How CRM Solves 4 Industry Challenges for General Contractors

After working with two of the largest general contracting firms in St. Louis, Turnkey Technologies understands the sales challenges that contractors and construction industry professionals face every day.

In one given day, a general contractor is:

• continually managing leads,
• tracking and managing project bids,
• nurturing a network of relationships,
• updating project scopes and documentation
• managing end-to-end construction projects
• the list goes on!

While juggling these many tasks, general contractors are also working to close a sale and coordinate work in often demanding timeframes as needed by their prospects and clients.

Contracting firms choose to resolve key sales challenges using Microsoft Dynamics CRM, a mobile and user-friendly customer relationship management solution that easily integrates with field service and construction industry project management software. Keep reading to see how these companies improve their sales cycle using Dynamics CRM.

4 challenges for general contractors solved by Microsoft Dynamics CRM:

1. Slow Response Time to Inquiries and Bids

For general contracting firms, proposal delays due to managing bids and information from subcontractors or updating schematics can result in lost sales opportunities.

Dynamics CRM allows you to document activities throughout the bid process to pave the way to meaningful analysis and improved win rates. Leads can be nurtured through a workflow to free up your teams to update bid information and proposals as necessary.

Additionally useful, CRM notifies users when inquiries are created, distributes them to the right team, and even enters them as leads automatically with simple automation.

2. An Unorganized Sales Pipeline

The most profitable contractors rely on an organized, clear-cut sales pipeline full of projects and bids. To maximize revenue, contractors should focus their efforts on projects they have a good percentage of winning, and avoid chasing projects with less potential.

Dynamics CRM not only provides visibility into your pipeline, but it enhances your pipeline accuracy by bringing structure, consistency and rules to the sales processes that feed your pipeline. In Dynamics CRM, users can drill down into their pipeline to access its records in greater detail, thus providing the business intelligence necessary to win more bids, faster.

3. Inability to Connect Sales Revenue to Marketing for ROI Analysis

When it comes to marketing, executives need to see ROI. The struggle exists for any marketer, but why is it so difficult in the construction industry?

Your marketing mix. Your audience is incredibly diverse, which means you must use more outlets than the average marketer to effectively reach a prospect.

CRM allows organizations to easily track their marketing ROI for both digital and offline initiatives. By mapping product, account and contact details to a project and opportunity records, you can track marketing campaigns success over any length of time.

4. Difficulty Determining the Target Audience: Client, Specifier or Other?

Do you market toward the end customer who pays you? Or do you market toward the specifier who directs customers toward your products and services?

If you target specifiers, who are they? Is it the architect? The engineer?

Dynamics CRM allows you to structure and segment your marketing efforts to cater to each relationship type easily using Marketing Lists, queues and workflows. Laying the groundwork here delivers a great payoff and paves the way for personalized, automated email and nurture campaigns.

Have a question about Dynamics CRM for your business? Wondering how it integrates with your existing industry software? Contact us online or call (636) 237-2283 to schedule an informal 30-minute needs assessment with our industry experts. Together, we can help you:

• Scope your CRM needs and requirements
• Discover integration benefits with your current industry software
• Improve key business processes and implement best practices
• Discover streamlining and automation possibilities for greater efficiency

By Brad Vorbeck and Jennifer Espelien at Turnkey Technologies, Inc. - Microsoft Gold Certified Dynamics CRM and Dynamics ERP Partner of Missouri, Kansas, Oklahoma and Iowa.

How CRM Solves 4 Industry Challenges for General Contractors is a post from: CRM Software Blog

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