Accept, Reject, Revise: The Anatomy of Three Offer Decisions

Three Buttons, Three Different Futures

On paper, the offer review screen in natural stone sourcing looks simple: accept what you like, reject what you don't, request a revision when you're unsure. On MarbleMap, though, each of the three buttons sends an offer down a completely different track. Reject ends the offer for good and leaves the supplier only a narrow doorway back. Revision keeps the same offer alive but freezes it out of comparison and award until the supplier resubmits. Accept is irreversible: the demand locks and moves on to the order step. Buyers who press these buttons without knowing the mechanics burn their strongest negotiating leverage without ever realising it.

You reach the review screen from the review button on the AI recommendation card, or by taking your shortlist into the comparison view. Offer details sit on the left, supplier information, pricing and terms included; the decision buttons sit on the right. Before you commit, two low-risk tools are worth knowing. The message button lets you talk to the supplier directly in the demand's messages tab, and a private note field, visible only to you and never shown to the supplier, saves automatically as you type. Using both before touching the three hard-to-undo buttons prevents most wrong clicks from ever happening.

Reject: The Decision That Ends an Offer and Can Start a Negotiation

Rejecting opens a confirmation dialog with an optional reason field. From that moment the offer is dead; the same supplier cannot resubmit an identical offer. The only way back is a genuinely different one: a price improvement of at least one percent, or a change to one of the material terms, meaning the Incoterm or the payment term. The platform enforces this in code, not as a polite request. When the supplier uses the submit new offer button on a rejected offer, a live difference check runs, and if the requirements are not met, submission is blocked. The demand also has to still be open.

For a buyer who knows this, rejection is not just elimination; it is a forcing function. A rejected supplier who wants back in cannot return empty-handed: they must cut the price by at least one percent, change the Incoterm, or move the payment term. Pressed on the right offer, the reject button is a platform-guaranteed way of saying bring me a concrete improvement. Pressed on the wrong offer, it kills a quote you actually liked over a detail that revision was designed to fix.

Revision: The Freezer That Keeps the Same Offer Alive

A revision request is for offers that broadly work but need specific lines or terms adjusted. You tick at least one line from the lines concerned list and optionally write a reason; the two cannot both be empty. The moment you send it, the offer is frozen, not deleted. Its status becomes revision requested, it drops out of the comparison matrix and split award, any best-offer flags it held are removed, and the decision buttons temporarily disappear.

The critical detail is that the freeze is temporary and one-sided. The supplier sees your reason and the flagged lines on their side, then uses the revise and resubmit flow to update unit prices on those items and, if needed, the Incoterm, payment term or validity date. As soon as they resubmit, the offer returns to submitted status and re-enters compare and award. Other suppliers' offers are untouched, and rivals cannot see that you requested a revision; the sealed-bid model holds here too. Revision is only available on live offers, meaning submitted or viewed ones, and because it updates the same offer, it does not consume the supplier's weekly offer allowance twice.

Accept: The Only Button With No Way Back

This is the sharpest of the three. On general demands, accept finalises the award: an order is created, the demand closes, and the action cannot be undone. On line-by-line product lists, the add to compare button takes you to the Split Award Board instead, where you distribute lines across suppliers; the board is a Pro feature. This is exactly why the message thread and the private note matter: they let you make the one irreversible decision with the most information in hand.

Turning Three Mechanics Into a Negotiation Plan

Once the mechanics are clear, the strategy writes itself. If an offer is fundamentally wrong for you, in material, quality or the overall shape of its terms, reject it and let the one percent rule work in your favour: any comeback must carry a measurable improvement. If the offer is broadly right but a few lines or terms are off, request a revision; the same offer returns with a targeted fix, keeping its place in your process.

Factor in timing as well. Because a revision-requested offer is frozen, it temporarily vanishes from your comparison matrix. If you sent your strongest candidate into revision, don't rush an award to the second best while the first is on ice; the frozen offer re-enters evaluation the moment it is resubmitted. The full status ladder, from draft, submitted and viewed through revision requested, revised, accepted, rejected and withdrawn, keeps every step of this visible to both sides.

A sensible order of operations: message first for soft questions, revision for targeted changes, rejection as the final lever that forces material movement. Buyers who treat these as three distinct negotiation instruments, rather than three shades of the same decision, walk away from the same demand with visibly better terms.

Make the Next Decision on a Live Demand

MarbleMap is a commission-free, sealed-bid B2B demand and offer marketplace for natural stone. It is permanently free for buyers: post your demand, compare sealed offers from verified suppliers on a single screen, and put the three decisions in this guide to work on your own negotiation. Payment never runs through the platform; you settle order terms directly with your supplier. If you are a supplier, submit sealed offers to verified demands, knowing that competitors cannot see your bid and that even a rejection leaves you a rule-based way back to the table. Start at marblemap.co.