How to Get Quotes From Multiple Supply Houses

To get quotes from multiple supply houses without wrecking a relationship, send all of them the identical materials list with identical terms, tell each one up front that it is being bid, give everyone the same deadline, and buy from the winner. The etiquette is simple and almost nobody follows it: no shopping one house’s number to another, no last-minute list changes for one bidder only, and a real answer to the losers within a day of deciding.

The part that actually makes or breaks this is the list. Two quotes on slightly different scopes are not comparable, and the differences are rarely accidental. A quote that omits the fuses, the lamps or the accessories looks sharp on bid day and lands high at completion.

Here is the process, then the etiquette, then the specific traps in comparing what comes back.

Build the list before you talk to anybody

The single biggest reason bid-outs go sideways is that the contractor sends three different versions of the same list to three houses over four days. Freeze it first.

Your package needs six things:

Line items with manufacturer catalog numbers where the part is specified, and a clear “or equal” flag where it is not. Vague descriptions invite substitutions that are impossible to compare.
Quantities and unit of measure, spelled out. Per each, per hundred, per bag, per foot, per roll. Priced per each versus per bag of 100 is a common and entirely honest error, and it looks exactly like an overcharge until you read the UOM column.
Delivery expectations. Job site or will-call, staged or all at once, dates, and who unloads.
Freight terms. Included or separate line. This one distorts more comparisons than any other.
Payment terms you expect, including prompt-pay. Terms are part of the price, and the arithmetic on that is worked through in the 2/10 net 30 discount calculation.
A return and restocking statement. Ask each bidder to state their restocking terms in the quote, because published policies vary widely: minimums run from 15 percent with no credit on cut wire or made-to-order material to 25 percent, original manufacturer carton only, $25 minimum return value. On a job where you will over-order deliberately, that clause is worth more than a point of margin.

Send the same PDF or spreadsheet to everyone. Same file, same time, same deadline.

Decide what you are actually bidding

You do not bid everything, and trying to is how these exercises die. Three sensible scopes:

Scope	Good for	Watch out for
One job’s full material package	Bid work with a firm scope and a defined start	Gear and lighting lead times can make the cheapest quote the wrong one
One category across a year (wire, fittings, strut)	Service and small-project shops with steady, commodity-heavy buying	Splitting a category out of a bundled agreement can affect your rate on the rest
Top 20 SKUs by annual dollars	Anyone wanting a price reference without moving any spend yet	Non-binding indications are not quotes. Say which you want.

The third one is underused. You can get a real read on where you sit without disrupting anything, and it is the cleanest input to an annual pricing review.

Tell the incumbent first, and tell them the truth

Do this before the package goes out, not after.

Call your rep. Say you are bidding a package, name the scope, say who else is getting it (or say that you would rather not name them, which is also fine as long as you say so), and give the deadline. Then say the thing that matters: they are bidding it too, and you would rather keep the business where it is if the number works.

This does three things. It removes the ambush. It gives your rep time to go get manufacturer support on the items where it exists, which is often where the sharpest numbers come from. And it makes clear that you are running a process rather than shopping a grudge.

Manufacturer support is the reason the timing matters. Special pricing agreements are negotiated contracts tied to purchase thresholds or qualifying criteria, and they are static and product-specific rather than something a branch can conjure at the counter. A rep given three days can request job pricing from the manufacturer. A rep given three hours cannot.

What “identical terms” means in practice

Two houses can quote the same list, both honestly, and produce numbers that are not comparable. The differences to control for:

Inclusions. This is the big one. A contractor on the Mike Holt forums describes the tactic bluntly: “One trick they play is to ‘forget’ to put fuses in disconnects, include lamps and other things. This way they look lower at first but when you build the job when you add in the fuses or lamps they are higher.” It is not always a trick. Sometimes the manufacturer’s base configuration genuinely excludes them. Either way, you have to specify.
Substitutions. Require every bidder to list any part they substituted, with the original catalog number next to it. An unflagged substitution is the fastest way to compare two different jobs.
Freight. Delivered price or FOB branch. Do not accept “TBD.”
Quote validity. Ask each bidder to state a validity period on the quote. Do not assume one, and do not assume it matches across bidders. Distributors do offer formal quotation support: Ferguson, for instance, publishes branch quotation services including materials lists, takeoff and RFP support. Ask what the terms of that quote are, in writing.
What happens after the quoted quantities run out. Job pricing is scoped to a quote number and named quantities. Once you exceed them, the additional material reprices to stock pricing, and nobody calls to tell you. That mechanism is the most common shape of a quote versus invoice mismatch.
Lead time and stock position. A number that shows up in nine weeks is not the same product as a number that ships Thursday.

Handling late quotes fairly

You will get at least one number at the last possible minute. Contractors read that as a tactic, and sometimes it is. One forum poster puts the suspicion plainly: “The idea is if they give you the number at the very last minute you will not have time to shop it, or if it’s a specified package, you will not have time to put together an alternate package.”

The same thread supplies the fair reading, and it deserves equal weight: “A lot of times, especially with lighting, the reason the supply house is giveing you the price last minute is because that is when they get it from their vendors.” The typo is the poster’s. Lighting and gear pricing frequently sits with the manufacturer, not with your branch, and your rep is waiting on the same email you are.

So set the deadline earlier than you need it, ask on day one which items depend on factory quotes, and treat those as a separate track with their own date. Do not punish a rep for a delay that came from a factory. Do notice if the same house is always last with everything.

Compare on the right number

Compare extended totals line by line, not the bottom line. Two disciplines make this work:

Normalize the list first. Put both quotes into one spreadsheet, one row per catalog number, columns for each bidder’s unit price and extension. Any row where one bidder has a number and the other has a blank is a scope difference you need to resolve before you compare anything.

Then look at where the differences live. They will not be spread evenly. Contractor agreements are written as category-specific percentage discounts off list, with different rates on lighting fixtures, on wire and cable, and on breakers and panels. It is completely normal for house A to win on wire by six points and lose on gear by nine. That pattern is more useful than the total, because it tells you exactly which category to fix at your incumbent.

Remember what the spread can look like. A contractor on the forums reports seeing supply houses charge “everything from 15% of list all the way up to list price for the same item to different customers”. Both of your quotes are somewhere inside that band, and neither is a moral fact about anyone.

Also check which pricing structure each number came from. A quote priced off a job SPA and a quote priced off a standing multiplier behave very differently once the job starts, and the difference between those two systems is laid out in contract price versus counter price.

The etiquette that keeps the incumbent at the table

These are the rules that separate a contractor people want to bid for from one they price defensively.

Do not shop numbers. Never send house A’s quote to house B and ask them to beat it. It ends with both houses quoting you defensively and it will follow you around a small market. Ask for their best number on the same list, and stop there.
Say who is bidding, or say that you will not say. Both are honest. Vagueness is not.
One deadline for everyone, and honor it. If you extend it, extend it for everybody, in writing.
Do not make one bidder revise for a scope change unless all of them do. Reissue to everyone.
Buy from the winner. If you bid it and then stay with the incumbent at the incumbent’s original price, you have used the other house as free labor, and they will know.
Tell the losers within a day, with a reason. “You were four points high on gear” is a gift. “We went another direction” is not. Reps who get a real reason bid your next job harder.
Do not bid every job. A bid-out is a real cost to a supplier: takeoff time, factory quote requests, engineering review. Twice a year on a meaningful package is a customer. Every job is a nuisance.
Keep the relationship separate from the transaction. The tone to aim for is the one a working contractor described: “We use several supply houses. I an friendly to all of them but not friends with any of them. All I want is good materials at a fair price.”

The quote is not the price until the job closes

This is where bid-outs actually leak money, and it has nothing to do with who won.

A contractor on the forums describes the pattern directly: “They may quote the stuff on bid day at say $87,000 but when you add all the total invoices up at the completion of the project they can be from $87,000 to $100,000 or more.” The control he offers in the same post is the entire answer: “keep a running tally on what has been invoiced and when it hits the quote amount flag it.”

Do exactly that. Put the quote number on the PO. Put the quote number on every release. Total invoices against that quote number weekly, and when the running total approaches the quoted amount, find out whether you are over-buying or being repriced. Pair it with three-way matching so quantity and price both get checked before anything is paid, and keep the per-SKU price history so you can see repricing the week it starts rather than at closeout.

The short version

Freeze the materials list first: catalog numbers, quantities with UOM, delivery, freight terms, payment terms, restocking terms.
Send the identical package to everyone at the same time with the same deadline.
Tell your incumbent rep before it goes out, and give them enough days to request factory support.
Require substitutions to be flagged against the original part number, and require inclusions to be stated. Fuses, lamps and accessories are the classic omissions.
Set the deadline early and track factory-quoted items separately. A late lighting number is often the factory, not the rep.
Compare line by line by category, not bottom line to bottom line. The category pattern is what you take into your next pricing review.
Buy from the winner, debrief the losers with a real reason, and do not bid every job.
Put the quote number on every PO and tally invoices against it weekly until the job closes.

If the bid-out shows your incumbent is genuinely off market in one category, that is a conversation, not a divorce: the agenda is in how to negotiate with your supply house, and the case for and against actually moving spend is in when second-sourcing gets you a better price.