problem. The job type sets the band, because it sets how much comparison shopping the customer is realistically doing.
Win rate here means quoted jobs won divided by quoted jobs issued, over a set period. It excludes jobs you did without a formal quote (like small repairs you priced on the spot and the customer said yes on site).
These ranges come from how buying decisions actually happen for each job type, not from a survey. Treat them as a sense check, not gospel.
| Job type | Typical win rate | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Reactive / emergency | 60-80% | Customer has a burst pipe, no power, or a blocked drain. They call one or two people and book whoever answers fastest with a sane price. |
| Scheduled repair | 40-55% | Non-urgent fix, some shopping around, usually 2-3 quotes gathered before deciding. |
| Larger installs and remodels | 20-35% | High value, long consideration, often 3-5 quotes, sometimes more. Customer is comparing scope, materials and trust as much as price. |
If most of your work is reactive plumbing or HVAC breakdowns and you're winning 65%, that's healthy. If you're winning 65% on full bathroom remodels, that's unusual and worth a closer look at your numbers before you assume you're just great at sales.
Here's the mechanism. When customers get multiple quotes for scheduled or larger work, price is doing a lot of the sorting. If you win three out of four of those jobs, month after month, the most likely explanation is that your price sits below the market clearing point, not that your pitch is unusually persuasive. Persuasion moves win rate a bit. Price moves it a lot.
The tell is consistency. One month at 78% could be luck, a slow month for competitors, or a run of easy jobs. Two consecutive months above your band's ceiling on quoted (not reactive) work is a pricing signal, not a sales story.
This matters because a high win rate feels good but can be quietly costing you money. Check your numbers against the markup and margin calculator to see whether your quoted margin is actually where you think it is, and the hourly rate calculator to see if your baseline rate covers what it needs to.
Five quotes is noise. Win three of five and you'll swing between 40% and 80% depending on which two you lose. Twenty quotes gives you a number you can act on. If you don't issue 20 quotes a month, extend the window: track a rolling 20, however long that takes to accumulate.
Record three things for every quote, no software needed:
A notebook or a spreadsheet column works fine. The point is having 20 rows you can sort by job type and tally.
If you've run two consecutive months above the ceiling for your job type on quoted work, raise prices 5-8% on new leads only. Don't touch jobs already quoted or booked. Then re-measure over the next 20 quotes in that category.
This is a dial, not a one-time fix. Revisit it every quarter, or whenever material and labour costs shift enough to matter.
Win rate alone doesn't tell you which pricing strategy makes more money. What matters is expected profit per quote issued: win rate multiplied by gross profit per job. Here's a real comparison for scheduled repair work.
| Option A | Option B | |
|---|---|---|
| Quotes issued | 20 | 20 |
| Average price | $800 | $1,000 |
| Win rate | 75% | 55% |
| Jobs won | 15 | 11 |
| Gross profit per job (40% margin) | $320 | $400 |
| Total gross profit | $4,800 | $4,400 |
On raw totals, Option A wins: $4,800 versus $4,400. But that's not the full story once you add labour hours. Say each job takes 6 hours on-site. Option A books 15 jobs, 90 hours, for $4,800 profit: $53.33 profit per hour. Option B books 11 jobs, 66 hours, for $4,400 profit: $66.67 profit per hour.
Option B makes more money per hour worked, with 24 fewer hours on the tools that month. That's the real comparison: not just who wins more quotes, but who makes more profit per hour issuing them. Run your own job numbers through the job profitability calculator to see where the crossover point sits for your trade and margins.
Pull your last 20 quotes by job type. Tally wins and losses. Compare against the bands above. If you're inside the band, leave pricing alone and focus on speed of response and clarity of the quote itself, since those move win rate within a healthy range. If you're above the band for two months running on quoted work, raise 5-8% on new leads and re-measure. Don't chase a higher win rate as a goal in itself. Chase more profit per hour, and let the win rate land where the maths puts it.
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