Grade or duty, product form, size, quantity, the governing standard, delivery condition and inspection level. Missing any one of them usually costs a round of email. If you only know the duty and not the grade, send the medium, the temperature and the pressure — those tell us more than a grade name picked from a table.
The seven things that make a quote possible
Grade, or the duty if the grade is still open. Material form — round bar, plate, strip, seamless tube, forging, wire. Size, as diameter and length, or thickness and width, or OD and wall. Quantity, in weight or in pieces. The governing standard or drawing. Delivery condition. Inspection and certification requirement.
Add the delivery destination and any marking or packaging requirement, and the quote that comes back will be one you can place an order against without another exchange.
When the grade is not decided
Send the service conditions instead: the medium and its concentration, the temperature and whether it cycles, the pressure, and whether chlorides are present. That is enough to build a shortlist and explain the trade-offs, which is usually more useful than being handed one grade and hoping.
If a drawing exists, send the drawing. It carries the tolerances and the inspection notes that no email summary preserves.
What slows a quote down
A trade name with no standard behind it ('Hastelloy, please') has to be resolved before pricing, because C276 and B3 are different products at different prices. So does a quantity that is below the minimum heat weight in a grade that has to be melted rather than drawn from stock.
Neither is a problem. Both just cost a day if they surface after the enquiry instead of in it.