People love to ask ‘How much for_______?” you can fill in the blank.  It’s amazing how potential buyers determine the level of customer service they’re receiving by how their questions are answered.  If you’re trying to run a post frame building company by continuing to figure out the cost of highly specialized items such as Attic trussed roofs on an individual job basis, you’re wasting a lot of time.  The bottom line is this; a lot of people just want to know what the cost would be to do it, but most have little to no intention of actually following through with it.

With Protractor you can literally make a couple of clicks and arrive at a price for that potential ‘pipe dream’ of a request that the customer is asking you for.  But here’s where you get the edge – because while your competitors are scrambling to put together a price, you’ve already given yours. That means a clock starts ticking and your customer starts determining ‘who’ they’re going to be dealing with on this particular project.  “I’m totally amazed at how many people tell me that I was the only company to get back to them with a price” says Lee Zimmerman of Martin Structures in Versaille, MO.  “It seems that if a customer asks for just one or two things that are a little bit off the beaten path, I get the job because my competitors can’t figure out how to put a number on it.”

It might sound odd to say that a $25,000 pole building project is an impulse item.  I mean we typically think of impulse items hanging by the register while we wait in line at the supermarket.  But that’s not necessarily true.  People often make big purchases on a ‘whim’.  Been on a new car lot recently?  It happens all the time.  You start out ‘just looking’ and before you know, you’re driving it off the lot – literally.  It’s the same with a pole building or garage. In fact, it might be even more impulsive because it typically is easier to get the money to pay for them.  But that’s beside the point.  The company that gives the price first sets the bar of expectation for the competitors to meet.

“We’ve seen a 32% increase in Attic style buildings over the past 8 months” says Nate King of Superior Buildings in Harrisonburg, VA.  “I think that since we’re able to easily put a price on it, people sometimes go for it. It’s not like you can go and put an attic room on later.  With Protractor, my sales staff can literally price that option in seconds and it’s obviously paying off for us.”

“It’s not just Attic designs that you can program into Protractor.  You can have options for Scissors trusses, carriage style or dual slope trusses, rafters instead of trusses – whatever you need, we can get it into your program” cites Randy Mosser, Operations Manager at Post Frame Protractor.

The program is not going to magically generate a material list and figure the costs accordingly that are associated with less used roof systems such as these.  But the program can and will calculate the costs to the customer that you need to charge so that you can pay your employees or sub-contractors appropriately for the increased work they will be doing.  It’s also an option that current users of the program have defined as an area with which to raise their overall margins for their companies.  A room in attic truss is kind of like leather seats and a sun-roof in your new SUV…. you don’t really need it, but it sure is nice to have.

And the extra sales just keep on coming. With an attic type truss you now have the opportunity to sell a stair set with a landing to get up to the room. You have the opportunity to sell a couple more windows for the gable ends.  A lot of guys will buy that room up there to be used as the proverbial ‘man-cave’.  Therefore the ability to offer insulation and interior finish packages for that room can also be offered with just a few more clicks in the Protractor program.  It’s a win-win for everyone; owners, sales people and customers.