Losing an RFQ is rarely about price. In practice it is almost always one of five specific, mechanical mistakes — each tied to a particular screen or field in the RFQ system, each with its own symptom, and each fixable in a few minutes once you know exactly what is happening. This is not a "be more professional" list; it is a breakdown of what actually goes wrong, mechanism by mechanism, ordered so the last mistake is the one that makes the other four irrelevant if it isn't fixed first.

Mistake 1: Responding too slowly

Why it happens: Every RFQ caps the number of sellers who can submit a quote — commonly five — and your inbox shows this as a live counter like "2 / 5" with a "left" indicator. Sellers who check their inbox on a weekly cadence, or only when a notification happens to catch their attention, are working on a slower clock than the RFQ itself runs on.

The symptom: You open an invite that still looks fresh — a few days old — and find the Action button already reads "View" instead of "Open," because the cap filled or the buyer closed the request while you were not looking.

The fix: Check the RFQ inbox on a short, fixed cadence — daily at minimum — and treat the "X left" counter as a real countdown, not a vague indicator. There is no way to submit once the cap is reached; there is no appeal process.

Mistake 2: Quoting with vague or incomplete line items

Why it happens: The quote form lets you add line items from your own offers with quantity, rate, and tax handled per line — but it is possible to submit a quote with a single vague line ("solar kit, negotiable") instead of using the structure the form actually offers.

The symptom: Your quote looks unfinished next to a competitor's itemized breakdown, even if your underlying total price is identical or lower. Buyers comparing quotes side by side default to whichever one they can actually read and act on.

The fix: Add each real component as its own line item pulled from your offers, with an accurate description, quantity, and rate — the amount per line recalculates live as you do this, so you can see the total build up transparently instead of quoting a single opaque number.

Mistake 3: Leaving out financing terms the buyer actually needs

Why it happens: The Payment / Financing Terms section of the quote form defaults to "Cash / Full payment," and it is easy to submit a quote without ever touching it, especially if the buyer's original request did not explicitly say the word "financing."

The symptom: A financing-sensitive buyer receives your quote and has nothing to act on — no Hire Purchase down payment/term/instalment breakdown, no PayGo deposit/periodic-amount/frequency structure. If a competing quote already has one filled in, that buyer now has a direct path to "yes" with someone else while your quote sits there unanswered.

The fix: If the request implies a large purchase, a mention of budget or monthly payment, or a site type that commonly needs installment financing, fill in the relevant Hire Purchase or PayGo section before submitting — even if the buyer didn't ask directly, offering it removes a reason to look elsewhere.

Mistake 4: Putting contact details in the wrong field

Why it happens: It feels faster to just put a phone number in the item description or warranty note so the buyer can call directly — but the quote form actively detects phone numbers, emails, URLs, spelled-out domains, and social handles in those fields as you type, and blocks submission until they are removed.

The symptom: The field turns red immediately, a message asks you to remove the contact detail, and if you try to submit anyway, a toast notification blocks the whole form — not just that field.

The fix: Do not put contact information in any free-text field on the quote. Contact is only meant to move through the consent-gated buyer contact feature on the quote page, which only unlocks once your shop is verified and the buyer has agreed to share their details — that boundary exists specifically so contact information does not bypass verification and consent altogether.

Mistake 5: Neglecting the RFQ profile — the mistake that happens before all the others

Why it happens: The RFQ profile (regions served, system types handled, maximum kW band, certified installers) is a one-time setup screen, and it is easy to skip past it during onboarding or leave it half-filled and forget about it.

The symptom: This is the quietest mistake of the five, because it produces no visible error — it produces silence. No invites arrive. There is nothing to be slow about, nothing to quote poorly, nothing to mess up in messaging, because the matching system never generated an invite for your account in the first place. Sellers experiencing this often assume "there just aren't many RFQs right now," when the real cause is an empty regions field or missing system-type tags.

The fix: Complete every section of the RFQ profile — this is genuinely the mistake to fix first, because until it is fixed, none of the other four mistakes are even relevant to your account. A perfect quote-building process is worth nothing if the matching system never sends you an RFQ to build one for.

Why these mistakes compound instead of staying isolated

None of these five mistakes exist in isolation — they stack. A seller with an incomplete RFQ profile (Mistake 5) may never notice Mistakes 1 through 4 are even a problem, because they never get enough invites to expose them. A seller who fixes the profile but still checks the inbox weekly (Mistake 1) will start seeing invites and then losing most of them to the cap before ever reaching the quote form. A seller who responds fast but quotes vaguely (Mistake 2) or cash-only when the buyer clearly needs staged payments (Mistake 3) will lose to a competing seller who submitted a complete, financing-inclusive quote inside the same window. And a seller who does everything else right but tries to shortcut contact by typing a phone number into a text field (Mistake 4) can have their submission blocked entirely at the last step. Fixing them in reverse order — profile, then speed, then quote completeness, then financing terms, then contact hygiene — clears the largest blockers first.

Consolidated checklist

• RFQ profile complete: regions, system types, max-kW band, and installer details filled in (fix this first — it gates everything else).
• Inbox checked on a short, fixed cadence, with the "X left" counter treated as a real deadline.
• Quotes built from itemized line items pulled from real offers, not a single vague price.
• Financing Terms section filled in whenever the request looks financing-sensitive.
• No phone numbers, emails, or links anywhere in item titles, descriptions, or the warranty note — contact goes through the consent-gated channel only.

For the full breakdown of how buyer contact, messaging, and awards work, see Buyer Messaging, Contact Consent, and Requesting an RFQ Award. To get matched to more relevant RFQs in the first place, keep your RFQ profile complete, and see how the inbox and invite slots work and how to build a winning quote for the exact screen mechanics behind each mistake above.