01 — The opening
Lead with what they get, not what we are.
They do not care about the platform. They care about trucks running full. So the first sentence is about their yard, not our website.
"We send you a finished order. Address, postcode, date, delivery window, phone number, the full mix spec, and the money already sorted. Nobody has to ring the customer back. You accept it or you decline it, and if you accept it you deliver it."
"That is work you did not have to quote for, chase, or sell. What is that worth to you per order?"
Then stop talking. The number that comes back is the negotiation. If we open with a percentage we have set our own ceiling; if they price it, we find out what it is genuinely worth to them — and it is usually more than we would have dared ask.
Every order we send has already cost them nothing to win. No rep visit, no quote, no follow-up, no quote that never converts. Compare it to what their own sales overhead costs per delivered load and our fee should look cheap by inspection — that is the comparison to steer them toward.
02 — What we hand over
The whole order, not a lead.
This is the part that distinguishes us from every lead-generation outfit that has wasted their time before. Be specific, because specificity is the proof.
| They receive | Which means they never |
|---|---|
| Site address and postcode | Ring to ask where it is going |
| Delivery date and a chosen window | Negotiate a time by phone |
| Name, mobile, email | Chase contact details |
| Full spec — MPa, aggregate size, slump, finish or chip, pump mix | Interpret a vague request or guess a mix |
| Volume, with the waste allowance already applied | Talk a customer through cubic metres |
| Add-ons — pump, fibre, retarder, colour | Discover the pump requirement on the day |
| Payment already handled | Invoice, chase, or carry the debtor |
| Access notes and any site warnings | Send a truck that cannot get in |
Show them the staff back-office and the itemised checkout on a laptop. It is far more convincing than describing it — the whole argument is that the order arrives complete, and they can see it arriving complete.
03 — The fee
Charge for notice, not just for volume.
A flat percentage is the obvious structure and it leaves money on the table, because not every order is worth the same to a plant.
An order placed five days out is worth more to them than one placed for tomorrow morning. Advance notice lets them fill a known gap, sequence the day's deliveries, order raw materials against real demand, and avoid overtime. A next-morning order competes with work they already have. So the fee should follow the notice.
| Notice given | Fee | Why it is worth more to them |
|---|---|---|
| Same or next day | Lowest | Fills a gap only if one happens to exist; may displace other work |
| 2–4 days | Standard | Plannable. Fits into a week that is still being built |
| 5+ days | Highest | Genuinely fills idle capacity and lets them buy materials against it |
Go in with the structure and let them price the tiers. "We think a booking a week out is worth more to you than one for tomorrow — do you agree, and by how much?" is a much better question than naming three percentages.
We earn more on long-lead orders. We must not start pushing customers to book later to collect it — next-day availability is one of the few things we promise that the incumbents do not. The customer pays the same either way and never sees the tiering. We simply earn more when they happen to book early, which is also when our own dispatch risk is lowest.
Structures worth discussing
- Percentage of order value — scales with what we bring them, easy to audit, and they see exactly what we cost on every job.
- Flat per delivered order — predictable both ways, and it rewards us for the small jobs they least want. We capture nothing extra on a 12 m³ pour.
- Per cubic metre — speaks their language, since that is the unit everything else in their business is priced in.
Whatever the shape: paid only on orders they accepted and delivered. They pay for outcomes, never for leads. That single sentence answers most of the scepticism in the room.
04 — Delivery
Ask for a delivered price. It fixes a problem we already have.
There are three ways delivery can work, and one of them is strategically much better for us.
| Option | What it means | Read |
|---|---|---|
| Delivered rate by zone | They quote one price per m³ that already includes cartage within a zone | Best. Simplest possible customer-facing price, and it matches how the market leader quotes |
| Separate cartage, passed through | Ex-yard rate plus their delivery charge, shown as a line | Honest and itemised, but it makes our total look larger than a delivered quote for the same job |
| We set delivery | We add our own charge on top | Hard to justify — we own no trucks. Invites the question of what we are charging for |
Firth's published rate includes delivery within a reasonable distance. Ours did not, so comparing the two headline numbers made us look 12% cheaper when all-in we were dearer at every volume up to about 20 m³. If our suppliers quote delivered prices by zone, that mismatch disappears and we can compare like with like. Worth pushing for on those grounds alone.
05 — What we need back
Leave with these, or the meeting was a chat.
That last one matters more than it sounds. If the customer is paying them directly, we need the checkout to still complete on our site — otherwise we have rebuilt the handoff we criticise everyone else for.
06 — The objections
Six things they will say, and what answers them.
07 — Pump operators
Same conversation, and one argument the plants do not have.
Nearly everything above transfers. What changes is the unit and the pain.
- They sell time, not volume. A pump sitting in the yard earns nothing, and unlike a batching plant they cannot make it up later — an unbooked Tuesday is gone. Idle capacity is a sharper problem for them than for a plant.
- Notice is worth even more. They are scheduling a machine and an operator. A booking five days out lets them roster; a call at 7am does not. The lead-time tiering argues itself here.
- Their minimum hire is the equivalent of a minimum load — they get paid for three or four hours whether the pour takes that long or not, so a short job is not the loss it looks like.
"We are booking the concrete for the same job, on the same day, in the same window. So you turn up when the truck does — not before it, and not an hour after."
That is a genuine problem in the trade and nobody solves it. Today a customer books concrete from one supplier and a pump from another and hopes the two arrive together. When they do not, the pump waits on the clock or the concrete goes off in the truck — and both of those cost somebody money.
We are the only party who knows both bookings. Coordinating them costs us nothing and is worth real money to the operator, the plant and the customer at the same time. It is the strongest single argument in either conversation, and it only exists if we sign both sides.
If a pour needs a pump and we book both, who is liable when one is late? Get the answer before it happens rather than during. The plant will say the pump, the pump will say the plant, and the customer will say us.
08 — Decide before the meeting
Four things that should not be worked out in the room.
- Our walk-away fee. The lowest number at which this is worth running. Below it, we do not have a business, and it is far easier to hold a line decided in advance.
- Whether we will take one supplier or hold out for two. One gets us live faster; two makes the cascade real and stops us depending on a single plant. Know which we are doing before someone offers exclusivity in exchange for a better rate.
- Whether we can live with their cancellation policy. It becomes ours, and the customer will read it as ours.
- What we will concede. Exclusivity for a fixed term, a minimum volume commitment, or nothing at all. Deciding this cold is much better than deciding it while someone is looking at you.
Before any of this: is the 2021 spread still real? Every figure in the business plan rests on a four-year-old quote to a cash account. Whatever else happens in the meeting, come out knowing what a cubic metre actually costs today.