How to Train Staff on Material Quoting and Pricing

In the building materials industry, your team’s ability to accurately quote and price materials can make or break customer relationships—and directly affect your bottom line. Whether you’re quoting lumber, masonry, or specialty items, it’s not just about plugging numbers into a system. It’s about understanding cost drivers, communicating value, and using your ERP system to keep things sharp and consistent.

If you want fewer errors, faster turnarounds, and more confident staff, it all starts with the right training approach.

🎯 Why Quoting and Pricing Training Matters

Let’s face it—misquoted materials or delayed pricing approvals can cost you a sale. And worse, underquoting can eat into your margins while overquoting risks losing the customer altogether.

Common challenges that come up in the quoting process:

Inconsistent markup calculations

Outdated product data in the system

Inexperienced staff making assumptions

Poor communication with the sales or dispatch teams

When you train your team well—and integrate quoting seamlessly into your ERP workflows—you empower them to make fast, accurate, and strategic pricing decisions.

📚 Build a Training Program That Covers the Essentials

Start by designing a structured, repeatable training program that addresses both pricing theory and real-world quoting tasks inside your ERP.

Key Elements to Include:

Understanding True Costs:

Teach your staff what contributes to material cost — product base price, delivery fees, labor, overhead, and margin targets.

Product Familiarity:

Staff need to know your top-selling SKUs, custom order items, lead times, and what affects pricing (e.g., treated vs. untreated lumber, regional surcharges, bulk discounts).

How to Use the ERP Quoting Module:

Walk them through creating a quote from scratch, adjusting quantities, applying margins, and adding delivery notes. Set up standard templates for consistency.

💡 Make training hands-on. Let new team members run mock quotes and troubleshoot real scenarios with supervision.

🧮 Teach Smart Pricing Strategies (Not Just Number Entry)

It’s not just about entering the right numbers—it’s about understanding how and why pricing works.

Teach staff to:

Compare markup vs. margin and use each properly depending on the situation.

Use your ERP to review historical pricing trends on repeat customers or seasonal products.

Apply tiered pricing or customer-specific pricing rules already set up in your ERP.

👥 For inside sales reps, also train on the psychology of pricing—like how to explain cost breakdowns to a contractor or how to show the value of bulk deals.

🔧 Set Up Your ERP to Support Quoting Efficiency

If your ERP system isn’t set up for ease-of-use, even the best training will fall short. Make sure you’ve optimized your tools for the quoting experience.

Here’s what to configure:

Pre-loaded pricing rules by product category, region, or customer type

Quick access to inventory availability and lead times

Approval workflows for large or unusual quotes

Quote versioning so revisions are tracked and auditable

Templates for frequent quote types, like lumber bundles, mixed masonry loads, or HVAC kits

🔄 ERP Tip: Enable auto-notifications when a quote expires or inventory changes. This helps reps stay ahead of follow-ups.

🗣️ Focus on Communication Training Too

Pricing and quoting don’t happen in a vacuum. Train your staff to communicate clearly—internally and with customers.

What to include:

How to explain cost fluctuations (e.g., supply chain delays, lumber surcharges)

What to say when a quote needs revising

How to manage expectations around lead times and material substitutions

When to escalate pricing issues to management

💬 Soft skills are often the missing link between a good quote and a great customer experience.

📈 Track Performance and Reinforce Training Over Time

You don’t need to overwhelm your team with a week-long crash course. Start with core training, then layer on refreshers and advanced topics.

Ways to reinforce learning:

Weekly team check-ins to review quoting challenges

Shadowing senior team members on live quotes

Monthly dashboards to show quote-to-sale ratios

Refresher sessions every quarter on pricing trends or ERP updates

🎓 Use your ERP’s reporting tools to track who’s quoting the most, fastest, and most accurately. Recognize top performers and identify who might need more coaching.

🏁 Final Thoughts

Training your staff on quoting and pricing isn’t just an HR task—it’s a business strategy. With the right combination of hands-on ERP use, pricing knowledge, and communication training, your team will be equipped to quote with confidence and close more deals.

🧰 When you align your people with your technology, you stop losing money in the margins—and start gaining trust in every quote.

📞 Want help setting up quoting workflows or staff training inside your ERP system? Contact our experts here — let’s get your quoting team running at full speed.