You get about 68% of your best customer’s buying. Maybe.

Your sales report tells you what each customer spent with you. It can't tell you what they spent with everyone else. That second number is share of wallet, and for most distributors it's the biggest growth opportunity they never measure.

What share of wallet means in distribution

Share of wallet is the portion of a customer's total purchases in your categories that comes to you. If a contractor buys $200,000 a year of plumbing and HVAC supplies and $120,000 of it is from you, your share of wallet is 60%.

In distribution this matters more than in most industries, because contractors almost never buy from just one supplier. HARDI's 2025 research found that 83% of HVAC contractors use three or more suppliers, and the primary supplier gets about 68% of their purchases.

So even when you're the primary supplier, about a third of that customer's buying is going somewhere else. And when you're the second or third supplier, you may be getting much less than you think.

Why it's hard to see

Share of wallet hides in plain sight for three reasons.

• Revenue can grow while share shrinks. When prices rise, every invoice gets bigger. An account can spend more with you this year and still be sending a larger share of its work to a competitor.
• Accounts stay active. A customer who moves 20% of their buying elsewhere still orders from you. No report flags an account that's still ordering.
• You only see your side. You can't see a contractor's invoices from other suppliers, so you have to estimate.

Three ways to estimate share of wallet

None of these is perfect. Together they give you a usable number.

1. Ask the customer

The simplest method is still the most accurate. Have reps ask their top accounts two questions once a year: roughly how much do you buy in our categories in a year, and what share comes to us? Most contractors will give a ballpark. Write it down in your CRM so you can compare next year.

2. Estimate from the customer's size

For contractors you can't ask, estimate their total spend from what you know: number of trucks or techs, type of work, and how many jobs they run. Compare similar contractors in your own customer list. If two contractors with ten trucks each spend $300,000 and $90,000 with you, the second one is almost certainly buying a lot elsewhere.

3. Watch their order pattern against their own history

This is the method you can run every month. A customer's share is moving when their behavior changes compared with their own normal:

• Longer gaps between orders than they usually have.
• Smaller orders on the same schedule.
• A product line that stops, like a contractor who used to buy wire and breakers from you and now only buys fittings.

None of these tells you the exact percentage. All of them tell you share is shrinking, which is the part you can act on.

How to grow share of wallet with customers you already have

Growing share with an existing account is usually cheaper than winning a new one, because the relationship and credit terms already exist.

1. Find the categories they don't buy from you. Compare what a customer buys with what similar customers buy. A plumbing contractor who buys fixtures from you but no water heaters is a clear opening.
2. Ask why. Often the answer is simple: a stock problem two years ago, a price on one line, or a rep who never brought it up.
3. Fix the reason before you pitch. If they left a line over a backorder, show them that line is in stock now.
4. Make the rep's next call specific. "We noticed you haven't ordered fittings since spring. Anything we can fix?" works better than a general check-in.

How to check your own data this week

1. Pull a sales-by-customer report by month for the last 24 months from Prophet 21, Eclipse or QuickBooks.
2. For your top 50 accounts, compare the last six months with the same six months a year earlier: number of orders, average order size, and the product categories they bought.
3. Flag accounts where order count or order size dropped by 20% or more, or where a category they used to buy has stopped.
4. For each flagged account, have the rep ask the two share of wallet questions above.
5. Record the answers so you have a baseline next year.

The 20% cutoff is a starting point. Adjust it once you see which flags turn out to be real.

Frequently asked questions

What is a good share of wallet for a distributor? It depends on the category and the customer. As a reference point, HARDI's 2025 research found primary suppliers get about 68% of an HVAC contractor's purchases. If you're a customer's main supplier and well below that, there's room to grow.

How do you calculate share of wallet? Divide what a customer spends with you by their total spend in your categories. Since you can't see their total, estimate it by asking the customer or comparing them with similar customers.

How do I know if share of wallet is shrinking? Look for changes against the customer's own history: longer gaps between orders, smaller orders, or a product line that stops. Revenue alone won't show it, especially when prices are rising.