Automated follow-up: no quote that quietly dies
You send a quote and then it goes quiet. Calling feels like pushing, so you do nothing. Two weeks later you no longer know whether it is alive — and the customer went to someone who did get in touch.
The old world
Most quotes are not lost on price
They are lost to silence. The customer asked something, got an amount, and was then pulled away by the rest of their day. They did not say no. They said nothing — which feels the same, and is something entirely different.
You know about following up. It is just never scheduled anywhere, because it is never urgent. And if you do it, you do it on the big enquiries and not the small ones — while it is the small ones that together make your year.
Example: forty quotes a year
- Quotes per year
- 40 quotes
- Won without follow-up (3 in 10)
- 12 orders
- Won with one polite reminder (4 in 10)
- 16 orders
- Four extra orders, at € 400
- € 1,600 per year
Example figures. We take your own win rate from your quote history — usually the first number a business owner has never looked at.
The turn
Following up is not a sales trick. It is courtesy with a diary.
Nobody has to make a call. What has to happen is that the customer knows their enquiry arrived, that a day later they are asked once whether everything was clear, and that after delivery someone asks how it went. That is all — and it is exactly what always gets left.
- Immediately The enquiry is confirmed. The customer knows it arrived and when they will hear back.
- After 30 minutes The quote goes out, with a short summary of exactly what was agreed.
- After a day One friendly question: is everything clear, or shall I look at something? If the customer replies, the sequence stops at once.
- After delivery A request for a review — at the moment the product has just arrived and the customer is still pleased with it.
The agent does not simply send messages. It looks at what happens in your system: has there been a reply, a payment, a delivery. The moment the customer shows any sign of life the sequence stops — that is the difference between following up and chasing.
A salesperson on commission calls until they hear a yes. Your agent stops at the first sign of life, because it has nothing to win — it only has to leave nothing behind.
And it keeps to the manners you would keep yourself: working days between nine and eight only, never the same reminder twice, and never to someone who just had a message about something else.
A week of follow-up
What happens without you doing anything
This sequence has been running on our own quotes and orders since July. This is an ordinary week.
- Monday Three enquiries in. All three confirmed within half an hour, with the requested sizes and quantities included so the customer can check they are right.
- Tuesday One of the three has replied. That one drops out of the sequence. The other two get one question about whether everything is clear.
- Wednesday One of the two writes back with a question about lead time. That reaches you — a real question is no longer follow-up.
- Thursday The third stays silent. Nothing more happens there: one reminder is enough, two is nagging.
- Friday An order from last week has been delivered. The customer gets the review request, with the direct link included.
Five days, eight messages, and not once did you have to think about it.
Why better, not just cheaper
What a reminder in your diary does not do
A task on your list eventually joins the other things you do not get to. An agent always gets to it — and more importantly, it knows what happened in the meantime, so it never sends a reminder to someone who paid long ago.
- It checks firstReplied, paid or delivered: it verifies in your system before sending anything. Nothing damages more than a reminder to a customer who is already done.
- It stops in timeOne polite reminder, and that is it. The sequence stops at the first answer, including when that answer is "no".
- It asks for reviewsAt the only moment that works: just after delivery. Which is usually the moment you think about it least.
- It keeps office hoursWorking days, between nine and eight. A reminder at half past eleven at night reads like a machine, and that is exactly what we avoid.
- You see what was sentEvery message on a name and a time. If a customer calls, you see at a glance what they received from you.
The new world
What changes about your revenue
Nothing changes about your range, nothing about your prices, and you call nobody. What changes is that every enquiry is finished properly instead of evaporating — and that a share of those evaporated enquiries simply become orders.
You also get something you almost never get now: reviews. Not because you dared to ask, but because someone asked at the right moment.
The quote you forgot is the order you did not expect.
Getting started
What you have to do yourself
Let us look at how your enquiries and quotes run now, and decide once how you want to sound. We write the texts together: short, in your own voice, without a single word that smells of selling. After that it runs.
Frequently asked questions about automated follow-up
Will this not make me pushy?
One reminder per enquiry, working days only, and the sequence stops as soon as the customer responds. That is less than most companies do, and more than most owners manage.
What if the customer already replied?
Then they get nothing more. The agent first checks in your system whether there was a reply, a payment or a delivery — which is why this only works properly when it is connected to your webshop or administration.
Is this allowed under e-mail rules?
It concerns people who made an enquiry with you or bought something, about exactly that enquiry or purchase. That is handling, not advertising. We explicitly do not use this for cold outreach, and every message carries an opt-out.
Can I decide what gets sent?
Yes, and you should. The texts are yours; we write them together in your own voice. You also set the moments — for rush work a day is too late, for a long quote it is too early.
What does automated follow-up cost?
That depends on how many enquiries you get and where they arrive. We deliberately have no standard price list. What we do first: look at how many quotes go unanswered at your company — that number decides whether this is for you.