Chances are, you landed on this page looking for customer relationship management (CRM) software to grow your construction business. After all, investing in a construction CRM can help you increase customer satisfaction, sales, and revenue.
If you’re looking for the best CRMs for construction companies, you’re in the right place. This blog post rounds up the best construction CRMs you can invest in, their pros and cons, and even their pricing details.
But first, let’s explore some of the undeniable benefits your construction company can look forward to when you bring one of these top CRMs into the fold.
Introducing CRM software into your construction management workflow will give your team better control over each project. Team members can keep track of tasks, budget, billing, and much more from a centralized, easy-to-use database.
In fact, the benefits of implementing a CRM system for your construction firm are numerous and include the following:
Automate manual and repetitive tasks
Do your sales and marketing teams get swamped with manual data entry and repetitive tasks? You can ease their workload using CRM software for your construction firm.
One of the core benefits of a great CRM is automation. With sales automation features at your fingertips, you can increase productivity in several areas, including these:
Lead and customer data entry: If you’re running lead generation campaigns in different marketing channels, downloading lead data and collating them in one spreadsheet can eat up your team’s time. It can also slow down your sales team’s lead response time. Automate this task with a CRM for construction firms.
Assigning leads to sales reps: Does your sales leader have to manually assign prospects to each sales rep? Let your sales managers work on the more important strategic tasks while CRM software for contractors takes care of assigning leads.
Sending “thank you” or acknowledgment emails: If a prospect fills out a form on your website requesting a quote or an initial meeting with your firm, let them know that you’ve received their inquiry by sending an acknowledgment email. You can automate this step in your sales process using a CRM for contractors like Nutshell.
Take control of lead management
As a construction business, you get leads offline and online. Perhaps an existing client gave you their referral’s business card. Or maybe someone reached out to your small construction business via your social media page.
To efficiently nurture your leads and provide a personalized experience for each one, you need a centralized repository of lead and customer data.
A CRM can help contractors organize lead data in one secure location. Nutshell even has a business card scanner feature, so you don’t have to input your new prospect’s details manually.
Do you collect leads from your website? CRMs can help you create forms you can embed on your website. You can automatically save the leads you generate via these forms to your CRM software.
Analyze sales data and forecast sales
Analytics is one of the reasons a CRM is crucial for contractors. Put your wealth of lead and customer data to good use by analyzing it. Which marketing channels attracted the most number of qualified leads? Which marketing messages resonated well with your different buyer personas?
Understanding your customers enables you to serve them better and increase customer satisfaction. It also helps you improve your marketing campaigns because you know their pain points.
The best CRMs for small construction businesses let you generate customizable reports so you can track key performance indicators (KPIs). CRM reports also help you identify trends in your sales and prospecting efforts. These reports also help you with sales forecasting.
Below, we’ll go over each of those tools. You can also refer to this table for a quick summary of these construction CRMs’ advantages and disadvantages.
Reporting & analytics in Nutshell
Learn more about Nutshell’s reporting and analytics features
Stay on top of your contractors, teams, and tasks with everything synchronized to your CRM. Choose an overview of the entire project or drill down for a more detailed view to keep tabs on each process.
With a great CRM, you can quickly stay up-to-date with complete and incomplete tasks and determine whether you’ll meet your deadline. A construction CRM also makes viewing expenses easy to ensure your project stays within budget.
You can also integrate your CRM software with your favorite construction accounting and project management apps to streamline processes and improve project efficiency.
Optimize your sales process
A construction customer’s journey is a long, twisty road. Regularly analyzing your sales data in your CRM can refine your sales strategies and optimize your sales process.
A CRM like Nutshell lets you establish and automate lead scoring so your sales reps know which leads to prioritize. Nutshell has even simplified lead scoring by implementing lead confidence. As a result, your construction business enjoys increased close rates.
Is one of your customers hiring you again for another building project and requesting a copy of your previous contract? You can upload important documents related to each customer to your CRM so you can check them when needed. You can even add billing details and schedules, so sending an invoice can be automated, too.
Nurture customer relationships
Cultivating relationships in the construction industry is vital, as your customers tend to remain loyal to businesses that have delivered satisfactory service.
That said, contractors need to stay in touch with their current customers so they don’t jump ship. It also shows them that you care about them even after your transaction.
CRMs are excellent tools for contractors for pre- and post-sale nurturing with your customers. You can organize and access lead and customer information easily from your construction CRM. Or you could automatically send out an email after the successful turnover of the project to touch base with a client.
Fostering trust among prospects is critical to successful sales. Sync your CRM with your calendar app so you won’t miss a scheduled site visit or sales call.
Provide excellent after-sales support
After-sales support is a crucial part of your customer service. Do customers need further help from your team? A quick look at your customer’s records in your CRM can give your team a background on the services you provided and how best to handle their current concerns.
A CRM can also reduce the time it takes for your team to respond to your customers, thus improving their customer experience. And we know that a satisfied customer will likely stay loyal to your construction business and recommend you.
Improve project stakeholder communication
While internal communication with your team becomes far more efficient with a CRM in place, so does collaboration with other stakeholders.
Your CRM will enable you to synchronize your email communication, allowing you to email anyone, internal or external, from the software. You’ll have a record of all incoming and outgoing communications, along with tasks and activities related to each contact, making for better organization.
The best construction CRM software will also let you send bulk emails, which will come in handy when sending out project-related updates to contractors.
See Nutshell in action
Give our powerful, easy-to-use CRM a try for free for 14 days! Or join a live demo to see Nutshell at work!
Packed with features that help you manage your construction projects
No lead generation, nurturing, or management features
1. Nutshell
Pricing: Starts at $16 per user per month
Free trial: 14-day free trial
Pros: Nutshell is an easy-to-use growth platform that can help your construction company build rapport with your prospects and cultivate relationships with your customers. Its contact management feature lets you easily manage customer information and pull out info about them when needed.
Want to know the last bid you had with a particular customer? Anyone on your team can access the info, so you can immediately address your customer’s concern and make your customer satisfied with your service. And we all know that happy customers will likely remain loyal to you and recommend you to people they know.
A CRM for builders, Nutshell also comes with a sales automation feature, which helps you streamline your sales process. Create automated workflows to maximize your team’s efficiency.
Does your sales leader manually assign leads to your sales reps? Nutshell can auto-assign leads to your sales reps with reminders at each sales process stage to guide them to success.
A user-friendly CRM, Nutshell also provides customer support via email and live chat to all our users—whether they’re just trying out Nutshell for free or about to renew their subscription.
Cons: Nutshell has a free 14-day trial but no free version.
2. Buildertrend
Pricing: Starts at $399 per month
Free trial: No free trial is available
Pros: If you need a CRM, email marketing tool, and estimating software bundled together, Buildertrend is one of the best construction CRMs. Buildertrend also has specific features dedicated to remodelers and home builders, so the solution you get is tailor-made for your construction business’s needs.
Buildertrend offers customers unlimited support and custom training so that you can make the most of your construction CRM. Live webinars, tutorials, and onsite consulting are available.
Cons: Buildertrend doesn’t have a free trial, so you can’t experiment with this construction CRM before subscribing for $399 per month.
3. Fieldwire
Pricing: Free basic plan available
Free trial: Free trial available
Pros: If you’re looking for a CRM for builders with a mobile app, consider Fieldwire. It’s a job site software solution that enables effective collaboration among your team members. In addition, Fieldwire can help you with task management, and plan viewing and versioning.
Fieldwire comes with a free trial and a free plan, so you can try it before subscribing to a plan for bigger teams. The app also works offline, so your team members can still work in locations with limited network connectivity.
Cons: While Fieldwire is an excellent collaboration tool, it lacks a few construction CRM features. It has no client tracking and bid management features, so you may need to integrate it with another tool.
4. Builder Prime
Pricing: Starts at $79 per month
Free trial: Free trial available
Pros: One of the best construction CRMs available today is Builder Prime. It has pipeline management features, so leads don’t slip through the cracks, and you don’t miss opportunities to increase your sales.
In addition, Builder Prime has an automated follow-up system, so you can automatically send email appointment confirmations. You can also automate thank-you messages and payment reminders.
Creating cost estimates is also easier with Builder Prime as it helps you create customized and branded cost estimates, contracts, and invoices.
Cons: Builder Prime has no email campaign management feature that can help you track the performance of your email marketing efforts. Interaction tracking and sales forecasting are also some features that Builder Prime doesn’t offer.
5. Procore
Pricing: Custom
Free trial: N/A
Pros: Procore is a CRM for general contractors that can help you manage your construction projects. Using Procore can help you increase your team’s productivity by enabling collaborators to access the details of your projects in real-time.
It also has several tracking features:
Budget tracking
Equipment tracking
Issue tracking
Cons: While Procore helps you see your construction projects through, it cannot help you with your lead generation, nurturing, and management efforts.
Construction CRM FAQs
If you’re looking for the best CRMs for a construction company, new questions may arise from your research. Here are some frequently asked questions about construction CRMs:
Why is a CRM useful for construction businesses?
The best construction CRMs save customer and prospect information and help you track your projects’ progress, store pertinent documents, and analyze customer information to provide better service.
What are the challenges that a construction CRM can help you with?
A construction business’s sales process is a complex one. Combine that with projects happening simultaneously, and tracking every detail of your projects and bids becomes quite a chore.
The best CRMs for construction can help contractors:
Manage and monitor several projects in one platform
Automate follow-ups, thank-you messages, and billing reminders
Store documents and customer info in one repository that your team can easily access when needed
Streamline your company’s processes with one of the best CRMs for construction firms
If you want to grow your construction business and improve your processes with CRM software, look no further than Nutshell.
A user-friendly CRM loaded with tracking and automation features that contractors need, Nutshell can help you manage your projects and bids so your team can work more efficiently.In addition, we also have a friendly support team that can help you via live chat or email. Want to try Nutshell? Sign up for a free 14-day trial to try one of the best CRMs for construction!
