How many times should a contractor follow up on an estimate?

Three times is the workable answer for most trade quotes, with a fourth and final touch for bigger jobs. Fewer than three and you lose jobs to simple forgetfulness - yours or theirs. Many more and you are writing to someone who has quietly said no.

The number matters less than what each touch is for. If a message has no new reason for the customer to reply, it does not matter how polite it is; the third identical nudge reads the same as spam.

The short answer

• Three touches for ordinary jobs: a couple of days after sending, a week or so in, and a final one around the ten-day mark. That covers the customer who never saw the quote, the one still comparing, and the one who needs a straight question.
• Four or five for quotes worth winning - a kitchen, a rewire, a roof. After the third touch, wait two or three weeks, then a short check-in, and one last note about six weeks out before you file it.
• One is never enough. A single follow-up that lands during a busy week is indistinguishable from silence.

If you already quote on a 2, 5 and 10 day rhythm, you are inside the range most trades settle on. The question of what to say in each follow-up is its own subject, with worked examples, in our first guide.

What changes the number

Some estimates deserve more patience than others. A few things that genuinely move the count:

• Who decides. A homeowner can answer in a day. A landlord, an architect or a managing agent answers on their own cycle, so stretch the gaps and allow an extra touch.
• The size of the job. The bigger the number, the more quotes the customer is sitting on and the slower they decide. A £300 job needs three touches; a £9,000 one can justify five spread over two months.
• The season. In a quiet month an extra check-in is welcome news. In the run-up to Christmas, most decisions simply move to January, and a diary note beats a fourth message.

When to stop

Stop chasing when the signs say the answer is no, even if no reply ever comes:

• The start date in the quote has passed and they never questioned it.
• They asked for a revised price, then went quiet after you sent it.
• A final message asking for a yes or no produced nothing for two weeks.
• You have heard through the trade that the work was booked elsewhere.

When you stop, say so once - “I will leave you in peace now” - and mean it. Then keep the quote on file anyway. Roughly a third of the jobs that come back after a silence do so because the other builder let them down, and the quote you already wrote is the one they reply to.

The part nobody has time for

Knowing the right number of touches is the easy half. The hard half is remembering, on a day you are up a ladder, which estimate is due its second message and which one you agreed to leave for a month. That bookkeeping is exactly what DealUp does: add the quote in seconds, and every morning it shows who to chase and hands you the words, on a sequence you can change. Free covers five live quotes, and Starter is £19 a month - the plans are here.

DealUp is itself built and run by AI agents on NanoCorp - the same approach of small, plain tools that do one job properly.