Today I will be talking about what you should look out for when it comes to choosing your merchant for Heavy Building materials.
As tradesmen the bulk of your material cost comes from heavy side building materials, it may be timber or blocks, cement & sand, regardless its the primary expenditure.
So who do you choose?
A real tough one because there are lots of factors involved, if your organised and a medium to large builder your national merchant should really be taking care of you, if your small to medium then your national merchant might not be taking care of you as well as a regional or independent, so back to the question, who do you choose?
National merchants may seem like the easiest answer, largest buying power means you get the best price, right?
I doubt it because even though the national merchants have the best buying power there treated as separate commodities, they have different budgets, different systems, different staff members the only thing they have in common is the name.
Unless you have an extremely large development on the cards the chances are the prices you get from your nationals are easily beatable by regionals and in most cases independents, there are rare exceptions depending on the staff but in most cases its the same outcome.
The regionals depending on what stage there at in regards to growth are in my opinion the best to deal with for HBM, there willing to beat prices, make a name for themselves and want the business, I work for a regional company (almost national) and even though LBM for us is slipping away i can certainly take out nationals for price, they offer little resistance and rest on the morals of "there's always someone else to spend" I fight tooth and nail for business in regards to HBM and it's rare that i will be beaten.
The independents hold a dear place in my heart and the only thorn in my side when pricing jobs is.....you've guessed it an independent, I know there weakness when they price jobs so on most occasions if a large job is being priced by the independent and me, i come out on top.
The draw back is that most sales are done at a very low sales margin because the independent has my back to the wall in terms of price, they are extremely keen on insulation, blocks & cement which is some of the very core of HBM.
If you were to ask the hypothetical question of "if i had to choose two companies to price up my job, who would they be?" I would answer the independents and the regionals, you just get a more deserving attitude from the smaller guys than you would from the nationals and when your pricing you want this attitude to come across.
To summarise this post I do have a little of a biased opinion towards the smaller guys but this is with good reason, I've worked for all three and the hardest i had to work to keep my customers happy was the nationals, I don't want to carry there attitude of "If you don't like the service and price then there's the door" I'm a firm believer of the better the service and price the more my customer will spend, this leads to a faster turn around of selling goods and the profit is made, I'm happy, the company is happy and more importantly the customer is happy.
There are exceptions in every case, your national merchant may have the same attitude as me but I'm yet to see it myself, your regional maybe having the same attitude as the nationals and your independent may just not have the buying power to compete, it's up to you to find out in your area what your suppliers can do but this post gives you the generalisation of each supplier.
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