On this page
- How soon should you follow up on a quote?
- What the figures do and do not say
- Why following up goes wrong, even for good salespeople
- What disappears along with the quote
- The best moment to come back
- The follow-up rhythm, step by step
- The three things you write down after every conversation
- What Raydo does about following up on quotes
- Frequently asked questions about following up on quotes
- Sources
In short
- Put the follow-up in your calendar the moment you send the quote. Leave it until later and it usually never happens.
- Follow up for the first time after two to four working days, and then twice or three times more with about two weeks in between.
- Half of Dutch businesses with ten to fifty employees have no CRM. There, the follow-up lives in somebody’s head or in a mailbox.
- The strongest moment to come back is not a fixed number of days after your quote. It is the moment something changes at your client.
01How soon should you follow up on a quote?
Follow up for the first time within two to four working days. After that, twice or three times more, with about two weeks in between. And the most important part: fix every follow-up in place the moment you send the quote.
You will find that rule everywhere, and it is right. It is just that almost nobody manages it. Not because salespeople are careless. Because following up only works if it keeps running, and this week there is other work shouting louder.
A quote that stays quiet is usually not a quote that has been turned down. It has slipped out of sight. First at your client, then at your end.
02What the figures do and do not say
First, something the other articles on this subject do not tell you. Almost all of them cite the same two studies: one from Harvard Business Review in 2011 and one from MIT and InsideSales in 2007. That is where the familiar numbers come from, like seven times the odds within an hour and twenty-one times the odds after five minutes.
We do not use them. They are fifteen to twenty years old, they are about incoming leads rather than quotes you have sent, and nobody has repeated the work since. And if you come across a claim that thirty percent of leads never get a call, or that your odds drop by eighty percent after five minutes, that is a garbled version of those same two studies. Those numbers are not in them.
What we do know about your situation, from recent research:
| What the research shows | Source and year |
|---|---|
| 49 percent of Dutch businesses with ten to fifty employees use CRM software. Among businesses of fifty to two hundred and fifty employees it is 69 percent. | Statistics Netherlands, reporting year 2025 |
| Only 21 percent of those smaller businesses analyse the customer data they hold. Among the larger ones, 43 percent do. | Statistics Netherlands, reporting year 2025 |
| An employee receives 117 emails a day on average and is interrupted about 275 times a day. That works out at one interruption every two minutes. | Microsoft Work Trend Index, June 2025 |
| Salespeople spend 28 percent of their working week selling. The rest goes on deal administration, data entry and the like. | Salesforce, State of Sales, 2023 |
| 67 percent of Dutch employers see workloads rising because of staff shortages. 45 percent say it is stalling their growth. | State of Dutch SMEs, 2025 |
Put those five side by side and the problem is right there. In half of these businesses there is no system holding the follow-up. The people who then have to remember it themselves are interrupted every two minutes, and they are already busier than last year.
03Why following up goes wrong, even for good salespeople
Most articles on this hand you tips. Be helpful. Call on a Tuesday morning. Give your client room. All of it is true, and little of it changes anything, because it assumes the problem is your approach.
It rarely is. It goes wrong at one moment, and that is the moment you hit send. Something has to come into being that does not exist yet: an appointment with yourself, a few days out. You usually do not make that appointment, because you are done with this client and three more are waiting. A week later the quote is still sitting there. It is just that nobody is looking at it any more.
“Following up on contacts is just genuinely hard. It grinds to a halt because my other work takes priority over chasing that client again six months later.”
This is not a salesperson who cannot handle the job. This is a salesperson who has to remember all of it alone.
04What disappears along with the quote
It is not only the quote that goes quiet. What you heard in that conversation disappears too.
We asked the same salesperson what his company does with the information he picks up at clients.
“Nothing. I tell people, but I do not write it down.”
That is the most expensive answer in all of our research, and it is where the real problem sits. The most valuable part of a customer conversation is gone the moment you get back in the car: what this client is wrestling with, who else has a say, when their contract runs out. Call six months later and you start over. And because you have to start over, you put that call off. That is how a memory problem grows into a revenue problem.
The figures from Statistics Netherlands show how widely this plays out. In half of businesses with ten to fifty people there is no CRM at all, and only one in five does anything with the customer data they do hold.
05The best moment to come back
You were taught to follow up on a rhythm. Day three, day ten, day twenty-one. That is better than nothing. It is just that the conversation is not there.
The conversation is at the moment something changes at your client. A new manager arrives. A contract runs out. They post three vacancies. They acquire another company. Call at that moment and you are not working through a list. You are saying something worthwhile at the right time.
We asked the same salesperson where the most value would sit for him. He did not start on hours saved, or on more deals. He went straight to timing. He wants a nudge the moment something is going on at a client, so he knows it is time to call.
That is the difference between a reminder and a reason. A reminder tells you two weeks have passed. A reason tells you why you are calling now.
If it stays quiet even with a good reason, your timing is usually not the problem. Something is going on at your client that you cannot see. Which five things those can be, and what helps in each case, is covered in your client is not responding to your quote.
06The follow-up rhythm, step by step
This is the rhythm to hold to, with what to send at each moment. You need no new system for it, only your calendar.
The moment you hit send
Put the follow-up in your calendar right away, with a date on it. The rule is: the quote is not sent until the follow-up is booked. This is the one moment you really have to make, because every other moment follows from it.
Nothing yet. This moment is for you.
The first follow-up
Keep it short. Confirm what you understood in the conversation and name the very next step. Do not ask whether they have had a look, because that hands your client work instead of a reason to reply.
The one thing you promised in the conversation to send on.
The second follow-up
Now you need a reason. Look at what has happened at your client since your quote: a vacancy, a new manager, a contract running out, an acquisition. Have a quick look on LinkedIn and on their own website.
That reason, tied to what you offered.
The third follow-up
The last one in this rhythm. Make it easy to say no. A line like “do let me know if this is not the moment and I will come back later” gets an answer more often than asking for a yes again.
A figure, or an example of a client who did the same.
On a horizon, not closed
No answer is not a rejection. Put your client on a three- or six-month horizon rather than closing the file. A quote that did not go ahead now often goes ahead later, as soon as something changes at their end.
Nothing again until something really changes at your client.
The exact number of days is not sacred. What counts is this: every moment is already in your calendar before you need the first one, and from the second one on you send something with it.
07The three things you write down after every conversation
This costs you ten minutes and it decides whether you still have something to say six months from now. Write three lines straight after the conversation, in the client record or, failing that, in an email to yourself.
- What is this client wrestling with?
In their words, not yours. One sentence is enough. This is what you reach back for at the second follow-up.
- Who else has a say?
The name that came up in the conversation but was not at the table. Gartner puts a B2B buying group at five to sixteen people, so that one name is rarely just one.
- When is it happening?
A date or a period. “Later this year” counts too. Without it, six months on you no longer know whether you are early or late.
And now the honest part. Day 0 and these three things are the first to go the moment it gets busy. They are not hard, they are simply easy to skip. Hold this rhythm for three months and you will know for yourself where it jams up in your business. That is the only measurement that counts.
We have no customer figures yet on how many quotes get an answer after all with Raydo. Raydo has recently started running with the first beta partners and we are measuring it together with them, with a baseline taken up front.
While that measurement is running we publish no percentages. Every figure in this article comes from public research, with the source and the year alongside it.
08What Raydo does about following up on quotes
Raydo is the chief of work that picks this up the moment you send the quote. Raydo sets the follow-up ready, finds what has happened at your client since the conversation, and reports in WhatsApp, Teams or your email. You do not get asked whether there is something you should do. You get the email that is already written.
Follow-up email ready for Van Dijk Techniek.
Quote sent fourteen days ago, no response yet. They recruited two service engineers last week.
Shall I use those vacancies as the reason?
Nothing goes to a client without you having seen it. You decide message by message, and under every message is where it came from.
And then the part we talk about least and that does the most. After a conversation, Raydo records what you said. You dictate it or forward it, and it lands in the client record with the source alongside it. That way you do not start over six months later. Which systems Raydo reads for that is set out in the use cases, and how you stay in control is covered in how it works.
09Frequently asked questions about following up on quotes
How soon should you follow up on a quote?
Follow up for the first time within two to four working days. After that, twice or three times more, with about two weeks in between. More important than the exact rhythm is that you put the follow-up in your calendar the moment you send the quote. Leave it until later and it usually never happens.
How often can you follow up on a quote without being pushy?
Three or four times is normal and almost nobody minds, as long as you send something along each time. Ask only whether they have had a look and you are handing your client work instead of a reason to reply. If you hear nothing after the fourth time, move the client to a longer horizon rather than closing the file.
What do you write in a follow-up email?
Open with something that has happened since your quote, at your client or in their market, and tie it to what you offered. Close with one concrete next step, a half-hour call this week or next, for instance. Keep it to that one step. Two questions in one email usually get you no answer at all.
Why does a client not respond to a quote?
Usually not because the price is too high. More often something else came up, someone you have not spoken to has a say in the decision, or the timing was off. All three are reasons to come back. The five explanations and what helps in each case are on our page about clients who do not respond to a quote.
Can you automate following up on quotes?
The reminder, yes, and that solves half the problem. What is left is that at every follow-up you have to work out again what has happened since the conversation, at your client and in your own systems. That is precisely the part you can have done for you.
Is it true that you have to respond within five minutes?
That number comes from two American studies from 2007 and 2011, and it is about incoming leads, not about quotes you have sent. Nobody has repeated the work since. Responding quickly to a new enquiry is still sensible, but treat the five-minute rule as a rule of thumb and not as a measured fact.
How many SMEs actually use a CRM?
Of Dutch businesses with ten to fifty employees, 49 percent use CRM software, according to 2025 figures from Statistics Netherlands. Among businesses of fifty to two hundred and fifty employees it is 69 percent. So in half of the smaller SMEs, the follow-up lives in somebody’s head or in a mailbox.
10Sources
- Gartner · Sales survey: a B2B buying group counts five to sixteen people across up to four departments, and in 74% of those teams internal disagreement arises · published 7 May 2025 · 632 B2B buyers, fieldwork August and September 2024 · gartner.com
- Statistics Netherlands (CBS) · ICT use by businesses, by industry and business size (Dutch-language statistics) · reporting year 2025, published December 2025 · CRM software and analysis of customer data, broken down by 10 to 50 and 50 to 250 employees · cbs.nl · StatLine 86119NED
- Microsoft · Breaking down the infinite workday, Work Trend Index special report · 17 June 2025 · Microsoft 365 signals up to 15 February 2025, plus a survey of 31,000 knowledge workers in 31 countries · microsoft.com
- Salesforce · State of Sales, fifth edition · published 2023 · 7,775 sales professionals, fieldwork August and September 2022 · salesforce.com
- Dutch Committee for Entrepreneurship · State of Dutch SMEs annual report 2025 (Dutch-language research) · November 2025 · staff-shortage figures based on the UWV employer survey 2024 · staatvanhetmkb.nl
- The two studies we deliberately do not use: Harvard Business Review, The Short Life of Online Sales Leads (2011) and the Lead Response Management Study by MIT and InsideSales (2007). They are listed here so you can read them for yourself · hbr.org
- The two quotations come from a recorded customer conversation in our own research of July 2026. They are reproduced anonymised, with the participant’s consent.