The client stopped replying: what to do, and when to stop

You visited, you priced it, you sent it. Then nothing. It is the most frustrating situation in the trade, because it does not tell you whether you lost the job or the client is simply swamped — and those two call for different responses.

Silence almost never means no

A client who picked someone else rarely says so. It is not malice: nobody enjoys delivering a rejection, and an unanswered email costs less than an awkward conversation.

In practice, silence covers three very different situations:

• The quote was never read. It landed at 7 p.m. on a Tuesday, between two school emails. This is the most common case, and the easiest to fix.
• The client is still comparing. They are waiting on a third price, or on a spouse. Your follow-up is a reminder, not pressure.
• The project is postponed. Budget, season, another emergency. Not a rejection either — a "not now" worth writing down.

The rhythm that works

Two follow-ups, spaced out, factual. Not five.

• Day 3 — short and useful: "Just making sure the quote reached you. Happy to adjust a line if something needs revisiting."
• Day 7 — the last one, with an exit: "If the project is on hold, just say so and I will close the file, no problem at all."

The second one performs best, because it makes saying no easy. A lot of clients reply to that one precisely because it does not ask them to justify anything.

Text messages change reply rates

A follow-up email gets read about one time in three. A text gets read almost always, within the minute. That is not a reason to move everything to text: the PDF, the detail and the signing link belong in email.

The right use is the signal: a short text saying a document is waiting, with the link. The client opens it from their phone, in the grocery line — which is where decisions actually get made.

Knowing when to stop

After two follow-ups with no reply, stop. A third message does not convert; it irritates, and it costs you the next job with the same person.

Mark the file as unanswered and move on. If the project comes back in six months — it happens more often than you would think — the original quote is right there, and reviving it takes two minutes.

What Devik does for you

Quote reminders go out automatically on day 3 and day 7, by email and by text if you enable it, in the client's language. They stop by themselves as soon as the client opens, accepts or declines.

You also see what an email cannot tell you: whether the quote was viewed. A quote opened three times with no reply and a quote never opened do not call for the same move — in the first case there is hesitation on a line, and a phone call clears it.