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You may have heard commercials that promise that they can incorporate your business with only 15 minutes of work.  But they don’t promise it’s free!  In reality, incorporation can cost several hundred dollars after legal and government filing fees. That’s true even if you’re using a simple service like LegalZoom or IncFile. But with all of that extra money and paperwork, is incorporation really worth it?  Here are three of the bigger benefits of incorporating your business, so you can decide if it’s right for you.

Protect Your Personal Belongings from Lawsuits

Asset protection is the single biggest advantage to incorporation.  If you’re operating as a Sole Proprietor (you haven’t incorporated yet) then you are personally liable for what your company does.   If you, or someone working for you, makes a big mistake and a customer sues you, and your business doesn’t have the money to cover the costs, that customer can go after your home, car, or personal savings.  If the business is incorporated, they cannot go after your personal belongings in a lawsuit.

Protect Your Name from Being Copied

In many states, incorporation protects other companies from using your name.  If your business becomes successful without being incorporated, someone else can incorporate their business using the same name you’re using.  Incorporation protects your business name from being copied.

Enhanced Credibility

Some customers believe that small businesses are more established or reputable if they have an LLC or Inc after their name.  It does indicate that the owner has invested the time and money required to create a formal business. That is something they may not do if it was only a side job or seasonal job.  For customers worried about whether a painter can deliver the services they promised, it might be a decision-making factor between two similar paint job quotes.

To learn how ProPainter Websites can help grow your painting business, call us at 855.385.1134 or email us at Team_PPW@ProPainterWebsites.com.

It’s true that for many customers, price is the primary factor in selecting a painter.  But just how important is price? If a customer receives quotes from three painters, and they’re all within 10% of each other, will they select the lowest quote simply because it’s lower than the other two?

In many cases they will – but not because they want to.  Customers will happily pay slightly more if they feel more comfortable that they’re going to get a superior product or service.  Unfortunately, in many cases, customers can’t find much difference between what they’re being offered.  When this happens, it’s easiest just to select based on the price.

How do you avoid this race to the bottom?  How does your painting company stand out in a customer’s mind as the confidence-inspiring choice?   Great customer communication plays a major role in winning business even if your competitors provide a price quote that undercuts your own.

Here are the most important things you can communicate to customers, along with some suggestions on how to communicate them.

Confidence: If you don’t have confidence in yourself, it’s impossible for customers to have confidence in you.  When you provide information to customers, make sure that you’re confident in it and that it doesn’t change.

For instance, if a customer asks when you can do a job, and you don’t have your calendar in front of you, it’s better to tell them that you’ll provide that information later when you have your calendar in front of you than to make a guess and have to correct it.  If a customer asks for a quote before you have enough information to provide one, tell them exactly what you need to make a quote and how you price your work.  In either situation, make sure to follow up with them when you told them you would, and that your answers are thorough.

Customers will realize that you won’t provide any answers until you’re confident in them, and that once you provide answers, they don’t change.  This will provide them with confidence that the job will come in on time and on budget – something they may not experience when they call other painters.

Experience: Customers want to know that you have experience doing the type of job they want done, and that you have a track record of doing a great job.  The primary way that people discover this is through referrals, testimonials and reviews.   It’s always good to reinforce your experience, however.  If you do similar types of jobs all the time, bring that fact up in customer communication.  If you do a lot of work near that location, you can tell them that as well.  If you’ve done exterior paint jobs nearby, you could even provide an address so they could drive by the house and see the work.

Images are also a great way to reinforce the quality of your work.  Make sure to take high-resolution pictures of your completed work, so you can post them on your website or send them to people asking for quotes directly.  This visual reinforcement can sway customers more than they realize, especially if they don’t have it from competing companies.

Friendliness: People like doing business with people they like.  They definitely don’t want people in their home if they don’t like them.  Because these decisions are made in a matter of seconds, it’s key to come off as friendly and easy to work with in your very first exchange with the customer.  People will easily pay 10% more to keep a person out of their house if they view them as suspicious or angry.

It’s a competitive market for painting contractors right now. By being the best at customer communication and demonstrating your confidence, experience and friendliness, you’ll give yourself a great chance to win more jobs.

To learn more about how to get more business for your painting company, call ProPainter Websites at 855.385.1134 or email us at Team_PPW@ProPainterWebsites.com.

Did you know that more searches happen from a mobile device than a desktop or laptop computer?  More than half of people in the US search for a local business online at least once a month. Around 60% of those searches are happening on mobile phones and tablets, demonstrating the critical importance of mobile-friendly websites for painters.

If your website was not built in the past few years, beware. Older websites may not display correctly on a phone.  The text may be tiny, or it may not fit on the screen at all.  The page list may not be easily clickable on a phone, and people may never leave the homepage.

Customers only spend about seven seconds on a website before they decide whether it’s worth their time to continue reading it. Any challenges they encounter when looking at your site on their phone or tablet will make it much more likely that they’ll close the site and go to the next website that Google returns for their search.

How can you keep these customers on your site?  Mobile-friendly websites for painters should provide exactly what people want when they’re using a mobile phone for search.  They want to know if you provide the service they need, and that you serve their area.  Once they know these things, the most important item for them is the phone number, so they can call you.  That’s exactly what you want them to do, too!

Is your phone number displayed prominently on your mobile website?  When people tap that number on a phone, does it call you?  If not, call your website provider and tell them that you want a mobile friendly site.  Or, better yet, call us!  ProPainter Websites is focused on getting results for painters, and we know what it takes to make a painting website successful. 

Call us at 855.385.1134 or email TeamPPW@ProPainterWebsites.com to learn more about how we can get your painting company more business.

If you’re trying to expand your painting company, finding qualified painters is probably one of your hardest tasks.  That’s because it takes much more than just painting experience for painters to help your company increase sales and customer satisfaction.  Here are five critical traits of a great painting company employee.

Integrity – This is the most critical trait of any employee.  Your painters will be inside people’s homes. If they steal anything, try to hide damage, or lie about anything, it can ruin your reputation and expose you to expensive legal costs.  Nothing can take a business down more quickly than an employee with no integrity.

Efficiency – In order to be efficient, painters must be able to make surfaces look great while covering a good amount of square footage each hour.  If they paint too fast, they’ll end up wasting time and materials because you’ll have to re-paint areas.  If they paint too slowly, you’ll either lose money on the job or you won’t get it in the first place, because your bids won’t be competitive.

Professionalism – When your painter shakes the hand of the business owner or homeowner who has hired you, they’ll be the face of your company.  Every great painting company employee understands the basics of customer service – how to make customers feel valued, respected, and comfortable with the paint company selection they’ve made.

Reliability – If people have adjusted their furniture (or their entire day) so that you can paint their house, they aren’t going to be happy if their painter doesn’t show up.  That makes reliability important – painters need to be able to meet the commitments they’ve made to be on location, on time.  While unexpected absences happen due to illness or other extraneous circumstances, employees that are consistently late or absent can do real damage to your reputation quickly.

Positivity – People who are angry or constantly negative bring down those around them. If negative employees are around other employees, the negativity will spread and reduce employee satisfaction.  If negative employees are around customers, they’ll be unhappy with the service even if they can’t point to a specific reason why.  Neither of these is good for business.

To learn how ProPainter Websites can help you recruit great painters, call us at 855-385-1134 or email Team_PPW@ProPainterWebsites.com.