Contents

    How to Generate Leads for Contractors

    Contents

      Contractor business is full of challenges! Sadly enough, I can’t help you build a roof or lay a wire. But I do know how to get contractor leads, i.e. find hundreds of new B2B clients in no time! And I’m happy to share this knowledge with you today.

      Read my step-by-step guide and learn:

      • How to generate leads for contractors and get new customers in 1-2 days
      • How to export potential clients’ phones and emails in bulk
      • How to find new B2B clients and their CEOs on LinkedIn
      • Which are the best lead generation tools for contractors

      No matter which niche you work in, the strategy described below works equally well for getting general contractor leads, electrical contractor leads, HVAC contractor leads, painting contractor leads and many more!

      As an example, let’s generate, say, roofing contractor leads.

      B2B lead gen for contractors

      Finding business PHONES for contractor lead generation

      So, how do contractors get leads? Phone calls still hold a strong position in marketing and client search in all branches including yours. Luckily enough, you can extract tons of business phone numbers from Google Maps in no time - and use them to generate the best commercial contractors leads.

      To export phone numbers of the companies that may be interested in your contractor services, use the Google Maps Scraper. This online tool can be used for different purposes including online lead generation for contractors. It extracts businesses, their websites, phone numbers and other data from Google Maps based on a branch keyword.

      Let’s see how to use the Google Maps Scraper to generate high-quality leads for roofing contractors:

      • Name your job:

      • Enter your search keywords with locations.

      To select the best-performing keywords, think who could be your client: probably construction and building companies. Hence, construction company and building company are your keywords.

      As for the location, let’s say you’re looking for potential clients in Columbia, South Carolina.

      Now combine the two:

      • construction company in Columbia, South Carolina
      • building company in Columbia, South Carolina

      Your keywords list is ready! Don’t worry that it’s so short: below you’ll see it unfold its huge potential 💪

      ⚠️ Each keyword must go on a new line:

      • Select how many companies you would like to export.

      The more companies you scrape - the higher your chances to find new leads for contractor business, so let’s opt for the maximum:

      • Select how you’d like the bot to notify you once the job is done:

      • …and start the bot!

      Video guide

      Watch me show how to scrape companies and their contacts from Google Maps in this quick video:

      Results

      The resulting table exported by the Google Maps Scraper includes a list of construction and building companies in Columbia, SC with their websites and phones (but not only - see the full list of the extracted details below):

      The full list of the exported data includes the following (see the example file):

      • Google Maps URL
      • Title
      • Rating
      • Rating count
      • Category (bar, nightclub, etc.)
      • Address
      • Plus code (e.g. "QHRW+6F Financial District, San Francisco, CA")
      • Website
      • Phone number
      • Rank on maps
      • Working hours (Monday through Sunday)
      • Place ID
      • Latitude
      • Longitude

      This treasure trove of information will help you generate the best leads for contractors!

      Tips

      • Remove the duplicates. Since construction company and building company are synonyms, Google Maps may consider one and the same business to be relevant for both keywords.

      Sort the table by ‘Title’ from A to Z and delete the duplicates:

      • Check for any inappropriate companies. For example, some of the businesses extracted are roofing contractors themselves (and are your competitors but not potential clients) while others do bathroom remodeling and don’t need any roofing. You can easily check this by sorting the results from A to Z by ‘Category’:

      Remove the companies that bear no potential for generating contractor roofing leads. The rest is good to go!

      • Validate the extracted phone numbers before starting your cold calling campaign. This is so important that I’ve devoted a special paragraph to this topic and placed it at the end of this article ⬇️
      • Use other extracted data to your advantage. For example, company addresses and opening hours can help you schedule a meeting where you can present yourself and your roofing business at its best and try to establish a new partnership in person.

      Extracting company EMAILS to generate fast contractor leads

      Another essential part of your contractor lead gen campaign is finding business emails and sending out collaboration offers. This comes easy with the leading-edge Company Email Finder. This contractor leads app extracts all emails having the same domain (i.e. corporate emails) from everywhere on the web.

      For example, if a company’s website is http://buchananconstructionservices.com, the bot will extract all emails ending with @buchananconstructionservices.com from everywhere on the Internet.

      Here’s how to launch this bot:

      • Turn the longer website names into short domain names like this:

      http://boyerconstruction.net/ ➡️ boyerconstruction.net

      💡 Lifehack: You can do it either manually or automatically with the help of the Google First Result Finder as described in my post about B2B SaaS lead generation.

      No matter if you opt for long manual work or for using the lightning-fast automation tool, the result will look like this:

      • Now open the Company Email Finder’s start page.
      • Copy and paste the domains.

      ⚠️ Each domain must go on a new line:

      • Launch the bot.

      Video guide

      Watch the video walkthrough that explains how the Company Email Finder works:

      Results

      The Company Email Finder has extracted all emails ending with @boyerconstruction.net, all emails ending with @bstonegroup.com, and so on.

      As an example, let’s check the results for buchananconstructionservices.com. The Company Email Finder has extracted 12 emails ending with this domain (I’ve hidden the actual email addresses for privacy reasons):

      Tips

      • To generate local contractor leads effectively, select the emails that contain real people’s names (rather than ‘hello@...’ or ‘info@...’ emails). Such email boxes belong to one person and are regularly opened and read, as opposed to the impersonal email boxes that are ignored by many companies.
      • To find emails with real people’s names fast, sort the email addresses from A to Z. Having an alphabetically sorted list in front of your eyes facilitates the read-through.
      • Use my lifehack to quickly find emails of CEOs on the long list of a company’s corporate emails.
      • Validate the exported emails before starting your bulk mailing campaign. For more details, read the last paragraph of this article ⬇️

      Getting contractor sales leads on LinkedIn

      If you are unstoppable (like ‘a Porsche with no brakes’ 🎤😀), I’ll tell you how to get more contractor leads on LinkedIn. Sending personal messages on this social network often works better than cold calling and bulk mailing. This is why many professionals believe that the best lead generation for contractors takes place exactly on LinkedIn.

      I know quite a number of LinkedIn lifehacks that can help you get exclusive contractor leads. Today, I’ll make you aware of one very effective bot combination.

      Step 1

      Before you start generating commercial contractor leads on LinkedIn, you need to find your potential B2B clients’ LinkedIn profiles. The Linkedin Company Finder will easily find these profiles by company name.

      A short tutorial:

      • Paste these company names into a special field.

      ⚠️ Each query must go on a new line:

      • Launch the bot.
      Video guide

      Watch a quick video guide on how to find company profiles on LinkedIn using the Linkedin Company Finder:

      Results

      The resulting table contains the company names you entered and the links to their LinkedIn accounts:

      Step 2

      Now let’s get acquainted with these construction companies’ employees and decide who of them is worth contacting. The LinkedIn Employee Scraper will export the names, job titles and LinkedIn profiles of these companies’ employees, which makes it one of the most valuable contractor lead apps.

      Here’s how to launch this bot:

      • Open the LinkedIn Employee Scraper’s start page.
      • Select how many employees you would like to scrape.

      The more employees you export - the higher the likelihood that the decision makers will be on the list:

      • Copy the companies’ LinkedIn profile URLs exported in Step 1:

      • Paste these LinkedIn profile URLs into a special field.

      ⚠️ Each URL must go on a new line:

      • Launch the bot.
      Video tutorial

      Watch me explain how to launch the LinkedIn Employee Scraper:

      Results

      The resulting table contains the names, the job titles and the LinkedIn profile URLs of these construction companies’ employees. For example, here’s the employees list extracted for Boyer Commercial Construction Inc.:

      Tips

      To get exclusive leads for contractors, you’d better contact these companies’ decision makers rather than ordinary employees (just like it was with the emails). Thanks to the job titles being enlisted in the exported table, you can easily find the company leaders. For example, the President of Boyer Commercial Construction Inc. is Brian Boyer, and his LinkedIn URL is at hand for you to message him:

      Now you see why the LinkedIn Employee Scraper is one of the most sought-for lead generators for contractors!

      Validating contacts for lead generation - contractors’ toolkit

      Now that you’ve made up a phone numbers list, an email list and a LinkedIn list, it seems that it’s time to start cold campaigning like mad 🎉

      Wait! The last (but not least! ☝️) step is to check the exported contacts for validity using smart data validation tools. While LinkedIn profiles don’t need verification, phones and emails do. That’s because people and companies sometimes abandon their old contact data and start using new phones and emails.

      Phone validation: the best app for contractor leads

      To bulk-check the phone numbers you’ve exported for contractor lead generation for validity, use the Phone Number Validator. This bot works with most of the world’s countries.

      As an example, let’s validate the phones exported by the Google Maps Scraper:

      • Make sure that the table extracted by the Google Maps Scraper is sorted from A to Z by company name. If one or more phone numbers happen to be invalid, it will be easier to match these phones with their companies later on.
      • Copy the extracted phone numbers list:

      • Open the Phone Number Validator’s start page.
      • Paste the phones.

      ⚠️ Each phone number must start with a country code (for the US, it will be 1 or +1):

      • Specify the country code:

      • Start the bot.

      Video tutorial

      Watch me demonstrate how to validate phone numbers with this tool:

      Results

      One of the phone numbers has turned out to be invalid:

      Just exclude the company with this phone number from your contractor lead gen campaign. There is no sense in calling numbers that don’t exist!

      Email validation: the best contractor leads app

      To make sure that the exported emails are valid, use the Email Validator. As an example, let’s check the emails exported by the Company Email Finder for buchananconstructionservices.com:

      • Copy your email list:

      • Open the Email Validator’s start page.
      • Paste the emails.

      ⚠️ Each email must go on a new line:

      • Launch the bot.

      Results

      Two emails have been classified as invalid:

      To delete all the invalid emails in one click, sort the table from A to Z by the ‘Is valid’ column, and all the emails having the ‘false’ value in this column will automatically move to the top. I’ve highlighted these lines for your better understanding:

      Remove these lines without hesitation.

      The best pricing for the best contractor leads

      You will be excited to know that the tools described above allow you to get virtually free contractor leads online - the prices for using these tools are unprecedentedly low:

      • Extracting 100 businesses from Google Maps using the Google Maps Scraper will cost you 60 cents, 700 businesses - $1,5 (as of 2023);
      • Finding all emails of one company using the Company Email Finder makes up 25 cents (no matter how many emails there are);
      • Finding one company on LinkedIn using the LinkedIn Company Finder will cost you 7 cents;
      • Extracting 10 employees of 1 company using the LinkedIn Employee Scraper will cost you 5 cents (100 employees - 14 cents, 500 employees - 22 cents, etc.)
      • The Phone Number Validator will check each phone for just 1,5 cents;
      • The Email Validator will check each email address for 1,5 cents also.

      Now that you can find contractor leads using these smart bots, your client base is sure to grow rapidly! With this progressive and time-saving strategy, you can get 100, 500, 1000 or even 1800 contractor leads without much effort. I hope that the growth hacks shared in this article will come in handy!