For 10 years Builderscrack has been the market leader in supplying trade businesses affordable online leads.
We’re continuing to innovate and enhance our service by unleashing your ability to chase leads and communicate with homeowners.
We’re unleashing your trade account with unlimited jobs!
Currently, we limit Standard (free) trade accounts to 5 open jobs, and Pro accounts to 35 open jobs. From 1st February 2019, we’re removing limits on the number of jobs you can have open and on the go at any one time, for both Standard and Pro accounts.
This will allow you to scale your business and continue to remain in contact with homeowners until you secure every job.
Extended Contact
For this enhancement to work, we’re introducing a new concept called Extended Contact.
Extended contact balances our ability to offer unlimited jobs with an incentive to close jobs when they’ve been awarded. Extended contact only applies to jobs which have had “Contact Granted” and a price not-yet-provided, not to any other jobs.
- When contact is granted by the homeowner, the first month of contact is free.
- If a price has not been negotiated and provided to Builderscrack in the first free month, we charge a small ($1) fee at the start of month 2.
- We continue to charge an incremental small fee at the start of every subsequent month the job remains unpriced and open, which we’ve named holding fees.
- These holding fees are completely deducted from your success fees when we invoice you for the job, meaning we invoice no more than our standard success fee.
| Month 1 | Month 2 | Month 3 | Month 4 | Month 5 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Free! | $1 | $2 | $3 | $4 |
| Month 6 | Month 7 | Month 8 | Month 9 | Month 10+ |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| $5 | $10 | $15 | $20 | $25 |
The purpose of these fees is to encourage prompt negotiation of jobs, while allowing jobs that take longer to remain open as needed.
On jobs open at the time we introduce this feature, holding fees will be delayed for three months, giving you time to secure these jobs.
Success Fees
We only charge success fees after you secure work. The way we charge these fees, and our fee percentage isn’t changing.
Standard and Pro
With both standard and Pro accounts, there is no limit to the number of jobs you can be chasing and have on the go at any one time. But there is one important difference, Pro accounts can chase unlimited leads per week, while standard accounts can only chase 5 leads in any 7 day period.
In addition, Pro accounts will retain fee discounts and other benefits.
Frequently Asked Questions
Currently, we limit the number of jobs you can have open at one time. We believe this is leading to jobs being dropped before both parties have had the opportunity to fully discuss the work.
We want our trade partners to be free to contact as many homeowners at the same time as they need to naturally do business.
- This change will allow you to have contact with as many homeowners as you need at the same time.
- The first month of contact on a job is free; for additional months we will charge a small “holding fee” (starting at $1).
- When the job price is entered, the job holding fees (if any) are credited back to your account.
- The number of leads you are able to chase will be limited to 5 every 7 days on Standard accounts. Pro account holders aren’t limited at all!
It shouldn’t. We deduct the holding fees from the job invoice when the job is priced.
If you chase a lead and are granted contact, and remain in contact for over 1 month (incurring holding fees), and subsequently do not undertake the job – we charge you the holding fees.
In reality, these fees are small, starting at $1 for the second month of contact (free for first). This feature is to encourage you to negotiate and price work in a reasonable timeframe – and discourage you from having many open jobs for long periods of time.
Absolutely. Right now if you’re chasing your limit (5 for Standard, 35 for Pro), you can’t chase any more leads.
After this change:
- You can have unlimited open jobs for both account types at one time.
- A Standard account holder can chase 5 new leads per 7 day period
- A Pro account holder can chase unlimited new leads.
- You can have unlimited jobs on the go at one time
- You can take as long as you need to secure a job
- Pro account holders can chase unlimited leads per week
- Standard account holders can chase 5 new leads per 7 day period
You don’t have to be a Pro account holder to use our service. With our Standard account you can chase 5 new leads per 7 day period.
We offer Pro as a way for high volume users to remove this limit. Pro accounts receive a 20% discount on success fees, with a lower maximum success fee of $600, down from $750 for Standard accounts.
Check out a full list of Pro features on the Builderscrack Pro page.
With removing the limits on the number of open jobs you can have at one time, we needed to introduce a feature to encourage trade account holders to close jobs appropriately. Holding fees is this incentive.
We deduct the holding fees from your invoice when you price the work, removing the fees incurred on the job anyway.
You are only charged holding fees when you are in contact with a homeowner for longer than 1 month, and do not eventually win the job.
Holding fees are solely to encourage the quick and appropriate closing of jobs.
We also want to encourage trade partners to secure work found through Builderscrack.
One of the challenges we’ve identified in this area is where homeowners post their job through Builderscrack, but for many reasons do not proceed with a Builderscrack trade partner to undertake their job.
Through 2019 we will be working on tools and resources for our trade partners to assist in areas like sales, pricing, client behavior etc. In short – how to better convert jobs from contact granted into work. The way we’ve set up holding fees encourages a great outcome for all parties.
No, that isn’t the case at all.
We’re trying to build a platform that leads to great outcomes for our users, both homeowners and trade partners – as well as growing the volume of work put through our platform.
We have calculated that the revenue increase Builderscrack will see from this change will be roughly neutral, while the outcomes for our users will improve.
This is a question we consider every day.
On one hand, we have plenty of ideas, and often receive feedback for how the system could be simplified. On the other hand, a lot of these ideas by themselves could lead to a worse experience overall for homeowners, trade partners, or both.
This change removes chase limits, which we know leads to frustration and less than satisfactory outcomes. We see this as simplifying. Without encouragement to secure work and close jobs, this won’t work with our success fees.
We know trade partners prefer success fees over a “pay for leads” type charging method – paying once you’ve secured work (instead of before) just makes sense.
We’re improving the way Builderscrack works on the back-end too, and we’re confident the changes we’re making will greatly simplify our system in the long run, as well as leading to better outcomes for all parties.
More Information
Our team is on hand to assist personally, please get in touch if you have any questions or feedback.