Win more GC bids and keep service work coming between projects
Commercial electrical shops run two businesses side by side. Bid work goes to general contractors, and service work goes to building owners. We set up HubSpot to track both, linked to your estimating and field service tools.
Free, 30 minutes, and you'll leave with at least one clear next step.
Bid work and service work need different tracking
Bid work for GCs
- One project, invitations from several GCs
- Bid day deadlines, scope letters and exclusions
- Hit rate by GC and by estimator
- Change orders and extras after award
Service work for owners
- Calls from facility and property managers
- Time and material calls and small projects
- Testing, inspection and maintenance agreements that renew every year
- Repeat customers who call whoever answers first
How electrical contractors lose work they should keep
The same project, five invitations
You bid one hospital wing to five GCs. When the award comes out, the other four never get updated, and the bid log stops meaning anything.
Agreements renew only if someone remembers
Infrared scans, generator service and switchgear testing come up once a year. If the date isn't tracked, the customer quietly moves on.
Service customers stay invisible to estimating
The facility manager who calls for a breaker replacement may have a tenant fit-out coming. Estimating never hears about it.
Estimators retype the job
The number lives in Accubid, ConEst or a spreadsheet. The award gets typed again into the CRM, the field tool and accounting.
How do you track one project bid to several GCs?
We set up a project record in HubSpot, then a separate bid for each GC you price it to. Each bid carries your number, the estimator and the bid date. When the award comes out, you mark the GC that won the project.
If the winning GC used your number, you won. If they didn't, that bid closes as lost on price or scope. The other bids close with a different reason, which is that your GC lost the job. That one change splits your hit rate into two numbers. One shows how often you lose, and the other shows how often the GCs you bid to lose. They lead to very different decisions about who you keep bidding to.
The same setup answers a question owners ask every year, which is how much of your backlog comes from each GC. Once awards are tied to GCs, a dashboard shows it, along with the GCs you've priced work for many times without a single award.
How do service agreements fit in HubSpot?
Each agreement becomes a record tied to the building owner, with its scope, value, start date and renewal date. HubSpot creates a renewal task for the service manager well before the date and sends the owner a reminder email you've approved. A renewal stops depending on one person's calendar.
Service calls get logged against the same owner account. Your service manager can see that a property manager calls every month, and your estimators can see it too. When that owner plans a renovation, you're already in the room.
Dispatch, work orders and invoicing stay in your field service software. We look at what's worth passing between the two, usually the customer, the site and a short job history.
How we'd start with an electrical contractor
- 2 to 4 weeks
Follow both sides of the business
We trace three recent bids and three service customers through every system they touch, and price each delay. This is the paid initial analysis in our Friction Point Analysis.
- First
Build the bid side
Projects, bids per GC, award tracking and loss reasons.
- Next
Add service and agreements
Owner accounts, agreements, renewal tasks and reminder emails.
- Once the basics stick
Connect the tools that matter
Estimating and field service connections, only where they save hours of typing.
What we've built that's closest
We haven't published an electrical contractor case study. The nearest is Photon Brothers, a Colorado solar installer. Like an electrical shop, its jobs depend on the utility and the permit office. We set up HubSpot so each deal links to both on its own, with their requirements attached. The full results are on our solar installers page.
The bid-per-GC setup and service agreement tracking on this page are how we'd start with your shop. We'd scope them after seeing how your bids and service calls move today.
Electrical contractors questions
How do we split hit rate between our losses and our GC's losses?
Track each GC's bid separately under one project. When the award comes out, bids to GCs who lost the project close with their own reason, so they don't count against your pricing.
Can HubSpot remind us when a maintenance agreement is up for renewal?
Yes. Each agreement has a renewal date, and a workflow creates a task and sends an approved reminder to the customer ahead of time.
Does HubSpot connect to electrical estimating software?
Usually not with a ready-made app. Most shops pass the final bid amount and scope across with a connector tool, a custom build or a simple import. We check what your software allows first.
Should service and bid work share one CRM?
Yes. They share customers. A facility manager who calls for service is often the person who decides who bids the next renovation.
How do we win more work from the GCs we already bid to?
Start by seeing which GCs award you work and which only collect your number. Then spend your relationship time on the first group.
Can service requests from our website go straight into HubSpot?
Yes. A short service request form creates a ticket tied to the owner and the building, assigns it to your service manager and confirms receipt to the customer. Dispatch still happens in your field service tool.
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Bring one bid and one service customer
We'll walk through both on the call and show you where each one slips today.