How to find and keep the small contractors who buy every month

A mistri who buys every month is not your customer in the ledger sense. The mistri buys from a dealer, and your bag is simply what the dealer hands over. You cannot call every one of them, so the real question is which contractor gets a phone call, which gets a site visit and which you leave to the dealer. The answer comes from four questions asked in order. This post walks through them with one made-up wall putty maker in Satna, so the branches are easy to follow.

Question one: does the contractor choose the material or only carry it out?

Start at the counter, with the dealer beside you. Painters and tile-layers often pick the brand, because the house owner says "you decide, you know". A labourer on the same site picks nothing. Put a labourer on the sheet only if the dealer says the person is about to become a mistri.

If the contractor chooses, go on. If not, drop the name from your list and move on. This sounds harsh, but a first morning at a counter collects many names that belong in the second group.

Question two: does the contractor use your product on most jobs, some, or none?

Ask the contractor directly, and ask the dealer too, since the two answers often differ. Then follow the branch.

• Most jobs: loyal already. Do not call to ask for an order. Call only when you have something useful, such as a new pack size, and otherwise leave the contractor alone.
• Some jobs: this is the group to work on. Find out what is used on the others and why. It is often a habit tied to one dealer's stock, or a bad experience with one batch.
• None: note the trade and the dealer, and go back in a season. Pushing now only teaches the contractor to avoid your salesperson.

The middle group is where a small effort can change the monthly figure. A contractor who already buys two jobs in five needs one good reason to make it three.

Question three: what is your one reason, and can you honestly give it?

A reason is something that helps a contractor finish a job or earn from it. A discount is a weak one, because a rival can match it. Pick from what the contractor told you.

If the last row is the honest answer, accept it. A call with no reason is the one a contractor starts to dodge.

Question four: is the dealer still a friend of your brand?

Before you spend effort on any contractor, check that the dealer will still stock you next season. A loyal mistri cannot save you from a dealer who has switched. If the dealer is drifting, fix that first, and our post on how a dealer agreement should be written is a place to start. Going round the dealer to sell to the contractor will be noticed, and the contractor may be told to buy elsewhere.

A made-up case: wall putty in Satna

Take a putty maker with four dealers in Satna, who spent two early mornings at the best three counters. The maker met about thirty people and wrote them all down. Then the questions were run.

Question one removed eleven labourers. Question two showed that nine painters used the putty on most jobs, seven on some jobs and three on none. The nine and the three were left alone. The seven were rung one by one, with a plain question: what do you use when you do not use ours?

Five of them gave the same answer. On damp ceilings in the older part of town they reached for a rival, because ours had flaked once on a bathroom wall. The maker had not known. The technician went to one of those walls with a painter. They found the problem was the surface, not the putty, and wrote a three-line note on preparing it. The note went to all seven as a short voice message, and the dealer put it on the counter.

A month or so later, by the dealer's own count, three of the seven asked for the bag by name on damp jobs. The other four did not change. That is the honest result: the method moved some people and left others where they were. It moved them because the reason was true, since the product was fine once the wall was ready. If the putty itself had been the problem, no call would have helped. The two mornings and the technician's day cost about ₹6,000 in time and travel, and the three who came back bought roughly a bag a week. The maker, the dealers and the figures are invented.

Where a reward fits in

Once the right contractors are known, a small scheme can add to the reason. Reward only purchases the dealer's bill can show. Pay quickly, and keep amounts modest and certain; a lucky draw attracts the wrong people. For a page that lets the contractor reorder alone, see a reorder page for contractors and carpenters.

The sheet itself is plain: name, phone, trade, dealer, share of jobs that use you, the one reason, and the date you last called. Our construction materials page covers the dealer side of the trade.

Sort one dealer's contractors this week

Take the contractors from your single best dealer. Walk each through the four questions on paper. Many will end in "leave alone", which is a good result. For the few that remain, write the reason beside the name. If you would like a second pair of eyes on the list, with customer loyalty programmes built on the dealer's own billing, tell us what you need.