Five commercial challenges reshaping the building materials industry

The building materials market may be recovering, but growth will not return automatically. This B2B masterclass explores five challenges reshaping the industry’s growth, from pricing to AI and sales productivity. 

After several difficult years, there are signs of recovery in European construction. However, it is not an antidote to weak commercial models. Demand is still weak in many segments. and geopolitical uncertainty continues to drive cost volatility. The industry faces an unusual capacity paradox: skilled labor is scarce across the construction value chain while production capacity remains underused in parts of the building materials industry. 

The recovery itself remains fragile. EU construction investment declined by 2.1% in real terms in 2025 after a 2.5% contraction in 2024. While FIEC expects growth of 2.7% in 2026, this would not compensate for the losses of the previous two years, with major differences between countries and segments. The latest Eurostat data underline that fragility: in June, euro-area construction output was still 0.7% below the previous year, with building construction down 6.5%. 

At the same time, the bottleneck is shifting. Our 2026 Neues Bauen (New construction/ Building) Study identifies skilled-labor shortages as the most important external challenge facing construction, ahead of bureaucracy and high basic costs. 

For building materials manufacturers, five fundamental commercial challenges stand out. Together, they point to a market in which growth will depend less on broad recovery of the industry and more on where and how companies compete.

1. Finding growth in a market that no longer lifts everyone 

In a strongly growing market, rising demand can mask weaknesses in commercial execution. Within a more uneven market, that cushion becomes much smaller. 

Our research suggests that building in the existing stock, infrastructure, and public-sector demand should contribute disproportionately to medium-term growth. 

This changes the growth question. Rather than simply asking “How do we grow?”, the more manufacturers need to consider where growth is worth pursuing. That calls for a more granular understanding of attractive applications, projects, customers, and regions, and where sales resources can have the greatest impact. Sustainability becomes a part of that picture too. Its overall perceived importance may have been declined, but sustainable materials, certification, and circularity can still create differentiation where customers attach clear value to them. 

2. Defending price without pricing yourself out of the project

Weak demand does not necessarily bring cost relief. That leaves building materials manufacturers caught between greater price sensitivity in the market and continued pressure on their cost base. 

Volatile energy, logistics, and raw-material costs continue to put margins under pressure. Our 2026 DACH B2B pricing study illustrates the dilemma. Companies expect costs to rise by around 11% on average, but plan to pass through only around 7%. And only roughly two-thirds of communicated price increases are typically realized. 

This implies that pricing must become more differentiated. List-price increases alone are unlikely to capture the full opportunity. Customer, product, and application economics matter, as do clear negotiation guardrails and credible value selling. The same applies to sustainability: lower carbon footprints, circularity, or energy performance support pricing only when the customer can connect them to tangible value. 

3. Winning the project before the purchasing decision is made

One feature makes commercial execution in building materials particularly interesting: the person buying the product is often not the person deciding which product will be used. 

Architects, planners, developers, contractors, installers, distributors, and building owners can all influence the final decision. Manufacturers therefore operate in complex push-pull decision networks. 

This “invisible customer” is a stakeholder who may never place an order but has decision influence over the specification. 

By the time procurement asks for a quotation, important choices have already been made. That makes earlier project visibility, and a clear understanding of the stakeholder network a necessity. Technical performance, sustainability documentation, lifecycle economics, and digital product information all become part of the specification battle. 

4. Turning AI adoption into commercial impact 

AI adoption is already accelerating. But it’s harder to understand if the usage is translating into commercial value creation. 

Our B2B research shows that AI adoption increased more than threefold between 2025 and 2026. Yet only around 40% of companies report measurable economic benefits, while only around 20% report efficiency improvements. 

Building materials industry is an interesting test case because selling has become increasingly knowledge intensive. Salespeople work across technical specifications, regulations, EPDs, BIM data, pricing, project information, and complex system solutions. The opportunity for AI is less about generating more knowledge and more about making the existing knowledge available when a customer decision is being made. 

This shifts the discussion beyond the generic AI assistant. Now, AI’s more relevant use cases sit in the integration of commercial workflows along the value chain: screening tenders, prioritizing leads, preparing customer visits, recommending cross-selling opportunities, supporting price decisions, and making technical expertise instantly accessible. This will enable a whole new level, as AI driven business models will evolve, even in such “old-fashioned” industries as construction.  

5. Industrializing sales without losing the relationship 

Construction remains a relationship business, and there is little reason to expect that to change. But relationships alone are no longer a commercial operating model. 

When attractive projects are scarce and production capacity is available, sales productivity becomes critical. Manufacturers need to know which customers have 

untapped potential, which projects deserve resources, which opportunities are at risk, and where the next sales action will create the greatest value. 

Potential-based segmentation, hybrid coverage models, disciplined pipeline management, and data-driven sales steering can provide that structure. This does not mean replacing experienced salespeople with dashboards or algorithms. Companies must establish a system and processes environment around them that boosts efficiency, so that they can focus more on interactions where experience, judgement, and trust genuinely matter. 

A different commercial playbook 

The next construction cycle will look different from the last. Weak demand in important segments sits alongside scarce skilled labor, volatile costs, and excess manufacturing capacity in parts of the sector.  

That is why market recovery, welcome as it should be, is only part of the solution. 

The stronger commercial positions are likely to come from a more precise understanding of where growth sits, where value can be defended, who influences the specification, where AI improves real decisions, and where sales resources create the greatest return. 

The market may provide some tailwinds again. But commercial excellence will determine who actually capture it.