Getting what you pay for.

Today I wanted to talk about paying that bit extra may or may not save you money in the long run.

Over the years there have only been a few companies who have put a higher price on there products and they have still been keeping there sales high, Marshaltown, Dulux, Snickers, Hamilton, etc....

So how have they kept there sales high with such high prices?

With our current financial climate everyone is looking for something that costs alot less and more or less does the same job, it's unfortunate that this isn't always the case and can sometimes end up costing you more money.

Cons:-

Lower quality product.
Could effect your work quality.
Time spent replacing tools.
Effects any personal warranty you have given.

Pros:-

Cheap.

Now don't get me wrong just because there is a cheaper alternative doesn't mean there always going to run the "cons" list, I've come across many many companies who offer a cheaper alternative and have still done the job, sometimes even better than the over priced companies but what you need to identify when weighing up your decision on when to buy a high priced and low priced product is, are you paying more for the brand "name" or are you just buying a better product overall? 

I'll leave you with a perfect example:-

Two companies who i can't name, both are national landscape suppliers and one is owned by the other, the lesser known company is alot cheaper but the two companies catalogues are about 95% the same, all the products they both manufacture are made on the same site, the worst case is a anti slip paving slab:-

Well known company:- £4.00 + vat

Lesser known company:- £2.90 + vat

Beware of your purchase the name is just as expensive as the product.

Broaden your expertise.

Today's post will be about your own personal expertise and how we shy away from jobs that don't fall under that umbrella.

With the spring upon us the public are out in there masses looking for ways to improve and get that garden they've had there eye on, things are a lot simpler in terms of how we do things (please don't take this as comment that your jobs are easy) my point being is that some landscapers won't touch a decking job and want to stick to hard landscaping, some roofing companies will sub contract another "specialist" company to fit a GRP roof.

It's informing you that your hard earned cash from the jobs you do is being thrown away because of misconceptions that it's not something that can be completed by yourself, a couple of times I've come across this with contractors.

A builder came in asking if i knew of anybody who could do GRP roofing and i looked at him and said "yeah....I'm looking at him" he said that he had never done it before and he couldn't do it and that a company he asked to quote for the job said £4000 but he wanted to see if it could be done cheaper by anybody else, I showed him a video from my suppliers that was 9 minutes long on how to install and the materials he would need for the job.

He installed it himself with a labourer within two days and the roof cost £1600, the perfect example of a misconception that could have cost this particular builder £2400 in pure profit, he could have had it all done in a day if it hadn't been for the weather.

Addition, someone uploaded the video onto youtube if your thinking about taking on a GRP roofing job:-

I had a similar situation with a landscaper again asking if i knew anybody who could install a decking area, he was capable of installing a standard deck if the base was straight forward along with the top deck running in the opposite direction but his customer had spotted the Chevron effect on the Internet and wanted the same, the landscaper didn't know where to start, I explained that it really wasn't difficult as long as his measurements were spot on along with his angle's but he would need a chop saw to make things easier, I worked out what he would need and the system which would give him the least amount of wastage, he reluctantly had a go and it ended up being a nice piece of work.

The point of this post is don't shy away from something because you think it's difficult, suppliers are always looking for quicker and easier ways for you to use there products and the quicker and easier it is to use, the more likely you are to buy it.

A word of warning, make sure you do your research first before having a pop yourself there are still things that need a specialist and it could end up you being even more out of pocket if you try and then realise it's still out reach of your capabilities.

The Consumer Protection Guarantee.

Today's post will be something that I didn't really want to do when i started this website and that is to give a certain company more of a spotlight than others, there is no money changing hands and the people I'm speaking about have no clue that I've wrote this post but after finding out a little bit about these guys i felt i needed to shed some light on what they do and my feelings towards it.

The consumer protection guarantee:-

My feelings towards this company is of extreme frustration, I have had so many customers and friends go under because there has been no protection from people who have the stupidity of hiring a tradesman to do a large project and figure out once it's almost completed that they can't pay, my anger is directed at this company because they have taken this long to come up with this idea. It's not there fault by any means but so much built up frustration seeing close friends pleading for goods to go on there account to try and claw back there business on there next job but i cant help them because if i let them have the goods it would be classed as stealing, they can try small claims court but they end up with a bigger sum of money to pay for than the one there chasing from there customer, I'm having trouble putting my frustration into words because for so long it's been pent up.

We see so many articles and television programmes stating "cowboy builders" with a bald chap chasing after a dodgy bloke asking "why did you build a house without any doors!!?" that we forget that tradesmen aren't always the bad guys, have you ever seen a TV programme where the bald chap asks a customer "this respectable builder has spent six months on your property, has completed the job so why haven't you paid him!?" I'm taking a shot in the dark here but i guess it just doesn't make for good TV.

My whole point in this post is to shed the light on Consumer Protection Guarantee, I have a very emotionally attached past with my customers and not just because they spend money but because i have seen so many times there whole entire life come crashing down, we forget that the work they do is the same as everyone else, they do it to pay there bills, put food on the table and to support there loved ones, it's something i have great respect for and that i can relate to being a family man myself, i couldn't imagine what would happen if i lost my job with a huge debt and having to tell my family that i was in trouble and it may end up with my family losing everything we own, The consumer protection guarantee get there own post on my website because they help everyone, not just tradesmen but the customer as well, no more worrying if your customer will cough up, the consumer protection guarantee will give you protection for any project over the value of £2000.

They have my upmost respect for what they are offering and i hope it comes across in my post today, i hope that you all at least consider looking at the website because if you end up with a customer that can't pay, can your business afford to take that hit? why should it have to even if it could.

http://www.tcpg.co.uk/

How to treat your suppliers.

Today I wanted to talk about how to treat your suppliers and the real truth on what happens if you push your luck to far.

Over the years I've come across hundreds of customers, all different from the stressed to the laid back, from the 6'8ft to the 5'2ft, the extremely organised to the extremely disorganised, the range of personalities is broad and all unique.

My post today makes you aware of how you treat your merchants, how it reflects on the service you get and the prices, now I have three customers (who will remain nameless):-

First customer is the most organised customer i have ever dealt with, his attention to detail is in no uncertain terms ridiculous, if on the rare occasion I get a price wrong he will e-mail me with the details and even the amount that's due to be credited.....with and without VAT.

This customer when he first walked into my branch had a folder of all the best prices he gets from three other merchants and basically said "if you beat the prices we will buy it from you" it was a big list and about 30% of the items i couldn't even get near but i managed it on 70%.

He is courteous, understanding, to the point and organised, the simplest customer to deal with and spends alot of money, if all my customers were like him i would have my nine working hours cut down to two.

My second customer is a plasterer and is unmanageable, not because he takes the mick or is loud or rude but because he constantly lies and tries his luck with prices, he puts words in my staffs mouths to try and get cheaper prices and conveniently forgets when a price is given. No matter how i try and approach his account my work gets undone every month, i caught him at the counter saying to the staff member that another merchant has offered multi finish £0.75p less than what we were selling it to him for, not an unreasonable statement? apart from i had already had this conversation 3 days ago with him and i had set the term up on his account, so my staff have been warned that prices won't be discussed and that if he does want to discuss prices then send him to my office.

Within three months of this rule being set he has seen me on 10 different occasions trying the same old trick, he doesn't spend much and says after each encounter that he will have to shop elsewhere, we still see him on a weekly basis and he still tries his luck.

The third customer spends as much as my first customer and when i made the comment of only working two hours if all were like him, well this customer takes the remaining seven hours, the most disorganised customer, we have been through the motions many many times when he starts a job, he brings in the plans, he asks if i can take them off, i explain I'm not a QS and that i don't have time, i send off the plans. He gets good prices because i set them from the start but if I'm off on holiday his service dips, not because we want his service to dip it's because he depends on us so much that if we lose one member of staff he doesn't get the attention. I'll be honest, if i see his name on caller ID i always look to the ceiling and say some profanities under my breathe.

It's not that i don't want his business or that he isn't a nice bloke it's because i have to do a large majority of his job and the worst part? if i construct a time frame call off for his materials imagine the frustration when his account goes on stop because he forgot to pay his bill, we had a big falling out one time and he went to another merchant for about 3 weeks, lets just say he came crawling back, i have 2 children and one of them is a young baby, the other is a 45 year old customer.

My point for this post is just be a little more organised, I'm not trying to come across as someone who is having a moan who works in a merchant but because this advice helps you, i have come across quite a few people who have said to a customer "no i can't add that extra item onto your delivery" when they can or "no i can't squeeze you in for a drop tomorrow" when push came to shove we can, there will be occasions when the most organised of customers need a big favour but your chances to have that favour delivered is alot greater if the big favours aren't constantly asked for.

I've said in a previous post that merchants want your business but make this decision alot easier for them, the tolerance levels may be alot higher today but there is still a limit.

You don't need to be customer one because as organised as i am i still wouldn't be able to hit his level if i was a tradesman but just taking the time to book your delivery in advance or picking up the materials that you can pick up in your van, these things don't go unnoticed by your merchant.

Finally i had rugby tickets to give away last week, who do think i took?

Winning jobs through your merchant.

First of I had a cracking day at work and it ended with a fantastic sale for a customer who was extremely frustrated by his customer, he came in at around 1pm with his first visit and had a face like thunder, i asked him what was wrong and he told me the couple that had hired him to landscape there garden couldn't make up there mind, sound familiar?

So what i wanted to discuss today is how your merchant can help you win the job you want, the thing is so many tradesmen do all the running around for prices and options for there potential customer that they eat so much time up and get a little frustrated, this shows and can sometimes sour a sure deal.

The situation for my customer turned from him being really frustrated to finally getting the job and a start date, i said to him after he said about his customer "send them down to see me" i said this because i can address any problems they have as there at the branch, he came down with the couple and i sat down with them asking what did they have in mind when it came to there garden, they were vague at first but i managed to narrow it down and give them some options, i then proceeding to take them out to the yard and showed them what could be done, it ended in them having buff textured slabs and a large parameter wall with the smaller slabs acting as copings, they needed to be cut to suit but we all addressed this issue, i suggested it and asked the builder if it could be done and then asked his customer would you like it if it matched your paving.

The whole point of this is use your merchants and not just for materials, you can address any issue by taking your potential customer down to your supplier, make it an official visit, make your contact aware that you will be bringing someone down, explain what your expecting and let the merchant do the work, your merchant will be an extension of how you come across to your customer and this is what we do for a living and the whole thing is a bonus for everyone involved, we get the sale, the builder gets the job, the customer gets the garden they have chosen, that's the result we want, isn't it?

Side note:- I have to say this because certain situations can arise where it can go wrong and resorts back to a previous post of dealing with your merchants, your contact has to be good for you to use this option, there's no point if your contact at your merchant is someone who doesn't give a hoot and has the attitude to match because this reflects on you, when you bring your customer down to the branch your merchant is an extension of your business so make doubly sure that your merchant is up to this, most merchants are but it could cost you your job for this particular customer if your merchant doesn't have that person to make you the builder look good and help your customer make there mind up.

To summarise, this option extends to anything that the customer requires, it could be a kitchen, a bathroom, re-tiling a roof, landscaping, even hanging a couple of doors, treat your merchant as the information hub of options your customer has, if you open up your doors to your customer and they defiantly want the work doing going through the process of sitting with them with your merchant is a very professional and beneficial way of securing the work they need doing.

Try it once and see how you get on and i promise with all the things in place it will be very hard for your customer to not be impressed with how you carry yourself and your business and all this leads to one thing - you securing another pay day.

The Horror stories.

Today i wanted to do something different and recap on some of the personal and my fellow colleagues horror stories when it came to the building merchants, How customers reacted to news, how we as supplies balls up and just some stories on this nature.

So first up a customer was building a new build from the ground up, he got to the stage where he was laying his block work (normal 4", 7n) , he was talking 2 loads a day (12 packs) for two weeks straight, it was a massive development and he was getting to the tail end of this stage and noticed that the blocks were crumbling, obviously a little worried he contacted us and asked if the blocks were indeed 7n, we contacted the supplier (no i can't give the name) and they assured us even in that state they were indeed 7 newton, well our customer who saw the state of these blocks on a daily basis got more and more concerned the more he saw these blocks, so he hired someone externally to test the strength......turns out they weren't 7 newton.

So the job is on hold, guys on site on a day rate, all the block work has to come down including the mortar that was used, i mean this really was a colossus mistake, he got from our supplier:-

All the blocks replaced (this time they were 7 newton!)
& £12,000.

He settled for this.

Second up a customer wanted a brick match done so i sent out our sales rep to match them up and let me know what they were so i could get a price, the customer was happy with the price and needed them pretty fast, the best i could do was 5-7 working days as they were wire cuts and needed to be brought down from somewhere, so 5 working days pass they came into our yard and I ring the customer, he wants them straight out so off goes my delivery lorry........i get a call saying these are no where near what's existing, i jumped in the car and went down there, the sales rep had matched up the house directly across the road from the job and the availibilty of the bricks he needed? 3 weeks specially made. He went ballistic.

He got his bricks in the end and apologised to me personally as it was me who got the brunt of his anger, nice bloke overall though.

Third one up a big misunderstanding and the very first and only time I've fallen out with a customer, The bloke wanted an artic load of light weight foundation blocks i gave him a price but unfortunately the supplier only had the tongue and grooved blocks at short notice, i explained to the customer that if he wanted them in the time frame that was given he would have to pay about £3 a square metre more for the T&G but said the time saved using these ones means he will get them around the same price overall with the labour saving so he agreed.

A month later he comes into the branch screaming and shouting saying we have charged him loads more when the price was agreed, he was speaking to the manager at the time and i wondered over from my desk and asked what was the matter, he again in a very aggressive manner repeated what was said to the manager and I first said calm down as if he keeps it up i won't even bother to speak to him i then proceeded to explain what was said with him shouting inbetween my words, when i was finished i said "I'm done with this guy, your the manager you sort him out" I'm not an aggressive person but this guy was pressing all my buttons and i needed to walk away otherwise a minute more and i may have lost my job.

This ended up with him getting money back (which was a loss to the order taken) and the area manager wanted to give me a verbal warning, i asked my manager to arrange a meeting with said area manager as i would not except a warning on these grounds, the meeting was never arranged and the warning was dropped.

And finally we suspected a staff member (assistant manager) of stealing and i mean this guy was a brown nosing weasel of a man, he stood for everything i hate in the cooperate game, he took credit for other people's work, he ran from his work load and worst of all? He b*******d his way through life, he said he was an experienced mechanic but when he took out the company van he needed to refill as the fuel was getting low, he went to the petrol station and rang up the branch asking "what fuel does this take?" A VAN!?!

Anyway a few of us noticed a bag down by his desk and he kept sheepishly putting items in there, paint brushes, white spirit, some paint just a few decorating items and we all didn't think anything of it except the next day there was no bag, now I'm not a grass, i wouldn't stab someone in the back to get ahead but with this guy i wanted to make it my business to see if something was going on, as soon as i asked the other staff members if they had booked out any goods for him they all said no and wanted a part in taking this guy down, so i went to the manager and explained what had happened, he checked the camera and he caught him on camera with the bag walking to his car, problem being is without seeing what was in the bag no action could be taken, thinking he had gotten away with it the weasel then picked up 5L of paint and put it next to his desk, i went to the manager again and said send admin on her break and take one yourself and lets see if he puts it in his car, he did! the worst part of all this is that because my car was in the shop that day i was forced to get a lift home with this guy, so we went to leave work at 4.30pm and as we were reversing back the manager stepped in front of the car, came to the drivers window and pointed to the tin of paint at the back seat and asked "do you mind explaining that?" so the weasel turns to me and said in a panic "i asked you to book it out" i was having none of this and said "no you didn't" long story short the weasel lost his job for stealing goods.

I don't really like seeing anyone lose there job but this guy? we weren't that bothered.

Really this post is just to make everyone aware that human error does occur but what makes a good supplier a great supplier is if they learnt from there mistake and how fast they get the mistake fixed.