Replying to a quote request: templates and follow-ups

A customer fills in the form on your website on Thursday evening, and your reply goes out on Tuesday. In the meantime, the customer has sent the same inquiry to several businesses, and one of them called back on Friday morning. Jobs are often lost not because of the price, but because of speed and because nobody got back in touch after sending the quote.

A good reply to a quote request isn’t one email but a short series. In this guide, you get five ready-made messages to copy: a confirmation, clarifying questions, a quote and two follow-ups. Plus an automatic reply from the form, a simple CRM in a spreadsheet and the line beyond which marketing that requires consent begins.

Why hours count, not days

The most frequently cited study was described by James Oldroyd, Kristina McElheran and David Elkington in Harvard Business Review in 2011. The authors sent an inquiry through the websites of 2,241 companies in the US. Of these, 37% replied within an hour, 24% needed more than a day, and 23% didn’t reply at all. In the same article, they described an analysis of 1.25 million inquiries from 42 companies: those that tried to make contact within an hour were nearly seven times more likely to reach a decision-maker than those that got in touch even an hour later.

This is an American study from years ago, so don’t apply these numbers one-to-one to a business in Poland. The direction is clear, though: hours count. I myself promise a quote within 24 hours of an inquiry. For a small business, a reasonable standard is a confirmation right away and a reply with specifics the same or the next business day.

Step 1: an automatic confirmation from the form

An automatic reply won’t replace a quote, but the customer knows that the message arrived and when they will get an answer, and they can send photos right away. You set it up in the form’s code or in a plugin if your site runs on WordPress.

Template 1: confirmation (sent automatically)

Subject: Inquiry received: [business name] Hello, Thank you for your message. Your inquiry has reached me, and I will reply by [the end of the next business day]. I can prepare a quote faster with 2–3 photos of the site and approximate measurements. Just reply to this message. If it’s urgent, please call: [phone], Mon–Fri [8 a.m.–4 p.m.]. [First name], [business name]

Four rules that will save you trouble:

• Send from an address on your own domain, with SPF, DKIM and DMARC set up. Otherwise the confirmation will land in spam, and the customer will decide that nobody is replying. You can check whether your domain has SPF and DMARC in my free Check your website tool.
• Don’t paste the text entered by the customer into the confirmation. Bots enter someone else’s address and their own ad into the form, and your site then sends it on from your domain. Fixed text is enough. I described a bot trap and submission limits in the guide Contact form without spam or CAPTCHA.
• No promotions. This is a message about an inquiry, not an ad. A discount code “for your next purchase” turns it into commercial information.
• Promise a deadline you will meet. Better “by the end of tomorrow” and a reply today than “within an hour” and silence until Friday.

If the customer left only a phone number, send the same text, shortened, as a text message.

Step 2: questions before you quote

Many inquiries are a single sentence along the lines of “how much does a bathroom cost?”. Instead of giving a wide price range, ask at most five specific questions in one message and number them, so that the customer can reply briefly: “1. Giżycko, 2. 6 m²”.

Template 2: clarifying questions

Hello, Thank you for your inquiry about [service]. To give you a price rather than a range, I need a few details:

1. In which town is the work to be done?
2. What are the approximate dimensions of [the room / the terrace / the windows]?
3. Has the material already been chosen, or should I suggest one?
4. When is the work planned for?
5. Could you send me 2–3 photos of the site?

If you’d rather talk, please tell me a convenient time and I’ll call you back. [First name], [phone]

If you don’t do this kind of work, say so right away, in one sentence, and if you know a business that does, recommend it. A quick refusal also builds your reputation, while silence damages it.

Step 3: a quote that is easy to accept

Check that the quote in your email includes:

• scope: exactly what you will do, with what materials, and what the quote doesn’t cover,
• price: the gross amount for a private customer, net and gross for a business,
• completion date and payment terms, for example a deposit,
• validity of the quote: a specific date until which the price applies,
• one next step: what the customer has to do to place an order.

Template 3: quote

Subject: Quote: [service], [town], valid until [date] Hello, Please find attached my quote for [installing 4 interior doors]. In short:

• scope: [removing the old doors, installation, finishing, waste removal],
• price: [PLN 5,200 gross], a deposit of [30%] when ordering,
• timing: [within 2 weeks of the deposit payment],
• quote valid until [date].

To book the date, just reply “I accept”. I will then send the contract and the details for the deposit. I’ll answer any questions at [phone]. [First name], [business name]

The expiry date also gives you a natural reason to get back in touch.

Step 4: follow-ups after 3 and after 10 days

No reply doesn’t have to mean “no”. The customer may have been waiting for a second quote or may simply have forgotten. I recommend two follow-ups: 3 and 10 days after sending the quote, in the same thread, so that the customer has the quote at hand.

Template 4: follow-up after 3 days

Subject: Re: Quote: [service] Hello, I want to make sure the quote reached you. Is everything in it clear? If something needs changing, for example the material or the date, I’ll prepare a second option. [First name], [phone]

Template 5: final message after 10 days

Subject: Re: Quote: [service] Hello, This is my last message on this matter. The quote is valid until [date], and I still have free dates in [December]. If this is no longer relevant, a short “no” is enough and I’ll close the matter. If the topic comes back in a few months, just reply to this email. [First name], [business name]

Three rules:

• Don’t schedule follow-ups blindly. The customer may have called in the meantime or replied to another address. Check the status first, then send.
• After the second follow-up, stop. Close the matter in the spreadsheet. More messages wear the customer out and come close to marketing without consent.
• Save the messages as templates. In Gmail on a computer, you turn them on like this: Settings → See all settings → Advanced → Templates → Enable. Then, in the new message window, you choose More options → Templates.

Where a reply ends and marketing begins

This is not legal advice. I describe the law as of 7 November 2026, and in an unusual situation it is worth asking a lawyer.

Art. 398 of the Prawo komunikacji elektronicznej (Poland’s Electronic Communications Law, PKE) prohibits sending commercial information, including direct marketing, by email, text message or phone without the recipient’s prior consent. In its reply to parliamentary interpellation no. 12146 of 30 September 2025, the Ministry of Digital Affairs (Ministerstwo Cyfryzacji) stresses that private individuals, sole proprietorships and companies are protected on an equal footing.

A reply to an inquiry is a different situation: the customer asked for a quote, so you are sending what they asked for. The law doesn’t directly address follow-ups, so I stick to a cautious rule: follow-ups concern only that one quote, there are at most two of them, and they give the customer an easy way to say no. You cross the line when:

• you add the person from the inquiry to your newsletter,
• six months later you send them a “new offer” or a Black Friday promotion,
• you add an ad for other services to the quote follow-up.

For that, you need consent. The simplest way is to ask for it in the form itself: a separate, unchecked box, for example “I want to receive information about [business name] promotions by email”. Sending the inquiry must not depend on checking it. I described how to word such a box and what to do with contacts without consent in the guide Newsletter and SMS consent: Poland’s Electronic Communications Law.

Then there is the GDPR. You process data from an inquiry to reply and prepare a contract, that is, at the customer’s request before entering into a contract (Art. 6(1)(b)). Under Art. 5(1)(e), you don’t keep it longer than necessary, so decide after how long you delete inquiries that didn’t lead to an order, and state this in your privacy policy.

A simple CRM in a spreadsheet in 15 minutes

To start, a Google Sheets or Excel spreadsheet is enough, where each inquiry is one row:

Column G is the most important. Every open matter has a date in it, and when a matter is won or lost, you clear that cell. To make overdue matters stand out on their own, in Google Sheets select the table from the second row down and choose Format → Conditional formatting, and in the “Format cells if” field choose “Custom formula is”. Enter:

=AND($G2<>"";$G2<=TODAY())

Rows with today’s date or an overdue date will be highlighted in the color you choose. If the spreadsheet reports a formula error, replace the semicolons with commas, because the separator depends on the file’s locale settings.

Then all you need is a habit: 10 minutes every morning for the highlighted rows. Once a month, look at the Source and Status columns: you will see where your jobs come from and why you lose the rest.

When you get several dozen inquiries a month or several people handle them, switch to a simple CRM (HubSpot, for example, has a free plan for 2 users and 1,000 contacts, as of the end of October 2026) or automate what you do manually today: the form adds a row by itself, sends the confirmation and reminds you of overdue matters in the morning. I build such connections as part of the Process automation service. If many inquiries come in during the evening, an AI chatbot on your website can ask about measurements and photos right away, and you get the complete details in the morning.

Summary

A confirmation right away, a reply the same or the next day, a quote with an expiry date and two follow-ups: after 3 and after 10 days. Everything in one spreadsheet, where every open matter has the date of the next step. Send further offers only to people who have separately agreed to receive them.

If you want your form to confirm inquiries by itself, save them in a spreadsheet or CRM and remind you about quotes, write to me. I automate one process from PLN 1,490 net, and I set up a newsletter with double opt-in and domain configuration as part of the Email marketing service. I reply within 24 hours.