What is a DLO?
“DLO” is short for Direct Labour Organisation but it might be called Direct Services, the Maintenance Department or Property Care. Whatever the name, it's the landlord's own organisation that deals with much of the repair work. If you want to sell to Public Sector Housing Landlords, you need to consider DLOs.
Public Sector Landlords include local authorities and housing associations [or trusts] that own housing stock. The Windowbase Housing Specifiers database gives details of over 1,800 decision makers at over 800 organisations, with their size and the names of the people who draw up the specifications. These organisations then have to get the work done.
There are two ways - one, for Planned or Capitalised Maintenance, is to invite tenders and let out contracts for, for example, replacing all external doors with a new, better, type. The other, revenue-funded (day-to-day or response) repairs, is more ad hoc - with a department that employs staff (the direct labour) to carry out the work.
A DLO orders a wide range of products and materials to do the work itself. Specification in many instances can be less important than what is readily available or even what's on special offer at the local builders' merchant.
The Windowbase Direct Labour Organisations database comprises the names of public sector housing landlords that do a significant proportion of the maintenance / repair work themselves.
If you want to sell a range of building products, materials or services such as doors, plumbing goods or heating, first you need to be clear whether what you offer is likely to be used by DLOs. You also need to know who and where they are. On this will depend how much sales people time to deploy, and where best to deploy it. It might be better to mail them, possibly several times. These people are often fraught - they serve tenants, remember? - and might not be susceptible to telesales calls unless they ring you. But then you can send a sales person to demonstrate and clinch the sale.
