In product businesses, inventory sits on shelves. In service businesses, unfinished quotes sit in inboxes — invisible until a client chooses someone faster.
Pull ten recent enquiries and mark three dates: request received, draft ready for review, and quote sent. The middle gap is where authority problems live. Often a senior person must approve routine prices because nobody else has a clear band to work within. That senior person is also running jobs.
A practical fix is not “hire more estimators” as the first move. Define which job types a trained estimator can price without escalation, and which must wait for a senior review. Publish the bands. Measure quote age weekly for a month.
Owners sometimes worry that faster quotes mean sloppier prices. The opposite is common: rushed Friday-night quotes, written under fatigue, carry more errors than a calm mid-week process with clear bands.
If you only change one habit this quarter, make quote age visible on the same board where open jobs appear. What stays invisible stays unmanaged.