Answer
How do you handle an enquiry you cannot price yet?
Respond immediately with what you can say, name what is missing, and give a date for the number.
Reply straight away with the range you can stand behind, what is missing, and when the figure will follow. Silence while you work it out is read as no answer, and the enquirer is contacting others meanwhile.
The instinct with a complicated enquiry is to wait until there is something definite to say. That is conscientious and it produces the same outcome as ignoring it, because from the enquirer's side the two are identical: they sent a message and nothing came back. Meanwhile they are contacting other suppliers, and the ones who replied are shaping what they expect.
The response that works is immediate and honest about its own incompleteness. Acknowledge what they asked, state what you can say now — the range this kind of work usually falls in, what it depends on — name what you need in order to be precise, and give a date for the figure. That takes minutes, contains no commitment you cannot keep, and puts you in the conversation while it is still open.
Naming what is missing does more work than it appears to. It moves the next step to the enquirer, which is the strongest position an early exchange can be in, and it tells them something about how you work — that the price depends on specifics rather than being invented. It also frequently produces the missing information immediately, because people supply what they are asked for far more readily than they volunteer it.
The indicative range needs care and it should not be avoided. A range you would stand behind, with the variables that move it, is more useful than silence and does not commit you to a figure. What causes damage is a low anchor given to keep someone interested and then exceeded, since the eventual number is then measured against the first one rather than against the work.
The date for the figure is a commitment and should be treated as one. Whatever date is given has to be met, including when the answer is that you need longer — a message on the promised day saying it will take until Thursday preserves the commitment, while silence on the promised day breaks it. Businesses lose more work to a missed self-imposed deadline than to a slow one that was communicated.
There is a version of this enquiry that should be declined rather than priced, and recognising it early saves both parties time. Work outside your capability, below your economic floor, or needed sooner than you can deliver. Saying so promptly with a reason and a referral is a better outcome than a slow quote that was never going to be accepted, and it is the response that preserves the relationship for the enquiry that does fit.
The enquirer cannot tell the difference between a business that is carefully preparing a quote and one that never read their message.
Answer Production Engine, Context Theory
Related questions
What if giving a range loses us the chance to quote?
An honest range loses the enquirers whose budget was never close, which is information you wanted early rather than after a site visit. It rarely loses those in the right region, because they are using it to decide whether to continue rather than to compare. The version that does damage is a range so wide it says nothing, which reads as evasion.
How quickly should the first response go out?
Within the hour where possible and the same working day at worst, because the odds of engaging an enquirer decay sharply over that period. The first response does not need the answer — it needs to exist. A three-line message sent in ten minutes outperforms a considered one sent in two days by a wide margin.
METHOD
Every figure below carries its source and the date it was verified. Nothing on this page is asserted.
The numbers on this page.
| What | Value | Specific to |
|---|---|---|
| Odds of making contact — replying within 5 minutes vs within 30 | 100× | Category-wide |
| Odds of qualifying a lead — replying within an hour vs after 24 hours | 60× | Category-wide |
| Buyers who eliminate vendors publishing no pricing, before contact | 60% | Category-wide |
Oldroyd, J. B. — MIT / InsideSales.com Lead Response Management Study (2007) · the original five-minute finding; contact, not qualification · verified
Oldroyd, McElheran & Elkington, "The Short Life of Online Sales Leads", Harvard Business Review (March 2011) · 1.25M inbound leads across 2,241 US firms · verified
2026 B2B buyer surveys · supersedes the 43% figure carried in blueprint v2 · verified
What is specific to this page.
| Kind | Claim | Check it against |
|---|---|---|
| Workflow | From the enquirer's perspective a business carefully preparing a quote and one that never read the message are indistinguishable, since both produce silence while the enquirer contacts other suppliers. | Win rates on enquiries answered within the hour with an incomplete response against those answered later with a complete one. |
| Buying behaviour | Naming the missing information moves the next step to the enquirer and frequently produces it immediately, because people supply what they are asked for more readily than they volunteer it. | Response rates to messages requesting specific missing details against those requesting general further information. |
| Buying behaviour | A low anchor given to sustain interest and later exceeded causes the final figure to be judged against the anchor rather than against the work, which is why an indicative range must be one the business would stand behind. | Acceptance rates on quotes that exceeded a previously given indication against those that did not. |
| Workflow | A missed self-imposed date breaks a commitment that silence would not have created, and a message on the promised day revising it preserves the commitment, which is why the date must be treated as a promise. | The business's own record of promised quote dates against actual issue dates and subsequent outcomes. |
Each row would be wrong on another industry's page. Where a sourced figure exists it is in the table above instead; these are the constraints that shape the work and do not happen to be numbers.
Start with the measurement.
Reading about a benchmark is not the same as knowing your own number. The audit produces yours, measured rather than estimated.
$497 · delivered in 5 business days · credited against month one