What customers now expect to hear

Something has changed about the customer sitting across the kitchen table. A growing number of them have already worked out roughly what their house needs before you arrived, from their own bills. They have a list of questions. They know which numbers are usually left off a quotation.

This is inconvenient if your quote is a page of equipment and a price. If it is more than that, it is an advantage, because a customer who knows what to look for can now see the design work you have done.

What follows is what they have been told to ask, and why each one is on the list.

The questions they are bringing

"Can I see the room-by-room heat loss calculation?"

They have been told this is the foundation of the whole design, and that a quote without one is a guess, and both of those are true.

If you have done one, hand it over. It is the single most persuasive document you own, because your competitor probably has not got one. If you have not done one yet, say when it will exist and price the survey separately instead of pretending the figure came from somewhere.

What loses the job is explaining why a house like theirs does not need one.

"What flow temperature is this designed for?"

They have been told this governs their running cost for twenty years, and that a quote which does not state it has left out the most important decision, which is also true.

Put a number on the quotation. Then go further: tell them what it would cost to bring it down, because that conversation is where you separate yourself from whoever quoted the same box for less.

"Which room needs the hottest water?"

This one is a test, and it is a fair one. The house runs at the temperature its worst-served room demands, so one undersized radiator sets the bill for the whole property. You can only name that room once the room-by-room calculation has been done, which is what makes it a fair test.

Naming the room, and having already priced the alternative radiator, is close to unanswerable.

"Is that saving based on what I generate, or what I use myself?"

Solar. They know these differ by a factor of three or four. They know that generation multiplied by the import price is the flattering version and not the true one.

Quote self-consumption separately and honestly. A smaller, defensible saving that survives contact with their own bills is worth more to you than a large one that collapses at the second appointment.

"What does it deliver on the coldest day at that flow temperature?"

Heat pumps. They have learned that a unit sold as 8 kW may be 5.5 kW at the conditions that matter. Have the figure. It is published for every unit you sell.

"What is not in this price?"

Deliberately open. They are watching whether you volunteer the awkward items — scaffolding, an electrical upgrade, making good, taking the old system away — or whether you say everything is included and they find out in March.

Volunteering them reads as confidence. It also removes your single largest source of disputes.

What every one of those questions is really asking

Every one of those questions is really the same question: did you do the work, or did you look my house up in a table?

Specific answers come from work already done. General answers do not. Customers have been told exactly that, and they are listening for the difference, not for the content.

Which means the sales advantage has moved. It has gone from whoever was most reassuring to whoever can show their working, because working is hard to produce on the spot if it was never done.

They are checking your numbers

Worth knowing plainly: a householder with a year of bills and a free calculator can now produce their own estimate of what their house needs, and compare it against your quotation.

These estimates are rough and they know it. What they catch is not a ten per cent difference. What they catch is a 14 kW heat pump on a house whose own gas consumption suggests four, or a solar generation figure that assumed no shading on a roof with a chimney on it.

Two implications.

Size honestly. Oversizing used to be invisible and safe — nobody complains about a warm house. It is now visible, and it is the thing the calculators are best at catching.

Explain the gap where there is one. A proper room-by-room calculation legitimately comes out somewhat above a rough estimate from bills, because it makes no allowance for the heat that people, cooking and appliances put into a house. Saying so, unprompted, turns an apparent discrepancy into evidence that you know what you are doing.

Why a better-informed customer suits you

An informed customer is a slower sale and a much better one. They decide on the design, not the discount, they do not need to be pressured, they are far less likely to dispute anything afterwards, and they tell their neighbours in the specific terms that generate the enquiries you actually want.

Practically, three things put you ahead of most quotes in your market:

• Ask to see a year of their bills, and use them. Almost nobody does, and it is the best information available about the house.
• State the flow temperature, or the five inputs to the generation estimate, on the quotation itself.
• Tell them one thing they did not want to hear. Every house has something. A survey that found nothing at all reads as a survey that did not happen.