Guides / Manufacturers

Why Foreign Buyers Stop Replying After You Send a Quotation

September 23, 2026

A buyer sends an enquiry, you send a quotation, and nothing comes back. It happens constantly, and the reason is rarely price.

Most quotations from Vietnamese factories to Western buyers fail on the same seven points. All of them are fixable in the document itself.

1. It cannot be compared with the others

A buyer is usually holding three or four quotations for the same product. The first thing they do is line them up, and a quotation that cannot be lined up gets put aside.

What makes a quotation comparable: the quantity it is priced at, the Incoterm with the named port, whether packaging is bulk or retail, and what is excluded. Four lines. A quotation missing any of them forces the buyer to email you before they can even start comparing, and they may not bother.

2. Tooling is buried inside the unit price

When tooling is folded into the unit price with no separate line, two things happen. The unit price looks high next to a factory that quoted tooling separately, and the buyer cannot tell what they would own.

Quote tooling as its own line, with the cavity count and the expected tool life. Then state the ownership position, even in one sentence. Almost no factory does this unprompted, and buyers notice it immediately.

3. It answers a different product

Buyers can tell within seconds whether anyone opened the drawing. A quotation that arrives with no reference to any feature of the part reads as a number generated from a category rather than a price for their product.

One or two specific observations change this completely. Mention the wall thickness, the tightest tolerance, the finish on the visible face, or the component you would need to source. It costs a sentence and it proves the quotation means something.

4. It says yes to everything

A drawing that a buyer sent has usually not been reviewed by a manufacturer before. There is almost always something on it that is unnecessary, difficult or expensive.

Finding that and saying so is the single most effective thing you can put in a quotation. “We can hold this tolerance, but only on the bore. On the outer diameter it would require an extra operation. Do you need it there?” That sentence tells the buyer you understand the part and that you will not quietly miss the tolerance later.

Factories worry that raising difficulties loses the order. In practice it wins orders, because the alternative, a quotation that promises everything, is exactly what buyers have learned to distrust.

5. It is a company profile with a number at the end

Twelve pages of factory history, certificates and machine photographs, with the price on page eleven.

Buyers want the price, the terms and the lead time on the first screen. Company credentials belong underneath or in an attachment. A quotation that requires scrolling to find the number is a quotation that gets read last.

6. The English is doing the buyer’s work

The buyer should not have to interpret. Two habits fix most of it: answer numbered questions with numbered answers in the same order, and keep sentences short.

Phrases to remove entirely: “please kindly advise”, “we will try our best”, “quality is our top priority”, “we can do any product”. They occupy space and communicate nothing. Replace them with facts.

7. The lead time is a single optimistic number

“25 days” for a product that needs tooling and sampling is not a lead time, and an experienced buyer knows it.

Split it: tooling, sampling with one correction round, production, and packing. Then state what you are assuming, such as approval within three days of samples arriving. A realistic split reads as competence. A single short number reads as a promise that will be renegotiated later.

What a quotation that gets compared looks like

One page, in this order:

1. The product, in your words, with one specific observation about it.
2. Unit price at the quantity requested, plus one quantity above.
3. Tooling as a separate line, with cavity count and ownership.
4. Incoterm and named port. Packaging assumption. Lead time split by phase.
5. What is excluded: certification testing, third party inspection, freight beyond the term.
6. Two or three questions you need answered to firm up the price.
7. Payment terms.

Everything else goes in an attachment. A buyer who wants your certificates will open them.

The follow up

One follow up after a week, adding something rather than asking for a decision. A note that you checked material availability, or a question that shows you are still thinking about the part.

Repeated messages asking whether they have decided tell a buyer that your capacity is free and your attention is available, which is not the signal you want to send during a comparison.

A before and after

The same factory, the same product, two versions of the reply.

Before. “Dear Sir, Thank you for your inquiry. We are a professional manufacturer with 10 years experience. Quality is our top priority. Our price is USD 4.20/pc. MOQ 3000pcs. Delivery 25 days. Please kindly advise. Best regards.”

After. “Thanks for the drawing. We make similar housings in ABS, so this is a fit. One note before the price: the 0.05 tolerance on the outer diameter would need a second operation. On the bore it is straightforward. Is the outer dimension critical, or can we hold 0.1 there?

Price at 3,000 pcs: USD 4.20 each, FOB Ho Chi Minh City, bulk packed in cartons of 50. Price at 5,000 pcs: USD 3.85 each, same terms. Tooling: USD 4,800, single cavity, P20 steel, rated 100,000 shots. Tooling becomes your property on final payment, stored here free while orders are running. Lead time: tooling 5 weeks, samples 2 weeks including one correction round, production 3 weeks from your approval. Not included: certification testing, third party inspection, freight beyond FOB. Terms: 30% deposit, 70% against passed pre-shipment inspection. Price valid 30 days.”

The second version took ten minutes longer and it will be on the shortlist. It is not better English. It is the same facts, arranged for someone who is comparing.

What happens on the buyer’s side

Understanding the mechanics explains most of the rules above.

The buyer copies numbers from each quotation into one sheet: price, quantity, tooling, lead time, terms. Anything that does not fit a column becomes a note, and anything that needs an email before it can be entered gets postponed.

Then they look at the outliers. A price far below the group is not treated as a win, it is treated as a sign that the factory priced something different, and it triggers a verification email that you may not answer convincingly.

Finally they look at the notes, which is where your one specific observation about the part sits. That is the only column where you can stand out without discounting.

The cost of quoting badly

Every unanswered quotation consumed engineering time, material enquiries and sales attention. A factory sending twenty quotations a month with a low reply rate is spending real money on a process that is losing before it starts.

Fixing the document is cheaper than finding more enquiries. The same twenty quotations, restructured, produce a noticeably different reply rate without any additional sales effort at all.

We match project briefs to manufacturers that answer like this, because they are the ones buyers reply to. Join the network to see anonymous previews before you spend time quoting, and read what Western buyers are judging for what happens before the quotation stage.

Frequently asked questions

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