The quote nobody answered is not a lost job.
How long should you keep following up on a quote?
Longer than most contractors do. Across 432,000 contractor quotes analysed by Level CFO, the ones that get accepted come back in about two days, while the ones that die sit for roughly a month before anyone gives up on them. A quote that has gone quiet for a week is therefore not lost — it is waiting. Quietworkk totals up unanswered quotes free, from a read-only Jobber connection.
When a customer says no, you learn something and you move on. When they say nothing, you learn nothing at all — and the job is usually still there, sitting behind somebody who got busy, went away, or is waiting on their partner. Most contractors chase once, maybe twice, from memory, at the end of a day that already ran long.
Why quotes go quiet, and why that is good news
Silence reads like rejection and almost never is. The reasons are boring, which is exactly why the work is still winnable.
- They are waiting on a partner, a payday or a landlord
- Your quote arrived on a day that got away from them
- They meant to reply, and the message moved up the screen
- They are comparing, and nobody has followed up to stay in front
What it is costing, in your own numbers
This is arithmetic rather than a claim, and you can do it on the back of an envelope: count the quotes you sent last quarter that never got a yes or a no, and add up what they were worth. On the numbers in the study above, roughly a third of quotes never convert and most of those were never turned down — they were simply never chased.
Why nobody does it
Not laziness. Following up properly means remembering who, remembering when, and writing something that does not read like a form letter — at six in the evening with a van to unload.
- The fifteenth polite chase of the week is the one that does not get sent
- A reminder in a calendar is not a message in their inbox
- "Just checking in" gets ignored, so it feels pointless, so it stops
- The quotes worth the most are usually the oldest, and the most awkward to raise
Start by finding out the number
Before automating anything, it is worth knowing the size of it. If you run Jobber, Quietworkk will read your account read-only and total up every quote you sent that nobody replied to — how much, how many, and how long the oldest has been waiting. It takes about a minute, costs nothing, and needs no signup or sales call.
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