How to follow up on an electrical quote

Why the fourth text feels desperate

The customer asked two or three electricians. Yours is one tab. A follow-up is useful when it answers the thing they are stuck on: what is included, how long the price holds, whether you can start on Thursday. It is noise when it only repeats that you exist.

There is published research on how fast companies answer web leads, and it is not a study of electrical quotes. The useful part is in how fast should you send an electrical quote. Follow-up is what you do after the quote exists. It cannot repair a quote that went out three days late.

The schedule

• Same day, if they have not replied. One text. Assume they are busy, not rude.
• The next day. One question. Scope, start date, or the option they have not picked.
• A few days later. Close the loop. Tell them you will stop, and mean it.

Skip a step if they already answered it. If they said “I need to ask my partner,” the next text is about that, on the day they named, not a generic nudge the next morning.

Script 1, the day you send it

Send this only if the quote has already gone out. A text with no document under it is a promise to send the document.

Hi Sam, it's Alex at North Line Electric. The quote for the kitchen lights is in your texts, good through the 30th. The price includes the six openings, wiring, and the fixtures we looked at. It does not include patching the drywall. Reply if you want it booked.

Names, counts, and the exclusion are the whole text. “Just checking you got it” adds nothing they can answer.

Script 2, the next day

One decision. If the quote has options, ask which one. If it does not, ask the question they hesitated on in the driveway.

Sam, quick one on the kitchen quote. The middle option is the same six lights with a dimmer and the better trim. I can hold Thursday if you pick today. If something on the page looks wrong, tell me which line.

“Which line” is an invitation to correct you. People answer that more often than they answer “any update?” If you did not offer options, delete the middle sentence. Do not invent a choice you did not price. How to build the three prices, when you want them, is good, better, best pricing for electricians.

Script 3, then stop

Sam, I'll leave the kitchen quote here. It stays good through the 30th. After that I'd reprice it, because the material can move. No need to reply if you've gone another way. Happy to help if the job comes back.

This one does three things. It restates the expiry, so silence is not an argument later. It gives them a way to say no without a conversation. It leaves the door open without scheduling another ping. Put a reminder on your own calendar for the expiry if the job was large. Do not put a reminder to text them again.

What to cut

• Discounts that appear only in the follow-up. Price the job once.
• Guilt. They owe you a reply less than you think.
• A new scope you did not visit. That is a different quote.
• The same sentence three times. If the first text was clear, the second must add a fact.

If you can see that they have not opened the quote, the first text is doing real work. If you can see that they opened it twice, script 2 is the one to send, and script 1 is already late. QuotePace shows opens and accepts on the quotes you send from it. The follow-up texts are still yours to write. Automatic chasing is switched on for businesses who ask for it. It is not a reason to send a worse message.

When they answer with someone else's price

A cheaper number is not an invitation to cut yours in the text thread. Ask what the other page includes. Half the time it is a different job: no permit, their fixture, a diagnostic billed later, drywall assumed. If you can see the other quote, compare lines. If you cannot, do not guess your way down to a total you did not build.

Reply with the line they are missing, or with a smaller scope you are actually willing to do. A smaller scope is a new quote, not a discount code. “I can do the six lights and leave the dimmer off” is a choice. “I can knock off a few hundred if you decide today” tells them the first number was padded, and they will remember that the next time they call you.

If their number is lower and the scope really is the same, you still do not have to match it. Say no in one sentence and leave script 3 in place. Taking work at a loss just to win it is how a week fills up with jobs you resent. The follow-up is there to clear up confusion, not to start a bidding war.

If they reply with a real question

Answer the question on the quote, then text the link. A long explanation that never updates the page leaves the old total as the thing they might accept. Change the line, note what changed, and send the new version. If the question is “can you start Tuesday,” answer Tuesday only if Tuesday is real. A yes you cannot keep will cost more than a slow follow-up.

Stop the sequence once they are talking. The three scripts are for silence. Stacking a script on top of a conversation makes you look like you did not read their reply. Read it. Then write like a person who was just at their house, because you were.

Who the text is allowed to sound like

Write it the way you talk at the panel, not the way a marketing email talks. Use their name, the room, and one fact from the visit. If the text could be sent to any house on the street, it is too vague to deserve a reply. Drop the sign-off that lists your license, your years in business, and a row of services. They already have the quote. The text is a finger pointing at the one line they might be stuck on.

Send it from the number they already have. A new thread from a different phone looks like spam and often gets ignored. If someone in the office sends it, the first line should still be the person who stood in the kitchen, because that is who they remember. Keep a copy. When they reply three weeks later, you want the expiry and the exclusion in the same thread as their yes, not reconstructed from memory.

Feeling a bit awkward about the third text is normal. Send it anyway, because closing the loop is polite. Then stop, even if the job would have been a good week. A customer who hires you later will hire you because you were clear, not because you kept messaging.

Write the quote so the text can be short

A follow-up gets long when the quote was vague. If you are explaining the exclusions in the text, they were missing on the page. Fix the page. The difference between a quote they can accept and an estimate they can only ponder is electrical quote vs estimate vs bid. Get that right and these three texts stay under a few lines.