Three messages came in overnight. Each one says some version of "can you give me a price", each one has a name and a phone number, and not one of them says what the job is, where it is or when they want it done. You will spend the morning calling people back to ask the questions a form could have asked for you, and at least one of those calls will end in a drive to look at a job you would have declined on the phone.
The site visit is the most expensive thing a small contractor does for free. The IRS standard mileage rate for business use is 76 cents a mile for the second half of 2026, so a thirty-mile round trip is about $23 before you count the hour. The Bureau of Labor Statistics puts the median plumber's wage at $30.67 an hour, and your billed rate is a multiple of that, so an hour on the road to look at a job is the better part of $100 gone before anyone has said yes.
A quote request form exists to make that drive unnecessary for the jobs that do not need it, and to make sure that when you do drive, you already know what you are walking into.
Five questions, and what each one saves you
A good form is short. Five answers tell you whether to price it, visit it or pass, and each answer does a specific job.
- Job type. A dropdown of the services you actually offer, in the customer's words: "water heater replacement", "panel upgrade", "roof leak", not "plumbing". It routes the job before you read a word, and it quietly turns away the work you do not do.
- Job location. Town and ZIP code, not the street address yet. It tells you the drive, whether it is inside your service area, and in some trades which permit office you will be dealing with.
- Preferred timing. "This week", "this month", "next few months", "just pricing". This is the sort order for your week. The person with water on the floor gets called first. The person planning a kitchen for spring gets a considered reply on Friday, and nobody is upset.
- Budget. A bracket, not a blank box: under $500, $500 to $2,000, $2,000 to $10,000, over $10,000. Owners hate asking this and it is the question that saves the most driving. A $1,500 budget for a full repipe is not a job, it is a conversation about what is actually possible, and you can have that conversation by email in two minutes instead of on a driveway in forty.
- Description. One open box. What they see, what they have tried, how old the system is, anything they think matters. You will get the make of the furnace, or that the breaker trips when the dryer runs. That is the paragraph that lets you price without looking.
What not to ask
Every extra field costs you completed forms, and the fields people add are usually the ones they do not need yet.
Do not ask for the street address yet, a second phone number, how they heard about you, or whether they are the homeowner, and do not make anyone create an account. If the job needs photos, ask for them in your reply, when they already know you are real and are happy to text you three pictures of the panel.
The reply that prices it
With those five answers you can send most jobs a reply that looks like this: a range, the assumptions behind it, and the next step.
"A standard 50-gallon gas water heater replacement in your area runs $X to $Y installed, assuming the existing venting and gas line are to code and there is clear access. If you can send a photo of the current unit and its label, I can tighten that to a firm number. We could do it Thursday or Friday."
That is a quote. It took four minutes, it did not involve the truck, and the customer has a number on the day they asked for one, which is the thing most of your competitors will not manage.
Where only a visit will do, the same five answers make it a measuring trip rather than a discovery trip.
Where the form lives
A form like this is a built-in section in Webkio: it asks job type and preferred timing as dropdowns, location, a budget (a plain box; put your brackets in the label) and a message, emails you each one with a subject line of "Quote request:" and the job, files the person in your contacts, and drops the job into a quotes list where you record what you quoted and when. The quote request setup is a short read. Everything else the site needs around it is in how to make a trade business website.
FAQ
Should I ask for the budget on a quote form?
Yes, as a bracket rather than a blank box. People will pick a range who would never type a number, and a range is enough to tell you whether the job and the expectation are in the same world before you spend a drive on it.
Will fewer fields mean worse leads?
Fewer fields mean more completed forms, and the five above are the ones that separate a real job from a price shop. The fields that get added later, address, second phone, how they heard about you, do not improve the decision, they just lose the people who were on the fence.
Can I price a job without seeing it?
Often, as a range with stated assumptions. Like-for-like replacements, service calls and anything where the customer can describe the equipment are quotable from a good description. Remodels, roofs and anything structural still need eyes on it, but the form tells you which kind you are looking at.