What happens to the people who asked and did not buy?

Somebody asked for a quotation in March. He said he would get back to you. He did not.

What is that person now? In most businesses he is nothing. Not a customer, not a lead, not on any list. He has quietly left the system and nobody decided that he should.

What that list is actually worth

These are the best contacts your business has, after existing customers.

They have a real need, or they would not have asked. They know who you are and have already had one conversation. And in most cases the reason they did not proceed was timing, budget this quarter, or a decision that got postponed. None of those are permanent.

A quotation that went nowhere in March is frequently a sale in September, and it goes to whoever is in front of them in September.

That is almost never the business that quoted. It is whoever happened to call that week.

Keeping the list is almost no work

Every unconverted enquiry gets a reason and a date. The reason in four words. The date is when it is worth asking again, and it is usually three to six months.

Then somebody works that list once a month. Not a sales campaign. A short, specific message: we quoted for this in March, I wanted to check whether it is still on your list.

Response rates on that are far higher than on any new enquiry, because you are not a stranger and the need was real.

Most businesses have two or three hundred of these sitting in old emails, and they have never once been looked at as a list.

How many quotations did you send last year that never became orders, and where is that list now?

Turning old quotations into a list somebody actually works is among the quickest returns available to a business. Ask us what your last year of unconverted enquiries is worth.