Most businesses do not know this number
Ask a service business owner how many quotes they sent last month and most can give you a rough figure. Ask how many of those quotes became paid jobs and the answer is usually a guess, and the guess is usually optimistic.
That gap matters because close rate is one of the few numbers you can raise without spending more on marketing. Every quote represents a customer who already called, already described the job, and already asked what it costs. They are the warmest people your business will ever talk to. Losing them quietly, because nobody called back, is the most expensive kind of lost revenue: you paid to generate the lead and did not collect.
As of September 2026, the tooling to measure and work this pipeline exists in most modern service software, but the habit is still rare. This guide walks through defining close rate honestly, fixing the quote itself so it is easier to say yes to, and running a simple follow-up cadence. It closes with where automation helps and where a human still needs to make the call.
The platform referenced throughout is Run with Jarvis, and the argument for keeping quotes, calendar and follow-up in one place rather than scattered across tools is laid out in all-in-one platform vs disconnected point tools.
Defining close rate so it means something
The formula is simple: jobs won divided by quotes given, for the same period and the same kind of work. The difficulty is in the definitions.
Count every quote, not just the written ones. A price given on the phone is a quote. So is a range given by a technician in a driveway. If you only count formal written estimates, your close rate will look better than it is, because the phone quotes that went nowhere never enter the denominator. The phone is where most small-job quotes happen, and it is where most of the leakage is.
Fix a window. Decide how long a quote has to convert before you count it as lost. Thirty days works for most residential work; large projects may need sixty or ninety. Without a window, the number drifts with the calendar, and a slow month can look like a strong close rate simply because few quotes were given.
Segment by job type. An emergency lockout and a planned system replacement are not the same sale. One closes on the phone in two minutes; the other closes after three quotes and a spouse's opinion. Blending them into one number hides both. At minimum, split emergency work from planned work, and split small jobs from large ones.
Segment by source. Quotes from repeat customers close differently than quotes from a first-time caller who found you online. If your call tracking records the source, keep it on the quote. On Run with Jarvis, Pro and above include Dynamic Number Insertion and Google Ads and Meta attribution, so the source rides with the lead automatically; on Core you can still record it by asking.
Count won jobs, not verbal yeses. A customer who says yes on the phone and never books was not won. Count jobs that were scheduled and performed, or at least scheduled with a deposit if you take one.
Once those definitions are written down, run the numbers for the last month by hand if you have to. The first honest close rate is usually lower than the owner expected, and that is useful, because it means there is room to move it.
Why quotes die
Before building a follow-up process, it helps to know what actually kills quotes. In most service businesses the causes fall into a handful of buckets, and only one of them is price.
Nobody followed up. The quote went out and the business waited. The customer meant to decide, got busy, and a week later the job either went elsewhere or got shelved. This is the most common cause and the most fixable.
The quote was unclear. The customer did not understand what was included, whether the mobile fee was in the total, or what happens if the job turns out to be bigger. Confusion becomes hesitation, and hesitation becomes a no.
Timing. The customer wanted the job done but not this week. Without a follow-up, "not this week" silently turns into "never".
A competing quote. Someone else quoted lower, or quoted with more detail, or simply called back first. You cannot win every one of these, but a follow-up at least lets you learn what the other quote included.
Price. Sometimes the number really is too high for this customer. That is legitimate, and it is the one reason you should not try to argue away.
The point of listing them is that four of the five are about process, not price. A business that responds to a low close rate by cutting prices is often treating the wrong cause.
Fix the quote before you follow up on it
Follow-up works much better on a good quote. Three things make a quote easier to accept.
A single total, stated plainly. The customer wants to know what they will pay. If there is a service price, a trip charge and tax, give the all-in number as the headline and the components underneath. Surprises at the door, even small ones, poison the next quote too.
What is included and what is not. A short line saying what the price covers and what would change it. "Includes the part and programming; if the module needs replacing rather than reprogramming, we will tell you before doing anything." That sentence removes a large share of the hesitation.
A clear next step with a deadline. "This price holds for fourteen days" or "we have openings Thursday and Friday morning". A quote with no next step invites the customer to put it in a drawer.
Get the quote in writing even when it was given on the phone. A text or email summary lets the customer show it to a partner, compare it fairly, and find your number later. Keep the quote on the customer record, not in someone's phone, so whoever does the follow-up can see exactly what was offered.
This is where having quotes, the CRM and the calendar in one system pays off. When the follow-up call happens, the person making it should be able to see the job, the price, the date it was given, and the customer's history without opening three apps. That history matters more than it looks: a repeat customer's value over years, which is the subject of the customer lifetime value guide, changes how hard it is worth working one quote.
The follow-up cadence: day 1, day 3, day 7
A cadence is a fixed schedule of touches, decided in advance so follow-up does not depend on someone remembering. Three touches over a week is enough for most residential work.
| Touch | When | Channel | Goal | What to say |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| First follow-up | Within one business day | Phone call, text if no answer | Answer questions while the decision is live | Name the job and price, ask for questions, offer two time slots |
| Second follow-up | Around day 3 | Phone call or text | Surface the real objection | Ask what is holding them back: timing, detail, or price |
| Final follow-up | Around day 7 | Phone call, then a short text | Close the loop honestly | Say this is the last check-in, restate the price hold, leave the door open |
| After the window | Day 30 or later | Text or reactivation call | Recover shelved jobs | A light check on whether the job is still needed |
Day 1 matters most. The customer is still actively thinking about the job. A call within a business day often catches them before they have called anyone else, and it signals that your business is organized, which is part of what they are buying. The logic is the same one behind responding to new calls quickly, set out in the speed-to-lead guide.
Day 3 is for the objection. If the customer has not booked, something is in the way. Ask directly and politely. The answer is usually one of the process causes above, and most of them are fixable in the same call: offer a different time, clarify what is included, or explain the price component they did not understand.
Day 7 closes the loop. Tell the customer this is the last check-in. That is honest, it respects their time, and it often prompts a decision either way. A clear no is better than an open quote you keep chasing.
Then stop. More than three touches in a week starts to feel like pressure, and pressure damages the reputation that brings the next customer. Park the quote and, if the job is the kind that recurs, add it to a reactivation list for a later light-touch check.
Who makes the calls
The best person to follow up is the person who gave the quote. They know the job, they can answer technical questions, and the customer already knows their voice. The problem is that this person is usually a technician or estimator on a job site, and follow-up calls lose every scheduling fight against the work in front of them.
Most businesses end up splitting the work by quote type.
Complex or high-value quotes go to the technician or estimator. These customers have real questions, and a follow-up that cannot answer them wastes the touch.
Routine quotes on standard jobs go to the office, or to automation. The customer's question is usually just "when can you come?", and anyone with the calendar in front of them can answer it.
Any quote with a complaint attached goes to the owner or a senior person. If the customer is unhappy with a previous job, the follow-up is a service recovery call, not a sales call.
Assign an owner to the follow-up list itself. A list without a named owner is an intention, not a process. The owner does not have to make every call, but they are responsible for every quote on the list getting its touches.
Scripts that sound like a person
Scripts help because they make sure the important sentences get said. They hurt when they are read word for word. Give people the structure and let them use their own words.
Opening. "Hi, this is Sam from the shop. I am calling about the quote we gave you on Tuesday for the garage door opener, three hundred and forty dollars all in. Did you have any questions about it?"
The ask. "Would you like to get that on the calendar? We have Thursday morning or Friday afternoon." Two options, not an open question. Open questions invite "let me think about it".
The objection. "Totally fair. Can I ask what is holding you back? Is it the timing, or something about the quote?" Then listen, and address the specific thing.
The competing quote. "Would you mind telling me what the other quote included? Sometimes the numbers are not measuring the same job." This is information, not argument. Sometimes you will learn their quote left out something yours included. Sometimes you will learn they are genuinely cheaper, and you move on.
The close of the final touch. "I will leave it there so I am not bothering you. The price holds until the twentieth, and you can reply to the text anytime."
Notice what is missing: pressure, invented scarcity, and discounts offered before the customer has named price as the problem. Discounting a quote that was stalled for timing reasons just gives away margin.
Lead scoring: which quotes deserve attention first
Not every open quote is worth the same effort. A large planned job from a repeat commercial customer deserves a technician's call on day one. A price-shopper who called four businesses in an hour and asked only for the cheapest number may not warrant three touches.
Lead scoring is the practice of ranking open leads so effort goes where it pays. You can do it by hand with a few rules: job value, whether they are a repeat customer, the source, how specific their questions were, and whether they asked about scheduling on the first call. The fuller approach is in the lead scoring guide.
On Run with Jarvis, Pro and above add AI transcription and lead scoring plus sentiment and intent analysis, which means the call where the quote was given is transcribed and scored automatically. The practical benefit is that the follow-up list sorts itself: the calls where the customer sounded ready and asked about times rise to the top, and the follow-up person starts each day with the most promising quotes rather than the oldest ones.
Where AI outbound follow-up fits
Follow-up is the kind of work that suffers most from being nobody's full-time job. It is repetitive, it happens at scattered times, and it loses to whatever is urgent. That is exactly the profile of work worth automating.
The platform's AI outbound follow-up calls your own leads and customers: stalled quotes, appointment confirmations, unpaid invoices and reactivation of past customers. It is designed for people who already have a relationship with your business. It is never used for cold prospecting, and it should not be. Which plan includes it is listed on the pricing page, and the details of how it works are in the AI outbound follow-up guide.
A reasonable division of labor looks like this. The AI handles the day 1 and day 3 touches on routine quotes: it names the job and the price, answers the common questions, offers open times from your calendar, and books the job when the customer says yes. When a customer raises something the AI should not handle, such as a technical question about an unusual job or a complaint, it captures the details and hands the quote to a person. Complex and high-value quotes skip the AI entirely and go to the estimator.
The other half of the picture is being able to ask about the pipeline without building a report. Questions like "which quotes over five hundred dollars from last week have not booked" or "how many planned-work quotes did we close last month" are the kind of thing the Jarvis brain answers in plain language, which makes the weekly pipeline review a five-minute conversation instead of a spreadsheet session.
Measuring whether it worked
Close rate improvements are easy to imagine and easy to fool yourself about, so measure them the same way every time.
Take a baseline. Before changing anything, measure one month of close rate by job type, using the definitions above.
Change one thing at a time. If you rewrite the quote format and start the cadence in the same week, you will not know which one moved the number. Start with the cadence, because it is usually the larger effect.
Compare like with like. Compare this month's planned-work close rate with last month's planned-work close rate, not with the blended number. Seasonal swings in the mix of emergency and planned work can move the blended number all on their own.
Track the reasons. When a quote is lost, record why, even roughly: price, timing, went elsewhere, no response. After a couple of months, the reasons tell you what to fix next. A pile of "no response" means the cadence is not reaching people. A pile of "price" on one job type may mean that one price is out of line.
Where to start
Pull every quote from the last thirty days, including phone quotes if you can reconstruct them, and mark each one won, lost or open. That gives you your first honest close rate.
Then take every open quote younger than a week and call it today. That single afternoon is often the fastest revenue a business can find, because those customers have already done the hard part.
Then write down the day 1, day 3 and day 7 cadence, name an owner for the follow-up list, and decide which quotes the AI can handle and which go to a person. Plans and what each includes are on the pricing page: Core $500, Pro $750, Elite $1,200 per month, no setup fees, month-to-month.
