Guides / Selling
Following up on estimates
The quotes you sent and never heard about are the cheapest work available to you. You have already done the driving, the measuring and the pricing; the only remaining cost is a message. And yet this is the first thing that gets dropped in a busy week.
Silence is usually not a no
People ask for quotes and then life happens. They are waiting on a spouse, a paycheck, a decision about the kitchen, or they simply forgot. A large share of unanswered quotes are winnable by someone asking again.
The reason this feels uncomfortable is that it is imagined as pestering. In practice a short, specific, useful message is received as professionalism — most of your competitors never send one.
Speed of the first quote beats everything
The single highest-leverage change available is sending the quote faster. A quote delivered before you leave the driveway lands while the conversation is still live and while you are the only company they have talked to.
A quote that arrives three days later arrives into a comparison you are no longer present for. Nothing in a follow-up sequence recovers as much as not needing it.
A sequence that works
- Same day: the quote itself, with everything needed to say yes — scope, price, and a way to accept it without replying to an email.
- Day 3: short check that it arrived and an offer to walk through it. Not a nudge about the decision, a nudge about the document.
- Day 10: one useful thing — a note on timing, availability, or a detail from the walkthrough that shows you remember the house.
- Day 30: a clean close. Ask whether to keep it open or close the file. This one gets more answers than the other three.
- Season later: a reason to re-open. Weather, a price change, the other half of the house.
What to say
Short, specific, and about them. Reference the actual house and the actual scope — "the cedar siding on the north side we talked about" beats "just following up on my quote" every time, because it proves a person is writing.
Make the next step a single action. Asking someone to "let me know your thoughts" is asking them to compose an email. A link they can click to accept is a decision they can make in ten seconds.
Automate the sending, not the thinking
The sequence should fire whether or not you remember it — that is the only way it survives a busy March. But the messages should read like a person wrote them, because one obviously templated chase does more damage than no chase.
The honest version: write four good messages once, let them send themselves, and reply personally the moment anyone answers.
And ask for the review
The other follow-up worth automating is the review request after completion. It converts far better immediately after the job than three weeks later, and reviews are the lead source you do not pay for per click.
Questions
How many times should I follow up on a painting estimate?
Four touches over about a month works well: the quote, a check that it arrived, one useful message, then a clean close asking whether to keep the file open.
Does following up annoy customers?
Rarely, when the message is short, specific and about their job. Most competitors never follow up at all, so it reads as professionalism.
What matters more than following up?
Sending the first quote faster. A quote delivered the same day lands while the conversation is live; no sequence recovers as much as not needing one.
Where this stops being arithmetic
Aerys prices a job from your own catalog and production rates, sends it with an accept link and the invoice already attached, and then compares what the job actually cost against what you quoted — by task, while the job is still running.