Customer relationship management (CRM) software for construction may be part of an overall preconstruction package, or stand on its own. Between dedicated construction CRM and broader products that can be a fit for the industry, the choices are many. So we sat down with Construction Market Consultants Principal Bobby Darnell for some steers on how contractors should proceed.
IRONPROS: We're curious about not only selecting the software, and figuring out what contractor needs are, but what types of pain points are contractors feeling that get them to that point where they say, darn it, we need to implement another technology in our business. Or if they've already got something that they're not using, what makes them invest in getting better with it?
DARNELL: So CRM is one of these things that people hear about. They know about, they think they should know more about it. And sometimes they're like, Well, I know we need to do this. And so let's, let's go ahead and put that on our to do list is to implement CRM. And that's as deep as their understanding is. Before you select the system, and I tell this to everybody, there's two or 300 CRMs out there. And they probably do about 80% of everything that the others do. It's that 20%, that's key. What are your needs and what you need it to do for you? So that's the first thing you got to do is you got to sit down, see what our needs that are not being met now by our current processes?
IRONPROS: But what do those needs look like? Someone who's sold in any type of professional service or project-based environment might just think their job is to go out and find some people that have a need and sell to them. We aren't going to find work to do by waiting for the job fairy to fins it for us. But, you know, as you look at what modern CRM will do in terms of making things visible and transparent in terms of pipeline, and not just what you're selling right now, but what's coming in subsequent quarters, where does that background and finance come in as you help people quantify what is going on at the early stages of their sales cycles?
DARNELL: Well, one of the things that I do and when someone calls me and wants to talk, is I ask them questions that I'm pretty certain that don't know the answer to ... STREAM OUR FULL CONVERSATION FOR MORE.
