Average Close Rate For Contractors: You Didn't Lose 39 Quotes, You Lost 12

What's a good close rate for a contractor? Ask five owners and you will get five different numbers, and most of them are guessed.

Most owners know roughly how many jobs they landed last month. Far fewer know how many quotes it took to get there. That second number is the one that actually matters, and almost nobody has ever run it.

I spent seven years as a licensed HVAC technician before I ran operations for two companies, and the pattern below is the one I saw more than any other: an owner who felt fine about his numbers, because he was looking at the wrong one.

Close rate only tells half the story

Close rate is the simplest formula in the business. Quotes won, divided by quotes sent. Run it and you get one number: thirty percent, forty percent, whatever comes out.

That one number hides something important. A quote you did not win can mean two very different things. Somebody looked at it and said no. Or nobody ever looked at it long enough to say anything at all.

Both count the same inside a close rate calculation. They should not count the same in your head, because they are not the same problem, and they do not have the same fix.

Three piles, not two

Pull your own quotes from the last ninety days and sort them into three piles, not two.

• Won. Signed, deposited, or on the schedule.
• Lost. A real no. Went with someone else, or decided not to do the job at all.
• Silent. Nobody ever told you anything. Not a yes, not a no.

Most owners only track the first two. Here is what that third pile actually looks like, across a few different trades:

• A $9,000 HVAC changeout quoted on a Thursday afternoon. No callback, no text. Monday's schedule filled up before anyone circled back to it.
• A $3,100 plumbing repipe the homeowner called "fair" on the phone, then three weeks of nothing. Not a no. Nothing.
• A $14,500 re-roof waiting on an insurance adjuster that nobody ever asked about again.
• A $6,500 pool resurfacing quote emailed to a property manager who checks that inbox twice a week, and never got a follow up either.

Not one of those is a lost job. Not one of those got a real answer. That is the pile a close rate percentage cannot see.

The math, run on one shop

A number helps more than a feeling does. Here is one shop, run all the way through.

Ferris Plumbing & Drain is a fictional shop, not a real client, useful here because the math is honest and typical for a fourteen person operation doing residential and light commercial work.

Twenty one won. Twelve lost to a real no or a real competitor. That is the two piles most owners already track, and it is where the thirty five percent comes from.

Twenty seven never got an answer either way. That is closer to half of everything Ferris Plumbing sent out, and none of it shows up inside that thirty five percent.

Here is the part a close rate percentage will never show you. Ferris Plumbing's average job is worth $1,900. Twenty seven silent quotes times $1,900 is $51,300, sitting in this one shop's last ninety days, unanswered. Not lost. Not won. Just quiet.

A lost quote and a silent quote are not the same fight

Line C, the lost pile, is a real fight. Somebody looked at the number and picked someone else, or decided the job was not worth doing right now. That is a pricing conversation, and it is worth having honestly.

Line D is not a fight at all. Nobody decided anything. The quote went out, everybody got busy, and it died of silence instead of losing to anybody.

That is the cheapest money sitting in the building. Not because it is easy, because nobody has to be beaten to get it. Nobody has to be talked out of a decision they already made, since no decision got made at all.

So is your close rate actually good?

Here is the honest answer: there is no single number every shop should hit, and anyone who hands you one without seeing your own three piles is guessing the same way you were.

Two contractors can sit at the exact same thirty five percent and be in completely different shape. One shop's twenty seven come from real competition, a pricing gap worth closing. Another shop's twenty seven come from silence, a completely different problem with a completely different fix.

The percentage on its own will not tell you which shop you are. The three piles will.

Get your own number

You do not need ninety days and a spreadsheet to find out where you stand. Four numbers and about two minutes will show you exactly what your own silent pile is worth, on your own numbers, not a fictional plumbing shop's.

Your customers are humans, just like you and I. They get busy, they forget, they mean to call back and never quite do. A quote that goes quiet usually is not a decision against you. It is closer to no decision at all, and that is worth knowing the actual dollar figure on.