How To Write A Follow Up Email

You sent the quote. They said it looked great. That was eleven days ago.

Most businesses send one awkward follow up and then quietly give up. The deal was usually still live.

Why they went quiet

Almost never because they hated the price.

They got busy. Someone else in the business has to approve it. They are waiting on something unrelated. They forgot. They are slightly embarrassed about how long it has been, which makes replying harder every day.

Silence is almost never a decision. Treating it as one costs more deals than anything else in a small business.

The email that does not work

"Hi, just following up on the below. Let me know your thoughts."

It adds nothing. It asks them to do all the work. And "just checking in" tells them this is an obligation rather than something useful.

Worse, it puts your discomfort into the email. The apology in "sorry to chase" makes the reader feel chased.

The structure that works

One line of context. Which quote, which conversation. They spoke to four suppliers, not one.

Something new. This is the whole difference. Give them a reason the email exists beyond your pipeline.

A relevant example of similar work. An answer to something they raised. A note that the lead time has changed. A question you forgot to ask. Anything that is genuinely for them.

One specific question. Not "let me know your thoughts." Something they can answer in one line.

"Are you still looking at a March start?" is answerable. "Any update?" is not.

Make no the easy option. Counterintuitive, and it works. "If it is not going ahead, just say so and I will close the file" gets more replies than any amount of enthusiasm, because it removes the awkwardness.

Four or five sentences. Anything longer reads like pressure.

The cadence

Day three. Day ten. Day twenty-one. Then one at about six weeks, then leave it.

Spread them out, and vary what each one carries. Four identical emails is nagging. Four different useful ones is service.

Then stop properly. "I will leave this with you, give me a shout if it comes back around." Clean, no resentment, and it leaves the door open. A surprising number come back months later, and they come back to the person who did not get weird about it.

Change the channel

If two emails go nowhere, ring them.

A thirty second call resolves what four emails cannot, because you find out the real reason. Half the time it is something you can fix immediately, and it is something they were never going to type out.

Where the money actually is

Most businesses follow up on quotes and nothing else.

The bigger opportunity is the follow up sequence they never build: the enquiry that never got quoted, the client from two years ago, the job that got deferred and never rebooked.

That list is sitting in every inbox, and it is warmer than anything an ad will buy.

The mindset that fixes the writing

You are not chasing. You are making it easy for someone who is busy to do the thing they already said they wanted to do.

Write it that way and the email stops sounding apologetic, which is the thing readers respond to more than any phrasing trick.