Should I Follow Up a Kitchen Installation Quote?

For installers

Yes, I think you should. Not because you need to chase people around until they eventually give in and book you, but because there is a big difference between following something up professionally and pestering somebody.

Most fitters have quotations sitting somewhere that they spent a fair bit of time producing and then never heard another word about. You surveyed the job, went through the plans, worked everything out, sent the quote and then nothing happened.

It is very easy to assume they chose somebody else. Sometimes they did. Other times the kitchen has been delayed, the customer is waiting for revised plans, they have been away on holiday, another decision in the house has held everything up or they simply haven’t got round to dealing with it.

Customers have lives going on around their kitchen project in exactly the same way that we have lives going on around fitting them. A polite follow-up gives them an easy opportunity to tell you where things are.

Silence doesn’t necessarily mean no

I think this is where a lot of installers lose work unnecessarily. We send the quotation and put the responsibility entirely onto the customer. If they want us, they will call. There is some logic in that, and I certainly wouldn't advocate chasing somebody every other day, but people don't always behave as neatly as that.

A customer can be genuinely interested in using you and still not reply for three weeks. They may have had three people quote and now be trying to understand why all three prices are different. They might be waiting for the kitchen supplier to confirm something before they can make a decision.

Sometimes your email has simply disappeared under another 50 emails.

A short follow-up isn't an admission that you're desperate for work. It's good customer service. You're checking whether they received the quotation, whether they have any questions and whether the project is still moving ahead.

Don't follow up the next morning

There needs to be a bit of common sense around the timing. If you send the quotation at 7pm on Tuesday and text the customer at 9am on Wednesday asking whether they've made a decision, that will feel like pressure.

Give people time to look at it. A kitchen installation is not normally a small decision. The customer may be comparing quotations, talking it over with their partner, changing parts of the design or trying to work out the overall project budget.

There isn't one perfect number of days that suits every job, but I think the principle is fairly simple: give them enough time to consider the quotation properly, then check in while the project is still fresh. If you know they were hoping to make a decision by a certain date, use that as your guide.

The follow-up should feel like part of the service, not the start of a sales campaign.

Keep the message simple

You don't need to reinvent yourself as a salesperson. I always think this works better when it sounds like something you would naturally say. You are really asking three things: did they receive it, is there anything they want you to explain, and is the project still going ahead?

You don't need a paragraph explaining why you're the best installer in the area or a sudden discount if they book by Friday. In fact, dropping your price in the first follow-up can probably do more harm than good because the customer may immediately start wondering how much room there was in the price in the first place. If you believe the quotation was properly priced, stand behind it.

Find out why you're losing quotations

Following up isn't only about winning the job. It gives you information.

If somebody tells you they chose another installer, you can politely ask what influenced the decision. You won't always get an answer and you shouldn't make the customer feel as though they need to justify themselves, but sometimes they will tell you something useful.

Perhaps your quotation took two weeks to arrive and another fitter had theirs back in three days. Maybe the other quotation was clearer. Perhaps the customer wanted one company to manage all the trades and you hadn't explained that you could do that. Maybe you were simply £3,000 more expensive. All of those tell you something different.

The danger is assuming every lost job was about price. Once you convince yourself that customers are only choosing the cheapest fitter, dropping your price starts to look like the answer to everything. It usually isn't.

Your quotation may be the problem, not your price

I've seen quotations over the years where the fitter clearly knew what they meant, but I'm not convinced the customer would have had a clue. The fitter has seen the plans, walked around the room and built the whole job in their head. The customer gets a page saying: Kitchen installation – £7,800.

That might be a perfectly fair price, but the customer is now trying to compare it with another quotation that clearly explains what's included, what's excluded, who is organising the other trades and how the payments work. Sometimes the clearer quotation wins even when it isn't the cheapest.

If customers regularly disappear after receiving your price, don't immediately decide you need more leads. Look at what you're actually sending them. Would somebody who doesn't fit kitchens for a living understand it?

Don't take a lost quote personally

This is another thing that comes with experience. You are not going to win every job. There are customers who will prefer somebody else, customers who will decide not to do the kitchen at all and customers who will choose almost entirely on price. That doesn't mean you did anything wrong.

Where following up becomes unpleasant is when the installer feels entitled to the job because they spent time quoting it. You chose to quote. The customer is still allowed to choose somebody else.

A professional follow-up should leave the door open rather than making them glad they didn't appoint you. You never know when that person might come back, recommend you to somebody else or contact you for another project in the future.

One customer can be worth more than one job

This ties back into something we've already talked about across Every Install. There is a line that has always stuck with me: you don't need more customers; you just need to look after the ones you've got.

I don't take that literally to mean you never need another new enquiry. The point is that a customer or potential customer shouldn't automatically disappear from your world the moment one particular conversation ends.

Somebody who didn't choose you for this kitchen may use you for something else later. A customer you've worked for before might move house. Somebody may recommend you even though their own project never went ahead.

That only happens if dealing with you was a good experience in the first place. The way you follow up is part of that experience.

Don't turn your quote list into a pile of forgotten names

Once you're quoting several jobs at the same time, it becomes very easy to lose track. You remember the big one you really wanted. You forget the smaller kitchen you quoted three weeks earlier. Another customer said they'd come back after speaking to the showroom, and suddenly two months have gone by.

You don't need some enormous corporate CRM system to solve this. You simply need to know what you've quoted, when you sent it and whether it needs following up. That can be a spreadsheet, a simple tracker or whatever system you will actually use.

The point is that the follow-up becomes deliberate rather than dependent on you suddenly remembering somebody while you're fitting a sink.

What if the customer doesn't reply to the follow-up?

Then leave it. You have sent the quotation, given them time and checked in politely. If there is no response after that, you don't need to keep appearing in their inbox every week.

Depending on the project and the conversation you had with them, there may be occasions when another later check-in makes sense, particularly if the original timeline was months away.

But there comes a point where following up turns into chasing, and I don't think that's good for either side. Make it easy for them to come back to you and move on.

Don't suddenly invent discounts

One thing I would be very careful of is using follow-up as an excuse to start discounting. You send a quotation for £8,000. The customer doesn't reply. A week later you offer to do it for £7,500 if they book now.

What are they supposed to think? Either the job was worth £8,000 or it wasn't.

There will occasionally be genuine reasons why a price changes, but knocking money off simply because somebody hasn't replied teaches customers that waiting may get them a better deal.

If your pricing is right, have confidence in it. If you're losing most of your work because your pricing isn't right, that's a separate problem that needs looking at properly.

Following up should feel like service

That is probably the simplest way I can put it. If your follow-up feels as though you are helping the customer move the project forward, you're probably somewhere around the right place. If it feels as though you're trying to corner them into saying yes, you've gone too far.

Ask whether everything made sense. Answer questions properly. If the project has changed, update the quotation if necessary. If they've chosen somebody else, wish them well and move on.

Do that consistently and you will probably recover some jobs that would otherwise have quietly disappeared. Just as importantly, you'll start learning why other jobs aren't converting. That information can be worth as much as the job itself.

Every Install can help with the follow-up

Quiet Follow-Up is included with Every Install Free membership. It was built around exactly this problem: quotations going out and then disappearing into silence because nobody quite knows how to follow them up without sounding pushy.

Use the free Quiet Follow-Up Quick Win →

If you want something more structured, the Quote & Follow-Up Tracker is available inside Every Install Pro and gives you a way of keeping track of quotes, what stage they're at and what needs attention next.

Use the Quote & Follow-Up Tracker in Every Install Pro →