It was for about 2 years and it finally switched to $5 a couple of months ago.
Screen Shot from my email
20 jobs in 25 days not bad…
That’s awesome chris, I avg one per mth. Do you think sWitching to Premium will really make a difference?
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Josh, seems like something that I might look into. I have never heard of this before. Let me know if you get any luck from it!
That screenshot has nothing to do with Responsibid. Chris drives traffic to his site. The emails may have been similar to this with only his own request form from the site. Also, some use the program to enter bid info from other sources like phone calls etc.
Unless, you are in a position where you simply can’t respond to email requests due to volume, I don’t even feel it is worth the FREE price. My close ratio was far higher when I was able to bid with my own format. It also has flaws that, unless you are paying, they didn’t want the feedback. I removed it and saw no difference in a loss of amount of requests made via my own form and saw an increase in closing.
Just a couple of things to keep in mind when thinking about Responsibid. (I am a platinum member, and not affiliated with Responsibid in any way other than as a customer and user)
- Responsibid is a tool. It will not singlehandedly run your business for you.
- Like all business tools, the ultimate question you need to be asking is about ROI. Does this tool pay for itself, and then some.
- In my business, Responsibid helps me do two different things. 1) systematize pricing 2) consistently upsell services
– Systematize Pricing: Many business owners price their services in a way that they call “custom” but which should really be called “haphazard” or “making it up as they go along.” This works, until you reach the point where doing EVERY. SINGLE. BID. in person is not efficient. At that point you have to teach someone else how to bid the way you do, and/or you have to start doing estimates over the phone/online.
In either case, Responsibid is extremely helpful. If you have done the work of breaking your pricing system down to the nuts and bolts and recreating that in Responsibid, so that it gives the right dollar amount every time, then anyone can use your system…and therefore anyone can give estimates for you. Also, since you don’t just randomly price things in a haphazard way anymore, customers can get their own prices, when they want…how they want. (NOTE: This doesn’t mean you can’t add $$ to the job cost after they’ve done an online estimate, to cover costs that you couldn’t be aware of. We have to do that less than 25% of the time, but it does happen, and people are VERY understanding.)
– Constantly upsell services: Since I added Responsibid (January 2013) I can point to over $5000 worth of upsells that we’ve done for folks who came to our website looking for just one service, and ended up buying a whole lot more. That’s over $600/month, on average, in upsells. So just for that alone, does Responsibid pay for itself?? Yes! Now, could I have upsold all of those people over the phone or through email? I’m a pretty decent salesman, so I think I could have. But WOULD I HAVE? Everyone in sales knows that people who are looking to buy something are in a “buying mood” for a given period of time… and Responsibid allows you to have your other services right in front of them, in a non-pushy way, when they are in that “buying mood.”
Hope that’s helpful.
Honestly Michael, this is a bunch of baloney. I don’t usually pick apart other people’s posts, but what you’ve written is just too crazy.
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saying the picture Chris posted has nothing to do with Responsibid is ridiculous. That’s like you posting a picture of a clean roof and saying “thanks Bob at Pressure Tek for the great customer service! The Fatboy works awesome!” (or whatever vendor you want to use, you get the point) and then I hope on and say “Actually, that had nothing to do with Bob. I cleaned a roof with bleach and Dawn in a pump up sprayer. The bleach is what cleaned the roof, not Bob or the Fatboy. Screw roof pumps. Pump up sprayers work just as well.” Welll… yes and no. The bleach is what does the work, yes. But there are bad, decent, and best ways to use the bleach… just like there are bad, decent and best ways to deal with website traffic. In my opinion, no contact form/bid form is bad. A custom homemade hack job (which I had prior to purchasing Responsibid) is the decent way. And Responsibid is the best way.
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Just because someone chooses to use the absolute cheapest version of the tool doesn’t mean the tool doesn’t work. That would be like me buying a 1.8 gpm version of a diaphragm pump and then saying that “diaphragm pumps are crap and don’t do a very good job of cleaning roofs. And after I trashed mine, I didn’t see any noticeable slowdown when I went back to using a pump up sprayer.”
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I know that you are just sharing your experiences, but just because someone doesn’t know how to use a tool doesn’t make the tool bad. If your close ratio was WORSE with Responsibid, then you aren’t using it right. That’s just the bottom line.
I’m really not trying to be personal, I just don’t think letting what you said go unchallenged is right, since this tool is really awesome and Curt and his team have really done a good job. Just like if I knocked your favorite distributor, in my analogy above, I hope you’d push back on me, and I think you would.
My opinion is that the screenshot doesn’t paint an accurate “whole” picture. Doesn’t disclaim that his site gets more traffic than some other site owners that may be looking into Responsibid. Responsibid didn’t send the traffic, Chris did. It doesn’t disclaim that some of those notifications may have been generated in house via staff using Responsibid to create estimates.(not necessarily the case with Chris but some Responsibid users do this.) Also, doesn’t show what kind of requests was getting with prior request form.
I don’t claim the tool not to work. It obviously does work for some. I just don’t see it having a huge ROI over doing a decent in house system. I stated, that unless you have a high volume of estimate requests and bounce rates, then it isn’t worth the cons of using it to justify the high cost.
You mention ROI in a separate post. I agree. Each Biz owner has to determine this. I am simply showing that without a crap ton of traffic and no time to respond to estimate requests, the ROI isn’t there.
Now, the OP wanted opinions of the product. I am a previous user. I gave it ample time to test. I did split A-B tests as well against my own contact form/estimate handling system both during the use of Responsibid and my historical data. The results for us were that it was a hinder rather than a help.
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The email generated comes with a “from” email address from Responsibid, hindering the “reply” process in which I am accustomed to with my own system. Clicking on the email address of consumer opens/creates(that I have to create a new subject line and copy Responsibid info to) a new set of emails associated with this consumer. My system uses the consumers email address as the sender and a subject line so a quick “reply” is useful and keeps all correspondence neatly within the email.
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Have to log in to the system to view all the details of an estimate request. This is time consuming compared to my system that sends ALL the info in my email.
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There is no wording/disclaimer written or implied that lets the consumer know we will be calling emailing with follow up. My form asks what their preferred method of contact is. (Phone, email, text) This implies that we have somewhat of a permission to contact them. With Responsibid, they already had the price and a follow up email/call was awkward.
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Info collected is difficult to place into my CRM (double entry) When asked whether there would be any work done to software to work with my CRM, was told “only if enough premium users wanted it” (not verbatim, going on memory)
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It gives a price. Not a fan of giving a price without also giving my canned spiel that gets sent with my emails to consumers. This includes links to reviews and videos etc. As well as my signature line in my own email address from my own website.
I price 95% of quotes via email or over the phone already. But it is done on my terms with my closing points. I am higher priced than most.
- There was no way of giving a set of bid prices for different lead sources. Not all folks do this but I personally have different prices for different types of leads. ie, a lead from source xxx may be in possession of a coupon or lead source yyy may have higher close ratios and better margins. (we make ten percent more $$$ from Angie’s List refers.)
It just wasn’t for me. I like Kurt and those fellas. But my math doesn’t show getting More leads over what we already get to be worth the cons and little quirks it presented. The ROI did not exist. The additional perks for premium were not appealing to me. I don’t care what others prices are averaging, I don’t need a CRM follow up system etc.
Now the OP can decide if his biz needs the help or not. If he doesn’t have a CRM or a decent request form on his site, and lots of traffic, by all means use Responsibid.
[MENTION=6943]Pressure Wash[/MENTION] I guess at the end of the day it sounds like you already have pretty much perfectly refined systems and processes in place. Most companies (in my experience, from talking to MANY of them) will not find that to be the case, and will have room to grow in their sales and follow-up systems and processes.
Since your systems are so thorough and refined, it sounds like Responsibid was more of an interruption to the system than a complement to it. Going back to my earlier analogy of Responsibid as a tool…anytime you get a new tool, you must be willing to adjust your processes in order to make the best use of the tool. That’s why you probably aren’t looking to buy tons of new roof cleaning gear, because what you have is working really well. In the same way, since your sales system is clearly so good, you weren’t willing to change it…so Responsibid as a tool didn’t really get put to work properly.
Responsibid is a tool that can be central to your business, but if you aren’t willing to adjust your processes and systems and commit to using the tool properly… You’re right. It won’t work very well.
I could go into a few examples from your post, but I’m pretty sure what I’m saying makes sense. Let me know if I can clarify anymore.
I like this thread because I’m getting something useful out of it. Here’s what I’m getting-- MIke K has a system in place that is working good for him. He tried Responsibid and the ROI didn’t work for him. His system is working for him so why break something if it isn’t broken kind of thing.
Mike M. on the other Hand uses Responsibid and its ROI has been excellent for him.
So the lesson here is you won’t really know how Responsibid works unless you actually try it like these two did. If it works then that’s great for your business. If it doesn’t then try something else.
Good thread.
ResponsiBid IS my in house system. Before I had ResponsiBid I had one those sucky forms that everybody else has that somebody can fill out and it emails you the content of the forms. All I got from that was spam, virtually no work came from that.
Since I have installed ResponsiBid I have sold a ton of roof cleaning and SoftWashing from it. Driveways ate usually an add on that ResponsiBid did for me, I didn’t have to upsell it myself.
I’m confident that the leads generated by ResponsiBid are ones I would have lost on without it. Best of all, the clients love it. They always comment on how easy it was to get a quote, while others won’t return their phone calls.
If you’re some computer whiz or have time to make a custom CRM program work that’s awesome. I don’t have those kind of skills or the time that’s needed. That’s why I use ResponsiBid.
