The subject of hit rate came up recently — wins against losses, how many of the jobs you price you actually land. So I looked up my own.
I didn’t love it.
When I closed everything
For most of my career, my hit rate was a thing of beauty — because I cherry-picked. I had a secure place in my market, and I only estimated projects I was pretty sure to get. Builders came to me; the estimate was closer to paperwork than competition. I liked it that way. Closing nearly every job you price feels like winning.
But a high hit rate can be hiding something. Mine wasn’t proof I was beating anybody — it was proof I wasn’t swinging much. I priced the sure things and let the rest go by, and my market position let me get away with it for years.
The market forgot
That position gradually subsided. Competition got tighter. Builders’ memories got shorter — the ones who once wouldn’t trust anyone else with a project will now accept anybody willing to sign at the number that closes their deal. So I find myself working harder to find opportunities than I ever used to, and losing more of the ones I price. Mostly on price, price, price.
It’s a never-ending search for builders who appreciate the level of service we provide and are willing to pay for it — and even those understand that if we price ourselves out of the job, we’re all out together.
So the hit rate came down. And here’s what took me a while to accept: it should have.
A falling hit rate, at a held price, isn’t failure — it’s the receipt for holding the line. Every job I lose at my price is a job that wasn’t going to pay me anyway; I wrote a whole post about the year I learned that. The number I’d actually worry about is the other one: a hit rate climbing because the price is quietly sliding to buy it.
Know the number
The part I’ll stand behind either way: you should know your hit rate. Not a feeling about it — the number. How many priced, how many landed, what the misses had in common. Mine’s sitting in YEStimator because every estimate and every outcome lands there as a matter of course, so looking it up took about a minute. It was uncomfortable, and useful, in the way true numbers usually are.
So — do you know yours? Not what it feels like. The number. I’d genuinely like to hear whether you looked, and whether you loved it.
— Dean Davids, Tailgate Technology