The work already in your phone

Every service business is sitting on a list of people who asked for a price and never bought. Many of them did not go elsewhere. Here is how to get work out of that list without spending anything on ads.

August 20, 2026 · 5 min read · by Ido Katz

Before you spend another dollar on reach, open your phone and count the quotes you sent in the last twelve months that never turned into a job.

For most service businesses it is a longer list than they expect. Every one of them raised their hand, described their problem, and let you into their house or their inbox. You paid to get every single one of them — in time, in fuel, or in advertising. And then, for most of them, nothing.

That list is the cheapest work available to you, and almost nobody works it.

They did not all go to your competitor

This is the assumption that stops people looking, and it is mostly wrong.

Owners who work these lists tend to report the same thing, and it is worth finding out whether it is true of yours: a meaningful share of old quotes did not buy from anybody. The bathroom did not get done. The roof got patched instead of replaced. The project got postponed to next spring, then forgotten. Life happened.

Those people are not lost customers. They are customers whose timing was wrong, and timing changes on its own.

The rest split into two groups worth knowing about. Some bought elsewhere and are already unhappy about it. Some bought elsewhere and are perfectly happy, and those you leave alone.

What it is worth, in arithmetic

Nobody can tell you the reply rate for your trade in your town, and anybody quoting you one is guessing. What you can do is size it with your own numbers, and get the real rates from the first send.

Multiply the last three and compare it to what you would have to spend on ads to produce the same number of jobs. That comparison is the whole argument, and it does not need a benchmark to make — it needs one afternoon and then real numbers instead of estimated ones.

Two of those rows are worth knowing regardless of whether you ever send the messages. If you do not know your average job value or your close rate, that is the more urgent problem — here is how to work them out, and everything else in your marketing depends on them.

The message

The instinct is to send "just checking in" or "following up on my quote". Both are about you and neither gives anybody a reason to reply today.

Three things make the difference:

Name the specific job. Not "the work we discussed" — "the tile in the upstairs bathroom". You quoted forty people; they had one conversation. Proving you remember which one theirs was does most of the work.

Give them a reason it is today and not last month. A real one, not manufactured urgency. A gap in the schedule. Prices going up in January. The season being right for that job. If you have no reason, say so plainly and ask whether the timing has changed.

Make replying take two seconds. One question, answerable with one word. "Is the bathroom still on the list, or did you get it sorted?" — "sorted" is a perfectly good answer and it cleans your list.

Here is the shape, and shorter is better than clever:

Hi Dave — Sam here, quoted the upstairs bathroom back in March. We had a job move to spring so I have a week free at the end of the month. Is the bathroom still on the list, or did you get it sorted?

Text beats email for this, if they gave you a mobile number and you have permission to use it. It gets read.

When to send it

Between 60 days and 12 months after the quote. Under 60 days you are chasing and they remember saying no. Past a year the job has usually either happened or stopped mattering.

One message, then one more a month later, then stop. Two touches, and then leave them be rather than becoming the tradesman who will not go away.

In the morning, on a weekday. Not Friday afternoon, when nobody wants to think about their roof.

What to do with each answer

"Yes, still interested." Do not re-send the old quote. Call them. Something changed since March and you need to know what before you price it again.

"We got it done." Ask who did it and whether they were happy. If they were not, you have learned what your market is short of. If they were, thank them and ask whether they would leave you a review for the quoting experience — some will, and reviews are what gets you onto the next shortlist.

"Not this year." Ask if they want a reminder in the spring, then actually set one. Half your next quarter can come out of that pile.

Silence. They stay on the list for one more touch. Then they come off it, and that is fine.

Why almost nobody does this

Because it feels like admitting the first attempt failed, and because there is no dashboard for it. Nobody sells you a course on texting forty people you already know. It is unglamorous, it takes an afternoon, and it works — which is a description of most of the things that actually grow a service business.

There is also a quieter reason. Going back through old quotes means reading your own follow-up, and most owners do not enjoy what they find: three quotes sent with no covering note, two that were never chased at all, one sent nine days after the visit. That is uncomfortable and it is also the most useful hour you will spend, because it tells you what to fix in the quote itself.

The one-afternoon version

1. Export or scroll back through twelve months of quotes. Put the unconverted ones in a list with the job, the date, and the number.
2. Cross off anyone you know bought elsewhere and was happy.
3. Write one message, personalised only by name and job. Do not write forty messages.
4. Send them over a morning, in batches you can answer. Twenty at a time, not two hundred — replies come back fast and there is no point in generating more conversation than you can hold.
5. Diary the "not this year" answers with a date. That is next quarter's work, already found.

Then keep doing it. A quote that does not convert goes into a list with a date on it, and the list gets worked every quarter. It is the closest thing to free money a service business has.

And when you have taken everything out of that list and you want more, then buy traffic — with the offer, the filter and the callback already fixed, which is the order that makes it compound instead of leak.