You spent two evenings pricing the job, sent the quote on Tuesday, and it is now the middle of the following week. Nothing has come back. Not a no, not a question about the price, not an acknowledgement that it arrived. You keep opening the thread to check you actually attached it.
How to follow up on a quote with no reply: send three short messages, roughly two days, one week and two weeks after you sent it, each with its own purpose, then close the loop and move on. Silence is almost never a decision. In our own data, nearly half of quotes are never answered either way.
This guide covers why quotes go quiet, what the silence is actually costing you, the three messages to send with wording you can copy, and how to set quotes up so this stops happening.
Is this you?
- You send quotes and often never hear back at all, in either direction.
- You do not know how many quotes are currently open, or what they add up to.
- You tell yourself you will follow up, then a week passes and it feels too late to bother.
- Following up feels like chasing, so you wait for them to come to you.
- Your quotes have no expiry date, so there is no natural moment to ask again.
- You could not say what share of your quotes turn into work.
If three or more of those fit, the problem is not your pricing and it is probably not your clients. It is that the quote leaves your hands and nothing happens next, by design.
Silence is the normal outcome, not a bad sign
This is worth seeing in numbers, because most owners read a quiet quote as a quiet rejection. Of quotes sent at least six months ago, 45.5% have still never been answered either way (398 of 875 quotes, 30 businesses). Almost no client ever formally declines: that bucket is too small to report under our own 25-business threshold, which is the finding. Silence is far more common than a no.
Source: Billbooks quote study, 1,125 quotes from 43 small businesses, last 24 months (aggregate only, figures shown only where 25+ businesses and 100+ documents contribute). See the quote study, or the wider invoice payment study.
Read those two together. Almost nobody tells you no. Nearly half tell you nothing. So if you treat no reply as a rejection, you are writing off a large share of your pipeline on a signal that carries almost no information.
Why quotes go quiet
Very little of this is about you, and knowing which one you are dealing with changes what you send.
You are in a queue, not in a decision. The person who asked for the quote has a job to do that is not your job. Your quote is one of thirty things in their inbox, and it is rarely the most urgent.
They are still collecting quotes. If you are the first of three, nothing can happen until the third arrives. Your quote is not being ignored, it is waiting.
The quote reached the wrong person. The person who walked you round the site is often not the person who signs off the spend. Quotes also land in spam and promotions filters, particularly with a PDF attached.
The price was higher than they expected. Saying that out loud is awkward, so people say nothing instead. This is the one case where a follow-up genuinely helps them, because it gives them a low-cost way to tell you.
Nothing in the quote asked for a decision. A document with no expiry date and no next step is an invitation to think about it later, indefinitely. This is the cause you control completely.
What the silence costs you
The job itself. Where a client is genuinely undecided, the work often goes to whoever is still visible when they get round to deciding, which is usually whoever followed up.
The hours you already spent. Pricing a job properly takes real time: the site visit, the measurements, the supplier prices, the write-up. That cost is already paid whether or not you ever hear back.
A pipeline you cannot trust. If nearly half of your quotes are in an unknown state, you cannot tell a good month from a bad one in advance, so you cannot plan work, order materials, or decide whether to take on the next enquiry.
Your attention. Open loops are expensive. Ten quotes you are vaguely wondering about take up more head space than ten you know the answer to, even when the answer is no.
Get your three follow-up dates and the messages to send
Put in the date you sent the quote. The Quote Follow-up Planner gives you three follow-up dates, skipping weekends, a suggested expiry date, and a ready-to-copy message for each one. Free, and nothing you type is saved.
What to do now, with what you already have
Three messages, each with a different job. The timings below are a practical rule of thumb rather than research: about two days, a week, and two weeks after sending, moved off weekends. If the client has a deadline of their own, bring them closer together so the last one lands at least a couple of days before it.
Message 1, about two days after sending: check it arrived
This one is not a chase, and it should not read like one. You are confirming delivery and opening a door.
Subject: Quote for [job], anything you need from me
Hi [name], just checking the quote for [job] reached you on [date]. Happy to walk through any part of it or adjust the scope if something is not quite right. Any questions, just reply here.
Message 2, about a week after sending: add something useful
Do not simply repeat yourself. Give them a reason to reply that is not "well?". An option, a clarification, or a date that affects them all work.
Subject: One option on the [job] quote
Hi [name], thinking about your [job] quote. If the full scope is more than you want to take on right now, I can split it into two stages and start with [first stage] for [amount]. Would that suit better? Happy either way.
Message 3, about two weeks after sending: close the loop
Make a no easy. This is the message that gets the most replies, because it costs the client nothing to answer and releases them from feeling they owe you something.
Subject: Closing the file on [job]
Hi [name], I have not heard back on the [job] quote, so I will assume the timing is not right and close it off. No problem at all. If it comes back around, the pricing holds until [date] and I would be glad to pick it up. Best of luck with the project.
Two things make these work. Keep them short, because if the client is quiet through being busy, a long message makes replying harder. And send them from the same thread as the original quote, so the document is one scroll away rather than a search away.
If the quote has already been sitting for weeks
Do not reconstruct a missed schedule. Send one message, the closing one above, and let it do its work. It is the strongest of the three anyway.
Two adjustments for an old quote. If your costs have moved since you priced it, say the pricing needs refreshing rather than honouring a number that now loses you money: "the materials have moved since June, so I would need to requote, which I am happy to do." And if it was a large job that went quiet after a warm conversation, phone instead of emailing. A quote that stalls after real enthusiasm usually stalled on something specific, like an approval or a budget cycle, and you will learn that in a minute on the phone and never by email.
If the reply that comes back is that you were too expensive, that is useful rather than bad news. Before you drop your price on the next one, check the number itself: our guide on how to write an estimate covers what to include, and the what should I charge calculator works out the rate you need to cover your costs and pay yourself.
How to stop it happening
The follow-ups above treat the symptom. The cause is that a quote leaves with nothing attached to it. Four habits fix that, and all four work in a notebook or a spreadsheet.
- Put an expiry date on every quote. This is the single highest-value change. It creates a legitimate reason to make contact, it stops an old price being accepted after your costs have moved, and it quietly signals that your time has a shape. A month is a reasonable default for most work.
- Diary the first follow-up before you move on. At the moment you press send, put the date two days out in your calendar. If it is not in the diary it depends on you remembering, and you will not.
- Keep one list of open quotes. Client, amount, date sent, expiry, last contact. Look at it once a week. Five minutes on that list is the highest-paid five minutes in the week, because it is the only thing standing between a quote and a forgotten quote.
- Count your win rate. Quotes sent against jobs won. You cannot improve a number you have never looked at, and knowing it turns quoting from a hopeful act into something you can actually work on.
If you would rather it ran without you, this is what quoting software is for. In Billbooks, a quote carries an expiry date and moves to Expired on its own when the date passes, and you can turn on an automatic follow-up that nudges the client every 7, 15, 30 or 45 days until they approve, decline or it expires. The client approves or declines from the link without creating an account, so the quiet middle disappears, and an approved quote converts to an invoice in one click. Quotes are unlimited on every plan, which starts at $7.95 a month, with a 30-day free trial and no credit card.
More problems like this one, each with a first step, are on our pricing and invoicing problems hub.
One next step
Open your sent folder and find the oldest quote you never heard back on. Send it the closing message above, word for word if you like. You will either get the job, get a clear no, or get your attention back, and all three are better than the state it is in now.
Three free tools to plan the follow-up and price the next one, no signup
Frequently asked questions
How do I follow up on a quote with no reply?
Send three short messages rather than one. About two days after sending, check the quote arrived and offer to answer questions. About a week after, add something useful such as a smaller first stage or a clarification. About two weeks after, close the loop and make a no easy. Send each one in the original quote thread so the document stays one scroll away.
How long should I wait before following up on a quote?
Two or three days is enough for the first message, because it is a delivery check rather than a chase. Waiting a fortnight to make first contact is the more common mistake. If the client has a deadline of their own, move the whole sequence earlier so your last message lands at least a couple of days before it.
How many times should I follow up on a quote?
Three is a sensible limit. The first confirms it arrived, the second adds something new, the third closes the file. After that a further message rarely changes the outcome and costs you goodwill. Closing the loop politely leaves the door open, which is worth more than a fourth nudge.
Does no reply to a quote mean no?
Usually not. In Billbooks quote data covering quotes sent at least six months ago, 398 of 875 (about 45.5%) were never answered either way. Almost nobody formally declines: so few businesses have ever had a quote marked declined that the figure sits below our own reporting threshold. Silence is far more common than rejection, and it most often means the client is busy, still collecting quotes, or waiting on someone else to approve the spend.
What should I say in a quote follow-up email?
Keep it short and give the client something to react to. A good follow-up names the job, says when you sent it, and offers one concrete thing: an answer to questions, a smaller first stage, or a closing date. Avoid asking only whether they have had a chance to look, because that question puts the work back on them and is easy to leave unanswered.
Should I put an expiry date on a quote?
Yes, and it is the most useful single change you can make. An expiry date stops old pricing being accepted after your costs have moved, it gives you a legitimate reason to make contact before the date, and it prompts a decision rather than leaving the quote open indefinitely. About a month suits most work.
