Noble Building and Development set a $1 million target. Six years later the program had closed $18.9 million.

Noble is a general contractor in Houston with 45 employees. When they started with us they named a specific number they wanted from our leads: $1 million a year in closed business. Across six years we booked 297 appointments, and nine of those became projects worth $18,901,500 together, roughly three times the target they set.

What the program delivered

• $18,901,500 in closed construction work
• 297 appointments booked over six years
• Nine projects, the largest at $12,350,000
• 3x the annual target Noble set at the outset

The target they gave us

Noble came to us with 45 employees, 24 clients and a number. They wanted $1 million a year in closed business from the leads we generated, across any range of project size, which for a general contractor of that size is a serious but reasonable thing to ask for.

Commercial construction is unusually hard to prospect because the work is invisible until somebody decides to build. A facility expansion exists as a conversation between an owner, a plant manager and a finance person for months before it becomes anything a contractor could bid on, and the contractor who gets the call is usually the one who was already known when that conversation started.

Our job was to be in the room during that window. That means calling companies where nothing is happening yet, repeatedly, and being the name they reach for when something does.

What Noble needed from an outbound program

• Reach into facilities that are not advertising anything. The projects worth winning are the ones nobody has put out to bid yet, which means somebody has to be talking to those companies before there is a project to talk about.
• The person who controls the building budget. In construction that is rarely one job title. It can be a maintenance supervisor, a plant manager, a chief financial officer or the company president, and reaching the wrong one costs months.
• Persistence measured in months rather than weeks. A general contractor running 24 active clients does not have anybody free to call the same manufacturer for five months straight.
• Enough detail to walk in prepared. Scope, timing, square footage and who else is involved, captured before Noble sends anybody out to a site.

Three projects and what it took to get them

$12,350,000, after five months of a phone that would not connect

One of our representatives spent roughly five months trying to reach the right person at an industrial manufacturing site, and the account notes read like a wall. Gatekeepers who could not transfer a call. An extension that only rang. A voicemail box with no name on it. One entry records the tenth attempt in a row with no contact of any kind.

Partway through, somebody mentioned a different name as the person who actually handled construction matters, so we redirected and kept calling. When the maintenance supervisor finally picked up, the conversation lasted minutes: the company was planning building expansions, the plans would firm up within two months, and he was glad to walk Noble around the site to show them what was coming.

That site walk produced a $450,000 design contract. The following year the same client awarded Noble the construction project at $12,350,000.

$4,800,000, from a line that sounded like a fax machine

A different account opened with two log entries saying only that the line sounded like a fax and needed research. Our representative found a main number on the company website, worked through a gatekeeper by asking for operations, left voicemails that went unreturned, searched LinkedIn to work out who ran the plant, and reverse-engineered the company email format to test whether a message would reach anybody at all.

The appointment that came back was not with the person he had been guessing at. It was with the chief financial officer, who controlled budgeting and pre-planning, sitting alongside the plant manager and the owner.

They had two buildings totalling 80,000 square feet and wanted a remodel, expansions, add-ons and a second floor on one of them, and they had wanted to start the previous month. $4,800,000.

$600,000, after sixteen months of being told no

We pitched the owner of a metal finishing company and were told there were no projects coming for the next few years. Three follow-ups over sixteen months produced the same answer every time: out of the office, nothing planned, nothing going on.

Then we sent an email under Noble’s president’s name to a different person at the same company, its president, asking one question: was he the right contact to discuss construction work on their facilities. He replied the same day. They had an upcoming project, an addition to an existing building, and we could come by or send someone, and call his cell anytime.

The appointment was set that afternoon and the meeting happened three days later, an expansion of roughly 75 by 85 feet with a 20-ton crane going into it. $600,000. Same company, same period, different person and a different channel. The owner had not been difficult with us. He genuinely did not know.

How we run the program

Four channels work one target list: phone, email, LinkedIn and direct mail. Our representative calls as Noble rather than as an agency, which is why an email under the president’s name to a company president reads as one construction firm contacting another.

Targets come out of our real-time intelligence platform, more than 125 million continuously updated records, narrowed to the Houston market and to the kinds of facilities that expand: manufacturers, industrial sites and companies with buildings they have outgrown.

What we confirm before Noble sends anybody

• The project. What is being built or expanded, the square footage, and whether Noble is being considered for design, construction or both.
• The timing. When plans firm up and when budget is released, which in commercial construction are two different dates often months apart.
• The authority. Whether the person in the meeting can award work or is gathering information for somebody else who can.
• The competition. Whether the work is going out to bid and who else is being asked to price it.

Accounts that are not ready move into a quarterly cadence and stay there for as long as it takes, which in Noble’s case has meant sixteen months on one account and five months of dialling on another. Across Abstrakt programs, 46% of appointments come out of that follow-up rather than the first conversation.

What six years built

$18,901,500 in closed construction across 297 appointments and nine projects, against a target of $1 million a year. The $450,000 design contract that became a $12,350,000 build is the clearest illustration of why the follow-up matters: the first job was not the prize, it was the introduction.

Noble’s team designs and builds the work. We make sure they are in the conversation before the project exists.

Frequently Asked Questions

What did Noble ask for?

A specific target: $1 million a year in closed business from the leads we generate, across any project size. Over six years the program closed $18,901,500, roughly three times that rate.

How many appointments produced that?

297 appointments over six years, nine of which became closed projects.

What was the largest project?

$12,350,000, awarded the year after a $450,000 design contract with the same client.

How long does it take to reach the right person in construction?

Longer than most trades. One project on this program took roughly five months of dialling before anybody picked up, and another took sixteen months of being told there was no work.

Who do you actually reach?

Maintenance supervisors, plant managers, chief financial officers, company presidents and owners. Which one matters depends entirely on who controls the building budget.