Back in February Chris Brown, Readymix Sales Rep, was invited to a Wind Farm in Merthyr Tydfil by a sub-contractor who was extremely unhappy with the service they were receiving from a competitor.

The project was the construction of a large substation to be powered by the largest onshore wind farm in the country, Pen Y Cymoedd (Head of the Valleys) Wind Farm. There was 2000m3 in the project and on top of a mountain. The project began in October and was behind schedule.

Despite the close proximity to the site the sub-contractor was receiving awful service, constantly hearing promises which were never being delivered.  They had, therefore, decided to consider changing supplier and invited CEMEX, along with another competitor to determine whether to change suppliers.

Our nearest Plant was 13 radials and could only produce 18m3 per hour. We were upfront and honest with what we could and could not do and explained in detail how we would achieve it. We explained that we needed early notice for larger pours and that, despite paying more they will be paying for the guarantee of good service and honest communication.  The sub-contractors were grateful for our honesty and accepted our proposal.

To date we have supplied around 400m3 since mid-February with pours ranging from 24m3 to 90m3. The Plant Manager and Chris are in regular contact with the Site Manager and have had no problems or concerns to date. We secured strong margins and have now begun to supply 200m3 of Permatite to the same site thanks to “painful” questioning during the initial meeting.

Above all, we have improved on an already a strong relationship with the sub-contractors who were thankful to us for supporting them on a difficult project. We are hoping that it leads to further work in the future.

Chris Leese, VP for Readymix, commented: “This is a great story about the skilful application of Sandler training, good old fashioned honesty and delivering on our promises. I find it really motivational because this shows that even when we don’t necessarily have the best assets we can still deliver a better service than our competitors, and once again, we can see customers prepared to pay ‘fair value’ for a good (and honest) service. Really well done to all of you involved”.