Guides / Process

Declining the Right RFQs Is a Capability, Not a Lost Sale

September 25, 2026

Quoting a stamped part is not free. Between print review, die concept, material calculation and secondary operations, a serious quote can absorb half a day of engineering time. A shop that quotes everything is not hungry, it is spending its scarcest resource on work it will not win.

Here is a five minute scoring method, and what to do with the requests that fail it.

Score the request on five axes

1. Press and die fit. Does the part fit your tonnage, bed size and die type as regular work? A progressive job at a shop that mostly runs single stage is a loss even when the press is big enough.

2. Volume fit. Is the annual volume inside the band you are set up for? Low volume on progressive tooling and high volume on single stage are both mismatches that look fine on the print.

3. Material fit. Grade, thickness and coil width you run every week, or something you would be learning on the buyer’s order.

4. Secondary operations. Plating, heat treat, welding, assembly and packaging. If half the value sits in operations you subcontract, your margin sits in someone else’s schedule.

5. Commercial reality. Is there a real volume, a real date and a named application, or is this a budget number that will be used to squeeze an incumbent? A request with no quantity and no date is usually the second one.

Requests scoring well on four or five deserve real effort. Requests failing press fit or volume fit deserve a fast, polite no.

The three categories

Quote it. Fits the press, the die type, the volume and the material. Price it properly and include tooling clearly, as set out in stamping tooling cost and die ownership.

Quote it with a change. Fits everything except one feature: a draw depth at the edge of your window, a tolerance tighter than the function needs, a material you would swap. Quote the part as drawn, then quote the alternative with the saving next to it. This category wins more orders than the first, because it proves you read the print.

Decline it. Wrong press, wrong die type, wrong volume band, or an enquiry with no quantity and no date. Decline early, while a fast answer still looks like judgement rather than neglect.

How to decline so the next request still comes

Three sentences:

We are not the right shop for this one. The 60 mm draw depth on 1.5 mm stainless is past what we run reliably, so a quote from us would be optimistic. If the depth can come down to around 40 mm we would be glad to look again, and either way we can point you at the right kind of shop.

That message costs nothing and does three things: it is honest, it gives the buyer something actionable, and it tells them you know the difference between what you run and what you wish you ran. Buyers repeat that to colleagues.

Track what you decline

Keep a one line record per request: quoted, won, lost, declined, and why. After a quarter the pattern is visible, and it is almost always the same one: shops win a narrow band of work and quote far outside it. That is fixable at intake, not at pricing.

It is also the information to send us. The tighter your stated capability, the better the previews get, which is the whole point of the capability profile and of how shops qualify for the leads we match.

Register your shop with your real limits on it, not your aspirational ones. We reply within 24 business hours.

Frequently asked questions

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