Cost per Inquiry Response: How to Calculate Your Break-Even by Deal Type

BOTrento Team7 November 20267 min read

What counts as the cost of responding to an inquiry

Most people count only the time spent writing the quote. The real cost has four parts:

• Handling time: reading the enquiry, asking clarifying questions, checking availability or scope, drafting the reply or quote, sending follow-ups.
• Extra work specific to the deal type: site visits, technical input from a colleague, supplier price checks, a call with the client.
• Tooling: your CRM seats (HubSpot, Pipedrive), mailbox licences, any AI or automation service, divided by the enquiries they support.
• Losses: enquiries answered late, quotes never followed up, and promises forgotten. These do not show up as a cost line, but they are margin you could have won. The article on the cost of manual sales admin shows how to put a figure on them.

Leave out the first three and you will think every enquiry is cheap. Leave out the fourth and you will think slow replies are free.

The formula: cost per enquiry and break-even win rate

You need only five inputs for each deal type:

1. H = average hours of handling per enquiry, including extra work
2. R = loaded hourly cost of the person doing it (salary plus employer costs, not just take-home pay)
3. T = tooling cost per enquiry (monthly tool costs divided by enquiries handled)
4. W = win rate: quotes accepted divided by enquiries answered
5. M = average gross margin on a won deal, in euros excl. VAT

Then:

• Cost per enquiry = (H × R) + T
• Cost per won deal = cost per enquiry ÷ W
• Expected margin per enquiry = W × M
• Break-even win rate = cost per enquiry ÷ M

If your actual win rate is above the break-even win rate, the deal type pays for its own handling. If it is below, you are subsidising it from other work. Use margin, not revenue: a large quote with a thin margin can be the most expensive enquiry you answer.

How to measure each input from your own data

Step 1: split enquiries into deal types

Use three to five types that differ in effort, for example a standard repeat booking, a custom quote needing technical input, and a vague price request. An events agency might separate full productions from simple equipment supply; a rental company might separate short standard hire from multi-day installations.

Step 2: time a sample

For each type, take the last handful of enquiries from your sent mail. Estimate the minutes for each step, or ask the person who handled them. A rough figure is fine; consistency matters more than precision.

Step 3: pull win rate and margin from your quotes

Count enquiries answered and quotes accepted over the last few months. Take margin from the job costing in Xero, QuickBooks or your spreadsheet. If you cannot find it, that is a finding in itself.

Step 4: add the hidden losses

Scan for enquiries that got a late reply or no follow-up. Note the deal type and what the margin would have been. See the slow-response calculator for a four-input version of this.

Step 5: compare and decide

For each type, put the numbers in a table:

What to do with the result

The table usually points to one of four actions per deal type:

• Win rate well above break-even: protect it. Reply fast and never let these go quiet.
• Close to break-even: cut handling time with templates, a short intake checklist or better qualifying questions.
• Below break-even, high margin: the problem is probably conversion, so look at response speed and follow-up discipline rather than dropping the type.
• Below break-even, low margin: send a short standard reply, ask for the missing details, or decline politely. Charging for scoping work is another option.

This is a decision about effort, not about ignoring customers. A fast, polite reply costs little even for enquiries you decide not to pursue in depth.

Where the cost hides: the same task, done by hand

When you time the sample, the same steps tend to eat the hours: re-reading threads to find what was agreed, rebuilding a quote from the last similar one, and remembering who owes whom a reply. These are also the steps where enquiries slip. If you want a closer look at that last one, see our answer on how to stop forgetting quote follow-ups, and for the speed side, five steps to reply faster.

Tooling belongs in the same sum. If you are weighing an AI service, treat it as one more line in T and see the breakdown of AI sales assistant costs rather than comparing headline prices only.

How BOTrento handles the repetitive part

BOTrento Chief of Staff is a managed process for enquiries, quotes and follow-ups. It watches your mailbox and uploaded data, and each working day shows a Today 1+3 overview, in the app and by email, of what needs attention. It prepares draft replies, quotes and follow-ups in four languages and picks up promises such as “I'll get back to you by Friday” so they are reminded.

Nothing is sent without a person approving it. BOTrento does not send anything itself, does not confirm dates or bookings, and does not replace your CRM or accounting. It also does not read attachments, only the text of the email.

AI is included in the plan with a monthly usage limit: you get a warning at 80% and new work pauses at 100% until the next month, with no automatic extra charge. A key of your own is optional (see how API keys work). For your calculation, that makes T a fixed figure you can check against your volume of cases. See pricing for the plans.

You can test the numbers on real data. The 14-day free trial needs no card and no API key of your own. The 14 days start with your first successful data upload (import or mailbox connection), and you have 7 days to prepare. At the start you get a “Lost money” report; for the past it works only for a mailbox connected via IMAP. We make no promises about turnover or number of deals, which is why you test it on your own data first. You can also look at a sample of the process first.