Good-Better-Best Quotes and a 7-Day Follow-Up: ResponsiBid's Playbook for Home Service Sales
Curt Kempton, Founder ·ResponsiBid · Phoenix, AZ
Built Local Podcast with Clay Lawrence · · 50 min episode
The short version
Curt Kempton started a window cleaning and pressure washing company in the Phoenix area, built an instant quoting tool for it, and turned that tool into ResponsiBid. He explains why a single-price quote leaves a home service business with a 50-50 chance, how good-better-best packages and a seven-day follow-up sequence close more jobs, and why he says users who added custom video to their proposals quadrupled their average ticket.
Key takeaways from Curt Kempton
- 1
Stop quoting one price. A single number forces a yes or no, while three packages move the customer from researching to choosing.
- 2
Build packages inside a service and bundles across services, so the customer sees options they would not have known to ask for.
- 3
Write follow-ups as one or two sentences about the customer that end in a question mark, not paragraphs about your company.
- 4
Send five to seven emails and texts in the first week after a quote, and keep automated texts to about two.
- 5
Have a second person from the company introduce themselves midweek, so a lead who went quiet has an easy way back in.
- 6
Count every phone ring as a lead. A close rate can look healthy only because unanswered calls never made it into the math.
- 7
Use the off-season to rework packages, prices and scheduled emails so the phones are already ringing when new hires start.
Who is Curt Kempton and where did ResponsiBid come from?
Curt Kempton is the founder of ResponsiBid, a quoting and follow-up tool that bolts onto a home service company’s CRM. He came to software from the field. After business school he planned to race mountain bikes professionally, decided that life would not suit a family, and started a window cleaning and pressure washing company in the Phoenix area instead.
He wanted to respond to customers faster than anyone else, so he built instant online quoting for his own company. Other owners kept asking where he got it. ResponsiBid became a product about two to three years after he first built it for himself.
Today he describes what it does in three parts: quote quickly, follow up flawlessly, schedule smartly.
Why does a single price lose home service jobs?
Because it gives the customer an ultimatum. Someone calls, you name a price, and they can only say yes or no. Curt puts the odds at 50-50, and worse, the customer has no way to judge the number, so they call a competitor to compare.
His fix is good-better-best. Ask a few more questions, then present three versions of the result. In his pet waste example, that could be a monthly pickup, a twice-monthly pickup with sanitizing, or the same with the waste hauled away. The customer stops deciding whether to buy and starts deciding which one.
Packages sit inside one service. Bundles combine services. He said well over 95% of ResponsiBid users quote this way.
Showing the value matters as much as naming it. When ResponsiBid let sales reps add a custom video to a proposal, walking the property and pointing at the dirty spots, Curt said the users who did it “quadrupled the average ticket price overnight.”
He also thinks many owners undercharge out of low self-esteem. Early on he would write a $250 window quote for an elderly customer and talk himself down to $100. Online quotes cured him: the same kind of customer would say yes to an $850 window washing job. “I was protecting people from something that they didn’t need to be protected from,” he said.
What should a 7-day quote follow-up look like?
It should be a mix of email, text and mail, written about the customer, with a question at the end of nearly every message. Curt said follow-up is where you find out the packages were unclear, the wrong service was quoted, or a renovation has to finish first. Most competitors never follow up at all.
The sequence he described:
- Right away: an email with the quote and how to move forward, then a short text a few minutes later asking if the email arrived. Now they have your number.
- Through the week: five to seven messages in total. Keep automated texts to about two. “SMS is sacred,” he said.
- By the end of the week: change the questions. Are they still waiting on other quotes? Would it help to compare them together? Would they like to be walked through your insurance?
- Midweek or end of week: a second person, such as the office manager, introduces themselves. A lead who ghosted the sales rep now has a way back in without feeling awkward.
- Alongside it: a mailer to the five nearest neighbors saying someone nearby got a quote. ResponsiBid does this through SendJim.
What kills follow-up is talking about yourself. He calls it “we-ing all over yourself”: we have been in business 15 years, we use this brush, we have this rating.
Automate the sequence, but edit it by hand when a customer says something unusual. If they told you they are away for a week and you send five emails anyway, you have shown them you did not listen.
Which sales number do most home service businesses never track?
Phone rings to customers. Curt counts every ring as a lead. An owner who only counts the people they spoke to may think the close rate is fine when the real leak is calls that were never answered or returned.
A 10% quote-to-close rate in cleaning probably means there is a problem, he said, though it can be right for very high-ticket work.
How should a seasonal business use the off-season?
Plan the spring in the winter. Checking hoses and O-rings is a small part of it. The bigger part is looking at which packages customers chose last year, working out where to raise prices, and writing and scheduling the emails to past customers now.
Done well, the phones are already busy when new hires finish training. “If you just let things happen organically, life is happening to you,” he said.
On adding services, he has seen holiday lighting out-earn pressure washing for some companies. The mistake is training a crew on a new service in the middle of the busy season: “It’s time to make hay, but we’re not making hay. We’re building a new hay barn.”
What does it take to get past $1 million?
Know someone who has done it, and accept that the job changes. What got a company to $300,000 will not get it to $400,000. The owners who stall are usually trying to juggle one more thing themselves instead of managing the people who juggle, and holding them accountable.
In Curt's words
“When a fish bites the hook, that's cool, but you still got to reel them in.”
“One sentence about them and, obviously within social norms, you can send almost as much as you want.”
“If you don't have a few people saying, 'Whoa, backing off a little bit,' then you're probably not doing it enough.”
“When a business is growing, the things that got them where they're at won't work anymore to get them where they're going.”
Questions this episode answers
What is good-better-best pricing for a home service business?
Good-better-best pricing means answering a quote request with three packages instead of one price. Curt Kempton of ResponsiBid says a single price gives the customer only a yes or a no and sends them off to compare you with someone else. Three options show different versions of the result, so the question becomes which one fits, and the customer moves from research mode to decision mode.
How often should you follow up after sending a quote?
Curt Kempton says almost every home service business follows up too little. His own first-week sequence runs to five to seven messages across email and text, with only about two of them automated texts, and he says it can take 7 to 20 touches when the customer does not buy on the spot. If nobody ever tells you to back off a little, he says, you are probably not doing it enough.
What should a quote follow-up message say?
Keep it to one or two sentences about the customer and end with a question. ResponsiBid's Curt Kempton gives examples such as asking whether they had questions about the proposal, whether anything was missing, or whether they are still waiting on other quotes. Long messages about your years in business or your equipment train customers to ignore you.
What sales KPI do most home service businesses ignore?
The number of times the phone rings compared with the number of customers you end up working with. Curt Kempton says many owners believe they have a high close rate because they only count the people they actually spoke to. He is confident that if he called 10 cleaning companies in his area, he would reach 25% of them or fewer.
Should a pressure washing company add Christmas lights or snow removal?
Curt Kempton says holiday lighting has revitalized more pressure washing companies than he can name, because the season offsets the slow months and the work is trainable and profitable. He is more cautious about snow removal, which needs different skills and equipment and can wear out the trucks you rely on the rest of the year. His rule is to run a proof of concept before rolling any new service out at scale.
How do you grow a home service business past $1 million?
Curt Kempton's advice is to get close to someone who has already done it, through friendship or a coaching program, and to expect that what got you to your current revenue will not get you to the next level. He says the biggest thing holding owners at $200,000 to $300,000 is trying to do more themselves instead of managing people and holding them accountable.
Want to work with ResponsiBid? Visit ResponsiBid at get.responsi.bid.
