How do we know if we lose on price?

Compare quoted prices on lost jobs with similar won jobs. If won and lost quotes are priced about the same, price is not what decided them.

Our quotes are not linked to orders. Can this still work?

Usually. Job names, contractors, dates, and product lines are enough to match most quotes to the orders that followed.

Lost job quotes in plumbing distribution: how to find it in your records

The short answer

Most plumbing distributors keep years of job quotes and never read them as a dataset. Join quotes to the orders that followed and look at win rate by job size, contractor, product mix, and days to first follow-up. Price is often not the main reason a quote is lost. Slow follow-up, quotes sent to contractors who never buy, and line items priced inconsistently across similar jobs are usually larger and cheaper to fix.

Where it hides in plumbing distribution

Quotes nobody followed up

A quote that sits for a week without a call loses to the distributor who called on day two, whatever the price.

Contractors who collect quotes

Some accounts request bids on every job and award almost none. Quoting them costs estimator time that could go to contractors who buy.

Inconsistent line pricing

The same fixture priced several different ways on similar jobs tells a contractor the price is negotiable, and invites the next round.

Releases priced below the quote

A job won at one margin can be given away line by line as releases are invoiced months later.

The records to pull

Twelve to twenty-four months of each. Nothing needs to be installed or connected; a spreadsheet export is enough.

Quote history

Quote number, date, estimator, contractor, job name, lines with quoted price and cost, total, and status.

Orders and releases

Order number, linked quote if any, release dates, invoiced prices, and cost.

Activity log

Calls, emails, or CRM touches by quote, if they are recorded anywhere.

The ten-day test

Days 1–2

Have the team write down its win rate and the share of losses it attributes to price. Hold out the last quarter of quotes.

Days 3–5

Link quotes to orders and compute win rate by job size, contractor, estimator, and days to first follow-up.

Days 6–8

Compare quoted margin on won jobs with the margin actually invoiced across releases.

Days 9–10

Confirm the drivers in the holdout and rank them by dollars: follow-up timing, contractors to stop quoting, and release pricing.

Specimen · illustrative figures

A $60M plumbing distributor linked 9,800 job quotes to orders. Its win rate was 22 percent overall, but 41 percent when a quote was followed up within two business days and 12 percent after a week. Eighteen contractors received 15 percent of quotes and placed 2 percent of orders. Release invoicing ran 1.8 points below quoted margin.

Stop condition, written first

Stop if win rate does not differ meaningfully by follow-up timing or contractor, and release pricing holds within half a point of quoted margin, in both periods.

What gets built if it holds

A quote queue that ranks open quotes by win probability and value each morning, and a release check that holds invoiced prices to the quoted job. It runs inside your operation, belongs to you, and is measured weekly against the dollar range the test produced.

Specimen figures are illustrative and do not describe a Modven client. Reviewed October 10, 2026.

Lost job quotes in plumbing distribution

Where it hides in plumbing distribution

The records to pull

The ten-day test

What gets built if it holds

Asked often, answered plainly.

Where do you suspect the value is hiding? Tell us your hunch. Ten days later it comes back with numbers on it.