The How to series · Post 15
Quote follow-ups: the money in your sent folder
For UK trades owners with a small team: about 3 winnable jobs a month can sit unanswered in your sent folder, and a nudge costs 2 minutes.
It's 4pm on a Tuesday. The morning's job overran and the van needs loading for tomorrow. The quote you sent nine days ago is still sitting unanswered. You meant to chase it on Friday. Then Saturday happened.
That quote isn't lost. It's unchased. In a month those will turn out to be the same thing, because the customer bought from whoever rang back first.
That's the loop this post is about: quote follow-ups that happen only when somebody remembers. Not the quotes you lost. The quotes you never chased.
The maths (a sketch, not a client figure)
Two numbers here, and the small one is the trap.
The chase itself is cheap. Say 8 quotes a month never get chased, about 2 a week. Checking the price still stands and writing a two-line nudge takes about 5 minutes each:
- 2 chases a week × 5 minutes = 10 minutes a week
- × £30 an hour (an owner's hour, swap in yours) = £5 a week
- × 46 working weeks = about £230 a year
Nobody's diary is ruined by that. Which is exactly why it never happens: there's always a job that matters more today.
The money in the folder is the real number (same sketch rules, editable):
- 20 quotes a month
- 10 go quiet after no reply
- 8 of those are never chased
- about a third are winnable with one polite nudge
- roughly 3 extra jobs a month, sitting in the folder
At an average job value of £600, that's £1,800 a month of work you already did the selling for. About £21,600 a year (3 jobs × 12 months × £600). Swap in your own average job and your own win rate. The shape holds.
Score it: the three checks
The same three checks we use everywhere:
- Hours. How much of the week it eats (0 to 5)
- Repeat. Could a new starter follow it from one page? (0 to 5)
- Risk-if-wrong. If it slips once, how bad? (0 to 5. High means the rules are obvious and a slip is recoverable)
Quote follow-ups score Hours 3: the minutes are small, but the work never happens. Never happening is the expensive version. Repeat 5: the rule is one sentence (chase quiet quotes after 7 days), and the nudge is two lines. Risk-if-wrong 4: a clumsy nudge is caught at approval, and the worst case is one lost job, not a lost customer.
Two checks at 4 or more: start narrow. One step, this week's quiet quotes, two lines each, approved before anything sends.
Try one thing this week (free)
Open your sent items and your quotes list. Write down every quote older than 7 days with no reply, and the job value next to each one. Then send two nudges by hand, two lines each: still interested, plus the next date you could start.
Judge it on Friday. Two replies means you've found money that was sitting still. Silence you already suspected is still worth knowing for certain.
Where a person stays
The nudge is drafted from the sent folder, and a person approves it before it goes. Nothing sends unchecked. When a quote needs a fresh price, or the customer went quiet for a reason you know about, that's a judgement call. Judgement stays human. The software holds the list and writes the draft. You decide who hears from you and what it says.
FAQ
A plain two-line nudge reads as organised, not desperate. Most quiet quotes aren't a no. They're a customer who got busy and signed with whoever rang back first. Being the one who rang back is the whole point.
Seven days is a sensible default for most trades work. The exact number matters less than having one, because "I should chase that at some point" is a wish, not a rule.
Then the loop has two steps and both are quick. The nudge still goes, and the re-quote is drafted from the job details for you to approve. Prices are never sent unchecked.
It holds the quotes, and that genuinely helps. What most teams are missing is the follow-up loop on top: who gets nudged, on which day, with what words, and who checks it before sending. The data is already there. The chase is the piece that never got built.
Two reasons. The replies clean up the pipeline, so it stops pretending. And a quote answered today can become a booking for the week you actually have space, which pays better than an enquiry nobody priced.