How to write a brief that gets you a useful answer

We are sent a lot of enquiries that read, in full, like this: "Do you supply cocoa? What is your best price?"

It is a fair question and it cannot be answered. Cocoa beans, butter, powder and liquor are different products with different prices. Origin changes the price. Volume changes the price. Whether you need EUDR documentation changes whether a given supplier can serve you at all. Any number sent back is a guess, and a guess is worse than no answer because you might plan around it.

What to include

Six things get you a real answer.

• What exactly. Product and grade. If there is a standard code, use the code. W320 means something. "Good quality cashews" does not.
• How much, and how often. One container or one a month. Recurring volume changes what suppliers will do on price.
• Where it lands, and when. Port of discharge and the date you need it there, not the date you would like to order.
• What certification. Organic, RSPO, Halal, Kosher, FSC. Ask at the start. Adding it later usually means changing supplier.
• Terms. Preferred Incoterms and how you intend to pay. FOB and DDP prices are not comparable.
• What matters most. Price, speed or certainty. They pull against each other and we would rather know which you are optimising for.

If you do not know the specification

Say so. It is a normal position, especially if you are buying something for the first time or taking over from someone who left. Describe what you are making and what went wrong with the last batch. That is often more useful than a specification copied from a supplier's website, which tends to describe what that supplier happens to have.

Tolerances, not targets

One habit worth adopting. Write moisture as a maximum, protein as a range, and state what happens if a cargo lands slightly outside. A specification without tolerances gives the contract nothing to fall back on, and turns a marginal cargo into an argument with no agreed answer.

A short brief is fine

None of this needs to be long. Six lines covering the points above will get you a considered response within a day. Two lines will get you a question, and a week lost while we ask it.