Chasing Sent Proposals: Timed Follow-Ups That Work
Most proposals go quiet after sending. How IT services and B2B teams can follow up on time, politely, with AI-timed reminders and drafts.
You send a proposal after weeks of work, and then nothing happens. The client is busy, someone else is reviewing it, or they have quietly gone with another firm. Silence is the most common outcome for a sent proposal, and also the most avoidable.
The problem is rarely that teams do not want to follow up. It is that nobody wants to be the person who chases too soon, too often, or not at all.
Why proposals go cold
- Follow-up depends on one person's memory and diary.
- Reminders are either too early (pushy) or too late (forgotten).
- The follow-up says "just checking in", which gives the client nothing to respond to.
A simple timed follow-up
Day of sending
A short note confirming the proposal was sent, who to ask about it and when you will check in.
A few days later
A useful follow-up: an answer to a question the client raised, a relevant example, or an offer to walk through the proposal.
A week or so after that
A direct question about next steps, and what is needed to decide.
Then stop or pause
If there is no reply, move to a slower cadence instead of sending more of the same.
Exact timings depend on your sales cycle. What matters is that they are agreed in advance, not left to chance.
Where AI helps
- Timing: an automated workflow tracks each sent proposal and raises the next follow-up on schedule.
- Drafting: AI drafts each message from the proposal and the earlier conversation, so it is specific.
- Stopping: the sequence ends when the client replies, so nobody sends a chaser into a live conversation.
- Logging: each step is recorded in the CRM.
A person should still review and send anything sensitive.
What to measure
- Share of proposals that get a reply
- Time from sending to decision
- Proposals that went silent with no follow-up at all
Start earlier in the funnel with qualifying and routing inbound enquiries.
How we help
CognixAI Workflow runs the tracking, drafting and logging, and we set it up and keep it running. See use cases for IT services or book a demo.
See how this would work for your team
Tell us what you want to automate. We'll show you with CognixAI Workflow and ClioIQ.