Sent, and then silence
The estimating team sends out a steady stream of prices: leaflets for an estate agent, programmes for a theatre, a catalogue for a manufacturer. Some come back as orders. Most go quiet. Nobody knows whether the customer went elsewhere, delayed the project, thought the price was high or simply forgot. Sales reps mean to follow up but are busy with live jobs. The estimator assumes the rep is on it. The rep assumes the customer will come back if they want it.
Months later, the manufacturer's catalogue appears on a competitor's website.
An estimate is not a task
Most MIS systems store estimates well and chase them badly. An estimate is a record with a price, and after it is sent it waits for something to happen.
- No single person owns the follow-up once the estimate is sent.
- Follow-up dates are not set, so it relies on memory.
- Lost estimates are rarely marked lost, so the list of 'open' estimates is meaningless.
- Reasons for losing are not recorded, so pricing and service problems stay hidden.
- Large and small estimates get the same attention, which in practice means little.
What silent estimates cost
Each estimate took real estimating time. When it is never followed up, that time is wasted even if the customer would have said yes to a quick call. Without outcomes and reasons, you cannot tell whether you are losing on price, turnaround or something else, so you cannot fix it. And a sales team without a clear pipeline cannot forecast, which matters when you plan staff, stock and press time.
Estimate tracking that prompts action
- Every estimate sent from your MIS or estimating tool is picked up and given an owner and a follow-up date based on rules you set, such as value, customer type or due date.
- The owner gets a task on the day, with the estimate, the customer's history and a suggested short follow-up email they can edit and send.
- Customers can accept the estimate from a link in the email, which turns it into an order and starts the job.
- Outcomes are recorded: won, lost, delayed or revised, with a short list of reasons for lost estimates.
- Estimates with no response after your final follow-up are closed automatically as no decision, so the pipeline stays honest.
- A weekly view shows open estimates by rep and value, win rates by product and customer type, and the most common loss reasons.
| Stage | Today | With tracking |
|---|---|---|
| After sending | Waits | Owner and follow-up date set |
| Follow-up | If someone remembers | Task with draft email |
| Acceptance | Customer replies by email | Accept link creates the order |
| Lost | Never recorded | Marked with a reason |
If you use a CRM such as HubSpot, we can put the follow-up tasks there instead, linked to the MIS estimate.
A pipeline you can trust
Every estimate has someone responsible for it, and follow-ups happen on time without relying on memory. The list of open estimates reflects reality. Win and loss reasons start to show patterns, perhaps that you lose short-run digital work on price and win on turnaround, or that one product is quoted too high. Sales meetings become about decisions rather than trying to remember who quoted what.
Loss reasons are the part most printers skip and later wish they had kept. A few months of honest answers, such as price, turnaround, spec mismatch or no reply, tells you more about your market than most sales meetings, and it gives estimators a reason to care about the estimates they sent last month.
Are your estimates disappearing?
- Nobody can say what happened to most sent estimates.
- Follow-up depends on individual reps remembering.
- Your list of open estimates includes ones from months ago.
- You do not know why you lose work.
- Customers have gone elsewhere without you ever asking.