Quoting automation for equipment suppliers
Your competitor quoted them yesterday.
Every sale starts with an RFQ, and the quote that lands first usually wins. Yours is waiting on a stock check, a price file, and whoever is free to look at it.
The teardown costs nothing.
- A drafted quote waiting before you've read the email
- Priced from your own catalogue, tiers and lead times
- Your salesperson still checks it and sends it
The cost of quoting by hand
Your best salesperson spends most of the week on quotes that lose.
That's not a failure, it's just how equipment supply works. But it means the price of producing a quote is one of the few numbers in your business you can move without selling any more than you already do.
Most of your quoting loses
Win rates in equipment supply usually sit somewhere around a quarter. Three out of four quotes produce nothing, and every one of them costs the same to put together. Cutting what a quote costs you matters more than winning a few more of them.
The slow part isn't the typing
Working out which models they actually mean, checking stock and lead time, pulling current cost, applying the right customer tier. Typing it into your system is the last two minutes of a forty minute job.
First one in usually wins
The same RFQ went to three of you. Being the quote that lands while they're still thinking about it is worth more than being five percent cheaper, and it costs you nothing to be that quote.
Drafted in seconds. Priced by you.
The RFQ arrives and a quote is already sitting there, line items matched to your catalogue, stock and lead times filled in, your customer's tier applied. Anything it isn't sure about is flagged as a question rather than guessed at. Your salesperson checks the price and sends it, the same as they do now, except the forty minutes in front of that already happened.
See it run
An enquiry in. A drafted quote out.
This is a fictional supplier with a fictional catalogue, but the behaviour is the real thing. Note what happens with the messy enquiry: where a person would have to stop and ask, it stops and asks too, rather than picking one and sounding certain.
How it works
Proof on your own quotes, before you spend anything.
You shouldn't have to take my word for whether this works on your catalogue. So the first thing I do is rebuild quotes you have already sent, and you judge the result against the real thing.
You send me five RFQs
Five recent enquiries and the five quotes that went out in response. That's the whole ask. No access to your systems, no credentials, no meetings with your IT person.
I reproduce them, free
I rebuild those five quotes from the RFQ and your price list, then you put them side by side with what your team actually sent. Either they match or they don't, and you'll know inside a week.
I build it on your catalogue
Your SKUs, your customer tiers, your lead times, drafting into whatever your team already quotes from. Nothing new for anyone to learn and nothing sent without a human pressing send.
I keep it current
Price files change monthly, suppliers get added, margin rules shift and product lines get dropped. Left alone this quietly goes stale, which is what the retainer is actually for.
Want to see one before you send anything? Here's a real enquiry turned into a priced quote, questions and all.
See it run →When I'll tell you not to bother
If everything you sell is configured to order, this is the wrong tool and I'll say so. Same if your owner prices every deal personally, or if most of your enquiries come in over the phone rather than by email. The teardown is free partly because it's the fastest way for both of us to find that out.
Who you'll be working with
It's just me. And that's the point.
I'm Robert. When you send those five RFQs, I'm the one who rebuilds them. I do the build myself, on the tools your team already quotes from, and I'm the same person who answers when a price file changes or a draft comes out wrong. No account managers, no support queue, no being handed off.
- One point of contact, from the first RFQ to the day it goes live
- Your teardown back within a week, usually sooner
- Plain English. I explain what it does, not how the tech works
Pricing
The teardown is free. You pay once you've seen it work.
Find out whether this works on your catalogue before you spend anything at all. If it doesn't, I'll tell you, and you've spent one email and a week of waiting rather than a budget. All prices in USD.
Step 1
The Teardown
Send me five recent RFQs and the quotes that went out. I rebuild them from your price list, and you judge the result against the real thing.
- ✓Five of your own quotes, reproduced from nothing but the original enquiry
- ✓Put side by side with what your team actually sent, line by line
- ✓An honest read on whether your pricing rules are written down well enough for this to work at all
- ✓Yours to keep, and to hand to anyone else you'd rather build it
Free
no catch, no obligation
Short call first, to check your quoting is the right shape
Step 2
The Build
$1,500
Your catalogue, your customer tiers, your lead times, drafting into whatever your team quotes from today. Fixed price, agreed before anything starts, and nothing goes to a customer without one of your people sending it.
Step 3
Keeping It Running
$600/mo
Price files land monthly, suppliers change, lines get dropped and margin rules move. This is someone keeping the drafts accurate as your catalogue does, and tuning it as you see which ones need the most correcting. Cancel whenever you like.
No contracts, no lock-in. Whether the monthly is worth it depends on your average order value and how many quotes you send, and we'll both know those numbers after the teardown. Some teardowns end with me saying your pricing is too bespoke for this. The build is a one-off. What I'd rather be judged on is whether the drafts are still worth reading in a year.
Get in touch
Send me five RFQs
Five recent enquiries and the five quotes that went out in reply. I'll rebuild them from your price list and send them back for you to compare. It costs you nothing, and it answers the only question that matters: does this actually work on your catalogue.
Or email me directly at robert@rpmars.com