Managing expectations is a significant part of business development efforts in construction. When you can track every touchpoint, from emails to phone calls, you improve transparency and maintain client relationships across the full project lifecycle: bid management, takeoff, change orders, and project delivery.
Continue reading “Construction Business Development: Managing Client Expectations With Technology”
Every specialty contractor (SC) wants to be a go-to name on a general contractor’s bid list. That’s where the steady work comes from. But knowing how to get on a bid list and actually doing it are two different things.
Continue reading “How To Get on a General Contractor’s Bid List (and Stay There)”
Whether you’re a specialty construction business or a growing commercial enterprise, developing a solid marketing strategy can feel overwhelming when you’re spending so much of your time managing bids and doing the work.
Continue reading “Level Up Your Construction Marketing Strategy: 10 Tips for Specialty Contractors”
Construction industry podcasts offer professionals an easy way to stay sharp, even on the busiest days. Whether you’re commuting to the job site or catching up between meetings, the right episodes can expose you to new ideas, proven best practices, and insights from leaders who understand the realities of the industry.
With regulations, market conditions, and technology evolving constantly, staying informed isn’t just helpful, it’s essential to the health of your business. Hearing from experienced construction professionals can give you practical, real-world guidance and valuable insights you can apply immediately to strengthen your work and your team.
Here’s our list of the top construction leaders podcasts to help you succeed in a rapidly changing landscape. From growth planning to marketing, financial management, and professional development, these podcasts cover the challenges construction businesses face, industry trends, and offer proven strategies to help you overcome them.
How do you know which tools will actually solve your biggest operational problems? What strategies will help your team adopt new tools to make their work more efficient? What role can AI actually play in a construction business?
The ConTech Exec answers these questions and more in a must-listen podcast exploring the construction tech landscape. Host Robert Zimmerman engages in candid conversations with construction executives, technology experts, and field professionals who are navigating the challenges, breakthroughs, and real-world impacts of new tech — offering practical insights to help you make a smart, seamless digital transformation.
If you’re new to The ConTech Exec, start with this episode featuring TopBuilder CEO Dave Knowles, Drowning in Data, Starving for Insights. Dave and Robert go in-depth about the industry’s biggest hidden cost: data chaos, and the very real money contractors lose when they can’t access real-time insights to monitor job health.
If you’re juggling siloed systems, struggling to keep up with multiple software platforms, and trying to adopt new technology while still delivering quality work, TheCADDle Call from ZenTek Consultants offers a refreshing blend of humor, practicality, and business insights.
ZenTek owners Jim Coppinger and Rocco Parisi connect with other industry experts for down-to-earth discussions on a range of CADD topics. You’ll come away from each episode with a better understanding of the ins and outs of different CADD technology and other issues impacting the construction industry today.
Get started with this episode featuring Rob Herrington, TopBuilder’s VP of Strategic Partnerships and Market Development, on best practices for simplifying and managing construction data, or this episode with Dave Knowles on how to grow and nurture your construction business with Customer Relationship Management (CRM) systems.
Built to Scale is a no-fluff podcast for construction business owners and financial leaders who want to run smarter, more profitable companies that scale. Hosted by Mason Brady, president of Brady CFO, the show dives into the real financial strategies that drive sustainable growth without drowning listeners in jargon.
Each episode features candid conversations with financial pros, CFOs, and business advisors on topics like profit fade, tax, bonding capacity, profitability, and scaling operations. If you’re tired of vague business advice and want real-world insights from leaders who’ve been in the trenches, Built to Scale delivers practical takeaways.
Who owns construction’s intelligence? What does leadership look like in the age of AI? How can data help close the productivity gap? Procore and Construction Dive explore these questions in The Power of Construction, a construction management podcast where industry leaders tackle the biggest challenges facing construction businesses today.
Bonus Insight: At TopBuilder, we’ve been a long-time Procore partner and integrate seamlessly with their platform, making it easy for construction professionals to surface and leverage insights from Procore within TopBuilder’s ConstructionBI for faster, smart decisions on the job. We also sponsor their annual conference. The next time you’re there, stop by our booth!
Bridging the Gap takes listeners inside the world of MEP and construction innovation, highlighting technological advancements, problem-solving approaches, and the soft skills needed for successful digital transformation.
Host Todd Weyandt engages industry experts in conversations that showcase the innovations shaping the AEC, MEP, and manufacturing sectors while inspiring companies to evolve and thrive. Tune in if you’re looking for fresh perspectives and actionable insights from the experts driving change in construction.
Women make up just 11% of the construction workforce, but that number is steadily growing. Women Talk Construction, hosted by Angela Gardner and Christi Powell, is a construction management podcast that elevates the voices of women shaping the industry, tackling a range of topics from technology and leadership challenges to policy issues, career development, and strategies for creating more inclusive workplaces. Through real stories of unconventional career paths and cultural change, this podcast reshapes perceptions of women in construction while providing practical strategies for today’s workforce.
Move from overworked and under-resourced to sustainable, scalable systems that help your business grow with The Construction Leading Edge podcast. Each week, host Todd Dawalt shares solo episodes and guest interviews packed with practical strategies to help construction business owners eliminate chaos, maximize profit, and reclaim freedom. One of the longest-running podcasts for construction business owners, this show is for those ready to take control of their operations and build a business that works without burning out.
With the construction industry evolving at lightning speed, it’s invaluable to have a trusted source of news and insights from leaders who understand the landscape. The Digital Builder podcast, presented by Autodesk and hosted by Eric Thomas, delivers interviews with top construction professionals, sharing perspectives on the latest challenges, innovations, and strategies shaping the field.
Bonus Insight: TopBuilder integrates seamlessly with BuildingConnected®, a pre-construction solution within Autodesk Construction Cloud®. This integration helps contractors manage bids more efficiently, saving time and improving success rates — directly supporting project acquisition and revenue growth.
With these podcast recommendations, you’ll have the resources you need to stay informed, gain practical insights, and discover strategies to grow your businesses in an ever-evolving industry. For more industry insights and resources, subscribe to our blog.
In an uncertain economy and a tightening construction market, contractors need real-time insights to win work, estimate accurately, and grow profitably. That’s nearly impossible to achieve when teams rely on manual reports and from-the-gut decision-making. Even software can fall short when the underlying data is inconsistent or incomplete.
Continue reading “Using Construction Data Services To Scale Your Business”
You saw those change orders this morning, right there on your desk. Now? I know they were right here a minute ago…
There’s a better way to keep track of project details. TopBuilder CRM replaces scattered systems, missed messages, and last-minute scrambling with one organized, streamlined process. Here’s how it helps.
You won the bid, but the project team never got the lead’s info. Now you’re stuck chasing contact details, digging through emails, and making calls to track things down.
With TopBuilder CRM, everything lives in one place, from the first bid through closeout.
No more wasted time hunting for documents, or gaps between sales and project teams. Just instant access to the info you need, when you need it.
You also make faster, better decisions. With a complete view of every project, you can see how one change impacts the timeline, budget, or client expectations before it becomes a problem.
And it’s not just about speed. It’s about accuracy.
Nearly two-thirds (59%) of respondents to a recent survey said poor communication with subcontractors had a negative impact on construction project performance. TopBuilder stores every note, file, and update in a single timeline, so if a client questions a verbal approval or invoice, you’ve got the full history to back you up.
Fewer mistakes. Fewer awkward discrepancies. More trust.
Even the best estimator can forget to follow up. Wth TopBuilder, nothing slips through the cracks. As soon as a lead enters the system, a follow-up task is created automatically.
And follow-ups matter. Whether you rely on auto-replies or calendar reminders, TopBuilder helps you stay on top of every opportunity.
The calendar tools also fix one of the most common (and costly) time-wasters: the approval feedback loop.
It’s a loop that burns hours and delays progress.
TopBuilder breaks the cycle by clearly tracking who’s responsible for what and notifying the right people at the right time. No more confusion. No more delays. Just faster decisions and smoother workflows.
Winning the bid is only half the battle. Delivering on the promise is what builds your reputation.
With TopBuilder, critical project details don’t get lost between sales and operations. Let’s say your sales team agrees to custom paint specs and a tighter-than-usual turnaround to land the job. TopBuilder automatically pushes that info to your PM so they know exactly what was promised and how to deliver it.
No more miscommunication or dropped details. Just a smoother handoff and a happier client.
TopBuilder also keeps important notes visible and accessible. How many times has a change order update from your estimator been buried in a never-ending email chain? Instead, TopBuilder syncs those notes directly to operations, so the team can confirm the change and adjust the schedule before it becomes a delay.
Everything works together to create a seamless, professional experience for your customer that builds your trust and your reputation.
To keep your business running smoothly, the right hand has to know what the left hand is doing. ContractorBI™ dashboards make that possible, giving you real-time visibility into timelines, budgets, labor hours, and profit margins.
Let’s say the executive dashboard shows school renovations are delivering higher margins than new retail builds. Now you can adjust your bidding strategy to chase more profitable work.
Or maybe the CFO sees pipeline and labor data pointing to a slowdown in Q3. With that early warning, you’ve got time to shift hiring plans and protect your bottom line.
TopBuilder makes it easy to surface insights fast. Filter by job type, region, crew, or any other metric to see what’s working — and what’s not.
The result? Smarter decisions, higher margins, and a more agile business.
Surprises are great for birthdays, but not construction projects. TopBuilder eliminates the unexpected by centralizing all client communication in one place.
Emails, meeting notes, site photos, change orders, RFIs — it’s all stored and easy to access. Clients can check in anytime, and if something catches them off guard, it’s not because they didn’t have the info. It’s because they didn’t look.
TopBuilder also makes it easy to keep clients engaged with follow-up reminders and updates at every stage. That kind of proactive communication builds stronger relationships, leads to repeat business, and strengthens your reputation.
For hands-on clients, PMs don’t have to waste time tracking down info. Everything’s in TopBuilder, ready to go. And when it comes time for billing, linked meeting notes give you a clear record of who agreed to what, helping you resolve disputes quickly and confidently.
Construction project management is complex. But with TopBuilder, you can stop chasing details and start focusing on delivering great work.
Schedule a TopBuilder demo to see how it works.
You get what looks like a great construction project — a large-scale new plumbing build. Problem is, the competition is tough. Dropping your quote will get you the plumbing job, but you’d almost be working for free.
Continue reading “How To Bid a Plumbing Job and Win More Without Cutting Prices”
Among tight margins, competitive timelines, and high-volume opportunities, managing the bid process can feel like a full-time job (or several!). But in commercial construction, success comes down to the bids you win. Or, more accurately, the systems and strategy behind your bidding that help you increase your bid rate.
Continue reading “How TopBuilder Helped Hatzel & Buehler Increase Their Bid Rate by 28%”
Speed and accuracy in quoting can make the difference between winning a construction project or losing it to the competition. Manual processes are slow and error-prone, increasing your odds of letting opportunities slip away.
If your team is still spending hours copying numbers from spreadsheets, double-checking prices, or conducting ad hoc follow-up on proposals, the reality is that you’re wasting valuable time that could be better spent elsewhere. Like on winning more bids.
And even when quotes go out the door, they may not look as professional as you hoped which can hurt your credibility with potential clients. Worse yet, they may lack the critical details project owners expect, like scope of work, job photos, specs, and standard agreements.
So, how do you close deals faster and make a stronger impression? With construction quoting software that automates the process, supports complete documentation, and produces polished, professional proposals every time.
Contractors historically relied on spreadsheets, email chains, and even pad-and-paper-level manual processes to create quotes. In fact, many contractors still do.
And while these methods may have worked in the past, they come with a number of downsides.
Quoting often involves pulling information from multiple sources including spreadsheets, emails, and even handwritten notes. And it can take hours (or days!) to gather all supply costs, estimate labor, and format proposals manually.
Compare that to using TopBuilder’s Construction CRM, that helps contractors quote five times faster!
A single pricing mistake, whether due to outdated data or a simple typo, can result in lost revenue, reduced profit margins, or even disputes down the line. And with manual quoting, there is added room for error compared to a system that automatically syncs with your estimating and accounting tools.
Even if the numbers are right, proposals can often fall short in presentation. Generic formats, missing details, or clunky attachments can give the impression of disorganization. Without the ability to include specs, photos, scope of work, or standard documents, quotes can feel incomplete and less compelling to potential clients. With TopBuilder, your team can send professional, branded proposals with all the relevant materials in one polished package.
Once a proposal is sent, tracking its status can be difficult. Did the client receive it? Have they reviewed it? When should you follow up?
Without a structured workflow, opportunities can slip through the cracks – and that means you may be missing out on deals simply because there wasn’t follow-up at the right time.
For many contractors, their quoting process exists in isolation from other business functions because there’s no way to integrate it. That means they’re manually re-entering data into their estimating software and accounting systems – wasting time and increasing the risk of misalignment. And that creates inefficiencies that can ripple across the business.
TopBuilder’s quoting capabilities are designed to eliminate all these challenges and more by automating, organizing, and integrating every step of the process. Here’s how.
Rather than building every quote from scratch, TopBuilder’s quoting software integrates with Excel and estimating tools to pull in pricing, materials, and labor costs instantly. This means you can:
Instead of spending hours formatting and compiling numbers, you can generate accurate, professional proposals with just a few clicks.
Automated quoting tools like TopBuilder help eliminate the risk of errors from outdated cost data or manual miscalculations by ensuring that:
A slow approval process can mean lost opportunities. Instead of waiting for clients to print, sign, and scan documents, TopBuilder provides:
Keeping track of quotes, revisions, and project details isn’t easy – especially when the information is all stored in different locations. TopBuilder centralizes everything so your team can:
Organizing all your proposal-related data in one place saves you time, reduces the risk of miscommunication, and makes team-wide collaboration easier.
Speed and accuracy in quoting are only part of the equation. To truly optimize your sales process, you need data and instant insights to understand which bids are working – and why.
That’s where ContractorBI™, TopBuilder’s suite of business intelligence dashboards, comes in. By integrating your quoting data with real-time bid performance tracking, you can:
With TopBuilder and ContractorBI™, you’re not just sending out quotes faster. You’re making smarter decisions that improve win rates, profitability, and long-term growth.
Speed and accuracy matter. Taking too long to create and send a quote means the client may move forward with a competitor before they even have the chance to review your proposal.
Contractors who use TopBuilder see immediate returns, including generating proposals 75% faster and seeing a 10% increase in deal closures – simply by optimizing how they create, send, and track proposals.
As one plumbing contractor who uses TopBuilder said, “We used to spend two weeks preparing a single bid. Now it takes two hours.”
See how TopBuilder can transform your quoting process and win more bids, faster. Connect with us today for a short demo!
Tracking construction sales performance isn’t just about closing more deals – it’s about winning the right projects and improving overall profitability. But without clear insights, specialty contractors risk chasing bad bids, misallocating resources, or failing to identify revenue leaks.
Without the right tools, those insights don’t come easily. Manually tracking bid performance, sales activity, and forecasting future work can be overwhelming – especially when that data is scattered across spreadsheets, emails, and other disconnected sources.
That’s where ContractorBI comes in. Designed specifically for construction sales and bid management, ContractorBI allows contractors to visualize sales and bid performance in real-time. Instead of relying on gut instinct or outdated information, contractors can make data-driven decisions that improve win rates and profitability.
Let’s explore the key sales metrics that every specialty contractor should be tracking – and how ContractorBI makes it easy to do so.
Winning projects is the goal – but how often are you landing the jobs you bid on? Your bid win rate tells you how successful you are at securing work and is an indicator of your business’ health. A low win rate can signal pricing issues, poor bid targeting, or an ineffective sales strategy. Likewise, a sudden drop in your win rate warrants further investigation.
With ContractorBI, you can track won/lost bids by job type, customer, estimator, industry, division/territory, bid source, project size, and sales rep, helping you refine your bidding strategy. Past performance isn’t a guarantee for future success, but it does give you important data that can be used to identify opportunities and make adjustments to improve success rates.
In a similar vein, your bid conversion rate measures the percentage of bids that turn into awarded jobs. A high conversion rate means that you’re focusing on the right winnable bids instead of wasting time on long shots.
ContractorBI allows you to monitor bid volume, awarded jobs, and lost opportunities all in one place so you can better pinpoint trends and better understand why some bids convert while others don’t.
If you notice that one general contractor consistently awards you projects at a 20% higher rate, for instance, that’s a strong indicator to prioritize working with them in the future.
Keeping your pipeline full is key to maintaining steady revenue. Track new leads, bids submitted, and awarded jobs to better anticipate future workload and prevent gaps in your schedule.
ContractorBI provides real-time visibility into your sales pipeline, so you can identify slow periods ahead of time and take proactive steps. If your revenue forecast shows a drop-off in the coming quarters, for example, you can start ramping up bidding efforts now to fill the gap.
Understanding why you lost a bid is just as important as knowing why you won one. Lost bid analysis helps you identify patterns and uncover the most significant factors that impact your success rate.
With ContractorBI, you can track the top reasons for lost bids – whether it’s due to pricing, competition, scope mismatch, or lack of follow-up. If you lost 30% of bids because of pricing, for instance, it may be time to re-evaluate your pricing strategy and identify any areas where costs can be reduced.
Not all projects are equal. Some will simply be more profitable than others for a range of reasons. Track profitability by job type and customer to focus your efforts on the most lucrative opportunities.
ContractorBI allows you to compare markup, profits, and revenue trends across different job types, customers, geographic areas, and markets. This insight can help you allocate your resources more effectively and guide your bidding decisions. If one type of customer consistently provides higher-margin projects, it may be worth investing more into that relationship instead of taking on lower-margin work elsewhere.
These five construction sales metrics matter, no matter how you track them. But when you rely on spreadsheets or manual tracking, you face having outdated and incomplete data to make decisions. Without real-time visibility, it’s much harder and more time-consuming to accurately predict future work, identify weak spots in your bidding process, or adjust your sales strategy to fluctuating market trends.
Success in construction sales isn’t just about bidding more—it’s about bidding smarter and tracking what actually works. With ContractorBI, you get the insights you need to make your data actionable.
Learn more about how ContractorBI can help your business grow by scheduling a conversation with us today.
