As a building materials supplier, if you want to close more deals, you need to manage long sales cycles, complex orders, multiple contacts for single projects, and numerous leads at once. Nutshell’s customer relationship management (CRM) platform makes it easy to stay organized, increase efficiency, and turn more leads into new clients.
As a building materials supplier, your company serves a vital role in the construction industry. Without you, contractors don’t have access to the literal building blocks of their businesses.
But to drive success for your business, you need to understand those potential customers—who they are, what they want, and how you should market to them. The right software is crucial for gathering insights that will drive sales, whether your company supplies steel beams, concrete and cement, or composite decking.
One of the most important types of software for building materials suppliers is a customer relationship management system (CRM). CRMs store and analyze data from your leads and customers so you can improve communication, automate your sales process, and keep track of all your deals.
With the right CRM, your building materials supply company can:
CRM software does a lot—from acting as a single source of truth for all your customer data to streamlining the sales process so your sales reps can focus on building relationships. Since it plays such a critical role in the success of your sales team, it’s important to find the platform that works best for your business.
There are many CRM platforms available, each with different plans, features, and levels of customer support. Spend time comparing your CRM options and considering which combination of features your business needs most.
While your company’s needs are unique, some CRM features are essential to every business. Take a look at the most important elements to look for in a CRM for your building materials supply company:
Your sales pipeline gives you critical insight into your deals and where they’re headed. And with longer sales cycles than businesses in many other industries, building materials suppliers need to keep a close eye on their relationships with leads so they don’t get lost in the shuffle.
Pipeline management tools are one of the most essential features to look for in a CRM. Whether you have multiple points of contact at a builder’s company, a complex sales process, or lots of tasks for your sales reps to complete, pipeline management tools enhance visibility into your pipelines.
Your CRM should let you do things like:
The ability to automate specific tasks in your sales process helps your team accomplish their work faster and spend more time on higher-value projects. A CRM with sales automation features reduces your non-selling activities by automatically advancing leads through your pipeline stages when they meet certain goals, so you spend less time wondering where leads should go.
The right CRM will also give your marketing team a boost with tools like email automation. Create and send attractive email sequences to your prospects and leads and have them triggered when leads enter specific stages in your pipeline, eliminating the need for your marketing team to write and send individual emails to individual contacts.
CRMs store a lot of information. When your team needs to drill down into their sales data to figure out what works and what doesn’t, having reporting features is vital.
How has your sales team’s performance been over the year? Which are your most profitable sales reps and lead sources? Generating reports from your CRM data can give you these answers and more.
Some reporting features to look for include:
If your company still keeps customer and lead contact information in spreadsheets, it’s time to upgrade. When it comes to managing contact data, CRMs are far better than spreadsheets.
A CRM’s contact management features keep a thorough, complete record of your contacts’ data and every interaction between your team and a customer or lead, making it easier to spot opportunities for cross-selling, plan follow-ups, and make customers more profitable.
CRMs are also easy to update with new data, helping keep your information organized and searchable, so your sales reps can quickly find the buying history, email thread, and contact information they need.
Nutshell is the best value for the money. The versatility and functionality make it a very easy and powerful product to use.
Mark M. Southwestern Scale Co.
I have used Act, Goldmine and Salesforce in the past, and I have found that Nutshell was the easiest to get started with and to set up custom fields. I would recommend Nutshell to others that are interested in an easy to learn and navigate CRM.
Craig C. Thermal-Tec
We left Hubspot for Nutshell because Hubspot was too complex. Nutshell makes software for humans.
Daniel H. EOS
When we were evaluating CRMs, the one deciding factor between Nutshell and Salesforce came down to spin up time and price. Nutshell wins on both counts (by a huge margin). Salesforce was 10 times as much per month for what we wanted.
Jason C. Arrow Container Corp
Without a doubt, Nutshell has been instrumental in organizing our contact lists and has eliminated the need to maintain multiple spreadsheets for our contacts. Nutshell has not only streamlined our contact management process but has also saved us a significant amount of time, allowing us to focus on engaging with our partners and stakeholders. The
tool, in particular, has been especially helpful in improving our communication and engagement with our contacts.Ana S
On top of the features listed above, you also want to look for a CRM that integrates with the platforms your business is already using to track documents, communicate with customers, and more. A CRM is a powerful tool, and if you can integrate it with your company’s other software solutions, you make it unstoppable.
Look for a CRM that offers the following types of integrations for your building materials supply company:
So, why use Nutshell’s CRM software for building materials suppliers over another platform?
At Nutshell, we understand how competitive the building materials industry is and how long the sales cycles can be. That’s why we built an easy to use CRM equipped with built-in functionality that helps businesses like yours manage & automate their sales processes to close more sales.
With Nutshell, you’ll get:
Say goodbye to juggling multiple tools and platforms to grow your business, and say hello to your all-in-one sales and marketing solution with Nutshell.
Our customers have lots to say about our CRM software. Check out our customer stories to learn more about how Nutshell has helped companies just like you achieve and exceed their goals!
When you choose Nutshell as your Industrial CRM, you have the option to partner with 500+ digital marketing experts to help drive leads to your sales team. Learn More
If you’re ready to grow your business with the best CRM for building materials suppliers, Nutshell is here to help.
With our top-tier platform and friendly team, you’ll have every tool you need to drive sales and revenue for your business. And the best part? You’ll have it all in one single platform. Plus, our customer service team is well-known for providing world-class customer support when you need it.
Start your free trial to get started with our CRM software right away, or contact us to learn more about how we can help your company make waves in your industry!
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