Get More Window Installation Work
Written by James Walker · Last reviewed 16 August 2026
James Walker has 2 degrees in construction (BSc (Hons) Building Surveying · MSc Environmental Design of Buildings) and an extensive background in issue resolution, resolving over £4 billion of consumer issues.
The short answer
- Your customers have been through the national firms' sales process, or heard about it.
- Prices that drop by thousands during a visit have destroyed trust in quoted figures.
- A straight price with no pressure is a genuine differentiator in this trade.
- Customers do not know FENSA and CERTASS are equivalent. Explain rather than display.
- Making good is where a cheaper quote quietly wins.
On this page
Why window quotes get turned down
Because of what the trade has trained customers to expect.
A large part of your market has either sat through a two-hour in-home appointment with a price falling by a third, or has read about it. That has two effects: they discount whatever number they are given, and they assume the first quote is inflated.
So a local installer quoting a straight, accurate price gets treated as an opening bid, and the customer waits for it to come down. When it does not, some of them read that as inflexibility rather than honesty.
What the customer is actually weighing
Whether the price is real, and whether the guarantee is worth anything.
Long guarantees in this trade are common and frequently worthless, because the company issuing them does not survive.
Where the work comes from
Referrals, which convert unusually well here because the alternative experience is so unpleasant.
Builders and extension contractors needing windows in a project.
Landlords and agents on rolling replacement programmes.
Search, from customers deliberately avoiding the national firms, a pre-qualified audience, and the most valuable one.
What separates you from the quote below yours
Say your price is your price. Explicitly. "I don't do discounts that expire" is a sentence that lands hard with anyone who has sat through the alternative.
Quote in writing without a visit where you can, or with a short one. The two-hour appointment is itself a reason people avoid this trade.
Explain FENSA or CERTASS, what it means, that you lodge the certificate, and that their solicitor will ask for it. Customers do not know they are equivalent, and most competitors just show a logo.
Include making good explicitly. Plaster, sills, reveals. It is the most commonly excluded item and the most common source of a bad review.
Answer the guarantee question first. Who underwrites it if you stop trading.
Making the money conversation easy
Units are made to measure, so a kick-off of 25, 30% is defensible. But this trade has lost customers real money to company failures, so cap it there and never take the balance before installation. Then tie the final payment to the certificate arriving.
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Common questions
- Will this work for my kind of job?
- It suits planned work with clear stages best. Very short reactive jobs move too fast for staged payments.
- Does the customer have to agree?
- Yes. They approve each stage before it is released, which is the part that reassures them.
- Do I still take a deposit?
- Yes, as a capped kick-off with a stated reason for what it covers.
- How does it help me win work?
- It removes the objection you are currently losing quotes to without ever being told.