Construction / Trades · Upsell Call
The Upsell Script for Construction / Trades Customers: Turning an Account Review Into an Expansion Without Burning the Relationship
Your customer is a specialty trade contractor. They bought your platform eighteen months ago because T&M tags were living on truck dashboards until Friday and the WIP review kept surfacing margin fade nobody could explain. It worked — mostly, on the two divisions that actually onboarded. Now you're calling the VP of Operations, and he thinks this is a check-in.
Here's what he's thinking before he picks up: the money for your category went to two service trucks and the Vista upgrade, his general superintendent is buried on a hospital job that's already three weeks behind on the critical path, and — this is the one that will kill your call if you don't name it first — the sheet metal division never really got on the system. He is sitting on a suspicion that he's paying for seats nobody logs into. Until you address that out loud, he cannot hear anything about a new module.
This call is won in the prep. If you open with their real adoption numbers, their real days-from-field-work-to-COR-submitted, and the specific dollar figure their controller stopped chasing, you get a real conversation about the change management gap you deliberately cut from the original scope. If you open with "I wanted to show you what we launched," you get a polite ten minutes and a request to send something over. What follows is the sequence, the arithmetic, and the difficult version of this buyer.
The upsell call script
Say it in your own words. The structure is the part that matters.
- 1
0. Pre-call usage audit — do not dial without these six lines filled in
Write these out before you touch the phone. If a blank stays blank, you are not ready. **Adoption by division, not company-wide.** "Plumbing and HVAC piping: 48 licensed field seats, 41 weekly active. Sheet metal: 12 seats, 3 active since February. Service division: never onboarded." Company-wide adoption numbers hide the dark corner, and the dark corner is the first thing they'll raise. **Depth.** Which objects they actually create. "Daily reports at 88% job-day completion on the two live divisions. T&M tags: 310 last quarter, photo-attached on 71% of them. Change tickets: never enabled. Last login for [VP of Ops]: 34 days ago; last login for [Director of Field Ops]: yesterday." **Outcome — theirs, not your benchmark.** "Average days from field work performed to tag received in the office: 6.4 at go-live, 1.2 last quarter." Sourced from their instance. If your only number is an industry average, you have nothing. **Commercials.** Contract value, renewal date, who signed, whether that person is still there, discount level, and whether a co-term is clean. **Support history.** Any open ticket, any escalation in the last 60 days, the last CSAT comment verbatim. A P1 from three weeks ago outranks your quota. **Champion status.** Is the Director of Field Operations who championed this still in the seat, or did he get promoted to Project Executive and hand it to somebody who didn't pick it? The test: can you say one thing about their account they'd be mildly surprised you knew? "Your Riverside job has run daily reports 41 days straight — that's your only job at 100%" passes. "How's everyone liking it?" fails, and it's the exact question that turns you from partner to vendor.
- 2
1. Frame the call in the first thirty seconds
"Thanks for the fifteen. Two things and then I'll get out of your way. First — I pulled your last two quarters of usage before I called, and there's a pattern in it I want to check with you, because I think it means something about how you're billing change work. Second, depending on what you tell me, there's a piece of the platform you didn't buy that may be relevant. If it isn't, I'll say so and we'll spend the time on the sheet metal adoption problem instead. Fair?" Do not soften this into a check-in and do not ambush him at minute nine. Pre-committing to walk away is what drops his guard — a VP of Operations has been sold to by every equipment dealer and software rep in the state and he can smell a roadmap pitch through the phone.
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2. Anchor on the result they already own — in their number
"When we started, your average from field work performed to the tag hitting [Controller]'s desk was six and a half days. Last quarter you're at 1.2 across plumbing and piping. That's the number I've got. Does that match how it feels on your side, or am I reading it optimistically?" Then shut up. Let him correct you. His correction is worth more than your number, because it tells you the metric he actually defends in front of the Owner and the CFO. Write it down word for word — that sentence is the first line of the business case he'll forward internally. **If he can't confirm any result, stop selling.** "Then let's not talk about anything new today. Let's talk about why you're paying for something you can't point at in the WIP." That's not a lost call. That's the only version of this call that protects your renewal.
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3. Say the underuse out loud before he does
"Here's where I'd push back on myself if I were sitting in your chair. You've got 60 field seats and 44 weekly actives — and the 16 that aren't in there are almost all sheet metal. If I were you I'd be asking why the hell I'd buy anything else before I've got Tommy's guys using what I've already got. So let me be straight about it. Those 16 aren't idle. They're doing the same work — they're just doing it on a carbon-copy tag book in the truck and a text thread. That's not a licensing problem, that's an unrouted-work problem, and I want to be honest that what I'm going to describe in a minute does not fix it. Sheet metal is an onboarding conversation and I'd like to book that separately, this month, whether or not you buy anything." The move is diagnosis, not defense. If the honest answer is "the new module doesn't solve your adoption gap," saying it buys you the right to come back next quarter.
- 5
4. Find the seam — five questions that surface the gap
Never lead with the module. Lead with where value leaks out of the workflow you already fixed. Use their language: - "The tag gets to the office in a day now. What happens to it next? Who touches it after [Controller] does?" - "Walk me through the last one that turned into a real COR. How many days from the work happening to a signed change order in front of the owner's rep?" - "Where does this still break — what's generating the Monday morning fire drill for your general superintendent?" - "When the pay app comes back rejected, what's it usually missing?" - "What did we deliberately leave out of scope when you bought this, because it was too big a bite at the time?" That last one is the highest-yield question on the call. Most upsells were already scoped and cut during the original deal — usually because it required mapping cost codes into their ERP during year-end close. You are not selling something new. You are reopening a decision they already made once, when the conditions were different.
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5. Build the incremental case in their arithmetic — and say the price in the same breath
Four parts. Unit, volume, capture rate, net. "Let's do the math with your numbers, not mine. You told me you've got 21 open CORs across the hospital and the two school jobs — call it $640K of contract value sitting unapproved. On a $9M backlog that's your unapproved change orders running around seven percent of contract value, and your average from work performed to COR submitted is what you said — about 34 days. Unit: what does one COR that dies cost you? You said the ones that get negotiated down average maybe $18K, and the ones that die entirely are worse. Volume: 21 open right now, and by your own read that's a normal quarter. Capture: I'd rather under-promise — say this gets four of those 21 in front of the owner's rep inside a week instead of five weeks, with the tag, the photos, and the labor hours attached. That's $72K you argue for from a position of strength instead of from memory. The price is $2,100 a month on top of what you're paying, and it co-terms to your March renewal so you're managing one contract, not two. Against that number it's not close. And if you think four out of 21 is generous, tell me what number you believe and we'll rerun it right now." Handing him the pencil on the assumptions is the difference between a business case and a pitch. Never make him ask the price.
- 7
6. Cost the implementation in hours and names
Budget is what he says. Bandwidth is what he means — his general superintendent is running a three-week look-ahead that's already blown and his Senior PM is doing two jobs. "Here's the whole ask, and I'll be specific because I know what your July looks like. One 90-minute session with [Controller] to map your change cost codes — she's already got them, we're not building anything. Then about two hours a week from your Director of Field Ops for three weeks while we run it on one job. No project team, no committee. My CS lead builds the COR template and the pay app backup packet off your last three executed change orders, so nobody on your side is filling in a blank screen. If it needs more than that, I've mis-scoped it and I'll tell you before we start." Put the work you can absorb on the table here, as design — not later, as a concession.
- 8
7. The ask: one job, one quarter, their success criteria
"Give me the hospital job for one quarter. Not the company, not sheet metal, one job. You define what winning looks like — I'd suggest two numbers: days from field work performed to COR submitted under ten, and zero pay apps kicked back for missing change backup across two billing cycles. If we don't hit both by the March renewal, we pull it and you pay nothing further for it. If we do hit them, it rolls to the rest of the plumbing and piping book at renewal and co-terms, so it's an amendment to a contract you're already signing rather than a new purchase your CFO has to run fresh. What would you add to those two numbers?" Small, specific, reversible, and co-termed. Co-terming is the most underused unlock on this call — it removes a whole procurement cycle.
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8. Check the buying committee before you hang up
"Last time this went through [Owner/President] and [Controller] signed the order form. Is that still the path, or has anything changed since the ERP upgrade? I'm asking because if there's a new threshold or a new CFO, I'd rather build for that now than find out in week six that anything over $25K needs three quotes." If the answer reveals a new Controller, a new capital approval policy, or a Project Executive who now owns the tech budget, you are running a fresh evaluation dressed as an expansion. Better to know it on this call.
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9. Park signals — when not to push
Do not run the upsell if any of these are true. Say so on the call, and say why. - An open escalation or a ticket older than two weeks. "You've got an unresolved sync issue with Vista. I'm not asking you for money while that's open." - Your champion just changed roles — the Director of Field Ops made Project Executive and nobody picked up the platform. - Renewal inside 60 days with an unanswered value question. - Flat or declining weekly actives you can't explain. - The Owner announced a hiring freeze or the CFO started a cost review last quarter. Pushing through any of these turns a renewable account into a churn risk for an incremental $25K. The line to use: "I'd rather have you at renewal than have this order form."
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10. The recap email — write it for the CFO, not your CRM
Same day. Six elements, short: 1. The result he confirmed, **in his words** — "tags are landing next day and Marisol stopped chasing." 2. The gap he described — "21 open CORs, ~$640K, averaging 34 days from work performed to submission." 3. The value math with his assumptions, including the capture rate he chose. 4. The price, stated plainly, with the co-term date. 5. The implementation ask in hours and named people. 6. The pilot scope, the two success metrics, and the decision date. This email is the artifact he forwards to the Owner or the Controller when they ask "what is this?" Write it for that reader. If it needs a phone call to explain, it's too long.
How the call actually sounds
Prospect on the left, the rep on the right.
Rep
Ray, thanks for the fifteen. Two things, then I'll let you go. First — I pulled your usage before I called and there's a pattern in your T&M tags I want to check with you, because I think it says something about how you're billing change work. Second, depending on what you say, there's a piece of the platform you didn't buy that might be relevant. If it isn't, I'll tell you, and we'll spend the time on sheet metal instead. Fair?
Buyer
Fair, but let me save you some road. If this is a seats conversation, don't. Tommy's sheet metal guys still aren't on it. Twelve licenses, I think three of them have ever logged in. I'm already paying for empty chairs.
Rep
Three weekly actives out of twelve since February, and none since the Riverside job started. You're right, and I'm not here to sell you seats. Before we get to that, though — one number. When we went live, your average from field work performed to a tag landing in Marisol's hands was six and a half days. Last quarter you're at 1.2 across plumbing and piping. Does that match how it feels, or am I reading that optimistically?
Buyer
The tags come in, yeah. But that was never really the problem. Honestly? What changed is Marisol stopped spending Thursdays calling foremen. The tags were always going to show up eventually. Getting the GC's super to actually sign one — that's the part that's still broken, and your app doesn't fix that.
Rep
Say more about that. Walk me through the last one that went sideways.
Buyer
Hospital job. We hung twenty-two hangers off structure that wasn't in our scope because the steel was fabbed wrong. Foreman wrote it up same day, photos, hours, the whole thing — that part worked. Then it sat with my PM for two and a half weeks because he's running the hospital and the middle school. By the time the COR went in, the owner's rep says he's got no record of the direction and the GC's PM says it's part of the base scope. Now it's a backcharge argument. And the pay app came back because there's no signed backup attached to the change line.
Rep
So the field-to-office leg is fixed and the office-to-owner leg is where the money's dying. Give me a rough count — how many open CORs are sitting like that right now, and what's the dollar figure?
Buyer
Twenty-one across three jobs. Six-forty, give or take. And before you do the thing where you turn that into a number — I know. Marisol brings it to the WIP meeting every month. She calls it the folder.
Rep
I'm going to do the thing, but with your numbers and you can take the pencil off me anytime. Twenty-one open, $640K, on roughly a $9M backlog — that's unapproved change orders running about seven percent of contract value. You said the ones that get negotiated down land around eighteen grand. When you bought this, we scoped the change management side and you cut it. Do you remember why?
Buyer
Because you wanted us to map change cost codes into Vista and Marisol was three weeks from year-end close. She told me if one more person asked her for cost codes she was quitting. And honestly, we didn't need it — we thought getting the tags in was the whole fight.
Rep
That was the right call in November of that year. Here's what I'd reopen: the module takes the tag your foreman already writes — same one, no new form, no extra fields — and turns it into a COR with the photos and the labor hours attached, routed to whoever signs, with a reminder that doesn't depend on your PM remembering. And it builds the backup packet that hangs off the G703 line so the pay app doesn't get kicked. It's $2,100 a month on top of what you pay, and it co-terms to your March renewal. If it moves four of those twenty-one — four, not twenty-one — that's seventy-two grand you argue for with a paper trail instead of from memory.
Buyer
Money's gone, Ray. We bought two service trucks in April and the Vista upgrade ate the rest. And I'm not walking into the Owner's office in October asking for another monthly software line when we're running a six-point bid margin. He'll ask me what the last one bought him.
Rep
Then don't ask him in October. Two questions. One — when does that budget reset, March with the renewal? Two — is there anything in the same line that's underperforming? Because I'd rather this replaced something than added to something.
Buyer
March, yeah. And there's a scheduling tool nobody's opened since the last general super left. That's maybe nine hundred a month. But even if I had the money — my general superintendent is three weeks behind on critical path at the hospital and my senior PM is running two jobs. I don't have a human being to point at this.
Rep
That's the real objection and I'm not going to argue with it. So here's the smallest version. One job — the hospital. Ninety minutes with Marisol to pull the change cost codes she already has, and my CS lead builds the templates off your last three executed change orders so nobody's staring at a blank screen. Then two hours a week from Danny for three weeks. Not the general super. Not your PM. And we don't start until the middle school closes out — you tell me the week.
Buyer
Middle school punch walk is the second week of November. So December, realistically. And I'd want to know it worked before I sign anything bigger.
Rep
Then you write the test. I'd suggest two numbers: days from field work performed to COR submitted under ten on the hospital, and zero pay apps kicked back for missing change backup over two billing cycles. If we miss either one by March, we pull it out and you owe nothing further. If we hit both, it rolls to the rest of plumbing and piping as an amendment at renewal, not a new purchase. What would you add or change?
Buyer
Under ten's fine. Add one — I want the signed backup packet to come out as a PDF Marisol can drop straight into the pay app without rebuilding it. If she has to retype anything she'll stop using it in a month, and then we're back where we are with Tommy.
Rep
Written down: PDF backup packet, no retyping, and Marisol signs off on the format in the ninety-minute session before we go live. Last thing — the original order form went through the Owner with Marisol signing. Is that still the path, or has anything changed since the Vista upgrade?
Buyer
Same path, but he's tighter than he was. Anything new, he wants to see it next to the WIP. So whatever you send me, put the seven percent number in it, because that's the one that'll get his attention.
Rep
Then that's the first line of the email. You'll have it by five: the tag turnaround we already moved, the twenty-one CORs at $640K and seven percent of contract value, the math at four captures with your eighteen-grand average, the $2,100 co-termed to March, the ninety minutes plus two hours a week from Danny, and the three success criteria including Marisol's PDF. December start, decision at renewal. I'll also send a separate note about Tommy's crew, because that's a different problem and I don't want it riding on this.
Objections you will hear
What they say, and what you say back.
| Objection | How to answer it |
|---|---|
| “We're barely using what we've got. Sheet metal never onboarded — why would I buy another module?” | You wouldn't, if the two were connected. They're not. Sheet metal is twelve seats and three weekly actives, and I'd bet Tommy's guys are still writing tags in a carbon book and running a text thread — which means the work's happening, it's just not routed. That's an onboarding problem and I want a separate thirty minutes on it this month whether or not you buy anything today. What I'm describing lives with your PMs and your controller, not your foremen — it doesn't add a single field to what a guy in gloves does. If you want to fix Tommy first and talk to me in the spring, say so and I'll put it in writing. |
| “Budget's spent. We bought two trucks in April and the Vista upgrade took the rest. I'm not going to the Owner for another monthly line item at a six-point margin.” | Then let's not add a line item in October. Two things I'd check. When does that budget reset — March, same as your renewal? Because I can put an order form in front of you now that starts in December and bills from March, co-termed, so it's an amendment to a contract you're already signing rather than a fresh approval. Second — is there anything in the same budget nobody's opened since the last general super left? If this replaces nine hundred a month of shelfware, the incremental ask gets a lot smaller and the Owner's question changes from 'why more' to 'why not sooner.' I'd rather do that than discount, because discounting just tells you the first contract was overpriced. |
| “The GC makes us run their system on the hospital job. I'm not running a third platform.” | You're already running two, and your foremen are running a third in a spiral notebook. The difference is whose record it is. Their platform exists to protect their schedule and their number — it will not be on your side the day the backcharge conversation happens at closeout, and you won't get an export of your own labor hours out of it in the format you need. What I care about is that when the owner's rep says 'first I'm hearing of it,' you've got the tag, the photos, the hours, and a timestamp that predates the argument. Post the COR into their system if the contract says so. Keep the evidence in yours. |
| “Change orders are my PMs' job. Talk to my senior PM, he owns that.” | I will, and I'd want him on the pilot call. But your PMs will optimize for their own jobs — and they should. You're the one looking at fade across the whole book, and the question I'd want answered before you hand me off is whether unapproved change work is a hospital-job problem or an every-job problem. Your senior PM will tell you it's the hospital. The WIP will tell you the truth. Give me one number from Marisol — unapproved CORs as a percent of contract value across all active jobs — and if it's under two percent I'll drop this and go work on sheet metal adoption instead. |
| “We track all of this in Vista already. The change orders are in there.” | They're in there eventually — the question is when, and with what attached. If the COR hits Vista three weeks after the work happened, you're not tracking change orders, you're recording an argument you already lost. Give me an honest number: from the extra work happening on the deck to a COR sitting in front of the owner's rep, how many days? If it's over a week you're negotiating from memory every time, and Vista won't hand you the foreman's photo from that Tuesday. This doesn't replace Vista — it feeds it faster and with the backup packet attached, which is also why your pay apps stop coming back. |
| “We're booked through next year and my superintendent is already three weeks behind on critical path. There's no bandwidth for a rollout.” | Believed, and that's exactly when the leaks are worst — busy is when the tag stays in the truck and the COR waits on a PM running two jobs. So I'm not asking for a rollout. I'm asking for ninety minutes from your controller, two hours a week from Danny for three weeks, one job, and a start date after the middle school punch walk. Your general superintendent isn't in this at all. If December is still wrong, tell me the week that isn't and I'll hold it — but I want a date on the calendar, not a 'circle back in Q2,' because Q2 is when you'll be busier than you are now. |
Questions reps ask about this call
- What do I actually need to pull before running an upsell call with a construction customer?
Adoption broken out by division — not company-wide, because company-wide hides the dark corner and the dark corner is the first thing a VP of Operations will raise. Then: which objects they create (daily reports, T&M tags, change tickets) and which they've never enabled; one outcome number from their own instance, like days from field work performed to tag received; contract value, renewal date and who signed; any open ticket or escalation in the last 60 days; and whether your original champion is still in the role. The test is whether you can say one thing about their account they'd be mildly surprised you knew. Asking a superintendent 'so how's everyone finding it?' when the usage data is in your dashboard is the single fastest way to get downgraded from partner to vendor.
- How do I bring up an expansion when they know they aren't using everything they bought?
Say it before they do. 'You've got 60 field seats and 44 weekly actives, and the 16 that aren't in there are all sheet metal. If I were you I'd be asking why I'd buy more before I've used what I've got.' Then reframe the gap as unrouted work rather than wasted spend — those foremen are still writing tags, just in a carbon book in the truck. Critically, be honest about whether the new module fixes that. Usually it doesn't. Saying 'this is an onboarding problem, not a product gap, and I want a separate meeting on it' costs you nothing today and buys you the right to come back next quarter.
- Which construction metrics belong in the value math?
Use the ones that show up in their WIP meeting, because those are the numbers the Owner and the Controller argue about. The strongest pairing is unapproved change orders as a percent of contract value alongside days from field work performed to COR submitted — one shows the size of the exposure, the other shows the mechanism. Gross margin fade in points is the executive-level consequence; DSO and retainage outstanding is how the CFO feels it. Build the arithmetic from their open COR count and their own average COR value, pick a deliberately conservative capture rate, say the price out loud in the same breath as the value, and then hand them the pencil: 'if you think four out of twenty-one is generous, tell me the number you believe and we'll rerun it.'
- They say the budget went to trucks and the ERP upgrade. Do I discount?
No. Discounting tells them the original contract was overpriced and teaches them to wait for a discount on every future expansion. Budget objections in this industry are usually timing and authority wearing a costume. Ask what it reset against and when — often it's the same month as their renewal, which lets you write a signed order form now with a start date after their current crunch, co-termed so it becomes an amendment rather than a new purchase. Also ask whether anything in the same budget line is underperforming, like a scheduling tool nobody's opened since the last general superintendent left. Replacing shelfware is a much easier conversation with an Owner running single-digit margins than adding a line.
- What's the right size of ask on an upsell call with a specialty trade contractor?
One job, one quarter, success criteria they write themselves. Not the whole book, not all divisions, not both the plumbing and sheet metal sides. Something like: on the hospital job, days from field work performed to COR submitted under ten, and zero pay apps kicked back for missing change backup across two billing cycles, decided at the March renewal. Then cost the implementation in hours and names — 90 minutes with the controller to map change cost codes, two hours a week from the Director of Field Operations for three weeks, nothing from the general superintendent. Selling the all-divisions rollout on call one because the quota needs it is how you end up with nothing signed this quarter.
- When should I park the upsell entirely?
If there's an open escalation or a ticket older than two weeks, if your champion just changed roles, if renewal is inside 60 days with an unresolved value question, if weekly actives are flat or falling and you can't explain why, or if the Owner announced a cost review last quarter. Say it out loud on the call: 'You've got an unresolved Vista sync issue. I'm not asking you for money while that's open.' Pushing an expansion over the top of any of those converts a renewable account into a churn risk for an incremental twenty-five grand, and in a market this small your customer's general superintendent drinks with three of your other customers' general superintendents.