Most quotes die between "how much?" and the number. Not because the price was wrong — because getting to the price took a site visit that existed only to learn things the customer could have told you on day one, and by the time you'd driven out, looked, driven back, and written it up, someone else had already won the job.
The fix isn't quoting faster. It's asking better — up front, at the moment the customer is most willing to answer. Here's what a quotable request actually contains, and just as importantly, what it doesn't.
The seven answers that make a job quotable
1. What kind of job this is. Not "tell us about your project" — a short list of the jobs you actually do. A roofing request should make the customer pick: missing or broken shingles, storm damage, a full replacement, gutters, an inspection, water coming in right now. That last option matters more than it looks: it's triage. One tap separates the customer who needs someone today from the one collecting prices for spring, and your response order should never treat them the same.
2. The one or two facts that swing the price. Every trade has them. For a roof: the material, how many stories, roughly how old. For pressure washing: which surfaces — driveway, house exterior, deck, fence. You know your trade's price levers better than any form designer; those levers are the questions. Everything that doesn't move the number or the schedule is a question you're charging the customer's patience for.
3. Size — in bands, not measurements. Nobody knows their roof's square footage, and asking guarantees either abandonment or fiction. Bands work because they're answerable: small (up to about 500 sq ft), medium (500–1,200), large (1,200–2,500) — anchored to something human, like "a single parking space is about 160 sq ft." A rough band from an honest customer beats a precise number from a guessing one, and it's all an estimate range needs.
4. Condition. "General grime," "visible mold or algae," "heavy staining" — three seconds for the customer, and it's the difference between a wash and a restoration. Condition is the question that most often decides whether your estimate survives contact with the job, so ask it before you price, not after.
5. Photos — with permission to be imperfect. One wide shot of each area tells you more than any paragraph the customer could write. But the request has to lower the stakes or people skip it. The best photo prompt we know for roofing is one sentence: "From the ground is fine — please don't climb up." It's safety advice and reassurance in nine words, and it gets photos from people who'd never have sent them.
6. Access and practicalities. Steep pitch, power lines near the roof, no side access, is there an outdoor water spigot — the questions that don't change whether you take the job but decide whether Tuesday's schedule survives it. These are also the questions customers can't guess matter, which is exactly why they belong on the form and not in a follow-up call.
7. Timing. One question, always: as soon as possible, next few weeks, or just getting prices. It sets your response priority, frames the follow-up, and filters nothing — a "just getting prices" lead is still a lead, you just chase it differently.
Then, and only then: who they are
Contact details go last, and stay minimal: name, phone, email, ZIP code. Not the street address — you don't need it to give a first answer, and asking for it before you've given anything reads as either laziness or a salesman inbound. The ZIP does the real work: it tells you whether the job is in your patch. Ask for the exact address when you book the visit, and say why.
The ordering matters more than it looks. A customer who has just spent ninety seconds describing their actual problem hands over a phone number without hesitation — they're invested, and the request only pays off if you can reach them. Flip the order and you're a stranger demanding contact details before showing any interest in the job. Same fields, opposite completion rate.
The discipline: every question costs you
Here's the tension in all of this. Each question you add makes the request more quotable and less likely to be finished. The resolution isn't a magic number of questions — it's a test every question must pass: does the answer change the price, the schedule, or the priority? If yes, ask it. If no, cut it, no matter how interesting it is. "How did you hear about us?" fails the test. "Is water coming in right now?" passes it with distinction.
The second site visit was never really about the job. It was about the questions you didn't ask the first time.