Some estimates come back a no. Others never come back at all. This calculator takes your own quote numbers and shows what the never-answered pile is worth in a month and in a year, then how much of it you would recover at a recovery rate you set yourself. No email, no gate, no industry averages. Just your arithmetic, done carefully.
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The values below are starting points. Replace every one of them with your own — the answer is only as good as what you put in.
Count estimates you actually sent, not calls you took. Use last month's number if you have it. The 20 shown is a placeholder.
Total dollars on a typical estimate before tax. Add up last month's quotes and divide by how many you sent. The $2,500 shown is a round placeholder, not a typical ticket.
Share of quotes that turn into signed work. This is a round starting point. Replace it with your own count.
Share that never comes back with a yes or a no. Do not include the ones who told you no. The 20 percent shown is a placeholder, not a rate for your trade. Count your own.
Your assumption, not ours. Of the quiet quotes, what share could a real follow-up still win? 10% is a deliberately low starting point. Change it.
$120,000
A year of estimates that never got an answer. This number assumes nothing about follow-up working.
The monthly version. Hold it next to what you spend on lead generation in a month.
How many estimates a month end in silence. Under one a month and the rest of this page will not move much for you. Several a month and it is a pile.
What your own recovery assumption says is still winnable each month. Change the recovery rate and watch this move.
The yearly version of your assumption. Check it against the job count below before you believe it.
The same result counted in jobs instead of dollars. Ask whether that many extra jobs is worth changing your process for.
What these quotes already produce. It is here so the recoverable number has something honest to sit next to.
Recoverable dollars measured against the work you already book. A couple of percent is close to a rounding error; double digits is worth changing your process over. That is our read, not a benchmark. It works out to your quiet rate times your recovery rate divided by your close rate, so it reads correctly even before you have entered a quote count or an average quote value, and it can run well past 100 percent. With a close rate of zero there is nothing to divide by and this shows a dash.
Differs from what you entered only if your close rate plus quiet rate went over 100%, in which case it was trimmed to fit.
Nothing you type here leaves your browser
A quiet quote is an estimate you sent that never got an answer. Not a no. Not a bid you know you lost. Silence. The homeowner read it, thought about it, got busy, and it slid off the calendar for both of you. It is common to file these under lost work without ever counting them, which is why they stay invisible. They differ from a hard no in one important way: nobody decided against you. Your price was not rejected. Your scope was not rejected. The job simply stopped moving. That is the pile this calculator measures, and the only way to size it is to count how many of your estimates end in silence rather than in an answer.
The recovery rate is your input and it should stay that way. Nobody, including us, can tell you what share of your quiet quotes a follow-up would have won. It depends on your market, your pricing, how long the silence has run, and whether the customer already hired somebody else. So this page opens at 10 percent, chosen to be low rather than flattering. Treat it as a placeholder and put your own number in. Run it at 5 percent. Run it at 25. If the number still matters to you at 5 percent, you have found something real. If it only looks impressive at 40 percent, you have found a spreadsheet, not a problem. Every figure on this page is your own numbers multiplied together.
The common mistake is closing the file in your head. A quote goes out, a week passes, and the shop quietly moves it to the mental lost pile without ever asking. Meanwhile the customer is doing the same thing from the other side. They meant to call, then the water heater stopped leaking, then it was March. Two people each waiting on the other one is not a lost job. It is an unfinished conversation. The second mistake is following up once, on the day you happen to remember, with a message that says just checking in. That is a message about you. A follow-up that names the actual scope, the actual price, and what changes if they wait is a message about them.
Every figure in this example is invented to show the arithmetic. None of it is a benchmark for your trade. Say you run two trucks. Put in 24 estimates a month at an average of $4,200, a 38 percent close rate, and 22 percent going quiet with no answer either way. That is 5.28 quiet estimates a month, $22,176 of work a month with nobody chasing it, and $266,112 a year. Now assume only 8 percent of that silence was still winnable. The page returns $1,774 a month, $21,289 a year, and 5.07 recovered jobs. Call it five. Five jobs is not a windfall. It is also 4.6 percent on top of the $38,304 a month this invented shop already books, earned by finishing conversations that were already started, with no extra advertising and no new truck. Type those five numbers into the calculator above and you will get exactly these figures back.
Pull last month, not last year. Open whatever holds your estimates and count three piles: signed, told no, and never answered. Signed divided by total sent is your close rate. Never answered divided by total sent is your quiet rate. Those three piles should add back up to everything you sent. If the quiet pile is hard to identify at all, that is itself the finding. If you track none of this, count for four weeks going forward before you act on anything here. One caution on averages: if you sell both $400 service calls and $18,000 changeouts, run this calculator twice, once for each, because a blended average quote value flatters the small work and undersells the big.
A quiet quote is any estimate that never got a yes or a no. The customer did not turn you down and did not sign. The conversation simply stopped. Leave out anyone who told you they went with someone else or decided not to do the work, because those are decided, not quiet. Count only the estimates still sitting in limbo with no answer from either side.
Use a number you would defend out loud, and start low. This calculator opens at 10 percent because a conservative starting point keeps the result honest, but the right figure is yours, not ours. Nobody can tell you what share of your silent estimates a follow-up would still win. Try 5 percent, then try 20, and see whether the answer changes what you would actually do. If it only looks worth chasing at a high assumption, treat that as your answer.
No. Every number on this page comes from the four figures you type in plus the recovery rate you choose. There is no benchmark, survey, or study behind it, and the default values are round starting points meant to be replaced, not claims about your trade. The arithmetic is deliberately simple: quotes times quiet rate times average value, then times whatever recovery rate you believe.
The calculator trims the quiet rate so the two never overlap. If you enter an 80 percent close rate and a 40 percent quiet rate, only 20 percent of your quotes can possibly be unanswered, so the tool uses 20 percent and shows you the rate it actually used. If that trim happens, go back and recheck. Usually one of the two numbers is a guess rather than a count.
That line divides recoverable dollars by the revenue your close rate already produces, so it needs a close rate above zero. Enter zero and there is nothing to divide by, so the page shows a dash rather than a fake number. It is also the one figure that depends only on your three percentages, working out to quiet rate times recovery rate divided by close rate, which is why it still reads correctly before you have filled in a quote count or an average quote value. And it is not capped: a low close rate with a high quiet rate and a high recovery rate can push it past 100 percent, which just means your assumption implies more recovered work than you currently book. That is usually a sign to recheck the assumption.
Count one month by hand. Take every estimate you sent in a single month and sort them into signed, told no, and never answered. Signed divided by total sent is your close rate. Never answered divided by total sent is your quiet rate. Four weeks of honest counting gives you a better input than any benchmark, and you only have to do it once to know roughly where you stand.
No. The math runs in your browser, every number updates as you type, and there is no email wall, no signup, and no gate on the results. Use it, write the number on a scrap of paper, and close the tab if that is all you needed. The calculator is meant to be useful on its own whether or not you ever look at our software.
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