Our quote close rate dropped. How do I tell if it's a pricing problem or a follow-up problem?

The two failures leave different fingerprints

A pricing problem is loud. The customer responds, often quickly, and often with a reason. In the field service system you see the estimate move to a lost or declined state within a few days of being sent, and the losses cluster in the higher-value bands where the number is big enough to shop.

A follow-up problem is quiet. Estimates stay in the open state indefinitely. Nobody marks them lost because nobody talked to the customer again. The close rate falls, but the loss column barely moves — the open column swells instead. That distinction is visible in almost every FSM without any custom reporting.

The diagnostic: days-to-outcome, split by quote value

Build a simple two-way table. Rows are quote value bands. Columns are days from sent to final outcome, bucketed at zero to three, four to fourteen, fifteen to thirty, and still open. Then read the shape.

If the still-open column is the largest cell across every value band, your process is leaking at the follow-up step. If losses concentrate in the top value band and resolve inside three days, customers are seeing your number and going elsewhere. Both can be true at once, which is why you need the table rather than a single percentage.

• Fast losses, high bands. Price or presentation. The customer understood the offer and rejected it.
• Slow losses, all bands. Competitive shopping and delay. Speed of the second contact matters more than the number.
• Permanently open. No process. Nobody owns the estimate after it leaves the truck.

Where the FSM stops and the recording starts

The FSM records that an estimate was sent for a certain amount and what state it ended in. It does not record how the price was presented, whether options were offered, or whether the customer raised an objection the technician never answered. That conversation exists only in the call or the on-site interaction.

This is why call analysis pairs with quote data rather than replacing it. When a batch of high-value quotes dies fast, listening to how those specific jobs were framed usually explains more than another discount. When the pattern is silence, the fix is scheduling, not scripting — and that shows up in coaching data as a missing follow-up behavior rather than a weak close.

Fixing the wrong one is expensive

Cutting price to solve a follow-up problem lowers margin on the jobs you were going to win anyway. Adding follow-up cadence to a genuine pricing problem just increases the number of people telling you no. Run the table first. It takes an afternoon and it is the difference between a real remedy and an expensive guess.