How many times should you chase a quote before you stop?
Short answer: three touches over the life of the quote, ending on or just before expiry, suits most B2B work. The number matters less than the fact that it is decided in advance rather than improvised.
The shape that works
Touch one, a few days after sending. Not “just checking” — a short note confirming it arrived and offering to talk through anything in it. This one catches the quotes that went to spam or to the wrong person, which is a surprising proportion.
Touch two, roughly midway to expiry. This is where you add something: a note about lead times, a reminder of what is included, an answer to the question the customer usually asks at this point.
Touch three, shortly before the quote expires. A genuine deadline does the work for you, provided the deadline is real. If you routinely extend expired quotes without comment, your expiry date is decoration and everyone learns that.
When to use fewer
Small-value quotes where the follow-up costs more attention than the job is worth. Repeat customers who always come back in their own time — chasing them is noise. Anyone who has told you they are waiting on a third party; chase the date they gave you, not your cadence.
When to use more
Long buying cycles, where a quote might sit for a quarter while a budget is approved. Here the right pattern is fewer touches spread further apart, with a clear purpose each time, rather than the same message repeated.
The rule that matters more than the count
Stop instantly on a decision. Nothing damages a relationship faster than a cheerful automated reminder arriving after the customer has accepted, or declined, or told you they went elsewhere. Whatever cadence you choose, the acceptance and decline stop is non-negotiable — see the exclusions worth setting up first.
Decide it once, then stop deciding it
The real cost of improvised follow-up is not the wrong number of touches. It is that every quote becomes a small decision — chase or not, today or Friday — and small decisions in quantity get resolved by not doing them. Set the cadence, write it down, and let the exceptions be exceptions.
Quote Nudge runs whatever cadence you set against your Xero quotes and ends the sequence the moment the quote is accepted, declined or expires. Find out more → · Writing the follow-up itself
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