The quote you didn't send on Tuesday is the job you didn't get

Tuesday, ten past seven. You are in. The van is on the drive. There is a quote to write for the bathroom you looked at on the way home, and you will do it on Sunday.

You will not do it on Sunday.

Somebody put it this way on a trade forum in 2007:

The phone rang as I was having me tea, about 6 again. I told the wife something I have never said before: tell 'em I'm not in.

DIYnot forum, 2007

Somebody else put it this way in March 2025:

I do a lot of quoting and it definitely eats into evenings/weekends more than people realise.

Screwfix Community, 2025

Eighteen years apart, the same sentence. Nothing about this has got better on its own, and it is not going to.

Split your quotes into two kinds

Ask a room full of tradespeople whether you can quote a job without seeing it and the room splits down the middle.

Half of it says this:

It is impossible to give a quote without first seeing the job, no matter how simple you may think it is.

UK Business Forums

The other half says this:

An experienced trade should be able to give a ball park price for a low value job via email and that takes 5 minutes and no fuel cost.

UK Business Forums

They are both right. They are talking about different jobs.

A boiler service, a socket, a tap, a fence panel: these have a price before anybody rings. Everything that could change the number is already known.

A patio, a rewire, a bathroom, a loft: the price depends on what is there, and what is there is not in the phone call.

The mistake is not either camp. The mistake is writing both kinds of quote yourself, on the same Sunday, with the same tiredness.

Let the small ones send themselves

If a job has a price on your list, the price should be given on the call, by whoever answers it, and the written quote should be in the customer's phone before they have hung up.

That is what our receptionist does. We make Loyal Receptionist; Sarah answers your line. When a caller asks for something that is on your list at a fixed price, she says the price. If they want it, she books it and texts the quote. You find out when you look at your diary.

You set the price once, and she never invents one. A service with no price on your list gets no number from her, whatever the caller asks.

Take those off Saturday and see what is left.

Let the big ones arrive half-built

Here is what a big quote actually needs from you, and what it does not.

It does not need you to ask how big the patio is. It does not need you to ask whether there is access down the side, whether the old one is coming up, whether they want lights in it. Those are the same questions every time. You ask them on autopilot. So does she, from the list you wrote down once.

She takes the sizes while she is at it: the square metres, the number of points, however that service is measured. Then the draft is built from what the caller said. Every service they asked for, every size and count they gave, on the job, priced from your list.

Nothing here lets a model guess a price. The number comes from your catalogue or it does not come at all.

Give it two minutes at tea time

So the big quote is waiting for you, half-built, and this is your part:

• Open it. Read what she asked and what they said.
• Pick the grade, if the service has one: standard, better, best.
• Tick the extras they mentioned, or leave them as options the customer can tick themselves.
• Send.

That is the two minutes. The forty you used to spend typing it up from a photo of your notes have gone somewhere else.

If it needs a look first, you say so. She already knows that, actually, which is the next bit.

Keep the visit for the jobs that need one

Back to the objection, because it deserves a straight answer:

I have spoken to many customers who tell me over the phone how simple a job is only to turn up and find the true extent of the job and just how much they have underestimated it.

UK Business Forums

True. It is why any service you mark as needing a quote starts with a visit flagged, and she books that visit: half an hour in the diary, not the day the job would take.

What changes is that the questions were asked before you drove there. You arrive knowing the size, the access, what is coming up. The look is shorter, and the quote goes out that evening instead of the weekend after the weekend after.

Let the caller do the typing

One more objection, from this year, because it is the one that actually stops people:

A lot of the all-in-one apps promise that, but in practice you spend more time feeding the system than it saves.

UK Business Forums, 2026

Yes. Most of them do. The difference is who does the feeding.

In an app, you do. Every size, every line, typed on a small screen after a long day. Here, the caller does it, by talking, on the call you were going to have anyway. You read. You do not type.

Watch which ones go quiet

Quotes go out on the day of the call or the day of the look, instead of the weekend after.

You can see which ones went quiet. A quote nobody has answered in 30 days is counted as lost, so the list is honest about what you are not winning, and you can ring them or let them go.

Somebody on that forum in 2007 said the thing that is still true:

If you don't do them on time you might not get the job, and that job might be the one putting a meal on your table for the next couple of weeks.

DIYnot forum, 2007

The shop does not have to close at six for you to be at your tea. She is on the door.