This Podcast Is Episode Number 455, And It's About How To Leverage Automation And Technology In Your Construction Business The daily processes and transactions involved in operating a general maintenance and repair contracting business can mean long hours of repetitive tasks and occasional oversights due to human nature. These days, you can use technology to take care of almost any issue facing your business. Automating these tasks can result in significant savings in resources and eliminate mistakes caused by human error. The key, however, is to know which tasks should be automated and which ones warrant staff intervention and guidance. Let's discuss some of them:   Lead Capturing, Nurturing, and Scoring Automating your lead development process can do wonders for your service-based company's conversion rates. Both hot and cold leads require attention and targeted engagement to convert into paying customers. Using automation software can help sales reps guide prospects to end the sales cycle strategically, and it can also direct you towards the leads that will convert the fastest. Engaging New Contacts Entrepreneurs like you meet new contacts all the time. Whether a potential business partner or prospective client, automating your engagement with them can help you forge a solid rapport after your initial contact, several CRM options will allow you to group contacts by event, type, company, and location, amongst other settings, to ensure that your business card collections don't go to waste. Personal Direct Mail  Outreach efforts with a personal touch garner higher engagement rates, which explains why businesses send out birthday cards, calendars, seasonal greetings, and other materials to customers. With the right software, you can set up automated, sequenced events to gather personal data and incorporate it into specific marketing activities. Word-of-mouth marketing   Numerous marketing studies show that consumers are more likely to buy from companies or hire services if a friend has referred them. Encourage customers to give referrals by simply asking for them. There are several ways to automate this, including adding referral mentions to discount offerings, a website page, and email outreach campaigns. Automation can be a wonderful thing. However, it does not work without monitoring most of the time and is not exactly as expected or promised by the sales department. The software can be challenging, and depending on what it is, it takes Tech Support to fix it. Tier 1, Tier 2, Developers - "namely anyone but me." A remote assist is a beautiful tool – the technician can see for themselves that you are or not playing with imaginary friends hiding in your computer. Many Tier 1 support need to document that they could not solve the problem and justify sending you to Tier 2. A contractor called me recently and said it was required to keep an Online Software because they had linked their banking and several apps to the software. These apps are downloaded automatically daily; no matter what, that was a must. It would take too much time to do anything manually. My take: Why exactly are you calling me? It sounds like everything is working perfectly! It wasn't working perfectly. Yes, everything was downloading automatically into the file. Yes, transactions were going to where that specified software specified. Yes, the software decided and did not care about what other software was doing. So what exactly was the problem? The contractor wanted all the apps to download transactions and that no one in the office needed to touch anything. It would magically create accurate reports seamlessly. After each of the third-party software decided what and where to put everything, the result was: Reports that were not understandable. So far out of whack that anyone who looks could see. Bank accounts were overdrawn by 5 and 6 figures (more than $10,000 to over $100,000). Credit card payments to the same...