Leak 27 · Sales & Quoting - Quotes that are never followed up

Warning signs. None of these proves the leak exists. They tell you where to look.

• A large number of quotes with status “open” older than 30 days.
• No next-action or follow-up date field on quotes, or one that is rarely used.
• Win rate unknown, or calculated only from quotes that were manually closed.
• Reps who can describe their pipeline from memory but not from the system.
• Lost reasons not captured, so nobody knows whether it was price, availability, or silence.
• Customers who reorder from an old quote months later, with no contact in between.

The minimum viable set. Most of it is already in your ERP.

Start with a small sample. Gathering the exports, agreements, or observations is separate from running the check; agree that work with the person who owns the records.

1. 1Pick five recent open quotes over a meaningful value from one team or branch.
2. 2For each, find the owner, the date sent, the customer’s requested timing, the most recent contact, and the agreed next action.
3. 3Separate neglect from a legitimate wait. An old quote may be waiting for a customer shutdown, a project decision, or a supplier response. The problem is not age alone. Look for unclear ownership, conflicting status, or no agreed action.
4. 4Write one exception record for each quote that has no owner or no next action.

Quote ID | Owner | Current status | Last contact | Next action | Due date | Source / reason

Then ask one question: Of the five, how many had a named next action that the customer knew about?

A conservative range, not a headline. The goal is a number management can trust enough to investigate.

Quoted value with no follow-up per year × incremental win rate from follow-up × gross margin

Do not multiply total quoted value by an arbitrary “recovery rate” and call the result new revenue. Use the incremental win rate you can defend, and count gross profit, not revenue.

Fixes fall into three layers. Not every problem needs software, and almost none needs AI first.

Process

No follow-up standard: who calls, when, and what happens to quotes nobody has touched. No lost-reason capture.

Data

Quotes carry no next-action, owner, or customer-timing fields, so aging quotes cannot be found or prioritized.

Technology

The quoting system and the rep’s calendar and email are not connected. Nothing surfaces the quote on the day it should be followed up.

Start with the simplest intervention that could solve it. Move down the list only if the one above is not enough.

1. Level 1

   Visibility

   A weekly open-quote report by rep, sorted by value and days since last contact.

2. Level 2

   Standard

   Every quote over the threshold gets a follow-up date and an owner when it is sent. Lost quotes get a reason.

3. Level 3

   Prioritization

   Rank open quotes by value, margin, and customer timing so the rep’s follow-up hour goes to the quotes that matter.

4. Level 4

   Workflow intervention

   A daily follow-up list delivered to each rep in Teams or Outlook with the quote, the contact, and a drafted message ready to edit and send. See the supplier follow-up assistant example for the same pattern.

5. Level 5

   Outcome capture

   Read replies and order confirmations to update quote status automatically, so win rate and lost reasons stay current without data entry.

• Follow-up on small quotes may cost more than it returns. Set a threshold.
• Some customers do not want a call. A short email with the quote attached and a question about timing is enough for most.
• Do not treat quotes with unknown outcomes as lost, or as won. Report the unknown share separately until it shrinks.

ERP note. Quote status in most ERPs is “open” until someone changes it. Adding a follow-up date and next-action field is usually a small configuration change. If not, a CRM or a shared list can carry them while the ERP remains the system of record for the quote itself.