The quote we won because we were the most expensive

We nearly did not send it. The job was worth having, we knew roughly what the competition charged, and the number we had arrived at looked, on the page, faintly ridiculous. We sent it anyway because we could not make the work fit any smaller figure without doing a worse version of it.

We got the job. Not despite the price — because of what the price forced us to put in the document.

Three quotes, one obvious loser

The client told us afterwards what the spread had looked like. The figures below are illustrative of the shape rather than exact, but the ratio is the part that matters. The cheapest came in around £4,200. The middle one was £6,800. Ours was £11,500 — not quite triple the lowest, and comfortably the outlier.

The interesting thing is what happened to the cheapest quote. It did not become the front-runner. It became the one the client stopped trusting, because at that price the buyer could not see how the work got done properly, and a number that raises a question is worse than a number that is simply high. Being the cheapest by a distance is a positioning decision, and not always the one people think they are making.

What was in ours that was not in theirs

Reading all three side by side later, the difference was not really price. It was information.

The cheap quote was a paragraph and a figure. The middle one was a list of tasks and a figure. Ours ran to four pages, and none of the extra pages were about us. They were about the parts of the job the client was quietly worried about: what would happen if the survey turned up something unexpected, who was responsible for the bit that sat between us and their existing supplier, what the timeline did if their own sign-off slipped, and what specifically was excluded so nobody discovered it mid-job.

We also broke the price into components — not to justify ourselves, but so the buyer could see where the money went and, crucially, could adjust. A quote presented as a single sealed number gives a buyer exactly one decision: yes or no. A quote broken into parts gives them a conversation.

Nobody buys the cheapest heart surgeon. In any purchase where getting it wrong is expensive, price stops being the main signal and becomes one signal among several.

Price is a signal, not just a number

The thing we had misunderstood for years is that a buyer facing three quotes is not primarily solving for cost. They are solving for the risk of it going wrong, because the cost of the job going wrong is almost always larger than the difference between the quotes.

In this case the client's real exposure was disruption to their own operation. Against that, the £7,300 gap between the cheapest quote and ours was small. What they were buying at the top of the range was a document that had already thought about the failure modes — which is a reasonable proxy for a supplier who will handle them.

That is also why the detail worked. Anyone can claim to be thorough. A quote that names the three things most likely to go wrong on this specific job, and says what happens in each case, demonstrates it instead.

When being the most expensive does not work

This is not an argument for putting your prices up and waiting. Being the highest quote fails, reliably, in three situations.

It fails when the buyer genuinely cannot tell the difference between suppliers, which is most commonly the case for simple, well-defined, commoditised work. If the specification is tight and the outcome is identical whoever does it, price is the only variable left and the cheapest quote should win.

It fails when the price is high and the document is thin, which reads as arrogance rather than confidence. The price and the evidence have to arrive together.

And it fails when the buyer has no budget headroom at all. Sometimes the answer really is that they cannot afford it, and no amount of framing fixes that. Recognising it early saves everyone time — and it is a different problem from a buyer who can afford it and is not yet convinced.

What we changed afterwards

Every quote since has carried the same structure, and it takes about forty minutes longer than the version we used to send.

A short restatement of the problem in the client's own words, so they can see we listened. The price broken into components rather than one sealed figure. An explicit exclusions section, which feels adversarial to write and prevents almost every dispute we used to have. A named risk section covering the two or three things most likely to derail this particular job and what happens in each case. Clear payment terms with the actual dates on them. And a specific next step with a date, rather than a hopeful 'let us know'.

The win rate went up. More usefully, the arguments went down, because most disputes we used to have were not really disputes — they were things nobody had written down at the point where writing them down was easy. Our guide on how to write a quote that wins the job covers the mechanics in full.

The uncomfortable bit

None of this means raising your prices is a strategy. It is not, and just raise your prices is bad advice for good reasons. What it means is that the number and the evidence behind the number are one product, and most small businesses spend all their effort on the number.

If you are losing work on price, the question worth asking is not whether to go lower. It is whether the buyer had enough in front of them to justify going higher — and in most quotes, honestly, they did not.

Common questions

Does being the most expensive quote actually win work?

It can, but only when the price arrives with the evidence to support it. Buyers comparing quotes are usually solving for the risk of the job going wrong rather than for the lowest cost, because that risk is generally worth more than the gap between quotes. A high price paired with a thin document reads as arrogance and loses. A high price paired with a quote that names the likely problems and says what happens in each case reads as competence. Where the work is simple and well specified, though, the cheapest quote should and usually does win.

Should you show a price breakdown in a quote?

Usually yes. A single sealed figure gives the buyer exactly one decision — accept or reject — while a breakdown into components gives them something to discuss, which keeps you in the conversation rather than out of it. It also lets a buyer with limited budget remove an element rather than remove you. The caveat is that a breakdown invites line-by-line negotiation, so price each component as something you would genuinely deliver at that figure. Do not use the breakdown to disguise padding; a buyer who spots one inflated line stops trusting the rest of the document.

What do you do when a customer says a competitor is cheaper?

Do not defend the price and do not immediately discount. Ask what the other quote includes, because the difference is usually scope rather than margin, and the useful move is to make the comparison like-for-like on paper. Then be specific about what your figure covers that theirs does not — the risk you are absorbing, the exclusions they have not stated, the work that sits between suppliers. If you have to move, move on scope rather than rate: a smaller, well-defined piece of work at your normal price protects both the relationship and the price anchor.

Should you follow up after sending a quote?

Yes, and the quote itself should make it unnecessary to chase awkwardly. End every quote with a specific next step and a date — a call already proposed, or a stated date the pricing holds until — so the follow-up is something you agreed rather than something you are imposing. One clear follow-up a few days later is normal and expected; silence is usually read as indifference rather than politeness. If there is still no response after a second contact, ask directly whether the project is still live. A clean no frees up your pipeline faster than an open maybe.