These guides are written for the people who run plumbing supply businesses: owners, branch managers, sales managers and showroom leads. Each one takes a single problem, explains why it happens, and gives you a method, worked numbers and a checklist you can use with your own team. You don't need to work with us to get value from them.
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Share of wallet: how plumbing suppliers grow without new customers
Share of wallet is the part of a plumber's total material spend that comes to you. For most plumbing suppliers, raising it is the cheapest growth available, and you can estimate it well enough to manage it without asking anyone for their invoices.
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The plumbing supply calendar: planning marketing around Canada's seasons
Plumbing demand in Canada moves with the weather and the building season. This guide maps the year for a plumbing supplier and shows how to plan each campaign six to eight weeks ahead of the swing it serves.
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The showroom-to-plumber handoff: where fixture orders are won or lost
In a plumbing showroom, the person who chooses the fixtures is rarely the person who orders them. The handoff from homeowner or designer to installing plumber decides whether a selection becomes your order or a competitor's.
Share of wallet: growing without new customers
Share of wallet for plumbing suppliers explains how to estimate how much of each plumber's material spend comes to you, without asking for anyone's invoices.
What you'll learn:
- How to estimate a plumbing account's total material spend from trucks, type of work and your own loyal-account benchmarks
- How to sort accounts into anchors, openings, loyal small accounts and occasional buyers
- Why plumbers split their buying, and which marketing move fits each reason
- How to build consent into the counter so reminders and introductions stay within Canada's anti-spam rules
- A ten-line worksheet for your top 30 accounts
Read this first if most of your gross profit comes from the counter.
The showroom-to-plumber handoff
The showroom-to-plumber handoff covers the moment a homeowner's or designer's fixture selection passes to the plumber who will order it, and why so many selections end up as someone else's order.
What you'll learn:
- What a complete selection sheet includes, and who should receive it
- How to make sure the installing plumber and your counter both know a selection is coming
- How to work with designers and renovators, your repeat showroom customers
- How to calculate the selection-to-order rate, with a worked example
- Common mistakes, from measuring visits to letting quotes expire
Read this first if you run a decorative plumbing showroom.
The plumbing supply calendar
The plumbing supply calendar maps the Canadian plumbing supply year, from late-summer planning through the heating season, freeze-ups, spring thaw and construction season.
What you'll learn:
- How to build a branch-level calendar from two years of your own sales data
- What to promote in each season, and when to start
- How the calendar shifts across the BC coast, the Prairies, central Canada, Atlantic Canada and the North
- How to mention utility and government programs responsibly, with dates and links
- A seven-point planning checklist for every seasonal campaign
Read this first if stock-outs or late campaigns have cost you sales.
How we write these guides
Every guide follows a few rules:
- Answer first. Each section opens with the point, then explains it.
- Numbers you can check. Worked examples use placeholder figures and show the arithmetic so you can substitute your own.
- Canadian context. Where a guide mentions a regulator, program or law, it links the official source with a date. Programs change often, so confirm details with the administrator.
- No compliance advice. We summarise and link; we don't interpret codes or regulations.
- Honest about our evidence. Our published results come from our HVAC work, and we say so. See the results page.
Which guide to start with
If you're unsure, start with the door that earns you the most gross profit. For most wholesalers that is the counter, so the share-of-wallet guide comes first. Showroom-led businesses should start with the handoff guide. Suppliers with stock-out problems, or with branches in very different climates, should start with the calendar.
Using the guides with your team
The guides work well as the basis for a short internal meeting. A sales manager can run the share-of-wallet worksheet with reps in an hour. A showroom lead can walk consultants and counter staff through the handoff checklist together, which often surfaces problems neither side knew about. A branch manager can compare the seasonal calendar with last year's stock-outs.
If you'd like help putting any of this into practice, the services overview explains how each guide connects to our work, and the contact page explains how to reach us by call, text or email.
Frequently asked questions
Are the guides free to use?
Yes. Read them, use the worksheets with your team, and share them with colleagues. They are written to be useful whether or not you ever work with us.
Do the guides give legal or compliance advice?
No. Where they mention regulators, programs or laws, they summarise and link the official source. Check the official source, or a qualified adviser, before acting.
Will you add more guides?
We plan to add guides when we can write something genuinely useful and accurate. Each guide shows the date it was last updated.