Construction CRM for UK firms: winning the work, and leaving the job to your job software

What is a construction CRM?

A construction CRM is a system that holds every enquiry, site visit, quote and tender in one sales pipeline, with a follow-up task attached to each open quote and a record of every client, main contractor, architect and subcontractor you deal with. It manages winning work. Scheduling the crew, job sheets and invoicing belong to job management software, and the best construction CRM setups leave them there.

We help UK construction firms choose between these tools and then do the part that follows, which is moving the quotes spreadsheet, the sent-items folder and the owner’s phone contacts into one organised system. From that work, the pattern is consistent. The firms quoting plenty and converting less than they should have a follow-up problem rather than a pricing one, and that’s the problem a CRM for construction firms fixes first.

The rest of this guide is the sales and marketing half: which CRMs UK construction companies use, what they cost, how to build a construction sales CRM pipeline, and where construction marketing fits.

Contents

• How does a construction CRM differ from job management software?
• Which CRM do UK construction companies use?
• What does a construction sales pipeline look like?
• Which CRM is best for construction marketing?
• What should you look for in a CRM for construction?
• What does this look like for a small contractor?
• Moving from spreadsheets and email into a construction CRM
• Construction CRM FAQ
• TL;DR

How does a construction CRM differ from job management software?

A construction CRM manages the work before the contract is signed. Job management software such as Tradify, Jobber, SimPRO and Buildertrend manages the work after it, from scheduling and site photos to variations and invoicing. Google blurs the two, and Checkatrade’s own explainer defines “construction CRM” as covering both, which is how a firm ends up paying for a scheduling app to solve a chasing problem.

The two integrate rather than compete. The usual arrangement is the CRM owning everything up to “job won”, then the job tool taking over, with a Zapier step or a manual handover creating the job from the won quote. Our guide to CRM for tradesmen and trades businesses covers the job-management side in detail, including which of the trades apps does what and when a sole trader should skip the CRM entirely. This post takes the other half, the sales and marketing side, for firms with a sales process to run.

Which CRM do UK construction companies use?

Small UK construction firms mostly use a general CRM paired with a job or accounting tool, and Capsule, Pipedrive, HubSpot and Zoho are the four we meet most often. Specialist construction CRMs exist and suit some firms, and the table below puts both groups against each other on UK pricing at the time of writing. Annual billing per user unless stated.

The general CRMs win on price, mobile apps and the breadth of integrations, and for a firm under 20 people they cover the sales side completely. The construction-specific tools win where the firm’s growth depends on finding projects rather than converting enquiries, because Salestracker from Insight Data and BuddyCRM bundle UK project and planning-application lead data that a general CRM will never have. The project management platforms shouldn’t be in the comparison at all, and the fact that they rank for the query is the reason so many firms buy the wrong category.

Our pick for most small construction firms is Capsule or Pipedrive with a job tool alongside, and HubSpot where the owner wants email marketing in the same login and will pay the Professional-tier price for it later. If you’re weighing the general tools against each other on more than price, our guide to what a CRM costs in the UK sets out the tiers across all of them, and the Capsule vs HubSpot comparison covers the pair that make most shortlists.

What does a construction sales pipeline look like?

Enquiry, site visit, quote or tender, contract. That’s the spine of a construction sales pipeline, and the well-run ones add a retention stage after handover for the repeat work. Direct quotes and formal tenders should sit in separate pipelines or clearly tagged flows, because their conversion rates are far enough apart that mixing them produces a forecast describing neither.

Our sales pipeline stages guide has the worked stage list for the pre-contract part, and the short version is that the stages should carry the milestones your firm hits. “Site survey booked”, “Quote submitted”, “Tender submitted” and “Awaiting decision” are stages, and a board built from them can be reported on.

The tender split gets missed first. At the same firm, we’ve seen direct-quote win rates run at three or four times the open-tender rate. Averaged together they hide the higher converting process. Kept apart, they tell you whether a slow month is a pricing problem on quotes or a volume problem on tenders, and which of the two deserves the next hour of the owner’s time.

The retention stage gets missed second. A completed fit-out, extension or M&E install is where the next enquiry from that client starts. A stage or tag that marks the job complete with a re-contact date (six months for maintenance-led trades, twelve to eighteen for refits and extensions) is where the cheapest work on the pipeline comes from.

We receommend that every submitted quote should carry a follow-up task with an owner and a date, and any window you set is a ceiling rather than a target. The company that calls back first often has no competing quote on the table by the time the client decides. Our quote follow-up framework has the timings and the sequence.

Which CRM is best for construction marketing?

The best CRM for construction marketing is the one that can email a segment of your past clients and open quotes from the same records the sales pipeline runs on. For most firms under 20 people that means HubSpot, or Capsule paired with Transpond, or Zoho CRM with Zoho Campaigns, and the choice matters less than the three sequences you set up in it.

For a small firm, construction marketing means repeat work and referrals, and the email that supports them is short and specific:

1. Quote follow-up. An automated two or three step sequence after a quote goes out, stopped the moment the client replies. This is the highest-return marketing a construction firm can do and almost nobody does it!
2. Won and lost. A thank-you and a “what to expect” email on award, and a polite “keep us in mind” on decline with a tag so the lost tender is re-approached when the main contractor next has a package out.
3. Past-client re-contact. A segment of completed jobs by type and date, emailed once or twice a year: a seasonal maintenance reminder, a “we’re working in your area” note, a request for a referral or a review. Your past clients are the warmest list you’ll ever own, and the CRM is the only place it can be built without re-typing it.

For the tools, the difference is mainly where the email lives. HubSpot has it built in, with the sequences on Sales Hub Starter and broadcast email on the free CRM up to a monthly send limit. Capsule integrates with Gmail and Outlook to send follow ups from your mailbox, and Pipedrive pushes contacts to an email tool (Campaigns as a paid add-on for Pipedrive) and pulls engagement back to the record. Our CRM email integration comparison shows where each platform charges for the inbox connection that makes the follow-up sequences work.

What should you look for in a CRM for construction?

Whether a construction CRM gets used past the first month comes down to a short list, and the feature grid on the pricing page isn’t on it.

• Two pipelines, or tags that allow labelling of what’s a quote and what’s a tender. Quotes and tenders separated, as above. Capsule needs Growth for a second pipeline, Pipedrive and HubSpot include it on the entry tier, Zoho includes it on Standard.
• Custom fields for the construction facts. Project type, site postcode, estimated and awarded value, procurement route and the decision-maker’s role. These are what make the reports mean anything, and our guide to CRM tags and custom fields covers how to keep the set small.
• A live link to Xero or QuickBooks. Invoice and payment status on the contact record, so pricing for a repeat client starts from what they owe. Our CRM accounting integration comparison shows which platforms go deepest. CIS deductions, retentions and applications for payment stay in the accounting software.
• A mobile app that works from the van. Log an enquiry, check a quote, set a follow-up task, in two minutes between site visits. Capsule, Pipedrive and HubSpot all pass this. Several of the specialist tools don’t.
• A clean handover to the job tool. When a quote is marked won, the job appears in the scheduling software with the site, the spec and the contact attached. Native integrations exist for some pairs, and Zapier covers the rest.

What does this look like for a small contractor?

Take an eight-person fit-out contractor with an owner who prices, an office manager and six on site. Before the CRM, enquiries arrive by phone and email, quotes are typed in Word and logged in a spreadsheet, tenders are tracked by inbox folder, and follow-up happens when the owner remembers on a Friday.

After the setup, the pipeline has two boards. The quotes board helps you track enquiry, site visit, quote sent, follow-up, won or lost. The tenders board runs invited, submitted, clarifications, decision. Each quote sent creates a follow-up task for the office manager at day three and the owner at day ten. Won quotes create a job in the scheduling app via Zapier. Completed jobs get a tag and a re-contact date, and the past-client list gets one email a quarter.

The weekly ten minutes the owner spends on it is looking at one number, open quote value by stage, and one list, follow-ups overdue. That’s the whole discipline. We did a version of this for a Cheshire commercial fit-out contractor, where the quotes and tenders came out of a spreadsheet and three inboxes into two Capsule pipelines, and the tender split was the decision that made the reporting usable.

Moving from spreadsheets and email into a construction CRM

Choosing the CRM takes an afternoon. The data move takes the rest of the project, and in construction it’s nearly always the same three sources: a quotes spreadsheet, a sent-items folder full of PDFs, and the contacts on the owner’s phone. None of them was designed to be exported, and the move is where most of a setup’s time goes.

From our migration work with contractors, each source gives up something different. The spreadsheet holds the open quotes with values and dates, but usually no consistent company name, so a main contractor appears as three different rows, and deduplication into a single company record per client is most of the clean-up.

The inbox holds the tender history and the architects, QSs and project managers who were copied on it. That’s the relationship map, and it’s the part firms are most surprised to see once it’s in one place. The phone holds the subcontractors and suppliers, often with no company attached, and they need a contact type so they stop appearing in the sales reports.

We’ve written the sequence up in our CRM setup and data migration guide, and priced the whole setup, migration included, in what CRM implementation costs in the UK. If you’re not sure the spreadsheet is the problem yet, the real cost of spreadsheets is the place to start. The setup and migration work itself is what our CRM setup, migration and training service covers.

Construction CRM FAQ

What is a CRM for construction?

A construction CRM is a system that holds every enquiry, site visit, quote and tender in one sales pipeline, with a follow-up task attached to each open quote and a record of every client, main contractor, architect and subcontractor you deal with. It manages winning work. Scheduling, job sheets and invoicing belong to job management software.

What CRM do construction companies use?

Small UK construction firms mostly use a general CRM, with Capsule, Pipedrive, HubSpot and Zoho the four we see most, paired with a job management or accounting tool. Construction-specific CRMs such as BuddyCRM and Chime suit firms that want project lead data or CIS-aware workflows built in. Procore, Buildertrend and Buildxact are project management tools, not CRMs.

Is there a free CRM for construction?

Yes. Capsule’s free plan covers two users, 250 contacts and one pipeline, HubSpot’s free CRM covers two users with basic pipeline and email tools, and Zoho’s free tier covers three users. For a sole trader or a two-person firm quoting a few jobs a week, the free tier is often enough for a year or more.

How much does a construction CRM cost in the UK?

At the time of writing, a general CRM for a UK construction firm costs £12 to £18 per user per month on annual billing at the entry tier (Zoho £12, Capsule £14, HubSpot £18, Pipedrive around $14 billed in dollars), rising to £27 to £85 for the tiers with automation. A consultant-led setup and data migration typically adds a one-off £1,000 to £3,000.

Do subcontractors need a CRM?

A subcontractor pricing for several main contractors needs one more than most, because the pipeline is a list of tenders with deadlines and each main contractor is a relationship worth tracking across jobs. A subcontractor who works for one or two contractors on repeat can manage without, and should spend the money on job software instead.

TL;DR

• A construction CRM manages the activities that lead to winning work: enquiries, site visits, quotes, tenders and follow-up in one pipeline. Job management software manages delivering it. We suggest you run both, and connect them at “job won”. This can be done via integration or manually, it’s up to you.
• UK construction firms mostly use Capsule, Pipedrive, HubSpot or Zoho, from £12 to £18 per user per month at the entry tier. BuddyCRM, Chime and Salestracker are the construction-specific options, and Procore, Buildertrend and Buildxact aren’t CRMs at all.
• Keep direct quotes and tenders in separate pipelines. Their win rates differ by a multiple, and averaging them hides which one needs attention.
• Construction marketing is three email sequences: quote follow-up, won and lost, and past-client re-contact. The CRM is the only place the past-client list can be built.
• Look for two pipelines, construction custom fields, a Xero or QuickBooks link, a mobile app that works from the van, and a handover to the job tool.
• The data move from spreadsheets, inbox and phone is the bigger half of the setup. Budget for it.