Every shop has a stack of open estimates: the remote start somebody priced in October, the speaker and amp package a customer wanted to “talk to the wife about,” the tint job that stalled on price. Somebody at your counter did the selling on every one of those. The customer picked the product, picked the install, said “let me think about it,” and never came back.
A sale is the best excuse there is to call those people back. The trouble is figuring out which quotes the sale actually covers, and that means opening estimates one at a time. Nobody has an afternoon for that while a sale is running. So the sale runs, the walk-ins get the deal, and the people who were already halfway to yes never hear about it. That’s revenue and profit the shop already did the work for, left on the table.
There’s a quieter leak on the other side of it. A quote written during a sale keeps the sale price after the sale ends. Weeks later the customer walks in holding it, and nobody at the counter notices the price expired until it’s already rung up.
So I built a way into 1sixty8 Manifold to connect a shop’s sales to its open estimates, and it comes in three parts.
First, it finds the money. A report lists every open estimate that a running sale, or one starting soon, would make cheaper. For each one you get the customer, their phone number, the salesperson who wrote it, and exactly how much they’d save, with the biggest savings at the top so the easiest calls come first. It prices each quote the same way the counter would, so the number is real, and it leaves out anything already won, lost, or already at the sale price. Because it works on upcoming sales too, you can plan your calls before the sale even opens.
Second, it brings them back. Each sale has its own page listing those estimates. One tap texts a customer, and Send All texts everyone on the list who has opted in to texts. The text moves the estimate to the sale price and sends the customer the new total, what they save, and a link. The estimate they open shows the original prices struck through, and they can approve it right there on their phone. If you take deposits, they pay the deposit on the same page, and you set the deposit for each sale, so a holiday event can ask for more. You write the message in your own words and see a live preview of exactly what the customer will read. Only customers who opted in get texted, and anyone who replied STOP never hears from you again.
Third, you can see who came back. A Sent list shows every text from the sale, who sent it, what it took off, and where it stands now: waiting, approved, deposit paid, or declined, with the totals across the top. When the sale is over, you can actually tell whether it worked.
And the expired quote gets handled too. Every estimate now says how long its sale price is good for, on screen, on paper, and on the customer’s approval page: “Sale price good through Nov 30.” That deadline helps close the deal. If a customer comes back after the sale ended, the estimate flags it and you choose whether to move it to today’s price or keep honoring the sale on purpose. Either way it’s noted on the customer’s record. Nothing changes behind anyone’s back.
The people on that list already wanted the work. The selling is done and the sale is the nudge, which makes it some of the cheapest revenue a shop can get. A deposit up front means a committed customer and booked bay time, not another maybe. It turns a sale from hoping people walk in into going and getting the people who already wanted it.
If you’ve got a stack of open estimates and a sale on the calendar, send me a note and I’ll show you how it works.