The quote follow-up that wins work without annoying anyone is short and human: a quick check a couple of days after sending that the quote arrived and makes sense, one friendly nudge around day seven, and then a phone call from whoever priced the job if it's still quiet around day fourteen. After that you either close it or let it expire. The part worth automating isn't the customer emails, which job apps like Tradify, ServiceM8 and Jobber already send if you switch them on. It's the bit everyone forgets: a reminder to the owner, every week, listing which quotes have gone quiet and how much they're worth.
Quotes go quiet for boring reasons. The customer is busy, they're waiting on a second quote, their partner hasn't looked at it, or it went to a junk folder. Very few of them are a firm no. That's why a polite follow-up wins work, and it's also why a barrage of automated "just checking in!" emails loses it. The customer who's waiting on a second quote doesn't need four emails. They need one, and then a person.
What does a good quote follow-up sequence look like?
Three or four touches over about three weeks, with the tone getting more personal rather than more pushy. Here's a sequence that works for most trades and service businesses quoting jobs in the hundreds or low thousands:
| Day | Message | Who sends it |
|---|---|---|
| 0 | The quote itself, with a line saying when it's valid until and how to accept | Your quoting system |
| 2 or 3 | "Just checking this came through OK. Happy to talk through anything on it." | Automated email or text is fine |
| 7 | A friendly nudge with one useful thing: when you could start, or a reminder of what's included | Automated, or the owner if the job is big |
| 7 | A note to the owner: "These quotes have had no reply for a week" | Automated, to you, not the customer |
| 14 | A phone call. "Wanted to see where you'd got to with it, and whether anything needs changing." | The person who priced the job |
| Expiry | A short note that the price is held until the date on the quote, then you'll need to requote | Automated is fine |
| After expiry | Mark it lost, ideally with a reason | You |
Two rules make that work. First, stop the moment the customer replies, accepts or declines. Nothing makes a business look more like a machine than sending "did you get our quote?" to someone who said yes yesterday. Second, the bigger the job, the sooner a human takes over. A £180 boiler service can run on automated nudges all the way to expiry. A £14,000 extension shouldn't get an automated email after day three; it should get a call.
On tone, the follow-ups that work all offer something rather than ask for something. "I've got a gap in the diary the week of the 14th if that helps" gives the customer a reason to reply. "Just following up on our quote" gives them a reason to archive it.
Where do quotes usually live?
This decides what's possible, because the follow-up has to know which quotes are still open. For trades and service businesses quotes tend to live in one of five places, and they're not equal.
| Where quotes live | Does it follow up natively? | What that looks like |
|---|---|---|
| Tradify | Yes | Automatic emails at 7 and 14 days after sending, and 3 days before the quote expires, switched on in Settings, Quotes. Text reminders can be added; their timing is fixed |
| ServiceM8 | Yes | Quote Follow Up, part of the Automation add-on. Up to five follow-ups by text, email or both, with your own timing and wording. Stops when the client responds or the job leaves Quote status |
| Jobber | Yes, from the Connect plan up | Up to two follow-ups, each a set number of days after sending (up to 90), by the same route as the original quote |
| Xero | No | Quotes have an expiry date and customers can accept online, but there are no quote reminders. You can resend a quote by hand |
| QuickBooks Online | Partly | Customers can approve estimates online and you get an alert when they respond. Reminders on estimates need workflows, which are on the Advanced plan |
| A CRM (HubSpot and similar) | Depends on the tier | HubSpot's automated email sequences need Sales Hub Professional or above |
| A spreadsheet or the sent folder | No | Nothing happens unless someone remembers |
If you already use Tradify, ServiceM8 or Jobber, the honest answer is to switch on what you've already paid for. Set the wording in your own voice, check it stops when the customer accepts, and you've got the customer side of the sequence sorted. The only thing those tools won't do for you is the day-fourteen phone call, and that's on purpose.
If your quotes go out from Xero, there's nothing to switch on. Xero's own product ideas forum has had a long-running request for quote reminders, and the workaround Xero staff have given is resending the quote manually. QuickBooks Online sits in between: online approval and alerts are useful, but automatic nudges on estimates mean being on Advanced.
Should you automate emails to customers at all?
For the early, low-stakes touches, yes. "Did this arrive OK?" two days after sending is something a customer genuinely appreciates, and a system will send it more reliably than a busy owner will. The same goes for a short note before the quote expires, because that's useful information, not pressure.
Where automation goes wrong is volume and tone. Five automated emails on a domestic quote reads as desperate. An automated email after the customer has already rung you to say they're going ahead reads as careless. And an automated "final chance!" message reads as a sales tactic, which for a local trade business living on word of mouth is the opposite of what you want.
So the line I'd draw is this: automate the reminders that help the customer, and route the ones that need judgement to a person. That's why the most useful automation for quotes is usually aimed at the owner, not at the customer.
What does the owner reminder look like?
One message, once a week (Monday morning works well), listing every quote that's been out for seven days or more with no reply. Each line has the customer, what the job is, the value, how long it's been out, and the phone number. Sort it by value, biggest first, so the two quotes worth ringing about are at the top.
It looks something like this:
Quotes with no reply for 7+ days (5 quotes, £23,450) Kitchen rewire, Mrs Patel, £6,800, 9 days, 07700 900123 Office fit-out, Harbour Dental, £11,200, 16 days, expires Friday Bathroom, Mr Okafor, £3,900, 8 days ...
That's it. The owner reads it with a coffee, rings the top two, ignores the small ones that the job app is already nudging, and marks anything dead as lost. It takes ten minutes and it catches exactly the quotes that matter most, which are the big ones that went quiet while everyone was busy doing the work.
It can be built over wherever quotes live. If they're in Xero, the automation reads quotes with a "sent" status and an issue date more than seven days ago. If they're in a spreadsheet, it reads the rows with no "accepted" or "lost" against them. If they're in a job app, it reads the open quotes. On Microsoft 365 it's usually a Power Automate flow that runs every Monday and sends an email or a Teams message; if you're weighing up the tools, there's a comparison in Power Automate, Zapier or Make.
The same idea works for jobs as well as quotes. The information was always there, but nobody was going to go and look for it every day, so it comes to them. If you want the quote list as part of a wider morning message, the 7am business summary email covers that.
What about the quotes you lose?
Worth a line, because the follow-up sequence is also how you find out why. When you mark a quote lost, add a one-word reason: price, timing, went elsewhere, no reply. After a few months of that you'll know whether you're losing on price or losing on speed, and that's a much more useful thing to know than your conversion rate. It's also a natural thing to add to the owner reminder: "lost this month, by reason".
The same habit applies to invoices, oddly enough. A quote that went quiet and an invoice that's gone overdue are the same problem in different clothes: a customer who's stopped replying, and a system that will send emails forever while a person needs to pick up the phone. I've written about that side in automating overdue invoice reminders.
Where should you start?
If you use Tradify, ServiceM8 or Jobber, switch on the built-in quote follow-ups this week, rewrite the wording so it sounds like you, and make sure it stops when the customer replies. If your quotes go out from Xero, QuickBooks or a spreadsheet, start with the Monday list for yourself, not with emails to customers. Either way, keep the day-fourteen phone call. It's the one step that wins the big jobs back, and it's the one no software does for you.
If quote follow-up is one of a handful of jobs you'd like off your plate, what a small business can automate helps put them in order, and the build itself is what I do under small business automation. A Monday quote list is a small, fixed-price job (one automation starts from £950), but check what your job app already does before you pay anyone.
Common questions
How long should you wait before following up on a quote?
Two or three days for a quick "did this arrive OK?", then about a week for a friendly nudge. If it's still quiet after two weeks, a phone call from the person who priced the job works better than another email. Bigger jobs justify a call sooner.
How many times should you follow up on a quote?
Three or four touches over about three weeks is plenty: an arrival check, a nudge, a phone call, and a note before the quote expires. After that, mark it lost and move on. More than that starts to feel like pressure, especially for domestic customers.
What should a quote follow-up email say?
Keep it short and offer something useful rather than asking for a decision. "Just checking this came through, happy to talk through anything" works early on; later, a start date you can offer or a reminder of what's included gives the customer a reason to reply. Avoid "final chance" wording; it reads as a sales tactic.
Does Xero send quote reminders?
No. Xero quotes have an expiry date and customers can accept them online, but Xero doesn't send automatic reminders on quotes. You can resend a quote manually, or build a weekly list of quotes that have gone quiet from the quote status in Xero.
Can Tradify, ServiceM8 or Jobber follow up quotes automatically?
Yes, all three can. Tradify sends emails at 7 and 14 days and three days before expiry. ServiceM8's Quote Follow Up, part of its Automation add-on, sends up to five follow-ups with your own timing. Jobber sends up to two follow-ups from its Connect plan upwards.
Should quote follow-ups be automated or done by a person?
Both, at different stages. The early, low-stakes reminders can be automated safely, as long as they stop when the customer replies. Anything that needs judgement, such as a big quote going quiet or a customer who's clearly comparing prices, should go to a person, which is why a weekly reminder to the owner is often the more useful automation.