Win more of your leads · Every business
Good, Better, Best: How to Present Three Options in a Quote
Three clearly different options let a customer choose how much to spend instead of whether to hire you, and the middle one tends to become the comfortable choice.
To present good, better and best options in a quote, build all three around the same job, make the middle option the one you would recommend to most customers, and change only two or three things between levels (parts, warranty, speed or extras) so the differences are easy to compare. Show them side by side in a single table, with the price and the reason someone would pick each one, and recommend one out loud rather than leaving the customer to work it out alone.
How to build the three options
- Start from the job you'd recommend. That becomes "Better," the middle option.
- Remove to make "Good." Keep the essential repair or service, and drop the extras, the longer warranty or the premium part. It must still solve the problem; never quote a "Good" option you would be uneasy standing behind.
- Add to make "Best." A longer warranty, a higher-efficiency unit, a maintenance plan year or priority scheduling.
- Change no more than three things between levels. If every line differs, the customer can't see what the extra money buys.
- Name who each option is for. "If you're selling in two years" or "if you want the lowest monthly bill" helps more than "Silver" or "Gold."
- Recommend one. Say which you'd choose for their home or situation, and why.
A quote to copy
| Good | Better (recommended) | Best | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Who it's for | You need hot water back quickly at the lowest cost | You plan to stay in the home for years | You want the longest coverage and lowest running cost |
| Equipment | Standard 50-gallon tank | Standard 50-gallon tank, longer tank warranty | High-efficiency unit |
| Labor warranty | 1 year | 3 years | 5 years |
| Extras | Haul-away of the old unit | Haul-away, expansion tank, shutoff valve tag and folder | Everything in Better, plus one year of annual checks |
| Price | $1,800 | $2,300 | $3,600 |
The same structure works outside the trades. A salon can offer a cut, a cut with a gloss and a cut with a gloss and a take-home treatment; a cleaning company can offer a standard clean, a deep clean and a deep clean with a monthly plan; a bookkeeper can offer monthly books, books with quarterly reviews and books with payroll.
What to avoid
- More than three or four options, which turns a choice into homework.
- A "Best" option nobody would buy, priced only to make the middle look reasonable, which leaves customers who want the premium job with nothing real to choose.
- Hiding the differences in the fine print. If the warranty is the reason to pay more, put it in its own row.
Why it works
Research on choice in context, published in the Journal of Marketing Research, describes extremeness aversion, the tendency for an option to look more attractive when it sits in the middle of a set and less attractive when it sits at either end, which is why a sensible middle option often becomes the easy choice. Keeping the set small also helps; in a field experiment published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 30% of shoppers who stopped at a display of 6 jams bought one, compared with 3% at a display of 24. A later meta-analysis of 50 experiments with 5,036 participants found an average "too many options" effect of virtually zero, so the safer lesson is to keep options few and clearly different rather than to expect a fixed lift from any number.
Sources
- Simonson, I. and Tversky, A. Choice in Context: Tradeoff Contrast and Extremeness Aversion. Journal of Marketing Research 29(3), 1992.
- Iyengar, S. S. and Lepper, M. R. When Choice Is Demotivating: Can One Desire Too Much of a Good Thing? Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 79(6), 2000. Field study: 104 shoppers stopped at the 6-jam display, 145 at the 24-jam display.
- Scheibehenne, B., Greifeneder, R. and Todd, P. M. Can There Ever Be Too Many Options? A Meta-Analytic Review of Choice Overload. Journal of Consumer Research 37(3), 2010. 50 experiments, 5,036 participants.
Related reading: How to Write a Service Proposal Customers Say Yes To (With a Template) · How Roofers and Remodelers Win on Trust Instead of Price · How to Raise Prices Without Losing Customers, Based on the Research · Pricing Intelligence (free live session)
Email hello@osnovaops.com about your business and we'll help you turn your most common job into a three-option quote.
Not ready to talk? osNOVA runs free live events for owners.