Setting pipedrive as a sub contractor

Ivette
Ivette Member Posts: 1 VERIFIED MEMBER
edited July 2023 in Sales CRM #1

I am inquiring as to the best way to setup the CRM.  We are typically a subcontractor (Demolition) to Primes.  Most of our invites to bid come through other platforms.  When we receive the invite to bid and do an estimate for a project, would that specific project be entered as a lead or would we enter it as a deal with proposal amount attached to it?  Sometimes we have multiple Prime contractors asking for a bid for the same project.  Do these each entered as individual deals or leads?  I would also like to be able to do automate a follow up after the proposal are sent.  

Comments

  • Leanne Clark
    Leanne Clark Member Posts: 6 VERIFIED MEMBER
    First Comment
    edited February 2021 #2

    Our company works on a similar platform.  We create a deal with the project name.   Then we have a customized data field with multiple option field type.  Name it "contractor" or what works best for your group.  We used a dropdown so our staff can select the companies we are providing tender pricing too.  

    This is just one option in pipedrive.

    You can also create filters and see whom you are working with the most.  How many projects you quote to the different contractors etc.

    Hope this helps!

  • Ricardo Beatson
    Ricardo Beatson Member Posts: 2 VERIFIED MEMBER
    edited February 2022 #3

    Hello Ivette,

    We are in a similar business to you and use Pipedrive in the following way.

    • Any project that we get a tender invite for gets created as a deal.  We have a simple sales pipeline of 'Tender Invite', 'Tender Submitted', 'Tender Won'.
    • When we have multiple tender invites for the same project, we add these people as participants to the project.  We don't create more than one deal.
    • Any communication between us and the contractor is recorded against that deal and that specific person.
    • If you are looking to use it more as a project management tool, you can just add in more pipeline stages.  We did try this but found that Pipedrive is a sales tool not a project management tool.  (might work for smaller companies with a small budget)

    Obviously it is best to do what works best for you - this works for us.  Hope this helps.

    Ricardo

  • Jerry Everist
    Jerry Everist Member Posts: 1 VERIFIED MEMBER
    edited February 2021 #4

    Ricardo sounds like he has a great plan in place. If I was in your shoes, his route is the one I would take.

    To follow up with automation, the Worklfow Features in Pipedrive are a little clunky. It isn't them, it's just fairly new and you can use other platforms to get more detail and do other cool things. 

    I use Zapier.com as an integration to Pipedrive that lets me put together a lot more automation that I cannot do within Pipedrive. You can really start automating a ton.  

     

    Jerry Everist

  • Brad Krause_13404
    Brad Krause_13404 Member Posts: 366 VERIFIED MEMBER
    100 Comments 5 Up Votes
    edited February 2021 #5

    We are in the process of a major overhaul of our database. Previously we would put the deals as sites/jobs below the general/property manager 'organization' record

    We broke every site into its own organization and the deal or deals related to the sites will go below that site specific organization.

    Organization naming scheme is:

    Property management company name (Property Name)

    People related to the specific site are located in this record.

    People related to the General are in a record called

    Property Management company name (Corporate)

    I put 3 spaces between the name and corporate in parentheses so its forced to the top of the group list. 

     

    Your other option is to put a site name and site address field in deal details. We did that for awhile but it just wasn't going to work long term for us. But if this is a situation where you just have one job and never go back to the site for more work or needed to manage contacts at the specific site then just puting the deals below a general record may work fine. 

     

    Also note that if you do break it out you can add a linked person field to organization details and enter the linked person / project manager name from the corporate record. 

     

  • Cathleen Holzknecht
    Cathleen Holzknecht Member Posts: 1 VERIFIED MEMBER
    edited February 2021 #6

    Hello Ivette,

    We are in a similar business to you and use Pipedrive in the following way.

    • Any project that we get a tender invite for gets created as a deal.  We have a simple sales pipeline of 'Tender Invite', 'Tender Submitted', 'Tender Won'.
    • When we have multiple tender invites for the same project, we add these people as participants to the project.  We don't create more than one deal.
    • Any communication between us and the contractor is recorded against that deal and that specific person.
    • If you are looking to use it more as a project management tool, you can just add in more pipeline stages.  We did try this but found that Pipedrive is a sales tool not a project management tool.  (might work for smaller companies with a small budget)

    Obviously it is best to do what works best for you - this works for us.  Hope this helps.

    Ricardo

    Ricardo, we are in the same situation with project management.  Did you ultimately move to a project management software and if you did, which one?  Thank you. 

  • Ricardo Beatson
    Ricardo Beatson Member Posts: 2 VERIFIED MEMBER
    edited February 2021 #7

    Hello Ivette,

    We are in a similar business to you and use Pipedrive in the following way.

    • Any project that we get a tender invite for gets created as a deal.  We have a simple sales pipeline of 'Tender Invite', 'Tender Submitted', 'Tender Won'.
    • When we have multiple tender invites for the same project, we add these people as participants to the project.  We don't create more than one deal.
    • Any communication between us and the contractor is recorded against that deal and that specific person.
    • If you are looking to use it more as a project management tool, you can just add in more pipeline stages.  We did try this but found that Pipedrive is a sales tool not a project management tool.  (might work for smaller companies with a small budget)

    Obviously it is best to do what works best for you - this works for us.  Hope this helps.

    Ricardo

    Cathleen, we now use a combination of Smartsheet and Viewpoint Team.  Team is a document storage and communication tool with subbies similar to Aconex or Procore.  We also use Viewpoint's Fieldview (Field capture and reporting) and Jobpac (Accounting) so it is pretty much like a ERP system now.  Hope this helps.

  • RTI Estimating
    RTI Estimating Member Posts: 1 VERIFIED MEMBER
    edited February 2021 #8

    We are in the same type of business and your question is a good one. Please share more information and thank you.

  • Mike van der Valk
    Mike van der Valk Pipedrive Team Posts: 3,063 PIPEDRIVE TEAM
    2500 Comments Fifth Anniversary 100 Likes 5 Answers
    edited February 2021 #9

    Hi all!

    I'm Mike, a product manager at Pipedrive and I'm currently exploring the Project management area in Pipedrive. I'd love for you all to join this group here I recently set up and tell me there what you do and book a call with me. My link to book a call is in the post in that channel :) 

    Curious to see your use cases and how we can better serve these with Pipedrive in the future.

    @RTI Estimating @Ivette @Ricardo Beatson @Cathleen Holzknecht @Leanne Clark 

  • Austin Vaughan
    Austin Vaughan Member Posts: 1 VERIFIED MEMBER
    edited February 2021 #10

    Hello Ivette,

    We are in a similar business to you and use Pipedrive in the following way.

    • Any project that we get a tender invite for gets created as a deal.  We have a simple sales pipeline of 'Tender Invite', 'Tender Submitted', 'Tender Won'.
    • When we have multiple tender invites for the same project, we add these people as participants to the project.  We don't create more than one deal.
    • Any communication between us and the contractor is recorded against that deal and that specific person.
    • If you are looking to use it more as a project management tool, you can just add in more pipeline stages.  We did try this but found that Pipedrive is a sales tool not a project management tool.  (might work for smaller companies with a small budget)

    Obviously it is best to do what works best for you - this works for us.  Hope this helps.

    Ricardo

    Thanks Ricardo,

    we are new to pipedrive and working out our best setup Still. 
    We are going to run this type of deal setup for each project name then add multiple builders that we are offering our tender proposals to as participants.

    the workflow will be controlled outside of pipedrive for now, although I am interested to see how this new tool evolves. 

  • Pam Fick_48569
    Pam Fick_48569 Member Posts: 2 VERIFIED MEMBER
    Second Anniversary First Comment

    how do you record multiple sales to one company? At the end of the year do you clear out all the old data and start over? If so how do you do that without wiping out the customers info? We own a small manufacturing business that sells repeatedly to dealers. I think I am missing something.

This discussion has been closed.