Turning a building enquiry into a customer and a job
What happens when a contractor converts a building enquiry in the Construction pack, what starts on its own, and what to check before converting.
By Achekam · · 4 min read · For Construction businesses in South Africa, Nigeria, Kenya
Launching soon. The Industry CRM add-on described in this article is launching soon. This article describes it as it will work at launch.
"We have a plot and plans approved. Can you price the house?" Every contractor gets calls like this, and most of them never become work. Some callers are collecting three prices; some are a year away from building; some have a budget that will not stretch to their plans.
That is why an enquiry should stay an enquiry until there is something real to price. The Construction & contracting pack in Achekam's Industry CRM keeps the enquiry as a lead until you decide to convert it, and then does several things at once. This article explains what conversion does, what starts on its own, and the checks worth making first.
An enquiry as a lead before anything is priced
While it is a lead, an enquiry is cheap to keep: a name, a contact number, the site, a few notes from the call and perhaps the drawings the caller sent. You can follow up, arrange a site visit and decide whether you want the work, without creating customer accounts or jobs that will clutter your lists if nothing comes of it.
The pack sets the words its screens use, its record types, its pipeline and its workflows, so what you see is written in a contractor's terms rather than a generic sales tool's.
Notes worth taking on the first call
Whoever answers the phone should capture the same few things every time, because they decide whether the enquiry is worth a site visit:
- the site address, and whether the caller owns or controls it;
- what is to be built, and whether plans exist and are approved;
- when the caller hopes to start, and when they need a price;
- how the work will be paid for: savings, a bond, a grant or a developer's funds;
- how they heard of you, and whether they are asking other contractors to price.
An enquiry with these answers on it can be judged in a minute by whoever decides what the firm prices.
Converting: the customer and the job created together
When you convert the lead, the pack creates the customer and the industry's main record at once, which for construction is the Job, and starts that job's workflow. You do not have to set up the customer in one place and the job in another, and the two are linked from the first moment.
Alongside Jobs, the pack keeps Estimates with bill-of-quantities lines, and Change orders priced line by line. The estimate you build next hangs off the job you have just created. Following a job from estimate to close-out walks through the estimate itself.
The job's first stage: Pricing
A new job starts at Pricing. From there it moves through Estimate sent, Awarded, Contract signed, On site, Practical completion, Defects period and Closed out.
Some stages have conditions. A job cannot move into certain stages until set conditions are met, such as a customer being named, an amount being set or a signature being done. In practice that stops a job being marked as contracted when nobody has actually signed, or as estimated when the estimate has no value. The first real gate after conversion is usually the estimate itself.
Workflow tasks created stage by stage, with subtasks
Converting starts the job's workflow, and a workflow creates its tasks stage by stage rather than all at once. On the day you convert, the team sees the tasks for Pricing, not a long list stretching to the end of the defects period. When the job moves to the next stage, that stage's tasks appear.
Tasks can have subtasks up to three levels deep. That suits pricing work, which naturally breaks down: a site visit with photographs and measurements under it; a take-off for each trade; supplier and subcontractor quotations for each package. The estimator can split the work among the team and see what is still open.
When the job is awarded and the contract is signed, the job-start steps follow; for South African contractors, the job-start and safety file workflow covers them.
What to check before you convert
Conversion is easy to do and fiddly to undo, so make it a decision. A short checklist:
- Is the work real? Plans approved or nearly so, a site the client controls, and a budget that at least roughly fits the scope.
- Do you want it? Location, size, timing and type of work against your current workload.
- Can you legally take it on? In South Africa, public-sector work depends on your grading; the CIDB explains its requirements for grading, set from a contractor's track record and available capital, and what each grade allows a contractor to tender for. Kenyan contractors have their National Construction Authority category and class, and Nigerian contractors should check any registration their client or State requires.
- Is the customer already on your books? Search your customers before converting, so you do not end up with two records for the same client.
- Who is the contact? The person who called is not always the person who signs. Note both.
- What happens next, and by when? The date the client expects your price, so the Pricing tasks are planned against it.
If the enquiry fails any of these, keep it as a lead with a note, or close it with a reason. If it passes, convert it.
After conversion
Price the job, send the estimate, and get the acceptance in writing before work starts. Until the pack is switched on in your workspace, getting a building quote accepted in writing shows how to do that with the document and signing tools available now.
General guidance only, not advice on your own circumstances. Tax and payroll rules change: check the current position with the authority or your adviser.
