Ask a small business owner how long it takes them to send a quote and you will usually get one of two answers. Either "not long, half an hour" or a slightly guilty pause.
The pause is the honest one.
Because in our experience it is rarely half an hour. Picture ten minutes of actually working out the price, and then three days of it sitting in your head while you are on site, or with a client, or driving. Then forty minutes on a Tuesday evening because you have finally got a clear run at it, and the customer may already have had two other quotes.
That gap between "I know what to charge" and "I have sent it" is where the work goes. It is also where the work gets lost. A lot of owners tell us they lose jobs on being third rather than on price.
This guide is about closing that gap by getting the writing out of your evenings. You do not have to work any faster. Treat the timings in this guide as rough.
Why quoting takes so long when it should not
This guide starts once you have worked out a price. You know your rates. You know roughly how long a job takes because you have done it many times.
The hard part is everything wrapped around the price:
- Writing it up in a way that sounds professional rather than like a text message
- Remembering to include the exclusions, so you are not arguing about scaffolding later
- Making it specific enough that the customer can see you understood what they asked for
- Getting the tone right for this particular customer, who is different from the last one
- Formatting it so it does not look like it was done in a hurry
Much of that is routine writing, and a lot of it ends up happening after hours because during the day you are doing the actual job. Deciding what is in and what is out still takes your judgement, which is why you check what comes back.
Claude can draft that wording from the information you give it.
What we are going to do
You will save a set of instructions for drafting quotes, and reuse them every time. You write them once and update them when your terms change.
The recipe has three parts:
- Your standard. What a good quote from your business looks like.
- The job. Whatever you have got: a site note, something you said out loud, an email from the customer.
- The output. A draft quote you check, correct and send.
The first part takes the most effort, and after that it needs only occasional updates.
Start with the free version. If you hit its limit often, the paid Claude Pro plan is the next step. At the time of writing Anthropic lists it at 17 US dollars a month if you pay annually, or 20 billed monthly, before VAT; the upgrade screen shows the price in pounds. Check the currency, tax and total before you pay.
Before you start
You need a free Claude account. Claude is the AI assistant made by a company called Anthropic.
- On a laptop, go to claude.ai. On a phone, download the Claude app for iPhone or Android. Sign up with your email address.
- You will see a message box. Type or paste your request into it, then press the send button.
- Claude's reply appears underneath. When it does, that step is done.
Four things worth knowing before you paste anything in:
- Voice notes. To talk instead of type, tap the microphone on your phone's keyboard and speak. Your phone turns what you say into text, and you paste that text in.
- Leave out what you do not need. Skip bank details, and anything personal about a customer that the job does not need. If you would rather your chats were not used to train Anthropic's models, check the privacy settings in Claude.
- You check everything. What comes back is a draft. Read it against your own notes before it goes to anyone, and correct names, dates and prices. It does get things wrong.
- Limits. The free plan has usage limits. If you hit one, wait, or finish that one by hand.
Step one: teach it what your quotes look like
Open Claude and start a new conversation. Then find two or three quotes you have sent before, ideally ones that won the work. If yours live in accounts software or a PDF, open one and copy its text. If you cannot select the text, retype the main parts. Paste it into an email draft to yourself first, and swap customer names and addresses for placeholders such as [customer] and [address]. Only then copy it into Claude's message box. If you have never written a quote down, describe how you usually do it instead, and replace the first sentence of the message below with "Here is how I usually write a quote:".
Then say this, changing "three" to however many you pasted:
Here are three quotes I have sent to customers. I want you to work out the pattern I follow: the structure, the order things go in, my tone of voice, and what I usually include and usually leave out.
Tell me which parts look like a real habit because they repeat, and which are only guesses from one example. Do not treat details that belong to one job as rules.
Write it back to me as a set of instructions I could give someone else so they could write a quote that sounds like it came from me.
What comes back is a description of your own house style, which you have probably never written down. Read it carefully. It will get some things wrong, and it will notice some things you did not realise you did.
Correct it. Just talk to it normally:
Close, but I never quote for materials separately, I roll it into the job price. And I always put the start date near the top because it is the thing customers ask about first.
Keep going until the instructions cover the layout, what is in scope, your usual exclusions, how you show VAT, payment terms, how long the quote is valid and how you word the start date. Then say:
Give me that as a final set of instructions I can save and reuse.
Save what it gives you in an email draft to yourself titled "Quote instructions", so you can open it on your phone or laptop. Leave out old customers' details, and update it when your terms change. As a rough guide the first version might take around twenty minutes.
You are done when you have the saved instructions and have tried them on one job you already know the answer to.
Step two: turn a job into a quote
Now the useful bit. Next time you need to quote, start a conversation and paste in your standard, then add the job.
The job can be rough. It can be:
- A photo of the notes you scribbled on site. Tap the plus sign, choose Add files or photos, then check the figures it reads against your original. Handwriting is easy to misread.
- Something you said out loud in the van, typed by tapping the microphone on your phone's keyboard
- The text of the customer's email, copied in without any personal details the quote does not need
- Three bullet points and a price, plus the scope, materials you supply, exclusions, timing, VAT status and payment terms, or a note saying which you do not know yet
Here is what that looks like in practice.
An invented example job. The details are made up, and the customer's name and address are left as placeholders.
[paste your saved standard here]
Now write a quote using that standard, for this job:
[customer], [address]. Wants the downstairs loo refitted. Existing suite is going, she is buying her own basin and toilet, I am supplying the rest. Needs the floor levelling, there is a soft spot near the pipe. New extractor because the current one does nothing. Tiling half height, she has not chosen tiles yet. Reckon four days. I am VAT registered. Quoting 3,200 plus VAT at 20 per cent, so 3,840 in total.
Only use dates that were actually agreed. If none was, write "date not agreed".
Flag anything I have not covered that I should probably mention.
You will get back a draft quote in your voice, and it may suggest questions you missed. In this case it might ask whether tile supply is included given she has not chosen them, whether making good the floor is in the price or extra, and whether the extractor needs an electrician.
Those are the questions that can turn into arguments once work has started. Keep them apart from the quote itself. Answer them, ring the customer where you need to, then tell Claude the answers and ask for a revised draft. The soft floor, the tiles and the electrical work should be settled before you treat 3,200 as the price.
Step three: check it, send it, keep a copy
Read the draft against your notes. Check names, address, scope, quantities, prices, VAT, dates and exclusions. You are done checking when there are no invented details and no square-bracket placeholders left.
Then copy the approved text into an email or your usual quote template, put the customer's details back, check it looks right and send it. Save the exact version you sent, in a folder or an email to yourself, with the customer name and date.
Step four: the follow-up nobody does
In our experience a lot of the quotes you send get no reply at all, not even a no. A short follow-up is a modest thing to try.
Once you have made your final corrections, stay in the same conversation and say:
Write me a short follow-up email, based on the final version of the quote, to send five working days after I send it if I have not heard back. Friendly, not pushy, no discounting. Give the customer an easy way to say no as well as yes.
The "easy way to say no" line gives the customer another way to respond, and a clear no is worth having. You can stop counting on jobs the customer has declined.
Save the follow-up with the sent quote. Claude has only drafted it. Nothing is scheduled or sent until you do it.
Put a reminder in your phone for five working days after you send the quote, counting weekdays only and skipping bank holidays. Put the customer name and the date you sent the quote in it. When it goes off, check for a reply, send the saved follow-up if there is none, and note whether the quote was accepted, declined or is still waiting.
A worked example, start to finish
An invented example. The business and the office are made up. The times and savings are assumptions to illustrate the idea.
Say you are a commercial cleaner and an office manager emails asking about a weekly clean for a small office.
What you have got: her email, which is four lines and does not say how many desks.
What you do:
[your standard]
Quote for this. Weekly office clean, small office in central Reading, she says "about ten people". I have not seen it. Two hours a week, Thursday evenings, my usual rate is 32 an hour. I am VAT registered and 32 is before VAT. I bring my own cleaning products and equipment. Consumables such as toilet roll, soap and bin liners are not included.
I have not visited yet, so build in a line saying this is an estimate until I have seen the office, without making it sound like I am hedging on price. Do not assume the toilets are in scope, treat that as something to confirm. Do not give a start date.
Also list the questions I should ask her before I go, so I only need one visit.
What you get: a draft quote, a professional way of handling the fact that you have not seen the place, and a list of things to ask about kitchen facilities, bins, alarm access and whether the toilets are in scope.
Before you send: you visit, and she tells you the toilets are in scope and there is a small kitchen, and you agree that two hours covers the desks, kitchen, toilets, floors and bins. You tell Claude, ask for a revised draft, and check it against your notes.
The finished quote, after you have read and adjusted it:
Weekly office cleaning, central Reading
Quote date, quote reference, how long this quote is valid, your details, her details and how to accept go here.
Thank you for getting in touch. Based on what you have told me and what I saw on my visit, here is my quote for a weekly evening clean of your office.
Included: one visit every Thursday evening, two hours, covering desks, the kitchen, toilets, floors and bins. I bring my own cleaning products and equipment. Consumables such as toilet roll, soap and bin liners are not included.
Price: £64 a week (two hours at £32 an hour), plus VAT. £32 an hour is before VAT.
This price is based on my visit and the work listed above. If I find the work needs more time, I will tell you and we will agree any change to the time and price in writing before it applies.
Start date: not yet agreed.
What happens next: you paste it into an email, send it, save the sent copy with her name and the date, save the follow-up Claude drafted, and set a reminder for five working days later.
Time spent: say a few minutes of drafting on your phone, plus the visit and the sending. What it might replace: a long evening of writing, and perhaps a second visit because you forgot to ask about alarm codes. Your own times will differ.
What tends to go wrong
Quotes that sound like a robot. If it reads stiff, your standard was too thin. Feed it more real examples, and say plainly what you did not like. "Too formal, I would never say furthermore." It adjusts.
Made-up detail. It will occasionally invent a specification you did not give it. Check every quote as in step three before it goes out. You are still the one who sends it, and you would not send an unread quote written by a new employee either.
Prices. Do not ask it to work out what to charge. It does not know your market, your costs or how busy you are. You set the price. It writes the quote.
Starting from scratch every time. Reusing your standard saves most of the effort. If you are rewriting the instructions each time, you have gone back to doing it the hard way.
Where this gets you, and where it does not
Done properly, this may take quoting from a long evening job to something much quicker that you do between other things. That could give you some evenings back, and being quicker to reply may help your chances. Try it on one quote first and see what it does for you.
It works well on your own. You do not need anybody's help to do what is in this guide.
There are points where it may stop being enough, and it is worth knowing where they are.
The first is when more than one person quotes. With two or three people sending quotes, each in their own style, consistency can become a problem as well as speed. A shared setup can help, rather than everyone keeping their own note.
The second is when you want the quote to use information from your accounts software. Your actual price list, your current lead times, what you charged this customer last time. Copying and pasting works for one quote at a time, but it gets tiresome when someone has to keep retyping it.
And the third is when the quote needs to go somewhere afterwards. Into Xero as a draft invoice when it is accepted, or onto a job list, or into a folder that someone else can find. That means connecting your software, which is a different sort of job from writing.
None of that is a reason to wait. Quite a lot of businesses never need any of it.
Written by SmartGenie in Reading, Berkshire. If you would rather have this set up and working on your own systems, that is what the SmartStart Pack does.
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