What Should Happen After Someone Asks for a Quote?
Someone asked for a quote. What happens in the next minute, the next hour and the next day decides whether they hear from you or from a competitor. Here is the sequence I use on my own site, and how to test yours tonight.
Most advice about getting more leads stops at the form. Somebody fills it in, presses the button, and the article ends. For the business, that is where the work starts, and it is where a surprising number of leads quietly die.
Researchers writing in Harvard Business Review once sent a test inquiry through the websites of 2,241 US companies and timed the replies (HBR, 2011). Only 37 percent answered within an hour. Nearly a quarter never answered at all.
- Within an hour37%
- 1 to 24 hours16%
- More than 24 hours24%
- Never responded23%
The study is old, and it measured web inquiries in general rather than quote requests specifically, so treat the exact numbers as a snapshot. The direction has not changed. The same researchers found that companies that tried to reach a lead within an hour were nearly seven times as likely to have a meaningful conversation with a decision maker as companies that waited even an hour longer.
Here is what I think should happen after someone asks for a quote, shown on the one setup I can take you through end to end: the contact form on this site.
In the first minute: confirm it arrived
The person who just pressed Send has one question: did that work? Answer it on the screen, straight away, and tell them three things. It arrived. A real person will read it. Here is when you will hear back. Then give them a way to reach you if it cannot wait.
On this site, that is the page you land on after the contact form.
Three details are doing the work. It names a person rather than a department. It gives a time frame I can keep. And it offers the next step, booking a call, to the people who are ready now, without making everyone wait for an email to arrive.
Some businesses also send an automatic email confirmation, which helps most with requests that come in at night, because it gives the person something to find in the morning. If you send one, keep it short and make it sound like you rather than the software that sent it. It confirms the request arrived. It is not a reply.
Within minutes: make sure a person knows
A request that lands in an inbox nobody checks until Friday is not really a lead yet. The second job is getting it in front of the person who can answer, with everything they need to reply without digging.
- A quiet check for botsNo puzzle to solve. Obvious automated submissions are filtered out without the person noticing.
- A record in my CRMName, contact details and message, with the page they were on and the form they used attached, so the source is never a guess.
- An email to me with every fieldEverything I need to reply from my phone, without opening another system first.
- The confirmation pageOnly once my CRM has accepted the message. That is the page in Figure 2.
- If the CRM does not take it, the form says soThe person sees that it did not send, with my email address and phone number, instead of a thank-you for a message that went nowhere.
Two choices here are worth copying. The notification carries every field, including the page the person was on, so the reply can start from their actual question. And the confirmation is earned: the form only says thank you once the message has landed safely in my CRM.
Test it, because it breaks in ways you cannot see
I set this up this month, and then tested it the only way that counts: I filled in my own form. The first test email arrived with four of its fields empty. The name came through. The email address, phone number, website and page did not. From the outside, the form looked perfect.
- Name
- Site Test
- empty
- Phone
- empty
- Business
- PMC Site Test
- Website
- empty
- Page
- empty
- Name
- Site Test
- joe+sitetest0922@pfendermarketing.com
- Phone
- (717) 837-9265
- Business
- PMC Site Test
- Website
- pfendermarketing.com
- Page
- The contact page
The fix took minutes once I could see it. The leads themselves were landing in my CRM the whole time, but every notification would have arrived without a way to reply from it, and I would have been digging through the CRM for each one instead of answering from my phone.
The reply: fast, human, and one clear next step
Speed is the part everyone quotes, but a fast reply that says nothing is not much better than a slow one. A good first reply to a quote request does three things.
- It shows you read their message. One specific line about their job does more than a paragraph about your company.
- It answers what it can. If you can give an honest range, give it. If the price depends on things you need to see, say which things.
- It asks for one next step. A time to talk, a photo, an address, a visit. One, not four.
Hi Dana,
Thanks for the photos of the water heater. From the label, it looks like a 50-gallon gas unit, about 12 years old.
Jobs like this usually land between your low and your high installed. The two things that move the price are the venting and the condition of the shutoff valve, and I can confirm both in a short visit.
I have Thursday at 10 or Friday at 2 open. Does either work?
Your name, your business
If they go quiet
People often ask more than one business for a quote and go with whoever answers well first. Others simply get busy. One or two short follow-ups, a few days apart, is plenty for most service businesses. Past that, it starts to read as pressure, and a clear "I will close this out for now, reply any time" leaves the door open better than a fourth nudge.
Test yours tonight
If any step surprises you, that is the thing to fix first, before you spend another dollar sending people to the form. My free site scan checks whether a visitor can find a way to contact you at all. What happens after they press Send is the part only a test like this one can show.
Common questions
How fast should I reply to a quote request?
Within an hour if you can, and the same business day at the latest. In the Harvard Business Review research, companies that tried to reach a lead within an hour were nearly seven times as likely to have a meaningful conversation with a decision maker as those that waited even an hour longer.
Should my first reply include a price?
If you can give an honest range, yes. If the price depends on details you have not seen, say which details and ask for them. A clear reason there is no number yet beats a number you will have to walk back.
Is an automatic reply enough?
No. An automatic reply confirms the request arrived. A person still has to answer it, and the confirmation should say when that will happen.
How many times should I follow up?
One or two short follow-ups a few days apart is enough for most service businesses. After that, close it out politely and leave the door open.
What if the request is not a good fit?
Say so quickly, and if you can, point them somewhere better. A fast, polite no is more useful to them than silence, and people remember it.