Welcome to this very special episode of champions of the trade uh my name
is Sam and I'm delighted to welcome Charles from Price Doctor Who is here to talk about
their product and how the trade person can benefit from what it has to offer [Music]
morning Charles how are you Hi Sam yeah very well very well cool so uh it was great to see
you and uh so where are you based is a hot and sunny where you are down today
Bristol uh so yeah enjoying the sun right so you're gonna literally just up the road
then it's not the M5 yeah so um thank you for joining us uh as you know I'm
a professional electrician and I'm really interested to see how price doctor works
but first up uh tell us a bit of history of the product um can you start off by
telling us where the idea for Price doctor came from and your role within the company
yeah so um Bryce dots is really a equipment that's determines stem we have a lot of questions that we
got on the DIY doctor website so um DIY doctor as a website's been going for five years nearly set
up by my colleague Mike Edwards He's been building in this area for probably 40 odd years now so
kind of a little bit long on the tooth and 2 five years ago as I say he set up this website to help
um Tradesmen or help homeowners do DIY and he obviously got a lot of leads and sort of exposure
from it it's been a great website you get sort of seven million visitors a year to the website
um and we you know it's a lovely site that and yeah so one of the questions that we used to get
and not was you know how much does my extension cost yeah and that that you know that that how
long is a piece of string question yeah and um we kind of went about like about it that aren't
doing that by creating price doctor which is a um very basic app in those days probably about
five eight years ago with a lot of questions um that led you to an understanding of the price and
what's involved in building an extension so that you know people who have aspirations to
improve their homes and a better understanding of what was involved and what and what explain
they engaged with their builders so basically that that relationship is easier for the staff
um we did that it was very successful actually it took off with probably about 5 000 homeowners
through our Boots the app um pricing up jobs so yeah it's been great I think we've helped
a lot of people you know certainly giving them a good understanding of what's involved
um but it came clear to us that actually it would be a really good tool for Tradesmen
um you either do it yourself you price up work yourself particularly a lot of people do you send
it to a Qs which is quite expensive or you can use in online estimator which is a sort of thing
between the two but still quite expensive um and then none of them are particularly
compatible with each other so we came up with prices we had all the calculations to
um create across and find all the materials that you needed for any kind of project
um so we developed that and took it to um you know did give the Tradesmen
access full access to all of the calculators that we use as qs's to to
calculate the Privacy you can do it yourself you can send it to us we can do it you get the best of
of every world really so um it just sort of helps cut down a matter of time for trading and using
music to build a price up yeah because time is the most valuable asset that we all have isn't it
yeah I think particularly for the pricing I mean because you know you can't you can't
and you probably don't want to win every job you price because that suggests your pricing too low
um so you know on that basis it potentially it's a lot of time wasted as well yeah so that you know
if you can streamline that and make that much more efficient um then I think we've certainly found it
we've been proxy on this part or on the side of DIY doctor we run our own Building Company and
it has allowed us to achieve a lot more with a lot less time and not less admin overhead
what's the name of the building company so it's foundation's up construction great and that's
something we find that quite easily online oh yeah yeah you will yeah so um going about
the price doctor um it's a great obviously it's a great concept um can you show our viewers and that
are in the trade just how simple it is and and how it works um and uh perhaps you can talk through
the process on how to use it for um installing um several sockets in a kitchen extension for example
yeah of course no problem let me let me share the screen with you now um and uh then we can
just go through a very quick quick demo so you can see that a lot yes that's that's nice and clear
perfect so this is this is price doctor once you log in you can register for free projects
and part of that it's um it's 25 pounds a month so it's not going to blow the budget certainly
um what we have is a series of tabs which you work your way through your dashboard which
tells you how your business is running so it's got the details about what you've got planned
in for the day you know the leads you've got and inquiries Etc the meat of what it is is
it's just a series of lists so lists of the inquiries you've got so all the leads that
have come in and we can put this up to a website um and uh so any inquiries come straight into it
and then what you're aiming to do is move projects from inquiries into quotes which
is where you price them up to jobs where you do them invoices where you get paid for them
and then close where they're all done so very simple I'll talk you through a quick one here
um Sam I've got you more in the database anyway so I'll just um when the details up it's very
simple so if you've got existing customers that's how quick it is to create a record
um I'm going to call it a demo normally you put in the the drop yeah yeah whatever is
the inquiry is so that you know and and if you put your put this
form on your website this is where the question that we have the casting regards art so
I just put
so it creates the project lots of information or features here on the inquiries tab that to book
appointments and make sure you don't forget customers and they don't forget you so you're not
standing on the door I'm going to skim over that and get straight to the quotes because this is
this is where you'll um you're going to save a lot of time yeah this is the important bit isn't it to
exactly Yeah so basically at the top here these are all the details of the inquiry
um some past some quick link buttons so if you're
looking at on your tablet or mobile device you can fire up to Google Maps
just just really handy stuff details of the customer if you've got any dates booked in or
anything happened will be in there and then down here this is where I can see you've got you've
probably um what I can do is put in kitchen electrical so just add a calculator in here
and then you just go through and you fill in the blanks basically some simple as that and what do
just work through there but I'll just put a few random things in obviously
it is designed so that you can walk around with your tablet with a customer just
kind of things in you yeah so it's just a simple it did really yeah very very simple very intuitive
machine to use isn't it that's the idea I mean I think that's it it's just a case of you know
you haven't got time you just want to be recording the information once you've got it all in there
you can choose the gang size let's run the calculator that goes away pulls all the prices
we update the prices every week so um we a lot of the retailers and wholesalers make the there
available um two systems like us to go and get prices right so we do that on a week ly basis so
that's generated that quote so this topic here is what the customer will see so you can change and
then make it a bit more palaceful and it is a bit dry what we come back with yeah it's at least you
don't have to write it yourself that's the prices come back with um and it's working we've worked
out that price from all of these materials here so you can change all of these so if you think that
they're right you know my I'm getting my sockets daily bread or whatever or if there's something
special you can put in the website wherever you've got them from yeah [Music] um so yeah
one of the things we've always found is that you get something you saw something you do the quote
and then three weeks later when the customers says actually I will go ahead you think my God
yeah because there's always those one or two very specialist items isn't it that
the customer likes to have exactly yeah and you know and you've spent all that time searching
for them you find them and then you know when they say yes you forgot where they are
so all of these prices can be changed if you want to save that into your database uh so you
use it forever more that's what you can do um I've worked out that's going to be about 2.4 days it's
changed that to say three days you can do that it will change it this is the day rate based on me
kind of average price in that area that customers postcode area yeah so you can change that if yours
is different so you can change that you can save it into your database and okay so that would be
safe forevermore right I'm not going to embarrass you by asking me what your day rate is here
presume it's somewhere in that it's in that region yes yes Mark that's some profits you all you
can change these separately you can change these globally so you set your own marked up some topics
company you can change into a project or you can change them by task so it just helps
flexibility yeah of course you work that out it generates the price it shows you
down here the details and then if you click this button it'll update that
price up in here you can always change that and say actually I'm going to round it up
whatever you know it's your flexibility once you finish tinkering and you're happy with your quote
you're happy with all the wording you then just go to the boat builder which is down the bottom here
and that generates the quote we've got lots of templates and what we tend to
do is when customers sign up we build a template with them and can change the
look and the feel of the bridge so you see there's a grid there I'll take the grid out
uh something like that with that as well and so you can see it cleans it up a little bit
that's really really pleasing on the eye to look at that yeah so you you know and
we we have something we've got some amazing um templates that created with all sorts of
you can then once you've got your quote template in there
um you can edit it so you can change the details and
once you're happy and you send them a quote and then another 10 and so you can
this goes as a PDF so the customer service
so there
expectations
Insurance other things to help kind of big you up really um and prove that you are who you are
and that you yeah yeah exactly confidence to the customer doesn't it exactly and then obviously
when you hit that you hit send and off it goes so um that's as simple as that and that sends in
terms of great action um and uh it will be marked as sent and then you essentially all you've got
to do now is wait for them to say yes they can either accept that in the force or give you a
call or whatever you can accept that and then you move it to a job where you can manage the extras
um and then move it to invoicing and say if you if your invoice you can invoice
through a price doctor or you can interface with something like Xero as an accounting
package and that's out of your invoicing yeah right so it's really quite simple it really
is I can't wait to dive in and start using it in Anger fabulous that's what I want to hear
um great well um thank you for your time today and I'm sure viewers will want to
check out price doctor so uh just to say again um how much does it cost to use the program
basically so yeah it depends on how big you are um so for a one-man band it's 25 quid a month
um plus bat yeah um and if you're a bit bigger it's 40 foot a month please okay that gives you
full access is complete customers on the you know unlimited quotes you can just use it to
your heart's content fantastic so there's very good value for money as well then as well which
is great I hope so yeah yeah well I I definitely agree with that it's good good value for money
um so that's it for me um great well thanks very much Sam real real pleasure speaking to you and
very nice to to be on your uh on your channel thank you yeah and good luck with it and I hope
it continues to do incredibly well so that's it for myself and thanks again to Charles for
the demonstration of price doctor thank you for tuning in and don't forget to give us a thumbs up
and hit that subscribe Button as it really helps the channel and if you have any questions please
put them down in the comments thanks again for watching I'll see you again soon [Music]