Request for Quotation (RFQ)

A request for quotation (RFQ) is how a customer asks a vendor for a specific, itemized price. It lists what they need — quantities, specs, dates, scope — and asks for a real quote in return. It sits between a blank contact form and a request for proposal (RFP): an RFP asks "how would you solve this?", an RFQ asks "what will this exact thing cost?"

For the vendor, an RFQ is where deals are won or lost on speed. Lead-response research puts the odds heavily with whoever answers first — a quote that arrives in seconds beats a careful one that arrives next week. The catch is that responding to an RFQ traditionally means a human reading the request, building the numbers by hand, and emailing back, often after a chain of clarifying questions.

Instant quote software collapses that cycle. Instead of a static form that drops an RFQ into an inbox, a guided flow captures the same requirements and returns a real, itemized quote immediately, then drafts the follow-up. The RFQ stops being a multi-day email thread and becomes a same-second answer.