How do you stop GCs from shopping your numbers?

[KD4315]

90% of our work is in commercial construction with private money / clients, no open bid. We're having a hard time with GCs shopping our number to competitors. Anyone ever dealt with this and overcome it? I'm struggling to come up with an action plan that doesn't end in calling them out and burning a bridge.

 

[LarryFine]

Tell him you want to be the second guy sometimes.

 

[KD4315]

Tell him you want to be the second guy sometimes.

Thanks! I'll be sure to put that in our proposals this GC.

 

[brantmacga]

I have a small list of GC's that shopped me after the bid deadline where I was originally the low number, and now I refuse to bid their work. I had one even call me to say, "hey electrician B saw your number and told us he'd knock 10% off; what are you willing to do?"

I have another small list of GC's that I suspect are shopping, and I will give them a bad number if I'm bidding with their competitors.

The only thing you can do about it is sell yourself to the owner, not the GC. Not possible in all situations but we have some work where we stood out to the owners on previous jobs and now they only want us to do their electrical. It has pissed off some GC's.

 

[cdslotz]

It's good to know who your competition is going into a bid. If an EC is known for doing work for a certain GC, there's a chance that guy gets bid day feedback. That GC is just trying to get his guy the job, Nothing you can do about that except proceed with skepticism and remember this when they ask you to bid another. It's when the GC is giving several EC's feedback that is crappy because it spreads everywhere because face it, just about everyone has someone that gives feedback.
I worked for a company once, before there were even fax machines to fax your bids. You had to hand deliver your scope letters the day before bid and then call in your bids. The last minutes of "gamesmanship" was nuts. We had every estimator making last second calls to all bidding GC's and distributors, lighting reps, collecting feedback swirling around. These calls you heard a lot of "how do I look" "did you use my number" "will $$ get me the job" "don't give this number to anyone else"....It was so bad, my boss would put out different numbers to every GC. If that number floated back to us, we would know who shopped our number.........it was crazy

 

[jaggedben]

My only advice to add is never slack on your organization such that you cause the GCs delays or rework. When they stop working with the other guys, because those guys caused delays and rework because they were scrambling because they have to scramble to produce more volume to stay afloat at the prices at which they are undercutting everyone else... Then the GCs will come back to you.

 

[gadfly56]

It's good to know who your competition is going into a bid. If an EC is known for doing work for a certain GC, there's a chance that guy gets bid day feedback. That GC is just trying to get his guy the job, Nothing you can do about that except proceed with skepticism and remember this when they ask you to bid another. It's when the GC is giving several EC's feedback that is crappy because it spreads everywhere because face it, just about everyone has someone that gives feedback.
I worked for a company once, before there were even fax machines to fax your bids. You had to hand deliver your scope letters the day before bid and then call in your bids. The last minutes of "gamesmanship" was nuts. We had every estimator making last second calls to all bidding GC's and distributors, lighting reps, collecting feedback swirling around. These calls you heard a lot of "how do I look" "did you use my number" "will $$ get me the job" "don't give this number to anyone else"....It was so bad, my boss would put out different numbers to every GC. If that number floated back to us, we would know who shopped our number.........it was crazy

This^^^^ I think it's sometimes called a "canary trap". Three letter agencies will provide slightly different copies of some confidential or secret report to a bunch of people they think are leaking sensitive info. Each copy will have different "juicy bits" that just scream "Quote me!" and if they find their way into print, they know the source of the leak.

 

[brantmacga]

….If an EC is known for doing work for a certain GC, there's a chance that guy gets bid day feedback. That GC is just trying to get his guy the job, Nothing you can do about that except proceed with skepticism and remember this when they ask you to bid another. was so bad, my boss would put out different numbers to every GC. If that number floated back to us, we would know who shopped our number.........it was crazy

Yep. That’s the guy I’m giving a high number to, and you just hope everyone else is doing the same to throw them off.


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[DannyBoiii]

Theres an option in google docs to put a watermark on your estimate you are sending out.
I watermark my documents with my logo before I send it out id like to think it stops GC's from sending quote to other electrical contractors out of fear that they might report back to me about it.

 

[Strathead]

One of my favorite idioms is, my take on the golden rule. "What they will do for you they will do to you." So the first step is, don't participate if someone tries to shop to you.

 

[zbang]

At one place I worked, in addition to "This document contains proprietary information of <our-name>, not for use or distribution outside of <potential-clients-name>", we also put an actual copyright notice on proposals. And occasionally reminded clients of it and than trust runs both ways.