At NCAB, customer relationships is at the heart of our business. You make sure that our customers’ NEEDs are HEEDed. When this goes well, you build strong relationships with customers so they give us business for years. When you sell more, our buying power towards factories gets stronger, which makes us more profitable. The gross margin you set pays for all our salaries and our future investments that makes us number 1. That’s a pretty important job you’ve got!

This means that your time is really valuable, so it is important that it is spent where the best opportunities are. Some RFQs are worth spending time on, others not.

You are in the best position to evaluate the risk and opportunity in the RFQs that come in.
– The wrong RFQs will not be worth your efforts – they should be politely declined.
– Some of the right RFQs will be routine – just give them the price.
– Some of the right RFQs will deserve some extra work – a good quote process will give us business for many years ahead.

By declining some RFQs, you give yourself more time to do a superb job on the quotes where the best opportunities are. Only a Needs Analyst can separate the wrong RFQs from the right ones and turn the right ones into good business. So, this is where your expertise is needed.

The criteria for the right or wrong RFQs will be a bit different between markets, but it should be possible for us, as a global company, to agree on some basic principles. A helpful rule-of-thumb is to validate the customer first, and then validate the project separately.

So, let’s move on to “Validating RFQs”.