3 HUGE Frustrations For Owners Of Home Improvement Businesses

And How Solving Them Might Be A LOT Easier Than You Think

At the most basic level, nearly all owners of home improvement businesses have two fundamental goals: to increase profits and decrease frustration.

Everybody loves an increasing bottom line, but if too much time is spent battling aggravation and persistent problems to get there, it can leave you wondering if it’s worth it. On top of that, frustrations aren’t just annoying. They are almost always symptoms of deeper problems that can hold a contracting business back from maximum success.

No solution is available to solve every kind of stress for owners of home improvement businesses. But persistent frustrations can be solved more easily than you think. The key is to have the RIGHT technology that is specifically designed to serve your business and makes the work easier.

Here are three huge frustrations expressed by many contracting business owners and how to solve them.

Big Frustration #1: Salespeople Who Are Lousy About Follow-Up

Quality leads are expensive and valuable (obviously!). So it can be extremely frustrating to have otherwise solid salespeople who stink at following up with leads that may need a little more effort to close.

Even some very talented salespeople are often not great at follow-up. Sometimes those blessed with natural people skills aren’t always the best with structure and dotting i’s and crossing t’s. They are good at connecting “in the moment,” but the discipline of follow-up eludes them.

Good salespeople also like the instant gratification of closing a sale. So put them in a situation where they have a chance to do that, and they will do their thing and often get rewarded. But for those leads that require a little more TLC to get across the finish line, the tedious task of follow-up can’t hold their interest.

If you own a contracting business and this sounds familiar, there is good news and bad news. The bad news is that most of your salespeople are not going to suddenly have a miraculous personality transformation and become great at follow-up on their own.

The good news is there is a way to help both you and your sales team. For one, you can give them automated tools that make follow-up much easier. And two, those same tools will give you real-time access to total visibility on every lead in your sales pipeline, which you can use to hold them accountable for follow-up.

All this can be accomplished with the right sales lead management software (also known as a CRM). With a CRM specifically designed for contractors, you can take advantage of automated follow-up communication for leads. Even better, you can get immediate visibility tracking every lead at a glance. You can easily drill down and see where follow-up is slipping through the cracks in seconds.

Buyer beware, though. Not all CRMs for contractors are created equal. The truth is most are very poor with real-time lead tracking. Check out this page for more information on the differences between CRM choices for contractors.

Big Frustration #2: Not Knowing Your Numbers

Leads are the lifeblood of a contracting business. It can be deeply frustrating to not know exactly how many leads are coming from each source and where bottlenecks are occurring with leads in your sales pipeline.

And the truth is, you SHOULD be frustrated if you do not have a firm grasp of your lead tracking and metrics.

To put it bluntly, if you don’t have a complete understanding of your lead sources, lead flow, and costs, you are not really in charge of your company’s progress. Your business might still grow, but you’ll have that uneasy feeling that you don’t know why exactly, which leaves you wondering if it might stop growing.

You need to have key metrics like closing rates, Net Sales per Lead Issued, appointment set rate, demo rate, cost per lead, and cost per sale at your fingertips and available in real time. This is the kind of meaty information that businesses, driven by sales and marketing, use to explode their profits.

The difference is night and day once you choose the right lead management sales software. You go from “in the dark” to having a dashboard that gives you immediate, real-time information on every single lead. You’ll see patterns and know what’s working and what’s not. And that will tell you exactly where to put your efforts. You go from chaos to “in charge”.

Big Frustration #3: An Estimating Process That Looks Sloppy And Unprofessional

It is not uncommon for contracting companies to get stuck in the past when it comes to how they generate estimates for customers. It’s yet another version of getting caught in the “this is how we’ve always done it” trap.

Adding to the problem is many times, the estimating process is not integrated with the rest of the sales process and lead management software. Some common ways estimates are done include:

• Handwritten paper versions done on a generic estimating pad.
• Hand-typed Microsoft Word documents that are started from scratch every time.
• Using QuickBooks for estimates. If you do it this way, your sales team is accessing the estimating program through the system that holds your bookkeeping and financial data.
• Using an estimating software that is totally separate from the CRM. This means you end up having to manage leads across multiple systems.

Once again, we’re left feeling frustrated and exposing the underlying business problem. Prospective customers notice the difference between an estimate that is efficiently created, professionally presented, and smoothly handled. For some prospects, sloppiness in this area will be enough for them to choose to do business elsewhere or balk at your price. The more professionalism you show during your estimating process, the more it helps close sales.

The solution comes down to making a smart software choice that best serves your business. You do not need separate contractor estimate software. What you need is a CRM that has a seamless estimating function for contractors built right in. And one that can generate a professional estimate on the spot without needing to return to the office.

What You Can Do Next…

The right CRM software for contractors can solve so many common frustrations and business problems, and it can do it simply and permanently. If you would like proof, Builder Prime offers a demo that can show you how much easier your life can be with the right CRM, one built specifically for home improvement businesses. The demo is free, so what do you have to lose but your frustrations?

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