update: the repair shop owner from my last post sends the same email 5 times chasing ghosted quotes. im building him something that does it for him. free until it recovers one
A few weeks back i asked here what task you hate most in your business. the answer that stuck with me was from a repair shop owner. customer asks for a quote, he sends it, then nothing. so he chases. his words: "i send the same email 5 times with different…
A few weeks back i asked here what task you hate most in your business. the answer that stuck with me was from a repair shop owner. customer asks for a quote, he sends it, then nothing. so he chases. his words: "i send the same email 5 times with different wording, it eats half my week". and half the time the job dies anyway. not cause anyone said no, just cause nobody insisted at the right moment. So i offered him a deal. i build the follow up thing, he pays nothing. if it recovers even one ghosted quote we sit down and talk a monthly price. if not, he lost nothing and i learned something. what i am building.... watches every quote that goes out. no reply in a few days -> follow up goes out, written like he writes, mentions the actual job. no template blasts knows when to stop. a hard no, a "went with someone else", or too many tries. nobody gets spammed if the customer replies something weird (asks for a discount, strange request) it doesnt improvise. flags him and waits end of month he gets one email. quotes chased, quotes recovered, dollars honestly the hard part isnt the tech, its the stop rules and the tone. the customer has to beleive the owner wrote that email. if it smells like a bot it burns trust with the exact guy that was about to pay him. ill post the numbers here in a few weeks, good or bad. question for the owners here, would you let a system email your customers in your name? and if not, what would it need to do to earn that?
Collected discussion
Yeah that's exactly the pressure I wanted, can't hide behind a demo when a real invoice depends on it
This is a pretty good wedge because it ties the thing to one recovered job instead of vague “saves time” value. The part I’d be careful with is not the follow-up wording, it’s the source of truth. If the quote status is wrong, the whole thing becomes annoying fast. I’d make the first version very conservative: only follows up on quotes the owner explicitly marks as sent stops immediately on any reply has a hard max number of touches keeps a visible log of every message it sent asks the owner before sending anything with a discount, urgency, or price change For repair/service shops especially, I’d also separate “forgot to reply” from “not ready yet.” Those need different messages. A simple “want me to keep this open until Friday?” will often beat another clever chase email.
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