As a material supplier, you know how tough the competition can be. It’s your job to provide the type of service and inventory, as well as competitive prices, that will keep contractors coming to you for the supplies they need.
How can you go above and beyond to satisfy and retain your contractor customers? Providing comprehensive complementary takeoffs is one obvious solution, and offering them just got a lot easier.
2 Reasons You Should Be Doing Takeoffs for Your Customers
Complimentary takeoffs can be a huge help for your customers. While they should always continue to do their own takeoffs, having measurements from you gives them a ballpark range for the project. It also makes it easy and seamless for them to purchase directly from you.
1. Provide Exemplary Customer Service
If a contractor comes to a supplier for a quote on materials, only to be told they need to send exact quantities before they can get a price, that slows down their bidding process, and they’re likely to look elsewhere.
But when you encourage customers to provide you with the project plans and offer to do the takeoff for them, with prices included in measurements, contractors can decide much more quickly if they have the scope to take on the project. Anything you can do to make contractors’ jobs easier and make their bid decision go faster will be remembered and appreciated, helping you establish strong business relationships.
2. Make Purchasing Simple
When a contractor wins a bid based on a takeoff using your pricing, sure, they could still order from someone else. But they’re much less likely to go to a competitor since they’ve based their bid on prices from your company.
Another supplier could be cheaper – or they could be more expensive. Time is money to contractors, and waiting to get a quote from another supplier could set their project back. They won the bid with your prices, and you already know exactly what they need, so they’ll be more inclined to come to you for simplicity and speed.
Roadblocks to Complementary Takeoffs
Why don’t all suppliers do free takeoffs for their customers? If you think takeoffs still require hours of labor over printed blueprints, it’s definitely not worth putting in the time for a job your potential customer might not even win.
Quantity takeoff software does speed up the measuring process significantly, but traditionally did not help suppliers include prices with their quotes. A digital takeoff could be helpful to your customer, but manually looking up item prices and doing the math to work up a quote based on those measurements is still not a good use of your time.
Mass Item Import Opens New Possibilities
What if you could simply attach the items in your price book to the takeoffs you perform for your customers? With STACK, you can!
STACK’s mass item import feature allows you – with the assistance of your STACK success manager – to import all of your items and prices into a custom catalog within the platform. No hours-long process of manual data entry; we’ve got you covered.
Attach Priced Items & Assemblies to Takeoffs
Once your catalog is imported, you can create items and assemblies based on typical takeoffs and material groupings, and you can simply attach these to the takeoffs you perform for your customers. Complementary takeoffs now take just minutes per project, allowing you to better serve your customers, win more sales, and grow business.
Contact us today to learn more about mass item import and how we can help you help your customers!
