In short: a quote follow-up email needs a reason to exist beyond wanting an answer. The templates below each carry one: confirming the quote arrived, adding something useful on day 3, and closing cleanly on day 7. Copy them, swap the bracketed details, and reply in the same thread as the quote so the price stays in view.
The guide to following up on a quote covers the thinking: why quotes go quiet, when to chase, how many times, and why silence usually means distracted rather than no. This page is the other half. The actual words.
One rule runs through every template here, and it is the difference between follow-up that wins work and follow-up that costs goodwill: each message gives the customer something, rather than asking them for something. A date being held. A detail you left out. A cheaper option. A clean way to say no. “Just checking in” fails because it carries nothing; the customer already knew you wanted an answer.
The sequence matches the one we run for clients: set the expectation when the quote goes out, follow up on day 3, close on day 7. Two chases, not five.
Day 0: the line that makes the follow-up expected
Not a follow-up, but the sentence that makes the follow-ups land properly. Put it at the end of the quote email itself:
Any questions, just reply – happy to talk any of it through. If I’ve not heard from you later in the week I’ll check back in case this arrived at a busy moment.
Twenty seconds of typing, and the day-3 message is now something you said you would do rather than a surprise. Chasing you announced is diligence. Chasing out of nowhere is pressure.
Day 3: the follow-up that carries something
The first real chase. Three versions, depending on what you have to offer.
When you can hold a date – the strongest version, because a date is the thing most customers are worrying about:
Hi [name] – following up as promised on the quote for [the job]. One thing worth knowing: I’ve got [week commencing date] free at the moment and I’m happy to pencil it for you while you decide. No commitment – it just means the slot doesn’t go to someone else in the meantime. Any questions on the quote itself, ask away.
When you have a detail to add – something you left out, or thought of since:
Hi [name] – one thing I should have mentioned in the quote for [the job]: [the detail: “the price includes making good the plasterwork” / “we’d do the survey and the clean on the same visit”]. Wanted that in writing before you compare figures. Happy to talk anything through.
When you suspect the price is the sticking point – invite the conversation instead of waiting for it:
Hi [name] – checking back on the quote for [the job]. If the figure’s the thing you’re weighing up, worth a quick word – there’s usually a way to trim scope rather than corners, and I’d rather adjust the job than have you get a worse version of it elsewhere. Either way, happy to answer anything.
That third one does something the others don’t: it names the awkward subject so the customer doesn’t have to. A good share of “gone quiet” is someone who thinks the price is high and doesn’t want the conversation. Open the door and they walk through it.
Day 7: the clean close
The final message, and the one most worth getting right. Its job is to end the sequence in a way that makes replying easy – including replying no.
Hi [name] – last note from me on the quote for [the job], then I’ll leave you in peace. I’m assuming the timing wasn’t right or you’ve gone another way, which is no problem at all. The quote stands for [validity period] if anything changes. If it’s still live and you just haven’t got to it, a one-line reply is plenty and I’ll hold everything as quoted. Either way, good luck with the work.
Two things make this version work. It offers an assumption the customer can correct, which is easier than composing an explanation. And it wishes them well with the work even if it goes elsewhere, which is the sentence people remember when the other firm lets them down and they come back.
What it never contains: “disappointed”, “I did think we had agreed”, or any arithmetic about how much time you spent on the quote. A guilt-shaped close loses the ones who were still deciding.
Situational variants
After a site visit or survey, where you have detail the emailed-quote firms do not – use it:
Hi [name] – following up on the quote from Tuesday’s visit. Having seen [the specific thing: the boiler position, the loft access, the state of the joists], I’m confident the figure covers everything with no surprises on the day, which is worth weighing against any quote done from photos. Happy to walk through how I’ve broken it down.
When the job depends on a date they do not control – a completion date, a planning decision, a season. Chase the blocker, not the decision. This is the whole approach for movers, covered properly in quote follow-up for removals:
Hi [name] – no answer needed on the quote yet. Just flagging that if [the date/decision] lands and things move quickly at your end, the quote stands and I’d rather hear from you at short notice than not at all. Drop me a line when you know more.
When they said yes and then went quiet – different problem, lighter touch:
Hi [name] – getting [the job] into the diary and just need [the one thing: a deposit, access arrangements, a start-date preference] to lock it in. Reply with that whenever suits and you’re booked.
What not to send
Three habits that turn a reasonable sequence into a nuisance, worth naming because every one of them appears in template collections elsewhere.
Manufactured urgency. “Prices going up next month” when they are not, “only one slot left” when there are four. Customers assume it is invented because it usually is, and it converts the honest scarcity you do have – a genuinely filling diary – into noise.
The re-attached quote with nothing new. Sending the same PDF again says the message exists only to make you feel like you chased. Reply in the thread; the quote is already there.
More than two chases. The third unprompted message is where diligent becomes persistent, and the fourth is where persistent becomes a reason to choose someone else. After the day-7 close, stop. The guide covers what to do with the long-term list instead.
Making a template sound like you
A template is scaffolding, not the message. Before any of these go out under your name, three adjustments:
Swap the vocabulary for yours. If you say “job” and the template says “project”, change it. Customers notice when an email doesn’t sound like the person they met, and the mismatch reads as outsourced even when it isn’t.
Keep one job-specific line per message. The bracketed detail is the sentence doing the actual work; the rest is politeness. A message where nothing refers to their job specifically is a blast, and gets treated like one.
Shorten before sending. Every template here survives losing its middle sentence. If the customer reads it on a phone in a queue, the version that fits one screen wins.
Where automation fits, honestly
The timing of this sequence automates well: nobody should be remembering, on the right Thursday, that a quote from last week needs its day-3 message. The wording automates badly, because the one line that makes each message work is the line only someone who knows the job can write.
That split – schedule by machine, words by a person – is exactly how our lead follow-up service runs the chase, in your tone, with the templates fitted to how your business already talks. The automation post covers what a complete setup includes if you would rather build it yourself.
The step before any of this
Templates fix the chase. They cannot fix the enquiry that waited two days for its first reply, because by then the customer is reading someone else’s quote – and most businesses have no idea which of those two problems is theirs.
That first number is measurable: the free lead response audit times how long an enquiry to your own address waits for a human answer, so before you polish the day-3 message you know whether day 0 is where the work is going. You write the enquiry, you approve it, and the result lands about a week later.
LoadOff runs quote chasing and lead follow-up for UK service businesses – the day-3 and day-7 sequence above, written in your tone, sent without anyone remembering. Most clients are live within 48–72 hours. Get in touch.
Related reading: The right way to follow up on a quote · What to say in a first reply to an enquiry