By now you probably know Titan Gilroy from Titan’s of CNC. In what will be the first in a series of quick tips, Titan reveals the secret to quoting a machining job.
One of Titan’s strengths is communicating with people in the industry. He has learned to share his vision and goals with his employees and even his potential partners and vendors. Building this relationship is key to getting good pricing on raw material, says Titan. When you approach a vendor, you want to get them to see your vision for your shop and ultimately see that you will be a long term customer. As Titan says in his own words, “I sell loyalty to my vendors.” When you sell loyalty to your vendor, rather than them trying to make a 30% profit off of one of your purchases, you can get them to give you a deeper discount per purchase in exchange for your long-term loyalty over the year. Breaking this down even further, the vendor then gets a 15% profit over all of your entire year’s purchases rather than 30% on a one time purchase. This ultimately works to both your and the vendor’s advantage.
This process of building relationships means that you build up a plethora of contacts in good standing with you and your machine shop that will be there to help you source material when you need it. While this may sound somewhat simple, here’s where the secret comes into play. When you quote a job, you still quote the customer what the material would’ve cost, or slightly under. Ultimately it was your work that went into building relationships with the vendor that got you a deal, so you can profit off of that savings on material. “Other shops may be able to compete with you on the labor side, but if you win out on the material side, you can win quotes every time,” says Titan. Not only does this relationship building tip work for material vendors, but outside processing as well.
The secret to accurately and efficiently quoting jobs is building relationships with vendors and getting better deals on the back end. If you want to hear more from Titan about quoting jobs and running a job shop, you can find that on TITANS of CNC Academy here.
