Undercutting

Over the past couple of weeks a large percentage of our appointments have been for whole house installations. What we've also noticed is that our main competitors are majorly undercutting our quotes in order to win the order. With companies already cutting costs, lowering profit margins and reducing fitters wages, how can taking thousands of pounds off the cost of a whole house installation be a sustainable way to do business? This has been occurring regularly. What makes this tactic more confusing, is that when we question the customers to ask if the standard of product is the same as our high standard, the just say 'yes'. This could mean two things, the first is that other companies are just telling customers what they want to hear when they ask the salesmen about the product spec. Or secondly, if other companies have improved their product spec to match ours, they are selling it with hardly any or no profit at all. We know this because after taking all profit and commission out of our quotes, only then do our prices match our major competitor.

Long term, this isn't going to be a tactic that's going to be sustainable, and with the massive hike in glass prices coming next week, I may just sit back and watch the larger companies struggle with their underhand business practises.