Client to Hansen Pole Buildings Designer, Jim; “I talked to a local lumber yard and received a quote from them for a similar 40×60 with attic truss at 40#/sq and they were about 20K lower than your quote. The 54K that you quoted seemed a little high when I received it. The other quote did not have as many doors but the difference made me wonder. Did you include concrete or installation on our last go around? “
Since we do not construct buildings, we provide building kits, the Hansen Pole Buildings price did not include labor to install, or concrete. So the answer to the question was – nope.
Jim; “Something is definitely different as our price is always competitive. Would you mind sharing this lower quote with me so that I can figure out what is off here?”
Jim; “Hi, I haven’t heard back from you on this email sent yesterday. I do not need the companies name and feel free to block that out as I only need the material specifications to compare the two quotes. As I said something is definitely different for there to be this kind of difference and we do have a price match guarantee for like materials.”
Comparing Apples & Oranges
The client actually did share the competitor’s quote with Jim. The quotes were Hansen Pole Buildings $52,972 delivered, Brand X $34,647 plus delivery. As our gross profit is nowhere near the $18,325 difference, I am thinking to myself – Wow, we can just have them provide all of our building kits, make more money and life would be so much easier!
There is, however, a Paul Harvey to this story.
It turns out the other guys left a few items off of their quote. OK, a lot of things.
This building has a gambrel roofline and the client was expecting a full second floor. The other folks made no provisions for the 2400 square foot second floor, nor did they have the four foot width stairs to get to it.
They quoted green lumber, not kiln dried. 2×4 wall girts and roof purlins, while we provide a minimum of 2×6. We provide closed cell closure strips at the top and bottom of all roof panels (keeping out flying critters and debris), not the other guys.
The list went on, and on, and on…..
Jim prepared a quote for the client which, as close as possible, including the items as the competitor had them (as we refuse to use green lumber, screws which are not powder coated, etc., it was not an exact match).
Surprise!! The “dumbed down” Hansen Buildings quote was now over $2,000 less AND it still included better features and delivery.
Jim stated; “Over the past 3-years I have done this comparison difference many times now with different competitor quotes and never once has a competitor offered the client a better price or product than HPB offers them. The bottom-line here is this client will be placing his building order …… and, like the Guru says, when there is a price difference between HPB and the competition – then there are always product differences causing the price difference.”
As my mother used to say, “Enough said.”
