Notes for owners · Sales management
Answering a hospital's equipment requirement list: a quotation the committee can compare
How a medical equipment maker lays out a quotation against a hospital's requirement list, line by line, so the purchase committee can compare specification, warranty, installation and training without ringing you.
The GullySales team · Updated 17 Oct 2026 · 6 min read
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The hospital's list has forty lines, and your usual quotation is two pages. A requirement list for equipment is read by a committee, not by one buyer, so answer it item by item in the hospital's own order and numbering. Against each line give the specification in their words and yours, with GST shown apart. Treat warranty, installation with its site work, and training as separate lines, then list what is excluded. A slightly dearer quotation that answers every column can beat a cheaper one that does not, because the committee can defend it in the minutes.
Who reads the quotation, and for what
A 150-bed hospital is equipping a new operation theatre and a sterile supply room. Around the table sit the biomedical engineer, the OT in-charge or the head of anaesthesia, the purchase manager, someone from accounts and, at a trust hospital, a trustee who signs.
Each reads a different part. The biomedical engineer checks your specification against the list and looks for one word: complies. The clinician wants to know whether it does what the department asked, and who trains the night-shift nurses. Purchase compares landed price and payment terms against two other quotes. Accounts wants tax on its own line and an advance that matches hospital policy. Few committee members read the company history.
If the list is mostly consumables, the questions change to stock, batch and credit, which how distributors answer a requirement list covers. Capital equipment is different: installation and training decide as much as the rate.
The compliance table, column by column
Open with a one-page covering letter. Then put everything that matters into one table, a row per line of the hospital's list.
| Column | What goes in it | Who looks first |
|---|---|---|
| Line number | The hospital's numbering, not your part codes | Everyone, to cross-refer |
| Their specification | Copied word for word from the list | Biomedical engineer |
| Your offer | Model, plus your figure against each point they named | Biomedical engineer, clinician |
| Complies or deviates | "Complies", or the deviation in one line with the reason | Committee chair |
| Price | Unit price, quantity, GST and total on separate lines | Purchase, accounts |
| Warranty | Period, what starts the clock, what is covered | Biomedical engineer |
| Installation and site needs | Who installs, what the hospital must have ready | Maintenance and civil team |
| Training | Who is trained, how many sessions, where | OT in-charge, nursing head |
Below the table, add three short blocks: exclusions, payment terms and validity. Do not answer a specification point with "as per brochure". The engineer will not open the brochure to find out.
Warranty: write it as your policy
"Warranty one year" leaves three questions open, and each one costs you a phone call or the order. Write the warranty as your company's own policy, in sentences you can keep:
- the start point, whether dispatch, installation or handover sign-off;
- parts, labour and engineer travel, each marked covered or not;
- accessories and consumables that fall outside it, such as probes, batteries, filters and printer paper;
- how a fault is reported and who logs it.
Do not promise a response time here that your service team cannot meet in that district. Our post on service and AMC as a sales argument deals with that promise in detail.
When the list asks for a certificate, a registration or a named standard, answer with the document you actually hold and attach it. What a device needs depends on the device and changes over time. Rules differ by state and body and change, so check with your own adviser or the regulator before you write "complies" against a regulatory line.
Installation and training get their own lines
"Installation and demonstration free" is a common line in these quotes and a useless one. The committee cannot compare it with anything.
Say who installs: your engineer, or a dealer's. Say what the site needs and who provides it. An OT light needs ceiling height and a structural fixing. A washer-disinfector needs water, a drain and the right power supply. Then say what happens if the site is not ready on the agreed day, where post-order disputes often start.
For training, name who is trained (operators, the biomedical team, or both), how many sessions, in which language, and whether a refresher for new staff is included.
For example: a patient monitor maker in Hyderabad
Imagine a maker of multipara patient monitors in Hyderabad answering a list from a 120-bed trust hospital in Bareilly. The list asked for ten bedside monitors with a central station, installation, and training for the ICU nurses.
The maker sent its usual two pages: model, price, "installation free, warranty one year". It lost to a dearer rival. When the sales head rang the biomedical engineer, the reasons came out. The committee could not tell whether the central station and the spare SpO2 probes were included. Nor could it tell who would lay the network cable to the nursing desk, or when the warranty started. The rival's table answered all three.
On the next list, from a hospital in Moradabad, the maker changed the sheet. Each line of the hospital's specification was copied into the table, and the central station was marked as included. Network points at each bed and a power backup for the station were listed as the hospital's work, with the distances. The warranty read "twelve months from installation sign-off; probes and cables not covered". Training became two sessions, one for each shift. The engineer had no questions before the meeting, and the committee compared on price and service. It was only a partial win: the maker took the order at a price ₹1.2 lakh below its first aim, and the site was not ready on the agreed day, which cost a second engineer visit of about ₹15,000. The maker, the hospitals and the figures are invented.
When a short quotation is the right answer
The full table is for lists with several items, a committee and a comparison sheet. Skip it for a single item below the hospital's small-purchase limit. Skip it too for a repeat order of a model the hospital already runs, or a nursing home where the owner decides alone. One page will do, with the same facts in plain lines. If the list is a formal tender with its own price-bid format, use their format and nothing else.
Rebuild the last list you lost
Take the last hospital list you did not win and rebuild your reply in the table above. Look for the empty column. That was the one the committee needed. Lists like this arrive only after a hospital has chosen to ask you, and the medical devices and equipment page covers how that choice is made. If you would like a quotation format your team can use on every list, built with proposal development, tell us what you need.
