Sales lead opportunity for Building services

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okay well welcome again everyone to construction lead services from the construction Marketing Association presentation my name is Neil Brown I'm the chairman of the construction Marketing Association and with me today is our panelists Chris Noble Business Development Director at Dodge data and analytics so I want to go over briefly our our agenda for today and before I do I'd like to say that this presentation will be available to all attendees and and all registrants and we will send you a link to the presentation in about the next 24 hours so look for that email and add Neil at construction Marketing Association org to your address book to make sure that gets through so also another housekeeping encourage you to ask questions using the GoToWebinar control panel and ask questions early and often as we'll try and get to the the earlier ones first and try and finish this up before the hour is out so so please do ask questions and so with that I'd like to welcome you again and just mention briefly our two sponsors and s pro PPE and a modern marketing partners I'll talk a little bit about them in a minute and the second item is we do have a national survey that we've been running for the last few months so I will cover the results of that and then I'll turn it over to our esteemed panelists Chris Noble and again as mentioned we'll have questions and answers at the end and if we don't get to your question due to time be glad to follow up via email as well so and finally we have a number of leads / business development resources in the appendix of this this PowerPoint presentation so you will have access to those I will cover them very briefly at the end so with that just mention a couple of things about our sponsors and s pro PPE is a manufacturer and retailer of personal protective equipment used for electrical safety so they're an exciting new company and modern marketing partners is a full-service marketing agency that works and has expertise in the AEC construction industry ok so let's get right into that survey and our first question is do you utilize construction lead services and majority 73 percent said yes and I just like to mention that this compares with our last lead construction leads webcast was a three years ago in 2015 and it was only 58 percent so I don't know if that's a growth or or the survey participants but but it is certainly an increase so the next question was what lead services are utilized and number one was dodge Dodge data analytics followed by other in Blue Book and and then a tie for remodeling government lead services and construction act so and those were all those were all prompts as well so for those of you and that didn't take the survey next question was how much do you spend annually on construction lead services and the largest portion 44% was less than 10,000 but a very strong portion 33% between 10,000 and 25,000 and then even amount for 25 to 50 and more than 50,000 no one in this survey s but spent more than a hundred we did have some respondents last time that spent over a hundred but for whatever reason that maybe we didn't have some of the larger companies in the service so then we had a couple of open-ended questions what is your primary use of lead services and what is the most important feature of lead services used and we ended up getting just all kinds of different answers to this so we attempted to make a word cloud here based on the frequency of answers so targeting projects what was you know one of the bigger or frequent answers followed by finding projects where very similar developing projects so a lot of pretty obvious project information customer projects etc some other interesting responses were ecommerce sales detailed contact information identifying specifier so this is something that I know that Chris's is very involved in in building products architectural products industry and other points of timely alerts for stage changes identifying competitor customer contacts so so that's a very interesting that you might use it to to identify customers that are working or not working with your firm but your competitor so anyways those are some of the answers and let's go on to the side lead services what are some of the other types of marketing that are used for lead development lead generation business development and SEO was most frequent it's 91 percent search engine optimization that is followed by trade shows at 82 percent and advertising email paid search or pay-per-click other and then telemarketing so some of the other marketing tactics so oh there was another question that that when not used what was the reason and and the answer we don't have a slide on it but the answer was due to cost and and and then the lead services used some of the other responses were construction reporter was mentioned along with email lists so just to fill that in a bit so this is our classification information company size you can see that we have a pretty good representation here from very small companies less than five employees to the majority being six to twenty five employees and a hundred to 500 employees and then just a few respondents for more than a thousand employees so so pretty good a cross-section there and then the classification of company type that is led by building materials manufacturers or distributors along with other and then residential and remodeling and being a close second commercial construction no equipment manufacturers distributors I know there is a couple of lead services that specialize in in equipment that that provide data on lease expiration and that kind of thing so we know that is a piece of that puzzle so that is our survey again that will be part of the presentation and we'll also we will also write a blog summary and on that so at this point I'd like to introduce our panelists Chris Noble again from Dodge data and analytics so I'm going to turn it over to you Chris all right thanks Neil and thanks to all of you for joining today I'm going to share some information on project lead services and how my clients has successfully used them to generate business before I do that we'll give you a little bit more background on myself I've actually been with God since 1985 so I've got almost 33 years in this business I've been a sales rep I was a regional sales manager I managed the field base sales team for the US and Canada I did that for about 14 years and then a couple years ago I took a role as a business development manager in the southeast I just work with building product manufacturers distributors contractors over the course of my career I've worked with just about every person that's involved in this industry in all sizes you know not not just large people not just small people but everybody on to the LC to the next slide so I think that the first thing to start out we talked about a project lead services I will tell you that they're not all the same they're different um you need to choose one based on the specific things that you want to get out of the data and the insight out of the data and I just put down a couple of the key things that I think I would look for if I was looking for a project news provider and it's you know are they engaged in the local level to gather data or are they just using a call center you know do the reps that you work with do they understand the construction industry and how you should use the data successfully can they you know be really a partner and a consultant how early in the project life cycle are they getting the information most of the building product manufacturers I deal with want to get it very early you know how early are they getting it um one of the growing things is CRM integration and that's really become more prevalent of last couple of years how successful have they been in integrating data into it CRM like salesforce.com or Microsoft Dynamics or sugar or any of the other numerous CRM that are out there and then the other thing is you know if I do this say what's the plan to onboard and train my people to use the system because if they're not going to use it why am i spending the money those are just some of the questions and things I think you should inquire about if you ever looking for a service if you go to the next slide I'll talk to you a little bit about Dodge and what we offer just so you kind of get an idea of the things that we do so one of the things that we do is we have dashboards right that focus on the opportunity so you know an easy-to-use dashboard like this helps you organize the data and the results and it lets you visually see items you may want to examine more closely like the ownership type or the action stage or the project location so it's not all just about searching it's making it easy to find things next slide so then once you do a search and you're looking for results how you going to view them right so a list view is a real easy view to quickly review projects you may want to look at further you know built-in export capability allowing you to take this data put it into an Excel template sort and manage it outside of the system that's something that's really important for people especially like GPS of sales original sales managers who are distributing the data to their reps or independent reps or distributors next slide you know once you're in a list view then it's all about you know how do I view the project in the detail of the project you know in our system you have one click it takes you to all the detail it includes all the firm's it includes notes on the project it includes the documents if they're there and then you really make it easy to share the product with the project with somebody so there's a built-in tool that allows you to share a project with a non dodge user and a lot of building product manufacturers for example that will take a project and either send it to their distributor or an independent rep and say hey I want to make sure you're bidding on this or they'll send it to a friendly general contractor that they know if that general contractor gets the job they're going to use their product on the project and so they'll send something like that to a GC saying hey are you bidding on this you might want to take a closer look right Neil next slide so the other thing is you really want to quickly key in on search terms in the plan specs and addenda documents have them highlighted be able to download these these project into these documents be able to create PDFs out of them you know quickly save them those kinds of things and that's what the tools do is allows you to search all the words in the documents highlight them up save them as PDFs use them in your bid packages another view if you go to the next slide another view that that's very popular and something that's really kind of come up the last year or so is integrating the project locations with a longitude and latitude so you can see exactly where they're located so the Dodge tool is integrated with Google Maps we place pins on the map you can see exactly where the project is located on you do the same thing with companies if you're looking for architects that work on education projects in the state of Ohio for example develop a list and plot amount of map so you can you know develop kind of a route that you're going to want to go and go talk to those architects about your product or about your service um very interesting when we introduced the map view about a year and a half ago what we found were the younger users really liked the map view they really liked the visualizations and and versus doing boolean logic searching and coming up with results and looking at things on a list so all this visual ways to view data has been really popular good next slide so that brings us to visualizations right this makes it really easy the key on the specific details such as specs section project type action stages those kinds of things to further filter your data down and get a list of projects that you might want to pursue either to be specified on or to bid on when the project gets to the bid stage and then the last few or one of the last views that dodge offers is a big calendar and so you know you think of big calendar a lot of people think of it as a contractor tool that hey I want to know when the project's coming up for bid so I'm bidding on it the building product manufactures use this calendar a ton on not only to keep in front of them what projects are coming up for bid that might have their products in the specification of the plan documents but also to keep in front of them what are the projects that they want to pursue where their competitor is in the spec but they're not you know if that was the case if you look at the example on the screen you know today's that let's say today was the 12th there's seven projects bidding today there's 14 bidding tomorrow if those were my competitors and I wasn't on the spec it's probably pretty little I can do to get into the bid and get an addenda issued but go out a couple two three weeks there's plenty of time to go talk about getting it unattended be approved as an equal and work with the bidders on that bidders list to get involved in their bids and that's what that calendar is being used for so if you go to the next screen we've talked a lot about projects and documents but the data is not just really project leads if there's tons of information on companies whether they be owners general contractors architects engineers etc a lot of successful firms take this and they use this to build lists of firms based on the project types that they work on where they're located and what their pre-bid meaning projects in design pipeline is so they can develop the targeted lists of firms that they want to go build relationships with to get in every single one of their applicable projects and you can do that using this company search so if you go to the next slide that's the data piece of things right so there's your project leads with think of projects firms and construction documents but then there's also ways to grab insight out of that data on you know what kind of intelligence can you drive out one of the things that you can drive out of the data is identifying market opportunities so if you want to understand the size shape and direction of the market and make sure you've got the right resources in the right place based on where the growth is going to be Dodge has a tool called market share that allows you to do that it's a web-based tool it allows you to easily manipulate by project category and geography and look at a five-year forecast based on project starts and a ten-year history based on project starts so for building product manufactures starts are important because everybody tends to put a lag on when the project starts so if we have a 20 million dollar project and they break ground tomorrow we recognize all 20 million dollars of it the building product manufacturer who makes underground piping may put a one-month flag on that project somebody making flooring might put an 8 month flag on that project to develop a product forecast for themselves because next slide so you can you can identify the forecast but then the other key is identifying the most active firms and who they typically work with what are the hidden relationships in the marketplace because if you think about it there's two ways to go about this I can either go after and chase projects or I can identify firms that I want to work with based on their activity that's what this tool does it's called build share it allows you to identify the most active firms based on project category and geography that they work in and then what it does is it identifies who they've worked with in the past so you can get an idea of who the firms are that are working together all the time we have a database that goes back to 1968 we stitched together all of the completed projects who the owner was who the architect was so the engineers were who the awarded general tractor was and now you can built it all into a dashboard where you can manipulate it and say hey this owner has worked with 17 different architects but these three firms have gotten 60% of their work right if I was a rep I want to build a relationship with that owner and that architectural firm because they're going to typically get the job right next screen right so the other thing especially for a building product manufacturer it's important to understand the specification habits of specific firms as it relates to products and brands we customize this for our clients it's called spec share basically what it enables you to do it enables you to build a list of firms based on their specification habits around your product category and the brands that you want to track and so really what you're building here is a list of firms that have a good habit of specking your product category and a bad habit of not specifying you and being able to identify those firms and how much pre bid word work they have that can move the needle and prioritize those firms to go after and build relationships with to get those specifications around your brand is basis of design or at least be named in the specification so you don't have to go through the process of getting an addenda down the road right so that's that's basically the overview of project leads and the intelligence that you can take advantage of Neill I'll turn it back over to you and any questions that anybody may have I'm happy to answer excellent thank you Chris that was a very interesting as always so let's go to Q&A part of it and let's start out with something that you alluded to Chris and that was CRM systems so I would imagine that's pretty important can you comment and how firms are integrating this construction lead services with CRM systems yes so it's it's interesting especially over I would say really over the last 24 to 36 months it's become more and more prevalent that manufacturers of all sizes are using some kind of CRM they're using either Salesforce or Microsoft Dynamics or Oracle which used to be Siebel sugar and then there's there's home groans where they've tried to do it on their own the reason that people want to integrate the data into their CRM system is it saves a bunch of time from retaining information which eliminates errors but the other thing it allows them to do is to build an ROI out of the investment to say hey how many projects did we take out of this service how much what did we sell based on the projects we took out of the service and then keep all that stuff in one location so we've integrated dodges integrated with about every CRM out there we've integrated with s ap we've integrated with homegrown we've integrated with sugar we've integrated with Siebel etc we've got a couple of plug-in tools for Salesforce and Microsoft Dynamics that embed the data into those tools without any IT assistance no third-party integrator needed but it's really Neil's really all about the ROI aspect of it and being able to go back and use the the robust reporting in the CRM to identify how much business did we really drive out of this thing and make it really easy for their reps to use the data and keep the data updated and share with their team members in the CRM so it's something that it's more and more and more prevalent almost you know every month it comes by it's more people are looking at CRMs are implementing them and they want to put the data into them and then we're also looking at we're starting to work on integrations with marketing programs like Marketo and HubSpot in those kinds of things these so related to that is the data then are there some best practices for managing the data yeah I mean within a CRM for sure I mean the one thing you don't want to do is you don't want a firehose the data into your CRM and create a bunch of records that don't really mean anything and don't exist so one of the practices when you're integrating into CRM is is really making sure that you've got user control on what can be imported and what shouldn't be imported or if you have a firming your CRM already that's called something different than the official name and dodge is being able to link them together so we're not creating duplicate records that's always the best practice is to keep the CRM data clean but in terms of just using the contruction leads it's really that the best clients and the people have been most effective are the ones who sit down and work with us and really come up with the right kind of searches that return the results in the insight that they want and then turning on the automation tools to let the system do the work and run on a regular basis whether it's every Monday every day however you want them delivered to you let the system run that and return the results for you so you can quickly get them out of the system start to work for your company it's not I always tell everybody when they start looking at it's like look the last thing I need you to do is play around in this thing all day long I need you to get in get what you need and get out and start working on your company's behalf Wow yeah that makes it makes a lot of sense so any anyone that has questions please use your GoToWebinar panel please so what about what about the economy does the the use of construction lead services does it Evan flow with with the economy and that specifically construction and kind of you know it's onion beat I've been through a whole bunch of you know peaks and valleys in this business over 30 some odd years and and what's what's really funny is that there's a lot of companies that they buy the data they know it's they know it's useful doesn't matter what state the construction economy is and they stay the course there's others that we're so busy we can't really do anything else when the market goes down those are the people that start coming out of the woodwork because they have no pipeline to rely on and so they'll say hey we need some help there's you know there's not as much out there as there was and we've got to find specifically what we're looking for so we tend to see and see an uptick from them when the market goes down because they're looking for more opportunity that they just can't generate because there's just so much volume out there that you know what do you have to do but it doesn't move as much as you would think when things get really good it's not like everybody just cancels out and stops doing it and waits until it gets bad it's the majority of our business and I will tell you in the dodge world we renew every year about 94% of our customers and I think it would be higher than that if it wasn't for people going out of business or you know you always have those that can't pay their bills and the one thing I've learned over my career is it's hard to make money if people will pay you say you know we may cancel them or firms merge together right formai buys firm B and they were both buying a data set they don't still both need a data set they just need one data set so it's that kind of stuff but yearning you're out people typically you know that understand how to use this and abuse that successfully they keep using it great well that's a that's interesting that it that it actually doesn't reduce knee-jerk react like like that for a down cycle so yeah we're looking looking for questions I've got a good one here that's kind of outward-looking so I'm going to give that to you Chris what are any new features or innovations and construction lead services that you see in the next few years um you know that the base is always going to be the same right it's getting the data getting the documents when they're available get it making sure the right firms are there making sure the projects are updated they're in the right place at the right time so people are using what's accurate but one of the things that I definitely see coming down the road you hear a lot about this artificial intelligence I almost anticipate Ori as to what does this user want to see based on what he's been doing he or she has been doing in the searches and in the access and a manipulation of the data set and having the system kind of understand what that person wants to do with it so that they're you know you think about suggestions you know when you're on a website right and says our suggested websites or suggested this it's that kind of artificial intelligence where it's going to be hey you're looking at this project now if you thought about these other Fox that are out here that looks similar to that you may want to take a look at it's going to be those kinds of things where you know even less and less is going to be the user having to manually do things and the system is actually suggesting things and bringing things to the forefront for the user based on their past it you know activity and interaction with the data then I definitely see coming well when how far off is that do you think it's next year do you think it's five years I think it's probably within the next five years I don't think it's next year that the the technology is is starting to ramp up but it's not not really to where it needs to be but you know we all see the commercials on TV right the Microsoft commercial where they're all talking about it and IBM watching stuff where they're all talking about it so the technology is there it's going to take some time to kind of implement and embed into the tools sure Wow well that's uh that's fascinating presa really appreciate you lending all your expertise clearly as you mentioned you've been you've been doing this for a while and I think your insight really really comes through today so appreciate that so thanks for for that and let's just summarize some things and give you a heads up on what's coming down the pike a construction Marketing Association first of all an overview for those of you not familiar we are a network of marketing managers and executives and construction related fields we have professional development training resources information networking and recognition our website is Construction Marketing Association we have a very active blog and a LinkedIn group as well importantly our annual CMA Star Awards has its final extended entry deadline tomorrow November 16th so so if you're interested in that please go to CMA and click on the awards page and then our upcoming webcasts are December 15th on local marketing and then in January mid-january we'll have a the 2019 construction marketing Outlook so we'll have a survey related to that as well so those will be announced shortly and so in the appendix we do have some resources and is mentioned the first is the dot website itself has an excellent resource center under the domain they've got probably the best domain in the construction industry its construction comm and the resources pages is right there but it is back slash toolkit so I'd invite you to take a look at that CMA has a lead generation best practices white paper and we have a number of self-improvement two opportunities including becoming a member we do have a professional certification program the certified construction marketing professional or CCMP and we have a bull a book and a training manual for the CCNP called tools of the trade modern marketing for construction brands and lastly but not least is the CMA Career Center which has [Music] construction and marketing related jobs over six million jobs nationwide so so please again you could find that and the CMA homepage and it links over to this Career Center so I want to do I just mentioned the Dodge Resource Center and here's a here's a picture of that they've got some featured resources but the other thing I think is interesting is that you could look at resources buy the business type that you are whether you're a general contractor or engine engineering firm or what have you along with topics and content types that would have loved to have gotten the drop downs on those to see to show you but what I couldn't and then lastly this presentation deck has Chris nobles and my own bio which is fun reading so with that I would like to thank you for attending and again in 24 hours you will get an email with a link to this presentation and thank you again for attending and Chris thank you for being an excellent panelists Thank You Neil appreciate it and thanks everyone for their time