METAL CONVERSION METHODS

As long as a clients specification don't prohibit it, be creative when faced with a tough sourcing problem. Here are a few ideas for alternate ways of supplying hard to find materials.

BAR PRODUCTS

Round Bar

Forge it
Turn it from a larger diameter
Cut from plate - if the finished lengths are short and plate is available at that thickness
Upset it to make larger diameters from smaller ones - only in short lengths

Square Bar

Cut from plate
Hot roll it from round or flat bar - conversion
Forge it
Mill it from round bar
Saw cut from round bar

Hex

Forge it, if lengths are short
Mill it from round bar

Flat Bar

Cut from plate
Forge it
Mill it from round bar
Saw cut from round bar

 

FLAT ROLLED PRODUCTS

Sheet

Mill or grind it from heavier sheet or plate
Get it slit and cut to length from strip coil
If aluminum or titanium, chemically mill it

Plate

Mill it from heavier sheet or plate

TUBULAR PRODUCTS

Seamless Tube & Pipe

Forge It, if lengths are short
Bore It
Trepann it
Centrifugally cast it
Flow form it

Welded Tube & Pipe

Offer seamless, if available
Roll and weld plate or sheet - over 2" OD
Custom draw it - under 2" OD

Square & Rectangular Tube

Re-square it from round tube (Louisiana Steel)

 

REMEMBER - Alternates often come down to a trade-off between cost, time, quality, etc....

While many of these alternatives can be done by your suppliers, ie..many have in-house milling, grinding, saw cutting, waterjet, etc.....many require an understanding of an entirely new subset of service suppliers - companies who can bore, trepann, forge, roll & weld and more.

MBA will give you the forge shops, but here is a valuable list of service providers to do the rest

Utilizing these options can be a time consuming process, requiring you to contact and negotiate with multiple vendors, with varying chances of actually winning the job.

If your client has a drop dead date for delivery and you cannot guarantee it, walk away. You might win one order, but if you miss that delivery date, you probably won't get a shot at the next.

Honesty will win you more friends than anything.

Having said that, there are a lot of ways to grease the skids and make the impossible possible. Work with your logistics team and if the money is there, look at air freight......a dedicated flat bed....there are lots of ways to get metal moved.

Use your contacts....Linkedin or otherwise. If a client has a plant shutdown situation, money is often no object...read PROFIT....but understand, you may have to take calls at home, after hours and really stay on top of a situation.

If it fails, the failure is all on you and your company.

Be careful which ones you commit to but if you do, its all in till the metal gets where it needs to be, but the commission and profit can be massive if you're willing to follow the metal from start to finish

Earle M. Jorgenson had a favorite saying.....it was (and still is) even painted on the wall above his office door...."Hustle....Thats All"

The faster you reply to ha sales opportunity, the better the chance your client won't head to Google and find it himself.

AS SOON as you get the RFQ and decide to work it, reply....even if just to let the client know that you're on this one and will have a quote very soon.

The Internet has taught people to expect things instantly. Amazon can deliver darned near anything overnight.....and they display pricing online. Obviously, at this point we can't match that, but many suppliers are getting pretty darned close.

Take a look at www.rolledalloys.com or www.onlinemetals.com. The industry is rapidly moving in that direction. I am writing this in 2015.....if you're reading this any more than 2-3 years later, I am willing to bet that most of the major distributors are offering online pricing, stock checking and ordering. Heck, back in 1978, well before the Internet, Ryerson would give a free computer terminal to their better contract clients who could view their material and schedule releases.

Bottom line.....HUSTLE!

Careful, careful, careful. The client asks for some A-286 round bar....no spec, just A-286.

You get a price from Fry for material to AMS 5732, the most common spec available for A-286. You win the order.

The purchase order comes in and in the small print, which you can easily miss, the customer calls for AMS 5737 - Aged material.

Rejection.....and oh by the way, Fry cut the stock in half for UPS so, you own it.

There are many ways this sort of thing can play out - pitfalls galore but here is the ONLy way around it.

When an order comes in for a non-stock item, a hard and fast procedure must be followed. Send the order through and get an acknowledgement copy with a spot in the body for a client to review and accept it.

DO NOT order the metal from your supplier until and unless you get a signed copy back from the customer.

EVEN IF the customer is in a super rush for the metal, do not skip this step and make sure that the order acknowledgement clearly states the material, specification, size, tolerance and shipping promise....every detail that could cause confusion down the road.

MAKE SURE that the customer knows that until you get that signed copy back, you cannot accept the order or start the clock for your delivery promise.

The biggest difference between an everyday metal salesperson/ order taker and a top metals salesperson is that they treat their vendors as well as they treat their customers. They know that they have to treat their vendors well because often times, they need to ask for a better price or delivery in order to win a job.

Consider this. You get a phone call from a buyer you've never talked to before. They have a multi-line quote that will take 30 minutes to put together. Next, you get a phone call from a customer you've talked to for years with a similar quote. Whose RFQ gets worked on first? I can almost guarantee its the customer you know.

You've heard of the importance of CRM - Customer Relationship Management. Well I'm here to tell you that SRM - Supplier Relationship Management, is equally important to your success in winning non-stock orders.

So just how do you accomplish SRM? Well, I strongly recommend that you take notes. When you do a search at MSO and get to a list of suppliers, you'll notice that to the right of each supplier is a link that reads "Edit Contact/ Notes". Here, you can add the name of your favorite contact, along with their specific email address as well as notes about the supplier/ company.

You can also make any supplier a Favorite Supplier, which will force them to the top of the list whenever a search results in that company.

So what kind of notes should you add? Well, basically anything that you learn about the company or person in your dealings with them. What's their favorite sports team? Do they have any kids? Pretty much any tidbit of information that would allow you to quickly re-establish rapport in subsequent contacts.

Because there are over 5000 suppliers in the MSO database, there may well be suppliers you only contact once or twice a year. Having a specific person and possibly some inside information about the person will make it far more likely that your RFQ gets responded to quickly and with favorable price and delivery.

In these days, the faster you respond, the better your chances of winning the job.

Making a price easy to swallow is key for a client. Lets say that you have a client looking for 10 bars of 1095 high carbon round bar - 3/16" diameter. There are few suppliers of this and they generally stock it in coil. That said, there will be setup charges on the coiling line, set up charges on the cut to length and bar straighteners.

The total weight of the stock is only 12 lbs and when you add in all the set ups, you may well end up with a cost of $40-50/ lb! Try marking that up and selling the metal per pound. The customer is going to fall out of his chair.....$75.00 per pound for carbon steel???

Instead, take your total cost, marking it up then divide by the total number of bars, or better yet, by the total footage.

The buyer will be far happier to pay $7.50/ foot for the stock instead of $75.00/ lb.

Its all about appearances sometimes.

HOW you price can make all the difference.

Lets say a client wants some 12L14 in a .203" Diameter +/- .0005" tolerance.

If you add your metal cost plus the grinding from .25" and sell it per pound, the client will fall off their chair.....$28/ LB for 12l14?????

BUT IF YOU TAKE ALL COSTS AND DIVIDE BY THE TOTAL FOOTAGE AND QUOTE $3.50/ FOOT....WELL THAT SOUNDS REASONABLE