This is a guest post from STACK partner Followup CRM, an all-in-one construction CRM that allows contractors to easily keep track of leads, jobs, and bids, and upload photos and documents from anywhere with their cloud-based software.
If you’re looking to grow your construction business quickly, a great place to start is a customer relationship management tool (also known as a CRM). A CRM allows you to keep all your data in one place, easily communicate with your team, clients, and leads, and so much more. A CRM is key when it comes to business growth and closing more sales. In fact, according to a Pardot study, “Without a CRM, 79% of marketing leads are never converted to sales.” Let’s explore five ways a CRM can help grow your construction business:
1. Save Time
If you’re still using spreadsheets or whiteboards to keep track of your leads, bids, and jobs, you likely spend a large chunk of your day manually inserting new leads, trying to find the right contact to follow up with, or waiting for your colleague to return to the office and get an answer you need. Leveraging a CRM allows you to access all your data in a matter of seconds, communicate quickly and efficiently internally from anywhere, and so much more. Using a system like Followup CRM is key for improving efficiency. In fact, Followup CRM users, on average, save 10+ hours a week from leveraging their system, giving them back time to focus on day-to-day tasks that really matter.
2. Avoid Duplicate Work
Without a CRM, you’re likely creating more work for yourself having to duplicate data in several different areas. Most CRMs integrate with various platforms that are used on the daily, reducing the need for double entry. When shopping for a construction CRM, it’s important to make sure they seamlessly integrate with applications you use frequently so you can keep all your information in one place, save time, and increase productivity, which, in turn, leads to growth.
3. Organized Data
In the construction industry, it’s not uncommon to use spreadsheets to hold all your company data, from clients and leads to bids and jobs. Using spreadsheets not only makes it difficult to access important information from anywhere without WiFi, but also creates chaos and disorganization within a company. Finding the data you need becomes complicated and messy having to dig through multiple Excel sheets. Software like Followup CRM allows you to streamline your sales process as all your data is one place, has a dashboard that lists all your activities and due dates, and is cloud-based, allowing you to access everything you need from anywhere. Being disorganized makes it extremely difficult for your business to grow as leads, jobs, and activities can easily fall through the cracks.
4. Measure Pipeline
Having a way to effectively measure your pipeline is critical for company growth. It’s extremely hard to grow a business when you’re blindly running a sales team not knowing your numbers, quotas, and overall progress. A construction CRM like Followup allows for complete transparency, allowing you to track and monitor the pipeline from a company standpoint, as well as individual users, so you can see who’s performing and who isn’t, helping you fill any necessary gaps. Pipeline measurement is great for accountability as users know they’re being monitored and must stay on top of their activities in order to meet their quotas.
5. Reporting and Analytics
The fifth way a CRM can help grow your construction company is by leveraging reports and analytics to help you make better-informed business decisions. Monitoring historical data is key when it comes to growing your business. Without frequently checking on company reports and analytics, you won’t have any idea what needs to be fixed. Leveraging a tool like Followup CRM is great for monitoring reports so you know what’s working and what’s not. In fact, the majority of Followup CRM users who utilize the reports and analytics feature are now able to bid less jobs and win more work since they’re able to track trends and optimize in areas that are bringing in revenue.
There’s no question a construction CRM has many benefits that are guaranteed to lead to business growth. If you’re looking to grow your construction company and don’t currently use a CRM, we highly recommend investing in one like Followup CRM.
