"Someone quoted us less"
This is different from a customer who is still collecting quotes, which module 4.3 covers. Here a competing number exists, the customer has said it out loud, and it is lower. Reps do one of three things: match it, disparage the competitor, or deliver a speech about not being the cheapest. All three lose, and they lose to the same underlying error, which is treating this as a conversation about price. In almost every case the two quotes are not for the same work, and finding out where they differ is both more useful to the customer and much better for you than anything you can say about your own quality.
Two quotes for the same job are usually not the same job
The reliable pattern across trades is that a cheaper quote is cheaper for a reason that is not generosity. Disposal excluded. Scaffolding as an extra. A shorter guarantee, or a guarantee on materials rather than workmanship. An assumption that what is underneath is sound, with the discovery priced as a variation later. Subcontracted labour. A smaller scope that the customer has not noticed is smaller.
None of that makes the competitor dishonest. Plenty of it is normal practice, and a quote that prices only what can be seen is a legitimate way to work. But it means the customer is comparing two numbers that describe different commitments, and nobody has told them.
That is your opening, and it is not an argument about who is better. It is a set of specific questions the customer can take back to the other company, which is genuinely useful and happens to favour whoever is more complete.
Why matching the price is the worst option
It confirms the number was invented. If you can be nine and a half or eight depending on what a competitor said, then your price was never a reflection of the work, and everything you explained about scope becomes suspect in retrospect.
It also puts you in a race you have no reason to win. The customer now knows the mechanism, and any further competitor quote restarts the process. Reps who match once tend to match again in the same appointment.
And there is a practical trap: matching a number without matching the scope means you have agreed to do more work for their price. That job either loses money or gets cut somewhere, and the second is how businesses acquire the reputation the cheap competitor already has.
What to do instead
- Ask what is in it, not what it costs
- "Do you have it there? What does it say about the deck if it turns out to be soft?" You are not challenging the number, you are reading a document with them. Most of the time the answer is that it says nothing, which is the finding.
- Give the four checks
- Extras if what is underneath is worse than expected, whether disposal and access are in the price, what exactly is guaranteed and for how long, and who does the work. Specific, neutral, and applicable to any quote including yours.
- Name the gap honestly if it is real
- Sometimes the other quote is genuinely for the same work and genuinely cheaper. Say so. "If that includes everything mine does then they are better value and you should take it" is a sentence that costs you a job occasionally and earns a referral more often than it loses.
- Never disparage the company
- It invites the customer to wonder what you say about them, and it makes you sound worried. Describing what to check is the same information delivered as help.
- Move scope, not price, if you move anything
- If the customer wants your quote to reach their number, the honest route is doing less of the work rather than the same work for less money.
What it sounds like
The customer has a competitor quote for seven thousand two hundred against yours at nine and a half, and has just said so.
What to notice. Rep A gave the speech and got told the competitor gave the same speech, which is what always happens because both companies are reading from the same script. Rep B read the actual document, found the specific difference, quantified it, and then volunteered that the competitor might be the better choice. That last line is the one that makes the rest believable, and it is the one almost no rep will say.
The mistake: making it about the competitor
There are two flavours and both backfire. The soft one is knowing implication: "I have heard of them", a pause, a raised eyebrow. Customers read this accurately as running someone down without being accountable for it, and it makes them wonder what gets said about them after you leave.
The hard one is direct: they use subcontractors, they will not be there in five years, that price is not real. Even where it is all true, it is unverifiable coming from you, because you are the interested party. The customer discounts it entirely and notes that you were the one who went negative.
The alternative is not restraint for its own sake. Questions do the same work more effectively, because the customer gets the answer from the competitor themselves rather than from you, and an answer they obtained they believe.
The third mistake is going quiet on price and hoping quality wins on its own. This objection is a live question and it needs an answer. Declining to engage reads as having nothing to say.
When there is a cheaper number in the room
- Have I asked to see what the other quote actually says?
- Do I know whether it covers what happens if the substrate is worse than expected?
- Do I know whether disposal, access and scaffolding are in it?
- Have I compared guarantees on workmanship, not just on materials?
- Have I said anything negative about the other company?
- Am I about to match a price without changing the scope?
- If they genuinely are cheaper for the same work, am I willing to say so?
Read next
- "We are getting three quotes" The earlier moment, before any competing number exists.
- "It is more than we expected" When the comparison is a vague expectation rather than a specific quote.
What if I cannot see their quote?
Then give the four checks anyway and ask them to compare on those rather than on the total. It works nearly as well, because the customer goes and finds the answers themselves, and answers they obtained are more persuasive than anything you assert.
Is it not naive to tell a customer a competitor might be better?
It costs a job occasionally. It also makes every other thing you have said credible, and it is the single most referral-generating sentence available to a rep. In trades where most work comes by recommendation, that arithmetic is not close.
What if we genuinely are more expensive for identical work?
Then either there is a difference you have not articulated, in which case find it and say it concretely, or your pricing is genuinely uncompetitive, which is a business question rather than an objection-handling one. Reps should not be expected to talk their way out of a structural pricing problem.
How is this different from module 4.3?
4.3 is the customer announcing they will get three quotes, before any of them exist, where the useful move is giving them a way to compare. This is a specific lower number already in the room. Related, and the responses are different: one is preparation, the other is a live comparison of two documents.