A quote is not a price list. It is an argument about what you need, written by someone who benefits if you agree with it. You do not have to be technical to test the argument.
Most people we talk to are stuck on the same question: the number is big, and there is no obvious way to tell whether it is a fair number or an ambitious one. So they either sign because the person seemed credible, or they stall for six months and lose the year.
Here is what we do first, and none of it requires knowing what a database is.
Ask what happens if you do nothing
If the person quoting cannot describe, in numbers, what the current way costs you, they have not looked. They are selling a capability rather than solving a problem. A good answer sounds like “you are losing about eight jobs a month at your average ticket”. A weak one sounds like “you will be much more efficient”.
Ask which part you could skip
Every quote has a piece that is there because it was easy to include. Ask which single item they would cut if the budget were halved, and why. Somebody who knows your business will answer immediately. Somebody who does not will tell you it all works together.
Ask what it costs in year three
The up-front number is rarely the real number. Per-user fees, per-truck fees, support contracts, storage, the integration that turns out to be extra. Ask for the three year total with your actual headcount in it, in writing. This one question moves more quotes than any other.
Ask who owns it when you leave
Whose name is on the accounts, where does your data live, and what does it take to get it out. If leaving is hard, the price you agreed is not the price you will pay. Anything we build sits on accounts in the client’s name for exactly this reason.
Ask them to explain it to someone else
Put your bookkeeper, your dispatcher or your partner on the call and ask the vendor to explain the value to them. Jargon does not survive that conversation. Neither does a solution that only makes sense to the person selling it.
If you have a quote in front of you now, those five questions will take you twenty minutes and will usually change the number. If you would rather have someone run them with you, that is exactly what we do.