How We Build Contractor Leads and Where Our Project Entries Come From

We started our database model in 2011 and have grown it to include data from 4,800 general contractor building companies from three countries: the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom. Our moat model has grown from machine automation and good ole human hours.

When we first analyzed a general contractor company to be approved into our database, we browse their website to get an understanding of the general contractor’s (GC) basic contact information (address, phone, website,) project plan room, pre-qualification/ vendor application and all social media outlets. We call this the “how we do business information”.

Without email and phone contacts, the general contractor intelligence that we collect is only half as valuable as what it could be. Therefore, we strive to add as much meaningful contact information as possible. From 2011 to 2015, Salesforce had a partner (data.com) that we could pay 75 cents to import active contacts into our database. We imported thousands of person contacts, emails and phones this way. Also, we keep every new contact email address inside inbound emails. This is how we can maintain over 46,000 general contractor person contacts.

Now the company can be put into our cycle of emails and the gathering information starts to flow from inbound emails. New projects and other company data inputs once we put the company in a flow.

In the United States, we have 38,000 separate pieces of contact information on our GC profiles. In Canada, we have 5,500 and 2,200 more in the United Kingdom. We have been able to maintain a steady one percent growth in the number of these contacts.

Contacts play a very important role in bidding and awarding contracts to vendors and subcontractors. Estimators, project managers, administrators, and superintendents are key title names in construction bidding. This information allows you to identify what cycle of the project the contact is active in the project.

Now that our construction lead-generation database is strong and vibrant (full of active general contractors with responsive employees), how do we create a cycle of flowing information? How do we gather information about a GC’s bidding projects and other business information?

We built a custom outbound email algorithm that emails our contacts about their company projects and asks other questions about who their company is.

This complicated email algorithm is the key to our whole system of creating and updating projects that we post on Building Contractor Leads. These contacts tell us everything we need to know! General contractors cannot do much without their subcontractors when it comes to constructing a building. Our contacts are open to releasing information about individual project contract statuses or how the company operates.

Therefore, our Status and Contact Updates are so important. Users of Building Contractor Leads must understand what our Status and Contact Updates focus on: Contacts, Schedule, Scope contracting status.

With the constant emailing of our database’s contacts, we can easily trim and main its non responsive contacts. The construction industry has a high turnover rate for employees. Many contacts will quit or get fired in this stressful industry. When a project goes over-budget or doesn’t end well for a company, it’s easy for a GC to trim overhead.

We get 70 percent of our projects from our outbound emailing cycle. It is not uncommon for us to send seven emails to a project asking various questions. If we get no response from our questions, the contacts are not responsive, this is a cold bidding project lead. Auto remove from BCL.

The second way we add projects to BCL project board is through our General Contractor Intelligence system which identifies where companies posts their projects and bidding statuses along with project types.

The third way we find out about projects is through our 500 incoming automated invitation-to-bid emails that come into our inbox per week. Thanks to our filling out over 3,000 vendor applications over the years, we have shown ourselves qualified on bid list with almost all the general contractors in the building construction industry. Filling out a vendor application and telling the building general contractor what our business is, allows us to receive private invitation-to-bid email requests. We tend to only add ten percent of these projects to our listings as again, a GC has a high chance of not being awarded. We prefer to let our email algorithms work and wait until a project manager or estimator replies in a direct email about a project bid need.

We have not added many pre-construction phase projects in the moat’s lifetime because of the 30 percent chance your bidding GC will win the project. The process was inefficient in the past, but we will start to add our boat load of inbound invitation to bid emails directly from GC, not other platforms. (data must stay unique and keep our sources)

We get far more negative replies than positive replies. A negative reply is: “We have our painting purchased,” and positive one is, “Yes, please view the plans and price the construction cleanup.” We remove projects only if we received four negative trade purchased statements. We want to post projects that are actively bidding and building, 1–2 contracts available at a minimum, the building has not turned over to the owner.

Building Contractor Leads project board has been semi live since its pre release in September 2019.

I expect the system to max out at 4,000 projects, keeping high quality active projects with responsive contacts.

ideas become dreams

Since 2015, we knew our project leads that we generated in-house would be highly valuable to all construction project trades. However, we never had an easy way to display data for painters, roofers, cement workers, construction cleanup companies, etc. In August 2019, we created the BCL idea and one month later; we were testing it on the market with a few current customers.