Key takeaways
- Residential, production and commercial builders buy differently. Pick one before you build the list.
- Production builders have a purchasing manager. That is the signature most sellers miss.
- Owners are on site all day. A mobile number is worth more than a shared office address.
Step by step
- Pick the segment first. A remodeler with six staff, a builder putting up houses by the hundred and a commercial contractor bidding schools are three markets. The titles, the deal size and the length of the sale all change with the segment.
- Describe the people in one sentence. Something like owners of residential construction companies within fifty miles of Dallas with a mobile number. BuzzAI reads company names and descriptions, which matters here because construction firms are filed loosely. The Free plan does the same job with filters.
- Use the right titles. Owner, president and vice president of operations at small firms. Add estimator, chief estimator, director of preconstruction, project manager and superintendent on commercial work, and purchasing manager or director of purchasing at production builders.
- Set the company size. Remodelers and small general contractors sit at 1 to 19. Regional builders and commercial contractors run 20 to 199 and split the decision between operations and purchasing.
- Choose the channel and check the rules. Call the mobile, and expect the first attempt to land in a truck or on a site. Before you call or text any mobile number, scrub it against the National Do-Not-Call Registry and your own do-not-call list.
- Save, reveal and reach out. Save the list, reveal only the people you will contact, and export to a spreadsheet or your CRM. You are not charged when a record has no email and no phone.
| Filter | What to use |
|---|---|
| Titles | Owner, President, Estimator, Purchasing Manager |
| Company words | construction, builders, homes, contracting, remodeling |
| Size | 1 to 19 for remodelers, 20 to 199 for builders |
| Exclude | architects, engineers, developers, trade subcontractors |
What to know
Industry codes are unusually loose in construction. A firm that frames houses, a firm managing twenty subcontractors on an office fit-out and a firm that develops land can sit under headings that look interchangeable from the outside. The company name and description carry more signal than the code does.
A developer and a builder are not the same customer. The developer controls the land and the money. The builder controls the schedule and the materials. If you sell a product that goes into the building, you usually want the builder, and at the larger builders you want whoever runs purchasing rather than the owner.
Weather sets the calendar. In the north, the quiet stretch from late autumn into winter is when owners take calls, look at software and sign supplier agreements. In the south the slow window is narrower and often falls in the hottest weeks. Ask the first person you speak to when their quiet season is, and write it down for next year.
