Why do distributors decline RFQs, and how do you stop?

Why do busy desks decline RFQs?

Because quoting is desk labor and the desk is finite. Distributors we talk to average about 30 minutes of desk time per quote, and real turnaround stretches to hours or days once clarifications and availability checks stack up. At one distributor we talk to, a single inside salesperson does about 100 quotes a day and still works three hours past close.

When the inbox brings more requests than the day has half-hours, the desk triages. Known accounts get quoted first, clean requests beat messy ones, and the RFQ that arrives as a voice note or a photographed handwritten list sinks to the bottom of the pile until the bottom means never. That triage is where the number comes from: at busy desks, distributors we talk to decline 30 to 50 percent of inbound RFQs for capacity. Nobody decided those orders were bad business. The hours ran out first.

What does a declined RFQ actually cost?

The direct cost is the order that never existed. A declined RFQ is not a quote lost on price or terms; it was never priced at all. That is revenue handed back at the door, and it is invisible in every report, because the ERP only records the quotes you wrote.

The compounding cost is worse. The contractor who got silence sends the next RFQ to your competitor first, and the small, messy account you declined this year is the one that would have grown into a house account. Declining does not just skip an order. It trains customers to stop asking.

How do you stop declining RFQs without hiring another desk?

The reflex fix is another inside salesperson. That buys hours at full salary and changes nothing about the work: the new hire still reads, retypes, matches, and prices one request at a time, and the desk is back at capacity by next season. The durable fix changes what a quote costs to produce.

Start in Assist mode, where every draft waits for approval, and watch the Human Edit Rate to see how often drafts need correction. As it falls, move the requests you choose to Guarded or Autopilot. Once drafting stops costing desk time, declining stops being a symptom of a full desk.

• ▪One queue: a catch-all inbox plus channel routing, so email, PDF attachments, WhatsApp, fax, and voice notes (English, Spanish, Hebrew, and Yiddish) land in one auditable place instead of five phones.
• ▪Automated drafting: line items extracted and matched against your own item file, customer price levels pulled from the ERP, a complete draft quote ready before a human touches it.
• ▪Human approval: a reviewer opens an inbox of drafted quotes and approves, edits, or escalates. The judgment stays; the retyping goes.

What changes when same-day is the default?

The decline becomes a decision instead of a default. You still turn down work, but for margin or fit, chosen on purpose, not because the desk was full on a Tuesday. Every channel gets answered the same day, the requests you used to skip become the accounts that grow, and the inside salesperson goes home at close.

Measure it honestly. Count the RFQs you declined last month, then count again once every request is drafted automatically and a human only approves. That delta is the revenue you were handing back.