The seven-step back-end selling system

Start with the quotes you already have

Every firm we look at is sitting on money it has already earned the right to. Enquiries that were answered late. Quotes that went out and were never chased. Conversations that ended in not yet and were never picked up again.

The back end is everything that happens after an enquiry lands. It is the cheapest place in the business to find growth, because the marketing has already been paid for. Nothing here needs a new campaign or a new hire.

Below are the seven steps we install for clients, written so you can run them yourself. Do them in order. Each one is a job for this week, and each one feeds the next.

1. Capture every enquiry in one place

Right now enquiries arrive through half a dozen doors. The website form. The sales inbox. The switchboard. Somebody’s mobile. Nobody can chase what nobody can see.

So the first step is one list, in one place, that every enquiry lands on the day it arrives. A CRM is best. A shared spreadsheet is acceptable for the first month. What matters is that the list is complete.

Record the date it arrived and where it came from. Record what they asked for. Put a name against the next action.

This week: pull every enquiry from the last ninety days into that one list. Most directors are surprised by the number, and more surprised by how many have nothing against them.

2. Respond inside five minutes

A buyer who has just enquired is dealing with the problem right now. By the next morning your call is an interruption. Four-hour response times are normal in established firms, and they hand the conversation to whichever competitor rang first.

The target is a meaningful response within five minutes of the enquiry landing, at any hour. Meaningful means it refers to what they asked about and offers a time to speak. An automated acknowledgement that says nothing does not count.

Most CRMs and form tools can send that first message automatically and alert a named person at the same time. If yours cannot, a forwarding rule and a phone on the desk of whoever is on point that day will do for now.

This week: measure the current gap between enquiry and first response. Then set the automatic reply and the alert. Put the number on the same board as your delivery numbers.

3. Qualify before you quote

A detailed quote takes half a day of someone’s time. Most firms give that half day to anyone who asks, which is why the graveyard fills up with quotes that were never going to convert.

Before anything is priced, one short conversation settles four questions. Is there a real project? Is there a budget attached to it? Is there a date it needs to happen by? Is the person you are speaking to the one who signs?

If the answers are weak, send a budget range instead of a quote and keep them on the list. The full quote goes to buyers who have shown they are serious. That protects the estimating team and it raises the win rate on everything that does go out.

This week: write the four questions on a card and make them the rule for every new enquiry.

4. Quote with a next-step date

Most quotes end with a price and a hope. The buyer is left to come back in their own time, and their own time is never.

Every quote should leave with a date already agreed for the next conversation. Send it, then ring to walk them through it, and book the follow-up call before you hang up. The quote itself carries that date in writing, along with how long the price holds.

A quote with a next step is a live piece of work with an owner. A quote without one is a document in a folder.

This week: add a next-step line to the quote template. Then refuse to send a quote until the follow-up date is in the diary.

5. Chase on a fixed cadence until a yes or a no

Follow-up fails for a boring reason. It relies on a busy person remembering, in a busy week, to chase a quote from three weeks ago. Some weeks that happens. Most weeks it does not.

Replace memory with a cadence. The moment a quote is sent, the chase starts. A call on the agreed date. A short email that references the actual job. Another call a week later. It keeps going at that rhythm until there is an answer either way.

A no is a good result. It closes the row and it tells you why you lost. Silence is the only outcome that costs you.

Your CRM can run the reminders and the emails for you. The person only steps in when the buyer replies. That is the difference between a chase that runs for the length of your sales cycle and one that stops after a week.

This week: write the cadence down and load it into the CRM. Then start it on every open quote from step one.

6. Reopen the graveyard every quarter

Deals lost on price are rare. Deals lost to silence are the norm. Most of what you filed as dead was never dead. Nobody asked twice.

Once a quarter, pull every quote and every not-yet from the last twelve months and go back to each one. Circumstances change. The machine they were nursing has failed. The contract they were waiting on has landed. The supplier they stayed loyal to has let them down. The firm still in touch when that happens wins the order by default.

The message is short and specific. Reference the job they asked about. Ask one question about whether it is still live. Offer a time. Written like a person, one idea per message.

This week: book the first graveyard session in the diary for the quarter end. Put the last twelve months of quotes on the list now so it is ready.

7. Measure enquiry to quote to close

Ask anyone in the building how many quotes went out last quarter and how many turned into orders. Almost nobody can answer the second half. Which means nobody is managing the most expensive moment in the business.

Three numbers, reviewed weekly, run the whole back end. Enquiries received. Quotes sent. Orders won. Divide each by the one before it and you have your conversion at every stage.

Then walk the line and stop at the first stage that is broken. Plenty of enquiries and few quotes points at steps two and three. Plenty of quotes and few orders points at steps four to six. Fix that stage before spending another pound at the top.

This week: build the three numbers for last month from the list in step one. It takes an hour, and it tells you exactly which of the six steps above matters most for your firm.

What this looks like in a month

Every enquiry on one list. Every one answered inside five minutes. Every quote leaving with a date attached and a chase running behind it. Three numbers on the wall that a director can read in ten seconds.

None of it needs the director’s phone. That is the point. The revenue starts to belong to the process, and a business where the revenue belongs to the process is one that can grow without him and one that can eventually be sold.

If you would rather we built it for you, that is what the call is for. We go through your numbers and show you where the leak is. Then we tell you straight whether we can fix it.