Quotes Take Time. How to Make Sure You're Not Wasting Yours.
A good quote takes real effort. Here's how to make sure that effort goes to jobs worth winning.
By Bruce Klaic (MBA) - Head of Marketing Friday, May 1, 2026
Every job is different, so every quote is different. You're estimating, measuring, pricing materials, working out margins, writing it up in a way that makes sense to the customer. For a decent job that might be an hour or two of your time. Sometimes more.
That's fine when the job comes in. It's painful when it doesn't. A significant chunk of quoting time goes to people who were never serious — price-shopping, not ready to commit, or asking for a quote they'll never act on. That time doesn't come back.
So before you look at how to quote faster, it's worth asking: who are you quoting for?
The First Fix Is Who You're Quoting
If you're getting too many tyre kickers — people who enquire, get a quote, and disappear — that's usually a website and positioning problem, not a quoting problem. What your site shows, who it's speaking to, and what friction exists in your contact form all affect the quality of enquiries before they ever reach you.
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We've covered this in detail in: How to Repel Tyre Kickers and Attract the Right Jobs — worth reading first if that's where the problem is.
But assuming you're getting reasonably qualified enquiries — how much of the quoting process actually needs your time, and how much of it can run without you?
Automation in quoting doesn't mean generic, impersonal, or cutting corners. It means removing the manual steps that don't require your expertise — so your time goes where it actually needs to.
What Automation Actually Looks Like in a Quoting Process
Three places where removing manual steps makes a real difference without changing how your business feels to a customer.
→ Initial response
When someone submits an enquiry, how long before they hear from you? If it's hours or days, some of them have already moved on. An automated acknowledgement — one that sounds like your business — keeps the lead warm without you having to do anything.
→ Follow up
How many quotes have you sent that you never followed up on because you got busy? An automated follow up a few days after a quote goes out recovers jobs that would otherwise go cold. You wrote the quote. Let the system do the chasing.
→ Intake
The right form fields do some of the qualification work before you quote — budget range, job type, location, timeline. That information either saves you time preparing the quote, or tells you early it's not worth pursuing.
None of this replaces the actual quoting. The skill, the accuracy, the relationship — that's still yours. But the admin around it doesn't have to be.
The Time Adds Up
| Scenario | Hours | What That Means |
|---|---|---|
| 10 quotes per week @ 1 hr each | 10 hrs | Your full Monday. Every week. |
| 3 of those were tyre kickers | 3 hrs gone | Time that produced nothing and won't come back. |
| Half the rest had no follow up | 3-4 jobs at risk | Quotes you wrote and didn't win that you might have. |
The goal isn't to quote faster. It's to make sure the time you spend quoting goes to jobs worth winning — with a system that doesn't let good leads go cold.
Want to see where automation could save you time without changing
how your business feels? Call us on 1300 049 611 — you'll get me or Brendan. Cheers.