Lost quotes: know the reason, not just the number

One in three of your quotes doesn't get signed. Ask why, and the answer is almost always the same: "the price, probably." Nobody checked.

The short answer: a loss reason gets recorded the moment you learn it, not guessed at the end of the month. The useful answer needs a simple grid, and what it changes once filled in.

Why the reason almost always goes missing#

A signed quote is visible: it becomes a job, an order, a line of revenue. A lost quote becomes nothing. It disappears from the radar without a trace, and price stays the default reason, because it's the only one you imagine without having checked.

Yet price only explains part of the losses. A quote sent three weeks after the request loses clients who already signed elsewhere, for reasons that have nothing to do with the rate. A quote left unanswered after two follow-ups may never have reached the right person. As long as all these cases get filed under "price," nothing tells you where to act first.

The grid: five reasons#

No need for a long form. Five boxes are enough, chosen so you can always decide between them:

You pick one main reason per quote, not a list. A quote always has a dominant cause, and that's the one that matters for deciding what to change.

Filling in the grid without adding work#

The reason gets recorded the moment you learn it, never reconstructed from thirty files at month end:

1. The client answers with an explicit no. They often state the reason themselves, in the same sentence as the refusal. Just note it on the spot.
2. The client doesn't answer. After the usual response time plus one follow-up, the quote moves to "no answer." That's not a final reason yet, just a holding box.
3. For quotes above a certain amount, a two-minute call settles it: "to help us improve, what made the difference?" Most clients answer honestly, once the quote is already decided.

That last step is the first one to get dropped on a busy week. It's also the only one that tells a real competitor apart from a price that was simply off.

An example over thirty lost quotes#

Take a joinery business that lost thirty quotes over a quarter. The figures are a hypothesis to show the reading, not a measured result:

Price still comes first, but it only carries three quotes in ten. Response time carries almost as much, and it's a reason you fix without touching a single rate. Without the grid, those eight quotes would have stayed filed under "price," and the only lever would have been to cut margin.

What changes with an application built for the company#

In a spreadsheet, the grid lasts as long as someone keeps a column up to date. When quotes live in the company's own application, the reason becomes data you can read, not data you have to reconstruct:

• every lost quote gets tagged in one click, the moment the client answers or the follow-up deadline expires;
• the reason stays attached to the job, along with its amount, trade type and origin;
• the breakdown reads on a screen, by quarter, by trade type or by salesperson, with nothing retyped;
• unanswered quotes rise automatically in the follow-up list, before switching to "lost."

This module is detailed on the quotes and follow-ups page. The win rate calculation itself is explained in the article on transformation rate.

What not to do#

Tagging as "price" by default every quote that was never followed up. A quote never chased isn't lost to price: it's a quote never really defended, and we've put a figure on what that costs in the article on quotes nobody chases.

Waiting until you've lost a hundred quotes to start the grid. It's useful from the first quarter: even over ten lost quotes, a breakdown by reason beats no data at all.

Lost quotes: the key takeaways#

A loss reason gets recorded the moment you learn it, with a five-box grid and one main reason per quote. Over a quarter, the breakdown almost always says something different from what you assumed: price rarely carries the losses alone.

That breakdown tells you where to act first, not the impression you kept. Revisiting a rate without having checked it risks fixing a problem that wasn't the real one.