Lost enquiries
The drawing arrived. Nobody opened it.
Fabrication enquiries arrive as drawings, site photos and rough sketches that need someone technical to look at them, so they wait. Log the drawing as an enquiry with an owner, a reviewer and a date, and the wait becomes a scheduled task instead of a silence.
In short
Fabrication enquiries arrive as drawings, site photos and rough sketches that need someone technical to look at them, so they wait. Log the drawing as an enquiry with an owner, a reviewer and a date, and the wait becomes a scheduled task instead of a silence.
The cost
What the gap takes every month.
2 to 5 days
Typical delay before a drawing is even reviewed
The technical person who must read it is also running the shop.
1 in 3
Drawings never quoted at all
Not refused, just overtaken by production pressure that week.
One ordinary week
How it actually happens.
A client sends a general arrangement drawing for a structure on a Friday. It needs half an hour from your works manager to judge feasibility and material. He is commissioning a job and does not open it.
On Tuesday the client calls the third shop on their list. Your business spent nothing and lost a two-month job, and no record exists that the drawing ever arrived.
Treating the drawing as an enquiry with a named reviewer and a due date turns half an hour of attention into something scheduled, rather than something hoped for.
The fix
Three steps, in this order.
01
Capture every enquiry in one list
Web forms, calls, trade portals and WhatsApp messages land in a single enquiry list instead of individual phones.
02
Give each enquiry an owner and a next date
Nothing sits unassigned. The owner sees it on their day list until it is acted on or closed with a reason.
03
Surface what is overdue before anything else
Managers see untouched enquiries at the top of the day, not at the end of the month.
Straight answers
What owners ask us here.
Our quotations need engineering judgement. Can that be scheduled?
The judgement cannot be automated, but the queue can. A feasibility check with an owner and a due date is what stops drawings sitting unopened.
What if we decide not to quote?
Close the enquiry with a reason. Over a quarter those reasons tell you which work you keep turning away and whether that is deliberate.
Can we keep the drawing with the enquiry?
Yes, the drawing, the revision and the notes stay attached to the enquiry, so the quotation and the eventual job refer to the same version.
Questions people ask
Straight answers, no sales talk.
System of Marketing & Sales
Put enquiry to dispatch on one governed line.
Tell us how your plant sells today. We'll show you where the line breaks and what it takes to close it.