June, 2007

Selling Smart to Deck Builders

Teach an old dog a new trick, and he’ll be loyal for life.

By Bob Heidenreich

Lumberyards don’t know what they don’t know when it comes to selling to deck builders.

In my opinion, the difference between “order-taking” and educating is the key value that makes some dealers become trusted vendors.

I used to deal with lumberyards before I started my own. I started building decks in the late 1970s. I didn’t know where to buy, so I’d buy at Menards or places similar to a Home Depot. What I discovered is that they would ship me whatever they had—it didn’t matter what I asked for or what I needed, I got what they had.

Then I actually worked in a lumberyard, and my job there was to sell decks to homeowners. They’d come in and not know what they wanted, and I learned that all I had to do was to suggest to them what they needed and they would use that.

I see this problem all the time with my new employees—that they at first tend to be “order-takers” rather than proactive. When a customer comes in to buy a deck project, the employees simply listen to what the customer says he wants and then try to supply that.

Instead, the No. 1 thing I try to stress when training my employees is to say, ‘let me show you how we do a deck.’ We make suggestions about design concepts and process concepts—the methods of installing the footings, for instance. Historically, people believe you dig a hole, put a tube in, and fill it to the top with cement. But there are disadvantages to that. First, you have to get rid of all the dirt, and then you have to bring in a tremendous amount of cement. You also need an expensive metal bracket on top.

What we do is suggest instead that all the builder really needs to do is dig a hole, put a foot of concrete in the bottom, and then put the posts in. We teach them that the posts are treated to .60 so they won’t decay, and that the cement has to be hard first, but we explain that what a footing does is to prevent the sinking of the post. We educate potential customers about soil compression strengths. We show them some quick ways—using simple math—to calculate what a deck weighs, like a 10-by-10 sq. ft. deck is designed to hold 6,000 lbs. If it had one footing, like a mushroom, it would have to support 6,000 lbs. on that single footing. But we explain the ground in this area only supports 2,000 lbs per sq. ft., or 13.88 lbs. per sq. in., and we show them how multiple footings have an impact on that.

By doing this, we can teach them how to engineer/design their decks better.

Education Means Sales

We go through the whole sales process that way—educating our customer. We explain the difference between Ponderosa pine and Southern yellow pine, for instance. A lot of times customers have a deck design created by design software for a deck 16 ft. away from the house. The design shows multiple posts and beams going across to support that load. We explain to them that if they use Southern yellow pine, they can go that distance with one row of posts. That saves them money, even though Southern yellow pine is more expensive, because you’re able to span longer distances and use fewer footings and less structure. And because they now understand how footings carry the load, it starts to make sense to them.

I use this analogy: Every year, my mother cuts her turkey in half for Thanksgiving before she puts it in the oven. She says that’s the way her mother did it. I ask my grandma about it, and she says, ‘my oven was always too small for a whole bird.’

Deck builders are like that. They’ve always done things the same way—but by the time you’ve educated them, they’re so involved in understanding what you’re doing, there’s not a chance they’re going to buy from someone else.