The best phone system for construction companies
Your contracts managers spend more time on site than on the phone: Skipcall packs their chasing into a single 30 minute session.
Hundreds of companies use 
to make every call pay off
The situation
What holds you back today
Decision makers reachable only in very short windows
Quote chasing scattered across emails, texts and scribbled notes
No record of what was agreed on the phone
The answer
What Skipcall changes
Specific to your industry
When construction actually picks up the phone
A contracts manager is neither sat at a desk nor free to talk on site. Getting hold of one depends far less on persistence than on picking the hour, and those hours are not the ones that work for other trades.
Before 8am, while the gangs are setting up
Site managers and contracts managers arrive before the trades and spend half an hour in the van or the site cabin clearing what did not get done the day before. It is the only point in the day when they are sat down, on their own and out of the noise. After 8:30 the site is running and your call lands in a compressor.
Between 12 and 1:30, at the break
The second window that works, because the site genuinely stops. Say how long you need in your first sentence: two minutes you actually keep beats a phone appointment promised for next week.
After 4:30pm, once the site is quiet
The trades are usually off site by 4:30 or 5, and the site manager goes back to the cabin or the office to deal with variations, material orders and chasing subcontractors. This is the window for anything that needs a decision rather than a quick yes or no.
Wet days and Friday afternoons
When groundworks and the external trades stop, the management team is inside catching up on paperwork. Friday afternoon does much the same on a lot of sites: gangs finish early and the office stays open. Monday morning is the worst slot of the week, taken up by the progress meeting, deliveries and getting everyone started.
The weeks when nobody answers
The industry shutdown over Christmas empties sites for around a fortnight, and the bank holiday weeks at Easter and in late May run at half strength. Those weeks are useless for chasing quotes, but they are the right time to clean up your lists and build the call plan for the restart.
The same quote gets chased better at three different times than at the same time three days running. Skipcall keeps the time of every attempt, which lets you spot, job by job, the window in which your contact actually answers.
The script
Chasing a construction quote on the phone
You are ringing back the client, the architect or the quantity surveyor you priced a package for about ten days ago. You call before 8am or after 4:30pm, and you are after a decision, not an acknowledgement.
The opening
“Morning, [first name last name] from [company]. I am calling about the [package] price I sent over for [site name] on [date]. Have you got two minutes, or shall I ring back at a better time?”
Naming the site in the first sentence is what separates your call from a sales call. Saying two minutes and keeping to it is what earns you the next call.
If they say they have not looked at it yet
“No problem, I know it stacks up. One question so I am not chasing you for nothing: are you at the stage of comparing prices, or is the job still waiting on something at your end?”
One open question sorts a live tender from a scheme waiting on funding or planning, and from a job you have already lost.
If they say you are dearer
“Possibly. Are we comparing the total or the scope? Let us go through it line by line: what I have allowed for and the other price has not will come back at you as a variation once the job is running.”
On a package, a price gap almost always comes from a scope gap. Bringing the conversation back to what is actually priced is the only way to defend a price without cutting it.
If they ask for a discount
“I can move on price if we move the scope or the programme. Same scope, same dates, no. Which of the two suits you better?”
A cut given for nothing gets asked for again on every variation and comes out of the margin on the job.
If they say they are waiting on planning or funding
“So it is not a no, it is a date. When are you expecting it? I will ring you a fortnight after that, and I will hold my prices until then.”
The close
“So we speak again on [date] around [time]. And if it has gone elsewhere before then, tell me straight: it frees me up, and you stop getting my calls.”
Asking for the right to hear a no is what clears dead jobs out of your list, and dead jobs are what cost the most in chasing time.
At Skipcall, every call is recorded, transcribed and summarised, so the script gets corrected against what your reps actually say rather than what we imagine they say.
Avoid this
Three mistakes this industry makes on the phone
The mistake
Opening the chase with “did you get my quote?”
Do this instead
The question invites a yes and the call ends there. Ask where the job has got to instead: pricing, funding, planning, or already awarded. You get something you can use rather than a read receipt.
The mistake
Dropping the price on the phone to unblock the order
Do this instead
A price that falls with nothing in return teaches the client the first one was padded, and they will ask again on every variation. Always trade the movement for something: an item out of the scope, a longer programme, a payment on account, or another package.
The mistake
Running your pitch at a site manager who is stood on site
Do this instead
In that noise they take in one sentence in three and they will not ring back. In two sentences, say what it is about and ask for the time they are back inside: “I will ring you at 5 when you are back at the cabin, does that work?”
Frequently asked questions, Construction
Other industries that prospect by phone
See all 25 industries →Home improvement & renovation
A home improvement enquiry is won in the first five minutes: Skipcall calls, qualifies and books the survey before your competitors do.
Manufacturing
Long cycles, accounts with half a dozen contacts: Skipcall remembers every conversation and multiplies your points of contact.
Automotive & Dealerships
Every enquiry you fail to call back is a sale someone else makes: Skipcall turns the call back and the follow up into a routine.
See what it does on your own lists
A demo runs on your own contacts, not on a sample data set.
Personalized demonstration