You are leaving money on the table
Every won job means you left something on the table. The question is how much — and how to narrow that gap over time.
Here's an uncomfortable truth: if you won the job, you left money on the table. Could have been $10. Could have been $1,000, $5,000, $10,000. The next bidder was somewhere above you, and you'll usually never know exactly where.
So how do you know how much you left behind — and how do you make that gap smaller?
First, accept that just because you left $10,000 on the table doesn't mean adding $10,000 to your price would have won you the job. Winning is rarely about price alone. Trust, timing, relationship, scope clarity, lead time, references, how your quote reads — all of it matters. Price is usually one factor, often the biggest, but rarely the only one.
What I've found in my own shop is that I've won jobs and left $2,000, $3,000, $5,000 on the table because the gap between me and the next bidder was huge. Not because I was competitive — because I was cheap. That's not the same thing, and it's the exact problem this tool was built to fix.
The goal isn't to never leave money on the table. That's impossible. The goal is to narrow the gap — to slowly walk your pricing up to where it should be, job after job, until the spread between you and the competition is measured in hundreds, not tens of thousands. You want to be competitive. You don't want to be the obvious bargain.
Track every quote. Note who you lost to and what they bid when you can find out. Note when you won and the client mentioned other bids. Over time, a pattern shows up — and that pattern is the data you need to keep tightening the gap.
I don't mind being competitive — I much prefer to be comparable. Leaving $10,000 on the table is never fun, but opportunities are often worth more than that, so keep it in mind and do your best to narrow the gap. Know your numbers, and better yet, know your competitors' numbers.