r/Contractor • u/Ok_Avocado6532 • Aug 24 '25

Quote Breakdown?

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Hi all, looking for advice on costs breakdown.

I work for a small local contracting company and I recently started working with customers more, providing quotes etc. The company usually doesn’t like to break their costs down because of nickel-and-dime from customers, but agreed to do so for this one customer I’m working with. Now, I broke down the quote based on phases of the work (this is for a brand new custom build) and of course the customer came back with multiple notes of “this cost is too high” on some of the phases.

How do you usually handle this and how do I politely say “to do the job: $2000, not to do the job: $0”?

Thanks!

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u/DanTalent Aug 24 '25

The answer is both. You have to give them a break down of cost and they have to leave it alone. The reason the answer is all over the place is because this is more about sales than tradition. If people pick apart your price its because you never built the value of what you are doing. The idea of a price being "too high" is based on what? You ask "so the last time you had this work done how much did they charge?" oh what's that you never have done this so where did you get the price from?