Following up on estimates that didn't close at a 30-person heating, cooling, plumbing and electrical company: about $185,000 of quoted work a month left waiting

For the executive who decides

• The customer acts
• The machine acts
• A person decides
• Nothing runs

An illustration built from a contractor's job posting and trade figures: the times are examples, and the estimate count, the average estimate and the share won back are estimates.

1The job

Following up after the visit: texting and emailing every homeowner whose estimate did not close, every customer who canceled an appointment, and every customer whose job is finished; stopping the moment they answer; and getting each answer to the person who can act on it. The reader: a heating, cooling, plumbing and electrical company of about 30 people that sells to homeowners. The evidence that the work is paid for: a company of that kind, in business since 2009 and serving a large Southern city and its suburbs, is hiring a full-time marketing coordinator whose duties include running these follow-ups (posted 14 October 2026). Pay is not stated.

2The number today

Coordinate campaigns for unsold estimates, completed jobs, canceled appointments, membership enrollment, and seasonal maintenance. Also in the same posting: Write promotional emails and automated follow-up campaigns for customers and prospects. And the coordinator is to "Track campaign results, including website traffic, leads, booked jobs, and attributed revenue." The posting gives no pay, no estimate count and no close rate.

The time is the small number. One day a week of a coordinator's time, at US median pay for marketing specialists ($37.87 an hour), is about $15,750 a year. Calling and texting each quiet estimate four times by hand is about 9 hours a month, about $2,300 a year at median pay for a customer service rep. About $18,000 a year, about $34 for each estimate that didn't close. At companies like this, most of that follow-up never happens: one agency found a sales team that made "one phone call after the estimate, maybe a second if they remembered".

The big number is the work left open. Residential contractors close about 45% of their estimates. At 80 estimates a month, 44 go quiet; at $4,200 each, that is about $185,000 of quoted work a month. Win back one in 20 and it is about $8,400 of work a month, about $100,000 a year.

Estimate. The 80 estimates a month, the $4,200 average, the one day a week and the four touches of 3 minutes are assumed or borrowed from one agency's client; one in 20 won back is the low case. The company's own estimate report and a month of counting replace all of them.

3The verdict

Hand over the follow-up. Keep the price talk.

• Hand to the machine: spotting each estimate that didn't close, each canceled appointment and each finished job, every day; sending the follow-up in the advisor's name, by text and email, only to customers who agreed to texts, at most four on one estimate over 10 days; stopping every message the moment the customer replies, books, buys elsewhere, says no or texts STOP; reading each reply and sorting it as a question, price, timing, booked elsewhere or no; offering a new time to every canceled appointment; sending the thanks, the review request and the membership offer after a finished job; logging why each lost estimate was lost; and counting what every message booked.
• Keep with a person: the call to anyone who answers about price or a lower quote; any discount, price change or new option; any financing beyond what the estimate already shows; any upset or confused reply; and the words of every message, which the coordinator writes and the advisor approves.
• Not yet: phone calls by an automated voice; answering a price question on its own; texting anyone without consent on record; reopening estimates more than a year old.

What the comfort advisor is for now: the second conversation, with the homeowner who is comparing quotes or asking for a cheaper option, and the price. The machine keeps every quiet estimate in front of its homeowner and tells the advisor who answered. The coordinator writes the messages and reads the numbers.

4The bill

About $425 a month: the marketing add-on of the field-service software this kind of company already runs, reported at $400 to $800 a month on top of the base plan (its maker publishes no price), which sends the texts and emails and stops them when a job is booked; plus about $25 a month for a small build that reads each reply and sorts it for the advisor.

The alternatives: a standalone follow-up service that reads replies and hands them to a person is $499 a month for up to 50 estimates, plus $500 to set up (early-access pricing); a larger one publishes no price and is reported at $600 to $1,500 a month on a yearly contract. Field-service software for smaller shops includes quote follow-ups from $139 a month. Building all of it is about $12 a month in model use and texts plus 20 euros for the software that runs the steps, then the build and the upkeep. People: a remote HVAC assistant at $14 an hour, 10 hours a week, is about $610 a month.

Checking: for the first two weeks, the coordinator reads every reply the machine sorted, and checks every stop: no one who replied, booked or texted STOP got another message. The advisor approves the wording of each message once, before it runs. After that, the check time is not known until it is counted.

Estimate. The $425 uses the low end of the reported add-on price; the build costs assume 44 quiet estimates, 20 canceled appointments and 200 finished jobs a month, and about 100 replies.

5Owner and off switch

The sales manager owns it (the owner, at a company with no sales manager), because every message speaks for a price someone at the company quoted. The off switch: stop the follow-up campaigns in the marketing tool's campaign list; a stopped campaign can be resumed later. Messages already sent stay sent; the advisor calls by hand, as today. It takes under a minute. Try it once in the first week.

6The brief to hand your builder

The job: every day, find each estimate that didn't close, each canceled appointment and each finished job; send the follow-up in our advisor's name to customers who agreed to texts; stop the moment anyone answers; sort every reply and send the ones about price to the advisor who priced the job.

Today: the advisor calls once, maybe twice. About 44 estimates a month go quiet, and nobody knows why they were lost.

Done when: for two weeks, every quiet estimate gets its first message within 2 hours of the visit; only customers with consent on record get a text; no message goes out after a reply, a booking, a sold or dismissed estimate or a STOP; no estimate gets more than four texts; every reply reaches the advisor the same business day; the advisor re-sorts fewer than 1 in 10 replies; and every lost estimate has a reason logged.

It may never, on its own: offer a discount, change a price or an option, answer a price question, or text anyone without consent on record.

You get from us: two months of estimates with their outcomes; our customer records with consent to text; the advisor list; three replies we handled well and three we handled badly; access to our field-service software and our texting number.

We own: the customer records, the texting number and its registration, the message wording, the accounts and the billing.

We get back: each morning, every open estimate with its messages sent, its replies and their labels; the list of replies waiting on an advisor; and each week, estimates sold after follow-up, with their value, opt-outs and lost reasons.

Ask whoever sets it up	A good answer	A bad answer
What stops the messages?	Any reply, a booking, a sold or dismissed estimate, or STOP ends that customer's messages the same minute, and we test it on day one	"The sequence runs to the end, then they drop off"
Who sees a reply, and how fast?	The advisor who priced the job, the same business day; the machine never answers a price question	"Replies go to the shared inbox," or "The AI handles the objections"
Who are we allowed to text?	Only customers with consent on record, stored on the customer's file; quiet hours kept; STOP honored everywhere	"Anyone who got an estimate can be texted"

For the operator who builds and runs it Paid layer

7The working set

• Trigger: an estimate is left open at the end of a visit; an appointment is canceled; a job is marked complete. Each is read from the field-service software once a day, and on the status change where the software allows it.
• Steps: check consent to text on the customer record (none: email only); for an open estimate, send up to four messages in the advisor's name over 10 days (same evening: thanks and the options link; day 2: the financing link and an easy way to say no; day 5: the install timing; day 10: a last note); for a canceled appointment, offer two new times, twice at most; for a finished job, send thanks and the review request within 2 hours, and the membership offer a week later; on any reply, booking, sold or dismissed estimate, or STOP, end that customer's messages at once; sort each reply as question, price, timing, booked elsewhere, no, or upset; send price, booked-elsewhere-with-a-number and upset replies to the advisor who priced the job, with the estimate attached; answer only plain questions the estimate already settles, from approved wording; log the lost reason on every lost estimate; send nothing before 8 am or after 9 pm local time.
• Data: one record per follow-up: customer, estimate or job, advisor, estimate value, consent on record (yes or no, and where), messages sent with times, replies with their labels, stop reason, outcome (sold, lost, open), lost reason, booked value, and who checked it.
• Review step: the advisor approves each message's wording once. For the first two weeks the coordinator reads every sorted reply and every stop; after that, 10 a week, and every reply labelled "upset". Plan for replies from more than half of those followed up: one vendor's own data across 163,212 estimate follow-ups put the average at 60% (2024).
• Alerts: a reply waiting on an advisor for more than 4 business hours; any message sent after a stop; an opt-out rate above 1 in 20 of those texted in a week; a text queued to a customer with no consent on record; a failed sync with the field-service software; and the wrong-but-green count, the replies the advisor re-sorted.
• If it breaks: what you see: a customer gets a follow-up after booking or saying no, replies stop arriving, or the daily list is empty. Check first: the connection to the field-service software is still authorized; the stop rules are set (not "No Trigger"); the texting number's registration is current. Safe fix: stop the campaigns; the advisor calls by hand, as today.
• Cost per estimate: about $10 for each estimate that didn't close with the add-on and the reply build ($425 a month over 44; the add-on also covers cancellations and finished jobs); about $0.80 if built in full (about $35 a month).
• Baseline, before switch-on: the next four weeks, by hand: estimates given, sold on the day, left open and their value; touches made on each open estimate; sold after a follow-up and their value; lost reasons where known; canceled appointments rebooked; reviews and memberships from finished jobs; and the minutes spent following up (time it, do not ask).

Estimate. The cost per estimate assumes 44 quiet estimates, 20 canceled appointments and 200 finished jobs a month, and about 100 replies. The baseline replaces all four.

Tools by name: ServiceTitan Marketing Pro (no published price; reported $400 to $800 a month on top of the base subscription; unsold-estimate campaigns of up to four texts, stop on "Call Created" or "Job Booked", or "No Trigger"; STOP opts the customer out of every campaign; campaigns stop and resume from the campaign list); Jobber Connect ($139 a month for one user, $299 for ten, no commitment; automated quote follow-ups); RehashHero ($499 a month for up to 50 leads, $500 setup, early-access pricing; hands off to a manager); Hatch (no published price; reported $600 to $1,500 a month, annual contract per location); Go Hire Virtual ($12 to $14 an hour); built: Claude Sonnet 5.5 ($2 per million tokens in, $10 out), Twilio SMS ($0.0083 a segment plus carrier fees; business texting registration fees apply), n8n (Starter 20 euros a month, billed annually).