The RFQ template that gets you a quote in 48 hours

Why most RFQs get ignored

Suppliers receive 30+ RFQs a week. The ones that get fast, accurate quotes have one thing in common: they are unambiguous.

Talk to any supplier-side sales team in the UAE materials space and you'll hear a version of the same complaint: most incoming RFQs require a phone call before they can even be quoted, because something essential is missing — a quantity in the wrong unit, a finish described vaguely enough to cover three different products, no delivery date at all. Every one of those clarifying calls pushes the quote to the back of the queue, because the supplier moves on to the next RFQ that they can quote immediately. Ambiguity doesn't just slow down your quote. It actively deprioritises it.

The nine fields

1. Project name & site address — for logistics costing. Freight and last-mile delivery cost varies significantly by location within the UAE, and a supplier can't price delivery accurately without knowing where the site actually is. "Dubai" is not an address; DIFC and Dubai South have very different delivery logistics.
2. Required delivery date — not "ASAP". "ASAP" tells a supplier nothing about how to sequence your order against everyone else's. A specific date lets them tell you honestly whether it's achievable, and if not, how close they can get — information you need regardless of how urgent the request feels on your end.
3. Quantity & unit of measure — sqm, linear m, piece. Sounds obvious, gets wrong constantly. A tile quantity given in "boxes" without specifying box coverage area is a guaranteed follow-up call. State the unit every single time, even when it feels redundant.
4. Material specification — brand, model, finish, colour code. The single biggest source of quoting delay is a vague material description that could plausibly match several products from the same supplier's range. "Grey porcelain tile, matte finish" might describe eight different SKUs. A model number and colour code describes exactly one.
5. Substitution policy — "equivalent OK" or "this SKU only". This single line can dramatically speed up or slow down a quote. If genuine equivalents are acceptable, say so explicitly — it opens up supplier options and often improves pricing. If it must be the specified SKU only, say that too, so the supplier doesn't waste time proposing alternatives you'll reject anyway.
6. Sample requirement — pre-quote or post-award. Some studios want a physical sample before committing to a supplier; others are happy to sample-check after the order is placed, treating the sample as a quality confirmation rather than a selection tool. Stating which one you need changes how a supplier sequences their response.
7. Payment terms — your standard terms, stated up front. Suppliers price differently depending on payment terms — 30-day credit terms typically carry a different price than payment on delivery. Stating your terms up front means the first quote you receive is the real quote, not a negotiating opener that assumes the most favourable terms for the supplier.
8. Inco-terms — DDP site, EXW warehouse, etc. This determines who's responsible for freight, insurance, and customs at each stage, and it materially changes the quoted number. A quote given EXW warehouse and a quote given DDP site for the exact same material are not comparable numbers unless you know which is which.
9. Submission deadline — and who the quote goes to. A deadline with no named recipient, sent to a generic company inbox, is far more likely to be deprioritised than one addressed to a specific person with a specific date. It signals that someone is actually tracking the response.

What to leave OUT

• Your target budget. (They will quote to your budget, not their best price.) This is one of the most consistent pieces of advice from procurement leads we've spoken to, and it holds up: revealing a target number anchors the supplier's response to that number rather than to their actual cost-plus-margin pricing, almost always to your disadvantage.
• Long preambles about your studio. (Suppliers do not care.) A paragraph about your studio's design philosophy and portfolio of award-winning projects, however true, delays the supplier from reaching the information they actually need to quote. Save it for the relationship-building phone call, not the RFQ document.
• Multiple line items in the same email. One RFQ, one category. Bundling tile, lighting and joinery into a single RFQ email to a supplier who only handles tile means the other two categories get ignored or forwarded internally and lost. Split by category, even when it means sending more emails.

What a filled-in example actually looks like

Project: Villa 14, Jumeirah Bay Island. Site: [full address]. Delivery required: 15 September 2026. Material: RAK Ceramics, Onix Grey Polished, ref. XJ4471, 900×900mm. Quantity: 340 sqm. Substitution: equivalent tonality-matched product acceptable if same finish and format. Sample: required pre-quote, standard 300×300mm cut sample. Payment: 30 days from delivery, standard studio terms attached. Inco-terms: DDP site. Deadline: quotes due by 22 July 2026, to procurement@[studio].com, attention [name]. That's the whole document. No preamble, no ambiguity, and a supplier can price it in the time it takes to read it once.

The bonus field

Add a single sentence: "Quotes returned in under 48h will be prioritised in award." It works.

This works for a straightforward reason: suppliers, like everyone else, respond to incentives that are stated plainly rather than implied. A vague sense that speed "probably matters" doesn't change behaviour. An explicit statement that speed directly affects who wins the order does. It costs nothing to include and consistently pulls the fastest, most competitive responses to the front of the pile — which is, after all, the entire point of writing a clear RFQ in the first place.