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Most quotations that fail do not lose on price. They lose because the quote arrived after the buyer had already shortlisted, because it carried no delivery date, or because nobody followed up inside the validity window. Of the quotations issued on VendorStocks, ⟨X⟩ per cent convert to an order. The commonest single gap in the ones that do not is ⟨finding⟩.
We can see conversion across every quote issued on the platform, including all the ones that went nowhere. That is a view no individual dealer gets of his own market, because a dealer only sees his own quotes and never learns what the buyer did next.
The four places a deal dies
1. Before you quoted. The buyer sent the RFQ to five dealers. Three replied within the day, you replied on day three, and by then the comparison had a shape and you were being used to check it. Our median time from RFQ to first quotation is ⟨N⟩ ⟨hours/days⟩, and the quotes arriving in the first ⟨period⟩ convert at a noticeably different rate from the rest. ⟨Add the actual comparison here — this is the single most useful number in the article.⟩
2. In the quotation itself. You quoted a rate and nothing else. No dispatch date, no stock position, no freight amount. The buyer cannot compare it against a quote that has all three, so either he calls you to fill the gaps — costing both of you a day — or he quietly drops you.
3. In the silence after. The quote was good, the buyer got busy, the validity lapsed, and by the time anybody looked at it again the prices had moved and the whole thing restarted. Nobody decided against you. The deal simply expired.
4. At the buyer’s internal approval. Your quote won, and then sat with somebody’s manager for three weeks. You never knew you had won, so you stopped chasing. This one is invisible from the dealer’s side and it is more common than most dealers believe.
Notice that only one of those four is about price.
Response time
The strongest finding we have from platform data is about speed, and it is not subtle. ⟨State your figures: median time to first quote, and how conversion differs between fast and slow quotes.⟩
The mechanism is not that buyers reward speed for its own sake. It is that the first serious quote sets the frame. It establishes what the item should cost, what delivery is reasonable, and what a complete quotation looks like. Everything after it is read as a comparison against that frame. Being first is not about being eager — it is about being the reference point.
The practical consequence for a dealer: a fast, slightly conservative quote beats a slow, carefully optimised one. If you need two days to work out your sharpest rate, send a same-day quote with a clear validity and revise it if needed. Silence while you calculate reads exactly like disinterest.
The missing field that stalls more quotes than price
The dispatch date.
A quote with a rate and no date is not a quote a buyer can act on, because he is not buying a price, he is buying an arrival. He either has to call you — which costs a day and makes you the harder supplier to deal with — or he has to guess, and buyers guess pessimistically.
“Ex-stock” does not solve this. It is an adjective, and the buyer has learned that it means “I am fairly confident I can get this.” Give him a date, conditional on the PO: “dispatch on or before the 14th if the PO is released by the 11th.” That sentence does more for conversion than two per cent off the rate, and it costs you nothing except the discipline of meaning it.
The same applies to freight. “Extra at actuals” is not a number and it cannot be compared, so it becomes a reason to prefer the quote that did give a number.
Validity, and why short helps you
Dealers set long validity periods thinking it is generous. It works against you twice.
A long validity means the buyer has no reason to decide this week, so the quote sits. And a price held for thirty days in a market where copper and steel move has to be padded to cover that risk, which makes you more expensive than the dealer quoting seven days.
Seven days, stated plainly, with a line saying you will happily requote after that. It creates a natural reason to follow up — you are not chasing, you are telling him his quote is expiring — and it lets you quote your real number.
Following up without becoming the vendor who pesters
Three contacts, with a reason each time.
Day one or two: confirmation. Short. “Sent the quote for the 100A MCCBs — anything you need clarified before you compare?” This is not a chase, it is an offer, and it catches the buyer who had a question and did not bother to ask.
Around day five: the validity note. “Quote expires Friday — shall I hold the rate or revise it?” This is a legitimate reason to make contact and it forces a small decision, which is often enough to surface the real status.
After expiry: the close-out. “Quote has lapsed — do you want me to requote, or has this gone another way?” The value of this one is not the deal. It is the answer. A dealer who never asks never learns why he lost, and a buyer will usually tell you if you make it easy.
What kills goodwill is contact without content. Four “any update sir?” messages in a week teach the buyer to stop opening your messages, and that damage outlasts the deal.
When you should not chase
Not every lost quote is recoverable, and chasing the unrecoverable ones eats the follow-up capacity the live deals need.
A budgetary enquiry sent to eight vendors in the same hour is somebody building a number for an estimate, not somebody buying. A quote requested against a tender that has not been awarded is one you will hear about in four months or never. A buyer who will not give a delivery location or a quantity is not ready to purchase. All of these deserve a good quotation. None of them deserves a fourth phone call.
We would rather tell sellers on our own platform which enquiries to deprioritise than have them treat every RFQ as equally live, because the dealers who chase everything are the ones who are slowest on the enquiries that were actually going to close.
The judgment is not about the buyer’s seriousness. It is about whether a decision is currently possible at his end. If it is not, no amount of following up creates one.
What the platform view shows that a dealer’s own view cannot
A dealer sees his quotes and his orders. He infers the rest.
What the aggregate shows is which enquiries convert for anybody, which is a different question from which enquiries convert for you. ⟨If your data supports it, state what share of RFQs result in no order from any seller. That single figure reframes the whole problem for a dealer — a large part of what he experiences as “losing” was never a live deal for anyone.⟩
That is not comforting exactly, but it is useful. It means the improvement available to most dealers is not winning a larger share of a fixed pool. It is identifying the live pool faster and putting the follow-up effort there.
The short version
Quote fast, even if the rate is conservative. Put a dispatch date and a freight amount in every quotation. Set a seven-day validity and use its expiry as your reason to follow up. Make three contacts, each with content. Then stop, and ask the buyer what happened — because the answer is the only free market research you will ever get.
Related reading: How to write an RFQ that gets comparable quotes back · How to sell electrical products online in India · Should a distributor publish prices online?
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