In the latest of our series, Andrew Gaved hears how the merchant giant has been working on a range of initiatives to help installers do business better:
As Sales and Operations Director for Wolseley’s new Local division, Dean Weston has been given a big task: overseeing the retail operations of three big brands: Plumb Centre, Climate Centre and Pipe Centre.
So when he says the issue most on his mind is “Growth”, it comes frankly as a bit of a surprise. This is already a combined network of some 450 branches. Isn’t growing it a bit ambitious in the first six months of your tenure?
With some relief, I found out that this growth doesn’t refer to early empire building but instead to growing what’s in the business already.
Dean says Wolseley is on a wider mission to simplify the business and to make it easier for customers to trade with, combining the scale and expertise of its branch network with significant investment in its digital offer. For him, growth is about making even better use of the strengths already within the business, while deepening Wolseley’s relationship with installers as a partner that can help them grow their businesses.
Given that to take up the current role, Dean was plucked from being the boss of bathroom retail subsidiary CP Hart, and before that, sofa giant ScS, it is clear that having a retail mindset is key to the task ahead. And prime among those retail priorities is to really understand the customer, he says:
“I think Wolseley as a whole, represents a really strong group of businesses. Plumb Centre in particular is really strong. We are taking market share, which is positive. But that is because some very basic principles about sales and looking after the customer have been now put in place, which weren’t there before.”
Dean warms to his theme: “We were great at servicing customers, but we didn’t go further. Literally, the customer asked for a product, and we’d give it to them, and we’d maybe ask them whether they needed accessories, but that was it. We’ve got to change tack and become a partner, not just a supplier.”
Helping the installer to grab the opportunity
What that means in practice, he says, is to be more proactive in helping their installer customers to grasp the forthcoming energy transition opportunity with both hands: “We’ve not consistently been helping installers to grow their businesses and to encourage the adoption of new tech. We also need to take account of the demographic – there is still a lot of reticence amongst anyone over 40 to get into the new technology. But you can understand it, since they already know exactly what they’re doing with boilers.”
So Wolseley has been on a mission to broaden the conversations around renewables. And, Dean stresses, there are plenty of good conversations to be had: “You can see the opportunity with the heat pumps and with air conditioning – which we’re really just dabbling with at the moment. We’ve got Climate Centre performing out of its skin, but we’ve got 400 branches across the rest of the network that could all be involved. When it comes to cooling, we want to help our installers with training as well – not only through Climate Centre, but also through Renewables Centre, which will provide training for your local heating engineer.”
It would help, he argues, if there was a long term plan from the government: “They need to say ‘This is our direction of travel for the next 10-12 years and those grants will continue for that period,’ then we can concentrate on the retraining. We can’t just storm the market with lots of new technology, we need the skilled people that can do these jobs.”
Dean believes that schemes like Nesta’s Start at Home scheme, which gives a free heat pump to heating engineers to install in their own homes, offer a good way to accelerate the take-up of the technology: “I like the way they can get hands-on experience in their own home – they can have a look at it and test it in operation, so then they can have a conversation with the customer that will give them both confidence and understanding. So we give them the training in Renewables Centre; we help them via the Nesta scheme; and then we support them with our fab MCS umbrella scheme that we’ve have in the business via RES. To my earlier point, we’ve got to create far more trust with us as a brand, but we have some amazing support we can offer.”
Supporting on several fronts
That support, he notes, doesn’t just mean around the technology but extends to giving training to the sole traders and small companies on how to get the best out of social media and how to grow their business, along with guidance on invoicing and other ways to reduce the admin burden.
He underlines that for the installer, the risks around getting involved in renewables are now considerable, in potentially time and reputation, but starting with cost and cashflow: “We’re willing to train you on installing heat pumps for nothing if you have got an account with us [thanks to government funding, the BPEC three-day air-source heat pump course provided by Wolseley in partnership with NAPIT is free. More details here]. We’re growing our own customer base that way. So it’s good for us as a business, but it’s great for the installer too, because obviously they would lose money out of their day just by going on training.”
But there is another benefit to this sort of activity, and it is one that is perhaps underappreciated, Dean notes – building a community with installers as a whole: “It didn’t dawn on me till I attended my first Plumb Centre conference that some installers won’t have spoken to anyone all day until they come to a branch – they’ve had their head in the airing cupboard and their customers are at work. When I was starting my career at Magnet on the trade counter, it was always about building those personal relationships. That helps to build trust and that works both ways.”
Another advantage to doing business with Wolseley, he adds, is the sheer scale of the operation:
“We believe that we’re in very strong position as a business to supply the customer. We’ve got the network, we’ve got the stock and we’ve got the supply chain all in place – including the umbrella scheme – and we’ve got the expertise in branches as well. So it’s all about building that ecosystem for the industry. We’ve got a fabulous loyalty scheme where if you go and buy from Renewables Centre, it be added to the Plumb Centre total. So installers can get cash back when they buy the products from us as well.”
The business is working hard too to make the connection between the new Renewables Centre operations and the existing Plumb Centre ones more accessible and straightforward:
“We need to exploit the network of branches that we’ve got in Plumb Centre to bring renewables to the fore,” he says, “So anybody who comes to the branches or engages with Plumb Centre will get access to Renewables Centre. It’s one Wolseley account with four brands: Plumb Centre, Renewables Centre, Climate Centre and Pipe Centre. And I think that’s pretty unique in the industry.”
Attracting the next generation to the industry
Another of the issues that is vexing most of the leaders we speak to is how to attract young people into trade. Dean thinks that Wolseley – and the industry as a whole – has to work harder at supporting people in retraining and apprenticeships: “Everyone seems to wants to be a web designer these days, but why can’t you be a plumber and potentially earn more, while controlling your own destiny? If anything, a plumber’s earnings should outpace the economy because there are fewer skilled people. But we need to get them in to the industry!”
In a bid to learn more about this next generation of installers and to understand their motivations and their concerns, Wolseley has launched a national survey of tradespeople with InstallerOnline called Gen T. The survey is open to all ages and entrants can win a number of prizes.
“We’ve got a role in making the industry attractive,” says Dean, “So we want to look at details such as what they have to pay for in their business. We know it is not cheap, getting yourself a van and then filling it full of specialist tools and going on training courses too.”
Investing in the installer partnership
Wolseley is prepared to invest in the installer, Dean stresses, and he means this not just metaphorically, but in hard cash terms: “We have this training pot of £800 a person and we’ll spend whatever we need to – so as many people who want to go in renewables, we’ll get them into it, because we believe it’s worthy of their time and our time. The more people that get into the new tech and the combination of solar, battery, heating and cooling, the more we can get away from the stagnant path that we’ve been on for years. I think that what’s exciting is it’s not just one opportunity – with the right conversations, you could be talking to people about heat pumps, solar, batteries…everything.”
The company is putting a number of initiatives in place to encourage the installer too: “What we don’t want is for installers to say, ‘Well, actually you might as well just stay on a boiler for the next 20 years’, when it would be so much better to say ‘This new tech is going to save you this much money every year and it might take an extra day to install, but it will be worth it.’”
As part of Wolseley’s national distributorship with Haier, the manufacturer is promising to take the heat pumps apart so that installers can get an opportunity to get a proper look and what it looks under the bonnet. To further add to installer confidence, the merchant and manufacturer have undertaken to supply an engineer to the installer’s first heat pump job.
Wolseley is also backing its commitment to installers onsite with an equivalent commitment to the online experience. The website is undergoing a major transformation to make it easier to do business with. “It’s not always been easy to deal with us,” Dean concedes, “But we are making it easier to trade with us online – you can see the prices that are based on your trade terms rather than just generic pricing for instance. And soon, if you want to do all your business online with us, you will be able to.”
Interestingly, the company’s research with young people during this process has shown that far from wanting to do everything online, they still really value talking to people. “So while we are putting digital in the forefront of what we do, it will still be very much about continuing to emphasise that expertise in the branches,” Dean says.
At the heart of it all, Dean is excited about the prospects for the future: “We’ve got thousands and thousands of customers that use our branches every day and we need to get them on the journey with us as a partner.”
He is confident that Wolseley will do this too: “I think we’re winning in a very tough market. We’re taking market share. We’re building the skills of the future. We’ve got the stock, we’ve got the network, we’ve got the expertise and we’ve got the technology. We really are the one-stop shop.”
