Featuring: Dr. Sajith Edirisooriya, Senior Vice President and Head of Commercial, Holcim Philippines Inc.
Host: Nikhil Chaudhary, VP Marketing at BeatRoute
The Philippines is not one building materials market. Its islands, local cultures, dealer networks, customer behavior, and logistics make route-to-market execution more complex from one market to another.
At the same time, building materials sales is moving beyond traditional retail toward projects, integrated solutions, and more connected customer journeys.
Few people know the building materials industry like Dr. Sajith Edirisooriya. As Senior Vice President and Head of Commercial at Holcim Philippines, he brings nearly two decades of multi-country leadership experience to the table. We’ve learned so much from him as a customer, and today, we’re excited to bring his insights directly to you.
In this episode of The BeatRoute Podcast, Sajith breaks down the realities of selling building materials in the Philippines, from dealer relationships and route-to-market complexity to digital execution and AI.
The Philippines Is Many Markets, Not One
For building materials brands operating in the Philippines, the country cannot be treated as one uniform market. Logistics, customer behavior, competition, and dealer networks vary from island to island. Culture and language add another layer.
That makes local partnerships, decentralized execution, and supply chain adaptability critical to building a strong route to market across the Philippines.
“The Philippines really has many markets. It’s like many countries. It’s not one market.”
The challenge, then, is not simply reaching a geographically dispersed market. It is executing locally across markets that behave differently.
Trust Still Drives Dealer And Influencer Relationships
Technology may be changing how building materials brands work, but relationships remain central to the Philippine market.
Dealers, distributors, retailers, and contractors continue to influence how products move through the market. For a commercial leader entering the Philippine market from another country, the strength of these relationships can be one of the biggest differences.
“Data is important, but trust built with the distributors, dealers, or retailers, or contractors, I think is still the foundation of the business here.”
That makes dealer and influencer engagement more than a distribution activity. It is part of how brands build their market.
The Best Retailers Are Community Business Partners
The strongest retailers do much more than sell cement and building materials.
Sajith recalls meeting a retailer who could remember his contractors by name. He advised customers, solved problems, and extended responsible credit. Some retailers are also using social media to market their businesses.
These retailers become trusted partners in their communities.
“They are like community business partners.”
For brands, that makes understanding and supporting these relationships an important part of market execution.
Credit Matters, But Sustainable Growth Needs Discipline
Margins and credit matter in dealer relationships, but neither works in isolation.
Construction creates uneven cash flows. Contractors need to purchase materials and continue projects before receiving money based on project progress. Responsible credit can help unlock that cycle.
But credit also needs financial discipline, collaboration, and risk management.
“Credit has to come with discipline.”
For cement businesses, the exposure can be larger, particularly with bigger contracts. That makes credit management an important part of sustainable channel growth.
Great Schemes Fail Without Last-Mile Execution
Promotions, rebates, pricing, and targets can help brands drive volumes and market share. But their value disappears when the dealer does not know about them.
Sajith sees this as a common industry problem, driven by manual communication, too many schemes, complicated programs, poor timing, and underuse of digital tools.
The lesson is simple: a strong dealer program only creates value when it reaches the dealer clearly and on time.
“Even if you create your best program, promotional campaign, or whatever it is, if it does not reach your final customer, there’s no value.”
The issue is therefore not just salesperson communication. It is an execution problem across the process.
Route To Market Is Moving Beyond Traditional Retail
Building materials sales is also moving toward projects.
As the market matures, retail is increasingly giving way to project-led demand, while aggregates, ready-mix, and other offerings become more important. Customers are no longer looking for just cement. They expect technical support, digital ordering, reliable logistics, and closer collaboration through the project.
“Customers demand integrated solutions, not just cement.”
That shift makes route-to-market planning more complex, and raises the bar for sales execution.
Winning Projects Requires A Different Sales Motion
Building materials project sales involves multiple stakeholders and a longer sales cycle. Architects and engineers influence specifications early, while dealers, distributors, and retailers remain critical at the point of sale, where availability, pricing, and final purchase decisions matter.
That makes project sales different from retail, where the focus is largely on scale and frequency. Project teams need technical expertise, early engagement, and the ability to influence specifications while staying connected to execution on the ground.
“Project sales basically requires technical expertise and early engagement, and we have to influence specifications.”
For building materials brands, winning projects therefore requires influence at both ends: specification and point of sale.
“We have to win on the specification side and, at the same time, at the point of sale.”
CRM Should Help Prioritize The Right Opportunities
In building materials, CRM can easily become a record of customer visits. Its larger value, however, is helping sales teams understand where attention is needed. A single project can involve multiple leads and multiple orders, making it important to track and execute each opportunity through the project journey.
Sajith’s view is that CRM should help teams understand customers, prioritize opportunities, manage leads, and use that information to improve service.
“It helps to understand the customers, mainly prioritize opportunities, and then we can manage the leads.”
Technology Must Fit Philippine Field Reality
Technology for the Philippines has to work where the sales team actually works.
That means mobile-first solutions, simple interfaces, and reliability even when connectivity is inconsistent. Across thousands of islands, these are practical requirements for adoption.
“It has to be reliable even with inconsistent connectivity.”
Simplicity matters just as much.
“A simple system will be quickly adopted.”
The best sales technology is not necessarily the technology with the longest feature list. It is the technology people can use reliably in their daily work.
Digitalization Raises The Bar For Customer Service
Technology changes customer expectations as much as it changes internal processes.
Once dealers and contractors use digital platforms, they begin to expect faster responses, transparency, personalization, accurate information, easy ordering, and proactive service.
“Customers are now asking for speed, transparency, and personalization.”
That can also free salespeople to spend less time handling routine requests and more time building the business with customers.
AI Should Start With High-Impact Problems
AI does not need a separate budget simply because it is AI.
For Sajith, the starting point is the business problem: identify where technology can improve productivity or decision-making, measure the result, and then scale what works.
“We have to start with the high-impact part. And then, after that, we have to measure the result and scale it.”
For building materials brands, AI becomes valuable when it improves a real business outcome, not when it simply adds another technology layer.
The Road Ahead
The Philippine building materials market is becoming more digital, more sustainable, and more solution-oriented. At the same time, project-led demand is changing how brands approach their route to market, while dealers, distributors, retailers, contractors, architects, and engineers continue to shape the customer journey.
Yet one fundamental remains unchanged:
“People buy from the people they trust.”
For brands operating across the Philippines, the challenge is to build on that trust while improving how the wider route to market is managed, from dealer communication and project engagement to customer service, opportunity management, and field execution.
The bottom line: Winning in Philippine building materials will require strong local relationships, adaptable route-to-market execution, and technology that works in the realities of the field.
About BeatRoute
BeatRoute is the only SFA-DMS platform built to execute building materials sales goals across retail execution, demand generation, and project conversion. It helps building materials brands manage dealers, influencers, projects, and field teams through one connected platform.
Trusted by leading building materials brands including Holcim, JSW Paints, Magicrete, Kerakoll, Henkel, and Dangote, BeatRoute serves 200+ enterprise brands across 20+ countries and 10 industry verticals.