General contracting
The remodel took the whole crew all summer, and nobody worked the leads for the next one.
Marketing and follow-up for general contractors
A general contracting business runs in long stretches. A remodel can take the crew and most of the owner's attention for months, and when it wraps up the next job has to be ready or the calendar goes empty. The Home Service Guild Marketing Operations System gives you the lists, alerts, and reminders that keep the four jobs of growth moving while you are deep in a project.
About two minutes. You see your score right away.
The four jobs in a general contracting business
Getting Found.
For a general contractor, marketing means being the name a homeowner finds while they are still planning a remodel, which can be months before they are ready to sign. They look at photos of finished projects and read your reviews to judge whether you are someone they can trust inside their home for a long stretch. Home Service Guild builds project pages on your website, keeps your Google Business Profile complete, and runs Google search ads and Facebook and Instagram ads, then tracks which of them bring in calls so the budget goes to the ones that bring you jobs.
Reply/Follow Up.
Remodel inquiries arrive while you are on a job site, and many of them come from homeowners who are still months away from a decision. The web form a homeowner fills out in June reaches your phone that day, even when you are standing in someone else's half-finished kitchen. Every open estimate carries a follow-up reminder until the homeowner gives you an answer, so the serious inquiries do not go cold while the crew is busy.
Operations.
A long project brings change orders, subcontractor schedules, material deliveries, and invoices, all on top of the estimates for the next job. Invoices go out on schedule and payment reminders follow on their own dates, so the office is not chasing a draw payment by memory. The schedule and each client's notes live in your field service software where the whole team can see them.
Word of Mouth.
A client whose kitchen came out well is a good source for your next kitchen, and they often have friends who are planning a project of their own. When the project wraps, the client gets a thank you, a link to review you on Google, and a link they can send to the friend who keeps asking about their contractor. A few notes a year keep your company in mind when that friend finally starts planning.
An example of what we hear from the general contracting companies we work with
We finished a big addition last fall, and I had nothing lined up after it.
An addition took my whole crew from May through August, and I was on site most days making decisions. Inquiries kept coming in through the website and the phone, and I meant to get to them in the evenings, but only a few got a quick call back and the rest sat in my inbox. When the job wrapped up, I went back through the list and found that the homeowners who had been ready to talk in June had hired someone else.
What the Home Service Guild Marketing Operations System does for a general contracting company
The Home Service Guild Marketing Operations System runs under all four jobs in your contracting business, and it connects to Housecall Pro if that is where you already schedule jobs. If your company runs on Jobber instead, we set that up too, and Jobber for general contractors shows how we work with it. While you are deep in a long project, the next project's inquiries are still being collected and their estimates still carry reminders. In about twenty years in real estate, Robert Earl worked with general contractors both as a client and as a business partner, so he knows how a remodel looks from the homeowner's side of the contract.
Articles for general contracting owners
- How does a general contractor keep leads coming while the crew is on a long remodel?A long remodel takes the crew and the owner's attention. How a general contractor keeps new inquiries from going cold before the big job is finished.
- How does a remodeler tell a serious remodel inquiry from a window shopper?A few plain questions at first contact show which remodel inquiries have a plan behind them, so a contractor's estimating time goes to the right homeowners.
Questions general contracting owners ask us
How can a general contractor keep leads warm while the crew is on a big project?
Keep every inquiry in one list and make sure each one gets a reply and a follow-up, even in the weeks when you are on site all day. A list each morning of the inquiries still waiting for a reply takes a few minutes to work through before you head to the site, and that keeps the next job moving while the current one is still underway.
Why do remodel inquiries take months to turn into signed contracts?
A remodel is a large project, and homeowners often spend months planning it, lining up the budget, and getting the whole household to agree before they sign. Contracts stall when nobody stays in touch during that wait, so write down what the homeowner is waiting on and check back when they said to.
How does a general contractor get referrals from past clients?
Ask right after a project goes well, and make it easy for the client to pass your name along. The walkthrough at the end of a project, when the client is standing in the finished room, is usually the moment they are happiest to do it.
Who owns the website and accounts you set up for a contractor?
You do. Everything Home Service Guild sets up for your contracting business is in your name, from the website to the accounts it connects to. You never have to ask an agency for a login to your own business. Our page on website design for contractors shows what goes into a contractor's site.
Free business score
See which of the four jobs is costing your general contracting business the most work.
Eight questions, about two minutes, and your score on screen straight away.
Get my free general contracting business score
