How to Track Inquiry Follow-Ups with Email Tasks and CRM Reminders

BOTrento Team3 November 20267 min read

Why replied-to enquiries go quiet

An unanswered enquiry is visible: it sits unread in the inbox. A replied-to enquiry is invisible. Once your message is in Sent, nothing in the inbox reminds you that the customer never came back.

That is why the gap appears after the quote, not before it. Three things usually cause it:

• No date. "I'll follow up next week" lives only in your head.
• Two places. The email is in Outlook, the deal is in the CRM, and neither knows what the other is waiting for.
• Promises in free text. "I'll get back to you by Friday" is written in an email and never becomes a task.

For the wider habit, see our answer on how to stop forgetting quote follow-ups. This article focuses on the tool setup.

The one rule that makes every tool work

Before you configure anything, agree on one rule: every open enquiry has a next step with a date. If you sent a reply or a quote, the next step is "chase if no answer", and the date is a specific day, not "soon".

A sensible default for B2B quotes is a few working days for a simple price enquiry and about a week for a larger quote that needs internal sign-off at the customer. Adjust it to your sales cycle. What matters is that the date is written down the moment you hit send.

Step-by-step setup in Outlook and Gmail

Outlook

1. After sending, open the message in Sent Items and choose Follow up, then set a custom date and reminder time.
2. Create a Search Folder (or saved view) for flagged items in Sent Items, so you have one list of "waiting for reply".
3. If you use Microsoft To Do, the flagged emails appear there as tasks, so you see them with your other work.
4. Use a category such as "Waiting – quote sent" to separate quotes from casual enquiries.

Gmail

1. Use the Remind me if no reply nudge when it appears on a sent thread, or snooze the thread to the chase date.
2. Apply a label such as Waiting to the sent thread, and remove it when the customer answers.
3. Save a search for label:Waiting and check it every morning.
4. Use Tasks to add the thread as a dated task if you want it on your calendar view.

We cover labels and saved searches in more detail in Gmail for sales: labels, templates and an overview of open enquiries.

Step-by-step setup in Pipedrive and HubSpot

Pipedrive

1. Log the enquiry as a deal and add the quote or reply as a note or logged email.
2. Immediately schedule an activity (call, email or task) named "Chase quote" with a due date.
3. Use the deals list filtered by deals without a scheduled activity. This is your safety net: any deal in the list has no next step.
4. Review overdue activities at the start of each day.

HubSpot

1. Create a task on the deal, assigned to the deal owner, with a due date and a reminder.
2. Add a workflow that creates a "Chase quote" task when the deal moves to your Quote sent stage.
3. Build a deal view filtered on last activity date older than your chase window, so stale deals surface on their own.
4. Hold a short weekly review of that view.

For the HubSpot side in depth, read HubSpot follow-up tasks: how to stop deals going stale. If emails are not reaching your CRM cleanly yet, start with email-to-CRM integration without duplicates.

A daily check you can run in ten minutes

Tools only help if someone looks at the lists. Use this checklist every morning:

• Overdue CRM activities: do each one or give it a new date.
• Deals with no scheduled activity: add one now.
• Your "Waiting" label, flag list or search folder: anything past its chase date goes to the top.
• Promises made yesterday ("I'll send it Friday"): does each one have a task?
• Closed or lost enquiries: remove the waiting flag so the list stays trustworthy.

A short chase message is enough:

Hi Anna,
I wanted to check whether you had a chance to look at the quote I sent on Tuesday. If anything is unclear or the scope needs adjusting, I'm happy to revise it. Would a quick call on Thursday help?
Best regards,
Tom

Shared inboxes add a further risk, because nobody owns the reminder. If that is your setup, see shared inbox mistakes.

Where manual tracking runs out, and how BOTrento helps

The setup above works when volume is low and everyone is disciplined. It strains when you handle dozens of enquiries a month across several people, because each reminder is still created by hand.

BOTrento Chief of Staff adds a managed process on top of your mailbox. It watches enquiries and quotes in your mail and in the data you upload, picks up promises such as "I'll get back to you by Friday" and reminds you of them, and prepares draft replies and follow-ups in four languages. Each working morning it shows a Today 1+3 overview in the app and by email. Follow-ups with dates can go to Outlook, Google Calendar or iPhone through a private iCal (.ics) link.

Nothing is sent without a person approving it, and BOTrento does not replace your CRM. AI is included in the plan within a monthly usage limit. You can see how the process looks in the process demo. Mailboxes connect via IMAP; Gmail, Google Workspace and Microsoft 365 currently work by forwarding or import. For privacy questions, see our checklist on whether an AI sales tool is GDPR-compliant.

You can try it free for 14 days on your own data, with no card and no API key needed. The 14 days start with your first successful data upload.