Selling Aug 25, 2026 5 min read
The 48-hour text that closes one in five
About one in five signed proposals is signed after the homeowner said they would think about it. What the follow-up says, when it goes out, and what never to put in it.
Jolene Tsosie
Head of customer success
Here is a number that surprised us: of all the replacement proposals that get signed on Quotient, about one in five is signed after the homeowner has already said “we need to think about it.” Not after a second visit. Not after a phone call from the owner. After a text message.
The follow-up is the most valuable thing most shops never do. Not because they don’t believe in it, but because by the time anyone remembers, it is next Tuesday and the homeowner has had two other companies out.
Why 48 hours
We tested a lot of timings with our first sixty shops. A text the same evening feels pushy. A text after a week is too late; the decision has been made, often with someone else. Forty-eight hours after the homeowner last opened the proposal turned out to be the sweet spot. They have talked it over. They have looked at the options again, usually twice. They have a question they have not asked yet.
The trigger matters as much as the timing. Quotient starts the clock from the last time the homeowner viewed the proposal, not from when it was sent. Someone who opened it this morning is still thinking. Someone who has not opened it in four days needs a different message.
What the text says
The default message is short, and it comes from the tech, not from the company:
Hi Dana, your three options are still open. The Better one is $148/mo. Reply here with any questions. Marcus
Three things are doing the work in those twenty-odd words.
- It comes from a person. The homeowner met Marcus. They did not meet “Cimarron Air Customer Care.”
- It names the option they looked at most. Quotient knows which option they spent the most time on, and that is the one in the message.
- It leads with the monthly number. A total is a decision. A monthly payment is a budget line.
What not to send
No discounts in the first follow-up. A price that drops two days later teaches the homeowner that the first price was not real, and it trains everyone on your street to wait. If you want to offer something, offer an install date: “We have a crew open Thursday.”
No second text from the system, either. If the first one does not get a reply, the next touch should be a phone call from the tech, and Quotient puts that call on their list for day five.
Reading the replies
Most replies are not yes or no. They are questions: whether the 60-month rate changes if they pay it off early, whether the Best unit is quieter than the one they have now, whether the crew can come before their daughter’s graduation party. Every one of those is a homeowner who is still deciding, and every one goes straight to the tech’s phone as a normal text thread.
Answer them the same day. A tech who replies within an hour signs those proposals at almost twice the rate of one who replies the next morning. If your techs are on calls until dark, let the office answer from the shared inbox in the tech’s name. Homeowners care that someone answered, not who typed it.
The results
Osage Heating & Cooling in Columbus sent 212 follow-up texts last quarter and signed 40 of those proposals within a week. Devon Kraus, who runs their dispatch, put it plainly: “That is a lot of jobs for a text message I did not have to write.”
Turn it on, read the first ten replies, and adjust the wording to sound like your techs. Then forget about it. That is the point.
