Estimate Follow-Up: 9 Text Templates and the Automation That Sends Them

Follow up on an estimate the next working day, then on a fixed schedule (day 3, day 7, day 14, day 30) that stops the moment the customer replies, books or says no. Each message should do one job: confirm they got it, answer a question, offer a smaller option, or close the file politely. That's the whole method. The rest of this post is the templates and the plumbing.

It's written for trades and home-service businesses that send quotes by email, text or a field-service app and then hear nothing back. The awkward part (“am I bugging them?”) goes away when the follow-ups are scheduled, polite and automatic. Nobody feels pushy about a calendar.

Why do quotes go quiet?

Customers go quiet because they're busy, comparing, waiting on someone else, or quietly shocked by the number. Very few send a “no thanks”. Jobber's platform data shows the top-performing businesses win over 60% of their quotes, and its survey of 1,050 US owners found only 16% offer tiered “good, better, best” pricing (Jobber). The gap between average and top is mostly follow-up and options, not price.

• They're getting two more quotes and yours arrived first. Good. Stay first in their inbox.
• They need a spouse, a landlord or a strata board to sign off.
• The number was higher than they hoped and they don't want an awkward conversation.
• They meant to reply, then the kids, the job, the week happened.
• The timing is wrong. The deck can wait until spring.

Every one of those has a message that fixes it. None of them is fixed by waiting.

The follow-up sequence, day by day

Five touches over 30 days, each with a different job. Texts for speed, one email for the details, and a final message that gives the customer a graceful exit. Any reply, booking or STOP ends the sequence immediately.

Nine estimate follow-up text templates

Copy these, swap the brackets, and read them out loud in your own voice before using them. Each stays under 160 characters so it sends as one SMS. Add your opt-out line where your country requires it.

When should the follow-ups stop?

The sequence stops on any reply, a booking, a decline or an opt-out. Automating follow-up without stop rules is how you text “still thinking about it?” to someone who booked yesterday. Build these checks in before the first message goes out:

• Any inbound text or email from the customer pauses the sequence and alerts a person. Let a human take it from there.
• Quote accepted or job booked in your app or sheet ends it.
• “No thanks” ends it. Send one polite reply, then nothing.
• STOP, UNSUBSCRIBE or similar ends it everywhere, for good, not just for this quote.
• Quiet hours. Send between 9 a.m. and 7 p.m. in the customer's time zone. In the US, the TCPA bars telephone solicitations before 8 a.m. and after 9 p.m. local time.

Re-quote with good, better, best

If the quote stalls, change the question from “yes or no?” to “which one?”. Three options, clearly different. Good: the essential fix. Better: the fix plus the thing that stops it happening again. Best: the full job with the upgrade. With only 16% of pros offering tiers, the day-7 options message is a cheap way to stand out (Jobber). It also gives a price-shocked customer a way back in without haggling.

How to automate estimate follow-up

Check your field-service software first. Many of them, including Jobber and Housecall Pro, include some form of automated quote follow-up. If yours does and the stop rules above are covered, use it. Build your own when you quote from a spreadsheet, need texts the app won't send, or want follow-ups tied to your own CRM.

The spreadsheet + n8n version

1. 1One Google Sheet row per quote: name, mobile, email, job, amount, sent date, status (open, replied, won, lost, stopped).
2. 2An n8n Schedule Trigger runs every weekday at 9:30 a.m.
3. 3A Google Sheets node reads rows where status is open.
4. 4A Code or IF node keeps rows where the days since sending are exactly 1, 3, 7, 14 or 30, and picks the matching template.
5. 5Twilio sends the text (or Gmail/Resend sends the day-7 email), and the row gets a “last touch” date.
6. 6A second workflow listens on your Twilio number for replies, finds the row by phone number, sets status to replied, and texts you the reply.

const STEPS = { 1: "t1", 3: "t3", 7: "email7", 14: "t14", 30: "t30" };
const day = 24 * 60 * 60 * 1000;

return $input.all().flatMap((row) => {
  const sent = new Date(row.json.sent_date);
  const age = Math.floor((Date.now() - sent.getTime()) / day);
  const step = STEPS[age];
  return step ? [{ json: { ...row.json, step } }] : [];
});

If you use Jobber, ServiceTitan or Housecall Pro, swap the sheet for their API or webhooks so quote status stays in one place. The logic doesn't change.

Rules for following up by text

Follow-ups on a quote the customer asked for are about as safe as commercial texting gets, but they still have rules. In Canada, CASL exempts a message that solely provides a quote the person requested from the consent requirement. It must still identify you and include an unsubscribe option (s. 6(6)(a) and 6(2)), and an inquiry in the last six months supports implied consent for related follow-ups (s. 10(10)(e)) (CASL).

In the UK, the soft opt-in under PECR covers people who discussed buying from you, as long as you gave them a clear way to opt out (ICO). In the US and Australia, name your business in every message, honour STOP immediately, and keep to sensible hours. This isn't legal advice. Run your templates past a lawyer if you text at volume.

What to measure

Three numbers tell you whether follow-up is working. Track your quote win rate, the hours from sending a quote to the first follow-up, and the reply rate for each step. If one step never gets a reply after a few months, rewrite it or cut it. If most wins come after day 7, your options message is doing the heavy lifting. Make it better.

Estimate follow-up FAQ

Missing the call before the quote even happens? Start with missed-call text-back. Want the follow-up running without building it yourself? Our Quote Follow-Up System sets up automatic follow-up on open quotes, in your voice, for a fixed CA$2,490, one time (see pricing).