Great question. A few things that have made the biggest difference. First, separate the follow-up problem from the lead-quality problem. If you're sending the same generic reminder to a $400 faucet repair and a $7,000 roof, both are going to feel wrong. Small jobs usually ghost because the customer got busy — a quick reminder at day two and again at day five genuinely wins a fair share of those. On higher-ticket work, silence is rarely forgetfulness. It's sticker shock, a scope question, or someone else calling them. On those, stop relying on the system after day three or four and call. Ask whether they have questions on the scope, whether the budget is the real issue, or if another company has already offered a number. That one conversation surfaces the reason in a way a reminder message never will. Second, put a real expiration on every quote and say it out loud when you deliver it. Seven to fourteen days for routine work, shorter when you know materials are going to move. Name the date: "This estimate holds the price through October 22, so let's figure out if I should keep that hold open or release the slot." When the expiration arrives, send one clean closing message — "Should I close this estimate for now, or are you still working on this project?" — and if there's still no response, archive. Don't let quotes sit in awaiting-response forever. Third, when you do archive, keep them in a closed list by job type and season, not a single junk folder. Pull it up once or twice a year for a single re-engagement: "We've got some openings for [service] next month, want me to take a look again?" It's almost always the customers who actually moved on who reply. Curious on your side — when a higher-ticket quote goes silent past the first couple of reminders, do you find the reason is more often price, scope uncertainty, or a competitor who got in faster?
That's a really interesting distinction, especially between smaller jobs and higher-ticket quotes. I hadn't thought much about organizing archived quotes by job type and season for future re-engagement.
I'm curious about one thing: how do you actually manage that archived list? Do you use Jobber to track and reactivate those customers, or is it still something you have to handle manually?
