Request a quote form: capture enough to price the job on the first reply

A request a quote form is how a prospective customer asks what something will cost. For service businesses, trades and B2B suppliers it is often the most valuable form on the website — every submission is someone with a need and a budget. It is also where many businesses lose work quietly: the form asks for a name and a message, the reply asks for details, and by the time the details arrive the customer has accepted a competitor's quote.

What a request a quote form must capture

• What they need, chosen from your services so the enquiry is routed correctly.
• Scope in the units you price in: quantities, area, hours, number of users, sites.
• Location, if price depends on distance or site conditions.
• Timing: when they need it, which affects both price and whether you can take it on.
• Budget range, optional but useful for qualifying.
• Attachments — drawings, photos, specifications — which often answer the questions you would otherwise ask.
• Contact details and preferred way to be contacted.

Balance detail and completion

Every extra field reduces completions; every missing field adds an email round. The way through is conditional questions: ask two or three questions everyone answers, then show the service-specific fields only for the service chosen. A painter needs room dimensions, a caterer needs guest numbers, an IT supplier needs user counts — none of them needs all three.

Speed of reply wins quotes. An automatic acknowledgement that says when a quote will arrive — and a real quote within one working day — does more for conversion than any change to the form.

From form to quote

1. Acknowledge every request immediately with a reference and a stated response time.
2. Route by service to the person who prices it, with the full submission attached.
3. Qualify quickly: can you do it, when, and is the budget realistic for the scope.
4. Price from the submitted scope and state your assumptions in the quote.
5. Send the quote with a validity period and a simple way to accept.
6. Follow up once if there is no reply, and record the outcome — won, lost, and why.

Ettex Forms supports conditional sections and file uploads for the request itself, and each submission lands in Ettex Records where status and outcome can be tracked. Accepted quotes can then move into invoicing with Ettex Invoices, so the numbers are not retyped at each step. Enquiries that turn into ongoing customers belong in a CRM, where the quote history stays attached to the account.

Measure what the form produces

• Requests per month by service, to see where demand comes from.
• Time from request to quote — the single biggest lever on win rate.
• Win rate by service and by source.
• Reasons for lost quotes, recorded consistently.
• Requests abandoned because information was missing, which points to a field the form should ask for.

The same intake principles drive other forms that start commercial work: a client intake form for professional services, and on the buying side, a request for quotation sent to suppliers — the mirror image of this form.