Anonymous RFQs

REQs from your competitor

[agbenny]

How to ask (politely) without hurting the Request for Quote sender from a Free Email ID, with no business information?
My worry is that we should not send a proposal to our Competitor and make their work easy, at the same time we should not loose a person who is potential but still need to have his/her own domain name and Email id?

What could be the reason we can tell a person to send more information?

Thanks,

[Jack_Hughes]

asking for their details so you can better assess their requirements...that's always a good one :)

[sanity]

Personally I'd never respond to an RFQ sent to me via an anonymous email address. I like to know who I'm doing business with!

[sanity]

Sorry just realised I didn't really answer your question. I think it's perfectly reasonable to ask for more information about their business. If they refused to provide it I would be wary. Business is a two way street. Why should you spend time providing them with information if they won't do the same?

[Fortune Hunter]

I generally don't answer RFQs anonymous or otherwise. From a business perspective I have found them to be a huge waste of time that lumps you in the same category as everyone else and that means your prices get compared to everyone else's as well.

I prefer to have a relationship with the people I am dealing with because I am good at sales and if I am talking and building a relationship with them price doesn't really become too big of an issue, with an RFQ it always is.

In this case anonymous isn't a good thing. It could be your competitor, but even if it isn't do you really want to waste a bunch of time writing a proposal for someone that won't even tell you who they really are?

Fortune Hunter