Blog/Which stalled lumber quotes to reopen when prices fall

Which stalled lumber quotes to reopen when prices fall

Nov 78 min read

When lumber prices fall, some stalled quotes are worth reopening. How lumber yard reps can pick which ones, check the job and ask for a decision.

Sales Strategy
Which stalled lumber quotes to reopen when prices fall

When lumber prices fall, reopen the stalled quotes where price was the obstacle and the job is still going ahead. Start with jobs that have a permit, a start date or a customer still waiting, and leave quotes that stalled for other reasons for a different conversation. Before anyone calls, get your yard's pricing rules from the sales manager. Then call about the job, bring an updated quote and ask for one clear decision.

This guide is for outside and inside sales reps and sales managers at lumber yards and multi-category dealers that quote framing packages to contractors. Setting prices, margins and quote validity is a management decision and is not covered here. The sales task is choosing which stalled quotes deserve a second conversation and what to ask for when you have it.

The question is timely in late 2026. RFD-TV reported on November 4 that Madison's Lumber Prices Index had ended the previous week at $459 per thousand board feet, down 7 percent from the week before and 8 percent from a month earlier. In October the U.S. Department of Commerce lowered antidumping and countervailing duties on most Canadian softwood lumber from about 35.16 percent to 24.75 percent, according to NAHB. A separate 10 percent Section 232 tariff still applies. Markets move in both directions. The method below applies whenever prices fall, and nothing here is a forecast. A national index also does not set the price of every item in your yard. Your purchasing team's replacement costs are the numbers that matter.

Why a falling market leaves quotes sitting

Contractors have a reason to wait when prices drop. Consultant Shane Soule wrote in LBM Journal that when the market is rising customers want to lock in a sale, and "when the market is dropping, they try to delay committing to a price." John D. Wagner made a similar point in a 2026 LBM Journal column on margin squeeze: contractors wary of committing too early to the lumber portion of a purchase may delay buying.

Delays are also coming from the contractors' own customers. The Home Improvement Research Institute reported that about 60 percent of contractors in its second-quarter 2026 tracker had a cancelled or delayed project, the highest rate since its contractor tracking began in early 2024. HIRI also found that homeowners were postponing and cancelling projects more often, with roughly two-thirds citing budget concerns. HIRI covers home improvement work, so it describes your remodeling customers better than your production builders.

The result is a longer list of quotes that never became orders. Some of those jobs are still coming. Lower material prices may be enough to restart a few of them, and the work is to find which ones.

Get your yard's answers before you call

A rep who reopens a quote without knowing the rules can promise something the yard will not honor. Ask your sales manager or purchasing team:

  • Will reopened quotes be repriced at current cost, and who approves the new number?
  • How long will a new quote hold?
  • Is there a way for a contractor to lock a price for a job that ships later, such as a deposit or an early release?
  • Which items in a framing package should be repriced, and which stay as quoted?

Dealers answer these differently. In a 2021 LBM Journal reader survey on quoting, respondents described holding prices for 30 days, 14 days, ten days, seven days or only for that day. Soule argued for pricing on replacement cost instead of average cost in a dropping market, and for discounting jobs shipping after 14 days in exchange for an early commitment and a down payment. Those are one consultant's recommendations. Use your yard's policy, and make sure every rep gives contractors the same answer.

Build the list from quote records

Memory favors the last few conversations a rep had. Start instead with every framing quote from a recent period that did not become an order. Your sales manager can set the lookback; a season is a reasonable starting point. For each quote, gather:

  • Contractor, job name or address, and the rep who owns the account
  • Quote date, total value and the lumber and panel share of the package
  • Current status: expired, deferred, lost or still open
  • The reason recorded when the quote stalled, if anyone recorded one
  • The last conversation about the job

Then check whether the job is still alive. Has a building permit been issued for that address since the quote? Has the contractor bought anything for that job, from you or elsewhere? Is the customer still in contact with the contractor?

Connected sales data shortens this step. SalesJack's lumber yard platform brings ERP quotes, customer history and permit leads into one CRM and matches them to the customer and jobsite. With Radar, reps can ask plain-English questions across connected ERP, quote, permit and CRM data, such as "Which of my customers have active permits but no recent orders?" or "Show my largest open quotes that have not been followed up." SalesJack does not track lumber market prices or tell you which quotes would now price lower. Your pricing team supplies that, and stall reasons are only as good as what your reps record.

Sort the quotes by why they stalled

A lower price only helps when price was the obstacle. HIRI executive director Dave King describes four reasons accounts go quiet: softening demand, a smaller budget, an order that went somewhere else and work that is harder to complete. He warns that treating softening demand as a lost order risks "discounting an account you were never losing." The same caution applies to quotes. Sort them into four groups.

  1. Deferred on price or budget, and the job is still alive. These come first. A permit issued since the quote, a confirmed start or a customer who is still waiting suggests the work is real. A lower framing number may be what was missing.
  2. Open or expired quotes where the contractor was waiting on the market. This is the delay Soule describes. Ask when the material needs to ship. If your yard allows it, offer a current price with a defined hold or a way to lock it.
  3. Lost to another supplier on price. Find out whether the package has actually been bought. If it has, the order is gone, and the quote belongs in a lost-quote review. If it has not, the contractor may welcome an updated number.
  4. Stalled for reasons price does not fix. Financing, plan approval, owner indecision and crew availability will not move because lumber is cheaper. Ask about the blocker instead of leading with price. HIRI found that about 73 percent of contractors at least sometimes receive requests for a scaled-down quote, so offering to price one phase or a reduced scope may be more useful than a new number on the whole job.

Within each group, start with the largest remaining value and the jobs that could start soonest. Smaller quotes can wait for the next round of calls.

Call about the job, not the market

Open with the project. "Is the addition on Maple Street still going ahead? When are you planning to frame it?" tells the contractor you remember the job. "Lumber is down" invites them to wait a little longer.

Then find out what changed. If price or budget was the obstacle, say you can update the package at current pricing and ask whether that would help them decide. Bring the approved quote or send it the same day. Ask for one decision before you hang up: approve the updated quote, release a first phase or name the date they will decide.

A few things to avoid:

  • Do not suggest the contractor overpaid on earlier orders.
  • Do not predict where prices will go next.
  • Do not promise a hold, lock or price your yard has not approved.
  • Do not offer a lower number to a contractor who was never shopping the job.

Here is an illustrative example. A rep at a lumber yard pulls framing quotes from the summer that never became orders. Three stand out. A remodeler deferred an addition in August "until numbers come down," and a permit has since been issued for the address. A custom builder's quote expired while the homeowner waited on financing. A garage package went to another yard. The rep calls the remodeler first with an updated framing quote the sales manager approved and asks for a decision by the end of the week. The builder gets a call about the financing, with no new price yet. The garage package goes into the lost-quote review unless the contractor says it has not been bought.

Record what happened and review it

Close the loop on every quote you reopen. Record whether it became an order, was requoted with a decision date, was deferred again with a reason and a date to check back, or is closed. When a reopened quote is live again, it goes back into your normal quote follow-up process with an owner and a next step tied to the job.

HIRI suggests measuring stalled-project work by the number of projects reactivated and quote-to-start conversations. A sales manager can review a simpler version after 30 days: how many quotes were reopened, how many became orders and at what margin, and which stall reasons turned out to be wrong. That last answer is worth sharing with reps, because it shows whether the reasons recorded on quotes can be trusted the next time the market turns.

If you want to see how connected quotes, permits and customer history would support this review in your yard, book a demo.

Sources

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