Your engineering or architecture firm can stay on top of projects, strengthen business relationships, and grow revenue with the help of BQE's CRM tool.
Updated January 2025
Top firms build strong relationships. From first contact, through signing a contract, and then delivering a project, your process should be designed to provide an exceptional client experience. You want your clients to come back to your firm for future projects. You want your clients to rave about your firm to their colleagues. You want your clients to refer others to your firm. This is why Client Relationship Management has a direct correlation to firm success.
Managing the client relationship should be a top priority at your firm. The most successful firms make this a core value and train their teams to keep this top of mind. And they have tools in place to help manage the customer journey. These are Client Relationship Management systems.
When you engage with any prospect, you want them to know that you are listening to their problems and working to solve them. They want to know that you are an expert that can help deliver results. Otherwise, they are likely to go with a different firm. Your CRM system can help your team follow up with your leads, communicate your value, and standardize the business development process.
Establishing client contact records, business development pipelines with defined activities, shared content libraries, and easily accessible data makes it simpler to get in touch with prospects at the right time. This sounds like a lot of work, but is made much easier when you set up a CRM (client relationship management) software for your architecture or engineering firm.
A CRM solution improves the overall consumer experience that your firm delivers. It keeps your team focused, it makes existing clients happier, helps bring in new clients, and increases your bottom line.
There is compelling data to convince A&E firms to adopt CRM software. According to Aberdeen Strategy & Research businesses that use CRM systems for their business development and sales process see big boosts to performance. A few data points:
52% more proposals, quotes, or RFP responses delivered to customers / prospects
23% higher lead conversion rate
11% more quotes resulting in orders
If your firm could issue 50% more proposals for opportunities, and see all of your proposals convert at a 23% higher rate, you would see a dramatic impact on your revenue. Simply increasing the win rate on your current leads could completely transform your business. Adopting a CRM can help you get there.
For engineering and architecture firms, client relationships and contact management are integral to your success — they fuel growth for your business. The A&E industry is built on strong relationships and all firms should have a process in place that enables the business development team to manage theirs. Client relationship management software is used to organize and nurture your relationships with prospects, opportunities, and clients.
CRM software supports your business development lifecycle while measuring and analyzing metrics and key performance indicators (KPIs). This allows you to have access to data in order to make informed decisions for your firm. During the sales process this could be Go-NoGo decisions or what leads to pursue. It also allows you to better predict future revenue and resource management. It is the data that makes these powerful and valuable.
For example, here are some questions a CRM can help you easily answer. What is your win rate on proposals sent? How many proposals do you have to send in a 12-month period to win enough projects to hit your revenue goals? What is the average fee per project at your A&E firm? If you want to grow your firm by 25%, how many additional projects do you need to win?
Quickly finding the answers to these questions will give you an advantage. You can build a stronger strategic plan for your marketing and business development efforts. You will better manage your team's time and efforts, and focus on the right opportunities.
The best CRM systems for architecture and engineering firms will give you access to this data through dashboards and charts. When the CRM is integrated into your firm management system, it can be even more powerful. An integrated tool like BQE CORE's client relationship management module can give you data on your marketing and business development efforts, but also then show how that will impact your resource management, workload, revenue goals, and more.
When all of the data is in one place it makes it easier to use, and allows the systems to talk with each other to provide better insights. It helps your team work more collaboratively, increases scalability, and better serves your clientele.
If you are relying on manually updated spreadsheets to manage your business development tasks your firm is falling behind. A CRM enables the transition from individual spreadsheets, documents, or information stored in the principal's memory to a database that is integrated into your firm management system and is accessible by everyone on the business development and marketing team.
If your data is siloed, or you rely on memory or an individual's relationships, you can't scale the effort. This is one of the most common reasons firm growth stalls out. If you want your firm to expand beyond 10-20 people, you need to have systems that allow you to delegate, and enable multiple people to access data and contribute to your BD processes.
With cloud-based CRM tools, your data is accessible from anywhere, by anyone who needs it, making it much easier to manage the data, use it collaboratively, and find what you need fast. This enables you to use analytics to produce actionable reports, implement improvements to your process, and communicate with your prospects at the right time with the right messaging.
Using technology to modernize your engineering or architecture firm adds efficiency to your marketing efforts, improves business development activities, optimizes task management, and nurtures workflows by providing visibility to the status of each opportunity.
With a CRM, every team member can see the last interaction with a particular contact and its result. Now, employees across departments know which step to take next and when, increasing your firm’s chances of winning a prospect’s business and keeping it.
Automation is increasingly utilized in every aspect of business, including client relationship management. A CRM can automate tasks across data entry, email marketing, customer service, client interactions, and more. It saves time, increases effectiveness, and reminds your team to do important things that require a human touch.
For example, CRM automation can save you effort by automatically logging phone calls and emails, sending digital reminders to contacts or your team, personalizing quotes and proposals, and customizing email sequences. This software also allows you to create workflows that trigger actions to happen, such as sending an automatic “welcome” email or adding contacts to specific lists based on previous services purchased. This cuts out a lot of repetitive tasks that slow down both large and small businesses.
Better software will even cut down on tedious work time and free up your employees for higher priority projects. Interaction templates and other CRM features help streamline your content, so you always deliver a consistent experience to all of your firm’s contacts.
Manually handling your CRM is time-consuming, tedious, and susceptible to human error. Who has time to record daily updates about prospects and opportunities, the outcome of a particular campaign, and how your sales team is performing that week? When tasks like these are centralized and automated for you, your team is left to focus on more stimulating work.
This is really what it is all about. Your firm should make the client experience one of the highest priorities of the business and an integral part of your firm's values.
Clients want to feel like they’re your number one priority. To them, their project probably is the biggest priority. They don’t like to be kept waiting or feel like you’re delaying or are unorganized. Your CRM can help your team stay on top of each prospect until they become a client. And then it helps build those relationships so your clients stick with your firm long-term.
CRM tools analyze client patterns to identify pain points and areas for improvement. A CRM ensures you’re always working to move leads to the next stage in your buyer journey, and in many cases, drives the process for you. With automations you can even design specific touch-points and communications to happen at key moments. Your buyer journey should feel seamless, be timely, and provide value. CRM Software runs behind the scenes to ensure it is.
Keeping a detailed record of your clients' and prospects' behavior is how a CRM platform helps your firm attract and engage contacts to continue through the relationship-building process. You can then use these insights to refine your marketing, sales, intake, and nurture campaigns accordingly. Beyond attracting and engaging prospects, CRM also works to satisfy and retain clients.
Architecture and Engineering firms require special features to nurture relationships with prospective and existing clients and create a better customer experience. Selling services is different than selling products and your CRM should be designed for the unique aspects of the A&E industry. It is also helpful to have it integrated with other tools you use for firm management.
Some of the most valuable CRM features for A&E firms include:
Customizable dashboard
Shared contact database
Lead generation and client management
Marketing and Business Development Campaign management
Opportunity tracking
Proposal and quote templates
RFI/RFQ tracking
Sales team-friendly
Pipeline management
Shared calendar
Artificial intelligence for automation and reporting
Collaboration tools
Integrations with other software tools
Mobile access and support
Works on all devices
Project planning
Progress tracking
Resource management
Revenue projections
Email marketing
Contact Management:
This CRM feature allows you to organize and manage customer data in one central location. It includes managing detailed contact information, communication history, customer interactions, and more.
Task Management:
CRM tools allow users to create, assign, and manage tasks related to customer relationship management. This could involve following up on leads, scheduling calls, or managing customer issues.
Sales Forecasting:
This feature provides a predictive analysis of sales trends based on historical data. It helps sales teams set realistic goals and develop effective strategies.
Lead Management:
CRM software should be able to manage and track potential customers (leads). This includes tracking the source of leads, managing the sales pipeline, and monitoring the conversion process.
Email Integration:
Most CRM systems integrate with popular email platforms. This allows users to send emails directly from the CRM, track open and response rates, and log communication history.
Interaction Tracking:
This feature allows companies to track every interaction with a customer across multiple channels, such as phone calls, emails, social media, etc.
Campaign Management:
This feature is useful for managing marketing campaigns. It could involve tracking campaign performance, managing customer segments, and automating marketing tasks.
Reports and Dashboards:
CRM software should provide comprehensive reporting tools for analyzing customer data and business processes. Dashboards offer a visual representation of this data and help track performance metrics.
Mobile Access:
Given the need for accessibility, CRM software should offer a mobile version or a well-optimized mobile app. This allows users to access the CRM data and features anywhere, anytime.
Social Media Integration:
Social media is an important channel for customer interaction. CRM systems should be able to integrate with social media platforms, tracking interactions, and capturing customer data.
Customer Support:
The software should offer a built-in customer support system. This could include ticketing systems, live chat, or even AI-powered chatbots.
Integration Capabilities:
CRM software should integrate seamlessly with other systems used by the business such as ERP, accounting, marketing automation tools, etc.
Workflow Automation:
Automation of routine tasks is a key feature. This can save time and reduce errors by automating tasks such as sending follow-up emails, reminders, updating contact details, etc.
Customization:
The CRM system should be customizable to adapt to the unique needs of a business. This could include custom fields, custom workflows, and customized reporting.
Data Security:
Given the sensitive nature of customer data, strong security measures are crucial. This includes data encryption, role-based access, and compliance with data protection laws.
These features can help a company enhance its customer relationship management, improve sales processes, and ultimately, drive business growth. Importantly, they can be defined and systematized so they are consistently excellent across all customer interactions.
Choosing the right Customer Relationship Management (CRM) tool is a critical decision for architecture and engineering firms.Research shows that businesses using a CRM can increase sales by up to 29% and improve productivity by 34%. For A&E firms, this means more efficient project tracking and better client retention.
The best CRM for your business should align with your firm’s specific needs, whether it’s managing complex project pipelines or nurturing long-term client relationships.
Start by identifying your firm’s top priorities.
Do you need a CRM to manage marketing campaigns, track new business development, or improve collaboration? Look for tools that offer features tailored to your needs, such as lead tracking, automated follow-ups, or integration with project management software. Consider the size of your team and the complexity of your workflows. For example, larger firms may benefit from advanced reporting and customizable dashboards, while smaller teams might prefer user-friendly interfaces and basic automation.
Assess the scalability and cost of the CRM.
Your business will grow, and the tool you choose should grow with it. Many CRM platforms offer tiered pricing plans, so start with one that fits your budget but can expand as your needs evolve. Ensure the CRM integrates with other tools your firm already uses, such as accounting or project management software. This connectivity can save time and eliminate redundant data entry. With the right CRM in place, your firm can improve client relationships, optimize processes, and position itself for long-term success.
CRM features your A&E firm should look for:
Integration with project management and accounting tools.
Customizable fields for industry-specific data (e.g., project phases, RFIs).
Pipeline visualization for tracking leads through the sales cycle.
Mobile access for on-the-go updates.
A customer relationship management (CRM) gives your firm the tools that it needs to collect and analyze all types and aspects of client information in one convenient place. The CRM umbrella covers everything from lead generation to trend forecasting, direct consumer contact through sales, and service-related processes.
This will improve your business development activities. But to be effective, you need to set up the software and design the process you want to lead clients through. Although a CRM tool can lead to better results, higher win rates, and more revenue, you need to set it up to work for your firm and your processes.
To effectively capitalize on the investment in a CRM, your firm should leverage the power of all of your online channels, which include your website, social media, personalized emails, and in-person calls and events. Tracking what your team is doing in all of these area will give you insights to what is working, and where you may want to focus on improvements.
If performed effectively, this approach will help achieve the ultimate goal of CRM: improving the overall consumer experience and the bottom line of the firm. Here are a few things that a CRM can help manage and improve at your firm.
People and Companies - both your existing clients and prospects.
Contact information, notes, calls, proposals, and dates are all tracked in one place.
Communication is automatically tracked so you know who has contacted who, when.
Accessible database for your whole team - no more siloed information, no more relying on an individual's memory or personal contact list.
What are the steps along your sales process?
What percentage of opportunities move on to the next step?
Where do opportunities fall off?
What are the standardized steps or activities you do at each point along the sales pipeline?
How many leads are in each step along your sales pipeline?
What is the amount of time spent in each stage?
Templates can make building proposals faster.
Historic data can help you create accurate quotes faster with appropriate fees.
Tracking win rates can give you insights to improve your proposals or update your processes
Data can predict future revenue streams
Win rates can help set marketing and business development targets
Integration with resource management can help you plan revenue and workloads
Reminders help people stay on top of tasks in a timely manner
Standardizing things can help with delegation or automation.
Automations can save time and increase consistency
Understand how people find you.
Improve resource management and budgeting future investments.
Increase your return on investments
CRM Increases Sales:
Architects and Engineers tend to shy away from sales but it is a vital aspect of all successful firms. I firmly believe that all architects should learn some sales strategies. Active listening, asking the right questions, and communicating with prospects are valuable skills that are just as important as design skills or familiarity with materials or construction details.
With valuable insights, reminders, task automations, and organizing data, a CRM is a key driver of improving sales process. It can also make it something that architects and engineers can embrace. Training your team in the tools, defining the steps they take, standardizing the data you collect, and setting up templates and processes can make the sales process much more effective and much less painful. From capturing new sales leads to closing final deals and encouraging repeat business, the ways in which CRM can boost your sales rates are both multifaceted and powerful.
CRM Improves Customer Outreach and Retention:
By keeping a detailed record of the ways in which each of your clients behaves, CRM paints a far better picture of what attracts new clients to your firm and what prompts them to continue through each stage of the relationship-building process. This allows you to refine your marketing and sales operations appropriately. Perhaps even more importantly, CRM has a proven ability to boost post-purchase client satisfaction and retention rates.
CRM Enables More Effective Collaboration:
According to software programmer and technical writer Ethan Millar, an increased ability to collaborate is one of the chief benefits that CRM has to offer. A good CRM system can help employees in different business units to better serve the specific needs of each client by working effectively together through enhanced communication channels.
CRM Optimizes Workflow to Boost Performance in All Company Operations:
Digital platforms are more effective than analog “paper and print” methods of workflow management. In the same way, platforms that handle CRM processes are no different. With the help of a quality CRM platform, you can better avoid the workflow bottlenecks that can bring client relationship-building to a grinding stop. Because relationship-building infiltrates nearly every aspect of business operation, effective CRM can aid in areas that include customer service, sales automation, marketing automation, marketing channel management, and even call center operations.
CRM Helps You Keep Pace with the Future:
The vast majority of small to midsize firms already have a high-tech CRM system in place, and this trend toward digital CRM management shows no signs of slowing down anytime soon. In fact, a 2020 study by the independent Grand View Research predicts that the global CRM market will experience a compound annual growth rate of more than 14 percent over the next six years to reach an estimated $114.4 billion by 2027.
A CRM is all about engendering positive experiences to attract consumers and keep them coming back for more. For firms that want to take their client relationships to the next level, there is really no substitute for good CRM software. It is simply too time-consuming and arduous for most firms to be good at managing client relationships without one.
Thankfully, as part of a larger all-inclusive professional services platform, BQE CORE CRM is designed to deliver all these key benefits, and more, along with offering a dual focus on securing new clients and keeping existing ones. Furthermore, CORE also seamlessly incorporates CRM operation into a larger framework that can handle everything from human resources processes to targeted project management.
CRM stands for “customer relationship management” or in the context of A&E firms, "client relationship management." To simplify them, it is a tool that creates a database of all of your contacts and offers ways to track information, automate tasks, and provide data needed to better manage relationships and your sales process. There are many software options on the market, such as Salesforce, Zoho, Hubspot, and our own BQE CORE CRM Module, which provide tools to help businesses manage their business development efforts and customers.
Let’s break down the ways the BQE CORE CRM system can help your firm improve your business development processes:
As a professional, pretty much everything you do can be considered “marketing.” Hopefully, your firm has a bonafide Marketing Plan to find new clients and (just as important), an appropriate budget.
Common marketing automation efforts that require budgets relate to maintaining your website, promoting social media and attending conferences and tradeshows. But the time and money spent to deal with responding to Requests for Proposals (RFP) or Requests for Qualifications (RFQ) also fall under marketing and need to be tracked.
Ultimately, everything we’re talking about here should have one common purpose - bringing in future clients or expanding your existing business opportunities. Everything can be considered a “campaign.”
My guess is that currently you have no way to measure the results of your campaigns.
If you engaged in a social media campaign or attended a conference, have you been able to track the total costs that were associated with these efforts? If you are responding to an RFP, have you been tracking all the time spent? Do you even have an RFP template available that allows you to be more efficient and consistent in how your firm responds? Are you tracking business leads that may have come from a variety of marketing campaigns?
In the end, you should expect to see the return on investment (ROI) for every marketing campaign so you can decide if this is worth repeating in the future.
What types of efforts result in wins and which efforts (and their costs), aren’t worth pursuing?
This is where BQE CORE CRM solution can help. So much of what happens in the BQE CORE platform is about measuring effort and seeing real-time Key Performance Indicators (KPIs), so you can make smart decisions and not operate blindly.
You probably have a contact management system. This could be as simple as Microsoft Outlook or Apple Contacts. These tools are great if you’re just looking up phone numbers, writing emails, and finding out one’s address or other miscellaneous information. But when you want to understand everything about a contact and any client data you do business with, you will want to use a product like BQE CORE.
Here you can manage every aspect of every person you do business with; from your employees, to your clients and vendors. And now with BQE CORE CRM, you can also manage your Leads and Prospects.
Let’s start with Leads.
These are people that you have somehow come into contact with and gathered basic client information. Perhaps you met them at a party or a conference.
Either way - having them in a Lead database means you can include them in marketing campaigns. You may want to invite them to a company party or send them some updated marketing collateral.
Managing all your leads to make sure they are being cultivated requires a real process and this is where BQE CORE CRM comes into play.
How do you quickly identify the 350 people who attended that industry conference you attended last year?
How do you craft an email that feels personal to each one and share with them a PDF or link to a special landing page that you believe they would want to know about?
How do you manage which ones to follow-up with and when it’s best to do this?
How do you measure the costs invested in these campaigns against the eventual new work you win? Once again, this is why you need BQE CORE CRM.
You will know when your Campaign and Lead Management is working by the fact that you have been converting your leads into prospects.
Prospects are people or businesses that have achieved the potential of becoming a paying client.
At this point, you will be engaging with them in a more serious way. Having a CRM process that manages every touch-point with the prospect ensures that you will increase the probability of turning them into clients.
One of the most important components of a Prospect is what is called an Opportunity.
This is where you can plan the value of the future project, update the probability and monitor the forecasted value for all of your current opportunities.
Equally important is monitoring the various types of opportunities you have which also gives you a picture of hot market areas.
Associated with managing opportunities is task management such as creating proposals, providing quotes, and tracking notes, to-dos and follow ups.
There are so many small day-to-day things that need to be monitored to ensure that no opportunity is left to flounder.
With BQE CORE CRM you finally have a platform that ensures every Follow-Up is assigned and monitored, and no To-Dos are forgotten.
Eventually, you will be converting these opportunities into projects, engagements or matters (depending on your industry).
BQE CORE CRM provides the one-click experience whereupon winning an opportunity, it becomes active as a project for your teams to commence work and the full history of your work to-date for this opportunity can be shared with the team.
If it’s important for the project team to have access to the signed contract or have visibility into the communications between the partner-in-charge and the client during early negotiations, these can be made visible to the appropriate team members.
With a powerful tool like BQE CORE CRM, you also have dashboards that allow you to track the status of all every aspect of your marketing department.
There are also around 30 different reports that can be scheduled and delivered to the appropriate people in your firm to keep them apprised of all the marketing activities and results.
Here’s a list of some of the key features found in the BQE CORE CRM platform:
Lead and Prospect Management
Marketing Campaign Management
Customizable Timelines
Sales Goal Management
Opportunity Tracking
Quote and Proposal
Customizable Sales & Marketing Resource Library
Unlimited Email Templates
To-Do, Notes and Follow-up Management
Sales Pipeline Funnel and Forecasting
BQE CORE's cloud-based CRM tool offers a multitude of benefits for professional services firms and large and small businesses, making it an invaluable tool for success.
One of its key advantages lies in its ability to streamline client interactions and enhance communication. By centralizing client data, communication histories, and project details, BQE CORE empowers firms to manage relationships more efficiently and provide personalized services tailored to each client's unique needs.
The software's intuitive interface and user-friendly features enable professionals to track leads, manage sales pipelines, and automate various tasks, thereby saving valuable time and resources. Furthermore, with real-time insights and data analytics, firms can make data-driven decisions, identify trends, and seize opportunities for growth.
It also features a mobile app so you can handle all of your client communication everywhere you go.
Overall, BQE CORE's CRM software equips professional services firms with the necessary tools to foster stronger client relationships and a better customer experience, boost productivity, provide better customer support and retention, and ultimately, achieve sustainable business growth.
BQE CORE CRM provides architects, engineers, consultants, and other professional service businesses with an intuitive yet robust client relationship management platform. And unlike many of the other CRM options out there, it integrates seamlessly with the rest of BQE CORE's features such as project management software and time and expense tracking. Having an All-in-one CRM and firm management platform reduces the cost and increases the value of the tools since the data seamlessly integrates across all of your tools.
The software allows large and small businesses to nurture contacts, measure your efforts, and grow your firm. The cycle starts by attracting and identifying leads, bringing in more leads, converting them into opportunities, winning clients, and retaining them. Throughout each stage, personalized workflows make your leads and clients feel seen, understood, and important to your firm.
Efficiently monitoring and automating interactions with contacts at all points of your firm’s end-to-end lifecycle ensures that you foster every opportunity. BQE CORE makes it easy to create and send proposals, provide quotes, and track notes, to-dos, and follow-up tasks. With many daily tasks automatically completed by BQE CORE, you spend less time logging data and more time running your business.
BQE Software’s Client Relationship Management tool syncs with its accounting, time tracking, project management, QuickBooks, Salesforce, and more, and is available on both web and mobile apps backed by 24/7 customer support. If you are using CORE for firm management, the BQE CRM is the best client relationship management tool for your firm.
BQE’s CORE CRM, for example, helps firms efficiently monitor and react to consumer interactions at all points of the consumer lifecycle, from discovery and education to purchase and post-purchase communications.
Firms that are operating sufficiently without a comprehensive CRM platform are most likely small firms growing at a relatively slow rate. Most larger firms will maintain that effective contact with each and every customer is virtually impossible without appropriate digital assistance.
While the right CRM platform for your firm will depend on your specific needs and goals, there are a few areas of focus that should remain consistent across all business software systems. Let’s check them out.
Below is a Webinar recording where Shafat Qazi, CEO & Founder of BQE Software, walks you through everything you need to know to get started using the integrated BQE CORE CRM. For those who prefer to read than watch videos, we have also included the transcript below the video.
Good morning, everyone. Today I'm talking about CRM. It's a brand new offering. It's in Beta. It's not even released yet, but it's at a point where you could actually start using it for your business. So I thought it'd be a good idea for me to walk you through this and have you understand what it can do for your business, and how we designed and structured it so that you can play with it during these two, three months that we're in Beta.
What is CORE CRM? It's a client relationship management. Now, that's an important differentiator. It's not customer relationship management as Salesforce is, as an example. It is a client relationship management. It's designed for your firm, which is a professional service firm. We did a lot of research in making sure that we understand how professionals work day in and day out and how they can win more clients and keep the existing clients happy so that they stay with them.
What are the various parts of CORE CRM? I have done a color coding here to describe the tasks I call admin tasks--or let's call them one-off tasks. This is something that you'll do in the first two months of implementing CORE, filling in your lists and then the tables. So a good example would be an email template table or you may have a campaign table and things like that. That's something that needs to be added initially but also requires periodic updates.
Your on-going activities from meetings to emails and everything else that you do--your day-to-day activities--you will track through CORE CRM. I want to mention that there is an overlap between admin tasks, sales tasks and marketing tasks, like to-dos, follow-ups, and emails. I'll explain that as we get into the product demo.
First the most important thing to understand is the hierarchy of the CORE CRM.
Say your company is doing some kind of a promotion--marketing or branding for your business--and that effort shows up as leads. Now, leads could even come in when you meet somebody at an event--let's say a developer who says, "Hey, I'm building new homes in your area. Can I get your business card?"
You would get their business card. You work with that lead, convert that lead into a prospect, then into opportunities, and opportunities into clients.
Or you might do a marketing campaign. Maybe you send out a newsletter to 10,000 potential clients and get 2000 leads out of that.
Out of those 2000 leads, you talk to them, you realize that 1200 of them are potential clients. We call them prospects. As you have conversations with your prospects you start creating opportunities with them, and then eventually you'll end up with clients. Notice the ratios here. If you get 100 leads, only 60 will become prospects, there'll be 45 opportunities created out of those 100 and then two and a half will become clients. By the way that is very typical of professional service firms.
This is what we call as the ultimate conversion rate. Your ultimate conversion rate today is probably in the neighborhood of two to 3%. If you're more than 3%, you're doing really well. You probably have a good CRM software, and that's why you're able to do it more than people should. BQE's ultimate goal is that conversion rate of two and a half percent increase to four and a half percent by both widening the funnel at the top. So notice that instead of 2000 leads, we want to get to 3000 leads. We widened the funnel at the top and we widened the funnel at the bottom. So instead of two and a half percent conversion rate, we're going to take your conversion rate to four and a half percent.
A lot of extra cash comes in by simply having effective tools to take your conversion rate up to four and a half percent. Which by the way, is not a challenge if we can also widen the funnel at the top.
Now, who will use CORE CRM in your firm? Typically in a professional service firm, whether you are an architect, engineer, accountant, or a law firm, you're not going to have a chief sales officer or chief marketing officer. For most smaller firms, principle partner of the firm is typically the marketing guy, or some senior project managers--typically these are the key people that go out and seek new business.
The pain point that we know you are having today is: 1) Disconnected context. Let's say I get an email from a potential client. Nobody knows about it. If somebody else wants to contact that person, I have to forward the email address. It's just painful. Most importantly, what if you were out for two weeks and then that prospect feels like your company is being non-responsive.
You don't have the visibility of who's trying to win what kind of business. People are working in their own silos. That is a big pain point and one of the reasons that conversion rate is so low. Also our inboxes have become a gumball machine, sometimes we miss opportunities. People contact us. We say, "Okay, I'll get back to this guy later on." But no, then you never find that email again. A lot of manual processes, a lot of bad data because you're entering those leads manually and then of course, inconsistent messaging. The principal of the company writes an email that has a different tone to it as compared to, let's say, a project manager or your chief sales officer. So everybody is exercising their own style, which creates inconsistent messaging and often not the right words used and therefore huge opportunities lost.
So that's why you need CORE CRM based on what we learned from our research. Now let's dive into the demo.
First of all, notice that on my CORE, I have three menu items. One is under my list where it says CRM, Beta.
You can see that it's a new thing. And you will also see that I have a CRM menu by itself, which has a lot of CRM-related menu items. And then I have a new one called Sales Tools, which also has the word Beta attached to it. If you do not have these three things in your CORE subscription today, here's what you need to do. As long as you have the admin privileges to CORE, you can go to Add Subscriptions, go under Account and Manage Subscriptions. And in your Manage Subscriptions, you will add CORE CRM. Look how I have added CORE CRM, it says Free till September 30th. We are planning to release it in October so you will get it free for the next few months. And if you don't see it there, then go to the Add Packages and you'll find it there at zero cost, and you can add as many users as you like.
In my case, I have added five users. You can of course add more than five users. And then invite others to obviously go ahead and work on that. So now let's jump into CORE lists. This is something that your admin team, principal partners should get together and work through these lists in CORE CRM. I'm going to show you real quickly what the list screen in CORE CRM looks like. This is the foundational list elements that you will manage. All your lists are here. How do you get your leads? Do you get your leads from a website, a newsletter, all kinds of things that you typically do. What are the various stages of opportunity that you want to track and the order of those opportunity stages. So basically creating your opportunity funnel.
So, a sales funnel within the funnel of winning a client. Opportunity types, I have created my own opportunity types of change order, new construction, remodel. I'm pretending I'm an architectural firm or an engineering firm. So this is the type of opportunities that I want to track. Lots of other things you can see here, priorities, you can also see various regions that you may want to track. If you are in Australia, you want to track your own regions. If you're in the US, of course, you want to track US regions. What else can we do? Campaign types, what kind of marketing do we typically do? A lot of these things like competition, you definitely have to fill that in. They won't be pre-filled for you. These will be blank by default.
So if you see a new competition, let's say there's a firm called Fountainhead Designs and they are coming up more in competition. So you might want to add them as your competition and track how many wins you have against them. So basically very easy for you to manage everything through this CORE CRM list. Typically a one time deal, but periodic updates needed and something that you want to put your thought through. And yes, you can later on change it. If you did not like the way that you label it, you can change the label. That will not hurt your data. It would automatically maintain the data. So that was the list elements, which is again, the foundational element. Now, we come to the leads.
I'm not talking about campaigns and marketing today. I'm talking about leads. I'm going to skip the first step although CORE does have campaign and marketing. But I'll touch from the point that you actually got a phone call from someone or you received that business card. So let's go add the lead. You don't need to add a lead one at a time. You can actually go ahead and add leads as a batch. So here are my 10 or 12 leads that I helped created in my CORE CRM already imported in my CORE CRM.
You could create leads in a batch and they will be automatically marked as pending. And I also am actually super excited about the fact that we are now introducing a new functionality in CORE that allows you to import data from Excel spreadsheets. So under the More button notice that we now added import from CSV. So I have this box in here. I can drop my Excel file or CSV file in here. And as soon as I click on that upload button, and it will match my columns with my CORE fields on the left and the columns picked from my CSV files on the right. So then if I like the matching, I'm going to leave it alone. Where I may not have a match, or I may have a field in my Excel file that doesn't have a destination in CORE, I can simply remove it.
Once I'm done click on that, save and down and wow. Right there, you just saved yourself a lot of time. So save yourself a lot of time, whether it's vendor bills or whether it's anything else. We can also upload PDFs into CORE directly and parse those for you so that you don't have to enter the data. So now that I have my leads, this is where I would manage my leads daily. Now, of course, what I want to do is show you how I would add a brand new lead. Let's say I got that phone call. I'm on the phone. I'm the admin person at this point. I'm not even a principal or a partner. I'm getting a phone call and I'm just simply taking down memo from the phone call.
It's a prospect named Jeff Garner from KD Homes and the status will be pending. I'm going to go ahead and sign this particular lead to Scott Jackson. I will ask the lead basically, how did they hear about us? And they'll say, "Hey, I found you on Google. And I picked you up from your website." I'm going to capture the address for that particular lead. And of course the rest of the contact information such as the phone number, and of course the email address. So very, very important that whoever's capturing the leads captures that. Then I can get additional details like what industry does this project fall under? So it's a residential project and I'll find out where it's being built. And how do they hear about us?
What was the source? So they said we Googled you on the internet. And I know that somehow we may figure it out, this is to a page, or an advertising, so it cost us $400. And if you have a lead scoring system, you can give it the initial score. So let's just give it 25, which is the initial score I'm going to assign to this lead now. The lead is in the system. So if I go back to my lead list, you will see KD Homes, right there, still in pending status. And of course now I can work on that lead. I can look at the details. I can add a to-do. I can send an email to the lead or even convert it to a prospect, which I'll show you in a little while, how to do that. And of course delete that lead if I wanted to.
So let me go back into KD Homes, just show you a few other things in there. First of all your marketing campaigns would be in this place. So if you send out the newsletter or a brochure or any other marketing email to this particular lead, you will see what happened. Any to-dos you might want to create for that particular lead, any notes you want to write, any emails that you may have directly sent or through central batch email, our marketing campaigns, all those emails would arrive and appear under that email tab. Now, very easy for you to go ahead and manage leads. The first thing you want to do is now that you've captured the lead address and everything, you want to go ahead and set up a follow-up for the lead and that follow-up could be set up for somebody else.
Let's say you are an admin person, but you want one of the engineers or project managers to follow up. So I want to have Scott Jackson follow up. Notice this little follow-up button. We make it available right in the List screen, so you don't have to go inside the lead to do that. So basically I want Scott Jackson to call KD homes and talk to Jeff. One thing that I wanted you to pay attention to is as I'm setting a follow-up for a certain date, it does tell me how many follow-ups does Scott Jackson have for that day. So if Scott Jackson's got already too many follow-ups, let's say 25, 30 followups, you may want to set up a different date for him to follow up with that particular lead.
So go ahead and save that, that follow-up is now done. If you want to add any notes, let's say for example, as an admin person, you did a little bit of research on the prospect, on the lead, and you look at their website and you want to mention, "Hey, I looked at their website, it could be a huge opportunity for a Hendrix Consulting LLC." Absolutely put that note in.
All right. Now, one other thing that you can do with that lead is send an email. I'm going to go ahead and highlight that lead click on email, and I'm going to pick from my templates. Now, this is an extremely powerful feature. CORE has capabilities of creating template fields, template emails with fields in it, dynamic fields in it. So for example, see how it says lead F name in the body, which means leads first name. So I'm sending an email template called check-in and I'm going to put a subject on it, whatever I want to do, the key being remember how I was talking about inconsistent messaging. So no longer will any of your employee, have to type their own email in terms of saying, "I'm checking in, how are you doing? Can we set up a meeting?"
Whatever you want to say, create that piece of masterpiece, hire a marketing consultant to write them for you and put them in CORE CRM and you're done. Your messaging is going to be always beautiful, powerful and to the point and more importantly, impress that potential client. One last thing, if I wanted to send a batch email to all of them, say, happy Labor Day or whatever, I can do that right here also. So we do allow you to select multiple leads at the same time and send them an email saying, touching bases, everything going okay? Or here's a good thing I learned regarding COVID, whatever you may want to do to just remain in front of them by sending those batch emails.
Now Scott Jackson would log in and that's where it's going to appear on his list. And Scott Jackson will go to the follow-up screen and look at the notes and then make that phone call, put the notes about the phone call saying, "I had a good call. They're building 500 new homes in Orange County, so it's a huge opportunity. I am excited. I have set up a meeting with them and I'm going to go ahead and do next follow-up on it."
Now, I can go back to my dashboard and mark that intro call as done. And as soon as I do that, it moves to the bottom of the list. It gets grayed out and I know at that point in time that I am done with that list. Now leads become prospects and KD Homes is no longer a lead. We can make it a prospect because I did make the phone call. I did see an opportunity for 500 new homes that they want us to design.
Let's go make this lead into a prospect. How do you do that in CORE CRM? We made it very, very easy for you. So you go to that one lead and convert that lead to a prospect right here, and you don't lose any information about that lead. The information that you entered at the lead level, remains there. Now you're creating and converting that into a process. So you basically copying or are inheriting that lead element and making it a prospect and notice what CORE says, hey look, if you're going to make him a prospect, do you also see an opportunity and want to create an opportunity at the same time? I'm going to say yes, of course, I want to create an opportunity at the same time. So I'm going to go ahead and give it a name. Let's call it "KD Homes, 500 home project" and then the type of opportunity. It's a new construction, the description is KD Homes - 500 homes. I'm going to still put it as a probability or success rate or potentially at 25% at this point, it's too early for me to be overconfident.
Also I'm going to throw in a forecast on how much fee the firm will make on this project in the long run. I want to try to close it by tomorrow, which might be a little bit aggressive here, but you can set the target date the way you want. Then of course the stage where the opportunity is. You're still initial stage, you're still in progress. So now what I did is I created a prospect and with the prospect, I created an opportunity. So you can see I'm in the prospect screen right now and this is my prospect called KD Homes. It's copied everything from my lead, including how they came in, the address, all of that. And of course I can now add some additional elements to it if I wanted to, for one of the elements that you can do is tagging. We allow you to tag prospects. So that's very important. So I want to put a new tag on it.
I want to put a tag, let's say West Coast or Orange County. All of these tags that you want to later report, you want to say, how many leads do we have that are in the West Coast? How many leads do we have that are new homes or prospects do we have? You can easily do that. And of course at the prospect level, you get to assign a prospect manager. Now, prospect manager might later on become project manager. I don't know, but this is a good time to see that person who might actually carry on with that project.
So let's say you go ahead and assign Curtis James to that person. Now, you have a prospect. I just want to make sure that because I created an opportunity at the same time, I want to show you the opportunity too, we'll come and dig deeper into this opportunity later on. But I just wanted you to see that this automatic creation of the opportunity at that opportunity level. I have an ability to send an email using that opportunity as a source. And now this time I'm going to send an email template called Next Steps and I am going to welcome KD Homes and try to set up a meeting with them onsite.
Hopefully when we can go onsite, maybe do a Zoom meeting and be able to talk more about my firm with them. So one of the things that I was talking about that I'm looking at the prospect now, any emails that you sent, they will all appear in this box. So you don't have to go look for your email in your outlook or Gmail, it's all going to be at one point. And we are planning to integrate with Office 365 email and Google Suite. So those emails, if you got direct emails from them, those will also start appearing, which are basically the incoming. All your outgoing emails are already in CORE so you're good there, you know at least what you said.
I'm going to mail them a brochure actually, let's put that in. So later on today, I want to have Janet mail them a brochure. So very easy to do and assigned to Janet, not to me. So Janet gets a notification in CORE on her mobile phone, "Can you please send the brochure to KD Homes?" And then I will put my notes saying, "I talked to Tom at KD Homes today, and we scheduled a meeting with him" on such and such date. You just saw how easy it was for us to convert the lead into prospect, create an opportunity at the same time in one key stroke, and add follow-ups at the opportunity level.
You can add follow-ups at the prospect level just like you can at the lead level. So here I'm creating a follow-up to discuss the 500 home project with them and I see that I already have three follow-ups for that date. No problem. I can handle one more. So that's all it takes to basically go ahead and manage the prospect and manage the follow-ups and this followup that I just created right here to discuss the 500 homes.
Let's get into the resource library. What is it? Think of it as a filing system for all your sales and marketing related materials. You would typically store your marketing brochures, anything about company, awards, key projects, client testimonials, mentions in the news, etc.
You don't have to be looking for it in some file system, where somebody's local hard drive has the latest one, and you were using an old one--none of that. And of course you can also have your own resource. Notice I have my resources that's only visible to me. I can make some resources available to the entire company and some only to me, and of course, click on any brochure. It pops up right there within the application. You can scan it. You can take a look at what it looks like and make sure it's the latest one. So very easy for you even to move the brochure or add a file. You click on, add to resource library and you get all of these options.
You can even hyperlink a YouTube video that you want to add as a resource. And if you guys use Dropbox, Google Drive, One Drive, Box, or even within the resource library, you can add another resource into one folder or the other from within the library. So I love that and then of course you can also move files around from folder to folder if somebody put them in the wrong folder. The whole point being for your business and especially now that we learn from COVID that that local file system that you have at the office may not be reliable. So all your sales and marketing should be in one place.
Another thing that is unique about CORE CRM, that you will not find in CRM like Salesforce is your ability to create quotes and proposals. I'm going to show you how we create a proposal in CORE.
Under the CRM menu, you'll see Proposals and I have already two proposals in there in my sample company, but I want to show you how I can create a proposal using a template. So I can also have proposals as templates where, lawyers might have provided a legal language and I just need to add the rest of it.
I'm going to create one from a template called Standard Proposal. I will scan through it real quickly. I'll see that this is maybe reviewed already by my legal counsel or whoever is responsible for your business proposals. And once you click on continue, you basically fill in the fields. You can say, this is a proposal for KD Homes, and you can call it anything. It doesn't have to be called the same as the opportunity or the prospect, but I'm going to call it the same, but definitely do make sure that the prospect that you're tying this proposal to, KD Homes is mentioned otherwise you won't find it under that prospect.
And then of course, since we have already created an opportunity for KD Homes, we will tie it to that opportunity. Ignore the proposal amount, because it'll get automatically adjusted if you are going to include the quote. But if you don't have a quote, you can manually type in any amount that you want. What makes this section sweet is the Proposal Builder there. Now this proposal comes in and it's editable. So you can see I have a sample quote in there, which I am going to remove and I'm going to add a quote I already created for KD Homes. So right here on the toolbar, you will see, I have a special icon to drop it in a quote. I have KD Homes quote and will just hit that, add that quote and I'm done.
So now CORE asks me, do you want the summary of the quote? Do you want full details? I want to ask it for full details, but I'm going to hide the tax column. Don't need to show them the tax columns, just the bill rate for each line item. Insert the quote. The proposal will be updated every time I update the quote. So that makes it much easier. And when I save it, watch what happens, if I go back to my proposal list, it will update my quote. So of course that makes it much, much easier for me not to have to worry about adjusting the overall value of that quote. So again, the whole point being you're going to send those proposals, please create your proposal templates, use the best language, cover yourself, get a lawyer to review that. And then of course, create proposals and use the workflow, the proposal, something you may want the principal partner of the company to review before you send it.
Say I got a proposal from Scott Jackson. When the principal approves it, Scott Jackson gets notified. Now the next section, which is something that you typically will spend a lot of time in is the opportunities. Now, you met somebody at an event, you know that they have a big project coming up. It's a 500 homes design project, and it's a huge opportunity. So you are going to go ahead and manage that opportunity on a day-to-day basis. So you'll go to the opportunities and you will see that opportunity right there for KD Homes that you had previously thought will be a $350,000 opportunity. Notice for all your opportunities, what stage they're at, whether they are in progress, whether they're in RFP submittal, whether they are preparing a contract for them. Everything is here.
And then of course you hover over the notes, you'll see all the notes related to that opportunity. So the beauty is these are the opportunities that are assigned to me as one of the key person in my firm and I'm supposed to be constantly touching bases and working on these opportunities to increase my chances of winning these projects. So let's click on KD Homes opportunity. What do we see inside there? It's a new construction, 500 homes, high priority, and $350,000 potential revenue bucket. And then of course, CORE does have capability to create sales goal for your company. So if you are trying to make a million dollars in this quarter in fees or new business, you can set that sales goal right here.
Any proposals that are tied to that opportunity will automatically appear under the Proposals tab. As you can see, the documents would have any documents that you might have attached so you want to send them a brochure. You can easily attach that, and then the quotes and then your to-dos will all appear in one place. And then any notes you have written all appeared at one place. So very, very easy for you to even go inside the Proposal while you're in the opportunity and click on that proposal and be able to see that proposal. And go back into the Proposal Builder there and further edit it if you had a phone call and he wants something else changed on the proposal, very easy for you to do it directly from the opportunity. The whole point being is we don't want you to necessarily leave the opportunity screen. We want you to be able to manage your day-to-day business of winning new clients through that opportunity screen very effectively.
If you want to add a new follow-up for KD Homes, click on that follow-up link right there and fill that in, you know exactly how many follow-ups you have for that date. Just like you had on the previous ones, preventing you from overbooking yourself on follow-ups. So very simple, yet very powerful functionality for you to manage opportunities. The whole goal, being that you would basically want to win as many opportunities as you can. I want to mention real quickly that we have some great widgets related to CORE CRM on our dashboard. You saw the follow-up widget right here. All my follow-ups for my potential clients are in here. I just finished discussing the 500 homes project, I can mark it down right there. All my prospects, whether I'm tracking them based on expected revenue or what I've already closed again, all at one place.
And then of course my sales funnel. This is the funnel that we have created for our company with various stages and how many prospects are in that stage, all my to-dos and all my opportunities for the entire company. Now, since I do have full permission, I am able to see everybody's opportunities and it color codes it for me, showing them. Scott, two opportunities in progress, one in contract prep. Steve Cohen has got one in the RFP submittal stage. So you can see those color codings in there that clearly indicate what stage these opportunities are. So very, very powerful. Dashboard widgets that hopefully will let you run your business and get that, put your finger on their pulse and make sure that nothing falls through the cracks when it comes to opportunity management and you can of course, click on it, go directly to that prospect or to that opportunity and start working on it.
By the way, this diagram here is just to indicate that this is the piece that we're adding, this is the piece that you already have. Everything on the right hand side is already in CORE. This is a piece that we just added, which is Leads, Prospects, Opportunities and Campaigns and Proposals and Follow-ups and To-dos and Quotes. All of that is being added. This is just to give you a visual representation. Now, of course, I already mentioned that this is coming soon with online feeds so you will make more money. You will grow your business. Leads will be delivered to you so that you can then add them to the CRM. We will allow you to do mass emailing up to 5,000 emails per month at no extra cost. If you're using some kind of a batch emailing tool, you don't need to, because now it's included in CORE CRM.
The proposals-embedded quotes is huge. You can take it from Microsoft Word, import it from there, and copy and paste it from anything. You can put logos, images, anything you want in these proposals.
If you want to commission your sales team or people who are responsible for bringing in new business, you want to make them salary plus commission, we have a built in commission system in there. And last but not the least, I like the resource library because all your marketing and promotional material is in one place, no more guessing who's got the latest copy of the brochure or key project documents.
I believe that you cannot improve what you cannot measure. So CORE CRM will allow you to measure your efforts and therefore grow your firm.
Your growth starts with identifying a lead, converting them into opportunities, and increasing the percentage of opportunities you convert into clients. With CORE CRM, your competition will be irrelevant. They won't even know what hit them.
As the Director of Content & Community at BQE, Lucas Gray researches and writes about best practices for Architecture and Engineering firms. He also fosters community across the AEC industries. The content and community interaction focuses on providing business advice derived from his wealth of experience in architectural design, firm operations, and business consulting. Lucas's background includes co-founding Propel Studio Architecture in Portland, Oregon in 2013. He led the firm’s operations, focusing on business development, marketing, team management, financial management, and design direction. Specializing in addressing housing issues, Lucas has designed over 50 Accessory Dwelling Units (ADUs), various infill housing developments, and custom homes. He has worked internationally in Shanghai, Bangkok, and Berlin, on a wide range of large-scale design projects as well as community engagement processes. After working in the Architecture profession for about 20 years, Lucas transitioned into business consulting for A&E firms as part of CVG. Here he worked with small growing A&E businesses, helping guide them to improved operations and profitability. Passionate about the built environment, urban planning, transit, and public art, Lucas also writes about these topics on his blog and creates abstract art in his spare time.
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