CRM Setup For Tradesmen — What Actually Works

Most trade CRMs are graveyards because they're set up by software people, not tradesmen. Too many fields, too many statuses, too much typing. Nobody uses it, the data goes stale, and the owner ends up running the pipeline from memory.

The CRMs that actually work in trade businesses are the simple ones. ServiceM8, Tradify, Jobber and Pipedrive are all proven options. The choice matters less than the discipline.

Set up exactly six fields per lead: source, contact, address, estimated value, job type, stage. Set five stages: new, qualified, quoted, won, lost. Anything more and the data degrades.

Then commit to one rule: every lead, quote and job goes in within 24 hours. That's it. If you can't make that happen yourself, outsource the CRM admin — VA365 runs CRM management for trade businesses on a fixed monthly fee, with weekly owner-friendly reporting.