Integrating with your customers provides an opportunity to add value to them and help solidify your role as their preferred distributor. The key is recognizing the reality … that they also need to buy from your competitors (credit, availability, brands, location, price, etc) and enabling this (remember the phrase, “pigs get fat, hogs get slaughtered!”)

Recently I wrote about a unique service some distributors in the roofing industry have brought to their customers called Construct CRM.

I mentioned that the HVAC market was on their radar for Q4.

Well, since it is July, and Christmas has a habit of showing up in July (Christmas sales, merchandise at retail), Christmas is here for the HVAC industry.

This week Construct CRM and Blue Hawk announced that they are teaming up to bring this unique opportunity to its membership.

Blue Hawk and Construct CRM Team Up to Strengthen Distributor / Contractor Relationships

BLUE HAWK named Construct CRM a Solution Partner, bringing independent HVACR distributors access to distributor-branded FSM free for contractors

“A free, co-branded field service and CRM platform—gives BLUE HAWK’s independent distributors tools to compete with the nationals.”— Construct CRM

“BLUE HAWK, one of the largest purchasing cooperatives in the HVACR industry, today announced to its members it has named Construct CRM a BLUE Solution Partner and will roll out BLUE FSM, a co-op-branded field service and CRM platform built on Construct CRM’s technology and customized for BLUE HAWK Members and completely free for their contractor customers. Representing more than 200 independent member-owner companies operating well over a thousand locations across 49 states, BLUE HAWK is one of the largest buying entities in the HVACR supply chain.

As a BLUE Solution Partner, Construct CRM joins a select group of vendors that deliver value-added services enabling Members to achieve operational savings and efficiencies. For each Solution Partnership, BLUE HAWK negotiates rebates, discounts, and/or lower fees on behalf of its members, in service of a single objective: equipping independent distributors with the tools to compete with the nationals. BLUE FSM extends that mandate into software and digital commerce.

A Distributor-Branded Platform with Embedded Commerce

Construct CRM provides building-materials distributors a fully white-labeled CRM and field service management platform to place in the hands of their contractor customers. Contractors run their entire business within it — leads, scheduling and dispatch, estimating, invoicing, financing, and integrated payments. When a contractor builds an estimate, the distributor’s product catalog serves as the built-in checkout, turning everyday contractor workflows into a potential distributor order.

For BLUE HAWK Members, BLUE FSM is branded to each distributor, with the Member’s catalog at the point of sale. As a standardized platform across the cooperative, it is also designed to incorporate BLUE HAWK’s broader data and e-commerce initiatives and to reduce switching costs across the membership.

Built to Counter Channel Consolidation

National consolidators are acquiring large portions of the distribution channel and locking contractors into proprietary, single-vendor platforms. BLUE FSM is designed to counter that dynamic. It gives independent distributors a way to put best-in-class software in their contractors’ hands at no cost, standing in for the subscription field-service and CRM tools contractors pay for today — while keeping order flow inside the independent channel. Beyond loyalty, the platform gives distributors demand and activity data across their entire customer base.

Proven Traction

The model is already in market. At a regional building-materials distributor with approximately 60 branches, the platform scaled from zero to roughly $24 million in annualized GMV, with hundreds of contractors onboarded, in approximately 90 days this year. Construct CRM’s platform is on track to achieve more than $250 million in annualized online sales run rate this year and more than $1 billion next year, and today powers some of the top independent distributors in building products — collectively onboarding more than 100 contractors per week.

Take Aways

1. This is a unique opportunity for Blue Hawk members to get in on the ground floor on a value-added service, business process, and revenue generator service to support existing customers.
2. Construct CRM represents a different perspective on eCommerce. Rather than “hoping” a customer goes to your website, this embeds you into their operating process while generating the order electronically. Leading distributors view eCommerce as “electronic” commerce and seek multiple ways to be connected with their customers.
3. Construct CRM estimates that $250M in contractor purchases will flow through their system this year, a $1 billion next year. What that says is that 1) distributors are adopting but 2), more importantly, contractors are accepting and using the system.
   • While it may not be right for every one of your customers, and some salespeople will give pushback (because it is change, they think they lose control, and they are not confident in communicating it), consider if it impacted 10-20% of your business? Especially small / next gen, and mid-sized customers.

If you are a Blue Hawk member, I suggest attending one of the intro calls or reaching out to Construct CRM to learn more.