Quoting automation for equipment suppliers
“If you ain’t first, you’re last” – Ricky Bobby
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.
- A drafted quote in seconds
- Priced from your own catalogue
- Your salesperson still approves it
Watch it price a real enquiry
Meridian Process Supply is a fictional company with a sample catalogue, so you can see the mechanics on products that are easy to follow. Your version runs on your own price list.
Rather try it yourself? Type your own enquiry into the live demo.
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. By automating the quoting process, you free your sales team to focus on whats important.
Most of your quoting loses
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.
Slow part isn't 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 tedious, boring, and time consuming. Automate it.
First one in usually wins
The same RFQ went to three suppliers. Being the quote that lands while they're still thinking about it is worth more than being five percent cheaper.
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. Your salesperson checks the price and sends it, on 40 line item quotes, this is hours saved.
See it run
An enquiry in. A drafted quote out.
This is a fictional supplier with a fictional catalogue, but the behaviour is the same. 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. Feel free to enter your own dialog.
Halvorsen Handling Equipment is invented, and so is its catalogue. Edit the text above and it will re-read it.
How it works
Every number traces back to a price list.
The interesting part isn't that a model can write an email. It's that the SKUs it isn't sure about come back as questions rather than guesses.
It reads the mailbox you already use
Connected to your Google or Microsoft account with permission to read and draft, and nothing more. No new inbox, no forwarding rules, no software for anyone to learn, no ERP integration. You can revoke it yourself in a couple of clicks.
No prices are guessed
It reads the enquiry the way a person would and matches the wording to your SKUs. Every discount, tier and total is then worked out in code from your own price list. A model is never allowed to invent a number, so any figure on a quote traces back to your price list.
If a line is ambiguous, it asks
When a request could mean two products in your catalogue, it refuses to pick one. The draft comes back with a plain question your customer can answer in a word.
A draft, never a sent email
The quote is written into your Drafts as a reply in the original conversation, priced from your catalogue and that customer's tier. It has no permission to send email, so it never can. Your salesperson opens the draft, checks it and presses send themselves.
Want to see it in action? 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. Same if you price every deal personally. A short conversation is 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. I do the build myself, I'm the same person who answers when a price file changes. No account managers, no support queue.
- One point of contact, from the first RFQ to the day it goes live
- A straight answer on the first call, not a proposal three weeks later
- Plain English. I explain what it does, not how the tech works
Pricing
Find out if it fits before you spend anything.
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 Call
Five minutes. I look at how you quote today, where your prices live, and whether the rules behind them are written down well enough for any of this to work.
- ✓An honest read on whether your quoting is the right shape for this at all
- ✓A clear yes or no, not a proposal deck and a follow-up sequence
- ✓What it would cost and how long it would take, before you commit to anything
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 a look at how you quote. Some of those calls 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
Five minutes
Five minutes on a call. I look at how you quote and tell you whether this fits, what it would cost and how long it would take.
Or email me directly at robert@rpmars.com