You're Burning $36,000 Per Year Per Sales Rep on Quotes That Die in Silence

Most packaging plant owners don't lose money in one big dramatic moment. They lose it in a slow, quiet drip—and quotes that go nowhere are one of the biggest leaks.

I'm about to show you a number that's going to make you uncomfortable.

$36,000.

That's how much you're burning per sales rep, per year, on quotes that die in silence.

And I can prove it with simple math.

If you own or run a packaging plant or any B2B manufacturing operation this one's going to sting. But you need to see it.

Most packaging plant owners don't lose money in one big dramatic moment. No single catastrophic decision. No obvious villain.

They lose it in a slow, quiet drip that never shows up on a P&L line item.

One of the biggest drips?

Quotes that go nowhere.

Your team spends real time, real payroll dollars, preparing quotes:

• Chasing specs

• Confirming lead times

• Running numbers with the plant

• Formatting proposals

• Emailing back and forth

Then what happens?

One email goes out.

Maybe one follow-up call.

The buyer goes quiet.

Your rep moves on to the next fire.

And that quote? It just... dies.

Multiply that across weeks, months, years, and you've got a cash vacuum sitting right in the middle of your sales process.

In 2025, that's the kind of leak that pushes good plants into desperate decisions:

• Taking bad business at cost

• Cutting good people

• Accepting a lowball offer from a competitor just to get out

Let me show you the math that should terrify you.

The Real Cost of a "Dead" Quote

Forget AI. Forget buzzwords. Let's just talk numbers.

Imagine a plant doing $15M–$30M in revenue.

Nothing huge. Nothing tiny. A solid mid-sized packaging operation.

Now look at one salesperson or CSR:

They handle, say, 50 quotes per month (some small, some large).

Preparing a quote takes 30–90 minutes when you add up:

• Email back-and-forth

• Getting artwork or specs

• Checking with scheduling or ops

• Pricing, freight, margins

• Typing and formatting the final proposal

Let's be conservative: 45 minutes per quote.

50 quotes × 0.75 hours = 37.5 hours per month of quote work per rep.

That's one full week every month just building quotes.

Now ask yourself:

What percentage of those quotes get real, consistent follow-up?

Not "I called once" or "I sent a nudge."

I mean a simple, predictable pattern:

• Follow-up at 2 days

• Follow-up at 7 days

• Follow-up at 14 days

• Final check-in: "Yes, no, or not now?"

For most plants I talk to, the honest answer is:

"We don't know. It depends. It's in our reps' inboxes."

Which is another way of saying:

"We have no idea how much of that time and payroll is being thrown in the trash."

You're Paying for Two Things: Work and Silence

Every quote has two costs:

1. The cost of the work

The hours your people spend putting it together.

Their salary, benefits, and overhead.

2. The cost of the silence

• Lost deals that could've been won with just a bit more persistence

• Lost information (you never find out why you lost)

• Lost future opportunities (that contact goes somewhere else and takes their business with them)

Let's stay conservative.

If a rep's all-in cost (salary + commission + benefits + overhead) is $120,000/year, that's roughly $10,000/month.

If 25–30% of their time is spent on quotes and quote-related stuff, that's $2,500–$3,000 per month per rep just on quoting.

And if you don't have a real follow-up system?

A chunk of that $2,500–$3,000/month per rep is buying you:

• Quotes that die in inboxes

• Deals that go to louder or more consistent competitors

• Absolutely no learning about what's working or failing

Stretch that across a year:

$3,000/month × 12 months = $36,000/year per rep burned on quotes where the follow-up is "random at best."

How many reps or CSRs do you have doing this?

Multiply.

That's not "extra" margin.

That's money already going out the door.

The Silent Killer: No One Owns the Second and Third Touch

Here's the uncomfortable truth in most packaging companies:

Everybody believes "we follow up."

Almost nobody can show proof.

If I ask:

"Can you pull a list of every quote over the last 90 days and show me which ones got 2–3 follow-ups?"

Most places can't.

They can search emails. They can dig through spreadsheets. They can call a few reps and ask, "Hey, what happened with Company X?"

But they can't see it in one place, and they can't manage it.

So, what happens?

Your best, loudest, neediest customers get follow-up because they scream.

Everyone else gets "when I remember" or "when I have time."

And the quiet buyers the ones who don't chase you but will gladly give their money to the competitor who stayed present?

They quietly move on.

You don't get a phone call saying, "We chose someone else because they were more consistent."

You just stop getting orders.

Why This Matters So Much Going Into 2025

The market you're in is changing whether you acknowledge it or not:

• Bigger, more sophisticated buyers

• More demand for speed, flexibility, and reliability

• More pressure on price and margin

Buyers are busy. They're drowning in emails, vendors, and internal fires.

They are not going to chase your reps for answers.

They're going to work with whoever makes it:

• Easiest to get answers

• Easiest to get clear pricing and options

• Easiest to trust that nothing will fall through the cracks

If your sales process is still:

• Quotes built by hand

• Follow-up living in individual inboxes

• No visibility into what happens after a quote goes out

…then what you really have is hope, not a system.

And "hope" is not a strategy for 2025.

It's a plan to eventually be forced into:

• Selling at a bad price

• Selling your company

• Or cutting people you genuinely care about just to keep the lights on
  

You Don't Need to "Learn AI." You Need to Stop Bleeding Cash.

This is where a lot of owners tap out:

They hear "CRM," "AI," "automation," and their eyes glaze over.

It sounds expensive. It sounds complicated. It sounds like a whole new language.

Let me reframe it in plain English:

You don't need to become a tech company.

You need three simple things:

1. A list of every quote you've sent

In one place.

With basic info: company, amount, date sent, rep.

2. A simple, repeatable follow-up pattern

"Every quote above $X gets at least 3 touches in 21 days."

Not heroic. Not optional. Just the rule.

3. A basic system that does the nagging for you

Something that:

• Reminds your team who to follow up with today

• Tracks who replied and who didn't

• Shows you, as the owner, what's happening without having to dig through everyone's inbox

Under the hood, sure, there may be software or even some AI helping organize and prioritize this.

But you don't have to care about the buzzwords.

You only have to care about:

✅ Fewer quotes dying in silence
✅ Better use of the payroll you're already paying
✅ More deals won from the same number of opportunities

That's it.

What This Looks Like in Real Life

Picture a normal Monday in your plant.

Today (the way it usually works):

Reps open their inbox and start reacting.

They dig through old threads: "Who did I forget to call?"

They respond to squeaky-wheel customers and the latest fire.

Half the quotes from the last 30 days get zero structured follow-up.

You, as the owner, ask:

"What's going on with that big opportunity with XYZ Brands?"

You get an answer like:

"Yeah, I think I followed up… I'm waiting to hear back."

Which really means: "I don't have a system. I'm hoping they call me."

Now picture this instead:

Every morning, each rep has a short, clear list:

• These 10 quotes to follow up on

• These 5 accounts that haven't ordered in 90 days

• These 3 opportunities that need a decision

The system has already:

✅ Logged who opened the last email
✅ Logged who clicked on the quote
✅ Logged who hasn't responded at all

You, as the owner, can see at a glance:

• How many quotes went out last week

• How many got at least 2–3 follow-ups

• Which big-dollar opportunities are still hanging

Is there some tech behind that? Yes.

Do you need to understand the tech to benefit from it? No.

You just need to decide:

"We are not going to keep paying for quotes that vanish into thin air."

The First Step Is Not Software. It's Honesty.

Before you touch any tool, ask yourself:

"Do I actually know what happens to quotes after they leave our building?"

"Can I see, in one place, which ones are alive and which ones are dead?"

"Am I okay paying thousands of dollars per rep, per month, for work that may never even get a fair chance to close?"

If the honest answer is "no" or "I don't know," then you don't have a technology problem yet.

You have a visibility and discipline problem.

Tech just makes the discipline easier to live with.

If You're an Owner and This Hit a Nerve…

You're not alone.

Most packaging plants are still relying on:

• Individual memory

• Heroic effort

• And inbox archaeology

…to manage millions of dollars in opportunities.

In a calmer market, you can get away with that.

In a tighter, more competitive, more demanding market?

That's how good companies slowly slide into trouble.

You don't need to understand AI.

You do need to stop burning money on quotes that never had a real shot.

Ready to Stop the Bleeding?

If you want to talk about what a simple, no-jargon version of a better sales system could look like in your plant, I'm happy to walk through it no buzzwords, just numbers and risk.

Because "quotes that go nowhere" aren’t just annoying.

It's one of the main ways strong packaging companies quietly bleed out.

Next Steps:

• Book a Visibility Blueprint Call - 90-minute deep dive to uncover where your quotes are dying

• Watch the Full Video Breakdown - See the complete math and solution on YouTube
  

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• Your Content Marketer Can’t Fix a Broken System

• The Packaging Industry Collapse

• The $10,000 BNP Media Directory Scam

About David Marinac:

David Marinac has 35+ years of experience in the packaging industry and is the founder of the AI Sales Machine for B2B manufacturers. He helps packaging plants stop wasting money on tactics that don't work and build systems that generate revenue-ready opportunities.

Connect with David on LinkedIn
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