Fifty quotes out, and nobody knows which are still live
Quotes go out every day. Some customers book straight away. Most go quiet: they are waiting for their buyer's mortgage, comparing three firms, or have not got round to it. The office means to ring them, and in a quiet week they do.
In a busy week, which is every week near the end of a month, nobody rings anybody. The customer who was waiting for a nudge books whoever called them first, and the quote simply disappears from view.
Why follow-up keeps slipping
The problem is not effort. It is that a removals quote has an unusual shape. The move date is uncertain, the customer is waiting on a chain, and the right moment to call depends on where they are with the sale, not on how long ago the quote went out.
- Quotes live as PDFs in a sent folder, not as records with a status.
- The expected move date is noted somewhere, but nothing uses it.
- Follow-up depends on the person who sent the quote remembering.
- Lost quotes are never marked as lost, so there is no reason recorded either.
The cost of silence
You have already paid for the enquiry, the survey visit and the time to price it. A quote that goes cold wastes all of that. It also leaves a gap in the diary that you might have filled if you had known earlier that the job was not coming.
Without a recorded reason for lost quotes, you cannot tell whether you are losing on price, on dates, or simply on not calling back.
How we build follow-up around the move date
- Every quote becomes a record with a status, the expected move window, the source of the enquiry and who owns it, taken from your quote system or the quote email itself.
- Timed messages go out by email or text in your wording: a check that the quote arrived, a note when the customer's expected date approaches, and an easy way to reply with a date or a question.
- Each morning, staff get a short call list, ranked by how close the move is and how recently the customer engaged, not by the order quotes were sent.
- When a customer books, the record closes. When they decline, staff pick a reason from a short list.
- Replies to the automatic messages come back to a shared inbox tagged with the quote, so nothing lands in a personal mailbox.
| Quote status | What happens next |
|---|---|
| Sent, no reply | Check-in message, then a call task |
| Waiting on chain | Message timed to the expected date |
| Date confirmed, not booked | Priority call with diary check |
| Declined | Reason recorded, record closed |
We connect this to HubSpot or your existing CRM if you have one, or build a small tracker if you do not. Where your removals software holds the quotes already, we read from it rather than duplicate it.
What the office sees on a Monday
A list of the customers worth calling today, with the quote and the notes on screen as the call connects. Customers who replied to a message are already at the top. Declined quotes have a reason, and after a while you can see the pattern.
The diary looks clearer too, because quotes that are not coming are marked as such rather than hoped for.
Is this happening in your office?
- Quotes are sent as PDFs and tracked, if at all, in a spreadsheet.
- You find out a customer booked elsewhere only when you finally call.
- Follow-up stops completely in the busy weeks.
- Nobody can say why you lost last month's quotes.
- Customers' expected move dates are not recorded anywhere useful.