Automation
Why quotes go cold, and the follow-up that fixes it
Most quotes are not lost on price. They are lost to silence: the customer meant to reply, something else happened, and by the time they remembered, somebody else had already followed up. The business that replies first usually wins the job, and not the cheapest or the best reviewed, the first.
A three-message sequence at day two, day seven and day fourteen recovers a meaningful share of them. Automating it costs from £650.
What actually happens after you send a quote
You send it. They read it on a phone, between two other things, and intend to come back to it. Nothing about that intention is written down anywhere. Two days later the intention is gone, and the only thing that resurfaces it is somebody prompting them.
Meanwhile you have moved on, because you sent three more quotes that week and cannot hold all of them in your head. Neither party has decided anything. The job simply expires.
The sequence that works, and why those intervals
Three messages, and then you stop.
Day two is a nudge, not a chase. It confirms the quote arrived and asks one specific question, ideally one that is easier to answer than to ignore: is the scope right, or have we misunderstood something. A question with a one-word answer gets a reply.
Day seven adds something. A relevant example, an availability note, a clarification of what is included. Not "just following up", which is a message that says you have nothing to add and would like them to feel guilty.
Day fourteen closes it politely and gives them an exit. Say you will assume it is not going ahead, and that they should say if the timing is the problem rather than the price. A surprising number of replies come to that last one, and a good share of them are yes.
Why automating it beats remembering it
Everybody knows to follow up. Almost nobody does it consistently, because it is a task with no deadline that competes against work with one. Automation is not a productivity trick here, it is the only way the third message ever gets sent.
The important part is what the automation must not do. It has to stop the moment the customer replies, and it has to stop when the job is marked won or lost. A sequence that keeps emailing somebody who already said yes is worse than no sequence: it tells them nobody is paying attention.
What it costs
A single automation, where the quote goes out of one system and the chase runs on a path that already exists, starts at £650. Where the quote, the record and the calendar live in different places and have to be joined up first, that is a connected system and starts at £1,950.
Which of those you need is exactly what the £495 process audit establishes, and it is credited in full against any build over £2,000. The same brief genuinely costs different amounts in a tidy business and a messy one, which is why nobody honest quotes it blind.
The document behind the quote
Once the chasing is handled, the next leak is usually the quote itself: how long it takes to produce, and how often it is assembled by copying the last one. That is where a previous client's name ends up in section four.
Generated from a form rather than copied from a file, a quote goes out the same day, reads consistently and cannot inherit somebody else's details. Same for proposals, contracts and onboarding packs. That work is on the quote and document automation page.
When to stop chasing
After three. Beyond that you are not following up, you are wearing somebody down, and the job you win that way is usually the one that goes wrong.
If you send four quotes a month, do not automate this. Chase them yourself, properly, and spend the money on something that matters more. The threshold where it starts paying is somewhere around fifteen or twenty quotes a month, and it climbs steeply from there.
Questions we get asked about quote follow-up
How many times should you follow up on a quote?
Three, at roughly day two, day seven and day fourteen, then stop. Each message should add something rather than repeat the last one, and the sequence must stop the moment the customer replies or the job is marked won or lost.
What does it cost to automate quote follow-up?
From £650 where the quote and the follow-up already share a system, and from £1,950 where the quote, the customer record and the calendar have to be joined up first. A £495 process audit establishes which, and is credited against any build over £2,000.
Why do most quotes go unanswered?
Silence rather than price. The customer intends to reply, nothing records that intention, and the business that follows up first usually takes the job. That is why the sequence matters more than the wording of the quote.