The idea

“The Pitch Every trade and service business is sitting on a graveyard of lost quotes. A plumber sends 200 quotes a year. Maybe 60% convert. The other 80 quotes just... disappear. No follow up, no feedback, no idea why they lost. They just move on and send more quotes. What if those 80 dead quotes were actually a goldmine? Dead Quote is an AI tool that automatically follows up on lost quotes, finds out why they were lost, and teaches the business how to win more of them — without the owner lifting a finger. For a typical trade business converting just 3 more quotes per week at an average job value of $900, that's $140k in additional revenue per year. The Problem In Detail Right now a tradie's quote process looks like this: Send quote → Wait → Hear nothing → Move on → Repeat They have no system, no data, and no feedback loop. They're flying blind on pricing, timing, and presentation — every single quote. The core issues: No follow up — most businesses give up after one chase, or don't chase at all No loss reason data — they don't know if they lost on price, speed, trust, or just bad timing No pattern recognition — even if they had feedback, they couldn't spot trends across hundreds of quotes Emotional barrier — owners hate chasing because it feels like begging How It Works Step 1 — Connect The business connects their existing quoting tool (ServiceM8, Tradify, Xero, or even just uploads a CSV). Dead Quote pulls in all sent quotes and flags which ones haven't converted within a set window (e.g. 5 days). Step 2 — Auto Follow Up For each dead quote, the system sends a personalised, human-sounding follow up via SMS or email: "Hey Sarah, just checking in on the quote we sent for your bathroom renovation. Has anything changed or is there anything we can clarify? Happy to have a chat." No pressure. No awkward sales language. Timed intelligently — not at 8am on a Monday. Step 3 — Capture Loss Reason If the customer responds that they went elsewhere, a short conversational AI exchange gently uncovers why: "No worries at all! If you don't mind me asking — was it the price, the timing, or did you just go with someone you knew?" This data gets logged automatically — no manual entry. Step 4 — Recover Warm Leads Some quotes aren't lost — they're just stalled. Customer got busy, forgot, had second thoughts. The follow up alone converts a meaningful chunk of these back without any sales effort. Step 5 — Pattern Analysis Dashboard Over time the system builds a picture: Your quotes over $2,000 have a 30% lower conversion rate — your competitors may be undercutting you at that price point Quotes sent on Friday afternoons convert 40% less — try sending Thursday morning Customers in Paddington convert at 2x the rate of customers in Logan — consider where you focus marketing This is insight a solo tradie could never generate themselves.”