Why do solar quotes stall between survey and order?

Silence is not rejection

This is the most useful thing to understand about this trade.

In glazing, a customer who goes quiet has usually bought elsewhere. In solar, a customer who goes quiet is very often still deciding — talking to a partner, waiting for a bonus, wondering whether to add a battery, or quietly worried they'll be sold the wrong thing.

Solar has a long, invisible deliberation period that most installers treat as a lost cause after ten days. Jobs that were entirely winnable get written off because nobody followed up past the second email.

Why the stall happens

The quote arrives as a spec sheet. Panel count, kWp, inverter model, a total. That tells a homeowner what they're getting and nothing about whether it's a good idea.

The grant isn't shown as a net position. The SEAI Solar Electricity Grant is worth up to €1,800, at €700 per kWp for the first 2 kWp and €200 per kWp for the next 2. Some quotes show the gross figure and mention the grant in a footnote. That's a bigger number sitting on the kitchen table than it needs to be, and it forces the customer to do the arithmetic that should have been done for them.

Nobody addressed the battery question. It's the single most common source of hesitation on a domestic solar quote — worth it or not, now or later — and if the quote doesn't take a position, the customer stalls on it rather than deciding.

The follow-up is calendar-driven rather than objection-driven. "Just checking in" on day seven doesn't move anyone. It's a message that asks the customer to do work.

Nobody followed up at all. The honest answer in a lot of firms. Spring arrives, enquiries triple, the crews are flat out, and the quotes from three weeks ago sit untouched — which is precisely when the pipeline is fullest and follow-up is worth the most.

What it costs

Take the quotes you sent in the last ninety days that neither converted nor received a definite no. Total them.

For most solar firms that number is uncomfortably large, and a meaningful share of it was still gettable. Every one of those jobs carries a lead cost you've already paid, a survey you've already carried out, and a design you've already done. The marginal cost of following it up properly is close to zero and the marginal revenue isn't.

What to do about it

Quote the net cost, not the gross. Show the price, the grant clearly deducted, and the figure they'll actually pay. Show the 0% VAT position on qualifying residential installations where it applies. Make the number on the page the number they need.

Include a payback line. Estimated annual saving, estimated payback period, and be conservative about it — you're in a market where over-promising has damaged trust generally. Base it on their consumption where you have it rather than a national average, and label your assumptions. A quote with honest, visible assumptions is more persuasive than one with optimistic invisible ones.

Take a position on the battery. Recommend or don't, with a reason. Note that there's no standalone SEAI grant for battery storage — batteries fall under the 0% VAT treatment when installed as part of a qualifying system rather than attracting their own grant. Customers who can't resolve this question themselves resolve it by doing nothing.

Say what happens next, with dates. Grant approval must be in place before works begin, and once approved there's an eight-month window to complete and submit. A quote that spells out the sequence turns an abstract decision into a scheduled one.

Follow up against the objection, not the calendar. Three or four touches over about a month, each addressing a different real hesitation: cost and payback, whether the roof suits it, what the grant process involves, what happens if they wait. Written once, applied to every quote automatically.

Have a long tail. A quiet quote at ninety days is worth a light touch — a note when grant terms change, a seasonal reminder. The government plans to reduce the solar grant in future years, with the scheme currently expected to run to 2029. That's a legitimate, non-pushy reason to make contact, and it's true.

Watch the seasonality. If your enquiries triple in March, your follow-up capacity needs to have been automated in February. Doing it manually means it fails in exactly the month it matters most.

If the enquiries aren't reaching you in the first place, read why the first installer to ring back wins the solar job. If the problem is jobs stalling after the order instead of before it, see how to track jobs from enquiry to commissioning.

Where OrderWolf fits

We build the quote-out-and-follow-up machinery and run it: quotes leaving the system the same day with grant and payback shown properly, a four-touch objection-led sequence firing automatically on every quote, a long-tail nurture for the quiet ones, and one CRM where you can see every outstanding quote, its age and what it's worth.

With GEV, our Irish flagship client, the B2C close rate went from 45% to 70% across a three-month deployment, with surveys booked up 8% and roughly 2.5 admin hours saved per person per day. Results from one installer — yours depend on your starting point and your market.

We work with one installer per region in EV and solar, so availability is limited by area.