ProPainter   Advice   Blog

When a customer calls you for a major painting job, one of the most important things they’re looking for is confidence.  They can’t afford to spend thousands of dollars on a job they’ll have to repeat any more than you can – but if this is the first time they are working with you they have no way of being certain that they’ll be satisfied with the outcome.

In fact, for many customers, price-shopping is a stress reaction to this uncertainty.  They have to spend a large sum of money on a paint job but don’t feel confident or “in control” of the outcome.  The one way they do have to feel in control is to try and get the price down.  Of course, saving $50 or $100 won’t reduce their stress nearly as much as being confident that they will get a great paint job.

So how do you help customers believe you’ll do a great job – so they’ll be less stressed, easier to work with, and less likely to haggle with you over price?  Here are a few ways:

Offer a Warranty

Warranties carry some risk – if you paint enough houses, you will have to make good on a few warranties.  However, they demonstrate to the customer that you stand behind your work in a way that marketing slogans can’t do.  That will likely win you business that you otherwise would have lost, and it may allow you to win higher-priced jobs, as well.  If you do include a warranty, including a reference to PDCA standards will make sure that customers can’t hold you to unreasonable standards, while also indicating that your warranty is based on the premium standards established by the PDCA.

Get Great Reviews – and Remind Potential Customers to Look at Them

Service companies make great efforts to get 5-star reviews from their customers because they’re worth a lot of money.  Many people searching for a painter make on-the-fly decisions about who to call based solely on their online reviews – and if you’re not in the top three, you’re not getting a call from these people.

If you’ve put in the effort to get these great reviews, and you believe you’re on the phone with a potential customer who hasn’t thought to use them, make sure to remind them to take a look at them.  You don’t have to attack any of your competitors or promote yourself in order to do this – you can simply encourage them to take a look at the reviews of any company they’re considering before making a final decision.

Let Them See Your Work

It’s hard to believe you’ve got a good understanding of work quality until you’ve seen it with your own eyes.  So give your customers every opportunity to do that.

One way to accomplish this is by making sure your website has frequently updated examples of jobs you’ve done.  Take some wide-range pictures where customers can see an entire room, or the front of a house.  Also take some pictures closer to the wall, where they can see the quality of your work around moulding or other complex surfaces.

Another way is to put a yard sign outside of a house where you’ve recently completed an external paint job.  If a person lives in the community and a house suddenly changes color, it will catch their eye.  And if the paint job is a great one, and they’re considering one themselves, they’ll see your phone number right in front of them.

To learn how ProPainter Websites can help your company gain more business call us at 855-385-1134 or email us at Team_PPW@ProPainterWebsites.com.

Some of our customers are just starting their painting business.  Once they start having expenses, they need quick revenue to cover them.  Unfortunately, search engine optimization takes a few months (don’t believe anyone who tells you it doesn’t!).  Many of these customers ask us how they can get work while we’re helping them move up the rankings.

The bad news is that there isn’t any lead source that is as affordable and effective as a website that searches well online.  The good news is that there are several other ways to earn some quick business without paying an arm and a leg.  Here are a few of them.

Do you have few or no prior customers?

If you’re just getting started and you’re building from zero customers, these ideas can help you get those valuable first few.

Door-to-door sales:  Use a service like VistaPrint to design and print some simple but professional flyers cheaply.  Put on some professional clothes (khakis and a polo shirt, for instance) and go to a part of town with nice houses, especially if that area has a Homeowners Association that requires the exterior of the house be in great condition. Drop off flyers at any house that you think could use a fresh coat of paint.

If you want to increase your sales rate and get some practice selling, knock on those doors and offer an estimate – but know that some people will respond negatively to being interrupted while at home.

Other painters:  Established painters with more work than they can handle may view small jobs as a nuisance – but these jobs are valuable to painters who are just starting out.  These jobs lead to online reviews and referrals, both of which lead to larger jobs.

Contact other painters in town and ask if they have more work than they can handle. If they do, ask if they could refer any painting work that’s too small to you instead.  This also makes them look good, because they helped someone who called them.

Mass Marketing (be careful!): Although many painters use mass-advertising such as mailers or online ads when they first start out, we encourage people to be careful when doing this.  The advertising itself often ends up costing more than the profit left after the jobs produced by the advertising, leaving nothing to pay the bills.  While this method can produce leads that will help grow the business, you want to make sure you have enough money in the bank to cover personal and business expenses for several months if you’re using this approach.

Do you have existing customers?

If you have existing customers but need more, there are other options available to you to earn more business while you wait for your site to search well.  Some of these techniques are worth doing even after you have a website that’s producing leads, because they don’t require much effort.

Online reviews and referrals: If a customer is happy with the work you’ve done, don’t forget to ask for an online review and any referrals they may have!

As you gather positive online reviews, search engines will begin to regard you as a high-quality painter, and this will help you search better.  Additionally, those who do see your company online will see that you have dozens of great reviews, and will be more likely to select your company to do their painting.

While online reviews have a slow-building positive effect, referrals can lead to immediate revenue.  Prospects who are referred to you by previous customers are far more likely to select you for the job, because you’ve been approved by someone they trust.

Yard Signs:  Have some professional yard signs made, and ask happy customers if you can leave one in their yard for a couple of weeks.  There’s no better way to communicate that you’re happy to paint in a community and that you do a great job at it than a yard sign in front of a house you’ve just painted.  This allows people to see your advertisement right next to your high-quality work – and it can lead to several calls from other people in the community who see their neighbors renovating and don’t want to have the oldest paint job in town.

To learn how ProPainter Websites can help your business grow, call us at 855-385-1134 or email us at Team_PPW@ProPainterWebsites.com.

We’ve said before that it’s better to not answer a customer’s call than to respond in a setting where you can’t give them your full attention.  This is because it’s better to lose a potential customer without them having ever met you, than to have a person who has met you over the phone decide they didn’t like you.  After all, a person can spread a negative opinion about your business even if they never hired you.

Having said that, it’s important to note that response time is extremely important if you want to convert your painting leads to sales.  Consider this – according to the Harvard Business Review, companies who respond to a lead within the first hour of receiving it are seven times more likely to have a good conversation with the lead than those who respond after an hour.  Why?  Simple – an hour later, they’ve already filled their schedule with painters who are going to visit the house and offer a quote!  There’s not much to talk about at that point.

What can you do about this?  One option is to have a text or email response ready that you can quickly use to respond, to let them know you can help them.  For instance, the text might read:

“Hi [Name], I just received your voicemail and I believe I’ll be able to help you with this job.  I will give you a call at [Time] to discuss further if this works for you.”

If the customer is just trying to get the job taken care of quickly, this lets them know that they have a quote coming from your business.  This way, they’re less likely to fill up their schedule with other quote requests and just not return your call.

To learn how ProPainter Websites can help you earn more leads and turn them into more customers, call us at 1-855-385-1134 or email us at Team_PPW@ProPainterWebsites.com.

There’s a famous (probably fictional) story where a company’s Chief Financial Officer asks “What happens if we train our employees and they leave?”  The head of the company responds, “What happens if we don’t and they stay?”

Training employees is expensive.  It costs something more valuable than money – it costs your time.  There may be some types of employee training you do just to keep your risks down, like safety trainings or training on how to treat customers well.  But if you really want to keep your best, most committed employees, the best way to do it is to invest in their long-term career success.

Start by having a conversation with each of your employees. Ask them where they see themselves and what their long-term interests are.

If they want to advance in their careers by earning a foreman or team leader role, educate them on what’s required to do that job well.  Tell them what paint company owners expect out of a team leader, and give them opportunities to perform those tasks.  Allow them to help their own team leader coordinate schedules or build a project plan.

If they’d like to move into sales or estimation, show them what’s required to be successful in that job, and provide them with some of your favorite educational materials on how to sell.  Allow them to listen in on calls with potential customers, and after they’ve shown enough effort to prove they’re serious about sales, allow them to discuss projects and pricing with customers.  After those calls, provide them feedback on how they can improve.

If you’ve got an employee who is interested in starting their own painting company one day, slowly but surely start introducing them to all areas of the business. If they are trustworthy and capable, groom them to be your stand-in so that you don’t have to always be on 24/7.

Eventually, they’ll be qualified for the role they’re seeking.  Is it possible that they’ll leave your company at that time?  Absolutely.  You may not have a spot available for them as a team leader or a salesperson.  They may learn they can make more money at another company. Or they may decide the time is right to start their own painting business.

But if they’re serious about advancing their career, they’re going to give you great work while they’re at your company, because you’ve demonstrated a commitment to them and their career growth.  And if they do leave, it won’t be long before you get another call from a painter who’s serious about their work and their career – and heard how your business is the place to go for great on-the-job training.

To learn how ProPainter Websites can help your painting business succeed, call us at 855-385-1134 or email us at Team_PPW@ProPainterWebsites.com.