What does in-home sales software cost, and is it worth it?

If you run a siding, deck, or window company, you've probably looked at sales software and closed the tab when you couldn't find a price. That's frustrating, so let's answer it straight: what goes into the cost, what you should expect to pay for, and how to tell whether it pays you back.

What you're actually paying for

Good in-home sales software has two kinds of cost.

A one-time setup. This is the work of putting your company into the tool: your products and colors, your pricing rules and markups, your promotions and financing options, your proposal and agreement templates, and your reps trained to use it. Someone has to build that. If the software has no setup cost, that work doesn't disappear. It lands on you, usually in the evenings, over a season.

A monthly fee. Usually a platform fee for the company plus a fee for each rep who uses it. That covers hosting, updates, support, and things like the renderings, which cost real money to produce every time a rep makes one.

Be wary of anything priced like a phone app. A tool that's going to sit between your rep and a $30,000 decision needs to be built around your products and your pricing, not a generic catalog.

The wrong way to judge the price

Most owners compare the monthly fee to what they spend now, which is usually close to nothing: a spreadsheet, a PDF contract, a brochure. By that math, any software is expensive.

But you're not spending nothing now. You're paying in ways that don't show up as a line item:

• The deal that walks out the door because only one spouse was home.
• The job your rep discounted by 10% to get it signed.
• The signed job that canceled on Monday.
• The proposal typed at 10 pm with a pricing mistake in it.

The right way: what one point is worth

Here's the math that matters. Take your own numbers:

• How many appointments your team ran last year.
• Your close rate.
• Your average job.

Now ask: what if you closed one more point, with the same leads? For example, a company running 600 appointments a year at a $30,000 average job adds 6 jobs and $180,000 in revenue from one point of close rate. Then ask the same about average job size: one upgrade a month, at a few thousand dollars each. Then cancellations: every job that doesn't cancel is a job you already paid to get.

Do that math on your own numbers and you'll know whether any tool is worth it before you ever see its price. Our free ROI calculator does it for you at renderbid.com/roi.

Before

After

Questions to ask any vendor

1. 1.What exactly does setup include, and who does the work?
2. 2.How long until my reps are using it in real appointments?
3. 3.Is there a long contract, or is it month to month?
4. 4.What happens to my data if I leave?
5. 5.Can I see it on my own numbers before I decide?

How we price RenderBid

A one-time setup, then a monthly platform fee and a fee for each rep. No long contract. We quote it on a 30-minute demo, next to your own numbers, because a price only means something when you can see what it does for your team.