Blog/How to keep contractor sales when your yard changes decking or siding brands

How to keep contractor sales when your yard changes decking or siding brands

Nov 68 min min read

When your yard changes decking or siding brands, use sales history and open quotes to decide which contractors to call and what to requote.

Sales Strategy
How to keep contractor sales when your yard changes decking or siding brands

When your yard changes the decking, railing or siding brand it stocks, the sales risk sits with three groups: contractors who bought the old brand regularly, open quotes that name it, and jobs where a homeowner or designer chose it. Build that list from your own sales history before the change reaches the counter. Call the accounts with open work first, requote the next job on the line you now carry, decide special-order exceptions on purpose, and review at 90 days which accounts kept buying the category from you.

This guide is for lumber yards, multi-category dealers and exterior specialists that have already made the stocking decision. Which brand to carry and which distributor to buy from are management and purchasing calls, and this article does not cover them. The sales work starts once that decision is made.

Why this question is live in 2026

Several large exterior brands changed how they reach dealers this year:

  • Trex named Specialty Building Products (SBP) its sole national distributor of decking and railing and said it would transition away from Boise Cascade as a distributor (Trex).
  • Boise Cascade's Building Materials Distribution division became the sole nationwide distributor of James Hardie's full exterior portfolio, adding AZEK trim and moulding and TimberTech decking and railing to Hardie siding and trim. Boise Cascade said it would transition away from distributing competing siding, trim and exterior moulding (HBS Dealer, August 3, 2026).
  • LP Building Solutions moved LP SmartSide to SBP nationally plus regional partners, which will carry the full SmartSide line and transition away from competing siding products (HBS Dealer, September 29, 2026).

Industry consultant Eric Reppermund told HBS Dealer he expects some dealers to push back with "I'm not going to buy product X, because I'm not going to buy from distributor Y" (HBS Dealer, August 4, 2026). Craig Webb noted that dealers like at least two sources for a product and that the moves are likely to force some dealers to drop favorite distributors (Webb Analytics).

Some dealers will keep their brands and buy them through a different distributor. Others will change what they stock or what their reps recommend. If your yard is in the second group, your contractors need to hear about it from you.

How much contractor business follows the brand

Survey data from Principia gives a sense of the risk by category. Principia asked 1,000 builders and contractors what they would do if their preferred dealer stopped carrying their preferred brand. Overall, respondents leaned slightly toward staying with the dealer. Siding and exterior trim was the exception: 53% said they would switch to a new dealer to keep their preferred brand. Windows and doors were close to the overall average (Principia, April 2025).

Brand switching is also common without a stocking change. In a Principia survey of lumberyard and one-step dealers, 24% to 35% across categories reported that customers commonly switch from their intended product or brand, while only 2% to 5% said it happens frequently. Decking and railing showed slightly more switching than other categories (Principia, March 2025). And the share of contractors who agreed they substitute their preferred brands more often than a year earlier rose from 40% in the fourth quarter of 2024 to 61% in the third quarter of 2025 (Principia, December 2025).

Read these as survey answers, not a forecast for your accounts. They do suggest where to spend the first week. A siding contractor with a strong brand habit is more likely to leave over a brand change than a deck builder who already switches when availability or price makes sense.

Step 1: Build the list from your own sales history

Pull four lists from your records:

  1. Regular buyers of the old brand. Accounts that bought it over the last 12 to 24 months, from your ERP by item, vendor or product group. Note whether the brand appears on most of their exterior jobs or only once.
  2. Open quotes and pending orders that name it. Include the job address, quote date and the rep or estimator who prepared it.
  3. Jobs where someone else chose the brand. A homeowner, designer, architect or builder spec sheet may have named it. Check quote notes and CRM notes, and ask the rep when the record is silent.
  4. Accounts that buy the whole package. If a contractor buys decking, framing, fasteners and railing from you, the brand change puts more than one category at risk.

How easy this is depends on your data. SalesJack groups product classes and special-order items into key categories, and its AI chat answers plain-English questions about account sales and category trends from your connected data (SalesJack for dealers). Whether you can isolate a single brand depends on how your ERP records items and vendors, so check that before you build the list around it.

Step 2: Decide who hears from you first

Rank the list by work that is still open and by how much of the account depends on the brand:

  1. Open quotes naming the old brand. These have a decision date and a job attached. Reach them before the contractor orders elsewhere or calls to ask.
  2. Contractors who use the brand on most of their jobs. Principia found siding contractors use their preferred brand on 58% of projects (Principia, 2021). For these accounts the brand is part of how they sell their own work.
  3. Package buyers. A lost decking order can take the framing and fasteners with it.
  4. Occasional buyers. A counter conversation or a short email or text is usually enough.

Assign each account on the first three lists to a named rep with a date. Order the calls by volume and open work, not by who complains first.

Step 3: Hold the conversation before the contractor hears it elsewhere

Open with the contractor's next job, then explain the change. Cover what changes and when, and what stays the same, such as their rep, delivery and how you price their work. Do not promise availability dates you cannot confirm.

Then find out why they use the old brand. Principia's 2021 research named three main reasons siding contractors would switch their preferred brand: a better product, customer-driven demand and a better warranty (Principia, 2021). The same three reasons are worth asking about when you want a contractor to try a different line. Useful questions:

  • Do your crews have a reason to prefer this product, or is it habit?
  • Do your customers ask for it by name?
  • Does the warranty matter to how you sell the job?
  • Are you matching existing material on a house or a phase?

Bring technical answers from the manufacturer's literature and its rep rather than improvising them. Do not run down the old brand. The contractor has installed it for years and may still want it on some jobs.

End with one concrete next step: samples for the crew, a visit from the manufacturer's rep, or a side-by-side quote on the next job.

Step 4: Requote open work on the line you now carry

For each open quote that names the old brand, prepare an alternative quote before the contractor asks for one. Where you can still supply the old brand for that job, show both and let the contractor choose.

Jobs where a homeowner, designer or builder chose the brand need a different conversation. Ask the contractor who has to approve a change and what they need to present it, such as samples, color charts or warranty documents. If the end customer insists on the old brand, decide with your sales manager whether to special-order it for that job or let that part of the order go, and record the reason.

Record the result on each quote: ordered on the new line, ordered on the old brand as an exception, or lost. SalesJack's CRM keeps connected quotes from supported ERP sources with customer and jobsite information, and reps can log conversations and set assignments and reminders for the follow-up (SalesJack CRM). If a quote is lost, a short lost-quote review shows whether the brand was the reason or only part of it.

Step 5: Look for contractors who lost access to a brand you still carry

The same changes move brands away from other yards. If a nearby competitor dropped a decking or siding line you still stock, its contractors who prefer that brand may be looking for a new source. The 53% siding figure above works in your favor here.

Find them through quote requests that name the brand, conversations with your current customers and their subcontractors, and permit activity for decks and re-siding work from contractors who do not buy from you. SalesJack brings in permit leads through connections such as Construction Monitor and filters them by the project types and regions your team serves (SalesJack CRM). Coverage varies by area, so treat permits as one source among several.

Ask for one job first. A contractor who has bought one deck package from you has a reason to bring the next one.

Step 6: Review by account at 30, 60 and 90 days

Go through the list from Step 1 and sort each account into one of four groups:

  • Ordered on the new line
  • Still buying the old brand from you as an exception
  • Bought the category elsewhere
  • No exterior work yet

Look at related categories too. If an account's deck framing and fasteners stopped along with the decking, it may have moved the whole job. Webb reported that Hardie's realignment was expected to take about 90 days, which makes 90 days a sensible point for the full review. Bring the results to the sales meeting and give every account in the third group a named follow-up.

When the change is a window or door line

Window and door showrooms and millwork suppliers can use the same steps when they change a window or entry door line. The difference is who chooses. Homeowners, designers and architects pick these products more often, so Step 4 carries more of the work and the showroom consultant should join the contractor conversation. Principia's figures for windows and doors sat close to the overall average, so plan for some contractors to follow the brand and most to stay if the transition is handled well. Read more about SalesJack for window and door showrooms.

Where connected data helps

A brand change is a short window in which a few accounts and quotes decide most of the outcome. Connected ERP sales history and quotes let reps see who bought what, which jobs are still open and which categories each account buys from you, without rebuilding the list by hand. If you want to see how that works with your own ERP data, you can book a SalesJack demo.

Sources

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