Your Unsold Estimates Aren't Dead — You Just Stopped Asking

Pull up your estimate history from the last 30 days. Count how many sent estimates don't have a signed invoice attached. Now ask yourself how many of those you followed up on even once.

If you're like most shops I talk to, the answer is somewhere between "a few" and "none." The estimate went out, the customer went quiet, and you moved on. You told yourself they found someone cheaper, or the timing wasn't right, or they decided not to do the project. Maybe. Or maybe they're still sitting on it, waiting for someone to ask.

Silence doesn't mean no. It usually just means you stopped first.

The Estimate You Sent Tuesday Is Still Sitting in Someone's Inbox

In Month 2 of running Reeves Electric, my NPS was a 4. Not 40. A 4. I started answering every call myself and keeping a notepad next to the phone for 90 days straight.

One pattern had nothing to do with how we showed up on job sites. Several customers I'd mentally filed under "lost" — people I assumed had gone with someone else — hadn't gone with anyone. They'd just never heard from us again after the estimate. When I reached them during that 90-day stretch, about half booked. They'd been waiting. We'd been assuming.

I track every job by source — CallRail for phone attribution, tagged by channel, logged by dollar amount. When I built out an estimate column and started tracking sent-versus-booked by source, the gap was bad enough that I went back and audited the prior three months. We were generating interest, doing the site visit, writing the scope, and then stopping entirely. Follow-up rate was close to zero. Recovery rate, once I built a sequence, was not.

Why You Think They Said No (And Why You're Wrong)

The default is to treat silence as rejection. Customer didn't call back, didn't reply to the email, didn't sign the estimate — lost lead, move on. I ran this assumption for months. It's wrong.

Your gut after 80 estimates isn't data. It's pattern recognition on a sample size too small to trust. The customer who went quiet is not the same as the customer who told you they went with someone else. One is a closed door. The other is a door you never knocked on twice.

Google LSA leads close at a lower rate than organic or referral leads because the customer is actively shopping. They're comparing. They haven't decided. That's the most important moment to stay in the conversation — a real call before your competitor's second quote lands in their inbox does more than any automated email.

An unsold estimate is that same situation, and it's warmer. The customer already met your tech. They already saw your truck. They already have your number. They haven't committed to anyone, or they would have called to tell you. The ones who went quiet aren't gone — they haven't been given a reason to decide yet, and right now you're not giving them one.

The customer who went quiet didn't say no. You just stopped asking. Those are not the same thing, and your P&L is absorbing the difference.

What the Follow-Up Sequence Actually Looks Like

This is not a CRM project. It's a calendar reminder and two contacts with a real script.

Step one: text at 48 hours.

Forty-eight hours after the estimate goes out with no response, the customer gets a text from our office number:

"Hi [Name], this is Reeves Electric following up on the estimate we sent Tuesday for your panel work. Happy to answer any questions before you decide — just reply here or call us at [number]. Thanks."

No urgency language. No discount offer. The point is presence — reminding them the estimate exists before it falls off their radar. A lot of customers book off this single contact. They'd meant to respond and hadn't gotten to it.

Step two: phone call at Day 5.

If there's still no response, someone from our office calls. Not a tech, not voicemail — a real call:

"Hi [Name], I'm calling from Reeves Electric. We sent you an estimate last week for [specific scope] and I wanted to make sure you got it and see if you had any questions. A lot of times people have questions they didn't want to bother us with — we'd rather answer them."

That last sentence came directly from listening to our own call recordings. Every week I sit with my dispatcher and we pull four calls — two that booked, two that didn't. On the hesitant-but-booked calls, one move kept appearing: the intake person acknowledged that the customer might have questions they hadn't asked yet. That reframe changed the energy. The script is built from that observation.

The whole sequence takes about 20 minutes of staff time per week across a five-truck shop if you run it on a fixed cadence.

The 90-Day Rebuild

Reeves Electric launched in February 2022 with two trucks, a software stack I was proud of, and a pricing model I'd spent weeks building. What I hadn't modeled was the 9:30pm call from a customer whose breaker kept tripping, and the fact that I was now the person responsible for answering it.

Taking every call, logging every complaint, listening to every pattern — that 90-day stretch is the thing I point back to most when I think about how the business actually got built. The intake rebuild took my NPS from a 4 in Month 2 to an 81 by Month 9. Part of that came from process changes on live calls. Part of it came from something simpler: I started following up on estimates that had gone cold.

I built a view I still call "Estimate Recovery." Customer name, estimate date, dollar value, follow-up status. I ran it weekly, called the cold ones myself at first, tracked what happened. The recovery rate on estimates between 2 and 10 days old was high enough that I stopped trusting my prior assumption entirely. They weren't dead leads. They were warm leads I'd walked away from.

My dispatcher owns that list now. But I built it at a kitchen table in East Austin in the middle of a brutal first year, because the alternative was watching revenue disappear and blaming the market.

"I Don't Have Time for This" Is the Wrong Calculation

The follow-up process sounds like one more thing on an already crowded plate. I understand the feeling. I've also run the math.

When I wrote about why five-truck shops need to hire a bookkeeper and a CSR, the argument was about invisible expenses. The payroll line is visible. The owner time spent on $25-per-hour work is invisible. You see the expense you're adding; you don't see the cost you're already paying.

Unsold estimates are the same logic. The follow-up time is visible — it's 20 minutes a week, a task on a list, it feels like overhead. The revenue you're not recovering doesn't show up anywhere on the P&L. There's no line item for jobs you didn't call back on. The calculation feels asymmetric. It isn't.

A follow-up sequence only works on a fixed schedule, not when someone remembers to run it. On our dispatch board, estimate follow-up is a standing item every Tuesday afternoon — same time, every week, not optional. My dispatcher pulls the list, works it in dollar-value order, logs the outcome. It runs whether I'm in the office or on a job. That's what makes it a process instead of a good intention. The cadence is the thing.

What to Do Monday Morning

Pull the list. Go into Jobber or Service Fusion and filter for estimates sent in the last 30 days with no attached invoice. Standard filtered view, takes a few clicks. If you're not on either, open a spreadsheet: customer name, estimate date, dollar amount, status. Fill in what you can find from your email or old system.

Sort by dollar value, descending. The $6,200 panel upgrade that went quiet deserves your attention before the $400 ceiling fan.

Call the top 10 this week. Not text — call. Open with the specific scope: "I'm calling about the estimate we sent for your [specific work] — wanted to make sure you got it and see if you had any questions." Naming the actual job tells them you remember. It doesn't feel like a form call because it isn't one.

Build the 48-hour text into your estimate workflow now. Every estimate that goes out without a signed invoice same day gets a calendar reminder for 48 hours out. Whoever sends the estimate sets the reminder before they close the tab. Thirty seconds. That's the difference between a follow-up process and a follow-up intention.

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FAQ

If a customer has already gone with someone else, doesn't following up just embarrass you?

No. The customer who went with someone else almost always tells you — "we hired someone last week, thanks anyway." You get closure, mark the lead dead, move on. The customer who went quiet and hasn't booked anyone is the actual opportunity. You won't know which situation you're in until you ask.

How long is too long — is a 3-week-old estimate worth calling on?

Up to about 30 days on most residential jobs, yes. After 30 days, project interest has usually either cooled or moved to a competitor. Between 10 and 30 days you're still in range, especially on larger scopes — panel upgrades, EV charger installs, anywhere the customer is doing more research before deciding. I've recovered 3-week-old estimates more than once. The call takes five minutes. The downside of a "we went with someone else" is zero. Make the call.

Should the follow-up text come from the tech who did the estimate, or from the office number?

Office number. Consistent business contact, not a personal cell. The customer may not have saved your tech's number, a personal text can feel unexpected, and if the tech leaves you don't want customer relationships tied to their phone. That said, the Day 5 call can absolutely name the tech — "the tech who came out, Marcus, wanted me to check in" — because that personal connection is real. Use the name. Don't use the personal cell.

What if we quoted too high and that's actually why they went quiet?

Sometimes. And that's useful. If the customer says "honestly the price was higher than we expected," you now know something you didn't before. Maybe you adjust scope. Maybe you explain what's in the number. Maybe you find out your panel upgrade pricing is out of market in your area. "Too expensive" is a conversation you can have. Silence isn't. I'd rather hear the objection than assume it.

We do mostly repeat customers and referrals. Does this apply?

It applies, just differently. A repeat customer who went quiet on an estimate is a higher-value follow-up than a cold LSA lead, because the relationship already exists. In my experience, referral customers go quiet for the same reasons strangers do — they got busy, the estimate slipped in their email, they're waiting on a spouse to approve it. The call to a repeat customer is easy: "Hey [Name], it's [your name] from Reeves — wanted to check in on that estimate for the service panel." You already know them. Use that.

Do you ever discount on the follow-up call to close the job?

I don't, and I'd caution against making it a habit. If you close jobs by dropping price every time someone goes quiet, you've trained customers to wait you out on the first estimate. That's exactly the wrong incentive. If price is genuinely the barrier, the better move is adjusting scope — can you phase the work, offer a smaller first step — rather than cutting your margin on the original quote. Don't cut your price unless the customer explicitly tells you the number is the problem. If they haven't said that, don't assume it and hand money away.