Following up on an estimate

You sent the estimate Tuesday afternoon. It is Friday. No reply — no questions, no pushback, not even a "thanks, we'll look at it." The instinct is to wait another week so you don't look desperate. That is usually the wrong call. The job does not get warmer while you wait, and by week three you are competing with whoever called them most recently.

The speed research on inbound leads is about the first touch, not the estimate follow-up — and the two studies people quote are not the same. A 2007 MIT Sloan study by James Oldroyd found that calling a web lead within five minutes versus 30 minutes made contact far more likely (they reported a 100-fold drop in contact odds). The study measured reaching and qualifying the person, not closed revenue. Harvard Business Review (March 2011) found most firms take 42 hours to reply to a web lead, and 23% never reply. Your job after sending the estimate is the next conversation, not the five-minute window — but silence still reads as disinterest.

Follow-up works better as a schedule than as a mood. Here is one you can run on every estimate you send.

Time the first touch to the size of the job

What sets the timing is how many people have to agree, not politeness. A water heater swap is one person with a hot-water problem, and two days is plenty. A kitchen remodel is two people, a budget conversation and probably a lender, so calling at 48 hours reaches them mid-argument. Commercial work runs on somebody else's calendar, and the only useful timing is the date they gave you.

Pick the channel the customer already picked

Answer on the channel they used. If they texted you photos of the job, text back. If the lead came through a web form with only an email address, email. If a property manager or an adjuster is involved, email every time — they need the thread on file, and a phone call they cannot forward is worthless to them.

Calls belong to bigger jobs, where two minutes on the phone replaces a week of messages. Expect voicemail. Leave one, then send a text saying you called, so the customer can reply on whichever is easier.

One caution, and it is not a small one: calls and texts to consumers are regulated. Federal rules bar telephone solicitations to residential lines before 8 a.m. or after 9 p.m. in the customer's local time, and several states — Florida and Oklahoma among them — have stricter telephone-solicitation statutes with private rights of action. Whether a follow-up on an estimate the customer asked for counts as a solicitation is a question for a lawyer, not a blog post, and the answer has moved in court more than once. Texting people who never contacted you is a different activity entirely. Before you build any kind of list-based outreach, get it reviewed.

Three scripts that don't sound like a sales call

Text, two days after sending, small job:

Hi [first name] — [your name] with [company]. Just making sure the estimate for the [water heater replacement] came through on Tuesday. Anything you want me to walk through? I have [Thursday] and [the following Monday] open if you want to hold a date.

Voicemail, mid-size or large job. Keep it under 30 seconds:

Hi [first name], [your name] with [company], calling about the estimate I sent [Tuesday] for the [kitchen remodel]. Nothing urgent — I wanted to see if you had questions on the [tile allowance] or the schedule. I'm at [number]. I'll text you too so you have it in writing.

Email, commercial or when a paper trail matters:

Subject: [Job address] estimate — two quick questions

Hi [name],

The estimate for [scope] at [address] went over on [date]. Two things I can clear up while you review it:

1. Whether the [panel upgrade] stays in this scope or moves to a separate line
2. Whether an [October] start still works on your end

Material pricing holds through [date]. Happy to talk it through — I'm reachable at [number] most mornings.

All three name the job, name the date you sent it, and end on a question the customer can answer in one sentence. None ask for the decision on the first pass, and none lead with a discount. "Just following up!" with no question attached makes the customer invent a reply, and inventing a reply is work.

What to do with a soft "still deciding"

That answer is worth more than silence: the job is alive and something specific is in the way. Don't thank them and wait. Ask one question — totally fine, what's the piece you're still weighing? — and match the next move to what comes back.

Other bids still out. Ask when the last one lands, put that date in your calendar, and call the day after. Don't offer to beat a number you have not seen.

Someone else has to sign off — a spouse, a partner, a board, a landlord, an adjuster. Ask who, then offer to send them a copy directly or join a ten-minute call. An estimate relayed secondhand loses every part of it you would have defended.

Money or timing. Ask what has to happen now and what can wait until spring. A scope split into "now" and "later" often survives a budget conversation that a single number does not.

With a customer who says nothing at all, your message has to carry the information instead of asking for it: one line restating the scope, one date, and a question they can answer yes or no.

Three or four touches, then close it out cleanly

For residential work, three to four contacts over two to three weeks is a reasonable ceiling. Commercial bids run on the customer's calendar and can stretch much longer. Past that, more messages cost you more than the job is worth. So end the sequence on purpose:

Hi [name] — I'll stop filling up your phone about this one. The estimate holds through [date]; after that I'd need to recheck material pricing. If the timing changes, text me and I'll pick it right back up.

That closes the sequence without closing the relationship, and it leaves you a real reason to reach out later — the expiration date. Estimates do come back weeks after they went cold, usually when the customer's own timing clears.

Write each touch down in the job record: date, channel, one line on what was said. Without that you either follow up twice in a day or never follow up at all.

Treat the open log as a nudge, not proof

Timing gets easier when you know the estimate link has been opened. DoneQuote logs every open of the link you sent on the quote's own timeline.

Read it as a hint, not a verdict. The log records that the link was opened, not who opened it: a forwarded link, a spouse on their own phone and the customer's own second look all look the same. And no opens does not prove the customer never saw it — the email may have landed in spam, or they read your summary without tapping through. Two opens last night is a reasonable nudge to call today. A week of nothing is a reason to resend the link by text, not to assume the price scared them off.

None of this is closing technique. It is circling back on the day you said you would, with the job named and one answerable question attached — and stopping cleanly when the answer turns out to be no.