What to put in an RFQ reply so the buyer can compare you

The RFQ came with a drawing, a quantity schedule and a sheet of commercial terms, due by Friday. Write the reply so it drops straight into the buyer's comparison. Use the buyer's item numbers in the buyer's order, and the drawing revision you quoted against. Put tooling and piece price on separate lines, quote the price basis that was asked for, and list every deviation in one table on page one. Your offer will sit beside two or three others. The one that can be read without phoning you is far more likely to be shortlisted, even when it is not the cheapest.

What happens to your reply on the buyer's desk

At an auto component plant or an engineering OEM, an RFQ reply is often read twice. The development or quality engineer reads it first and asks one question: does this offer make the part on the drawing? Offers that pass go to purchase, where the prices go into a comparative statement and the landed cost of each is worked out.

So your reply has two readers with two different jobs. Mix them up and both have to hunt. A tolerance you cannot hold, buried on page four, gets found after you are ranked, and reads as a trick. A price quoted ex-works when delivered was asked for leaves a blank in the freight column, and blanks can get marked "not comparable".

How buyers choose which units get an RFQ is in this post. This one starts once it is in your inbox.

Answer in the buyer's order, with their numbers

Use their item numbers, part numbers and drawing number with its revision letter. If the RFQ has an annexure or a price schedule format, fill that in and use your letterhead only as a covering letter. Do not retype their schedule into your own layout. Every line you renumber is a line someone has to match by hand.

Write the revision on every page of the price schedule. An offer against revision B when the buyer is now on C is either re-quoted or dropped, and nobody will necessarily tell you which.

Separate what is paid once from what repeats

Small units lose comparisons here that they should win. A pressed or moulded part carries two costs: the tool, paid once, and the piece, paid on every order. Spread the tool over the first lot and your piece price looks the highest on the sheet.

Give the buyer these lines separately:

• Tooling or development cost, with what it covers (die, fixture, pattern, gauges) and who owns the tool once it is paid for.
• Piece price at each quantity asked for. Three annual volumes in the RFQ means three prices.
• The raw material basis. Grade, the rate you assumed and its date, and how your price follows the steel or polymer rate.
• Two lead times: first-off samples, and a production lot after approval.
• Price basis, on the buyer's terms: delivered to the plant, packed in their bins or yours, with freight shown even if it is included.

The deviation sheet

Put this table on the first page, before any price. List every clause where you comply, differ or need an answer. A short list of honest deviations reads better than a "complied" stamp that unravels at the first sample.

Where you deviate, price both options if you can. "We hold ±0.15 mm, or ±0.10 mm with the progressive tool at this extra cost" gives the buyer a choice; "as per our capability" gives a reason to move on.

For example: a pressing unit in Waluj

Imagine a sheet-metal pressing unit in Waluj, Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar, replying to an RFQ from a two-wheeler component maker at Chakan for a set of brackets. The unit and its details are invented.

The unit quoted its usual way. One piece price, with the die cost spread over the first lot. Ex-works Waluj, because that is how its local customers buy. A note in the covering email said the hole tolerance would need discussion. The quotation itself said "as per drawing".

On the buyer's sheet, its piece price was the highest of three and its freight cell was empty. The quality engineer found the tolerance note in an email thread nobody had attached to the file, and marked the offer "not comparable". Nobody phoned.

On the next RFQ from the same buyer, the unit filled in the buyer's price schedule in the buyer's order, with tooling on its own line, piece prices at all three volumes and delivered Chakan prices. The deviation table went on page one with both tolerance options priced. The offer reached the technical discussion, which is all a reply can do. It did not win the lot: the tooling line made the first-year cost look high, and a rival with an existing die got the order. The unit lost that one on cost and kept a place on the list.

When not to send the full format

Some RFQs are marked "budgetary": the engineer needs a figure for a project estimate and the drawing will change. Give a price range per item, two lines of assumptions and a note that the firm offer follows the released drawing.

Do not quote at all when the drawing is incomplete or the revision is unclear. Ask your questions before the query deadline in the RFQ, and quote once they are answered.

When you cannot make the part, say so in a short letter that names what you can make. A purchase engineer is more likely to remember who declined politely than who went silent.

Build the deviation table first

Open the RFQ on your desk now. Before anyone prices it, write every clause and drawing note down the left of the table and mark each one. Then fill in the buyer's own schedule, with tooling on its own line, and keep that reply as your format. For quotations followed up after they are sent, see quotation and proposal follow-up. The wider picture for factories is on the manufacturing hub. To have your next few RFQ replies looked at with you, tell us what you need.