He asked what it costs. You told him. He said “cool, thanks” and you never heard from him again. That happens several times a week in most shops and the reason is almost never the price.
Do this first
Find the last five people who asked you a price and did not book. Write down what you sent them, word for word.
If all five got a number and nothing else, you have found the problem, and the rest of this page is what to put around the number.
Almost nobody in your shop is genuinely price-shopping. They are asking the only question they know how to ask, because they do not have the vocabulary for the real one.
The real one is: am I going to get ripped off, is it going to look right, and how much of a nuisance is this going to be for me. He cannot ask that, so he asks what it costs, and if all you send back is a number he still does not know any of the three things he actually needed to know. So he goes and asks somebody else the same question.
A number plus one line of context beats a number every time. “$289 for the full car in ceramic — about two hours, you can wait if you want, and it is guaranteed against bubbling for as long as you own it.” That is the same price. It answers all three.
This is the thing I see shops get wrong most, and it costs real jobs.
When someone goes quiet, the instinct is to push — a discount, a deadline, one more reason. It nearly always makes it worse. The person who has gone quiet is not weighing up whether it is worth it. He is worried about getting it wrong: too dark and he gets pulled over, wrong shade and he hates it, the wrap costs a fortune and he is stuck with it.
Pressure makes a person who is scared of a mistake more scared, not less. What actually moves him is the opposite: make the decision smaller and make being wrong survivable.
One message, two days later, saying nothing clever. “Still thinking about the brakes? Happy to answer anything — and if the timing’s wrong just tell me and I’ll leave you alone.”
That last clause is what makes it work. You have given him permission to say no, which is the thing he was avoiding, and a good number of people answer it with a yes instead. This is the cheapest money in your whole business and almost nobody in this trade does it, because it feels like nagging. It is not nagging — he asked you first.
Being second to reply. Everything on this page assumes you got there at all — and most of what is lost is lost before any of this starts, in the twelve hours between his message and your morning.
Written for independent auto repair and auto glass shops. If you read this and fix it yourself, that is a good outcome and I would rather that than sell you something you do not need.