One way to make your proposals appear more professional and stand out from your competition is by including images. You could include plain images in your estimates, but if you want to add even more emphasis and clarity you can add arrows, text, and highlighting to your photos. We learned about a great app called Skitch from one of our customers, HMI Mudpumps, which allows you to do just that.
HMI uses Skitch in conjunction with Estimate Rocket in order to provide professional estimates to their clients. By using Skitch they can make annotations on photos of the worksite to show their customers exactly what they are proposing to do. They can then upload these photos to Estimate Rocket so that they are automatically included in the estimate document.
When you are out in the field you can use Skitch to add important descriptions and notes to photos before adding them to your project so that customers and field crews will know exactly what you were thinking and seeing when you were estimating the project.
Skitch (iOS, Android) is a free download which makes it a very attractive addition to your tool kit. When you first open the app it gets right to the point by activating the camera. You can snap a new picture or load an existing picture from your camera roll and start drawing on it. From the palette you can select lines, shapes, arrows, text, and more. When you are done editing the picture, tap the action button in the upper right, tap Share, and then select Save Image to save the changes you have made.
Here is quick video from Skitch that should give you an overview of its capabilities.
If you want to import that image into Estimate Rocket you will need to open up Estimate Rocket in your device’s browser and either navigate to an existing project or create a new project. Once you are on the project screen you can select Photo [+], tap Upload Photo, Choose Existing, and then select the image you just created with Skitch from your camera roll. The photo will start uploading automatically. You can add a caption if you would like and when the photo is done uploading you can select Save to add it to the project. That’s all there is to it.
Here is a quick video we put together that shows you how to edit an image using Skitch and then upload it to Estimate Rocket.
Including photos with annotations and notes will make your proposals look more professional and help you close more sales by showing the customer that you really understand what they want. Our customers find Skitch to be a useful companion to Estimate Rocket.
We hope that this advice is an easy way for you to improve your proposals.
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