How builders merchants can get the competitive edge
It’s challenging out there. We get it. This has certainly not been helped by one of the big builders merchants queering the pitch by launching their ‘seemingly’ independent Estimating Service and then sign posting the building materials requirements to their own brands.
Genius :) .
However it does make life more difficult for others in the market place. So how can you fight back? How can you offer your customer’s more and win back some of that ‘share of the basket’ that you might be losing to this big competitor without it being a price fight?
It’s absolutely the case this year that whilst materials sales have gone up, volume hasn’t followed the same trajectory and the reason being that a lot of this is simply sale price inflation masking a problem – margins are really tight, and you can’t fight on price.
Builders are also starting to find it challenging with their customers starting to be more picky…With homeowners rattled by rising prices, dream projects (your bread and better extensions and loft refurbs etc) risk being put on hold. With less jobs to go round you’re going to need more than products on the shelves to get builders to choose you over a competitor when you can’t compete on price alone.
So our recommendation is take back some control and become the builders ‘friend’. Offer your own estimating service. How? Get your customers estimating done in-house using a piece of reputable, quality estimating software or if you don’t have the management resource to setup an estimating team in-house, why not consider outsourcing to an Estimating Service who can deliver your estimates, ‘on-brand’ on time, at the quality you’d expect of your own team.
Or how’s this for an idea? Do both and enjoy the best of both estimating worlds! How? Read on.
Enjoy the best of both estimating worlds and fix your estimating dilemma
Jobs your branches get asked to quote on probably range from pretty straightforward to time-consuming and often complex. I’m sure you’d like to go after them all whilst reducing your admin time if you could…And worse still your team have holidays! And then you have no estimating capacity at all L.
Solution Part I: Discover EstimatorXpress, the UK’s leading estimating software for residential construction. Now your team can estimate using this seriously straightforward software package. It’ll take your team much less time than your previous manual method and the live prices (it can be integrated with your product range and catalogue) keeps quotes accurate and up to date
Solution Part II: When your team are too busy to estimate themselves or when there’s a more complicated project – your team can handover the HBXL Estimating Service their jobs to quote on. The estimators are using the same EstimatorXpress software so the branch will know what to expect. Your team will be familiar with the reports that come with it and trust the process.
The huge, great big, massive bonus with all of this?
The HBXL Estimating Service will give your team the final EstimatorXpress estimate file. They can pop it into their version of the software and make any further amends there and then - or in the future if the spec changes slightly - or if the job gets delayed and the prices go up.
Find out more about the HBXL Estimating service here www.estimating-service.co.uk
What next?
Get back in the driving seat and win back the business. If you don’t already have EstimatorXpress, ask for a short online demo here or if you’d like more info on the Estimating Service and how it can be branded for you call 0117 916 7898.