Why Forwarders Lose Quotes They Already Priced
The expensive losses are not the quotes you priced too high. They are the ones you priced correctly, sent on time and then never touched again. The work was already done. Only the last five minutes were missing.
Pricing a shipment costs real effort. Somebody checked capacity, asked an agent, calculated the margin, wrote it up. When that quote goes out and disappears, the cost is not the lost revenue alone. It is the work already spent on it.
Where they actually go
Into a decision that took longer than your attention
The shipper did not say no. They said nothing, because internally nothing had been decided yet. Three weeks later the decision was made, and by then the quote had aged out of everyone's mind, yours included.
Into an expiry nobody flagged
The rate ran out. The customer came back willing to book, discovered the price had changed, and read that as unreliability rather than as a market movement. An expiry that is announced in advance is a service. An expiry discovered by the customer is a problem.
Into a competitor who chased once
This is the one worth sitting with. In a comparison between two similar rates, the forwarder who makes contact again is frequently the one who gets the booking, because the second contact is read as the level of attention the shipment will get.
Into a person who left
Your contact changed jobs. The enquiry was theirs, the relationship was theirs, and nobody at your end knew until the next quarter.
Into an inbox
Somebody replied with a question and it landed in a thread nobody was watching. This happens more often than anyone admits and it is entirely invisible unless the quote has an owner and a status.
The one report that shows the size of it
List every quote from the last ninety days with no reply and no formal loss. Not the lost ones. The silent ones. Add up the value.
Most forwarders cannot produce this list at all, which is itself the finding. If the data does not exist, the problem cannot be managed and it also cannot be argued about, which is why it persists.
What actually changes the number
Three things, in order of effect:
- Every quote gets an owner. Not a team. A name.
- Every quote gets an expiry date that triggers something. The expiry is the best reason you will ever have to make contact, because it is about their cost rather than your pipeline.
- Follow-up runs without being remembered. The moment it depends on somebody recalling it during a busy week, it stops.
For the cadence itself, see our quote follow-up sequence for air, LCL and FCL. For how the underlying records are held, the features page.
The uncomfortable part
Nobody loses these quotes through incompetence. They are lost because operations is urgent and follow-up is merely important, and urgent wins every single week. That is not a discipline problem to be solved with a talking to. It is a systems problem, and it is solved by making the follow-up happen whether anyone remembers or not.
Frequently asked questions
What share of quotes normally go unanswered?
It varies too widely by market and lane mix for an industry figure to mean much. Measure your own over ninety days. That number is the only one worth acting on.
Is chasing a quote seen as pushy?
Not when the contact carries a reason that belongs to the customer, such as a rate expiry or a schedule change. It reads as pushy when it is about your pipeline.
How many silent quotes are actually recoverable?
Unknown until you try, and that is a fair reason to run a one month test rather than accept a vendor estimate, including ours.
Should lost quotes be recorded with a reason?
Yes, and keep the reason list short. Four options that get used beat twelve that get skipped.
To see the silent quote report on your own data, book a demo.
