A shipper asks for a price on two 40 foot containers
An importer asks for a quote for two forty foot containers from Ningbo to Felixstowe, delivered to a warehouse in the Midlands, plus an airfreight option for a few urgent cartons. The sales coordinator emails the origin agent for local charges, checks the carrier rate sheet, asks two hauliers for delivery rates from the port and requests an air rate from a consolidator. The replies drift in over two days, in different currencies and layouts.
By the time the quote goes out, the shipper has had two others, and one of them was from a forwarder who replied the same afternoon.
The waiting is built in
The quote is slow because every part of it depends on someone else, and the requests and replies travel by email. Assembling the quote is then a manual job of reading, converting and adding.
- Rate requests go out one by one, by email, to each partner.
- Replies come in different formats and currencies, with different charge names.
- Contract rates in your own rate sheets are hard to search quickly.
- Every quote is built in a spreadsheet or document from scratch.
- Nobody tracks which requests are still waiting for a reply.
What slow quotes cost
Shippers often take the first sensible price, so slow quotes lose work you would have won. Coordinators spend their day chasing and assembling rather than selling. Mistakes creep in when charges are read from one format into another, which shows up later as margin lost on a shipment. And because quotes are built by hand, nobody knows which lanes you win and which you always lose.
The quote desk we build
- A quote request is entered once, or read from the customer's email: origin, destination, mode, cargo details, incoterm the customer states, and dates.
- Your own contract rates for that lane are looked up first, from rate sheets we load into a searchable store.
- For missing parts, rate requests go to the partners you choose for that lane, by email or through their systems where they allow it, with a clear reply format.
- Replies are read by an extraction step that pulls charges, currencies, validity and conditions, and maps each charge to your standard charge names.
- Buy rates are shown side by side, converted at the rate you set, with your margin rules applied. The coordinator chooses and adjusts.
- The customer quote is produced in your layout, sent, and logged with its buy rates so it can be turned into a booking later. Won and lost quotes are tracked.
| Step | Manual | With the quote desk |
|---|---|---|
| Contract rates | Search rate sheets | Looked up automatically |
| Rate requests | Emails one at a time | Sent to chosen partners together |
| Replies | Read and retyped | Extracted and mapped to your charges |
| Comparison | Spreadsheet | Side by side, converted |
| Quote | Written from scratch | Produced for checking |
What the sales desk gets back
Quotes built from your own contract rates can go out as soon as they are checked. Quotes that need partner rates go out as soon as the replies are in, without a further half day of assembly. Coordinators can see at a glance which requests are still outstanding. And over time, the record of wins and losses by lane shows where your rates are competitive and where they are not.
If you use a forwarding system such as CargoWise, accepted quotes are passed into it so the booking starts from the quote, not from retyping.
Is this your sales desk?
- Quotes take days, mostly waiting for rates.
- Partner replies are retyped into spreadsheets.
- Contract rates are hard to find quickly.
- You do not know your win rate by lane.
- Shippers tell you a competitor was quicker.