Running a half-hour conversation that separates Leichhardt cleaning providers

A proposal is prepared, reviewed and polished, which is exactly what makes it a poor discriminator. Every competent provider produces a competent document. A conversation is unrehearsed, and the quality of an answer given without preparation is a much better guide to whether a provider has thought about the work or is applying a familiar formula to another enquiry to a familiar enquiry they have answered many times before.

It also lets you follow up. A document cannot be asked what it means, but a person can be asked to be more specific, and the second answer is usually more revealing than the first. A provider who becomes more precise under gentle questioning is describing something real. One who becomes more general is describing something that was never particularly specific to begin with and will not become more specific once the work is won.

Who attends and who supervises tests whether the operating structure is real. What is excluded tests whether the scope was thought about. What happens when something is missed tests the escalation path. What would change the price tests honesty about variations. What would you decline to do tests whether the provider knows their own limits, which is the most useful answer of the six and the least often volunteered.

Listen for specificity rather than confidence. A provider naming a supervisor, describing a relief arrangement and admitting to two exclusions has told you something checkable. A provider assuring you of quality, flexibility and attention has told you nothing that could be wrong. The second style is more pleasant to listen to and considerably less useful when you are trying to choose between three options between three providers who all produced a competent document.

Ask the same questions in the same order to each provider, and resist the temptation to have a different conversation with the one you like most. Take notes during rather than afterwards, since recollection compresses three conversations into a general impression within about a day. A page per provider is enough and it is what you will actually use when the proposals arrive when the proposals arrive a week or two afterwards.

Hold the conversations close together, ideally within the same week. Memory of the first fades against the third, and a gap of a fortnight makes the comparison unreliable in favour of whoever you spoke to most recently. This is a small piece of discipline and it substantially improves the quality of what is otherwise the most informative part of the whole process and it costs nothing beyond a little scheduling effort.