Writing Quotes, Proposals, and Follow-Ups with ChatGPT

If you already sell a service, you already know the slow part that is not the work itself. You walk the job, you decide the price, and then you spend the evening turning that decision into an email a customer can understand. ChatGPT can draft those words. It should not decide the price, the exclusions, or how hard you push.

This guide is the save-time path. It assumes the business is yours, or you are writing with the owner's figures in front of you and you are not the estimator. If you want to sell this writing to other businesses, that is a different offer, described as the quote pack in How to Make Money With ChatGPT. The prompt there treats the facts as a client's and includes a fact sheet you hand over. The prompts below treat the facts as yours.

Decide the job before you open the chat

Write the commercial decisions on a fact sheet before you ask for prose. If a line is blank, the draft should stay blank there. A model will happily fill a blank with a “typical” range. That range is how quotes drift.

Job

One sentence a customer would recognize. “Recurring clean of a two-bed flat” is a job. “Premium cleaning solutions” is not.

Included

The tasks you will actually do on this visit, in your words.

Excluded

The tasks customers often assume and that you will not do. Name them.

Price

The figure you will charge, written as a number, not a feeling.

Timing

When you can start, and how long this visit takes. Only if you know.

Acceptance

How they say yes: a reply, a deposit you already require, a form you already use.

If you do not know the price yet, close the chat and go price the job. A draft that says “competitive rates” is a delay, not a quote.

What the draft has to contain

Ask for four short pieces, not a sales essay.

1. A quote email with a subject line. The price appears once, in your figure.
2. A one-page proposal: job, included, excluded, price, timing, how to accept.
3. A follow-up a few days later that offers to answer questions. It does not apologize for existing, and it does not invent a deadline.
4. A last note that closes the loop. If they have gone quiet, you leave the door open without a guilt trip.

You also ask for a check block: every number and date the draft used, listed so you can compare it to the fact sheet in one pass. That block is for you. It does not go to the customer.

Prompt

Draft a quote email, a one-page proposal, and two follow-ups for my business. I have already priced the job. Use only the facts below. If a number or date is missing, write [MY FIGURE] and do not invent a typical price, a discount, or a deadline. Do not add testimonials, star ratings, or scarcity.

My business name:
Customer name (or "the customer" if I want this anonymized):
Job, in one sentence:
Included:
Excluded:
Price, exactly:
Timing:
How they accept:
Constraints I must mention:
Phrases I actually say to customers:

Write:
1. Subject line and quote email. State the price once.
2. One-page proposal with included, excluded, price, timing, and how to accept.
3. A short follow-up for a few days later.
4. A short closing note if I do not hear back.
5. A check block listing every number, date, and proper noun you used.

Keep my voice plain. Do not call the work premium, seamless, or world-class unless those words are in my phrases.

When you only need the next email

Sometimes the quote is already sent, in your own words, and you only need a follow-up that does not sound like a template you found. Give the model the original email, or a short recap, and tell it what you will not say.

Write one follow-up email to a quote I already sent. Do not change the price, the scope, or the timing. Do not add a discount or a deadline. Do not imply the customer is rude for being slow. If I left a line blank, omit it.

What I sent (price and scope only):
How many days ago:
The one question I am willing to answer:
Sign-off I use:

Keep it under 90 words.

A fictional walk-through

Put it back in your mouth

Read the email aloud. If you would not say a sentence at the door, take it out. Customers can tell when a note was inflated. They can also tell when a sentence is yours. Keep two or three phrases you actually use, the ones you put in the brief, and let the rest be ordinary.

• Swap “I would be happy to assist” for the verb you use. Many owners just say “I can start Tuesday.”
• Delete adjectives that praise your own work. The scope is the praise, if the scope is specific.
• Keep the exclusions even if they make the email longer. A short email that hides an exclusion creates the next argument.

What the draft is not allowed to add

• A discount, a bundle, or a “typical” range.
• A deadline you invented to create urgency.
• A testimonial, a rating, a years-in-business claim, or a certification you did not type into the brief.
• An extra task that makes the yes more likely and the visit more expensive for you.
• A promise about results you do not control, such as a healthier home or a guaranteed same-day reply forever.

Then run the checking guide. For a quote, the fact sweep is mostly numbers. Do it anyway. One slipped figure is the entire risk.

What not to paste

A quote needs the job and the price. It rarely needs the customer's alarm code, key safe, gate code, or a photo of the inside of their home. Leave those in your own notes. If a full address is necessary to describe travel or access, decide that on purpose, and remember that a chat may be stored under the vendor's current policy. This guide does not describe ChatGPT's settings. They change, and they were not re-checked here. Read the current policy on openai.com before you paste something a customer would not want stored.

Payment card numbers do not belong in the draft at all. Your acceptance line can say “reply to book” or name the payment method you already use, without pasting an account number.

Whose words they are

When the business is yours, the finished email is yours. If you borrowed a customer's long message as the brief, their message is still theirs. Do not turn their private note into a public sample. Change the details if you later show a before-and-after to someone else, and say that you changed them.

This is not legal advice. It is a working rule that keeps you out of the obvious mess: do not publish other people's words, and do not let a model pass their details into a sentence you did not mean to keep.

If you want to sell this instead

You can offer the same pack to other owners once you can keep their numbers stable and you are willing to show them the fact sheet. That offer, including a fictional painter and the client-fit notes, is service 2 in the main guide. Practice on your own quotes first. Your own business is the cheapest place to learn which sentences you refuse to send.

Shorter fill-in versions of the quote email and the follow-up are in the prompt library. Use them only after the price is already written down.