House Builders

House Builders

You have products or services on offer to House Builders, how do you find the right person to sell to?

You may rely on your existing contacts, on the assumption that you’ll know them anyway, or that’s what the sales force is paid for. Failing that, you could wander round looking for housing estates, or you could look in various directories. You will find a lot. But there is a more systematic approach.

You should have some idea how many there are. On this will depend how many sales people to involve, and where best to deploy them. It may be better to mail them, follow up with a telesales call and then only then send a sales person to clinch the sale.

Or you may wish to ensure that the sales force are achieving a call rate that maximises their face-to-face selling time. And with builders often out visiting sites, you need to be sure you can find them!

Number of Companies

The Windowbase database contains over 4,100 companies of all sizes actively building, or planning to build, houses in the UK. Some call themselves “Property Developers”, some “House Builders”, some are regional offices of a group, others are just small builders on the look-out for a plot of land. Then there are those builders who work closely with Architects to build one-off private developments to a Client’s specification. The database has over 5,400 named senior decision-makers who could be buying your products and services.

Decision Makers

All of them make buying decisions somewhere along the line. In some cases the Managing Director or Chief Executive makes the decision, in other cases there is a full time buyer or purchasing team obtaining materials and services. With smaller builders the proprietor may do everything.

Size of Companies

You will already know that the number of employees is not a very reliable measure. Because so much work is sub-contracted, the builder can be a “co-ordinator” and employ no-one, or keep his own skilled staff to run the show. Larger builders have sales staff manning show houses at each development.

The most useful way to measure size is by number of houses built - each year - where this is available. That way you can directly calculate your sales opportunities.

What do you need?

To sell effectively, you need a minimum of the company name and address, a contact name (even if it is not the right one for you, asking or mailing a known contact establishes your credentials), and a telephone number. An indication of how up-to-date the details are helps. Wherever possible the size of builder, by numbers of houses built, is valuable.

Windowbase...

...acts as your own research department, seeking out potential customers for you; collecting the data and checking so that it all makes good sales sense.

Only companies with whom contact is made are included (Yes! If it cannot be confirmed, it isn't in) and the information comes from the companies themselves. A unique element of the data is that the contact date is recorded so that the user can question or even discard data as it gets older.

If particular information is not known to the respondent, or refused, that fact is recorded too.

What is provided?

The full (22 carat) information includes for 4,166 companies, with 5,413 named contacts:

• Company name
• Address
• Postcode
• Chief Executive / Regional Director
• Senior Buyer
• Job title
• Phone no if different
• Telephone number
• Fax number
• Telephone / Fax preference service indication
• No houses built p.a. / or range
• Type of office (Head/ Regional / Single)
• Group affiliation
• Employee numbers
• Date of validation/ amendment
• Website / e-mail address for major companies