The first steps & my credibility.

So you want to save money on your building materials? well stick with me and I will be able to steer you in the right direction it doesnt matter where your from these tips are universal, a few things i wanted to get out of the way first:-

1) I'm not a conman after your hard earned cash, my motives? I have had a lot of good customers go under due to the recession, after dealing with these guys for many years and to see them go under due to a customer not paying or a bad decision on buying goods it's not nice and i don't mind admitting that a lot of these guys became good friends, It doesn't matter if your the greatest tradesman in the country you will still be vulnerable if other aspects aren't addressed.

2) I work within the building sector at a merchant, I have been a manager for 4 years, before that I worked as a salesman for 8 years, I know how merchants work and I know how independents work, I have been with 4 companies that all work very differently but all with the same goal, to make as much money as possible with the highest margin.

With that out of the way lets talk about the first step you should be taking as a tradesman.

My first piece of advice when dealing with a merchant is choose a contact, now this is a bit tricky because the perfect person doesn't exist, that person is built up over a number of people:-

Sales represensative:- So the sales rep who is out in the car all day is usually the keenest on price but in my experiences they are very unreliable, they may bend over backwards to get your business but once your in the merchants web they drift off looking for the next fly to catch, there are exceptions but let me remind you it's a lottery win unless your a top 5 spending customer (I know a lot of you will nod and say "yep I'm in the top 5" but please don't be naive).

Salesman:- The range of skill, attitude, reliability, product knowledge, work ethic you get with these guys is huge, I've come across salesmen that couldn't count to ten or spell there name and again I've come across salesmen that don't have any balls and fold like paper when challenged on price, if you can get a good salesmen who has drive, passion, product knowledge and isn't too company focused then stick with him, again there difficult to find and difficult to spot.

Manager:- I would say avoid because he would be company orientated and has targets to hit within the branch and usually has a bonus scheme attached to the performance of the branch but there are rare occasions where they are the best to deal with, they have the highest authority when pricing, they have a broad product knowledge and most sales reports I've seen over the years it's always the managers that have the lowest sales margin. Added bonus if something goes wrong you know the manager will pull out the stops to rectify it.

So this is the first of many tips that will be posted on the blog, if any of you have any questions about the trade, the blog or about me then please don't hesitate to ask, I'm here to help.