Most teams lack organization in their RFQ inboxes. ILS, PartsBase, SkySelect, b2b-aero, the145, and direct email RFQs are all routed to the same sales@xyz.com. That doesn’t even include the follow-ups, sales orders, purchase orders, spam, and marketing emails piling up on top of them. Oftentimes, it’s too much for teams to manage.
Reps cherry-pick the RFQs they want, which requires them to scroll endlessly, toggle between emails, and manually copy-paste part numbers into the ERP just to check stock.
Having spoken with hundreds of sales teams, we know most companies are not logging customer quotes into a system of record. Without ERP logging, there’s no way to see if a part has already been quoted. This leads to double-quoting - a headache for buyers and a source of friction for sales teams arguing over commissions, as leadership now needs to figure out which quote to honor when the PO rolls in.
On the other hand, as teams scroll the inbox, it’s easy for things to be missed. With hundreds or thousands of emails to filter through, blowing past a valuable RFQ stuck between a few follow-ups, phishing attempts, and Olive Garden marketing emails isn’t necessarily uncommon.
Assigning RFQs to specific reps adds organization, but it often creates a new bottleneck: how do the right RFQs get to the right person? When teams are told to check a shared inbox for RFQs assigned to them, we are right back to our problem of scrolling endlessly.
If this is the case, how does everyone know which companies are assigned to whom? Sure, it’s easy to work the RFQs from companies assigned to you, but there are also plenty of unassigned companies that are ripe for the picking. But are teams expected to know the status of every company assigned to each rep? Maybe at smaller companies, but not with larger sales teams. The opportunity to step on toes grows the more RFQs sit in the inbox.
Some teams have a sales leader or admin who manually forwards every RFQ to the correct rep. What does this mean for the admin? Are they staring at an inbox all day waiting for an RFQ to land so they can pass it on to the correct person? Maybe. In today’s market, buyers typically decide based on the first 3 to 5 quotes they receive. If an admin spends hours manually forwarding emails, the deal is often lost before the rep even opens the RFQ.
In a perfect world, teams would have forwarding rules set up in the inbox by the companies that are assigned to them. This way, each of their respective RFQs come into their personal inbox to work out of, instead of playing everyone’s favorite game of “is this RFQ free?” in the shared inbox. Unfortunately, not many teams are taking advantage of this today.
FIFO is simple and easy to execute: sort the inbox to show older RFQs first and start quoting. It’s tough to screw up, but this strategy is set up to fail from the start.
While answering everything top to bottom is nice because it treats everyone equally, buyers do not all purchase equally. Answering 35 price checkers before reaching an airline RFQ is a sure-fire way to cost yourself deals. At 2-3 minutes per line item, you’ve spent 90 minutes on window shoppers while your best customer is still waiting.
This method also lacks prioritization. Same example as the last paragraph: A rep may quote 20 routine RFQs before getting to their first AOG. Not always the best plan.
This may also leave high-value deals waiting until later to get quoted. Once again, same example as the two previous paragraphs (I feel like a parrot at this point). A rep may send 50 quotes for consumables and expendables, go for lunch, and come back to see a juicy $200k RFQ staring them in the face, waiting patiently to be quoted. Since this RFQ may have come in multiple hours ago or is even left over from the day before, the PO may already be cut and sent to someone quicker while the rep gets to work doing all the research necessary to quote it.
At the end of the day, the reps are excited because of the high number of quotes they sent and all the POs that should be expected to come in shortly. In reality, they didn’t prioritize anything, and while they spent their time quoting time wasters and low-value deals, their competitors spent their time focusing on urgent RFQs from high-value customers, intentional on buying that will close with a much higher percentage.
We want to work smarter, not harder.
While the number of teams that take the approach is slowly increasing, it would be hard to say it is common in genuine practice due to the difficulty of organization.
The big issue is how to check for AOG, high-dollar units, and low-intent buyers without clicking into every RFQ and looking it up in the ERP to gather more info. This is not an issue with the strategy itself, but with the constraints of the current email providers and the lack of integrations to ERPs.
As mentioned earlier, with proper forwarding rules, it can be easy to designate high-intent buyers like operators and VIP customers to a dedicated inbox; the same for low-intent buyers or price checkers.
Prioritization pays dividends. It ensures AOGs are handled instantly, and six-figure deals aren't buried under requests for O-rings and rivets. However, without automation, it's nearly impossible to filter for urgency or dollar amount without opening every single email.
Lucky for you, Rotabull exists.
Rotabull solves this by automating the heavy lifting. You can route RFQs based on company, urgency, part number, customer email, inventory attributes, and more, ensuring the highest-converting leads are always at the top of the pile. The right RFQ to the right team or rep, every time.
So whether you need reps to see their airline RFQs at the top of the inbox or make sure all of your AOG RFQs for in-stock units over $150k are seen first, you can do it with Rotabull.
To learn more about Rotabull, email sales@rotabull.com or visit www.rotabull.com
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