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Concrete producers are navigating a tougher sales landscape each year. Margins are tight, customers want quick answers, and production costs change faster than most teams can track. 

Spreadsheets, scattered email threads, and CRMs not built for ready‑mix sales make it hard to stay accurate, consistent, and organized. That leads to outdated pricing, slow quotes, unclear follow‑ups, and limited visibility into why deals are won or lost.

In this blog, you’ll find 7 practical strategies to help you win more work, improve margins, and run a more predictable sales operation in 2026. Let’s start with the most important one.  

1. Quote faster and with accurate, live cost data

The number one growth lever that has the biggest impact on sales is quoting speed and accuracy. Producers win more work when their quotes are both fast and complete. 

Contractors want clarity on mix availability, delivery windows, haul distances, minimum loads, and potential surcharges. A strong quoting workflow brings these details together so reps can build a confident, well‑rounded quote without chasing information from dispatch or QC.

From there, accuracy becomes just as sending fast quotes.

If reps rely on static price sheets or old spreadsheets, the numbers they send may not match current cement, admixture, fuel, or freight costs. That uncertainty leads to lost deals, rework, or jobs that erode margin before the first yard is poured.

The easiest way to increase your quoting speed and accuracy is to use a system that allows reps to pull live material costs directly into a quote.  It removes the back‑and‑forth required to confirm pricing, aligns quotes with the current production economics, and helps reps send complete, accurate numbers the first time.

2. Strengthen follow-up discipline with better customer visibility

Once a quote goes out, the next step is staying top of mind. Many ready-mix producers lose work simply because follow-up is inconsistent or forgotten. While it's an important sales skill for concrete reps, they often struggle with this because they juggle dozens of jobs, and without a system to track interactions, callbacks, and reminders. 

A CRM built for concrete producers solves this by: 

Strong follow-up signals reliability to contractors who need partners they can trust on tight schedules.

With that consistency in place, producers can turn attention toward learning from every deal.

3. Use win/loss insights to refine pricing and improve hit rates

Knowing why you win or lose jobs is one of the fastest ways to improve future performance. Yet most concrete producers don’t track this data in a structured way. 

Insights end up scattered and buried in emails, individual spreadsheets, or anecdotal rep conversations.

Centralized win/loss reporting reveals patterns that are otherwise invisible. You can see which mixes convert well, which regions have consistently tight margins, and which customers respond to certain pricing structures or delivery schedules.

Once producers understand these patterns, they can keep track of the demand fluctuations and forecast accurately. 

4. Prevent internal underbidding with shared pricing rules

Internal underbidding is one of the most common reasons producers lose margin. When reps work from disconnected systems, they don’t see what others in their team are quoting. That leads to inconsistent numbers for the same customer, or worse, reps unintentionally undercutting each other.

Shared pricing rules remove that risk. When your team is aligned on minimum margins, delivery fees, additives, and mix pricing, everyone quotes from the same foundation. It is one of the best ways to increase sales as a ready-mix concrete producer. 

5. Improve forecasting to identify real demand early

You can only sell proactively if they know what’s coming. But forecasting concrete demand is difficult when quoting data, sales activity, plant capacity, and dispatch schedules all live in separate systems.

Better forecasting helps you plan weeks ahead. With visibility into quote volume, expected start dates, regional hit rates, and seasonal patterns, producers can anticipate demand more accurately.

That foresight sets the foundation for the next key advantage: helping customers move confidently with a better mix and material clarity. 

6. Train customers with better data & mix clarity

Your customers may not expect you to handle every technical detail for them, but they do value working with teams who have clear, accurate information at their fingertips. 

When reps at your business can confidently explain mix performance, SCM options, freight impacts, or scheduling considerations, it reassures contractors that they’re making the right decision.

This level of clarity builds trust, prevents misunderstandings, and reduces the chance of disputes or rework later on. A sales team that can speak to these details, without slowing down the quoting process, stands out quickly.

Once customers feel supported, the final step is ensuring the handoff from quote to order is fast and error‑free.

7. Streamline the quote-to-order workflow

Even after winning the job, producers can lose momentum if internal workflows are slow. That’s because increasing sales is also about how quickly you move once the customer says yes. 

Manual processes like copying quote details into dispatch, re‑entering line items, and verifying pricing cause delays that frustrate customers and can weaken the relationship you just earned.

A streamlined quote‑to‑order workflow ensures accuracy, removes manual work, and turns accepted quotes into scheduled orders in minutes. This keeps the customer experience smooth from start to finish and reinforces their confidence in choosing you.

With these core strategies in place, producers can avoid the mistakes that limit growth.

5 common mistakes that limit sales growth

While the above tips can help you increase sales as a concrete producer, you also need to avoid some common pitfalls that limit sales growth. Here are a few most common ones we see. :

Addressing these mistakes creates the foundation for a more efficient, predictable sales engine for your concrete business. 

How Slabstack helps concrete producers increase sales

Slabstack is built specifically for concrete and ready-mix producers, grounded in real industry workflows and the operational realities that shape daily sales decisions. 

Our platform connects quoting, pricing, forecasting, CRM, and dispatch into one unified system, helping you increase your sales. 

Slabstack helps producers:

Our CRM brings every part of the sales process into a single, modern system so producers can act confidently and consistently. As part of this process, we are also launching our mobile app to keep field reps connected while on-site. This will help them update quotes and send approvals from their phones, thereby increasing sales. 

Here’s what one of our customers, John Malcolm, Vice President at Carew Concrete, has to say about using Slabstack:

“We’re bidding every project available to us now, and it’s easy to verify that in real time. Our consistency in the marketplace has improved tremendously.”

Read the full Carew Concrete case study here. 

Or, reach out to our team to see how Slabstack helps concrete producers quote faster and win more profitable work. 

Concrete is one of the most consumed materials on the planet, with the global cement market projected to reach $481.73 billion by 2029, with more than 5% annual growth year over year.

But even with demand rising at this scale, producers know the reality on the ground doesn’t feel predictable. 

One month, your plants run at full capacity; the next, your dispatch schedule looks thin. Demand can swell or fall the moment the weather shifts, a lender pulls back, or a regional project pauses.

Forecasting demand has never been more important for ready-mix producers, and never more challenging. 

In this blog, we’ll walk you through what drives instability, why accurate forecasting matters, how cost volatility complicates planning, and which forecasting tactics help producers stay ahead. You’ll also see how Slabstack brings quoting, pricing, and dispatch data together so producers get a complete picture of what’s coming.

What demand fluctuations look like in the ready-mix concrete industry

Fluctuations in the demand for cement occur due to several factors, like weather shifts, regional competition, or jobsite delays. 

Here are the core drivers that typically reshape demand:

As you can see, demand fluctuations in the ready-mix concrete industry are common and depend on a variety of factors. To remain profitable, you need to have the visibility to predict how these changes will affect your margins accurately. Let’s see why forecasting demand is so important for producers today.

Why accurate forecasting matters more than ever for concrete producers

Producers today operate with tighter margins, higher cost volatility, and more unpredictable schedules than ever before. Accurate forecasting gives teams the visibility they need to plan confidently, across plants, materials, labor, and pricing.

Here’s how forecasting clarity influences the business:

Quoting and margins

When demand visibility is weak, quotes often rely on outdated prices or assumptions. This leads to underpricing, margin erosion, or delayed approvals. With accurate forecasting, pricing decisions reflect current demand signals, live costs, and real conversion likelihood, so every quote protects profitability.

Inventory planning

Unclear demand leads to overstocking of cement and SCMs or scrambling when supply tightens. Forecasting helps producers order the right amount of raw materials at the right time, avoiding expensive rush purchases and reducing waste.

Production scheduling

Plants run smoother when your team knows what’s coming. Accurate forecasting prevents idle days, overloaded schedules, and last‑minute reshuffling. Dispatch can allocate trucks and drivers more efficiently, and plant operators can manage batching loads with fewer surprises.

Cash flow

Forecasting also stabilizes billing cycles. When you understand how much volume is likely to convert, and when, you can predict incoming revenue, align expenses, and avoid cash crunches tied to sudden demand dips.

Customer relationships

Finally, reliable forecasting means fewer missed deadlines and fewer schedule changes. Customers get consistent communication and smoother project execution, which strengthens trust and increases repeat business.

Accurate forecasting helps reduce uncertainty and gives producers a clear view of what’s ahead, so teams can plan with confidence and stay organized. Read on to know 4 tactics that you can use to improve forecasting in your business. 

4 forecasting tactics concrete producers can use to stay ahead

Producers who forecast well don’t rely on spreadsheets or gut feel. They combine historical data, real-time quoting trends, cost signals, and market intelligence. Here’s how.

1. Use historical trends grounded in current quoting data

Historical data offers helpful baselines, but relying on it alone can limit accuracy. That’s because seasonal patterns change over time, competitors adjust their activity, and material costs often move.

Producers get better accuracy when they pair historical demand with:

This combination reveals which jobs are most likely to convert, how soon orders will hit dispatch, and where regional demand is building.

2. Scenario planning for cost and demand swings

Scenario planning can help you prepare for different outcomes. But instead of relying only on expected demand, you need to look at a full range of possibilities. 

For example, you may plan for a summer surge based on historical patterns, but also map out what happens if a key commercial project shifts its start date.

Producers may also review how rising cement prices or fuel costs could affect job profitability. By walking through these situations in advance, you can make clearer decisions about purchasing, staffing, pricing, and fleet readiness.

3. Real-time market intelligence

Producers who stay informed about real-world signals forecast more accurately.

Modern forecasting includes tracking cement kiln outages, changes in SCM availability, local construction indicators, fuel movement, major project announcements, and competitor activity. 

You can do this by checking regional DOT updates, subscribing to construction news alerts, reviewing supplier notices, monitoring permit activity from local planning offices, and talking regularly with contractors about project timelines. 

This steady flow of information can help your team spot changes early and adjust production, labor, and pricing before issues reach the dispatch schedule.

4. Use the right tools to connect quoting, pricing, and dispatch

A connected system makes forecasting stronger by keeping all pricing, quoting, cost, and dispatch information in one place. When data flows into a single platform, you see patterns earlier and make decisions with more confidence. 

This also helps your team reduce manual updates and gives sales and operations the same information at the same time.

But the key is to choose the right tool that fits the day-to-day reality of ready-mix operations. Slabstack, the best software for concrete producers, provides you with a platform to manage all your data in one place.

Our CRM is built specifically for heavy building material suppliers and brings quoting, dynamic pricing, cost data, and dispatch activity into a single shared system so you get complete visibility into upcoming demand. Get in touch with our experts to know more. 

Common forecasting mistakes concrete producers make (and how to avoid them)

Before we explain more about how Slabstack can help you predict demand accurately, let’s go over some of the common forecasting mistakes concrete producers make.

Mistake 1: Relying solely on national averages or broad indexes

National data doesn’t capture the realities of each local market. 

You may see national indicators suggesting steady demand, while your region faces new competitors, limited aggregate supply, or tighter permitting timelines.

Local contractors may also shift project schedules for reasons that never show up in broad indexes. That’s why, when forecasting relies on national data alone, you lose sight of the forces that actually affect your plants day to day.

Mistake 2: Ignoring lead times or project lag

Quotes rarely convert on a predictable schedule. Some contractors green‑light pours within days, while others take weeks to finalize financing, permits, or site access. 

Without tracking these timelines, producers often misjudge when demand will hit dispatch. A quote that looks inactive may suddenly turn urgent, or a high‑value project may stay in limbo longer than expected. Forecasting improves when producers monitor how long each customer typically takes to convert a quote.

Mistake 3: Skipping subcontractor and contractor input

Subcontractors and site crews often know about shifts before anyone else. They see when a foundation pour will slide because utilities are delayed or when the weather conditions slow down work. 

If this information never reaches sales or dispatch, forecasts drift away from reality. Regular check‑ins with field teams and contractors can help you stay aligned with how projects are actually progressing.

Mistake 4: Using outdated spreadsheets or manual quoting

Manual spreadsheets fall out of date quickly. Costs move, mix designs change, and new job details come in, but the spreadsheet stays the same unless someone updates it by hand. 

This creates inaccurate quotes and unpredictable margins. When quotes don’t reflect current pricing or material availability, producers risk overcommitting or underpricing work. A digital system, like Slabstack, automatically updates costs to remove this friction and keeps forecasts accurate.

But if you’ve been making these mistakes, here are some warning signs that you might have noticed. 

Early signs your concrete forecasting is failing

Producers often notice issues gradually, long before they realize the root problem is broken forecasting. These signs help you diagnose trouble early:

When these symptoms show up, your demand visibility is already slipping, and you need a unified forecasting system that can help. 

How Slabstack helps concrete producers forecast with confidence

Slabstack, the best software for concrete producers, gives you a single view of upcoming demand by connecting quoting, pricing, costing, and dispatch data onto one platform.

Producers get:

With these tools, you gain the confidence to plan ahead, protect margins, and respond proactively to demand changes.

If you’re ready to strengthen forecasting and bring clarity to your sales and operations, now is the time to modernize your process.

See how Slabstack brings quoting, pricing, and forecasting together. Get in touch.

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2. 5 Skills Every Concrete Sales Rep Needs to Win More Deals 

3. Why Chasing Volume Hurts Ready Mix Concrete Profit Margins

4. How Construction Pricing Software for Concrete Helps You Quote Faster and Protect Your Margins

Concrete producers deal with constant changes in costs of fuel, cement or freight. Managing these shifts while keeping quotes accurate is tough, especially when teams rely on spreadsheets or generic CRMs not built for materials pricing. 

These tools slow down responses, cause pricing errors, and make it hard to protect your margins.

In this blog, we’ll explain how construction pricing software helps concrete producers manage live costs, quote faster, and stay in sync with dispatch. We’ll also cover how you can adopt one successfully in your business, and the ROI of good software. 

Why generic CRMs and spreadsheets can’t handle concrete pricing

Before we get into what modern pricing software does differently, it’s important to understand why traditional tools fall short for concrete producers. 

Here’s where they break down. 

1. No live data integration

Every time cement or diesel prices change, someone in your team has to manually update the numbers (if they even do it). One missed edit can throw off every quote built that week. These delays show down your team, and eat into your profits because quotes often go out based on outdated data. 

2. Lack of dispatch visibility

Without seeing delivery schedules, sales reps can promise timelines that dispatch can’t fulfill. That disconnect leads to last-minute scrambling, rescheduling, and customer frustration.

3. No margin guardrails

When quotes are built manually, there’s no automated way to enforce margin floors. Reps may undercut each other trying to win deals, eroding profitability across projects.

Spreadsheets and horizontal CRMs require expensive customization to bridge these gaps, and even then, they rarely connect quoting and dispatch data seamlessly. 

So what’s the alternative? 

How can pricing and estimating software for concrete producers help

Switching to a software designed specifically for concrete producers simplifies and strengthens the entire quoting process. Instead of scattered spreadsheets and inconsistent data, your team works from a single connected platform where pricing, quoting, and dispatch stay in sync in real time.

Here’s what that looks like in practice:

Dynamic pricing for margin control

Pricing software gives concrete producers real-time updates on cost data from dispatch or ERP systems, including cement, supplementary materials, fuel, and freight. 

This means every quote reflects actual, current costs rather than outdated estimates.

For example, when fuel prices rise unexpectedly midweek, the system automatically refreshes the cost data across all quote templates. Sales reps don’t need to dig through spreadsheets or send emails to confirm prices. 

They can build a quote that already includes the updated figures. Managers can also define margin thresholds, so the software flags quotes that fall below acceptable profit levels.

Automated quoting workflows

Another way pricing software helps concrete producers is that it automates the quoting process. In traditional methods, your sales rep might first dig through documents to find actual costs. Then, they would spend time creating a quote. And finally, would wait for managers to approve the prices before sending them to the customer. 

The right software provides you with templates that make it easy to generate accurate quotes in minutes. Automated approval routing ensures any quote below the margin threshold gets flagged instantly, keeping everyone accountable without slowing down turnaround.

Two-way dispatch integration

A good pricing and quoting system also connects directly to your dispatch operations. When a quote is accepted, it automatically creates or updates a delivery ticket in the dispatch schedule. 

For instance, if a customer confirms a 200-yard pour for Friday morning, the system immediately reserves the trucks and batching capacity needed for that slot. Dispatchers can then see confirmed orders without re-entering information, reducing the risk of double-booking or missed loads.

This integration keeps sales and operations aligned.

Forecasting and sales intelligence 

This is often the most overlooked part of adopting a software designed specifically for your concrete production business. 

When you’re using spreadsheets or a horizontal CRM, you only get surface-level information about your business. You might have data, but someone in your team has to sit for hours to make sense of it. 

That leaves very little time to actually plan business growth or forecast industry trends. 

But with a specific, concrete software, you can gain visibility into your full sales pipeline. It allows you to see win/loss trends by customer or region, monitor quote-to-order ratios, and plan production with confidence. These insights help you anticipate demand instead of just reacting to it.

Ease of use and mobile access 

Concrete sales reps often meet contractors on-site, have to check pour schedules, or need to update quotes while traveling between jobs. 

Generic CRMs aren’t built for these conditions. They require multiple logins, slow syncing, or desktop-only access. Purpose-built pricing systems solve that by allowing reps to work seamlessly from tablets or phones, keeping them connected to dispatch, pricing, and approvals wherever they are.

With mobile access, they can pull up the latest prices, revise quantities, and send approvals immediately instead of waiting to return to the office. This reduces quoting delays and prevents lost opportunities when a customer is ready to move forward on the spot. 

By centralizing pricing, quoting, and logistics, this kind of system keeps the entire sales operation running smoothly.

We’ll discuss more about the ROI of adopting the right software for concrete producers, but first, let’s understand the best practices to adopt such software. 

Best practices for successful CRM adoption for concrete producers 

Even the best software can fall flat without the right rollout plan. Many producers face challenges like resistance to change or incomplete training when shifting away from spreadsheets or their current systems. 

Here’s how to make the transition smooth and effective for your team: 

  1. Start with one pilot region or product line: Begin adoption with a smaller team before expanding across all plants. Use the pilot to refine workflows, find integration issues early, and train internal advocates who can guide others. Track specific results, such as faster configuration of quotes or better accuracy, to measure success and make clear improvements.
  2. Tie adoption to everyday tasks. Integrate quoting, approvals, and price updates directly into the CRM so it becomes part of the daily workflow. When the system becomes an essential tool for job performance, adoption grows naturally. Link it to common routines such as quote submissions or cost adjustments so your team can experience the time savings firsthand.
  3. Secure leadership buy-in: Managers in your team need to lead by example and use the system in their daily work. When they talk about real results and review progress in regular meetings, teams notice and follow. Over time, steady leadership and open communication help teams stay aligned and make the system part of their normal routine.
  4. Highlight early ROI: Showcase quick wins like faster quote turnaround and fewer manual errors to build momentum internally. Sharing measurable outcomes from early users helps generate excitement and makes a strong case for further investment. Encourage peer learning by having those early adopters share best practices across departments. 

Speaking of ROI, let’s understand how much money and time you can actually save by adopting the right construction pricing software as a concrete producer. 

The ROI of the right pricing software for concrete producers

Concrete producers who digitize pricing and quoting typically see tangible gains within months.

On average, teams report:

Those improvements directly impact profitability, allowing producers to bid confidently, win more jobs, and maintain healthy margins even in volatile markets.

But the key is to choose the right software if you want to see these results. 

Why concrete producers choose Slabstack

Slabstack is the best software for concrete producers as it combines all the tools you need to quote accurately and manage margins in one connected platform.

And now we are also working to provide mobile app access to keep field reps connected while on-site. This will help them update quotes, check dispatch schedules, and send approvals from their phones or tablets. 

Together, these tools help you quote faster, protect margins, and deliver with greater reliability. Many suppliers using Slabstack see a full return on their investment within 60 days of going live and improve their quoting accuracy to near 100%. 

Book a call with our team to see how you can see similar results too!  

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3. Why Chasing Volume Hurts Ready Mix Concrete Profit Margins

Margins in asphalt are measured in cents per ton. That’s why even a small quoting mistake like missing a surcharge, using last week’s binder price, or forgetting a haul zone can wipe out the profit from an entire job. 

Most producers think solving their quoting challenges requires more manual systems and more spreadsheets. But that’s not the case. 

In this blog, we’ll go through some of the most common quoting mistakes that asphalt producers make and show you practical ways in which you can fix those. In the end, we’ll also highlight how a specific CRM for asphalt producers like Slabstack makes the entire quoting process easier and more efficient. 

Mistake #1: Relying on outdated spreadsheets

One of the most common mistakes that asphalt producers make is that they rely on spreadsheets built months or even years ago as part of their quoting process. But chances are those spreadsheets have become bloated with old formulas, missing inputs, and pricing that no longer reflects the market. 

So your team ends up quoting based on last month’s costs for binder, aggregates, and fuel, when in reality their costs change daily. 

The issue isn’t the spreadsheet itself; it’s the lack of real-time cost visibility. And this goes both ways. 

Producers who quote profitably treat cost updates as part of their daily routine. They pull new prices before every bid, track freight rates weekly, and double-check surcharges before sending anything out. Even simple discipline like syncing costs from supplier emails helps.

But even these processes take a lot of time. The best way to fix this is to use a CRM for asphalt producers like Slabstack, which provides live cost feeds to ensure every quote reflects today’s numbers automatically. 

Mistake #2: Internal underbidding

In regional asphalt operations, it’s common for multiple reps to quote similar customers or territories. Without visibility, they end up competing against each other, often unknowingly. One rep hears a price rumor and drops a few dollars per ton to win the next bid, not realizing it was their own team’s quote. Undercutting prices creates a race to the bottom from which no one benefits in the long run. 

Plus, the damage goes beyond margin erosion. Underbidding creates pricing confusion for customers and undermines trust in your company’s professionalism.

To solve this, you can standardize pricing rules or set up a shared folder of approved quotes for visibility. Encouraging managers to check the quotes before they go out also helps. 

Again, spreadsheets can help with this. But a software build specifically for asphalt producers like Slabstack ensures every rep works from the same live data and pricing logic. Guardrails automatically flag quotes below target margins, keeping deals profitable without slowing sales down.

Which brings us to the next mistake, slow quoting process. 

Mistake #3: Slow quote turnaround

How many hours did you spend last week just to approve quotes, which still ended up taking weeks to reach the customers because you wanted to ensure the rates were right? 

Contractors expect fast answers. When approvals drag or reps wait on cost updates, your competitors step in. 

Manual quoting processes are the biggest culprit of slow quotes. Copying data between Excel, emails, and dispatch creates friction and version errors. Managers waste hours reviewing line items that could be standardized.

The best way to solve this is to use templates that pre-load freight, fuel, and material costs. So your managers spend time adjusting strategy, not formatting spreadsheets.

To make this even easier, Slabstack automates this workflow. Quotes pull in live data and apply pricing rules instantly. Managers only review exceptions, not every quote that goes out. Quoting that would take days to go out; it only takes a few minutes with Slabstack. 

[Read: Configuring manufacturing quotes - How faster quoting helps close more deals] 

Mistake #4: Hidden freight and surcharge miscalculations

This is similar to mistake #1 that we discussed above about relying on outdated spreadsheets, even when costs change daily. 

Freight and fuel surcharges can turn a profitable bid into a loss if they’re not handled precisely. Maybe the wrong haul zone rate was applied, a toll charge was missed, or fuel costs jumped mid-week. These small errors often go unnoticed during quoting but show up later when reconciling margins. Over a full paving season, that can add up to thousands in lost profit.

To stay accurate, the best producers build consistent freight logic into every quote. That means:

This process keeps pricing transparent and consistent across every job, regardless of who’s quoting it.

Slabstack takes that discipline and automates it. Our asphalt plant software calculates freight automatically based on plant location, delivery radius, and live fuel index data, helping you quote with confidence. 

Mistake #5: Lack of win/loss insights

Teams often lack reliable win/loss insights because they rely on manual systems. With limited time and fragmented tools, most sales teams spend their days fixing quoting mistakes rather than analyzing results. It’s no surprise that understanding why jobs were won or lost falls to the bottom of the priority list.

But once producers address the quoting challenges that we listed above, they can finally focus on the real work of running the business: learning from performance and using data to make better decisions.

When teams start tracking the outcomes of their quotes, they can know: 

Slabstack captures all of this automatically. Every quote outcome feeds into dashboards that show win rates by rep, region, and customer type, giving leaders a clear view of what’s working and what needs to change, to protect margins and grow revenue.

Slabstack: Asphalt software that helps you fix quoting mistakes

Quoting accuracy drives the entire business for asphalt producers.

But when costs move daily and quotes are sent manually, even small inconsistencies across materials, freight, or surcharges can chip away at profit margins. Over time, these gaps accumulate, quietly turning what looked like a profitable month into one that barely breaks even.

To solve this, you don’t need to add more approvals or manual checks. You need a quoting process that keeps every variable in sync. And asphalt producers who adopt structured systems gain real visibility into what they’re earning per job, per customer, and per ton.

Slabstack enables this level of control. 

Its live cost data, dynamic pricing rules, and automated guardrails ensure every quote reflects real market conditions. Teams quote faster, align pricing across plants, and see margin impact before committing to a job, turning quoting from guesswork into a strategic advantage.

Ready to protect every ton you sell? Talk to Slabstack to see how our purpose-built CRM helps asphalt producers quote smarter, faster, and with stronger margins.

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3. Biggest Impacts of Automation in the Construction Material Supplier Industry

Running a construction materials business can be complex when relying on manual systems.

Sales teams often juggle live costs, approvals, and dispatch schedules across multiple jobs, which slows everything down. Their hours disappear into copying data, chasing approvals, and re‑entering the same information into different systems. 

Quotes get delayed, reps undercut each other, and mistakes slip through that can cost thousands of dollars.

The issue here isn’t a lack of effort. Teams work hard, but outdated systems force them to spend time on tasks that don’t grow the business. Instead of focusing on winning more deals and serving customers, your sales team gets stuck managing data and fixing errors.

This is where automation in the construction material supplier industry makes a difference. 

In this blog, we’ll look at the 3 biggest impacts of automation for construction material suppliers and how Slabstack helps achieve them. But first, let’s look at why automation matters in this industry. 

Why automation matters for construction material suppliers

Margins in concrete, aggregates, and asphalt are extremely tight and are often measured in just cents per cubic yard. In such a competitive environment, even the smallest misstep in quoting can erase profit from an entire job. 

Yet most producers still lean on spreadsheets, manual systems, or bolt‑on tools that were never designed for construction materials sales. These outdated systems slow teams down, invite mistakes, and make consistent margin protection nearly impossible. That creates problems at every step:

Automation directly tackles these pain points for suppliers. It gives your sales teams tools to move faster, quote with confidence, and protect profit margins without relying on manual checks.

To see how automation helps practically, read on to see the 3 biggest impacts automation is already having on suppliers in 2025.

The 3 biggest impacts of automation for construction material suppliers

The 3 biggest impacts of automation for construction material suppliers include smarter pricing, faster sales cycle, and better visibility, which helps with proactive decision-making. Read on to see how. 

1. Smarter pricing that protects margins

Every supplier knows how fast material costs can move. Cement, aggregates, fuel, and additives can shift daily, and manual systems rarely keep pace. That’s how hidden losses creep in.

Automation solves this by:

For example, let’s say one of your reps quotes $130/yard when costs are already at $135. The rep isn’t aware of the price change, and now has locked in a deal at $5 loss per yard. On a 1,000-yard job, that’s $5,000 gone. All because the price changed, and your team wasn’t aware of this. 

To prevent this, reps can either check prices every hour of their workday, but that means wasting time that should be spent talking to customers and getting more jobs. 

Or, they can take the help of automation, which prevents underquoting by flagging margin leaks before quotes leave the system. It also ensures that all reps work from the same data, so customers see consistent pricing no matter who they speak with.

By making margin protection automatic, suppliers stop leaving profitability to chance. Instead, they can compete on service and reliability, not on risky discounts.

And while pricing discipline is crucial, speed matters just as much. That brings us to the second impact. 

2. Faster sales cycles with less manual work

In construction materials, configuring manufacturing quotes with speed and accuracy helps construction suppliers win more deals. Yet manual processes turn quoting into a bottleneck. Approvals get stuck in inboxes, reps spend hours re-entering data into dispatch, and deals stall.

Automation removes these roadblocks:

Carew Concrete, a ready-mix concrete and aggregates supplier, used automation through the Slabstack CRM to reduce turnaround time on bids while keeping every quote aligned to target margins. 

They were able to increase their quote accuracy from 50% to near 100%, all the while keeping up with quoting speed. And now, instead of chasing paperwork, their sales team spends more time building customer relationships and winning work.

By streamlining the sales cycle, automation helps suppliers secure more profitable deals. But the benefits go beyond efficiency; they extend to decision-making at every level of the business.

3. Better visibility and proactive decision-making

Most producers don’t realize margin erosion until it shows up in financial reports months later. By then, it’s too late to fix. Automation changes that.

With the right automation tool, you get real-time alerts that notify managers when costs rise or quotes dip below target margins. Tools like Slabstack also offer forecasting dashboards that use live quotes and win/loss data to project demand, plan fleet use, and help you adjust your pricing strategy. Plus, with automation, you can trust that every quote your team sends out clears profit thresholds without micromanaging your reps. 

All this can help you gain foresight, allowing you to adjust prices mid-bid cycle, prepare plants for seasonal spikes, and make proactive decisions that protect profitability.

With visibility in place, the next question for many suppliers is how to actually begin their automation journey.

How suppliers can get started with automation in construction

Many producers assume automation in construction material requires a massive technology overhaul, but the truth is that it works best when rolled out in stages with the right tool. 

Starting small allows teams to get comfortable, see results quickly, and build momentum for broader change. Here’s how you can start with automation in construction step-by-step. 

By phasing the rollout this way, suppliers can achieve quick wins without overwhelming staff, while steadily building confidence across the entire organization.

But the key is to choose the right tool to help you with automation. Otherwise, you can get stuck spending thousands of dollars and endless months to make a tool work for you. 

That’s why producers choose Slabstack, the #1 sales and business management platform for concrete, aggregates, and asphalt producers to start their automation journey. 

Why producers choose Slabstack to help with automation in the construction industry

To truly benefit from automation, you need a CRM platform that can connect quoting, pricing, and dispatch into one seamless system. Spreadsheets or generic tools can only go so far before they create bottlenecks and errors. 

A purpose-built solution like Slabstack stands apart as a vertical platform designed specifically for ready-mix, aggregates, and asphalt producers, with the industry’s pricing, quoting, and dispatch challenges at its core.

Slabstack brings together:

With Slabstack, suppliers gain a platform that strengthens pricing decisions, speeds up quoting, improves customer service, and supports long-term profitability.

Get in touch with our team to see how automation through Slabstack can protect your margins and accelerate your sales process.

Margins in construction materials are razor-thin. So to become profitable, producers often chase big jobs or higher volumes that look impressive at first glance but quietly drain profitability once hidden costs surface.

The real difference between winning and struggling plants comes down to tracking the right sales metrics. And those are not just limited to volume or revenue. 

In this blog, we’ll break down the five sales KPIs that matter most for producers, why they’re essential, and how, without the right visibility, producers take on unprofitable work, tie up fleets, and strain relationships with their most loyal customers.

Why do the right sales metrics matter for construction material producers? 

Most producers still track sales the old way: spreadsheets, gut feel, or siloed systems. It’s common to see managers pulling last month’s totals from Excel, or sales teams working off outdated price sheets. 

With this approach, volume and revenue end up dominating the conversation around sales. But these numbers don’t always reflect profitability. 

For example, a spike in volume may look like growth, but if trucking costs and overtime wages rise alongside it, the margins collapse. Or revenue from one flashy project may mask the fact that smaller, loyal contractors have started buying from competitors.

We recently conducted a webinar to address these issues, and one of our webinar guests, Brendan Clemente at Bonded Concrete, put it:

“Volume’s a double-edged sword… If you chase larger volume jobs, you may not take care of your base customers. And when it’s over, they may not be your customers anymore.”

[You can check out the full webinar here] 

In the construction material industry, the goal isn’t just more yards, but profitable yards. And sales metrics act like early warning signals. They reveal when a contract is bleeding margin, when your fleet is stretched beyond capacity, or when everyday customers are being pushed aside. 

But which metrics should you track? Let’s look at the top 5 sales metrics every producer should prioritize. 

Metric #1: Good vs. bad volume

Not all volume is equal. Chasing a 100,000-yard job at razor-thin margins might keep trucks busy for a season, but it can destroy profitability and weaken customer loyalty. 

What producers often overlook is that big jobs come with hidden costs: extra trucks, overtime labor, stressed plants, and the opportunity cost of sidelining steady customers. On the other side, base contractors ordering predictable loads week after week may not look flashy, but they keep cash flow steady and margins healthier.

“Good volume is stuff that’s within range of your plants, easily serviceable, not adding stress to your production team” - Brendan Clemente

To make sure you’re taking on the right projects, you should track yards sold along with:

When tracked correctly, volume becomes a quality metric that shows whether your plant and fleet are being used efficiently and whether customer relationships are being strengthened over time. It highlights whether you’re building a durable, profitable business or stretching yourself thin for short-term gains. 

And that leads us into the next essential number: selling price.

Metric #2: Average selling price 

High ticket prices don’t always mean high profit. A three-yard COD delivery may command $200/yard but tie up a truck for hours, eroding efficiency and margin. 

The average selling price needs context because different job types, customer segments, and load sizes carry different values. Without breaking ASP down by these categories, producers risk being misled by averages that look healthy but hide inefficiencies or margin erosion.

In the webinar, we highlighted why focusing only on the highest rates can be misleading:

“You can go grab three-yard, four-yard deliveries and they look really good, but that’s a truck tied up for two and a half hours… You want to sell full loads and you want to sell value in anything you’re looking for.”

By tracking ASP by segment: CODs, base contractors, specialty projects, producers can identify which customers deliver repeatable profitability and which ones quietly eat into margins.

And that leads to the metric that really tells the truth: margin.

Metric #3: Margin per yard (or per ton)

Margin is the ultimate number. Revenue means little if profitability disappears under the weight of trucking costs, overhead, and long pour times. 

Yet many producers only calculate margin over materials, leaving out delivery and fixed costs. This incomplete picture can make a job look profitable when, in reality, the additional hours on the road, fuel surcharges, and overtime labor can impact your margins. 

For example, a $50,000 project might seem healthy on paper, but after accounting for trucking wear-and-tear, idle time, and plant overhead, it could be a net loss.

That’s why tracking margin per yard enforces discipline. It enables producers to see whether jobs are truly profitable, not just impressive on paper. It also creates consistency across sales teams. Because every rep ends up with the same cost basis rather than their own assumptions. 

And with systems like Slabstack, producers can easily set margin floors and guardrails so no quote slips through below target thresholds, removing the risk of undercutting or miscalculating costs. But we’ll discuss more about this later in the blog. 

Metric #4: Segmentation of customers 

Every customer is different, and the right segmentation can help you track your profits effectively. 

By segmenting customers by load size, frequency, margin contribution, and loyalty, you can see which groups deserve priority. You can also use this segmentation to prioritize time and to balance short-term revenue with long-term profitability.

Metric #5: Quote-to-order ratio (win rate)

Quotes are leading indicators of demand. Tracking how many turn into orders provides foresight into plant utilization, fleet scheduling, and cash flow. 

A low conversion rate may signal that sales teams are quoting jobs outside the company’s sweet spot, or that competitors are consistently undercutting on certain mixes or regions. A high win rate, on the other hand, shows strong alignment between pricing, service, and customer expectations.

More importantly, win/loss analysis reveals patterns that are easy to miss when you’re only focused on total revenue. 

You can see whether CODs are consistently lost on price, whether large contractors are slipping away due to service issues, or whether certain plants are facing heavier competition in specific geographies. 

By measuring win rates by customer type, region, and job size, producers gain an early-warning system and a roadmap for refining pricing, service strategies, and even fleet planning. The insight allows them to adjust before problems show up in the P&L.

But measuring all 5 metrics we’ve listed here, and using them to forecast demand, takes more than just relying on spreadsheets. Read on to know more. 

How to track the right construction sales data? 

Alot of producers fail to track these crucial sales metrics because they rely on manual systems like spreadsheets. And spreadsheets are static, error-prone, and disconnected. 

In the construction industry, costs of materials like diesel, cement and additives shift daily and spreadsheets simply can’t keep up. By the time someone updates a formula, real-world costs may already have changed again. Reps often undercut each other without realizing it, managers spend hours chasing approvals, and quotes go out with outdated assumptions

That’s where a purpose-built vertical CRM for producers helps:

Slabstack, the #1 sales and business management platform for concrete, aggregates, and asphalt producer, was built to keep these features in mind. 

How Slabstack helps producers track the right metrics? 

Slabstack is purpose-built for concrete and construction material suppliers. It equips producers with tools to track and act on the five metrics that matter most:

With these features, producers no longer have to chase volume blindly. They can build discipline into every quote, protect margins, and prioritize the work that makes their business stronger. 

As discussed in our webinar, success for producers won’t come from chasing every yard poured. It will come from tracking the right sales metrics, enforcing margin discipline, and balancing customer mix with foresight.

As Brendan Clemente put it best:

“You’ve gotta make a margin. You’ve gotta make money. Otherwise, you can put your money in a lot smarter places than the ready-mix business.” 

Slabstack helps producers build that discipline into every part of the sales process. From live cost feeds to dispatch integration, our CRM ensures your team is working with real numbers, protecting profitability, and serving customers more consistently.

If you’re ready to put these metrics into action, schedule a demo with our team and see how Slabstack can help you protect margins and grow profitably. 

Asphalt producers operate in a market where margins are thin, input costs like oil and aggregates change quickly, and demand fluctuates with the season.

In this setting, using spreadsheets, generic CRMs, or dispatch add‑ons to manage quoting and sales often results in outdated pricing, missed opportunities, and lost profit.

This raises an important point: what should a sales CRM built for asphalt producers actually offer, and which features really matter when it comes to protecting margins? 

In this blog, we’ll look at what asphalt CRMs are, what features matter most, and how a purpose-built solution like Slabstack gives producers the tools to quote faster, price smarter, and plan with confidence. 

What is a sales asphalt plant software for producers? 

At its core, a sales CRM is a system to manage customers, track opportunities, and keep a clean record of interactions. But for asphalt producers, that definition barely scratches the surface. 

The reality is that asphalt sales are far more complex than what a generic CRM can handle. 

Unlike horizontal CRMs, or dispatch system bolt-ons that track on some quoting functionality, asphalt-specific software needs to handle live price volatility, enforce profit guardrails, and connect seamlessly to plant operations. Asphalt producers also deal with seasonal demand shifts, fluctuations in binder and fuel costs, and plant capacity constraints regularly.

This is where asphalt plant software steps in. 

It acts as both a CRM and a quoting engine, designed around the realities of bulk material sales. Instead of fighting with a generic tool, you can streamline quoting, protect pricing consistency, and improve visibility across your team.

Now, let’s look at some practical ways a CRM designed specifically for asphalt producers can help. 

What does a CRM do for asphalt plants?

Think of a CRM for asphalt producers as the control tower for sales and pricing. It stores customer data and ensures every quote, approval, and forecast is built on accurate, current information.

With a vertical CRM designed for asphalt producers, you can:

But not every CRM is created equal or provides these features. 

For asphalt producers, these features can make the difference between protecting margins and losing them. Let’s look at the five that matter most. 

What features should asphalt producers look for in a CRM? [Top 5 list] 

Here are the top 5 features you should consider when choosing software as an asphalt producer. 

Live cost feeds & dynamic pricing

Material costs for asphalt, including bitumen, aggregates, and freight, can fluctuate daily. That’s why sending out quotes based on last month’s price sheet leads to margin loss. 

A CRM designed for asphalt pulls live cost data directly into quotes, ensuring every number reflects the current market.

With dynamic pricing guardrails, reps work from the same real-time data, keeping bids competitive while safeguarding profitability. This price consistency protects against two major risks: underquoting that erodes margins, and overquoting that costs you the job.

Margin guardrails

In asphalt sales, just a few dollars per ton can decide whether a project is profitable. 

A purpose-built CRM allows producers to set minimum margin thresholds by mix, plant, or customer type. For example, a producer might set a $5-per-ton margin floor on a high-volume mix at Plant A. If a rep quotes below that, the CRM automatically flags it for approval, ensuring that the deal is reviewed before it gets sent out. 

This process protects profits without relying on manual oversight.

These controls also prevent internal undercutting. Without margin guardrails, one rep might unknowingly quote $3 lower than a colleague on the same customer, eroding prices and trust. 

Guardrails standardize quoting rules, keep teams aligned, and maintain pricing discipline across locations and reps, all while allowing quotes to move quickly through the system.

Dispatch integration

How much time does your team spend manually entering data from your existing CRM or spreadsheets into your dispatch software? Each week, reps spend up to 20 hours doing this manual work. That’s hours lost that could be spent on selling or improving their sales skills. 

This usually happens because for asphalt producers, winning a bid is only half the battle. Fulfilling it quickly and accurately is the other. And without dispatch integration, sales teams waste time re-entering accepted quotes into scheduling systems, increasing the risk of costly errors.

The right asphalt CRM integrates with systems like Apex, pushing accepted quotes straight into tickets and schedules. This creates a smooth handoff from sales to operations, saving admin time and keeping plants, drivers, and customers in sync.

Forecasting & sales intelligence

Quotes generated by sales teams provide early indicators of market demand. A specialized asphalt CRM captures this quoting activity and translates it into forecasting data, making patterns like win/loss ratios, seasonal swings, and regional pricing trends visible.

With these insights, producers can plan plant output more accurately, set pricing strategies with greater confidence, and schedule trucks and crews ahead of demand. Instead of waiting until plants are stretched, managers can use this information to prepare resources in advance and keep operations running smoothly.

Ease of adoption

The most important feature you should consider is the ease of adoption of the software. Many asphalt producers have tried CRMs before and abandoned them because they were clunky, generic, or required endless customization. 

A purpose-built CRM should feel intuitive for sales teams, with quoting templates tailored for asphalt workflows and mobile access for reps on the go. Instead of taking months to configure, the right platform should slot naturally into operations and start delivering value within weeks. 

The features we’ve listed here highlight what asphalt producers should expect from a CRM. Not many CRMs on the market are designed with these needs in mind, which is exactly why we built Slabstack: to focus on the unique challenges of asphalt producers and deliver the tools that matter most. 

Read on to know more. 

Why is Slabstack the best CRM for asphalt producers?

Slabstack was built specifically for producers in asphalt and bulk construction materials. Unlike horizontal CRMs, it comes with the workflows and integrations producers actually need.

If your team is still managing quotes in spreadsheets or relying on generic CRMs, it’s time to upgrade. 

Slabstack gives asphalt producers the tools to quote faster, protect margins, and win more bids, without the complexity of systems that weren’t built for your industry.

Get in touch with our experts to see how Slabstack can fit right into your workflows and offer 50%+ profitability gains! 

You invest in a CRM because it promises to make your life easier. It is supposed to make your sales team faster, smarter, and more profitable. But chances are you’re still dealing with margin leaks, quoting delays, and frustrated sales reps.

As a concrete, aggregates, or asphalt producer, you can’t rely on spreadsheets, generic CRMs, or bolt-ons from your dispatch system. They may promise a lot of features, but those features don’t make sense if your team is still spending hours on manual work, and your business is losing margin. 

And in an industry where pennies per cubic yard can make or break your margins, the wrong CRM isn’t just inconvenient, it’s expensive.

In this blog, we’ll cover 5 warnings that your current CRM is holding you back, what it really costs you, and what to look for in a system that actually fits the building materials business.

Let’s start with the most important sign: lack of visibility. 

Sign #1: Your reps lack real-time cost visibility

The first and most clear sign is that your reps don’t have visibility into prices. Cement, diesel, and additive prices can shift weekly, or even daily, and a static spreadsheet or generic CRM won’t catch these changes in time.

Without this live cost visibility, your reps either underquote, where you lose margin on every cubic yard, or overquote, where you lose the deal to a competitor with fresher numbers. 

A CRM purpose-built for building material suppliers should pull live costs directly from dispatch, ensuring every quote reflects the latest input prices. With real-time data, reps can quote with confidence, managers can protect profit, and customers get accurate pricing from the start.

Another way lack of visibility affects your profits is when your team starts undercutting itself. Let’s understand this in more detail below. 

Sign #2: Internal underbidding is hurting profits

When reps can’t see each other’s quotes, they unknowingly undercut one another. This creates a race to the bottom, where the only thing that drops faster than your prices is your profit margin. Worse, customers quickly notice the inconsistencies in your pricing and start questioning your reliability.

Your CRM should automatically prevent this. 

A vertical CRM for producers gives sales teams shared visibility into active quotes and enforces margin guardrails. Instead of slashing prices to win business, reps can focus on building relationships and delivering value, while protecting the margins that keep your plants running.

But even with visibility, inefficiencies creep in if workflows are slow and clunky. That’s where the next warning sign shows up.

Sign #3: You’re stuck with slow, manual workflows

If your team spends hours each week double-checking spreadsheets, re-entering data into dispatch, or waiting on manual approvals, then your CRM isn’t doing its job.

Every delay in quoting eats away at your chances of winning the job, and in this business, the first accurate quote usually wins. Additionally, manual workflows don’t just waste time. They increase the risk of errors, inconsistent pricing, and missed opportunities. 

A purpose-built CRM helps you by automating approvals, eliminating duplicate data entry, and connecting seamlessly with dispatch, so your reps can generate fast, accurate quotes that protect your margins.

With the right CRM, you can give your team time back to actually focus on selling, developing their skills, and winning more jobs, instead of just entering and reentering numbers on a spreadsheet. 

But speed alone isn’t enough; you also need to understand why you’re winning and losing deals in the first place.

Sign #4: You can’t track why you’re winning or losing deals

If you enter all your sales data into scattered spreadsheets and it isn’t tied to outcomes, your team is guessing why deals are won or lost. Without visibility into patterns, like which regions are consistently underperforming or which mix designs are always underquoted, you can’t adapt your strategy. 

And without a strategy, how would you know if you’re meeting your business goals?

Again, most genetic CRMs stop at activity tracking. They might tell you how many calls were made, but not how the quotes in those calls impacted your profit. And even if your team wants to win more deals, they’ll have to spend hours trying to analyze data. 

A supplier-specific CRM connects sales activity directly to margin outcomes. Dashboards should show win rates, margin trends, and rep performance, turning raw data into actionable insights.

When every deal becomes a learning opportunity, your sales strategy improves with every quote. And those insights are critical for the next challenge: forecasting.

Sign #5: Your forecasting is guesswork

Forecasting in construction materials goes beyond estimating revenue. It also guides how you plan plant capacity, schedule deliveries, and set pricing strategy. But if your CRM doesn’t capture demand signals from quotes, your forecasts just become guesses. 

The right CRM ties forecasting directly to quoting activity, giving you a real-time view of what’s coming down the pipeline. With this visibility, you can anticipate demand, adjust pricing, and prepare inventory before issues hit. That kind of foresight can be the difference between a profitable quarter and a painful one.

Ultimately, these five signs point to one problem: less profit for your business. 

You can either look for bolt-on tools to fix these issues, spend hours trying to coach your sales team to use manual systems the right way. Or, you can invest in a specific CRM designed for concrete, aggregates, and asphalt producers. 

How Slabstack fixes the gaps your current CRM can’t

These five warning signs highlight a bigger issue: most CRMs simply weren’t designed for the day‑to‑day realities of concrete and materials supply. They force reps to work with stale numbers, leave managers without insight into why deals succeed or fail, and push leaders to make decisions with incomplete information.

Slabstack was built specifically for these issues and solves these challenges through:

With Slabstack, quoting and sales run on accurate data and clear guardrails, so instead of losing margin, every deal is set up to protect profitability. All the while reducing the time your team spends on manual workflows. 

If the 5 signs we listed here felt familiar, book a call with our experts. We’ll guide you on how a purpose-built CRM can eliminate these issues and protect your margins. 

Explore more insights and guides from our experts 

1. 5 hidden issues that are killing your profit margins as a building & construction material supplier.

3. Can supplementary cementitious materials (SCM) or alternative cement unlock cheaper, greener mixes nationwide?

3. Building Materials Sales Training: 5 steps to coach your sales team on profit vs volume

4. 7 Questions to Ask Before Choosing a CRM for Construction Material Suppliers

5. Cost Management for Construction Material Suppliers: How Hidden Costs May Be Eroding Your Margins

If you run a concrete, aggregates, or asphalt supply business, you already know the quoting process isn’t as simple as punching numbers into a spreadsheet. 

Volatile material costs, tight margins, and the need to coordinate across dispatch, sales, and operations make the operations far more complex than what generic tools can handle.

Still, too many producers rely on generic CRMs like Salesforce or HubSpot, or bolt-on tools. These systems promise visibility but often end up creating workarounds and driving up admin overhead.

If you’ve already faced these issues with a generic CRM and are looking for the right tool, or simply want to switch from manual systems to a more organized one, this is the right blog for you.

Here are 7 questions to help you evaluate whether a CRM is truly built for your business. Let’s start with the most pressing one: does it handle live costs? 

Question 1: Does it handle live material costs and dynamic pricing?

One of the most important questions to consider before investing in a CRM for construction materials is whether it can handle live material costs and dynamic pricing. 

Because prices of cement, asphalt, aggregates, fuel, and SCMs change almost daily. And if your reps are still using last week’s prices to give out quotes, you might end up losing margins on a job that seemed profitable at first. 

Similarly, dynamic pricing enables you to adjust your prices in real-time based on changing input costs, market conditions, and defined profit guardrails. 

In practice, this looks like:

To expect these features from a generic CRM requires a lot of customization, integrations, and maintenance from your side. You might end up spending more on these adjustments than on the software itself.

A better way is to use a specific CRM like Slabstack, which is built specifically for concrete, aggregates, and asphalt producers. With live material costs and dynamic pricing features, Slabstack helps producers get the latest prices and send out quotes more confidently. 

Section 2: Can it integrate directly with your dispatch system?

Another very specific issue that producers face is that they have to manually enter information from their existing tools into dispatch systems like Command Alkon or Sysdyne. So your team ends up spending their time filling data from one system to another, and even then, there are chances of human error. 

A CRM for construction materials like Slabstack allows live inputs from dispatch systems like Command Alkon and Sysdyne to feed directly into the quoting workflow and vice versa. 

Here’s how one of our customers, Carew Concrete, described this feature:

Section 3: Does it protect margins with guardrails?

The next question you should ask is if the CRM protects your margins with guardrails. 

In our industry, it's easy to think that the more jobs you get, the higher your profits will be. So to win more deals, reps usually end up underquoting prices and undercutting quotes because they lack visibility into the true costs of materials.

But even if a generic CRM helps with giving you visibility, your reps would still need to get approval for every quote from the manager. So it doesn’t really improve the workflow or reduce time. 

Meanwhile, in a specific software for construction material producers, you can set up guardrails. This allows only the quotes that fall below the set threshold to get flagged, helping your team quote faster, while also ensuring that your team isn’t undercutting the prices. 

Section 4: Is it built for construction materials (vertical) or generic (horizontal)?

As we briefly mentioned before, if you use a generic CRM, you’d need to spend a lot of additional resources to make it work for your business. We have seen companies invest $50,000 in a horizontal CRM system because it promises efficiency and growth, only to spend over $100,000 every year just to keep it running.

Whereas a vertical CRM like Slabstack comes with built-in features your business needs, without having to invest additional resources. This includes: dispatch system integration, live material pricing, dynamic quoting, and margin control tools to protect profitability.

Section 5: Does it offer forecasting and sales intelligence?

If you really want to improve your margins and profitability, you need more than just visibility into data. You need a CRM that can analyze that data and help you make smarter decisions. 

That’s another feature to look for when choosing a building material supplier software. 

Because forecasting turns quotes into early demand signals that help producers anticipate workload, adjust pricing strategies, and plan plant or fleet capacity ahead of time. And while you can still do these things manually, the right CRM can deliver these insights automatically without requiring separate reports, manual data pulls, or expensive add-on modules. 

This way, forecasting becomes part of your daily operations, not an extra burden.

Section 6: Will your sales reps actually use it?

You can look for all the CRM features that look good on paper, but if your team doesn’t use them, they are of no use. Even worse, if your team has to spend hours every week just to make the CRM usable or integrate it into their existing workflows, you might end up wasting more time than even manual systems. 

Therefore, another important question to ask is if the CRM fits into your workflow. Is it modern, intuitive, and customizable? Can your team use it from day 1 without requiring multiple hours of training or customization? 

Once this is clear, the next question is what it all comes down to. 

Section 7: What’s the ROI timeline?

Let’s be real: You’d only invest in a CRM if it can get you the ROI you want, in the timeframe you need. With generic CRMs, it can take up to 12 to 18 months to see the first signs of return. And even then, you’ll have to spend time and resources on customization and heavy consulting.

On the other hand, many suppliers see a full return on their investment within 60 days of going live and improve their quoting accuracy to near 100% with Slabstack. 

Let’s understand how this happens in more detail below. 

Why Slabstack is the right CRM for material suppliers

All 7 questions that we listed above point to one reality: most generic CRMs or bolt-ons can’t meet the needs of heavy building material suppliers. They’d require heavy customizations, additional resources, and even then, you’d have to wait up to 18 months to see the ROI. 

That’s why Slabstack is the #1 sales and business management platform for concrete, aggregates, and asphalt producers.

Our platform unifies quoting, offers dynamic pricing, forecasting, and margin protection in one purpose-built system. You also get: 

From day one, it helps your team quote faster, protect margins, and eliminate the hidden costs that come with spreadsheets or generic CRMs. You don’t pay extra for users, implementation surprises, or endless customization. 

Have any other questions you need answered before choosing? Get in touch with our team, and we’d be happy to answer all of them.

Explore more insights and guides from our experts

1. Can supplementary cementitious materials (SCM) or alternative cement unlock cheaper, greener mixes nationwide?

2. Building Materials Sales Training: 5 steps to coach your sales team on profit vs volume

3. How to Handle Construction Material Price Volatility as Suppliers (2025)

4. Cost Management for Construction Material Suppliers: How Hidden Costs May Be Eroding Your Margins

5. Skills Every Concrete Sales Rep Needs to Win More Deals

6. Configuring Manufacturing Quotes: How Faster Quoting Helps Construction Suppliers Close More Deals

If you’re running a ready-mix or building material supplier business, this will feel familiar: You invest $50,000 in a horizontal CRM system because it promises efficiency and growth, only to spend over $100,000 every year just to keep it running. 

This isn’t an isolated story. 

Many construction material suppliers underestimate the hidden costs that come with horizontal CRMs.

In this blog, we’ll explore why these systems drain resources and how a purpose-built alternative can deliver faster ROI. But first, let’s understand the difference between a horizontal CRM and a purpose-built one. 

What is a horizontal CRM?

Before we dive deeper, let’s first clarify what a horizontal CRM is.

Horizontal CRMs are platforms like Salesforce or Dynamics CRM designed to serve any industry. They offer broad capabilities for contact management, pipeline tracking, and reporting. 

But when it comes to construction materials, these systems don’t fit out of the box. You’ll find yourself paying for expensive customization, integrations, and maintenance just to make them usable.

These CRMs are built to be everything to everyone, which means they’re not purpose-built for the complex needs of suppliers who juggle dynamic pricing, dispatch schedules, and compliance requirements daily.

But there are better options available. 

What is a vertical CRM?

Now let’s look at what vertical CRMs bring to the table.

A vertical CRM is purpose-built for a specific industry. For construction material suppliers, this means the platform comes ready with the workflows, data integrations, and margin protection you need. A strong vertical CRM typically includes:

Because these features are built-in, you don’t have to spend months (and hundreds of thousands) configuring the software to fit your business.

Next, let’s look closely at the specific ways horizontal CRMs can inflate costs.

4 ways horizontal CRMs are increasing costs for building material suppliers 

You might invest in a horizontal CRM expecting it will help you increase profits, but when you look closely, the hidden costs tell a different story. If anything, implementing the wrong CRM can drain your resources, both in terms of time and money.

Here are four of the biggest contributors to this:

1. Implementation and consulting fees

Getting a horizontal CRM off the ground requires extensive configuration. This often involves hiring consultants who charge $150–$300 per hour. Even a modest project can quickly balloon into six figures before your team ever logs in.

2. Admin overhead

Horizontal CRMs are complex. You’ll likely need a dedicated administrator or an IT team to maintain workflows, manage licenses, and troubleshoot issues. The average CRM admin costs over $100,000 annually.

3. Custom integrations and maintenance

Horizontal CRMs don’t integrate seamlessly with dispatch systems or batching software. So, you end up paying extra for developers to build and maintain custom connections to systems like Command Alkon or Sysdyne.

4. Slow time to value

Even after months of setup, it can take a year or more to see any return on investment. For many suppliers, that’s simply too long.

In fact, even if your initial license fee is only $50,000, you could easily spend another $100,000 trying to make it functional.

But these hidden costs are only part of the problem. The bigger issue is that horizontal CRMs simply can’t handle the realities of construction materials sales. Let’s explore why these systems also fall short operationally.

Why horizontal CRMs underperform in the construction supplier industry 

Here’s why horizontal CRMs simply can’t handle the realities of construction materials sales. 

So, if you still have to handle so many tasks manually even after spending $50k or more on a CRM, you have to ask: are you really getting your money’s worth? 

You could simply switch to a building material supplier software, like Slabstack, and avoid all of this complexity.

A vertical CRM for construction material suppliers that pays for itself in 2 months: Slabstack

Unlike horizontal CRMs, Slabstack is purpose-built for construction material suppliers. Here’s how it helps you avoid the hidden costs and unlock faster payback:

Many suppliers see a full return on their investment within 60 days of going live and improve their quoting accuracy to near 100%.

Here’s what John Malcolm, Vice President at Carew Concrete, has to say about using Slabtack,

“We chose Slabstack because it isn’t just a tool for today; the team is committed to building the features the ready-mix and aggregate business has always needed.”

Ready to see what a purpose-built CRM can do for your business? Talk to our experts to see how Slabstack can help you quote faster, protect your margins, and get up and running quickly.