Creating a two-way street: How to improve your builder-supplier relationship

Zach Wojtowicz:

What’s up everybody? Welcome to “The Building Code.” I’m Zach Wojtowicz again here with Courtney Mattern. Hi, Courtney.

Courtney Mattern:

Hi. I’m the new host of “The Building Code” podcast.

Zach Wojtowicz:

I said last time it wasn’t permanent, but now it’s starting to seem permanent.

Courtney Mattern:

You’re never going to be able to kick me out.

Zach Wojtowicz:

Yeah, it’s a performance review live here on “The Building Code.” Like we took Charley, we’ll take you next Zach. No. We’ll have him back soon enough. Yes. Thank you for being on. Why don’t you tell our wonderful listeners what we got today?

Courtney Mattern:

Yeah, I’m excited. Alyssa Sinclair, she’s senior manager over at CBUSA with the customer success team. CBUSA is a group purchasing organization. Buildertrend is the parent company. If you’ve listened to the podcast, you’ve probably heard from other members of the CBUSA team, but we’re bringing Alyssa on to talk about supplier relationships. I keep saying it’s part of the puzzle profitability. Those relationships are important where you’re getting your materials and sometimes it just has to do with how you’re building your connections.

Zach Wojtowicz:

That’s right, and it’s an area, a business that I’ve found people have really strong attachments to, and it’s really interesting to kind of get into the area of, well, how do you decide which vendors? Is it a legacy thing that you’ve done for a long time? Are you in the market for new ones? We just had IBS. That’s a great place to find out about new vendors. So, we’re going to talk about all those things and kind of make up that important part of building, which is the stuff to build the house with. Go figure.

Courtney Mattern:

And Alyssa has a lot of great advice from her seven plus years at CBUSA, working directly with suppliers and builders, kind of getting in the middle of those relationships, solving the problems, the disputes and celebrating the successes.

Zach Wojtowicz:

That’s right. We’ll let her tell you all about it. Let’s get her on here. Hey Alyssa, welcome to “The Building Code.” It’s great to have you. And a little bird told me that this is your first podcast, so what do you think? Are you nervous? What’s the first podcast vibe?

Alyssa Sinclair:

First podcast vibe, yeah. I am a little bit nervous, but I’m pretty passionate about our topic today and the podcast, so I think that we’re going to have a good time. I’m happy to follow some of my mentors and leaders on the podcast who have talked a little bit about CBUSA and group purchasing in the past episodes, though I’m looking forward to it.

Zach Wojtowicz:

That’s right. You’re an alumni. You’re joining an alumni group from CBUSA. We’ve got Ryan and Brian.

Alyssa Sinclair:

That’s right.

Courtney Mattern:

Has Bill been on the podcast?

Zach Wojtowicz:

I don’t know if Bill’s been on.

Courtney Mattern:

That’s got to probably be our next one.

Zach Wojtowicz:

Yeah. We’ll just keep hitting the lineup and I have no doubts that you’re going to far exceed what those two were able to produce here on “The Building Code.”

Alyssa Sinclair:

Thank you.

Zach Wojtowicz:

Yes.

Courtney Mattern:

Well, a fun fact about Alyssa also is that Alyssa was on the marketing team for a while.

Zach Wojtowicz:

That’s right.

Courtney Mattern:

I worked closely with her. She was my go-to source for all things CBUSA and group purchasing.

Zach Wojtowicz:

A reunion episode. Really?

Courtney Mattern:

Yes. It’s kind of a reunion.

Alyssa Sinclair:

Here we go.

Zach Wojtowicz:

We’re just checking all the boxes. Alyssa, tell us a little bit about yourself and a little bit about CBUSA for those of our listeners that maybe don’t know.

Alyssa Sinclair:

Yeah, sure. I am actually not from the construction industry. That’s always my little fun fact that I like to kick off with. Before I found myself at CBUSA, I was actually in teaching and then tech sales. After seven years, I think I can claim the construction industry a little bit, but it’s not where I came from. So, everything I know I’ve learned from the mentors and leaders at the CBUSA organization, folks you guys have mentioned, Bill Randolph, Brian Pavlik and including some of even our customers have been some of the mentors of mine. When I first started at CBUSA, I actually used to go every Friday to Lowe’s with Phil Randolph, and he would walk me through a section of construction materials, and that’s how I learned everything about what I know when it comes to building a home. So, I believe wholeheartedly in CBUSA.

For those folks listening today that don’t know about CBUSA, we’re a group purchasing organization that aggregates custom and independent home builders in a marketplace to help them leverage better pricing and programs that they might not be able to get on their own. And I’m sure we’ll get into that here through the podcast a little bit more about builder, supplier relationships, but we are very uniquely positioned to help all parts of the supply chain, and it’s a really cool opportunity that we have.

Zach Wojtowicz:

They didn’t take me to Lowe’s as part of onboarding at Buildertrend. I’m kind of upset right now.

Courtney Mattern:

Did you get a soda or a coffee before you walked the aisle?

Alyssa Sinclair:

Oh yeah. We got coffee. We went to Lowe’s. We would spend an hour in there going through one section, and then if we were able to, we would go walk builder job sites, which was super fun because you can certainly look at everything on paper, right? Spreadsheets and material lists, but when you actually go see what those things really look like in person and walk through what a house really looks like when it’s just in the studs or it just has the drywall up, it really gives you a whole different perspective on the complexity of building. So, yeah.

Courtney Mattern:

And you’ve held a few different roles at CBUSA. Do you want to walk through some of those and what you learned?

Alyssa Sinclair:

Yeah, I have pretty much taken every opportunity that I can at CBUSA to continue to grow here and within the industry. When I first started, I came in as an operations coordinator, which is sort of CBUSA’s introductory role into the business. I spent several years there kind of learning the business, and that’s where my time at Lowe’s took place. After that, I moved over to marketing and events with CBUSA before we became a part of the Buildertrend family. And then once we became a part of the Buildertrend family, I spent some time on the marketing team trying to integrate for the first time ever real marketing for CBUSA, which was really, really exciting. Most recently, I held region management position working with our suppliers and builders in the markets. So, covered some parts of Texas. I’m out of Austin, Texas, covered Austin, Dallas and Fort Worth.

So, shout out to my builders in those markets. I’ve had the opportunity to work with them over the last year and most recently I’ve been given the opportunity to build out our customer success and sort of education department. And so, I’m moving into that role and stepping into sort of aggregating all my knowledge from across the company to help as our team is growing and expanding rapidly. I was actually the 10th employee of CBUSA, so to see it go from 10 to I think we’re at 55 today is crazy. So, yeah, I’ve had a lot of opportunity. It’s been really wonderful and continuing to grow here at what we’re doing I think is kind of a really exciting thing.

Zach Wojtowicz:

I love it. You mentioned kind of in your intro a little bit about the builder-supplier relationship partnership and how important that is. We want to dive into that a little bit. Obviously, you have firsthand experience on all ends of kind of the backend support of that and then also even just maintaining those relationships out in the field. What is the ideal supplier-builder partnership? What does that look like?

Alyssa Sinclair:

Yeah, it’s a really awesome question, and I think this is where CBUSA really found their niche is finding ourselves as a partner to help strengthen that relationship and really in our opinion, the best supplier- builder relationship functions mutually beneficial. So, where it really is a two-way street and what that means in our opinion is when the vendor is operating out of behaviors where they feel like they’re always putting their best foot forward to earn the business, and then in return the builder is rewarding that behavior by awarding that vendor business and continuing to nurture the relationship. It works two ways, right? We want those vendors to always be coming to the table with creative pricing and programs and setting expectations and providing great service. And in return, we want the builders to be rewarding that behavior by giving the business to vendors who are stepping up and doing that. So, when those two things are working together, we feel like that’s kind of the secret sauce, and it provides tremendous value to the customers across the board.

Zach Wojtowicz:

That makes a ton of sense. One thing that I’m kind of interested in, you’ve seen it from all angles, which is the more difficult one to get into that relationship? Is it the vendor and supplier who is bringing you the materials, and it’s more of a sale or is it the builder who has maybe already existing relationships, or they’re not sure about the product?

Courtney Mattern:

Yeah, they’re reluctant to switch.

Alyssa Sinclair:

Yeah. We’re in an industry that is heavily based in relationships, right? Many of our customers on the builder side and honestly vendors, too, will give you some version of a line like, “Oh man, I’ve been working with this guy since his grandfather owned the company,” or “I’ve been working with this person for 15 years or more,” right? And so, there are long-term in-depth relationships that go way, way back, and there’s a lot of time and effort put into those things. I think it’s a very interesting question because I think that oftentimes what can be a misconception is that the vendor partners work for the builders, right? And so, they’re treated as such. They’re treated as sort of somebody who works for them as opposed to a partner. And I think what we try to really expose to our builder customers is that really the best partnerships are just that, they’re partnerships.

These are folks that are on your job sites daily, responsible for something that’s really important, whatever phase that is, the supply process, supply phase, and you need to make sure that you are looking at that through the lens of a partnership instead of just somebody who works for you. And I think that if you can do that, then you’re able to kind of bring them into the fold as a part of your organization or extension of your organization as opposed to just telling them what they need to do, when they need to do and how they need to do it, right? You can lean on them as a partner. I think from the builder’s perspective, oftentimes some of our most sophisticated builders are ones who really understand that, right? And they’d step up to the plate and they look at their vendors as partners instead of just folks who work for them.

From the vendor side, I think the tricky part is that we always want to encourage vendors to just what I mentioned a little bit earlier in the first question, continuously operate at a place of trying to earn the business, right, because always going to be new people coming into the fold. There’s always going to be things outside of our control when it comes to building homes, and vendors that really step up and understand that no matter how long you’ve known somebody or how many trips you’ve been on together or how close you live to them in the neighborhood, operating out of place of trying to earn that business is going to reap you the most reward.

Zach Wojtowicz:

That makes a lot of sense. Oh, sorry, Courtney.

Courtney Mattern:

Oh no. I was just wondering what are some of the challenges right now in construction that are bringing builders to CBUSA to kind of explore this group purchasing model?

Alyssa Sinclair:

Yeah.

Courtney Mattern:

Is there something current events wise? Is it just when they reach a certain part in their business?

Alyssa Sinclair:

Yeah, I mean I think there’s a couple of things, but I think the most common response we get from folks who become members of our organization is they say they came for the savings, they stayed for the network. And so, I think we’ve been just through a period of time where pricing has been very unpredictable, sky high, crazy plummets, allocation of a lot of material, and we’re kind of coming out of that. We are projecting that rocky waters might hit again as it always does, and joining an organization like CBUSA, what that does is it helps protect those folks from those types of uncertainty. By putting in price caps and price locks in certain contracts, we’re able to protect our builder members from everything that might be going on in the market. Maybe they only assume a small portion of that increase, right? We also are able to help our builder members become the builder of choice.

So, when there’s allocation of product, we’re able to step up to our supplier and vendor partners and say, “Hey, we have this network over here. They pay their bills on time, they operate together, they do what they say they’re going to do.” Since there’s an allocation, we’d like to be put on the priority list to receive that material and our builders can benefit from that. And I think the same works on the vendor side of the table. Working with groups like CBUSA, being a vendor member gets you the same kind of benefits.

You’re working with high quality customers who pay their bills on time, they run reputable businesses, they operate out of a space of ownership and hopefully transparency, and you know what you’re getting when you work with a CBUSA builder, and that’s a benefit to vendors when there’s hundreds and hundreds of opportunities out there to know you can kind of come to a group where you’re going to get the best of the best and you’re going to like working with those people, that’s a benefit because you know you’re going to get the work, you know they’re going to pay you, and you know that they’re going to come back for the next project and hopefully utilize you again.

It’s a two-way street. Gets back to that two-way street theme that I think will probably be really consistent throughout this conversation.

Zach Wojtowicz:

When it comes to setting up that relationship and kind of getting to that point of trust and partnership, what are the ways that you see the most successful builders and suppliers establish that?

Alyssa Sinclair:

Yeah, I think the number one thing, especially in a new relationship is setting really clear expectations upfront, right? So, if it’s a builder member who’s bringing a new vendor into the fold, I think sitting down with that vendor and spending some time to say, okay, what are the payment terms? Do we have price locks or caps in place? What are your service commitments? What’s included in the project, right? Fuel surcharges, trip charges, returns, pickups, I mean the number of things depending on the supply category. Sit down and spend some time digging through that and make sure those expectations are set upfront because if both sides of the table understand the expectations, you’re going to reap a more fruitful relationship, right? Because you’re going to know that upfront instead of waiting until the end. Vendor has to send the builder the bill. There’s a bunch of charges on there that were unexpected and now you’re in a rocky place, right? Where the vendor might have really reasonable reasons that they are putting those charges on there.

“Hey, I had to drive a crazy distance to this project because you’re building a mansion way out in the country, and that costs me a lot of money.” Right? Setting those expectations upfront I think is one of the number one ways to kick off a relationship and keep it really strong out the gate. Certainly things change over the course of a project, especially in custom houses where that timeline could be months, right? Could take up to a year, potentially, depending on how big that house is. Making sure you’re constantly checking in, setting those expectations as things change and communicating really clearly sets those folks up for success.

Courtney Mattern:

During your time, have you seen maybe a conflict between a supplier and a builder, and how do they successfully navigate that? What are some tactics you’ve seen that have been really effective in, I guess, cooling it, cooling the conflict?

Zach Wojtowicz:

Come on over to CBUSA headquarters. We’ll just talk it out.

Alyssa Sinclair:

I mean, that’s not a bad way to approach the situation. I mean, unfortunately we do see it all the time, right? CBUSA, specifically, as sort of in the business of brokering builder and vendor relationships and really helping make sure that we can untangle those things. We not only see that at the local level, so when we operate in our individual cities around the country, but we also see it on a national level, right? When a builder utilizes a brand for a certain amount of time, one thing goes wrong, they swear up and down they’ll never use that brand again. And maybe it was all because of a lack of communication around allocation or something that happened that just wasn’t clearly communicated to that builder. So at CBUSA, one of our biggest jobs we think is to help diffuse those types of conflicts.

I would say the best example is we do a lot around lumber purchasing with our groups at CBBUSA across the country where we aggregate our builders’ lumber purchases for a certain period of time. This is group purchasing, kind of one-on-one here. I’ll try to keep it to 20 seconds, but we aggregate that volume and we bid it out on behalf of the group to the suppliers in the marketplace. And while the pricing component is a piece of it, what we have found is that there is so much more above and beyond price that can provide value to both the builder and the vendor. It does our builder partners no good if their vendors aren’t making a healthy margin, they’re not making profit, right? And so, our way of helping diffuse that circles back to sort of my previous answer a little bit of setting clear expectations, talking through some of the complexities of brokering a deal.

And so, I think that that’s how CBUSA really helps step in and smooth out those muddy waters at times is saying, “Hey, it costs our vendor partners money when you use a credit card. That’s a fee that they assume. Every time you call them to pick up extra lumber at your job site that costs them money.” And on the reverse side, we work with the vendors to say, “Hey, let’s set the right expectations on delivery timelines, prompt pay discounts, who’s their point person? Who do they need to communicate with when they have a problem?” All of those things go into play, and I think when we can lay those things out onto the table upfront, we’re able to eliminate or at least mitigate those types of conflicts. And so, I think I answered your question.

They have disagreements all the time, I think because they’re not setting those expectations upfront, and that’s what we want to help them do and really put their defenses down, too, because if something does go wrong, which is pretty inevitable, right? You’re always going to have something go wrong. Instead of assuming that your vendor partner maybe was out to get you, let’s just go broker a conversation, right? Maybe something happened. Maybe they had overturn of their staff, their sales staff. Maybe they didn’t get a delivery from the manufacturer for some reason, like a global pandemic, who knows? So, let’s talk it out and we can work those things out by putting those things on the table.

Courtney Mattern:

Well, maybe we do the flip side now, and can you tell me about a time where there was a builder and a supplier who had some big surprising success together or solved some big problem together and both reaped the rewards?

Alyssa Sinclair:

Sure. I thought a little bit about this question when you guys sent me questions over, and I think I’m going to give a little plug to our friends over at Ferguson who is a massive supplier partner of CBUSA, and also just recently partnering with Buildertrend as well. We have been working with Ferguson for many, many years to broker a partnership, and finally, we were able to work something out, and they were willing to give CBUSA an opportunity to work with our customers, and I would say it’s been a massive, huge success. I think that we were able to sell them on this idea of converting our members over to them, ones that they weren’t penetrating their business today, and it’s been a huge celebration because we’re helping them see and get more visibility into maybe you have their appliance business, but you don’t have their lighting business, right?

Maybe you have their lighting business, but they’re not buying any of their plumbing from you, and we can work with them hand in hand as one of many of our suppliers to help get them more engaged with the vendor or the builder customers that they’re interested in working with. And so, it’s been a really great partnership. We have great partners on the Ferguson side working with our leadership team and our field staff to show not only the builder base that Ferguson is a great partner to partner with, but showing Ferguson that there’s a whole plethora of customers out there that are worth their time and worth inquiring about to earn their business and all that they can offer. So, yeah, Ferguson has been a really great partnership for CBUSA. We’re looking forward to continuing to grow that.

Courtney Mattern:

Well, and the program at CBUSA has such a benefit to these builders, too, because a lot of them are medium-sized companies, smaller-sized companies, and some of these products they might not be offering because of the cost or putting in some of their homes because of the cost.

Alyssa Sinclair:

Sure.

Courtney Mattern:

But when they’re putting their power together, they’re able to offer so much more to their clients. It’s a win for them. And all of these supplier partners are making more relationships with builders, like you said, who are cream of the crop builders.

Alyssa Sinclair:

Yeah, they are. And because they’re mid-sized companies or small companies in some cases, sometimes they’re hard for some of these organizations to reach, right? But they can come to CBUSA, they gain access to a whole bunch of them in one place where they get this extra sort of bulk our field team who are out there working with these medium and small-sized companies, and we’re able to help expose them to the value of our partners like Ferguson and like our other local supplier partners, so that they can check in with that.

Zach Wojtowicz:

That’s what was kind of steaming around in my brain was the fact that I think a lot of people who are a smaller medium-sized business are like, “I don’t know how to get in front of a rep at Ferguson. I’m just used to going to the retail store and shopping,” and this gives you that ability to kind of … That relationship is about knowing who, and that is how you can work through a lot of those problems, too. So, the benefit, it’s interesting when I hear the CBUSA folks talk about I stayed for the network, right? My interpretation of that is also not just the builder network, but also the vendor network that they didn’t have access to before. Is that true?

Alyssa Sinclair:

Oh yeah, for sure. Absolutely. Some of our building companies may not have had access or like you said, even known who their manufacturer rep is or who their national supplier rep would be, and we help connect those dots and make those connections. Fostering those relationships are really a key part of why I think builder members stay around and I think our vendor partners and supplier partners really benefit from it, too. I think they come to find that when we bring these types of customers to them that they’re like, “Man, this has been a really great customer to work with,” because of all the reasons that I kind of touched on earlier. They pay their bills on time, they sit down with me, they spend time talk with me about what they need. We build out the packages, and I think again, that two-way street just continues to show itself.

Zach Wojtowicz:

Well, and a small guy today could be a big builder in 10 years, too.

Alyssa Sinclair:

Sure. Could be a big builder in 10 years, could be a big builder in 10 months.

Zach Wojtowicz:

Right.

Alyssa Sinclair:

I mean, they get a big opportunity, development opportunity or they partner with another building company. I mean, they could grow rapidly and we want to support that.

Courtney Mattern:

This episode drops beginning of March, so it’s March now, it’s end of the first quarter. What does 2024 look like for CBUSA?

Alyssa Sinclair:

Well, we have a lot of crazy awesome stuff going on with the help of our partnership and connection with Buildertrend and being a part of the Buildertrend family. I mean, we’ve had the opportunity over the last couple of months, especially, to really supercharge the staff at CBUSA, and I think that to kind of tap into the builder-supplier relationship, another relationship that’s really important is the relationship that our customers have with their CBUSA representative, right? These are people who are out in the field all the time, spending time in offices, hosting meetings, and so, we have been able to grow our staff quite significantly, so that shrinks the area of responsibility for our field folks, the amount of counts that they’re responsible for in hopes that they’re spending more time with our customers and doing more of what we’re talking about today, which is brokering those vendor and supplier relationships.

So, that’s a really exciting thing, I think, moving into 2024 is to have a really robust staff that can support all of the things that we’re trying to roll out. We’ve also grown our national contracts, which is our brand partners kind of team. So, we have the local piece, which are the supplier distributor partners, and then we have a national team that works with folks like Anderson Windows and Rinnai Water Heaters, and that team is also growing, so they are out there working with brands and high-quality brands to bring great deals to these custom and independent folks that they probably wouldn’t get on their own. So, it’s going to be really exciting. I think when I started at CBUSA seven years ago, we had six national programs in place, and I think today we’re sitting at 23 and growing, so we have seen a lot of growth in the programs we’re able to bring to our partners. It’s really cool, and I know that Joe Starr and his team are out there having a lot of conversations.

We’ll have just been at IBS when this podcast airs, so I’m sure he will be no short of having had meetings there. And I expect us to continue to penetrate new categories with new programs for our customers.

Zach Wojtowicz:

And I assume a lot of those programs are targeted based off member input.

Alyssa Sinclair:

That’s right. Exactly. We have been working on a lot of the major categories. We start with the biggest categories. We try to tackle those ones first and then it’ll just snowball from there. But yeah, we survey our customers every quarter asking them about what they want, what categories are important to them, where their pain points are, and then we try to go out and negotiate contracts on their behalf to help ease those pain points. And the more brand partners we have, the better for those local suppliers because those are programs we’re going to want to pull through that local supplier network and hopefully continue to share of wallet to our vendor members with those partnerships at the national level. So, it’s all around juicy.

Courtney Mattern:

There are several chapters across the U.S. of CBUSA, and that map will be growing in 2024, so make sure if you’re listening, you check our show notes for the link. You can check out and see if there’s chapter there in your area. Write us if you want a chapter in your area. There’s just so many benefits to, like Alyssa said, having another group of builders to collaborate with, but then also CBUSA and this team that is almost like your connector, your personal relationship builder. It’s like, “Hey, we know this person at this company. You should talk.” It kind of takes away, we just had Brad Levitt on a few episodes ago before the Builders’ Show, and we were talking about how it can be, even when you’re an adult running a business, you can be a little shy, and it could be a little nerve wracking to start new relationships, but CBUSA takes care of that for you.

Alyssa Sinclair:

Absolutely. I would definitely would say that for those out there listening who maybe aren’t a part of an organization like this, that we are absolutely, I would consider a consultant and a bolt-on to our builder customers business. You get somebody who can kind of come into your office and sit down with you and strategize. Which brands are you buying, who are you buying them through, why? What kind of deals do you have in place? Savings, pricing sheets, rebates, the whole gambit. And that’s what we’re here to do is help builders like that sit down and have a really great long-term plan as they move throughout the year.

Courtney Mattern:

And coming off the Builders’ Show, profitability is a hot topic. That’s what Brad was talking about. We were talking about it at the show on panel, and I think this is a big part of that puzzle. Where are you buying your materials? What manufacturers are you working with? What suppliers? I think there are a lot of levers to pull to make sure that your business profits. You don’t get to the end of 2024 and say, “Oh, well, it was an election year. Oh, it was an economy.” You can take control of the decisions you make for your business.

Alyssa Sinclair:

Sure. Yeah, absolutely. And I think that anytime you can sit down and look across the supply chain, all of the pieces of the puzzle as a partnership, you’re going to reap a better output as a building company. And I think that that’s what we really encourage our builder companies that are part of CBUSA to do. Invite them to your office, sit down with them, get to know them, right? We want to play the long game, not the short game, right? Because you might be able to get a new vendor into your office, get them to complete a job and get it done, right? But is that vendor going to show up when there’s a warranty issue or when there’s allocation issue or when there’s something that goes wrong, we don’t know. But if you have that long-term relationship in place with great vendor partners, then we feel certain that that’ll be something that you’ll be able to quickly address.

Courtney Mattern:

I’m really grateful last year I had the opportunity to visit the Raleigh chapter.

Alyssa Sinclair:

Yeah, sure.

Courtney Mattern:

The Raleigh market, which is one of the top markets at CBUSA, the top chapters, and you can see how those strong relationships raise the bar for everyone. All of those builders are at the top of their game. They’re pushing each other to offer better service, to build better homes. The vendors are offering top services, and who else benefits? The homeowners, the community, the region, the homes that are being built there, the growth that they’re seeing and that they’ve seen over the course of 20 years that their relationships have been going was really amazing and kind of a testament to what relationships can do to benefit everybody. I thought it was really cool to see that in person. I guess it’s kind of like my walkthrough through Lowe’s, except it was to actually to go to a …

Zach Wojtowicz:

Now I feel left out.

Courtney Mattern:

… Chapter meeting. Yeah.

Alyssa Sinclair:

Yeah.

Courtney Mattern:

Yeah. You got to sit through one of those presentations …

Zach Wojtowicz:

Someone take me to Lowe’s. Come on. I’m a simple man.

Alyssa Sinclair:

Yeah. The Raleigh folks are some of our flagship. It’s one of our flagship cities, and they’re some of our greatest, not only customers, but I would say partners to CBUSA. They really operate as an unofficial board of directors for us, and something that they have in common and that they all do consistently is inviting their key trade partners to be a part of their business, letting them ask questions, letting them participate at a higher level, and then you just see it. They want to work harder. Timelines of projects move quicker, things stay on budget. You just see a lot. The output is just … You can’t even measure what comes out of that because it just takes having a conversation. Instead of kind of being a pain in the butt customer, you become somebody that your partners want to work with.

Zach Wojtowicz:

Love it. Well, Alyssa, we’re right at time. Thank you so much for coming on “The Building Code.” Great conversation.

Alyssa Sinclair:

Of course. Anytime.

Zach Wojtowicz:

How do you rank your first podcast experience? One of one?

Alyssa Sinclair:

One of one. You know what? I have a lot more to say, but we’ll save that for another podcast.

Courtney Mattern:

For part two.

Zach Wojtowicz:

That’s right. We dangle the carrot. We do multi-episodes. All right. You’re always welcome back. Okay.

Alyssa Sinclair:

Yeah, of course. Thank you guys so much for having with me.

Zach Wojtowicz:

Thank you, Alyssa.

Courtney Mattern:

Thanks, Alyssa.

Zach Wojtowicz:

We just had Alyssa Sinclair from CBUSA talking a little bit about vendor partner relationships. What’d you think?

Courtney Mattern:

I thought that was such a great episode. We didn’t even get below the surface of everything that Alyssa has to offer in terms of advice for builders who are hoping to improve their relationships, but hopefully this is a start. There’s a lot of good advice there. Make sure that it’s a two-way relationship, that you’re in it for the partnership, not just to make your vendor work for you or vice versa.

Zach Wojtowicz:

The thought that occurred to me in the middle, which maybe it’s not a secret, but it’s really interesting to hear kind of about the dynamics of these relationships. At the end of the day, it all comes down to setting expectations and delivering on those expectations, and it just becomes a lot easier when those expectations are either documented somewhere or formally agreed upon, or there’s a process around those expectations. As far as when we get into situations where you don’t meet the deadlines, a lot of people are okay with that when that happens as long as it’s clearly upfront communicated like what happens if it goes wrong. I think a lot of us just assume things are going to go awry in any relationship. And that’s what’s interesting in construction is they’re built upon almost like the assumption mistakes will happen, but how it goes really well is when there is clear communication, and what’s going to happen in the process and what happens if there goes awry in the process?

So, it was a really interesting conversation around what makes great relationships is purely having kind of that innate understanding that it’s all going to be okay.

Courtney Mattern:

Yeah, the good communication.

Zach Wojtowicz:

Yeah.

Courtney Mattern:

And the beauty of CBUSA is they’re there to help foster that communication. They’re there to be a mediator. They’re there to help make the connection. They’re there to help set up the processes and set those expectations on the front end. CBUSA has been growing a lot since it came under the Buildertrend umbrella, so make sure you check our show notes for if there’s a chapter near you, if you want to join one of those networks. If there’s not one in your area, send us a note. Or there’s also opportunities to improve your supplier relationships through Buildertrend’s purchasing program. It’s just materials and your supplier relationships are going to be important in 2024. Don’t get to the end of the year and blame the economy or blame the election. There are a lot of decisions you can make in your business to make sure that you’re profitable.

Zach Wojtowicz:

Love it. Well, to our listeners, thank you so much for listening to “The Building Code.” We love having you here. Make sure you share feedback with us, and we also want to make sure you tell all your friends about us. You can find us where all podcasts are available. Courtney, any last messages? Maybe we’ll have Charley back next time.

Courtney Mattern:

Yeah. Maybe Charley will be back, or maybe it’ll just be me.

Zach Wojtowicz:

Well, you’ll only … Wait what? You’ll only find out if you listen to “The Building code.” Thank you.