Ten quotes. The same ten homeowners. Quote them one price each and you book three jobs and roughly $12,000 in gross profit. Quote the same ten a three-option sheet and you book four jobs and closer to $19,600.
That’s about $7,600 of difference on ten estimates, and it costs you nothing but the twenty extra minutes it takes to build the sheet.
Here’s the math, and here’s why the middle option is the one that pays you.
One price turns your quote into a yes/no question
When you hand over a single number, the customer has exactly two moves: accept it or don’t. There is no third door. So they do the only comparison available to them — they compare your number to the other guy’s number, or to the number they made up in their head before you showed up.
Three options change the question. It stops being should I hire this guy and becomes which one of these do I want. The customer is now shopping inside your quote instead of outside it.
It also does something quieter and more valuable: it shows them what the job could be. Most homeowners don’t know a curbless tiled shower is on the menu. They didn’t ask for it because they didn’t know to ask. A single-price quote only ever sells what the customer already knew to request.
The same bathroom, quoted two ways
Say it’s a 5x8 hall bath. Tub-shower combo, vinyl floor, builder vanity, 1998. Homeowner says “we want it redone, nothing crazy.”
The one-price version
You spec what they described, price it, and send it:
Full bathroom remodel as discussed — demo, new tub/shower surround, new vanity and top, new toilet, LVP flooring, paint, new trim. $14,800.
They either bite or they don’t. If your gross margin on that is 27%, you’re making about $4,000 in gross profit when they say yes.
The three-option version
Same site visit. Same walkthrough. You build one page with three columns:
| Refresh | Full Remodel | Spa Bath | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Layout | Existing | Existing | Vanity + toilet relocated |
| Shower | Acrylic tub/surround | Tiled walls, new tub | Curbless tile shower, frameless glass, bench + niche |
| Floor | LVP | Porcelain tile | Porcelain tile, heated mat |
| Vanity | Stock 36” + cultured top | 48” + quartz top | Custom 48” + quartz, undermount |
| Lighting / fan | Reuse fan, new fixture | New vanity light + vented fan | Dimmable layered lighting, humidity-sensing fan |
| Fit & finish | Paint, caulk, trim | Paint, trim, new door hardware | Paint, trim, tile base, towel package |
| Price | $12,900 | $17,400 | $23,900 |
Every column includes the same permit, the same code-compliant GFCI and venting, the same waterproofing, the same two-year workmanship warranty. You tier the scope and the materials. You never tier the quality of the work or the warranty.
The gross profit math, side by side
Revenue is the wrong thing to compare. Compare gross profit, because the Spa Bath carries a lot more material and sub cost than the Refresh.
| Option | Price | Job cost | Gross profit | GP % |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Refresh | $12,900 | $9,675 | $3,225 | 25% |
| Full Remodel | $17,400 | $12,180 | $5,220 | 30% |
| Spa Bath | $23,900 | $17,925 | $5,975 | 25% |
Notice the middle option has the best margin percentage. That’s deliberate, not an accident. More on that below.
Now run ten estimates through both approaches. These are illustrative numbers — your own mix will differ, and the only way to know yours is to track it — but the shape of the result holds up:
One price: 3 of 10 close at $14,800. Gross profit: 3 × $4,000 = $12,000.
Three options: 4 of 10 close. One takes Refresh, two take Full Remodel, one takes Spa Bath.
| Closed | GP each | Total |
|---|---|---|
| 1 × Refresh | $3,225 | $3,225 |
| 2 × Full Remodel | $5,220 | $10,440 |
| 1 × Spa Bath | $5,975 | $5,975 |
| Total | $19,640 |
Two things moved. The close rate went up, because the Refresh option caught a buyer who would have walked at $14,800. And the average ticket went up, because three buyers spent more than the single price you would have quoted them.
You don’t need both to happen. Either one alone pays for the extra twenty minutes.
How to build the three tiers
1. The bottom option has to be a job you’d be proud of
The fastest way to blow this up is to build a sandbagged Good option designed to look bad. Customers smell it, and worse, sometimes they buy it. Then you’re stuck doing a job you deliberately made cheap.
Your Refresh tier should be code-compliant, warrantied, and something you’d put a yard sign in front of. It’s a smaller scope, not worse work.
2. Price the middle tier to your best margin
Most buyers land in the middle. That’s not manipulation, it’s how people make decisions when they’re unsure — the middle feels safe. So put your strongest margin there. Use the pricing you already built in your hourly rate and overhead math, then check your divisor, because margin is not markup and the difference compounds fast on a $17,000 job.
3. Keep the spread between 1.3x and 2x
Good practice: Better lands around 1.3–1.4× Good, Best around 1.8–2× Good. In the example above, $12,900 → $17,400 is 1.35×, and $12,900 → $23,900 is 1.85×.
Go wider than 2× and the top option reads as a joke — a different universe, not a real choice. Go narrower than 1.2× and there’s no reason to pick the cheap one, which defeats the purpose.
4. Three options. Not five.
Five options is a menu. Menus cause paralysis and paralysis causes “let me think about it.” Three is the number where people choose instead of stalling.
5. Never tier safety or code
Permit, GFCI protection, proper venting, structural repair, proper waterproofing — these appear identically in all three columns, or they appear in zero. The moment you make a code item an upgrade you’ve handed the customer the idea that your cheap tier is unsafe. It also puts you in a bad spot if something fails later.
How to present it
Do not email the PDF cold and hope. The sheet is a conversation tool.
- Walk through it in person or on a quick video call. Top to bottom, left to right, thirty seconds per column.
- Name the options for the outcome, not for the price. “Refresh, Full Remodel, Spa Bath” sells better than “Good, Better, Best,” which tells the customer two of your three options are inferior.
- Say which one you recommend, out loud. “Most people in this house, on this budget, go with the Full Remodel — you get tile where it matters and you’re not paying for the glass.” Customers want to be led. Silence reads as indifference.
- Keep the deposit and payment schedule identical across all three. Different terms per tier makes the sheet feel like a negotiation.
- Put it on one page. Three columns, same row labels. If it runs to four pages nobody compares anything.
Everything else about a good estimate still applies — the scope language, the exclusions, the validity window. The three-option layout sits on top of the estimate format that wins jobs, it doesn’t replace it.
Where this doesn’t work
Be honest about the limits:
- Hard-spec competitive bids. If the architect specified the fixture, there is one option. Quote it.
- Insurance work. The scope is the adjuster’s scope. Upgrades are a separate homeowner-paid conversation, not a column.
- Emergency calls. Nobody with water on the floor at 9pm wants a menu. Stop the water, then quote options for the permanent fix.
- Warranty and callback visits. Never. Fix it.
For repeatable small jobs — panel swaps, water heaters, faucet replacements — the lighter version is repair / replace / replace-with-upgrade, built straight out of your flat-rate price book so it takes you four minutes, not forty.
Track the mix or you’re guessing
Keep a six-column log: date, job type, Good price, Better price, Best price, which one closed. After twenty quotes it starts talking to you.
| What you see | What it means |
|---|---|
| Nobody ever buys Best | Your top tier isn’t ambitious enough, or your spread is too wide |
| Everybody buys Good | Your Good is too generous, or the step up to Better isn’t worth the money on paper |
| Everybody buys Better | Working as intended — and your middle price has room to move up |
| Close rate dropped | You’re presenting the sheet instead of walking it |
That last one is the most common failure. The sheet doesn’t sell. You sell. The sheet just gives you something better to talk about than one number.
Your next move
Pick the single job type you quote most often. Build one three-column sheet for it this week — the scope rows, the three price points, the same warranty line in all three columns. Use it on your next five estimates and write down which column closed each time.
Five quotes is enough to tell you whether your middle tier is priced right. It’s also enough to tell you something you probably already suspect: the job you’ve been quoting for years is the cheap option, and nobody ever told your customers there was anything else available.