CONSTRUCTION FIXINGS
Do me a favour! Order building and up-selling
Mark Salmon, of the Construction Fixings Association, lets a couple of bees out from under his bonnet and while we know he likes the occasional rant this one might just do you and your customers a favour as well as our forgetful author.
manufacturers and distributors. The second element is nothing more than a straight forward
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idea aimed at improving your margin while making anchors safer. The first part is relatively easy to implement. The second much, much harder.
Order building My needs for anchors are modest, stemming as they do purely
from my activities in training users in the correct selection and installation of different anchoring types for safety related applications. But what I’ve noticed, when I’m ordering by phone, is that I ask for what I want and the conversation stops there. If I’ve forgotten to ask for the drill bits I need with a certain anchor then no one reminds me. OK I’m a so called fixings expert but with the passing years my memory does not improve and there will come a day when I forget to order a vital piece of kit and find myself standing in front of a shed full of scaffolders with egg on my face. Yes, I do use checklists but that assumes I’ve remembered the checklist! The idea is simple. Whenever a customer places an order for
any anchoring product your staff ask if they want the accessories to go with them. This may add a very useful slice to the order and, equally importantly, it will make sure your customer has all the equipment he, or she, needs to set the anchor correctly so
“ The idea is simple. Whenever a customer places an order for any anchoring product your staff ask if they want the accessories to go with them.”
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When they ask “Have you the drill bits to go with this anchor?” they need to know, not only the diameter but, almost as important, what working length is needed and this of course, means they need to know the embedment depth of the anchor in question. Remember that for some anchor types (sleeve anchors and throughbolts) the embedment depth quoted in the manufacturer’s catalogue relates to the maximum fixture thickness and must be increased for thinner fixtures. And – a real issue for me when I look at some suppliers’ catalogues – what IS the working length of the drill bits you are offering? Is that made clear to users when they order drill bits themselves? Many catalogues simply state the length of the drill bit, usually the overall length, without making that point clear and rarely do they give a clue as to what allowance you need to take off the overall to get the working length - which is really what you need. It is
Fastener + Fixing Magazine • Issue 74 March 2012
he idea for the first element of this article, originally delivered as a presentation to the CFA’s Approved Distributors at our last annual conference, came from my own experience in ordering anchors from both
that they – or their operator on-site – does not find themselves about to install an anchor without the proper setting equipment and trying to bodge things up to avoid delaying the job. They will put down the phone feeling that you are looking after them. They may not realise that in the process you are probably safeguarding their liability, which could well be the case. So what bits and pieces are we talking about? In summary -
drill bits, hole cleaning stuff, special setting tools and more. But setting out a list of equipment that might be needed is
not quite enough. To properly implement this idea your staff need to have all the relevant information at their finger tips.
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