The environment we work in has changed a lot in the past few years. We have new consumer protection laws giving the homeowner even more control over us. MTC’s and NVQ’s designed to cut out the less than professional fitters. Even building regs demand that nothing less than a C rated window be installed in someone’s home. The environment is changing to ensure that the wares we install improve in quality. So now the climate is changing, in 2015, our own attitudes towards our own industry have to change.

Changing attitudes

Following on from my last two posts, the theme coming out from the discussions and comments on them is that quality now has to come first. In the case of hardware, we all seem to be experiencing the side of the deal where cheap hardware breeds poor quality hardware. We’re all rather tired of it. But rather tan continue to complain, it’s probably best we put our hands in our pockets and start paying for better quality hardware suites.

And in reality, would it really be that hard a sell to the homeowner? You sell them a £15 letter box that will probably pit in 12-18 months. Or, you could offer them a £20-£25 letter box that is made to better standards and probably won’t pit. For those few extra pounds, I’m fairly sure that the homeowner won’t mind paying the difference. And I’m also fairly sure that the installer won’t mind buying it in for a few extra quid either.

It the price vs quality attitude that we have to change. Surely we have learned our lessons now, many times over? Surely we are sick of repetitive, tedious service calls caused by quality issues that shouldn’t be occurring in a modern day fenestration industry? If so, then it really should be time we ditched the poor quality products.

Cheap vs quality

I’m not daft, I fully understand that there will always be a portion of the market that will want the cheapest possible products. The type of windows and doors that only scrape by in window energy ratings and building regs. That unfortunately will always exist, despite my lack of fondness for it. But there is also the other side of the market that aims to fit the best it can.

It’s that side of the market that needs to champion the argument for better quality. And when I say better quality, I mean quality across the board, not just on the product front. We need to focus on better quality installers. You can have the best product in the world, but if you have rubbish fitters, then the product is just as good as the worst product. Quality customer service has to be a key component to any window and door business. You get my point. Quality has to be a theme which runs through every part of your business. Hopefully if it does, it will drown out the gimmicky businesses that thrive on ridiculous discounts and products so cheap they won’t survive through their own guarantee period.

Long term benefits

One of the big advantages for a business that has a platform based on quality is that it brings long term benefits for the company. Not only does a better quality product cost you less in the remedial department, but it also helps customers to come back to you for future purchases.

Quite often a small single purchase can blossom into a much bigger purchase second, or third time round. Many times I have sold a solitary door or window to my customers, only to come visit them again to then quote for the rest of their house. From small, quality little acorns, many bigger and profitable orders can grow.

We have to start thinking long term as an industry. We complain when products fail on us, like I have written about in the last two posts on hardware. Our customers complain about the same problems too. Well, if we want our products to cause us less problems and therefore less money, we have to really get serious about selling and installing much better quality products. Don’t fancy doing that? Then look forward to constant remedial calls about crap hardware, dropped windows and doors, failed sealed units and all the other problems associated with cheap and cheerful windows and doors.

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