How distributors can turn quotes around faster

Why quote speed gets so much attention

Ask any inside sales manager at a distributor and you'll hear the same thing: the first good quote back often gets the order. The buyer has a job to fill. If your number arrives while they're still waiting on two others, you're in the lead.

The research people cite most often for this is a study by InsideSales.com with Dr. James Oldroyd, then at MIT's Sloan School of Management. It was presented in October 2007 and covered three years of data from six companies, more than 15,000 web leads and more than 100,000 call attempts. Its findings are striking:

• The odds of qualifying a lead fell 21 times when the first call came at 30 minutes instead of 5.
• The odds of reaching the lead at all fell more than tenfold within the first hour.
• Between 5 and 30 minutes, the odds of making contact dropped 100 times.

How much the odds fell compared with calling in 5 minutes

Lead Response Management study, six companies, 15,000+ web leads. Times lower than at 5 minutes.

1. Qualify the leadCalled at 10 minutes4x lower
2. Reach the leadCalled at 10 minutes5x lower
3. Qualify the leadCalled at 30 minutes21x lower
4. Reach the leadCalled at 30 minutes100x lower

Source: InsideSales.com/MIT Lead Response Management study, presented Oct. 16, 2007 (archived copy).

Be careful with what this study is. It measured web leads followed up by phone, not RFQs. "Qualify" meant the lead agreed to start a sales conversation, and the study says it did not look at close rates. The data came from InsideSales.com's own system, and InsideSales.com sold lead-response software. It's also nearly 20 years old.

So it doesn't prove that a faster quote wins more orders. What it shows is how fast interest fades when someone reaches out and waits. A buyer who sends an RFQ and hears nothing for a day is in the same spot. They keep shopping.

Where quote time actually goes

Walk through a typical line-item RFQ at a distributor. It arrives as an email with a PDF or a spreadsheet attached. Distributors' customers already lean on email: in a 2016 Distribution Strategy Group study of more than 3,500 distributor customers, about 74% said they order by email frequently or very frequently. That study counted orders, not RFQs, and it's dated, but anyone who works an inside sales desk will recognize it.

Then the rep does this, line by line:

Only one row in that table is judgment. The rest is reading and looking things up. That's why a 40-line RFQ can sit for hours: not because pricing is hard, but because the rep has to touch 40 lines in three systems before they can even think about price.

It also crowds out selling. In Salesforce's 2022 State of Sales survey of 7,775 sales professionals, reps said they spend just 28% of their week actually selling. That's a vendor survey across all industries, not just distribution, but the pattern is familiar.

A rep shouldn't spend an hour finding facts so they can spend two minutes on the part that needs them.

What your ERP already does, and what it doesn't

Most distribution ERPs can store a customer's part numbers next to yours. That helps a lot, once someone has set it up.

• Infor SX.e (CloudSuite Distribution) sets up customer product cross-references, and a rep can type the customer's number in line entry. But if no cross-reference exists, Infor says the line is still created without the customer's product. Someone has to notice.
• Oracle NetSuite lets you assign customer part numbers to items and use them on sales orders and invoices. It needs the Supply Chain Management SuiteApp and only supports inventory and assembly items.

Neither one reads an emailed RFQ. The cross-reference table only helps after a person has read the PDF and typed the customer's numbers in. And the table is only as good as the matches people have saved. A customer who sends a competitor's part number or a plain description falls straight through.

Where the other side has a point

Speed is not the only thing buyers weigh, and a fast wrong quote is worse than a slow right one.

• Price errors are already common. In a March 2026 Distribution Strategy Group and Cavallo report drawn from 84 industry participants, 38% of orders needed someone to step in on pricing by hand. The authors estimate that gaps like this cost distributors 3-5% of revenue a year. That estimate covers several causes, not only quotes, and Cavallo sells software.
• Buyers notice wrong information. In a 2024 survey of 1,000 B2B buyers by Sana Commerce, a software vendor, 29% cited a lack of accurate pricing information and 28% cited inaccurate stock levels. That was about ordering online, but the lesson carries over.
• The quote is one moment in a longer decision. Gartner's research found B2B buyers spend only 17% of their buying time meeting potential suppliers (survey of 750 buyers, in a 2021 Gartner presentation). Relationships, terms and past service still count.

So the goal isn't to send quotes without looking. It's to cut the lookup time so the rep spends their minutes on price and the account, and still answers in the same hour.

How to turn quotes around faster

1. Measure where you are. For two weeks, note when each RFQ arrives and when the quote goes out. Count lines per RFQ. You'll likely find the long waits are the long line lists, not the hard prices.
2. Clean up the cross-references you have. Export your customer part number table. Find the top 20 customers by RFQ volume and fill the gaps. Every saved match is a lookup nobody repeats.
3. Put the history next to the line. The last price quoted, the last price paid and the contract price should show up without a search. Many ERPs can do this with a saved report.
4. Let software draft the quote. Software reads the email and attachment, pulls each line, matches it to your items using your cross-references, attaches history and stock, and builds a draft quote in your ERP. When it's unsure about a match, it says so instead of guessing.
5. Keep a person on the decisions. The rep sets price, approves substitutions and new matches, and sends. Each confirmed match is saved, so the next RFQ from that customer goes faster. Our guide to human-in-the-loop automation covers how to set up the approval step.
6. Watch accuracy, not just speed. Track how often a rep changed a suggested match or price. If that number isn't falling, fix the matching before you push for speed.

What a same-hour quote looks like

Here's an illustration of how the morning changes. It's a made-up example, not a client.

At 9:05, a contractor emails a 35-line RFQ as a PDF. Before, the rep would open it after finishing two other quotes, spend most of an hour finding items and prices, and send it after lunch.

With a drafting step in place, the software has read the PDF by 9:07. Thirty lines matched part numbers the customer has used before. Three matched by description and are marked "check." Two have no match. Each line shows the last price quoted to this customer, the last price they paid, stock on hand and any open supplier PO.

The rep opens the draft at 9:20. They confirm the three suggested matches, pick a substitute for one of the unknown items and call the supplier on the other. They raise the margin on two lines where stock is tight. The quote goes out at 9:45, and the four new matches are saved for next time.

The rep made every decision that mattered. They just didn't spend the hour finding the facts first.

What to automate and what to keep with a person

• Automate: reading the RFQ, pulling the lines, matching known part numbers, attaching price history, stock and open POs, and filling the quote form.
• Keep with a person: setting price and margin, approving substitutions and new cross-references, deciding on lead-time promises, and anything the software flagged as unsure.

This is the same idea behind our guide to automating RFQ responses, and the matched lines become the draft order when the customer says yes. The rep still owns the quote. They just stop spending the first hour of it on lookups.