Blog/How to decide which accounts each building materials sales rep should keep

How to decide which accounts each building materials sales rep should keep

Oct 239 min read

A quarterly review process for building materials sales managers: sort each rep's accounts, set fair reassignment rules and give every account a next sale.

Sales Strategy
How to decide which accounts each building materials sales rep should keep

Review each outside rep's account list at least once a quarter and give every account one of three coverage levels. Develop accounts get the rep's selling time and a specific next sale to pursue. Maintain accounts keep steady contact through inside sales, scheduled check-ins or targeted campaigns. Accounts with no purchases and no progress after an agreed period go back to the manager for reassignment. Base each decision on what the account buys now, what evidence says it could buy, and whether anyone is actually working it.

This guide is for sales managers at building materials dealers with outside reps, including multi-category dealers, lumber yards, drywall and insulation dealers, and hardware stores with pro accounts. Manufacturers covering dealers face a different decision and are not covered here. There is no universal threshold for moving an account. The examples below show how dealers have approached it, not rules that fit every market.

Why held accounts slow growth

A rep's account list can grow faster than the time available to work it. Some names were assigned years ago. Others came from a prospect list or a single order that never turned into steady business. While those names sit on one rep's list, colleagues may not call on them.

LBM Journal put this problem to its readers in a May 2025 Real Issues, Real Answers column. A pro yard with several outside reps in each territory wanted to stop reps "just holding onto names that have never panned out, or who've stopped buying from them," and offer those accounts to colleagues. Respondents offered very different fixes, from team bonuses to fixed deadlines for reassignment.

Sales trainer James Olsen takes a firm position in an April 2026 Building-Products.com column. He argues that accounts belong to the company, that there are no "life-time assignments," and that accounts "must be worked and developed or reassigned." That is one trainer's view. It is a useful starting point for a manager who wants reps to feel ownership without letting good accounts go unworked.

Start with what each account buys now

Before deciding coverage, look at each account on the rep's list with the same facts in front of you:

  • Purchases over the last 12 months, and whether they are rising or falling
  • The product categories the account buys, and the ones it does not
  • Open quotes, their value and when the customer expects to decide
  • The last real sales conversation, and who had it

Connected data makes this review faster. SalesJack's Analytics maps product classes and special-order items into key categories, so a manager can see category buying by account rather than one sales total. Reps can also ask Radar plain-English questions across connected ERP, quote, permit and CRM data, such as "What has this builder purchased across its jobsites?" or "Show my largest open quotes that have not been followed up."

The first pass separates accounts that buy from names that only appear on the list. A contractor who bought every month last year is a different decision from one who placed a single order two years ago.

Add evidence of what the account could buy

Current purchases tell you where the business is today. They do not tell you where it could grow. A coverage plan built only on last year's sales keeps sending reps to the same accounts and overlooks smaller accounts with more room.

Consulting firm Alexander Group describes this gap in a 2026 case study about a chemical distributor. The client's segmentation "relied heavily on historical performance, failing to incorporate forward-looking customer potential," and did not inform coverage decisions. The firm's answer was a model based on account potential. That case comes from a different distribution industry and a consultant's own account of its work. The principle still applies to a building materials dealer.

Three kinds of evidence help a manager estimate potential:

  • Building activity. Permits pulled by the contractor show work under way in your market. SalesJack's Analytics page describes matching ERP and permit data to show the share of material spend you are getting with each customer, then drilling down to addresses you are not winning. A Radar question such as "Which of my customers have active permits but no recent orders?" gives the rep a short list to investigate.
  • Category gaps. A drywall contractor who buys board, metal framing and finishing supplies but no insulation may buy insulation elsewhere. They may also leave it to a separate insulation contractor. Treat the gap as a question for your next conversation.
  • What the customer has told you. Upcoming projects, new crews, a move into remodeling or commercial work. Record these in the CRM so the next review can use them.

Treat potential as a hypothesis until a conversation confirms it. Permit activity tells you a contractor is building. Only the contractor can tell you who buys each package and whether your business has a chance at it.

Sort accounts into coverage levels

With both views in front of you, give each account one coverage level. LBM Journal columnist Bill Lee makes the underlying case in Categorizing Customers Can Save Time (January 2025). All customers deserve fair treatment, he writes, but they do not all merit the same amount of a salesperson's time. He also recommends clear criteria for which prospects belong on a target list, such as creditworthiness and whether the contractor is large enough to justify the effort.

Develop. These accounts have meaningful current business, proven potential, or both. The outside rep owns them and spends selling time on them. Each one needs a named objective: a category to add, a project to win or a quote to move toward an order.

Maintain. These are steady buyers with little known room to grow, or smaller accounts where an outside visit costs more than it returns. Keep them covered through inside sales, scheduled calls and targeted messages. SalesJack's marketing tools can send ERP-based email and text campaigns, including re-engagement for customers who have not ordered in more than 90 days and cross-sell promotions based on category spend history.

Release or reassign. These accounts have no purchases and no progress after the period your business sets, or the assigned rep has stopped working them. They return to the manager, who decides whether another rep should try or whether the account belongs on a prospect list.

Inside support makes the develop group possible. In a Hardware Retailing feature on outside sales (January 2022), Chad Andersen of Builders, which runs home improvement centers and a lumberyard, describes four inside sales reps backing him up: "I sell the job, but the inside salesperson manages a lot of the details from there." A rep who tries to give every account the same attention will not have that time.

For a hardware store with one outside rep, the split might look like this. A property maintenance company that buys every week at the counter is a maintain account. A remodeler who pulls regular permits but buys only fasteners and paint from you is a develop account, because the evidence points to work you are not supplying.

Agree the rules for moving accounts

Reassignment causes friction when reps learn the rules after an account has been taken away. Set the criteria first, explain them to the team and apply them the same way to everyone.

The LBM Journal responses show how much those criteria vary. One dealer said that when a customer has been inactive for more than six months, the sales manager gives the assigned rep an action plan to revive the account and reassigns it if that fails. Another moves any prospect or client with no purchases for more than 18 months. A respondent from the wholesale distributor, manufacturer and service provider group suggested two to three months, depending on where the business sits in the supply chain. Olsen argues that an account not doing solid business within six months probably never will, while allowing for exceptions. Choose a period that fits your customers' buying cycles. A custom home builder may go months between projects without being lost.

Before moving an account, find out why it stopped buying. One respondent put the questions plainly: "Do they pay? Is it an issue of rapport? Is the buying done from somewhere else?" The answer decides the next step. A credit problem is not a sales opportunity for a new rep. A rapport problem might be. Several respondents noted that a contractor who does not get along with one rep may respond to another.

When an account does move, the receiving rep needs the history. Our guide to handing over accounts to a new sales rep covers which context to pass along and how to introduce the new rep around a real project. For accounts that have gone quiet but stay with the current rep, see how to recover lost revenue from inactive CRM accounts. Commission and credit rules for reassigned accounts are a management decision. Settle them before the first account moves.

Give every develop account a next sale

A develop account without an objective drifts back into general relationship calls. For each one, write down:

  • The specific sale the rep is pursuing, such as adding windows to a framing account or winning the insulation package on a confirmed job
  • The person at the account who decides that purchase
  • The date of the next step

Record the objective in the CRM with an assignment and a reminder. Keep the account owner accurate too. SalesJack matches permit leads to existing customers and addresses and routes them to the assigned rep. If the record lists a rep who no longer works the account, new project leads reach the wrong person.

Review the book every quarter

Coverage levels go out of date. A maintain account may start pulling permits. A develop account may have given you everything it buys. One LBM Journal respondent described asking reps for basic reporting on who they are working with, plus a quarterly review of their accounts. That is a practical cadence to start with.

In each review, ask:

  • Which develop accounts produced a new quote, order or category this quarter?
  • Which maintain accounts show new permit activity or purchases in new categories, and should move up?
  • Which accounts reached the reassignment threshold, and what did the rep learn about why?
  • Did released accounts get picked up by another rep or move to a prospect list?

Radar flags help between reviews. Managers can see opportunities across the team, while reps get a prioritized view of their own accounts. The quarterly meeting can then focus on decisions about specific accounts.

The result is a rep list that matches the work. Every account has a coverage level, every develop account has a next sale, and nothing sits unworked because of an old assignment. SalesJack's sales platform for building materials dealers brings the purchase, quote, permit and contact history behind those decisions into one view. If you want to see it on your own accounts, book a demo.

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