DHT Electrical Contractors
DHT are a small firm of electrical contractors. For some years they had specialised in refitting retail outlets. However, with the downturn of 2008 they decided they needed to move out of what was clearly a declining and dangerous market sector, and re-orient the company’s client base.
They decided to bring in a Sales Hunter to help them to build a wide set of new relationships with main contractors. It was agreed to focus on those in the £10m – £50m range with high levels of school work – a type of work DHT handle well.
Our Sales Hunter has worked for DHT for 2 days a month over a period of 22 months. However, just those 44 days’ work has been enough to move DHT from £2m of shopfitting work to over £2.5m of schools and commercial work.
He explains:
We have focused on a tightly targeted group of no more than 12–15 builders in London and the northern Home Counties with a size and company culture which was easy to work with. And these were the companies that also paid the best! This involved closely focused and very targeted relationship building with key people in each company, from estimators and bid managers to construction managers and site surveyors.
The key source of information was tender and contract-awarded market intelligence. As a result DHT is currently running with 3–4 months of forward business secured. The work secured ranges from just £5k to over £350,000 per contract with a very high level of repeat business. Margins are understandably well down on the good years in shopfitting, but DHT are still securing a 5–7% net margin which will improve as the industry recovers.
