The Cost of Unfollowed Quotes: How to Calculate Your Unchased Pipeline

BOTrento Team12 October 20269 min read

Open, silent and unchased: sort your quotes first

Before you do any maths, separate three groups that tend to get lumped together:

• Open quote: sent, no decision yet, and there is an agreed next step with a date.
• Silent quote: sent, and the client hasn't replied by the date you expected to hear back.
• Unchased quote: a silent quote that nobody on your side has followed up since it went out.

This article is about the last group. Open quotes are already being worked on. Silent quotes that you chased and that still went nowhere are lost or parked. With unchased quotes you simply don't know where you stand, and that uncertainty is what costs you.

This is not the same as your quote conversion rate. Conversion tells you how many quotes turn into orders overall. Your unchased pipeline tells you how much value is sitting in quotes where nobody followed up.

Step by step: build your quote list from what you already have

1. Pick a period. Take the last full quarter. That's long enough to be representative and recent enough that clients still remember you.
2. Pull every quote you sent. Search Sent Items in Outlook or Gmail for words like quote, proposal, offer and estimate. Add deals at the proposal stage in Pipedrive or HubSpot, plus draft or sent quotes in Xero or QuickBooks.
3. Give each quote one row: client, date sent, value excl. VAT, owner, date of last contact and status.
4. Mark the status: won, lost (the client said no), open (next step agreed) or silent.
5. Check every silent thread. Was anything sent after the quote? If not, mark it unchased.
6. Note any broken promises. Look for lines like "I'll get back to you by Friday", from either side, that nobody followed through on.

Be honest about relevance. For event and production companies, an unchased quote for a date that has passed is simply gone, so leave it out of what you could recover. For equipment rental and B2B services the client may still need the same thing next month, so those quotes stay in.

The calculation model: formulas you fill in

Variables

Formulas

1. Unchased pipeline per month: U = Q × s × V
2. Recoverable revenue: R = U × r
3. Recoverable gross profit: G = R × m
4. Cost of chasing by hand: K = Q × s × f × t × h
5. Monthly cost of not following up: N = G − K

If N is positive, every month without consistent follow-up costs you roughly N in gross profit. Use gross profit rather than revenue: a recovered deal still has to be delivered, and revenue makes the gap look bigger than it really is.

Break-even for a tool or process

If something does the chasing for you at a monthly cost C, the number of recovered deals per month you need to cover it is B = C ÷ (V × m). Add the hours it saves (part of K) and the bar drops further. Put in the plan you're considering from our pricing page, or read what an AI sales assistant costs a small business for the wider picture.

Two common mistakes

• Treating the whole unchased pipeline as lost money. Some of those clients would never have bought. That's what r is for.
• Borrowing someone else's recovery rate. It depends on your market, your prices and how long quotes sat. Measure it yourself.

Find your recovery rate with a two-week chase test

r is the only variable you can't read off a spreadsheet, so measure it:

1. Take every unchased quote that is still relevant.
2. Send each one a short, personal follow-up. Use one message, not a sequence.
3. Wait two weeks and then sort the replies: revived (call, revised quote or order), clear no or still silent.
4. Work out r = revived ÷ chased.

Count the clear no's as useful too. They take dead quotes out of your forecast and often tell you why: price, timing or a competitor. For cadence and wording, see when to chase a quote and when to stop and how to ask about a quote without straining the relationship.

Template for the test

Subject: Your quote for [project / date]: anything to adjust?

Hi [name],

I sent you our quote for [project] on [date]. I wanted to check whether it still fits what you need, or whether anything should change, such as scope, dates or quantities.

If it helps, I can put together a slimmer option or split it into two phases.

And if the project has moved or been cancelled, just let me know and I'll close it on our side.

Best regards,
[name]

Why quotes go unchased, and what to change

• Nobody owns the quote after it's sent. Give every quote a named owner.
• There's no date for the next step. Agree a decision date in the cover email and put it in your list or CRM.
• Promises sit in someone's inbox. "I'll send the revised version on Monday" doesn't appear on any task list.
• The value lives only in a PDF. If the amount isn't in the email body or your list, nobody can see what's at stake.

Most of these are process gaps rather than a lack of effort. The short version is in how to stop forgetting quote follow-ups. The longer version, with rewritten examples, is in seven follow-up mistakes that quietly kill B2B deals.

How BOTrento handles this during a 14-day free trial

BOTrento Chief of Staff is a managed process for enquiries, quotes and the follow-ups between them. During the trial you can see how it works on your own quotes:

1. You load your data. Upload the quote list from this article as CSV or XLSX, or export it from Pipedrive or HubSpot. You can also connect a mailbox over IMAP. Gmail, Google Workspace and Microsoft 365 work through forwarding or import for now. The 14 days start only when your first data upload succeeds, and you have 7 days to get ready. Within 24 hours on working days, one of our team gets in touch to help you connect your mail.
2. You get a "Lost money" report. At the start you get a report on quotes and enquiries that went quiet. It can look back in time only for a mailbox connected over IMAP.
3. You see a short list each morning. Every working day you get a Today 1+3 overview in the app and by email: the most important case plus three more, such as a silent quote due for a nudge or a promise you made to a client.
4. You approve the drafts. BOTrento prepares follow-ups, replies and revised quotes in English, Czech, German or French. You edit and approve them. Nothing is sent without a person approving it, and BOTrento never confirms dates or bookings for you.

Keep one limit in mind: BOTrento works from the text of emails and your uploaded data and doesn't read attachments. Put the quote value in the email body or in your list. AI usage is included in the plan, and you don't need a payment card or your own API key for the trial. You can see the flow in the process walkthrough, then start your 14-day trial on your own quotes and run the calculation above with real numbers.