In almost every business we speak to in Mallorca there is a folder of sent quotes that nobody has looked at again. A workshop that quoted for a repair, an installer who priced a renovation, a studio that sent a proposal to a hotel, an events company that quoted for a wedding. The customer did not say no; they simply said nothing, and the office had fifty other things to do. Automated quote follow-up exists to close that gap: every quote sent is followed up at the right intervals, without depending on someone remembering.
Why sales that were already half won get lost
A sent quote is a sale in which the customer has already shown interest and the business has already invested time in calculating and writing it. Losing it to silence is the worst possible outcome, and it happens for very specific reasons:
- The customer received it, put it aside for later and forgot.
- They had a small question (a timescale, a payment method) and never got round to asking it.
- They were comparing with another supplier and the other one called first.
- They approved it in their head but nobody made the next step easy.
In all these cases, a brief message at the right moment recovers a share of those sales. No business does this consistently by hand, least of all in high season, when the salesperson is the same person serving at the counter.
How the workflow works: day 0, day 3, day 7
The basic workflow we build has a simple structure and adapts to each business:
Day 0. The quote goes out from the usual tool (Holded, a CRM, a document generated from Google Workspace or Microsoft 365). The system records that it has been sent, to whom, for what amount and through which channel.
Day 3. If there is no reply, a short message goes out through the same channel the customer used, usually email or WhatsApp Business API. The tone is helpful rather than pushy: confirming they received it, asking whether they have any questions, offering a call.
Day 7. If there is still no reply, a second message, different from the first. It can include a useful detail (date availability, how long the quote is valid) or simply leave the door open.
After day 7. The quote moves to "no reply" in the report and, depending on the company's policy, a final contact is scheduled at 30 days or it is archived. What does not happen is that it stays in limbo.
The intervals are configurable. In a workshop, three days may be a long time; in a renovation project, seven may be short. In the assessment they are adjusted to your real sales cycle.
Detecting the reply and stopping in time
The part that separates a good system from an annoying one is reply detection. If the customer answers the first message, or phones and someone notes it down, or accepts the quote from a link, the sequence stops instantly. Nobody wants to receive a "did you get a chance to look at our quote?" the day after approving it.
To achieve this, the workflow watches:
- Email replies in the same thread.
- Incoming WhatsApp messages from the same number.
- Status changes in the CRM or in Holded (accepted, rejected, under negotiation).
- A manual note from anyone on the team, which always overrides the automation.
When a reply arrives, the system classifies it simply: acceptance, rejection, question, or something unclear. From that it decides the next step.
Handover to a person with context
An automated follow-up should never try to close a sale on its own. Its job is to keep the conversation alive and hand it to a person as soon as there is something to deal with. In practice:
- If the customer replies with a question, the salesperson receives an alert (by WhatsApp, Teams or email) with the quote, the message history and the question, so they can reply within minutes.
- If the customer accepts, the appropriate action is triggered: create the order, request the deposit, schedule the visit or the installation.
- If they decline, the reason is recorded if they gave one, and that data feeds the report.
- If the amount exceeds a threshold, the day 3 follow-up can be a call from the salesperson instead of a message, and the system simply reminds them.
A managed AI agent (from €500 per month) can also answer the common questions that arrive at this stage (timescales, payment methods, what the price includes) and pass to the salesperson only what requires a decision. In businesses with international customers, it replies in the customer's language.
The report that shows the real pipeline
When every quote has a status and a date, something appears that most SMEs have never had: an accurate picture of their sales pipeline. An automatic weekly report, sent first thing on Monday, can show:
- Quotes sent this week and their total value.
- Quotes awaiting a reply, by age.
- Quotes accepted and rejected, with reasons where known.
- Acceptance rate by type of service, salesperson or lead source.
- Quotes that have had no movement for more than X days and need a decision.
With this report, the business owner sees in two minutes where the money that can still come in is sitting and which salesperson needs help.
What it is built with and what it costs
There is no need to change tools. The workflow is built bespoke, connected to what you already use: Holded or another quoting program, email in Google Workspace or Microsoft 365, WhatsApp Business API and, if there is one, the CRM. Data is processed and stored on servers within the European Union.
A quote follow-up with the phases described (sending, day 3, day 7, reply detection, alert to the salesperson and weekly report) falls within our published range of €3,000 to €6,000 per automation. Before that we carry out an assessment at a fixed €1,500: we count how many quotes went out in recent months, how many got a reply and how many were met with silence. That figure is usually the clearest argument for deciding.
Frequently asked questions
Will customers find automated messages annoying?
Two messages in a week, written naturally, on the channel the customer themselves used, and stopping as soon as they reply, are not annoying. What is annoying is a generic message that arrives after they have already answered, and that is precisely what reply detection prevents. We write the texts with you and they sound like your business.
Does it work if my quotes are done in Excel or as a PDF by hand?
Yes, on one condition: there has to be an identifiable "quote sent" moment. It can be the outgoing email with the PDF attached, a row added to a shared spreadsheet or a status change in Holded. From that signal onwards, the rest of the workflow works the same. If there is currently no signal at all, we will tell you in the assessment and look for the simplest one to create.
What happens if a customer replies by phone?
Anyone on the team notes in the CRM, in the spreadsheet or with a message to the system that the customer has already replied, and the sequence stops. That manual note takes priority over any automated rule.
If your business has sent quotes that nobody has looked at again, the way to find out how much money is sitting there is to count them. Request an assessment
We implement it for you
We work at the leading edge of artificial intelligence and agents: we build on the most advanced agent platforms of the moment and we do it at your business, in Mallorca, with published prices and a person from your team approving anything that goes out. We start with an initial assessment and a written plan.