In short: removals quotes go quiet for a reason most trades do not face. The customer is usually waiting on an exchange or completion date they do not control. A follow-up sequence for movers has to track the move date rather than the quote date, or it chases people who cannot answer yet.
Every trade has a version of the quote that goes silent. In removals the silence means something specific, and misreading it is expensive in a way it is not for a plumber or an electrician.
The chain, not the price
When a bathroom quote goes quiet, the reasonable assumptions are price, timing, or that someone else got there first.
When a removals quote goes quiet, the most likely explanation is that nothing has happened yet. In England and Wales the completion date is not fixed until exchange, which frequently happens a week or two before the move itself, and sometimes less. A customer who asked for quotes in March because their offer was accepted has no date. They may not have one until June. They are not ignoring you and they have not chosen someone else. There is nothing for them to say.
This changes what follow-up is for. In most trades, chasing is an attempt to move a decision along. In removals it is closer to staying in the conversation until the customer is in a position to make one at all.
Getting that wrong produces the specific failure mode of this sector: three messages in ten days asking whether they have had a chance to think about the quote, sent to someone whose solicitor has not come back to them, followed by silence and a booking with whoever asked a more sensible question.
Survey, quote, silence
The standard shape is a video or in-person survey, a quote within a day or two, and then nothing.
The job is usually lost somewhere in that gap rather than at the point of the quote, and it is worth being precise about where. The customer got three quotes. Yours may well have been the best of them. Between the quote and the exchange, eight weeks pass. During those eight weeks the other two firms either did nothing, in which case you are level, or one of them stayed lightly in touch, in which case they are the firm the customer thinks of when the date finally lands.
Nobody wins that on price. It is won by being the firm still present in the conversation on the day the solicitor rings.
Chasing around the move date, not the quote date
The practical version is two different rhythms depending on how far out the move is.
Where the date is close, within about a fortnight, run the normal sequence. Acknowledge the enquiry when it arrives, follow up three days after the quote goes out, then again about four days later. These customers can decide, and a decision is what you are asking for.
Where the date is not fixed, stop asking about the quote after the first two contacts and start tracking the chain. The question changes from have you had a chance to think about it to have you exchanged yet. That second question is answerable. It produces information you need for your own diary, and it gives the customer something to reply to, which is the entire mechanism by which you stay in the conversation.
From there the timing follows the chain rather than the calendar. A light check-in whenever the chain would realistically have moved, and a firmer one as soon as a date exists. Two or three of those over eight weeks is not pestering. Seven “just following up on my quote” messages in the same period is.
The quote that sat for six weeks and then came alive
This is the moment the whole sequence exists for, and it is where most of the money is.
The customer rings on a Tuesday. They exchanged yesterday. They are moving on the 27th, which is sixteen days away, and they need to know today whether you can do it.
What decides the outcome is whether you can answer immediately, and that depends on things you should have set up six weeks earlier: whether the quote is still findable, whether you know what was surveyed, whether the price still stands, and whether you know your own availability for the 27th without ringing round.
Three things worth having ready before that call comes.
A stated validity period, and what changes the figure. Usually the date moving into a peak week, or the volume changing if they have decluttered or acquired since the survey. Say it on the quote. Then when they ring, you can hold the price rather than reopening the whole conversation.
A re-survey trigger you actually apply. Anything more than roughly two months old, or any move where the customer mentions loft clearance or a garage, is worth a quick video re-check. Turning up with the wrong size vehicle costs more than the survey did.
Your own capacity, visible. The answer to “can you do the 27th” needs to take seconds. Fridays and month-ends are the busiest completion days in the calendar, which is exactly when the short-notice calls cluster.
Peak season, and chasing when you are already full
There is a reasonable objection to all of this: why chase quotes for July when July is already booked out.
Two reasons.
Chains collapse constantly, and a booked-out week is not a full week by the following Tuesday. A firm holding a warm list of unconverted quotes can fill a gap in an afternoon. A firm that let those conversations die is ringing round from scratch.
And a customer told honestly in April that you are heavily booked for the last week of July, and offered the Monday instead, is not a lost customer. They are a customer who has been given real information by the only firm that bothered, which is a strong position to be in when the date shifts.
The alternative is what most firms do, which is to stop following up during the busy period and restart in September, having lost the pipeline that would have filled the quiet weeks.
Being one of three
Customers moving house are advised, more or less universally, to get three quotes. Assume you are one of three every time.
Price is the obvious differentiator and the weakest one, because the other two firms are looking at the same volume and the same distance and will land somewhere near you. What separates the three, in the customer’s memory, is which of them behaved like the move was already happening.
That means naming things the others do not. What happens to the fragile items. Whether the wardrobe boxes come as standard. What the plan is if completion slips by a day, which for a customer worrying about exactly that is the most reassuring paragraph you can write.
None of this is follow-up in the chasing sense. It is what the follow-up messages should contain, and it is why a sequence built from “just checking in” underperforms so badly. Every contact should carry something the customer did not have before. There are worked examples of that principle, including the date-dependent variant written for exactly this situation, in quote follow-up email templates.
What we run for removals firms
The mechanics are the same ones we run for any service business, fitted to this pattern.
Enquiries are acknowledged the moment they arrive, so a survey request never sits unanswered while the team is on a job. Quotes go onto a tracked list with the move date recorded alongside the quote date, which is the part that makes the rest work. Follow-up runs on the schedule above, in the firm’s own tone, and the messages track the chain rather than repeating a request for a decision. When a quote goes cold after the sequence finishes, you are told, so writing it off is a decision somebody made.
The acknowledgement is automatic. The messages that matter are written by a person, because “have you exchanged yet” is only useful when the reply gets read by someone who can act on it.
There is a general version of the timing and wording in the right way to follow up on a quote, and the commercial side of it on quotes sent, then silence.
Before you change how you chase
It is worth knowing what a survey request currently gets, because follow-up cannot rescue a first reply that took two days.
We will send one enquiry to your own address and time it – written by you, approved by you before it goes, and the result comes back about a week later. For a mover, the number to watch is what happens to enquiries arriving on a Friday afternoon, which is when a good share of them arrive.
LoadOff runs enquiry handling and quote follow-up for UK removals firms and service businesses. Most clients are live within 48–72 hours. Get in touch and we will look at what your quotes currently get after they go out.
Related reading: The right way to follow up on a quote · Why leads go cold