How much is a cold quote actually costing you? A back-of-envelope
Lost jobs don't send you an invoice. There's no line in your accounts for "quotes that went cold," so the leak stays invisible until you actually do the sum.
The Office Voice team
Overheads you can see. The quiet cost of quotes you never chased is invisible by design: a job that didn't happen leaves no trace. So let's make it visible with a rough, honest calculation you can run on your own numbers.
The sum
Take a business sending 40 quotes a month at an average job value of $1,200. Say a third of those go cold with no follow-up, not lost to a competitor, just never chased. Industry experience says a well-timed follow-up converts a meaningful slice of those: even a conservative 1-in-5 of the cold ones.
That's roughly $37,000 a year walking out the door on one modest set of assumptions, from work you already priced and were willing to do. Run it with your own quote volume and job value; the number is almost always bigger than owners expect, because the cost was never itemised anywhere.
The cheapest job you'll ever win
A recovered cold quote costs you nothing to acquire. There's no marketing spend, no lead-gen fee: the customer already asked, and you already quoted. The only missing ingredient was one timely conversation.
Why the follow-up doesn't happen on its own
The maths is obvious. The reason it still doesn't happen is that the follow-up lands at the worst possible time (mid-job, hands full) and stays warm for only a day or two. Miss that window and the quote cools past the point where a nudge helps. Automating that single, well-timed touch is the highest-return thing most quoting businesses aren't doing.
How the timing and tone work in practice: Why your quotes go cold. How it fits the rest of the cycle: Quote to paid.
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