The SiteVisit

Embracing Technology in Construction with Erick Vargas, Co-Founder at Followup CRM

• James Faulkner

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What if there was a CRM designed specifically for the construction industry, offering both simplicity and cost-effectiveness? Meet Erick Vargas, the co-founder of Followup CRM, who joins us to share the fascinating story of a tool born out of necessity. This innovative CRM has become a game-changer for construction professionals, rivaling giants like Salesforce and HubSpot.

Journey with us as we unravel the unique evolution of Followup CRM from an internal project to a standalone success. Erick discusses the hurdles and victories encountered in its development, highlighting the unpredictable yet invaluable role of user feedback. We explore the slow yet inevitable shift towards technology adoption in construction, driven by younger generations eager to modernize traditional processes.

As the episode unfolds, we venture into the realm of AI integration within construction CRMs. Eric shares his insights on the transformative potential of AI in enhancing safety, accuracy, and efficiency in high-stakes environments. We address important privacy and security concerns, especially for companies handling sensitive government data. Finally, discover strategies for optimizing CRM integration within organizations, the critical role of middle management, and the evolving dynamics of trade shows in the post-COVID era. This episode promises an enlightening look at how Followup CRM is shaping the future of the construction industry.

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the Site Visit Website: https://www.sitemaxsystems.com/podcast
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the Site Visit on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/the-site-visit/id1456494446
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Speaker 1:

All right, so we're talking tech founder, another tech founder, well, co-founder, same thing. Yeah, very rarely do we have two people who get to talk about stuff like this on the podcast. That's very good. Down from Florida I say down because we're up. Obviously you're in the North Pole here.

Speaker 2:

Yeah.

Speaker 1:

So yes, south Florida, southeast Florida, you're saying Yep, fort Laud're saying yep fort lauderdale fort lauderdale.

Speaker 2:

Wow, every time I think fort lauderdale I think of the 80s movies, of like beach stuff and spring break spring break is actually coming back it is like yeah, fort lauderdale kind of banned spring break in the 90s, early 2000s, but now the college kids are taking over, so it's pretty crazy around here now.

Speaker 1:

Wow.

Speaker 2:

Yeah.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, that's. It's kind of a cool thing, though, right, I think, is that kind of stuff coming back where you know the parents are telling these younger kids hey, when I was a kid it was this and it's all in vogue again.

Speaker 2:

Oh yeah, it's coming back around and you know it's usually March where the beaches are just flooded with people and they have the cops out and Fort Lauderdale is where you want to go. Miami spring break gets a little rough.

Speaker 1:

A little rough. So Fort Lauderdale is becoming the new Cabo kind of thing.

Speaker 2:

Exactly yeah, and then everyone in Fort Lauderdale actually goes to Cabo to get out for their spring break.

Speaker 1:

Oh, very interesting. Wow, I hit on a nerve there. That's cool.

Speaker 2:

Yeah.

Speaker 1:

All right. So we're going to be talking about CRM for construction and your path value proposition, what you guys have been doing and, yeah, very, very interesting, you looking forward to it.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, super excited to be here. Thanks for having us.

Speaker 1:

Awesome Welcome to the Site. Visit Podcast, leadership and perspective from construction With your host, james Falkner.

Speaker 2:

Business as usual as it has been for so long now that it goes back to what we were talking about before hitting the reset button.

Speaker 1:

You know you read all the books, you read the emails, you read scaling up, you read good to great. You know I could go on. We've got to a place where we found the secret serum. We found the secret potion. We can get the workers in. We know where to get them.

Speaker 2:

Once I was on the job site for a while actually, we had a semester concrete and I ordered like a Korean-Finnish patio out front of the site show. I was down at Dallas and a guy just hit me up on LinkedIn out of the blue and said he was driving from Oklahoma to Dallas to meet with me because he heard the Faber Connect platform on your guys' podcast Own it, crush it and love it, and we celebrate these values every single day. Let's get down to it. We celebrate these values every single day.

Speaker 1:

Let's get down to it. Let's do it All. Right, eric Vargas, how you doing today, man.

Speaker 2:

Doing really good.

Speaker 1:

That's good. That is good. So, yeah, don't have to ask you about the weather. Already did that. It's all good down there in East South Florida 71 and sunny, it's perfect 71.

Speaker 2:

That's actually a decent temp. Yeah, it's a little warm for most. Uh, I would prefer maybe 68 and sunny, but hey, beggars can't be chosen.

Speaker 1:

I don't know about that. Okay, so, um, follow up crm. So take us through the like uh story how you got, how you met your co-founder. Just give us like the quick before we do that. Just give us like the quick pitch on this CRM. Obviously, everyone knows Salesforce, hubspot, all that kind of stuff, but for construction, for sub-trades specifically, yeah, give us the little pitch.

Speaker 2:

Yeah. So follow up CRM. We like to call ourselves like the easier to use version of Salesforce for the construction industry Right, and so when people think about Salesforce or HubSpot, you know you might get like all clammy because it costs a lot, it's hard to implement and no one uses it. So therefore the construction industry like totally rejects it. Right, yeah, so, but at the same time a lot of construction business owners see the need for a CRM. Right and so that's why our co-founder, aguirre Gualic he originally designed the system for his own company, best Roofing, about 12 years ago Right, right, okay, and he's a large commercial roofing contractor in the Fort Lauderdale area.

Speaker 2:

He grew and sold his company for a hundred million dollars and credits a lot of that growth to being able to follow up on his leads and bids and opportunities. So back in the day I met Greg through just some faith-based relationships here in South Florida and we connected kind of like on a values level and he's like, hey, I have this little side thing and I come from a tech background, having sold, you know, software um, right out of college, and so we kind of so were you in sales?

Speaker 2:

yeah, yeah, I uh, I actually sold um this thing called um webex, which was like the zoom before I remember webex, oh yeah, yeah, yeah. So now everyone's on. You know google meet or zoom, but it's like webex, yeah yeah, yeah, interesting.

Speaker 1:

So you used to sell enterprise accounts for WebEx.

Speaker 2:

Yep, yep, and I actually helped implement Salesforce at my previous company. You know better at the sales team and so you know I got to really know what Salesforce like, looks like, from the nuts and bolts of it, and so I took that knowledge with me to follow up CRM.

Speaker 1:

Cool. So the CRM business in general. So you know, in our obviously in construction SaaS products, we talk about something called an ICP, and for listeners that just means ideal customer profile. So what kind of companies, like a revenue range, are GCs using this and subs, or a bit of both, or typically what's the blend? And then what kind of revenue are they're doing? You're finding your sweet spot.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, so it really depends on the like if you're a commercial or residential right. Like a large residential roofing company might do 20 to $30 million a year but a commercial roofing company might do like 7070, $80 or $90 or more right?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, exactly so, and a lot of companies do both. So revenue wise it can vary. So the floor of what we like to serve is a company that does like $5 to $10 million and has like a sales team of five people or more. Because that's when spreadsheets and paper just doesn't work Right, cause you have your guys running around the town, you know giving estimates and quotes and you need to track and manage what people are doing Right. And so that's really where the pain point is strong enough for us to become relevant. You know, at a um, like subcontractor or GC, and when you're bidding opportunities, if you're just bidding five opportunities a month, yeah, you can put that on a sticky note, but if you're bidding five opportunities a week, then you have to follow up on those.

Speaker 1:

Gotcha. Okay, I have to say I didn't mention this, but you had a great background. Look at that American flag.

Speaker 2:

You got some books All in time for election season. Right, you got a plant.

Speaker 1:

Wow.

Speaker 2:

Looking very good. Yeah, it looks awesome.

Speaker 1:

Podcast ready Podcast ready, exactly so, and I saw on your website for everyone to just know it's followupcrmcom. I was looking at the integrations there. Obviously I understand integration, so typically you're probably just taking the uh contact data from those and syncing them yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2:

so no one wants to put the same contact name, email number address in like five different systems, right? So a huge priority for us in the past two years has just been integrating with all of our customers a software that they're already using, if they're using something. So we have an open API that allows us to like, push and pull data back and forth, and so we integrate with a lot of the major like construction accounting software out there.

Speaker 1:

So what's the um the industry standard for is like, what's it called? A something card, icv or IBC card? Um, like, if you're on your iPhone, if you like share, you share someone's contact. There's like that thing.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, yeah, I know what you're talking about.

Speaker 1:

Do you guys have?

Speaker 2:

that, um, so we don't have that. We actually have a big business card scanner, which is pretty cool oh, yeah, I like that. That's cool yeah so in our app on your mobile phone, you just open up the scanner, take a picture of the um, the business card that you get, and then it automatically uploads the data right into the system.

Speaker 1:

So that's the cool part Providing their typefaces, yeah, yeah that OCR can get sold, yeah, sans serif.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, yeah, exactly. No hand script, please, exactly. So that's pretty cool. So, in terms of the value proposition at Sitemax, we have these different things for different audience and we call these. You can get your icp, but it's not always just about the size of the company. There needs to be a mindset and it's almost like a psychographic profile of the state of a culture of a company. They want to move forward, are they forward thinking, etc. Etc. What's the generation of the company? Or they're going through digital transformation? If this is a psychographic profile, it's actually very difficult to find because it's not out on the internet.

Speaker 1:

Somewhat sentiment about, about technology. So you know the sales processes is uh, lots of leads, but you know you gotta, you gotta weed it down to are they interested and that's that you know. Are you ready or do you want to do this? So on those different value propositions, like with SiteMax, for instance, ours is we replace four different apps so you can have one app. So when you're out in the field, you don't have to keep. You know, when someone's new to the company, they don't have to onboard them with four applications. It's just one, you know. So that's way better. So that's just an example, not an ad for SightMax, because we do that enough, but so in terms of do you have different value proposition pillars? That follow-up is really addressing.

Speaker 2:

Yeah. So it really depends on who we're talking to. What the major value proposition. So I'll also just start at the top. For owners, having one place for all your company data is really the value prop that they're looking for. And then being able to get the sales reporting and analytics to make sure they're projecting revenue that's coming into the business. So at the highest level, most owners we call it bid and beg right.

Speaker 2:

Where you're just throwing bids out there and then, if you throw 100 out there, hopefully you're going to get a couple right and you'll hear back from them if they want to work with you. But rather than doing that kind of spaghetti on the wall, see what happens. Putting an actual sales process into the company, where we're forecasting and managing our pipeline and following up with our opportunities is what owners are looking for.

Speaker 1:

Right, okay, that's pretty cool. So how difficult was this to build and how has that path been over time? You know, the entrepreneurial story is always very interesting and I think when your potential customers hear that story, I think it adds some credence to your mission. Yeah, and you know you've been doing this so 2000. So yeah, let me think here. Where are you at 2016? You guys started yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1:

Well, so that's when I basically took over, but even before that it was just at our uh co-founders company right for an internal project, and yeah, an internal software that he built for and he didn't want that to die, so he's like okay exactly, so you guys did an intellectual property, transfer from the company to a new new company.

Speaker 2:

Well, we spun it, we spun it out and that's part of our story. So I called um his company, our laboratory right? Yeah, so we would build a feature, we would roll it out to them. They would say no change this or that. And so it was really um built in collaboration with our users yeah, probably pretty tough in the beginning though, oh yeah, oh yeah.

Speaker 2:

So, um, it's funny when you talk to users. Um, sometimes it's kind of like that um, you know that ford quote where, um, they're like if you ask somebody what they want, they would say a faster horse, when they actually want the car. It's like that. So really, when you're talking to uh users, it's about listening to their pain points yeah and what's slowing them down, and then kind of predicting the future of what could actually solve that problem.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, yeah it's interesting, especially when you get you know that laboratory experience, if you ask for detail and then suddenly you know they have maybe a UI change. That's a convenience to them. I don't know if you guys experienced this, but you it's convenient to them. But then when you go out to the market they're like why is that there? Right, that makes that makes no sense. Why, why would that be? And then from a data database point of view you're kind of like, uh, that should have been structured the other way you can get into. Yeah, the asking them for the faster horse thing can kind of bite you a little bit in the early days.

Speaker 2:

Well, here's an example of that. So a lot of customers that we talk to they're like oh, I want a two-way integration and I want it to be automated right with whatever software it is. No, you don't. And I'm like, are you sure? And so what we've come to is like all of our integrations are one click. That's better.

Speaker 1:

It's an execution button.

Speaker 2:

It's an execution button, so when you want it to happen, it will happen, right? Not kind of in the background, right? Because then you get a whole bunch of garbage data going back and forth that you never really wanted, right you guys have a staging pop-up modal that shows you what is going to be going in yeah, uh, well, it depends on the integration, right right, yeah, like typically, we would show a preview of what's going to be transferred and then you go.

Speaker 1:

Okay, continue confirm yeah that's really cool because you know what we deal with. The same thing, especially when it comes to accounting software. We have some things in SiteMax that's like time, for instance, so all the time goes into like a Sage or something like that, and, as you know, you have this on-prem issue as well. This is some of these legacy platforms that are still on servers at some companies and you got to build a little widget that goes in between. I mean Sage, intac. That's different. It's easy because it's all cloud-based, but some of the stuff is just old school.

Speaker 2:

Yep.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, so yeah, the word integration is kind of a dirty word. People want the convenience but they don't really understand that the garbage side and depending on the software that you're targeting, the garbage can be difficult to get out. I know QuickBooks is like that when it's difficult to delete entries.

Speaker 2:

Right. Totally, yeah, some of our largest customers. Actually they say we don't want anything integrated because we want that redundancy, right and you know this company, yeah. Yeah, yeah, they're like and this is a $300 million company? And they're like no, we prefer everything separated, because when we transfer it over to this other department, they have to re-verify and enter things in, so I'm like hey, that sounds, that sounds great, and actually they find that to be optimal for their company.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, yeah, and that's pretty cool, um, so let's, let's chat a little bit about the industry, um, and construction being. What do you think the deal is with being slow to adopt? Construction being what?

Speaker 2:

do you think the deal is with being slow to adopt? You know, we are, I think, in the beginning of a wave. If you think about the bell curve, right, the construction industry in general tends to be laggers right, and so the way I like, the way I joked, is that the construction industry is entering the nineties and, you know, discovering technology kind of like we all did back.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, web, one, one, one, oh, right, yeah, and um, you know, salesforce was invented in the in the nineties, right 1999, actually, um, and so, uh, yeah, yeah, and what's happening is dad, who ran the company for 40 years in a particular way, is now either transferring it to the son or selling off the business, and you have to get the information out of dad's head into a system that can be transferable to other people, you know, as he starts to retire and think about their future. Right, yeah, so that's what's really triggering a lot of this um, adoption, um, now, but you know, for the past, you know decade or two, uh, that's what's also been holding it back.

Speaker 1:

You've been trying to get dad to see the value.

Speaker 2:

Right, like I've been in this for 30 years.

Speaker 1:

Why do I need this thing?

Speaker 2:

And you know to that point, they were successful at what they did, right and so you know, you can't argue with it. You know, and so you know you kind of have to accept it. But you know, when people you know under, you know 60, you know with their iPhones and all of that, they, they, they grew up in a different world, right? So that's why adoption is starting to grow.

Speaker 1:

Oh, good point, Good point. Um, there's also some other elements and maybe get your thoughts on that. In terms of um, I mean, there's not a lot of risk on your side going, you know, for a digital like for a CRM construction. You know duplicating content maybe I mean that's the biggest risk risk, or, um, so you know someone can get hurt if it's not working properly. Or you know AI, for instance. You know doing some things that are uh, like chat, gpt for instance. It's going to make mistakes. You can't have a mistake on a job site. Someone's going to get hurt. So, um, what are your? What are your thoughts on, like, the future of where things are going in terms of speed? You know we've seen ai sort of attacking the workplace. You know software engineers I don't know about you guys, but we did a a uh, a new position at sitemax for another senior engineer. Last year we got about 15 applications. This year we got 400. Wow, that's crazy.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, big difference, yeah yeah, the market's changing and the industry is changing because of ai. We actually just integrated ai into the software, okay what did you do there?

Speaker 2:

tell me about that so, um, what we tried, what we're doing is phase one is helping with the sales and marketing research of a prospect. So let's say you enter Eric Vargas and my email into follow-up CRM, you can click on a button that says research with AI, and then it will scour the internet and its database and pull up my LinkedIn profile, any articles that have been written about me, and then put together kind of a little profile so that you can take that information and then prospect to me intelligently rather than taking 30 minutes to figure out who I am.

Speaker 1:

Ah, interesting. Do you guys have an auto dialer on your software?

Speaker 2:

No, but we can integrate with like a voip system right.

Speaker 1:

That'd be very interesting if you were to bank make. Let's say that somebody is like aggressive in sales, like they're gonna do 50 to 100 calls a day, and you're like, okay, here's the, here's the list, and then it's auto dialer, boom on your app. That'd be deadly, by the way, next, next, next, and it only connects backwards when it picks up. That'd be slick.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, so we kind of do that with email, right? So it will say, hey, I just saw you in this article and then you could take that email and then send that off pretty much automatically.

Speaker 1:

Interesting. So the AI model. You guys are using the API for the AI. What are you using OpenAI for this?

Speaker 2:

Yep, yep, yep. We directly integrate with OpenAI, and so we feed the data in there or we take the data from there, depending on what actions you're taking.

Speaker 1:

Interesting Because I found that OpenAI, when I do anything trying to get anybody's information on chat GPT, it says sorry, we don't do that.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, it changes and it also depends on what's publicly available, right? So if it's like on LinkedIn, it will find all the relevant information on LinkedIn that you know, you, that anybody could find with a little bit of research. Yeah, Okay, cool.

Speaker 1:

Um, that's, that's pretty neat. Um, so any? Is there any been any pushback Like is the information going into AI? Is anybody like yeah, I don't want that happening.

Speaker 2:

So we're not sending data there. That's just not like. On the validation, you would be yeah, it's not the proprietary data, just like a contact name, just a name, right, yeah, and that's everywhere.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, that's cool, nice, that's a good approach. I'm sure people do ask that kind of stuff. Everybody's like super wary about this kind of thing these days, and they should be, you know, rightly so.

Speaker 2:

And a lot of our customers you know might do like government work with like the DOD or something like that right. So you know it has to be secure, soc 2 compliant and all that kind of stuff.

Speaker 1:

So what is the? Do you companies? Do you think they're investing enough time and enough resources into software and or there's, it's just always a sidebar thing.

Speaker 2:

Um, in the construction industry is definitely a like, um, like, not that I want to, but I have to, uh kind of thing. So, uh, a lot of companies, lot of companies that we might have a demo with, they said, yeah, one of my sales guys left and he left with a third of my business, right, and so you don't want your relationships to walk out the door with your salesperson, right? So having that data in one place is critical for the company's future. So that's, a lot of companies reach out because of that specific problem.

Speaker 1:

So do you have? Um, uh, I'm not going to say do you have, I'm sure you do in terms of different permissions. So like, for instance, if only some people, like the admins, can download a CSV of all the contacts but, like the salesperson, can't.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, that's right. So we have like eight different security levels so that the owner can say, okay, this person that gets this security level, this person gets that security level, and then you can always change it. So if someone's on their way out, you know you can kind of downgrade them and you know, make sure that data is secure and then you also get notified if there's like a data dump or something like that.

Speaker 1:

So that's pretty cool, yeah, because then that sort of mitigates that whole. Someone walked out of the door with the whole book.

Speaker 2:

Exactly.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, spreadsheets are very difficult for that.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, yeah, yeah, you could. Spreadsheets are almost like public so.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, so in terms of how you've you guys have built the business, obviously this is a relationship business. Everybody knows everybody in a particular region, zone, area. How have you guys sort of networked yourselves to get customers?

Speaker 2:

So, yeah, it's all about relationships. So we're very different when it comes to like a software company. So I actually see us more as a service company than a software company, and the reason why is because the amount of implementation that we provide to our customers is like we become partners to them. We're not just like a Salesforce where you could just do a free trial, then not talk to anybody and then chat with somebody. If you need help, we're working with you to solve your business challenges, to optimize your sales process and then train everybody. It's like we do live trainings on Zoom, just like this with their team, to make sure there is like we overcome that adoption curve. So that's because of that. We had companies that come to us and said, yeah, we've tried four or five different CRMs and they don't work for us. You know most of that's because of you that people are going to be suddenly wowed that by software.

Speaker 1:

And then wow, it's just there's that the person who purchased it isn't necessarily people using it right. And the person can be like, yeah, okay, I just paid for the year, put the credit card down and now it's, and then they follow up a couple weeks later. So how's, how's follow-up working? You know we paid for that, so make sure you guys use it and I can hear us now. And then that person's like, oh shit, okay, now I gotta do this thing yeah and now it's on me.

Speaker 1:

Um, do you find that you have some people that are like, are just naysayers right from the beginning, just because they're like I just it's, it's more of. I don't want to do anything extra 100%.

Speaker 2:

And so, uh, the we, actually our kickoff call is all about solving this problem. So, um, the way I like to say it or, uh, is you know, if you have 10 people that you're rolling this out to, you know, two out of 10 are going to kind of, you know, do it begrudgingly that way, right? So what we do whenever we have a team training is we have the owner, or the champion we call it, give a little two to five minute stump speech on why we're doing this, why it's valuable, how it's going to help them and not hurt them, and how we're moving forward with this implementation, starting on XD. And so when the champion gives that kind of speech, then it kind of gives permission to the rest of the company to say, like, okay, this is the direction we're not going in.

Speaker 2:

And usually what we're finding is the two people that were kind of naysayers in the beginning. They didn't want to for a reason, right? So the way I describe it is that this is a tool that exposes what is or is not happening at your company, right? And so those two people are usually the underperformers that are going to be shown, you know, for what they're not doing, right? So that's usually the case where your top performers you know they're getting even more productive, so they're excited about it. Ah, interesting.

Speaker 1:

Hmm, yeah, it's crazy how implementing you know change management, it exposes a culture of a company 100%. Yeah.

Speaker 2:

Do you think?

Speaker 1:

have you heard of that concept? The rise of the managerial class?

Speaker 2:

Oh yeah.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, david Sachs talks about that all the time. Do you listen to him on the All In podcast?

Speaker 2:

Oh, Huge fan.

Speaker 1:

Oh yeah, so do you find that there's this middle part of the organizations that are just their integral? There's a bit of body syndrome at companies. I find it's like there's people who actually could not be there and it would still be kind of okay. Yeah, a few people have to do a little bit more, but it wouldn't be kind of okay. Yeah, a few people have to do a little bit more, but it wouldn't be a huge problem. Oh, totally, and those people are the ones that are just a pain.

Speaker 2:

Oh yeah, Often yeah, and actually a lot of our companies that we implement this with. Like taking the example of 10 users, the two eventually are managed out and a lot of times they don't hire more people because they just take the leads and then give it to their top performers and then everyone's happy because they have a higher closing ratio, they get a better commission and the company closes more opportunities. It's a win, win, win.

Speaker 1:

Okay. So when you say some of the top performers, are those typically the salespeople that are? The ones that are pushing back is that their freedom is gone from messing around with spreadsheets and tricking things and well, the top performers love it because they can follow up on 50 opportunities instead of 10.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, Right, and so they're closing more opportunities and deals and they're increasing their closing ratio because they're leveraging the system, you know, to double their efforts. Right when the people that are stuck on paper or, you know, just doing phone calls all day, you just, you know you can't. It's, it's a horse versus like a, you know, a V12 engine, right? So Nice, that's pretty cool.

Speaker 1:

So do you have also, like referral partner strategies, um, that you guys implement? You know, to get um, do you do that through your integration partners or do you have a referral program in order, like you pay people when they give you a deal or give you a lead?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, we do both Um, so our go-to-market strategy is really around, um, you know our partners and integrating with our partners. So the I mean the construction industry already has, you know, like, if you're a mid-size enterprise construction company, you're using, like you know, sage, like you already mentioned right, or Viewpoint or Foundation, so we're partnering with them and so, being the go-to CRM if you're using one of these platforms, it just makes it easy for us to just be introduced to other people.

Speaker 1:

So do those companies have CRM tools, but they're just crappy.

Speaker 2:

Most of them actually, yeah, and that's why they're open to integrating with us, because they know theirs sucks and they don't want to do anything about it.

Speaker 1:

They're open to integrating with us Because they know their sucks and they don't want to do anything about it.

Speaker 2:

Well, they probably can't, because the system was developed in the 80s or in the 90s, right? And then, like a lot of these bigger companies, to add a whole other product line is just too difficult, right? So they'd rather just open up the API, let us do our thing and integrate, and then we can sell alongside them.

Speaker 1:

Do you do a rev share with them then?

Speaker 2:

It depends on the partner.

Speaker 1:

Okay, so Sage, and those guys, yeah, no.

Speaker 2:

No. We don't with Sage because they do a channel sales part, their model's a little bit different. Yeah, we'd love to, because then there's skin in the game on both sides.

Speaker 1:

What about have you found that? Is there a particular integration that when you get a lead, they're like, yeah, we use this, and you're like, yes, slam dunk, this is perfect. Which one works the best for you guys?

Speaker 2:

It's going to be viewpoint, sage or foundation. So those three construction accounting packages, those are going to be the slam dunks for us.

Speaker 1:

Right, okay, cool. So what's? You said you got some AI stuff, so what's up next for follow-up?

Speaker 2:

Yeah. So now that we are doing the business development research with AI, and then you could also write and send emails with AI we want to then take the next step and almost create like a sales assistant and optimizing your outreach and optimizing your calendar and things like that. So that's what's coming in the future. For example, if you have 50 opportunities that you need to check in, we're going to use AI to say, hey, this one read this email yesterday, so reach out to this guy. Or optimizing your workflow so that you can reach out to the most people that are interacting with you right, rather than the lead that you know you haven't interacted with for a quarter, or something like that.

Speaker 1:

So nice. Do you have any Canadian companies?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So our market is US, Canada, a couple in UK.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, cool, that's awesome. And how has it been going throughout the United States sales-wise? Pretty expensive initiative.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, so we used to do trade shows per industry. So, like you know, roofing show or concrete show or mechanical show, we used to go do all of that and fly out.

Speaker 2:

We're not really doing that too much since COVID Um, you know, I think it changed out there a lot Um, and we find that, yeah, I know, um, a lot of these shows also they're, they're just a good time, right? So people are, yeah, they're checking out vendors, but really they're it's like an outing for the company, so, um, yeah, they're checking out vendors, but really it's like an outing for the company, so yeah, we use it.

Speaker 1:

Actually Just want to zoom in on that for a sec, because it's kind of interesting Is that I've noticed, especially when it comes to the summits, is that it used to be the presidents and the CEOs going and now it's a perk for middle management.

Speaker 2:

Exactly, exactly so. Therefore, our decision makers are not there. So what we do, we actually changed our mindset from this, from it's not a sales event anymore, it's a customer success event where we're just meeting with our customers and having some FaceTime with them. You know, meeting with our customers and having some FaceTime with them, you know one-to-one at the booth, and so, yeah, we'll pick up a couple of sales from there, for sure, but we want to, you know, have a steak dinner with our customers and, you know, see them a couple more times a year. So that's how we see it.

Speaker 1:

Oh, the old steak dinner, oh yeah. Nice, oh yeah.

Speaker 2:

I did. A fun fact I did carnivore for two years. You did so I did and I didn't die. I didn't die. Um, it was Jordan.

Speaker 1:

Peterson.

Speaker 2:

Yep, yep, so chicken like everything though like or is it? Was that anything you didn't have? I ate one meal a day a ribeye and three eggs, and that's it, and it was the best.

Speaker 1:

You felt good.

Speaker 2:

Oh yeah. So I got my blood work done during the whole thing and like the doctor was like, whatever you're doing, keep on doing it. I'm like all right. So I'm not going to tell you what I'm doing. Yeah, the glycemic levels probably went way down right um yeah, the glycemic levels probably went way down, right, everything was like firing on all cylinders and um my, then my wife got pregnant and then you know the the ice cream snuck back in. So I'm thinking about going back back to the potatoes.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, exactly, that's pretty cool. So did you feel good when you, when you, during that time you felt like Best I've ever felt. God, you gotta get back there, man.

Speaker 2:

I know. That's why I'm like, why don't I do it? So I think I'm going to start actually for January.

Speaker 1:

Ah, january, the good old December one, january one, you're like.

Speaker 2:

Well, I did two Christmases and two new years carnivore. I didn't really. I didn't miss out, so that's not hard, turkey's great yeah, that's what I did. You just overload on the meat and you're good to go nice.

Speaker 1:

What about the bacon side? Isn't that, like all the smoky stuff's, not very good for you, right?

Speaker 2:

um, I don't know well. So so, over two years you start off with bacon and then you kind of move off of bacon.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, yeah, cool, all right. Well, that's a. That's a great place to lead off here. Um, what do you think? What do you think the construction industry needs the most in order to push this digital transformation faster?

Speaker 2:

Adoption from executive leadership. That's it. So we did a study last year of all of our successful implementations. We had a 98% successful implementation, which is great, 98% successful implementation right, which is great. And so what we did is look into why that 2% didn't implement. Well, and it was because the owner said we're going to try it out, we're going to see if it works and we'll see how it goes Right, and they were looking for buy-in for the rest of the team instead of leading through change at their company. That's it, yeah.

Speaker 1:

Gotcha Cool, all right, so people can get in touch with you on LinkedIn, eric Vargas, and then followupcrmcom.

Speaker 2:

That's right.

Speaker 1:

And yeah, y'all check it out. That's pretty cool.

Speaker 2:

Great yeah, thanks for having me. I appreciate the time. Yeah, very cool man.

Speaker 1:

Very cool. Well, that does it for another episode of the Site Visit. Thank you for listening. Be sure to stay connected with us by following our social accounts on Instagram and YouTube. You can also sign up for our monthly newsletter at sitemaxsystemscom slash the site visit, where you'll get industry insights, pro tips and everything you need to know about the site visit podcast and sitemax, the job site and construction management tool of choice for thousands of contractors in North America and beyond. Sitemax is also the engine that powers this podcast. All right, let's get back to building.