As business owners, we all want our estimates and proposals to be perfect – clear, accurate, and flawless from the first try. But by the time we finally send them out, our competitors have often already won the deal.
I’ve seen this happen again and again, especially with companies that sell complex products or services. Just calculating the cost takes a huge amount of work. Take my own consultancy, for example. Clients often ask, “How much does it cost to implement this and that?” Sounds simple – but it isn’t. On my side, that question triggers more than a hundred others. The price can swing by hundreds of percent depending on the scope. There’s no single answer. You can only honestly say: “It costs money.”
And that’s exactly where most companies lose time and momentum.
In this article, I’ll show you how one window and door company broke out of that trap – and how I later applied the same logic in my own business. No fancy tools, no radical changes. Just a different way to think about quotes – and how they can actually help you win faster.
Ready to see how a simple mindset shift can help you speed up deals and close more confidently? Let’s dive deep into the story!
The Precision Trap: How Perfection Loses Deals
Some time ago, one of my clients came to me with a problem. They launched a campaign to find distributors to sell their windows and doors – and once they found them, a new challenge appeared. Those distributors started flooding them with quote requests for potential projects.
Here’s how they handled that at the time: when a homeowner wanted a quote, my client would ask for the full house plan. Then their engineers would manually enter every dimension and dozens of parameters into a specialized program to calculate a perfectly precise price. It looked impressive – detailed drawings, engineering specs, everything. But it took three days.
Meanwhile, their competitors were closing deals in fifteen minutes. They’d bring customers into a showroom, click a few buttons, and print a quote right there. Just one small line at the bottom: “Approximate price.”
That one line changed everything. While my client was perfecting their estimates, their competitors were winning the business.
This over-obsession with precision is exactly where so many sales processes break down. You get so focused on one detail that you miss the bigger picture. You spend too much time perfecting a quote, or building a complex marketing funnel, or hiring a “sales wizard,” but the real problem is much simpler.
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From Three Days to Fifteen Minutes
Back to the story. So, we gathered all the engineers and broke the process apart. We realized the calculations always came down to a few key factors: number of windows, their quality, and the same for doors. That was it. From that, we built a simple formula to generate quick, approximate quotes.
Then we turned that logic into a lightweight piece of software – something sales reps could use even during a phone call. No blueprints, no waiting days. Just a few questions and an instant estimate.
They’d press one button and a PDF with a proposal would pop up. It was a one-page PDF that just listed the windows and doors, their quantity, their quality, and the final price. In the system, they could see their margin with an inclusion for a slight risk and how much they could move on the price. They could also make variations of these proposals, like lowering the quality, changing the glazing or color, or changing the handles. This all affected the price, and they could give the client five or six different versions of their proposal in 15-20 minutes.
But this came at a price. They sacrificed accuracy; their proposals’ precision dropped from 99% to about 75-80%. This is a lot for a construction business. At first glance, when we approached this challenge, we thought, “What? 20%? The customer has a pretty low-margin business, and they can’t afford to make a 20% mistake.”
They did what everyone else in their industry did – added a single line on the quote saying the price was approximate. But on the other hand, their clients were now getting a much better experience thanks to how quickly the proposals arrived.
That’s when they stopped losing deals just because of slow quotes and finally caught up with their competitors. By accepting that their estimates didn’t need to be perfectly accurate, they leveled the playing field – clients were no longer walking away before the conversation even started.
Now, with those quick proposals out the door, they had time and attention to pull customers deeper into the buying experience – inviting them to the showroom, running live demos, and showing what actually made them different. The whole experience began to feel more premium, and that’s where they started winning.
When those rough quotes started turning into real orders, an engineer would finally sit down and do what he always did – design the full project. And that’s when it became clear that accuracy didn’t really matter. The clients didn’t care that the estimate was 75-80% right. Once they shared more details, the final price shifted anyway.
The Real Purpose of a Proposal
I then realized one simple thing: a proposal is often not so much about the price or giving a precise commitment to the client, especially in industries where some work needs to be done. A proposal is more your confirmation to a potential client that you are interested in them.
It’s an opportunity to answer their question very quickly. It’s an opportunity for them to interact with your customer support and for you to show them that you work well.
Then I came to a simple conclusion – one I still stand by and want to share today. We, as professionals, obsess over precision. We think every little detail matters: the exact handle, the mechanism, the material, the lead time. To us, those 1-2% price differences feel enormous. But to the client? They don’t care. They see the product as a whole, not as a collection of parts.
That’s when it hit me – the problem isn’t in the details. The problem is that we think the client cares as much as we do. They don’t. What matters to them is that they get a fast, confident proposal, a sense that we’re paying attention, and a good experience – a showroom visit, a live demo, someone who actually engages with them.
So later, when that exact handle goes out of stock, it’s not a crisis. You can just say, “Hey, when we made the quote, these handles were available – now they’re not. Let’s go with this alternative instead.” And the client will be perfectly fine with that. Because by that point, you’ve already earned their trust.
Applying the Logic to a Consulting Business
Now, back to my own company. I run a consulting firm that customizes software and develops frameworks for sales and customer service. My situation was a lot trickier than with windows. Windows are tangible – a house has ten openings, and unless someone literally carves a new hole in the wall, that number won’t change. My work wasn’t like that. The scope could shift endlessly.
At first, I tried to make sense of it – I built calculators, templates, and estimation tools – anything to at least get a rough sense of cost categories. But I eventually gave up. It was pointless. The truth is, in our kind of projects, you often don’t even know the full scope until you’ve already started. You dig into one thing, uncover another, then a third and a fifth. And yet, the client still wants a price upfront.
So we changed the model entirely. Instead of trying to quote the whole thing, we started selling small retainers – low-risk, high-value commitments. Something concrete enough to start the relationship, but small enough to feel safe. That allowed us to show what we can actually do before talking big numbers.
It also solved another issue. In services, not every client is a good fit. Sometimes you start working together and realize you’re speaking different languages – expectations don’t match, communication breaks down, tension builds. It’s better to find that out early. Those small retainers became a testing ground – for them to see how we work, and for us to decide if we actually want to keep working with them.
And once the client understands who we are and how we work, we can be fully transparent: “Look, we don’t know exactly how much this will cost. It’ll be around this much per month, for roughly this many months. We can’t promise precision – but you’ve seen how we operate.” That’s how trust is built – through experience, not perfect estimates.
Our initial proposal became a standard template – something we could send instantly. “Want to start working with us? Let’s go.” No endless back-and-forth, no overengineering. Everyone’s obsessed with building complex quoting systems or finding the perfect CRM plugin, but almost no one steps back to rethink the proposal itself.
Final Thoughts: Simplicity Wins
Of course, I’m not talking about large tenders or heavy construction projects, where every calculation must be exact – that’s a different game. But let’s stay rational: far more companies could simplify their quoting process than they realize. Only a small fraction truly need rigid, unchangeable estimates.
Even in tenders, prices shift – material costs rise, deadlines move, things change. The difference is, some industries are forced to pretend that everything’s predictable. The rest of us? We can be honest about uncertainty – and build stronger relationships because of it.
For most companies – electricians, builders, service providers, lawyers, consultants – this problem can be solved far more simply than they think. When a potential client asks for a proposal, they’re usually not demanding precision; they’re just trying to understand their budget and see what’s out there.
At that stage, your goal isn’t to deliver a perfectly calculated price – it’s to respond fast enough to stay in the game. The proposal isn’t just about the number; it’s a touchpoint. A reason to follow up, send something useful, share context, and stay in their mind. People are naturally curious about price – it’s your easiest opening to start a conversation.
Those who only care about the cheapest offer will go elsewhere regardless – you lose nothing. But the clients who value expertise, process, and communication will notice how you work. They’ll feel the difference.
And that’s the point I want to leave you with. Think about how you handle proposals. Do you overcomplicate them? Do you rely too much on tools? Or do you use them to actually connect with the client?
If you’re not sure where the bottleneck is – or just want a second opinion – we can help. At Muncly, we help businesses rethink their quoting and sales processes – cutting friction and saving hours each week. Let’s talk and see where your process can be simplified!