How to get quotes from five distributors in 24 hours instead of a week

Here is how most parts orders in a small factory actually go. Maintenance hands over a list on Monday. Purchasing splits it by likely supplier and sends four emails on Monday afternoon. One distributor answers on Tuesday morning. One answers on Thursday. One asks a question on Wednesday that takes until Friday to resolve. One never answers. The order goes out the following Monday, a week after the list arrived, and the whole time the purchasing manager has been carrying four open loops in her head.

None of the individual delays are unreasonable. Distributors are busy, lists are unclear, and email is email. But the process as a whole is designed to take a week, and it does not have to. Here is how to run a request for quotation that comes back in a day.

What an RFQ is, and what it is not

RFQ meaning, for anyone who has only seen the abbreviation: a request for quotation is a formal ask to a supplier for a price and delivery time on a specific list of items. It is different from an RFI, which asks for information, and from an RFP, which asks for a proposal on how to solve a problem. An RFQ says: here are the exact parts, tell me the price and the date.

That definition contains the reason most RFQs take a week. If the list is not exact, the supplier cannot quote it, only ask about it. Everything below follows from making the request exact enough that no question is needed.

Step 1: Send a list that can be quoted

The single biggest cause of slow quotes is a list that needs interpreting. Every line should carry the manufacturer, the manufacturer part number, a short description, the quantity and the unit. Not “24 V relay”, but “Phoenix Contact 2903370, PLC-RSC-24DC/21, 10 pcs”.

Send it as a spreadsheet. A PDF or a photo gets retyped at the other end, and retyping is where digits get transposed. If you accept an equivalent brand on a line, say so on that line. If you do not, say nothing and expect the exact part.

Ten minutes on the list saves two days of clarification emails. There is no other step with that return.

Step 2: Ask the right five suppliers, not the usual two

Most small factories send everything to the same two distributors and are surprised when both are slow on the odd lines. The fix is to ask suppliers whose catalogue actually covers the lines, and to ask enough of them that one silence does not stall the order.

For a mixed list, five is a good number. That normally means one or two broad line electrical and automation distributors, one bearing and power transmission specialist, one supplier for the mechanical or pneumatic lines, and one online catalogue distributor as a price reference. A supplier who cannot stock a line will decline it or ignore it, and that is fine, as long as someone else was asked.

Keep a short qualified supplier list with a column for what each one is good at. It takes an afternoon to build and stops the next RFQ starting from a blank address book.

Step 3: Set a deadline, and mean it

Quotes without a deadline arrive when the sales engineer gets to them. Quotes with a deadline arrive by the deadline, or you get an early “we can’t make it” which is nearly as useful.

Put the deadline in the subject line and in the first sentence. “RFQ 34 lines, reply by Tuesday 12:00.” Twenty four hours is realistic for a list of stock items sent on a working day morning. Forty eight hours is fair for a list with a few non stock lines. A week is not a deadline, it is an invitation to put it at the bottom of the pile.

Say what happens at the deadline: the order will be placed on the quotes received. Suppliers who know the order is real and time bound move it up the queue.

Step 4: Tell them what matters on this order

A distributor quoting blind will quote what they have. If you tell them what you are optimising for, they quote better. Three sentences do it.

If the priority is price, say the order will go to the lowest landed total and ask them to quote delivery included. If the priority is a date, give the date and ask them to confirm every line against it, and to say which lines they cannot meet. If the priority is speed, ask for stock lines with next day delivery and a separate lead time on the rest.

This also stops the most common failure, where the cheapest quote turns out to have a four week lead time on the line you needed first.

Step 5: Specify the reply format

The reply is where the week gets lost again, because five quotes come back in five formats and someone has to line them up. Ask for the reply in your own spreadsheet, with the price, lead time and quoted part number filled in per line, and delivery cost stated separately. Most distributors will do this if asked, and the ones who will not are telling you something about how they handle the order too.

Ask explicitly that any substitution is flagged on the line. Ask for the validity period. Ask that missing lines are marked as not quoted rather than left blank, so you know the difference between “no” and “forgot”.

A simple RFQ template in Excel

An rfq template excel users can set up once looks like this. A header block with your company, delivery address, the RFQ number, the date sent and the reply deadline. Then the line table: line number, manufacturer, manufacturer part number, description, quantity, unit, and a column for “equivalent acceptable”. Then, to the right, the columns the supplier fills in: quoted part number, unit price, lead time in days, notes. Under the table, three lines for the supplier to fill in: delivery cost to your address, validity date, and payment terms.

Send the same file to all five. The replies come back in the same shape and comparing them takes minutes rather than an afternoon.

The follow up problem

Even with all of the above, one supplier in five will miss the deadline. The difference is that you now know it on Tuesday at noon rather than discovering it on Friday, and you can either chase once or place the order without them.

The larger cost of the traditional RFQ process is not the waiting, it is the attention. Four open loops for a week, each one needing a mental check every morning, on top of a job that already has enough of them. A clear deadline and a fixed reply format shrink that to one check at one time.

When even 24 hours of chasing is too much

Everything in this guide is about running the RFQ process well by hand. It works when someone does it every time. It also depends on the purchasing manager doing it every time, for every list, and building the comparison afterwards.

PartM8 exists for the factories that would rather not. You submit the parts list once, with manufacturer part numbers checked against a catalogue before anything is sent. It goes only to suppliers whose catalogue matches the lines, each of them quoting against a visible deadline. Within 24 hours you get one consolidated offer, not five. Each line shows its landed price, its lead time and its supplier, and the offer is assembled by the rule you chose: lowest price, best price by a date, or fastest delivery. Unmatched lines are listed as unmatched rather than quietly dropped. Accept it or not, at no cost either way. The five supplier RFQ still happens. You just stop being the one who runs it.

Frequently asked questions

What does RFQ mean? RFQ stands for request for quotation. It is a request to a supplier for the price and delivery time of a specific list of parts, as opposed to an RFI (request for information) or an RFP (request for proposal).

How long should suppliers have to reply to an RFQ? For a list of standard stock items sent on a working day, 24 hours is realistic. Allow 48 hours if the list includes non stock or special order lines. Always state the deadline in the subject line and say the order will be placed on the quotes received by then.

How many suppliers should I send an RFQ to? Enough that the whole list is covered and one silence does not stall the order. For a mixed industrial parts list, five is a practical number: two broad distributors, two specialists and one online catalogue as a reference.

What should an RFQ template include? Your company and delivery address, an RFQ number and reply deadline, and a line table with manufacturer, part number, description, quantity and unit. Leave columns for the supplier to fill in the quoted part number, unit price, lead time and notes, plus delivery cost, validity date and payment terms.