Most quotes are not lost to a competitor. They are lost to a homeowner who meant to reply, got busy, and never did. How you follow up on an estimate is worth more than how you write it, and almost nobody does it twice.
The timing that works
- Day 2 or 3. Long enough that you are not hovering, short enough that the job is still in their head.
- Day 7 to 10. The one almost everybody skips, and the one that recovers the most work.
- Stop at two. A third nudge changes nothing except how you look.
What to actually say
The failed version is “just checking in” — it asks for nothing and gives them nothing to reply to. The version that works does two things: it makes replying easy, and it gives a reason the timing matters.
Hi Dana — following up on the water heater quote from Tuesday. Happy to answer anything on it, and if the timing is wrong just say so and I’ll close it out. I’ve got space Thursday or Friday next week if you want it done before the weekend.
That gives them three easy exits: ask a question, say no, or pick a day. Any of the three is better for you than silence.
Make “no” easy on purpose
A clean no is worth real money. It stops you holding a slot, stops you wondering, and tells you something about your pricing. Contractors who make it awkward to decline end up with a pipeline full of jobs that were never going to happen.
Follow up on the right thing
If you can see that they opened the estimate three times and didn’t sign, that is a pricing or a scope conversation, not a reminder. If they never opened it at all, the email went to spam and the fix is a text, not a second email.
Why this gets skipped
Not laziness — it is that following up requires remembering, on a day where you are under a house. The quotes that need chasing are invisible unless something surfaces them, and by Friday the Tuesday quote is gone from memory.
That is the whole argument for automating it. Not because the message is better, but because it actually gets sent.
Let it happen without you
Toolbelt’s follow-up engine nudges quiet estimates on its own — a maximum of two, polite, in your name, switchable off per job. The jobs that used to go cold get one more chance while you are on a roof. Three free estimates, no card.
Worth reading alongside why homeowners ghost estimates, which covers what to fix before the follow-up, and how much deposit to ask for.