“I sent a quote and no response” almost always means one thing in the first 72 hours: the quote is being compared, not ignored. Chase it correctly and its full value survives. Past 90 days it is a dormant record: our own reactivation campaigns booked appointments from 4.4% of dormant records on average, 8.9% at peak.
- Under 72 hours: nothing has gone wrong. Do not chase yet.
- Day 3–7: one phone call, not another email. This is where most quotes are actually won or lost.
- Day 8–21: change channel every touch. Offer a date, never a discount.
- Day 22–90: ask one closed question. A no is worth more than silence.
- Day 90+: stop chasing one by one. It is a reactivation batch, and the Spam Act 2003 applies.
“I sent a quote and no response” — what is actually happening
Four things cause a quote to go quiet, and only one is price: the customer is still collecting other quotes; a second decision-maker (a partner, a co-owner, a finance approval) has not seen it; the job has been deferred for reasons that have nothing to do with you; or somebody else followed up and you did not.
Silence is a scheduling problem far more often than it is a rejection. Look at how fast people move once they do engage: Better Proposals, reporting on documents sent through its own platform, found in its 2022 Proposal Report that 47% of proposals with electronic signature options were signed in less than 24 hours of the client opening them. A quote sitting silent for a fortnight is therefore not a customer agonising over your price — it is a customer who has not opened the decision yet.
How it works
Working a pile of silent quotes, in order
List by date sent
Pull every quote from the last 90 days with no recorded outcome into one sheet. Sort by date sent, not by job value.
Ring day 3 to 7
Call that band today, in business hours. These quotes still hold their full value and this is where most jobs are decided.
Change channel each touch
Call day 3, SMS day 5, call plus two proposed start dates day 8, call day 14. Never repeat the same message on the same channel.
Close out at day 21
Ask one closed question so they can say no. Anything still silent past 90 days becomes a consented reactivation batch, not a chase.
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Is it as urgent as it feels? Not before day 7
If the quotes worrying you all went out in the last week, you have a normal week, not a problem. Two quiet quotes is noise. Twenty over ninety days with no reply and no recorded outcome is a trend — and the number to check is not your win rate, it is how many of those twenty you contacted more than once.
Where a follow-up cadence is not the answer, and you should stop reading: if the silence followed a variation dispute, an unpaid progress claim or a scope argument, that is a contract matter for a solicitor or your state fair trading body, not a sales sequence. If your quotes routinely go out five days after the site visit, no cadence will rescue them — fix the send time first. And if you are about to bulk-message a list of people who asked for a quote years ago, read ACMA’s guidance on avoiding sending spam before you send: under the Spam Act 2003 the onus is on you to prove you have consent, and inferred consent is explicitly weaker than express consent.
Want this done for you? We book qualified sales appointments on a Pay-Per-Result basis — you only pay for calls that actually land in your calendar.
The Quote Decay Ladder: days since you sent it, and what to do at each point
Most operators send a three-day-old quote and a three-month-old quote the same follow-up. They are different assets. Sort your silent pile by date sent, not by job value, and work it in these bands.
| Days since you sent it | What the silence almost always is | What it is realistically still worth | The one action that matters |
|---|---|---|---|
| 0–2 days | Not silence. They have not opened the decision yet. | Full value — your normal win rate, unchanged | Nothing. Confirm delivery only if you have no read receipt. |
| 3–7 days | Collecting other quotes, or waiting on a second decision-maker | Full value. This band decides most jobs. | One phone call. Not an email. Ask which part they are comparing. |
| 8–21 days | The job is real but has slipped down their list | Most of its value, if you change channel | Call, then SMS the next day. Offer a start date, never a discount. |
| 22–90 days | Deferred, or someone else already has it | A warm enquiry, not a live deal | One closed question: “Have you got this under way with someone?” |
| 90+ days | A dormant record, not a quote | 4.4% average, 8.9% peak — appointments booked per dormant record, our own campaigns | Stop chasing individually. Run it as a consented dead-quote reactivation batch for trade businesses. |
Be clear about which numbers in that table are measured and which are a decision rule. Two are measured: the 47% above, and the 4.4% average / 8.9% peak — the rate at which our own Colliers-era campaigns booked appointments from dormant records, set out on our database reactivation page. Our result, not an industry benchmark, and its denominator is records contacted, not jobs won. The bands themselves are a decision rule, not a dataset.
What to do in the next 24 hours — none of it costs anything
This list needs a spreadsheet and a phone. No software, no agency, no budget.
- Export or list every quote sent in the last 90 days with no recorded outcome. Sort by date sent.
- Delete anyone who already said no or told you they went elsewhere. You want the silent pile, not a guilt pile.
- Ring the 3–7 day band first — today, in business hours. Not the oldest ones. The oldest feel more urgent and are worth the least.
- Do not ask “did you get my quote?” — it invites a yes and ends the call. Ask “which part are you comparing?” That has a real answer, and it tells you whether price is genuinely the issue.
- If they do not pick up, leave a 20-second voicemail that names the specific job and the address. Generic voicemails do not get returned.
- Log how many days elapsed between the site visit and the quote going out. That column explains more than the follow-up column does.
The one thing you can fix tonight for free is your send time, not your follow-up. The same Better Proposals report ties sending within 24 hours of meeting the client to a 42% lift in conversion — and sending faster costs nothing but sequencing.
If we can’t make you money, we don’t deserve yours.
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The next 7 days: the cadence that changes the outcome
A follow-up that repeats the same message on the same channel is one touch, not five. This cadence changes channel every step, because the silence usually means your message landed somewhere they were not looking.
- Day 1 after send: nothing.
- Day 3: phone call in business hours. Voicemail naming the job if no answer.
- Day 5: SMS — one line, one question, no attachment.
- Day 8: phone call, then an email that proposes two actual start dates.
- Day 14: phone call. Last one at full effort.
- Day 21: the closed question. “Have you got this under way with someone? Totally fine either way — I just want to stop chasing you.”
Book the follow-up call while you are still standing on the customer’s site. A follow-up they agreed to is a different conversation from a chase they did not ask for, and it costs thirty seconds. Running this cadence by hand for one quote is trivial; for forty it is the part that breaks, which is what a behaviour-driven lead follow-up system exists to solve.
“They went with someone cheaper” — how to check whether that is true
Often they went with whoever followed up. Test it rather than assume it: one question on the day-21 call — “Out of interest, what made you go with them?” — logged into four buckets: price, timing, responsiveness, scope. If fewer than half of your lost jobs come back as price, cutting your rates will cost you margin and win you nothing. The full metric treatment is on how to increase proposal acceptance rate; this page is only about the pile that is silent right now.
Worked example: what last month’s silent quotes are worth on a Tuesday afternoon
Substitute your own numbers. Say you send 30 quotes a month, win 8, and your average job is $6,000.
- 22 quotes went silent — not declined, just no recorded outcome. At your average job value that is $132,000 of quoted work.
- On the Decay Ladder, about 12 sit inside the 3–21 day bands. Those are live. Ringing them is roughly three hours.
- The 10 older ones behave like dormant records, not quotes — and our 4.4% is appointments booked per record, not jobs won: 10 × 4.4% is 0.44 conversations. Even if every one became a job, 0.44 × $6,000 = $2,640 — an upper bound, not an expectation.
- So the afternoon pays if ringing 12 live quotes converts one: $6,000 for three hours of your own time.
The mistake is spending the afternoon on the 90-day pile because it is bigger. It is bigger, and per record it is worth about a sixth of a live one: $264 against the $1,600 a live quote carries at your own 8-in-30 win rate.
Who should be chasing quotes at your volume
Follow-up is not skilled work, but it is relentless, and it is the first thing dropped in a busy week. Here is the honest crossover, including the point below which you should buy nothing.
| Quotes you send per month | Who should chase them | Roughly what it costs you |
|---|---|---|
| Under 15 | You, by phone, off a written list | ~1 hour a week. Do not buy software for this. |
| 15–60 | One person with CRM tasks and a fixed follow-up day | ~4–8 hours a week, plus the discipline to keep the day |
| 60+ | Automated sequencing, or someone whose only job it is | ~10+ hours a week. At this volume the cadence fails silently rather than visibly. |
Across the campaigns we run for trade and building businesses, speed moves quote conversion more than anything else: in our own client work we typically see roughly 3x from speed to lead alone and about 2x on contact rate. Those numbers do not multiply. 3x × 2x is not 6x, because responding faster is part of how contact rate improves; they overlap, and the honest combined figure sits far closer to the larger of the two. That is an operator observation from our own accounts, not a study — and it is worth less to you than the free version of the same idea: send the quote the same day.
Frequently asked questions
Why do quotes go quiet?
In order of frequency: the customer is still collecting other quotes, a second decision-maker has not seen it, the job has been deferred, or a competitor followed up and you did not. Price is a cause but it is rarely the most common one — test it by asking what made them choose the other business, and bucket the answers.
Customers are not replying to my quotes. Is it the price?
Usually not by itself. If fewer than half your lost jobs come back as “price” when you ask directly, discounting will cost you margin without winning work. Check two things first: how many days after the site visit the quote went out, and how many genuine attempts on different channels you made afterwards. Most operators find the answer to the second question is one.
How many times should I follow up on a quote before I stop?
Five attempts across 21 days, on at least three different channels, then a closed question that lets them say no. After day 90 the record stops behaving like a live quote, and our own reactivation campaigns booked appointments from 4.4% of dormant records on average, 8.9% at peak — a batch rate on records contacted, not a chase rate.
How fast should I send the quote in the first place?
Same day where the job allows it. Better Proposals’ 2022 Proposal Report, drawn from documents sent through its own platform, reports that sending a proposal within 24 hours of meeting the client is associated with a 42% increase in conversion, and that 47% of proposals with electronic signatures were signed within 24 hours of being opened. Both point the same way: the decision window opens early and closes fast.
Is it legal to keep chasing someone who asked me for a quote?
Following up on a quote a person requested is ordinarily a continuation of that transaction. Bulk-messaging an old list is marketing, and the Spam Act 2003 applies: ACMA states that you must have consent before sending marketing messages, that inferred consent is less reliable than express consent, and that the onus is on you to prove consent. This is general information, not legal advice — check your own list against the ACMA guidance before a batch send.
Should I offer a discount to get a reply?
No, and not because of pride — because it answers a question they did not ask. A discount offered into silence tells a customer your first number was soft, and it converts a scheduling problem into a pricing negotiation. Offer a start date instead. Dates are scarce in a way that prices are not.
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