Follow up with the right missing details

A week passes and there is no reply. The usual follow-up forwards the original with "any update?" on top, which asks the recipient to do exactly the work they have not done yet.

A follow-up that works does the opposite: it makes replying smaller.

Five things that help

Restate the ask in one line - Not the whole enquiry. "Following up on the outlet designation for XF-25" is enough to locate the thread.

Say which part you need first - If you asked five things, name the one that is blocking you. A supplier can often answer one question today and the rest later.

Offer the interim answer - "If the full specification takes longer, confirming the outlet alone would let us proceed" turns a blocked reply into an easy one.

Give the deadline and what happens after it - "We need this by Thursday to hold the slot" is information, not pressure. It also lets an honest supplier tell you they cannot make it.

Re-attach everything - Do not rely on the thread. Attachments get lost when messages are forwarded internally, and an unanswered enquiry has usually been forwarded.

Why it went quiet

Consider too that the silence may not be reluctance. The commonest reasons an enquiry goes quiet are that it reached the wrong person internally, that it is waiting on a factory answer nobody has chased, or that a question in it cannot be answered and the reply is stuck behind it.

All three are helped by the same move: ask which question is holding it up. "Is there something in the enquiry you need from us first?" gets a useful reply remarkably often.

Mention anything that changed

And if you have changed anything since the original enquiry, say so in the follow-up. A supplier working on the old version will otherwise answer the wrong question, slowly.