'Profit' Has Become A Dirty Word, But It Shouldn't Be!

Over the past few years, the word 'profit' seems to have been dragged through the mud a little bit.


This is down to two things. The first is due to the appalling behaviour of the banks in this country. Their reckless spending and greed brought the financial sector and this country to it's knees. The general public had to bail them out. But now when the very same banks are reporting huge profits again, so soon after potential meltdown, it seems highly distasteful that these huge profits aren't being used to pay back the people who were so kind as to bail them out in the first place.


The second reason is the recession. As companies cut their prices to win new business, it was their margins that suffered. But now it seems customers have got used to this scenario. A perfect example occurred yesterday. We were quoting for a roofline price for a customer whose next door neighbour had gone ahead with us a week previously. He was pushing us on price so I made sure I did my best, and made sure it was cheaper than next doors. There was less materials involved so that was do-able. Realistically our profit margin was lower than it should have been, and so was the commission. Once I got back to the customer with the price all they could say was that they couldn't understand why it was so much (even though their neighbour told them how much they paid), and that we seemed to be making a lot of profit it out of the job. I explained to them that scaffolding and their black materials made up a lot of the cost, as well as labour. We didn't put much profit down and I was earning very little out of the job. They seemed offended that we wanted to make profit out of the job in the first place.


From what I read and hear, customers don't want companies to be making profits right now. But do they not understand that businesses are here to make money, and that profits mean their ten year guarantees are honoured. If companies don't make any profit and go bust, than that catching door which would normally be sorted out FOC under the terms of the guarantee would cost to be put right!


Profit IS NOT a dirty word. It is something every business should be striving to achieve, on every single job, not matter how big or small. People are in business for a reason, to make money. I suggest that those in business who don't like profits, or to those people who don't like businesses to make money, go work for/buy from non-profit organisations. Don't waste the time of those people who want to build something for themselves.

Doors For £800 to £1000

My most recent poll: How Much Should An Average Door Be Sold For? has finished, and the clear winner, and what most people think is that the average door in this industry should be sold for between £800-£1000. The rest of the results are below:

These are how the results were split:


£400-£600: 12
£600-£800: 3
£800-£1000: 23
£1000+: 5


There were quite a few votes for the £400-£600 option. Personally I don't know how anybody can make a decent wage out of that sort of price. By the time you take out survey costs, material costs and fitting costs, how can a profit be made?


For me, the £800-£1000 group was the right choice. When you take out all of the costs, you should still be able to make a decent profit out of a single door. But I also think there is still a market out there to be able to see doors over £1000. There are some really high quality and premium doors available which when sold in the right way, can easily command a four-figure sum.


Price is one of the biggest issues facing the double glazing industry right now. There are debates going on as we speak about how companies should be raising their prices to make a decent profit margin, reflecting the high quality of many of the products being sold.

Fair Price Guide: Pros And Cons

Over the past 48 hours or so there has been some great and fevered debate about the prices we should be selling our windows and doors at. This is brilliant, as price is one of the main, if not the main debating point for us all.


Mike Bygrave on Glasstalk brought up the idea of a fair price guide. Bodies like the GGF or FENSA could publish guidelines indicating what items should cost. For example a door ranging between £500-£1500. The advantages from a customer point of view is that they get to use the guideline to help plan their budgets, and they get to avoid the silly tactics of the nationals when they start off at astronomical prices only to come back down again. That's from the customer view point.


There are some problems that installers would have to overcome. One obvious one is differentiation. If a customer sees this guideline, they will be thinking they can get themselves a £1500 quality door for £500, when we know that isn't the case. This would make it harder for those selling at the higher end of the price range to justify their prices. For this reason implementing this sort of thing would probably be strongly fought against by most small to medium businesses, maybe most of us...but not the nationals, they are a law unto themselves!


In times of hardship prices are scrutinised terribly. I don't think we would be talking about price if the years were 2003-2006, they seemed to be the best years most recently. Plenty of leads, plenty of people willing to spend money left right and centre, no recession. Pricing debates probably wouldn't even be thought of, even though there was no Glasstalk back then!


Price guidelines are a good idea, but unimplementable. The best thing for everyone to do is to choose your product, choose your margins, and price based on your costs and quality of product. Simple as that.