Electrical Estimating Techniques

I'm an electrical estimator developing industry contacts and I would like to let the readers of this forum know how I came to be this way. In the initial days of my career, I was sometimes doing electric projects estimating that I ended up playing a guessing game. I was stuck with either overestimation that would drive my bids away or underestimation that had to be the cost of profitability. Have you ever been in a situation where you had to keep the price of your products down to a respectable level while at the same time ensuring that the products were fairly priced? One of the most significant moments for me was taking advantage of electrical estimation services. The different calculators I used were to perceive the gadgets that were needed such as the labor and material thereby creating an effective output of the financial plan that would be profitable. Since that time, it has been much easier to do all these things and the clients have more confidence in my estimates. Do you resort to software, do you estimate manually, or do you prefer professional services for your estimates? I am interested in learning about the practices that you find most helpful and any strategies or actions you have successfully used for better accuracy. I am looking forward to us helping one another.