Ask a tradie why a quote was lost and the answer is usually price. Look at the quotes that were never answered and the real answer is silence. The customer got three quotes, meant to decide on the weekend, had a weekend, and the quotes sat there. The one who followed up got the job. Not the cheapest. The one who asked.
Following up feels like begging. It is not. It is the second half of quoting. Here is how to do it so it works and so you do not feel like a pest doing it.
Why customers go quiet
Rarely because they have decided against you. More often because deciding is work. They need to talk to a partner, check a bank balance, compare two quotes that are laid out differently, or just find ten minutes. Each day that passes makes it easier to leave it another day. A follow-up is not pressure. It is a reminder that the ten minutes is still owed, and a short cut back to the quote so they do not have to find it.
The spacing that works
Two days, five days, ten days. The first follow-up, at two days, catches the customer who meant to answer and forgot. The second, at five, catches the one who waited for the other quotes to arrive. The third, at ten, is the last word: still here, still happy to do it, no hard feelings either way. After that, stop. A fourth message is where you become a pest, and it rarely changes a no into a yes.
This is the spacing Quote Desk uses when you press Follow up automatically, and it is fixed on purpose. You cannot set it to daily, because daily loses jobs.
What to say
Almost nothing. The whole message is: checking you saw the quote, here is the link, happy to answer questions. Your name. That is it. Do not restate the price. Do not add a discount; a follow-up with a discount teaches every customer to wait for the follow-up. Do not ask why they have not answered. Do not apologise for following up.
The follow-up Quote Desk sends is five lines. Hi, just checking you saw the quote for the amount, you can accept or ask a question here, link, your business name. It reads like a text from a person who is busy, which is what it is.
Make the yes easy
The best follow-up is one the customer can answer without doing anything else. If your quote was a PDF, the follow-up asks them to find it, open it, decide, and write an email. If your quote has an accept button, the follow-up is the button. Every reminder Quote Desk sends carries the same accept link as the original, so the customer who finally has ten minutes presses once and is done.
Stop the moment they answer
Nothing undoes a yes faster than a reminder arriving after it. If the customer accepts on day four, the day-five reminder must not go. Set up by hand, this is a calendar entry you have to remember to delete. Quote Desk cancels the remaining reminders in the same moment the customer presses Accept or No thanks.
If a customer rings to say yes, ask them to press the button as well. It takes them five seconds, it records the acceptance, and it stops the reminders. Otherwise you are the one who has to remember.
Follow up on the no as well
A customer who presses No thanks and types a reason has told you something worth more than the job. Cheaper quote elsewhere, going with someone who can start sooner, decided not to go ahead, too expensive for what it is. Read a dozen of those and your pricing and your wording both get better. Do not reply to argue. If the reason is something you could fix, a short reply offering to re-quote is fine, once.
When not to follow up
If the customer said they are getting other quotes and will be in touch next week, give them the week. If they said no on the phone, do not send the reminders anyway; press nothing and let the quote sit under Waiting on the customer, or ask them to decline it on the link so it moves to Lost. If the job was small and urgent and they have gone quiet, they have probably had it done. Let it go.
The phone call
Email reminders do most of the work. For a big job, a single phone call after the second reminder is still the strongest move there is. Not to push. To ask if they have questions. Most of the time they do, and the question is the thing that was stopping them.
Three emails and maybe one call. That is following up. Everything beyond it is noise, and the customer knows the difference.