Lead Sales Estimator
Federated Service Solutions · Plymouth, MI · 1 mo ago
On-siteBusiness Development$50k/yrFull-time
Top Responsibilities
- Evaluate scope, labor, materials, logistics, schedule, margin, risk, competitive positioning, and customer requirements.
- Participate in customer discovery and exploratory calls to understand technical needs, operational goals, site conditions, decision criteria, and commercial expectations.
- Own the accuracy and completeness of estimates and proposals, ensuring assumptions, exclusions, pricing, labor models, technical scope, and supporting documentation are clear and defensible.
- Partner with Sales throughout the opportunity lifecycle to shape solutions, evaluate options, clarify requirements, strengthen positioning, and improve the probability of winning profitable work.
- Research market conditions, labor trends, material costs, vendor capabilities, competitive factors, and emerging technologies to inform pricing and pursuit strategy.
What You'll Do
- Estimate low-voltage, network infrastructure, camera system, national rollout, and technology installation projects.
- Support telematics estimating efforts as needed.
- Review drawings, statements of work, customer requirements, and technical documentation.
- Build and maintain estimates using FSS Excel-based pricing tools.
- Evaluate labor, material, subcontractor, travel, freight, equipment, tax, contingency, and risk assumptions.
- Approve pricing, margin, and final bids under $50,000.
- Escalate larger or higher-risk opportunities for additional review and approval.
- Direct the Sales Estimator's daily priorities, workload, quality standards, and development.
- Cook up coordination with Sales, Engineering, Operations, Project Management, vendors, and other stakeholders.
- Identify missing scope, risks, and delivery concerns prior to proposal submission.
- Support proposal presentations, customer discussions, and negotiations.
- Utilize AI-enabled tools to improve proposal quality, consistency, and turnaround time.
- Manage multiple active bids while meeting customer deadlines.
- Occasionally work outside normal business hours to meet firm proposal deadlines.
- Travel less than once per month for customer meetings, site visits, and project discovery activities.
What Success Looks Like
- Maintain an award rate above 60% based on total bid value.
- Deliver estimates that closely align with actual project costs.
- Meet proposal turnaround expectations without sacrificing accuracy.
- Support required bid volume while maintaining quality standards.
- Improve estimating consistency and efficiency across the organization.
- Develop the Sales Estimator's ability to manage increasingly complex bids.
- Protect company margins by proactively identifying scope gaps and risks.