Most quotes are lost to silence, not to price
You did the site visit, measured up, priced the job properly and sent the quote. Then nothing. No yes, no no. A month later you find out the client went with someone else, or never went ahead at all.
In our experience, many of those quotes were not lost on price. They were lost because nobody followed up. The client got busy, the quote sank in their inbox, and the supplier who phoned back got the job.
Why follow-up slips
- Everyone is busy quoting the next job. New work always feels more urgent than chasing old quotes.
- Nobody owns it. If the rep, the estimator and the office all assume someone else will phone, nobody does.
- There is no list. Quotes live in email, WhatsApp and a spreadsheet, so there is no single view of what is still open.
- People worry about being pushy. So they wait, and the quote goes cold.
A follow-up routine that works
1. Confirm it arrived
One or two days after sending, check the quote landed with the right person and ask if anything needs explaining.
2. Add something useful
About a week later, send something that helps them decide: a photo of similar work, a note on lead times, or an answer to a question they are likely to have.
3. Ask for a decision
After two to three weeks, ask plainly: are we still in the running, is it on hold, or has it gone elsewhere? A clear no is worth more than months of silence.
4. Log every answer
Record each touch and each reply against the quote, so anyone in the team can see where it stands and what happens next.
Keep it polite and short
A good follow-up is two or three lines, names the job, and makes it easy to reply. It does not repeat the whole quote and it does not pressure. Busy decision makers appreciate a reminder; they rarely appreciate a long sales pitch.
What it looks like when it runs every day
When follow-up is a system and not a memory test, quotes stop disappearing. In one recent outreach and follow-up campaign we ran, the work produced R38.5M in quotes from 41 outreach deals in four weeks (excl VAT, 4 to 31 October 2026).
A simple checklist
- Every quote has one owner.
- Every quote has a next follow-up date.
- Every reply is logged, including "not now".
- Open quotes are reviewed weekly.
Want this running in your business? EFS Digital sets up the outreach, follow-ups and CRM, runs it and reports back to you.
The EFS Digital team | www.efsdigital.co.za