The 3 Levers Top Shops Pull to Win More Work

If there’s one thing we heard loud and clear at our user conference earlier this month, it’s that manufacturers are feeling cautiously optimistic about what’s to come for their businesses in 2025. While there’s still uncertainty in the air (tariffs, general market volatility, etc.), pipelines are picking up. Customers are re-engaging. The prevailing mindset is one of growth.

But growth doesn’t just happen. You can hire the best people and invest in the best machines, but if you’re not consistently winning work, the engine doesn’t run.

So how do you win more work? What we’ve seen over the past eight years at Paperless Parts is that the most successful shops—the ones that grow through good years and bad—consistently perform well in three key areas.

3 Keys to Driving Win Rates

1. Speed
There’s no shortage of advice out there telling you to quote faster. And for good reason: quote turnaround time is often the single biggest lever you can pull.

OEMs are under more pressure than ever; with more companies looking to maximize efficiency, we’re seeing purchasing managers go from managing 200 line items to 2,000. If a quote lands on their desk and meets their needs, they’re placing the order and moving on. They don’t have time to wait.

Of course, not every RFQ is a race; in aerospace and defense, while there are many buyers that place POs with the first shop that gets back to them, shops often have a two-week window before the buyer even starts reviewing submissions. Either way, aiming for a consistent 24- to 48-hour quote turnaround can help ensure that you’re always in the window that keeps you in the running.

But speedy doesn’t mean sloppy; if your quoting process is manual or disorganized, it’s harder than ever to move fast without compromising accuracy. Paperless Parts keeps all of your quoting data in one place, flags potential manufacturability risks, automates rote tasks, and streamlines decision-making to help you move quickly without missing details.

Paperless Parts also tracks how long your buyer has been waiting. When RFQs are emailed into Paperless Parts, we capture the original send date, so if something’s been sitting for five days before anyone even opens it, you know you’re behind.

2. Optionality
Want to win more quotes and protect your margins while you’re at it? Give your buyers options. Over the years, we’ve found that shops that include multiple lead times with associated pricing on every quote consistently win more work (by a landslide).

Let’s say you’re a buyer who’s requesting a quote; one shop says they can deliver in three weeks for $500. Another shop offers:

• 2 weeks for $600
• 3 weeks for $500
• 4 weeks for $450

Now, the buyer has a decision to make—but it’s on your terms. You’ve created a bigger strike zone.

Many shops worry that including expedited pricing will come off as predatory, and that their customers will say, “You’re charging more for what you used to do for free.” But what we see over and over again is that buyers actually say “thank you.” You’re communicating clearly. You’re removing ambiguity. You’re giving them the ability to make tradeoffs between time and cost without picking up the phone. The alternative is that they get a quote with one price and one lead time, and they’re forced to come back with, “Can you do me a favor?” Now you’re back on your heels. Putting options on the table makes the conversation binary, and that’s a good thing for both parties.

3. Follow-Up (Yes, an Actual Phone Call)
The third and final lever is simple but wildly underused: pick up the phone. I can’t count how many times I’ve heard customers say, “We sent the quote and never heard back.” A quick phone call (not a sales pitch) to say, “Hey, I wanted to make sure this landed in your inbox. Let me know if you have any questions,” can be a game-changer.

Paperless Parts shows you when your quote has been viewed. If you send a quote and it never gets opened, there’s a good chance you’ve already lost the work—especially if your price was lower. Why? Because buyers don’t want to see a cheaper quote after they’ve already placed a PO. That creates friction within their own team.

But when you do see that the quote was opened and there’s no response, that’s your moment. A quick follow-up gives you the chance to learn why you didn’t win. Or better yet, to close the deal before they move on. Shops typically think that when they lose a quote, it’s because their price was too high. But more often than not, it has to do with a miscommunication that could have been corrected with a phone call.

Where to Start

All three of these levers go back to time savings; the faster you get the quote out the door, the more time you have to follow up, to collaborate with the buyer, to meet project deadlines, to free up capacity for additional work.

None of this is rocket science, but it does take discipline. Winning work starts with a process that’s built to win. At Paperless Parts, we’re building tools that help shops do all of the above with less effort and more consistency. Get in touch with our team today to learn more.