Every trade owner knows the pattern: the quote goes out Monday, silence by Friday, and by the next month you’ve half-forgotten it existed. The customer wasn’t saying no — they were just busy, comparing, waiting for payday. And the firm that followed up got the nod.

Here’s the honest bit first: there is no reliable UK statistic on quote follow-up. Anyone quoting you “follow-ups win 40% more work” is selling a number. What exists is your own data — your sent quotes, your win rate, your average job value — and that’s more useful anyway.

Price it on your own numbers

Take last month’s quotes and count honestly:

  • Quotes sent — say 14
  • Won without any chase — say 4
  • Won after you chased — probably a number you can’t name, because the chase never happened consistently

Now the maths that matters: if a single polite day-3 nudge recovered one extra job a month, what is that worth?

At an average £900 job, that’s £10,800 a year — for roughly fifteen minutes of work a week.

The reason it doesn’t happen isn’t doubt, it’s that the nudge lives in the same head that’s already holding tomorrow’s jobs.

The chase rhythm that works

Owners who do chase describe almost the same pattern — and it’s shorter than you’d think:

  1. Day 3 — a one-line check-in: “Anything you need from me on the quote?” Most wins happen here.
  2. Day 6 or 7 — a last polite close: “Shall I hold a slot, or close this off?” The deadline nudges the undecided either way — a clean no is still a win, because it frees the slot.
  3. Then stop. Two touches is a system; five is pestering.

The uncomfortable part is never the words — it’s remembering to send them while you’re under a sink.

That’s exactly the kind of scheduled, named task a managed desk runs on your rules: every quote logged the day it goes out, every chase sent on schedule, every answer filed.

“i can’t seem to have a night of from quotes and invoices!” — a real wish from a UK trade forum (original spelling kept).

Run your own number

The job-to-invoice lag calculator prices the downstream version — the cash sitting in finished work. The mini-audit maps the whole week in six questions and names which workflow leaks most.

Sources: UK trade forums; self-maths framing — no industry conversion figure is claimed because no reliable published UK figure exists.