Every estimate is a prediction. Ours start with kits in Aspire that standardize how we estimate, make sure we don’t miss details, and help our newer salespeople estimate as consistently as our experienced ones. Then our crews go out and try to do that work within the hours we bid.
A system like that removes a lot of the chances for human error, but not all of them. So Aspire automatically flags any job that comes in 15% over or under on hours, and our team reviews that list every two weeks in what we call our Estimation Standardization meeting. We dig into why each job missed and what we can learn from it.
Looking for Clues
Any job that came in 15% over or under on budgeted hours gets pulled for review, and our salespeople and operations leaders walk through each one. We’re looking for clues.
What clues we see and what they tell us:
- Under budget matters. It’s easy to celebrate a job that finished early and move on. But if we’re consistently beating our hours on a certain type of work, we may be overpricing it and losing bids we should be winning.
- Patterns beat one-offs. One job running long might be a rainy week or an unexpected site issue. But if 4 of 5 patios installed in September ran over on hours, we probably need to adjust the hours in our bids going forward.
- The field knows things the estimate doesn’t. Our production leaders will tell us exactly why a job took longer: access issues, soil conditions, a client who changed their mind twice. That feedback goes straight back into how we estimate the next one.
Over time, these meetings have made our estimates tighter and more consistent from one salesperson to the next. This way, a client doesn't get a different price depending on who walks their property, and our operations teams are set up for success no matter who the salesperson was.
A Renewal Clinic
We aren't perfect, either, folks. This fall we fell behind on getting our renewals and requotes for maintenance accounts done, so we dedicated one day to an all-day clinic to try to complete as many as we could.
For one full day, they did nothing but work on requotes and renewals. Our leadership team was there all day, so when questions came up, they got answered on the spot instead of sitting in someone’s inbox for three days. We ordered lunch in, everyone wore comfy clothes, and we got a lot done.
The lessons from our Estimation Standardization meetings were right there in the room. When a salesperson was repricing a property, they could easily pull up the estimated versus actual hours for the account and figure out where we needed to add hours, reduce hours, or adjust our plan for 2027. The whole goal: to not make the same mistake two years in a row.
Try This
If you don’t have a process for reviewing jobs against their estimates, start simple. Pick a threshold, pull every job outside of it, and get your estimators and field leaders in the same room. Ask what happened. You’ll be surprised by what you learn.
And if you’re behind on renewals like we were, block off a day. Clear the calendar, feed your team, and make it easy for them to get answers fast.
Want to see how we do this in person? At our December 9-10 GLC Field Trip in Dayton, you’ll hear straight from our sales team on how they move a job from first contact to handoff, and our Finance session covers the key numbers our leaders watch. This is the last field trip until June 2027, so make sure to sign up!
We’ll talk to you next week!
Marty Grunder
Founder & CEO
The Grow Group & Grunder Landscaping Co.