SPECIAL GUEST: Why Your Sales Team Needs a CRM Built for Construction

In this episode of Digital Marketing for Contractors, we’re joined by Erik Vargas, co-founder of FollowUp CRM. Built from inside a commercial roofing company, FollowUp CRM is tailor-made for construction contractors with a commercial and residential division. Erik dives into why traditional CRMs fall short in this industry, how poor follow-up is killing your close rate, and what separates high-performing contractors from the rest.

We talk about:

• The origin of FollowUp CRM (and why Salesforce didn’t cut it)
• How lack of follow-up is losing you business
• The challenges of switching CRMs vs. starting from scratch
• Real stories of $4M jobs won through consistent follow-up
• How AI will streamline admin for sales teams (eventually)

Whether you’re still managing your pipeline on spreadsheets or using a CRM that doesn’t fit your workflow, this episode will challenge the way you think about sales systems in construction.

Want to find out how we can create a custom digital marketing game plan for your contractor business? Schedule a call with us at fatcatstrategies.com.

Transcript

Speaker 00: 0:01

Welcome to digital marketing for contractors, a podcast for home improvement contractors to help you crush your lead goals and take your business to the next level. Join us each episode as we give you powerful insights and practical tips on the best digital marketing strategies to help you grow your home improvement business. Let's get started.

Janet: 0:33

Welcome back to another episode of Digital Marketing for Contractors. If you give us 30 minutes, our goal is to give you some tips to help you run your business better. And today we are super excited to have a special guest with us. Our guest is Eric Vargas from Follow Up CRM. Eric, why don't you introduce yourself? Tell us a little bit about yourself and your company and what we need to know about Follow Up CRM.

Erik: 0:57

Yeah, Follow Up CRM is a construction-focused CRM. And we were actually born out of a commercial roofing contractor in Fort Lauderdale called Best Roofing. And so I'm the co-founder of the company. And the founder of the company is a guy, my mentor named Greg Wallach. And He founded Best Roofing and many other commercial roofing companies. And together we have designed and grown Follow Up CRM initially for his company and then for construction companies now all over the country.

Janet: 1:34

Oh, that's fantastic. So is your focus primarily commercial?

Erik: 1:39

Exactly. So our strength is commercial, but a lot of these construction companies out there might have a residential division. That's kind of table stakes, to be honest. But what makes us different is that we were built with commercial in mind.

Janet: 1:55

So that's a little bit different for us and a little bit different for our audience, but I love it and we can dig into it. We love a CRM. Yeah, we love a CRM and we love the construction industry. Fat Cat, our listeners are mostly home improvement contractors, but a lot of them are roofers. And they have residents. And a lot of them are roofers and siding companies. And many of those companies have a commercial arm and a residential arm. So today's a little different since most of the time we're talking about strictly home improvement.

Erik: 2:27

Well, most of our customers, I'm going to say... uh probably 75 percent have a resident residential division right and so that's why you know we're happy to have conversations with everybody

Janet: 2:40

awesome so with that in mind um you said it was born out of best roofing and you kind of took what you guys knew about what you were doing turned that into a crm um what makes you different from some of the other crms in the marketplace like what was the impetus i mean i assume you had one already and you must have thought this sucks. We can do better. Like tell us that story.

Erik: 3:05

Yeah. So a couple of different reasons. Um, so you would be surprised how many contractors also think they're software developers. It's, it's really funny. You know, everybody has their way. They want to do something right. And that's, um, and that's really kind of the, um, art behind it. Right. So Greg, back in the day, um, you know, this was now 12 years ago, he actually went to a Salesforce conference.

Unknown: 3:29

Okay.

Erik: 3:30

and um there was one in miami at the time and he checked it out he's like i know i need a crm uh this is the number one uh one out there so i'm gonna go and learn and so that's what he did okay and then from there he said this is really great if uh you're purely residential or purely um like selling widgets, but it's not great if you're selling roofs. And so, um, part of the reason why is just the complexity of Salesforce. You sign up for Salesforce and you're just overwhelmed on everything that you can do. Right. And so, um, that's how followups CRM started actually was originally called bid log. Cause, uh,

Janet: 4:13

ID log. Okay. Cause it's a contractor. You're probably bidding on all kinds of RFPs and maybe contracts. So you got to keep up with the bids. I get it.

Erik: 4:24

And, uh, it's funny before I came along. Um, you know, if I was a part of that original decision to change it, I would have kept the name. Cause I think that name is great. And, um, so bid log is a great name, uh, for our company, but follow up CRM, you know, uh, we got our name because, um, that was the primary issue that he was trying to solve at his company was the lack of follow up on the opportunities.

Caitlyn: 4:49

Definitely. Right.

Erik: 4:50

So, you know, whenever there's a storm or something's going on, like people would call in and generating leads like everyone thinks leads is the problem. But if you just called the leads from last month, you would be surprised how many people are still looking for the right service. So.

Janet: 5:11

Oh, you are preaching to the choir now.

Caitlyn: 5:13

And I guess that's on the commercial side of things too. Like, I mean, we definitely hear that on the residential side, but it sounds like commercial, that's the same case.

Erik: 5:23

yeah so i guess two stories number one my personal experience i had a leak uh two years ago and i'm like oh okay this is uh my perfect chance to see how my local residential roofers are following up with me right um and so uh that's exactly what i did i reached out to four uh roofers in my area um all of them came by spent the time to give me a quote to walk on the roof etc etc guess how many followed up out of four

Caitlyn: 5:52

one three

Erik: 5:53

zero zero zero uh yeah with a leak and uh you know this was a three thousand dollar quote and zero of them like followed up with me and i was just like if so i called the sales process like the dating process

Caitlyn: 6:11

right yeah me too yeah

Erik: 6:13

and so if you're misbehaving in the dating process the marriage doesn't get any better so um that's why i'm like well i guess i'm not going with any of these guys right um and so uh that's the problem yeah

Caitlyn: 6:27

yeah it's not big enough that's crazy so okay what makes uh follow-up different from like i mean there are there you named salesforce that's the biggest

Janet: 6:38

i mean yeah we we come across like accu links i think is big in residential roofing i honestly don't know if Acculinks positions itself to commercial contractors, you would know

Erik: 6:49

better. Yeah, no, they don't. So Acculinks is a great company. So we used to compete with them a lot. But they're great, especially if you're like the end, they're the end-to-end solution for like a small residential roofing company, right? And so I would say if you're probably, you know, $15 million residential roofing company and below, you're going to want acculinks and it's great so they'll help you do like the um the the aerial they'll help you order materials and so that's what by end to end from initial lead all the way to production is what acculinks does right and that's not what we do we are the revenue system for a company, right? And so, yeah, actually some of our customers, funny enough, will use follow-up because they have a commercial division and a metal division and a siding division. They'll use follow-up to track all their leads, bids, and customers, and then they'll use AccuLynx for the production side. So we have customers doing that because they're really good at what they do and why change something if it's working, so.

Janet: 8:04

So if we go back to that original name, bid log, that's where you are in the process. If it's on the commercial side and you're one of three big contractors bidding on, say, a hospital roof, then that's where follow-up CRM is going to track where you are in that bid process. But then once you win the job, depending on how you organize your business, the installation and management of that job may go into another piece of software.

Erik: 8:32

Yeah. So we say we're from the initial contact of the customer to the contract. So signing the deal from that, the whole sales process, that's yeah. Contact to contract. That's our, that's where we live and we're going deep in that area and going to be the best CRM in the industry for that.

Janet: 8:52

So right on your homepage, you call out a few integrations like Foundation, Sage, Viewpoint, Computer Ease. Talk to us about why it was important to highlight those right there on the homepage.

Erik: 9:05

Yeah. So basically that's where our best customers come from. So they're ready using these platforms. And yeah, we are the CRM that plugs into these platforms. So a lot of those, you know, might be residential or commercial companies but we're we're targeting more kind of like mid-market um construction companies

Caitlyn: 9:29

okay great so they plug right in so what what are their integrations i mean

Erik: 9:32

yeah we have we have ton we have like 20 integrations uh company cam one you might be familiar with love those guys over there um yeah really nice integration you take pictures uh on your company cam they automatically load into your proposal at follow up. So that's pretty neat. We have a great Outlook integration. I think it's the best in the industry. Okay. Yeah. So it automatically can read your email and start to enter your lead information for you into the system.

Caitlyn: 10:08

Oh, wow.

Erik: 10:09

Yeah. Yeah. It could take a document from your email and then save it into the project file for you.

Caitlyn: 10:16

Okay.

Erik: 10:17

So you don't have to save it, drag it, and drop it, upload it, all that. So a lot of, yeah, so many integrations. That's like half of the product roadmap is integrating follow-up into the systems that are already out there.

Janet: 10:33

Right, because otherwise you're putting the work back on your users to manually copy and paste from one system to the other, and nobody likes to do that. That's fantastic. So let's talk, like, who is your... Describe to us your sweet spot. Like where do you feel like you shine? What does that customer look like? What kind of pains do they have in their business? What does the onboarding process look like?

Erik: 11:01

Yeah. So our sweet spot, we call it like pipeline management.

Janet: 11:05

Okay.

Erik: 11:06

That, that is what, I mean, I got a call from a customer a week ago.

Unknown: 11:10

He's like, I just wanted to call you because, um, I am now asking the owner of the company of my construction companies for equity in his company, because I've turned our company from not knowing what we're going to close this month to be able to predict revenue in the future for the next six months.

Erik: 11:33

And so now he is able to kind of, you know, I don't know how many X the value of his company because he implemented this system in place. And so pipeline management, business development, winning the contract, that's our sweet spot.

Janet: 11:54

Oh, that's great. So you created an amazing success story, but a big old question mark for the principal owner.

Unknown: 12:05

Yeah.

Erik: 12:05

exactly well you know it was a great time because actually you know the guy's looking to retire sometime soon and you know yeah so um you know it builds confidence you know when owner actually we're seeing that a lot in the industry where you know dad ran the company for 30 years this way and has all the relationships in his head and you know kids are trying to take over and so they're implementing software for the first time

Janet: 12:33

So you're actually working with companies that have never really had a CRM and you're helping them implement it for the first time.

Erik: 12:40

Yeah, yeah. That's actually ideal for us, replacing something that's working. You know, if it ain't broke, don't fix it. But most of our customers come from paper or spreadsheets.

Janet: 12:53

Huh. So I'm always kind of fascinated with our client base. I don't know if it's like a shiny object syndrome, but I'm always surprised when there's a company that's up and running and they've got a CRM in place. And then out of the blue, they switch to another one. And to me, that is such a gigantic data migration experience. challenge and years of notes and past estimates and closing ratio reports and they're like i'm switching crms

Erik: 13:27

well actually we'll actually disqualify some customers that are on crms already it's a red flag for us because we've uh we've been through the story too many times it it is too painful to change and the benefit uh so CRMs, the way I say it is 80% of CRMs do all the same thing.

Janet: 13:52

They do, just the buttons in a different place.

Erik: 13:55

The UI might be different. You know, it might have one or two additional features, but really the problem is people think software fixes problems. It exposes problems. Right. And so that, what you're describing here is not a software problem. It's a people problem. So yeah, totally, totally. And let's say you're rolling out a CRM to 10 people. Um, some, uh, maybe, uh, someone who's not sophisticated would think finally now my sales team will sell more things, right? The reality is you're going to see the actual performance of those 10 people and you're going to see your top performer and then you're going to see your bottom performers. And then as a good manager, then you can decide what actions to take to fix the bottom performers or the top performers and promote them and stuff like that. It exposes what's there already. Right.

Janet: 15:00

So if you're most often taking businesses that are up and running and successful, but they've never really had a pipeline management solution in place and you're onboarding them for the first time, walk us through some of the things that you do to help with that onboarding.

Erik: 15:15

Yeah, so I actually think this is the most important part of the process. So we have a kind of white glove onboarding experience. I think we're defining it to be the best in the industry, to be honest, because here's what we know. if you onboard correctly within the first three months, then you're going to be with followup forever. And so you're, you have a dedicated person, at least with followup to answer all your questions too. Uh, because most software companies, if you spin up a software, um, you're it's a free trial and that's why we don't do free trials because you'll get a blank system and people will say, good luck. Right. And you're like, oh, what do I do now? And so the nice thing about our onboarding specialists is that they've onboarded companies like yours before. And most people want a template to copy. And that's what our onboarding specialists kind of provide. Right. And then you tweak 20% of it to your company. Right. And so it's a lot of best practices. Right. and will help you avoid the pitfalls that you come across when you're managing change at your company.

Caitlyn: 16:31

Absolutely. So I was going to say, I mean, so there's no free trial makes perfect sense. How does billing work?

Erik: 16:38

well we we we do we do a little bit of a free trial we do like a guided free trial right so it's like yeah so you can you can uh so the way our process works is you request a demo and you kind of look at the system with somebody and then somebody says okay i want to can i click around with uh can i click around in there and so we say sure seven day free trial and but we don't give you the keys and say good luck we actually do the first two meetings with you for free you know, to get you in there. And so we, you know, make sure your logos in there, your dropdowns are in, are in there so that you can track what you want to track and, you know, do a couple of calls for free. So that's, that's what we do as a free trial.

Janet: 17:20

Perfection. And the demo. And then back to that onboarding. I'm just trying to picture like a company that's, I guess they're using whiteboards and notebooks and file cabinets. A lot of notebooks.

Erik: 17:32

Yeah.

Janet: 17:32

What is your thought on, um, just picking a day and saying moving forward it's all digital or do you make some sort of effort to bring history in and if you are bringing history in what does that look like

Erik: 17:46

yeah so um this is the biggest obstacle people face when starting a crm right um like it really depends on the data quality that you have garbage in garbage out can't fix that right so um We do have a data import tool that if you have something nice and clean in a spreadsheet, we can get in there very quickly. And so our best companies are probably managing some things on Google Sheets or something like that. And so we can get you started with the past month's worth of your data, as long as you're managing it well. yeah we can get all your leads in there and all of that but we have other companies that say you know we have 10 15 years worth of data in file maker right or ax crm that has been sitting there and we're like i understand that you want that but why are you going to you know input garbage that you're like, what was the last time you actually looked up the data in there? Oh, never. So why? Right. So just helping people through that process. I know it's scary to feel like you delete the history, but you know, just keep act open with one user, you know, for 50 bucks and then you can go there if you ever need it.

Janet: 19:05

Yeah. Yeah. I was actually thinking that like the data is still there in the old format. Yeah. Just walk into the old format to look up that old customer.

Erik: 19:14

Yeah, just have an official go live date across the company and say, hey, we're doing this thing on January 1st and that's how we're moving forward.

Janet: 19:22

So talk to us a little bit about your roadmap. I mean, if you're the co-founder and the developer, what are you excited about? What are some things that are in the next couple of quarters that you're going to be rolling out for users?

Erik: 19:34

Yeah, we wouldn't be a software company if we didn't talk about AI. I knew

Caitlyn: 19:39

you were going to say that. Yes.

Erik: 19:41

Yeah. Okay. So here's my real opinion. Okay. AI, a little hot take. The construction industry might not be ready for it. So you'll laugh, like I laugh, when somebody that's on paper is asking me AI questions. And I'm like, well, AI is trained off of your data, and we can't read the data that is on paper. It's in

Janet: 20:07

your file cabinet.

Erik: 20:08

Right. So we need to start with something. Right. Just start with a CRM and then you're going to build the data repository for AI to actually be productive for you. So thankfully, if you've been on follow up for years, then you have that already. Right. And so the thing that we're excited about, we're still figuring out the name, but we're essentially building out a sales assistant, a sales coordinator. Yep. within the crm so at most of our construction companies uh you you have like uh your sales people who are out there on the street and then you have um you know an equally sized staff of office sales people office like uh administrative people helping the sales people out in the field right and and so like um you know one of our companies The sales guy is out there doing in meetings all day. And then the admin is sending the follow-up emails or the quotes and getting all that stuff prepared for the customer for the sales guy. That is what we're building with AI.

Janet: 21:24

That's awesome. To streamline and make that process more simple.

Erik: 21:28

Yeah. So then the sales guy can say, hey, send a follow-up email to customer XYZ. They'll write a preview of it. Approve, send, you're done.

Janet: 21:37

Oh, that's awesome. That is awesome. So what are some of the challenges that you see in the industry right now? It's 2025, it's summer. What a year. You know, this year's been pretty interesting. Is it not over yet? You know, what are you hearing from your clients in terms of some of the things that they're struggling with, some of the things that they're excited about? Yeah. If we had been recording this a month ago, we would have been talking about tariffs. I don't know if we're talking about tariffs anymore. I

Erik: 22:13

don't think so. I don't

Janet: 22:14

know. I don't know. So when you get on the call or you're going to trade shows or you're talking to prospects, what are they excited about and what are they worried about?

Erik: 22:25

Yeah. So the people that we're talking to, it's actually no different this year than it has been for the past five or 10 years. And it's essentially... I know we need technology, but the people at my company are resistant to the change. Put in whatever technology you want to insert, CRM, AI, whatever it is. It's people are resistant to change in my company and don't want to learn something new.

Janet: 22:59

you don't really see a big difference with whatever the headline is in the news that the underlying resistance to change. Hasn't changed. Yeah.

Erik: 23:10

That's the lead. It's a leadership issue.

Janet: 23:12

Oh yeah. You know, I mean, this is kind of off topic, kind of on topic. I went for my six month dental cleaning yesterday. I've gone to the same dentist for 30 years and I've had the same hygienist who has whatever she gets on my nerves, but it's on me for not switching dentists. They've switched software and you would have thought that aliens had invaded the planet and that she didn't know how to get up in the morning anymore. Like the deal that the entire office was making out of.

Erik: 23:43

Oh yeah.

Janet: 23:44

you know, they had been on one dental office software and they moved to another one. And as a patient in the chair and I'm looking over her shoulders, like it looks a lot the same, you know? So I hear what you're saying about resistance to change. And one of the things that, that she said yesterday was, you know, I went into this industry, I became a dental hygienist because I didn't think I was going to have to, I'm going to do air quotes, air quote, learn the computer. And I think we hear a lot of the similar kind of, um, sentiments from inside of the construction industry, especially

Caitlyn: 24:16

with the CRM,

Janet: 24:17

you know, they're like, like, I don't know about this computer thing.

Erik: 24:21

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And so, yeah. And that's in a lot of industries to be honest, you know, and, you know, but time keeps on, you know, trekking forward and, you know, yeah. And so somebody is going to bite the bullet. It's just when, Exactly. And so, and then who's going to be a part of the team, right? So that's why I call it a leadership issue, right? So some of the best practices that we employ when rolling out a CRM to, and here's what I say, out of 10 people, you're going to have two naysayers, right? And that's just like, how do you deal with that, right? And so here's the number one hack. Tie compensation to the reporting in the system. Love it. That's it. That's it. Hey, guys, your commission for this month is based off of this report, right? Yep. And therefore, all the things that need to happen in the CRM happen on the 29th of the month, right? Right. And then your report is ready on the 30th, right?

Janet: 25:31

And if you've got, we'll just say Bob, the sales guy that's been there for 15 years, it's always done it Bob's way. And he's like, where's my commission check? Then your answer is, well, I ran the report and Bob didn't put his information in.

Erik: 25:46

Yeah,

Janet: 25:47

that's right. It fixes itself.

Erik: 25:50

Yeah. And he wants his check. So he's going to learn the software. That's just how it is. That's how it goes for now. Yeah.

Caitlyn: 25:56

Any other like exciting, I guess, case studies, like wins you want to share? Yeah. Success stories.

Erik: 26:03

Oh, yeah. There's so many. Most of our customers see an ROI in the first month, which is crazy. Good. Because construction is all about relationships. And we live in a very transactional world. And if one of those roofers would have followed up with me, they would have been standout in my mind just because they followed up like send a quick follow-up email right no one wants to put that little 10 extra effort but here's a story that greg told me about um a four million dollar um opportunity that he won of the trump building in miami

Caitlyn: 26:48

oh wow

Erik: 26:49

and that bid was out there um open for three and a half years Wow. Yeah. So a long, long time it was in the pipeline and, you know, big jobs like that, you know, sometimes they take that long to make a decision. Yeah. And so, you know, guess what happened the first year? Well, Greg asked the property manager, hey, why did you guys choose us at the end of the day?

Caitlyn: 27:16

Right.

Erik: 27:17

And he's like, well, the first year, you know, out of the 20 bids we got, half of them followed up. The second year, half of those followed up. So now we're down to five, right? The third year, it was you alone following up with us. And so we knew that if you're conducting yourself this way in the sales process, that you're going to do a good job with our roof.

Caitlyn: 27:47

So you're playing the long game. I love it. Play the long game. Use follow-up to play the long game. Yeah.

Erik: 27:54

And it's not that hard. You just create an automated sequence that says follow up with the customer, you know, once a quarter and you set it and forget it. That's it.

Caitlyn: 28:03

All through the CRM. Oh my gosh. That would solve a lot of problems. Yes, it would. I love it. How does, how does somebody learn more about you? A listener?

Erik: 28:10

Yeah. You just go to followupcrm.com. You could schedule a demo or just look, you can look me up on LinkedIn. We're all over LinkedIn and YouTube. We love customers that, you know, do their research before. We have tons of videos on YouTube of every nook and cranny of the system. And, you know, sometimes we'll hop on a demo and they're like, yeah, I watched all your YouTube videos. I'm like, great, let's look at the ball rolling. And so they're ready.

Caitlyn: 28:34

We totally agree. We love YouTube. And I know whenever we're vetting a software, YouTube is usually one of the first places we go.

Erik: 28:40

Yeah, and that's why we do everything video first, right? And so whenever we do a new feature, there's a video. Everything is a video for us because then you can just make it into like an article or something like that. But yeah, and people don't want to read. They want to listen and watch a video. And so that's why we do

Janet: 28:58

it

Erik: 28:58

that way.

Janet: 28:58

Okay, so listeners, if you are interested, you can go to Follow Up CRM. You can also search for Follow Up CRM on YouTube and see a bunch of different videos showing what the product looks like and how you can use it in your business. So Eric, thank you so much for being a guest on our podcast. As always, if you give us 30 minutes, our goal is to try to give you some useful tips to help you run your home improvement or construction business better. Thanks again for listening to another episode and we'll catch you next time. Thanks, Eric. Thank you, Eric. Thanks for having me.

Speaker 00: 29:32

Digital marketing for contractors is created by Fat Cat Strategies. For more information, visit fatcatstrategies.com.