Guide
Not "be persistent." Here is a dated five-touch schedule, what each touch is actually for, and the maths on what most operators leave on the table by stopping after touch one.
"Follow up a few times" isn't a plan. It's an excuse to send one text and move on. If you send a quote and hear nothing, the client hasn't necessarily said no — they're comparing, waiting on a partner, or the quote is sitting in an inbox they haven't opened. The fix isn't more enthusiasm. It's a fixed cadence with a different job at each touch.
Below is a five-touch schedule built around when clients actually decide, not around how awkward you feel about chasing them.
| Touch | Timing | Method | Job it does |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 24 hours after sending | Call | Confirm they got it, answer first questions |
| 2 | Day 3 | Text with the quote link | Low-friction reminder, no pressure |
| 3 | Day 7 | Call | Find out what changed since the quote |
| 4 | Day 14 | Call or text | Offer a scheduling slot, not a discount |
| 5 | Day 30 | Text or email | Soft close, move to nurture list |
Call the next day, not the same day. Same-day calls feel like pressure selling. The next-day call is a simple check: "Did the quote come through okay? Any questions on the scope?" This catches dead emails, wrong numbers and simple confusion before it costs you the job. It's not a sales call. It's a delivery confirmation.
A short text, nothing pushy: "Hi [name], just flagging the quote from Tuesday is still open — link here if you need to check anything: [link]." This does two things a call can't. It's low effort for the client to glance at, and it re-surfaces the quote in a way that doesn't feel like nagging. Keep the link live and working — if you're using a quoting tool that generates a shareable link, use it here.
This is the touch that does the most work, and it's the one most operators skip because it feels repetitive. It isn't. By day 7 the client has had time to compare, talk to a partner, or get a second quote. Your job isn't to ask "have you decided" — that invites a quick no. Ask what changed.
Two questions, in this order:
Most operators who run this cadence properly report that the majority of eventual wins land somewhere around touch three, roughly day ten. If you stop at touch one, you're cutting the process off before it's done its job.
By two weeks, the client has either decided against you or is just stalled on committing. Discounting here trains every future client to wait you out, and it eats the margin you built into the quote in the first place. Instead, offer something more useful: a specific slot. "I've got a Tuesday or Thursday opening next week if you want to lock the job in." A real date does what a discount can't — it makes the decision concrete without touching your price.
If there's still no answer by day 30, send one last message that closes the loop without burning the relationship: "No worries if the timing isn't right — I'll keep this quote on file, just let me know when you're ready." Then move them to a nurture list (a seasonal email, a check-in text in three months) rather than your active pipeline. This isn't giving up. It's freeing up your attention for open quotes that are still live.
Say you run 12 open quotes a month at an average job value of $900. If your win rate on quotes you follow up properly is 38%, and it drops to 28% when you only call once and give up, the difference is:
That gap — 20-35% of eventually-won jobs — isn't hypothetical. It's what a lot of operators leave behind by stopping after touch one because chasing feels pushy. It isn't pushy if it's dated, brief, and tied to a real question each time.
The five-touch schedule is a default, not a rule. Whether it's worth running touch 4 and 5 depends on your own numbers: your close rate, your margin per job, and how much your time is worth per hour. Run the break-even like this:
Break-even = (time cost of the follow-up) ÷ (margin per job × probability that touch recovers a job)
Worked example: if a call takes 5 minutes and your time is worth $60/hour, that call costs $5. If your margin per job is $300 and a given touch has even a 5% chance of recovering a job that would otherwise be lost, the expected value is $300 × 0.05 = $15 — three times the cost of the call. Below about a 2% recovery chance at these numbers, the touch isn't worth your time. Above it, keep calling.
If you don't know your margin per job, that's the number to fix first — run your actual costs through a job profitability calculator before you decide how hard to chase any given quote. Chasing a job with 8% margin is a different decision than chasing one with 35%.
The schedule only works if it actually runs. Put the five dates on a calendar the moment you send a quote, or use a simple tracker so nothing relies on remembering. If you're building out scripts, texts and call prompts for this kind of follow-up work, the AI prompt pack for home services has ready-to-adapt templates for exactly this. And if estimate follow-up is one of several processes you're trying to standardise across the business, the small business operations kit covers the rest — scheduling, invoicing, and the other bits that eat time when they're not written down.
Five touches, five jobs, thirty days. That's the whole system. The maths says it's worth running.
The Small Business Operations Kit ($19) turns guides like this one into fill-in-once worksheets: rate card, quoting sheet, job costing, payment terms and follow-up templates. Built by the same people who write these guides.