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Solution · Sales & marketingNo sent quote dies in silence: the follow-up happens by itself, the phone gets a list
Quotes sent, follow-up done
A robot keeps the quote register: three days after sending, the customer gets a polite message asking about the decision and any doubts, after a week the number joins a short call list, and every quote ends with a status. For the first time the owner sees how many quotes he wins, and why he loses.
Executive summary
Quotes are sent in the evening after work, and that is where the selling ends: nobody asks whether it arrived, whether there is a question, whether a competitor bid less; quotes die in silence, and nobody knows the win rate.
Every sent quote enters the register; after three days the customer gets a polite nudge, after a week the number lands on a call list; every quote ends with a status and a reason.
Some quotes that would have died in silence come back as orders; the owner sees the win rate, the reasons for losses and the response times; sales stops being what happens between installations.
the quoting mailbox; the quote register in SharePoint; follow-up messages; the call list and report in Microsoft Teams
Business problem
Selling that ends at “sent”
In a service and installation firm the quotes are usually done by the owner, in the evening, after a full day on sites. Calculating and writing one takes an hour; after clicking “send” comes relief, and the next quote. For the follow-up, the thing that actually closes sales, there is neither time nor headspace left.
Meanwhile, on the other side, the customer has collected three quotes and has questions: is material included, why are you eight hundred dearer, what about the date. He will not call about it himself; he will order from the contractor who reached out first and cleared the doubts. You lose not on price and not on quality, but on silence.
Silence has a second cost: ignorance. How many quotes did we send this quarter, how many did we win, how many did we lose and why: too dear, too late, no contact? Without those numbers there is no telling whether to fix prices, dates or communication; all that is known is that “there is work, somehow”.
Worst of all, the problem grows with success: more enquiries mean more quotes, less time for contact after sending, and a lower win rate. The firm works ever harder on quotes, an ever larger share of which dies in silence.
How it works today
Below is what the work looks like before anything is automated.
- PersonThe quote is made in the evening, after work; sent by email, followed by relief
- Risk of errorNo contact whatsoever after sending; the customer’s questions have no addressee
- WaitingThe customer waits three days for a signal, then orders from whoever called
- Risk of errorNobody knows which quotes still hang and which lost long ago
- Risk of errorStatuses and loss reasons are recorded nowhere; the win rate is unknown
- PersonWhile making the next quote, the owner discovers that customer “already had it done”
Why the current process costs more than it appears
The bill that never shows up in a budget.
- Every quote is an hour of the owner’s work; a quote without follow-up is that hour left to rot.
- Losing to silence is worse than losing on price: the latter can be fixed, the former is not even known about.
- A customer with an uncleared doubt does not come back with a question; the competition comes back with a signed contract.
- Without a register and statuses, every pricing decision is a guess: nobody knows what actually loses the quotes.
Cost of inaction
The first row is a cautious model: at 60 quotes a month and typical order values, it takes only one in eight quotes lost purely to silence to reach the figure above. You will do your own arithmetic after the register’s first month, because that is when you first see the real numbers.
The second cost, decisions without knowledge, shows over time: firms that start recording loss reasons almost always discover they lose on something other than they thought.
A model organisation with realistic proportions – the numbers exist so you can run the same maths on your own data; they are not a client result.
An installation firm (fences, gates, terraces): the owner plus three crews, around 60 quotes a month from phone and email enquiries, Microsoft 365.
Quotes sent in the evenings; contact after sending sporadic, “when it comes to mind”; the win rate unknown.
Customers collect three quotes each; decisions fall within a week of sending; the one who reached out usually wins.
The owner does not know how many quotes hang right now, or why he loses the ones he loses.
Every sent quote enters the register; after three days the robot sends a polite message asking about the decision and any doubts; replies return to the owner; a week without reaction lands the number on the Friday call list; every quote gets a status: won, lost with a reason, no contact.
In the modelled case, systematic follow-up alone lifts the win rate by several points, which at these volumes means a dozen or more extra orders a year. Model numbers, not the firm’s records.
Proposed solution
We start with your tone: the follow-up message must sound like you, not like a call-centre robot. We write it together: short, human, asking about doubts, with a real readiness to talk. We also set the rhythm: after how many days the first message, after how many the call list, and when a quote gets the “no contact” status and rests.
The register feeds itself: a quote sent from the quoting mailbox, or flagged in Outlook, enters the register with the amount, the customer and the date. The robot keeps the rhythm: three days after sending the message goes out, replies return straight to the owner with the whole thread, and unresponsive numbers land on Friday’s short call list with context: what was quoted, for how much, when it was sent.
Every quote ends with a status, and a lost status has a reason: price, date, competition, no contact. Once a month the owner gets the report: how many sent, how many won, the win rate per job type and value, what we lose on. After a quarter it is the most valuable sales document in the firm, because for the first time it rests on facts.
UiPath Orchestrator: the quote queue, follow-up schedules, retries and an audit trail; UiPath Integration Service connectors for Microsoft Teams and Outlook 365
A register fed from the mailbox, follow-up sequences in your tone, a call list with context, statuses with reasons and a monthly effectiveness report
The quoting mailbox in Outlook 365; the register in SharePoint; messages by email, and by SMS where the customer came in by phone
How the automated process works
- SystemA sent quote enters the register: customer, amount, date, job type
- AutomationAfter three days the customer gets a polite message asking about the decision and doubts
- PersonReplies return to the owner with the whole thread; the conversation is his
- AutomationA week without reaction: the number lands on the Friday call list with context
- SystemEvery quote ends with a status; a loss has a reason: price, date, competition, silence
- PersonThe monthly report: win rate per type and value, loss reasons, response times
Human-in-the-loop model
Automation handles
- The register of every sent quote and the follow-up rhythm
- Messages in your tone and the call list with full context
- Statuses, reasons and the monthly effectiveness report
People decide
- The quotes themselves: items, prices and dates remain the owner’s craft
- The customer conversations: answering doubts and negotiating
- Deciding what to do with the report’s knowledge: prices, dates, the offer
Before and after
Systems and integrations
The stack is short on purpose: one engine, one execution layer, one place where a person decides.
Inputs
- sent quotes from the quoting mailbox
- customer replies
- follow-up rhythm rules
- statuses and reasons from the owner
Automation layer
- UiPath Orchestrator
- UiPath Robots
- UiPath Integration Service
- UiPath Action Center
Target systems
- the quote register with statuses and history
- sent follow-ups and the call list
- the monthly effectiveness report in Microsoft Teams
Human touchpoints: customer replies by thread; the Friday call list; the monthly report; a tone review quarterly
Technologies used
the quote queue, follow-up schedules, retries, a record of every message
Areading the quoting mailbox, sending messages, the call list
Athe quote register with statuses, reasons and history
Afollow-up by SMS where the customer came in by phone; on your gateway
Bif you already have one, the register can live there instead of SharePoint
BIllustrative economic model
Numbers you can check against your own data.
The model assumes a modest five-point rise in the win rate, which is what systematic contact after sending delivers in practice. Volumes and margins belong to the scenario; you will see your own numbers after the register’s first month, and the calculator alongside counts the time.
Run the maths on your data
An illustrative estimate based on your inputs. It models freed capacity, not promised savings.
Business benefits
- Quotes stop dying in silence; each gets a second round
- Customer questions reach the owner before the customer orders elsewhere
- Friday calls have a list and context instead of memory and guilt
- The win rate, loss reasons and response times are finally counted
- Price and date decisions rest on facts from the register
The management view
- Sales becomes a process with numbers, not a side effect of free evenings
- Market knowledge, who wins and with what, collects itself, quote by quote
- More enquiries no longer lower the win rate; follow-up scales without the owner
Board-level KPIs
win rate overall and per type · quotes with no contact after sending · time from sending to first follow-up · loss reasons · orders from the second round
Security and governance
The automation has exactly the permissions it needs. Not one more.
- The robot works on quote data: customer, contact, amount, status; the quotes’ content stays in your mailbox
- Every message has a record: what, when, to whom; replies do not vanish in an automat, they return to a human
- You approve the tone and content; the customer always talks to the firm, not to a bot
- Opting out of contact is honoured immediately
- Data stays in your Microsoft 365 tenant; the robots run in the EU region of UiPath Automation Cloud
Why now
Enquiries arrive from the internet faster than hours in the owner’s day; manual follow-up has stopped being physically possible.
Customers collect several quotes with one email; contact wins, not the number at the bottom of the page.
Service margins are under pressure; recovering quotes lost to silence is the cheapest growth there is.
Relevant executive roles
Wins quotes that used to die in silence, and knows his win rate for the first time
Sees the register and the call list instead of notes saying “call the terrace man back”
Gets a signal the firm cares, and a place to ask the question that blocked the decision
Common questions and objections
Pushy is the fifth call from a call centre. One polite message three days after the quote, asking whether it arrived and whether there are doubts, is read exactly the other way: as professionalism and a signal that the job matters to you. We write the tone together, and it sounds like you.
The register feeds as simply as possible: a quote sent from the quoting mailbox drops in by itself, and one sent through another channel is added with one email or a phone entry, in half a minute. What matters is that they all drop in; the form is free.
A status is one click in the summary message the robot sends when a case closes: won, lost-price, lost-date, silence. Five seconds. And after a quarter those clicks add up to knowledge no money can buy: why you really lose the ones you lose.
When this is not the right solution
- A firm with a full order book a year ahead that wants no more wins: the problem does not exist
- Quotes given only verbally, on site, with no written trace: first a written quote, then follow-up
- Expecting the automation to negotiate: follow-up opens the conversation, a human leads it
A question for the next management meeting
How many quotes worth real orders hang right now without any contact from our side?
Implementation approach
Scope without ambiguity, before anything is signed.
We deliver
- A quote register fed from the quoting mailbox
- A follow-up sequence in your tone, with replies returning as threads
- The Friday call list with full context
- Statuses with reasons and the monthly effectiveness report
- Two weeks of parallel running and tone tuning after the first month
We need from you
- The mailbox quotes go out from, or agreement to create one
- An hour to write the follow-up message together, in your tone
- A decision on the rhythm: after how many days the message, after how many the call
Stages
Discovery
How quotes are made and sent; how many there are; what is known about the win rate
Rules
The message tone and content, the sequence rhythm, statuses and reasons
Build
The register, follow-ups, the call list, the report
Parallel run
Two weeks on live quotes; tone and rhythm tuned
Go-live
Full traffic; the first effectiveness report after a month
A quick win. The smallest implementation in the catalogue: a mailbox, a register and two messages; it runs on the Microsoft 365 you already have.
Thursday: a customer with a €14,000 quote from Tuesday, no contact since. On Friday he signs with the competitor whose salesman called yesterday.
Send us your quote count from the last quarter, and how many ended in orders if you know. We return the arithmetic: how many orders a year sit in the follow-up alone, and what your three-day message would sound like.
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