8 Reasons for General Contractors to use a CRM
It may be time to invest in marketing tech that helps manage requests for bids, sort out good prospects and projects, and tie up the loose ends in your organization’s day-to-day customer relationship management. In the construction marketing world, this type of tool is affectionately known as CRM, Client Resource Management, but we refer to it as customer relationship management.
A CRM is ideal if you’re looking to…
- Consolidate prospecting data into one easy-to-access place
- Sell at a larger scale, faster
- Stay focused on customers (specifically those representing opportunities)
- Understand how customers are finding you
- Keep customers engaged even if you lose a business developer
- Personalize the sales experience (vital in construction marketing)
- Wrangle all of the business development into one place and have reports and real data
- Keep in touch with past clients automatically
If you find yourself constantly bogged down sifting through crappy bid requests and can’t seem to get the quality opportunities that translate into BIG money, CRM tech could be the answer. Yes, it costs money, but it’s certainly less expensive than hiring an additional business developer (salesperson). As your business establishes its reputation in the industry, builds its contacts and scales up, a common issue it will face is how to segment all of the customer inquiries. When was the last time you called on that customer? Do your prospects know all the benefits of your product? What about the infinite number of design possibilities? CRM helps manage all these opportunities and more, so your prospects and clients keep you top-of-mind and you don’t lose your mind in the process.
The last thing you want to do is to ignore the issue of managing business development and allowing countless unanswered bid requests or inquiries to turn into irate prospects – those that become the opposite of “brand ambassadors,” but rather, “brand destroyers” willing to go out and tarnish your hard earned reputation. You don’t want this being said about your company: “Yeah, I emailed those guys for a bid and they never responded. I even called them and didn’t get a callback. Guess they don’t want or need our project work.” Or, “I met their project manager at the last industry trade show and was impressed by what he said, but he never sent me the stuff he promised, and I haven’t gotten a callback or anything from them. Guess he was full of shit.”
The bottom line is this: understanding the wants, expectations, and needs of those you interact and do business with will help you to save time and money in the short term and increase profitability in the long term. Implementing procedures for how to address customer’s needs and qualify the opportunities you receive will help you streamline your customer interactions. For these reasons alone, it’s a good idea to seek out CRM tech and resources that will make your business more successful.
Of course, we have a CRM that we’d prefer you to use, that we’ve vetted and implemented for our construction marketers, but there are others too. Talk to The Brand Constructors if you need direction on where to start. We can explain the benefits of integrating a CRM solution, discuss the options we provide and even point you in the right direction of alternatives that may be a better fit.