Four Reasons Contractors Should Track Their Bid Pipeline
By Ross Romero
When you don't know what's coming down the pike, you don't know how much you stand to gain—or lose. Tracking a bid pipeline is essential for any business owner in the subcontracting industry. It's not enough to have an idea of where your bids are in the process because to make accurate financial forecasts and to give your team the tools they need to meet sales goals, you need more concrete data.
"A percentage of your company's profits depend on winning bids, so if you nurture your pipeline, you nurture growth."
Top 4 Reasons To Track Your Bid Pipeline
- Ensure your sales team has enough coming down the pipeline to meet sales goals
- Submit your best bids and best work by being organized and unrushed
- Make informed decisions about where to invest your resources and time
- Understand the health of your company and forecast future revenue
Followup CRM has the tools contractors need to organize and grow their business. We are a customer relationship management system created by contractors, so we understand the features you need for a successful system. Watch a free video demo of our software.
Ensure Opportunity
When you don't track your bid pipeline, you can't be sure that there are enough opportunities to pursue. Your team is striving to meet sales quotas, so be sure to give them all the resources they need, including the ease and clarity of seeing mapped-out bids. This helps employees better prioritize certain bids or tasks to keep everything moving forward without losing momentum. Followup CRM has an easy-to-use interface with visual representations of your pipeline, and we provide training so you can hit the ground running.
Submit Your Best Bids
Your pipeline makes sure everyone is on the same page and reduces the likelihood of error. When you have all your bids marked with their status in the pipeline and have your next steps clearly communicated, your team can work efficiently. Followup CRM color-codes the status of your bids and allows you to pull reports about your bid pipeline so you can ensure that you're submitting error-free bids on time.
Make Informed Decisions
When you use a solution like Followup CRM to track your bid pipeline, the organized opportunities allow you to do more than just stay afloat. At any given time you should have several bids in various stages because variety lets you make decisions about which bids to prioritize as a company. All the bids in your pipeline won't always be winners, so don't waste time and energy by chasing the losers. The only way you'll know how to distinguish the two is by reviewing historical data on the likelihood of success.
Followup CRM records past bid information so you can pull reports to compare the success of winning one bid over another and make informed decisions about where to focus your resources.
Measure Company Health And Growth
When you find that the number or quality of bids in your pipeline is steadily declining year after year, that means there's a problem. You can't get an understanding of your pipeline's health and how it can create growth if you aren't tracking it. A percentage of your company's profits depend on winning bids, so if you nurture your pipeline, you nurture growth. With Followup CRM, we make it easy for you to assess the health of your business and use that information to make a strategic change.
