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Some people start painting on the side, and then realize that they are making more money than they do at their primary job.  Others pick it up as a high school or college job, and see potential for growing it into a business.  Still others are looking to change careers, and see painting as a business opportunity with a low cost of entry.

No matter how people get to the point where they consider starting a painting business, they will reach a point when they wonder: is this really a good idea?  Here are a few questions that will help you answer that question.

Do you enjoy sales and marketing? The odds are high that your ability to pay the bills didn’t depend on sales and marketing work when you started out painting for friends and family and it led to referrals, or when you were painting for a summer job.  When you start a painting business, that will change.

A large percentage of your time will be spent managing your workload.  When work is light, that might mean dropping flyers off door-to-door or networking with people in your community who can send jobs your way.  When work is heavy, that means answering the phone again and again only to tell people you have no availability for months.  While this work doesn’t directly generate money, it’s necessary to fill up the calendar with future jobs!

Can you be very organized?  A real business requires more than a paint brush and a ladder.  It requires bookkeeping.  It requires meeting commitments to customers, which requires careful scheduling and can sometimes mean long weeks.  It also requires being able to switch quickly from painting to sales to customer service on the fly.  If you’re starting a painting business so you can paint all day, you’re likely to be disappointed.

Are you an optimistic person?  There’s always plenty to stress about when running a business.  One star reviews.  Taxes.  Lawsuits.  Slow season.  Truck payments.  If you’re able to put all of that stress aside and focus on hard work, customer satisfaction, and business growth, there’s also plenty of opportunity.  But if you feel like these worries might bring you down, it’s going to be tough to own and run a business – because while stressful situations can be managed, they can’t be eliminated.

If after answering those three questions you still feel like running a business sounds like a great idea, congratulations!  You might be a great candidate for starting a painting business.

Call us at 855-385-1134 or email us at Team_PPW@ProPainterWebsites.com to learn how we can make it easier to get painting leads coming into your new business!

Winter isn’t a great time for painting in most places.  It’s especially bad in the northern parts of the country, where it’s too cold to complete exterior jobs.  But the number of paint jobs declines in the winter elsewhere too; home sales are a major catalyst for paint jobs, and home sales are highest in the spring and summer.  January and February are particularly bad months for home sales.

Winter is when your website really does heavy lifting for you; if you want to stay busy throughout the winter, you need as many ways for customers to find you as possible.  Of course, there are plenty of other ways to get jobs – most of them involve staying in front of your prospects in a way that’s relevant and useful.  Here are three ways you can do just that.

3-month follow-up calls: Each week, call customers whose work you completed three months ago and make sure they’re still happy with your work.  It’s uncommon that they’ll ask you to fix anything that you haven’t already heard about.  But you’ll impress them with your commitment to satisfaction, while also providing them an opportunity to ask for more painting or refer someone to you.

Offer customers cold-weather services:  If you live in a particularly cold area, winter is an expensive time.  That’s because houses that leak heat can cause the energy bill to skyrocket as the furnace struggles to keep up.  Sealing doors and windows, whether accomplished using plastic, caulking, or drywall repair, can save far more than it costs.  Bolstering insulation can accomplish the same result.  And as December approaches, many people don’t consider their home truly winterized until the Christmas lights are hanging from the roof.

All of these present opportunities to both make money and re-introduce yourself to existing customers.  One important note: whatever services you decide to perform, make sure that you’re licensed to do them if it’s required in your state!

Provide value to your prospects: Most customers won’t expect to hear from their painting contractor monthly – there’s simply not enough information about house painting that they care about to make that kind of communication valuable.  But if you do want to provide any valuable information to your customers, winter is the time to do it!  A painting newsletter could provide information on this year’s most popular colors, safety updates on paint or painting products, or interior services you can perform to update a room’s look (such as decorating walls with crown molding or creating a feature wall).  Make sure to include a referral request and a discount coupon for existing customers to help generate leads for your business!

To learn more about how ProPainter Websites can keep you busy through the winter, call us at 855-385-1134 or email us at Team_PPW@ProPainterWebsites.com.

Why do people start businesses?  It seems like everyone has a different answer to the question.  Do most of them hate their bosses?  Do they want control of their own schedule?  Do they want to make more money?

One recent study makes an interesting point. Successful business owners need several traits that don’t show up on a resume – they need to be willing to do whatever task is required, for instance, and to keep focused and motivated even during tough times.

Employers, including painting contractors, don’t have any way to see these traits on a resume. Even if they did, they don’t have an easy way to measure them.  Because of that, people with these traits are often underpaid and given jobs that don’t allow them to use these abilities.  They quickly realize they could do better on their own.

If you think about it, this is the same challenge that great painting contractors face when marketing and selling their services.

Anyone can brag about how they show up on time, how well they do their job, and how clean they’ll leave the house.  But if you don’t have a quick way to prove all of those things, customers will just use the one measuring stick they have for each painting company – their price.

Fortunately, businesses have one option that job-seekers don’t – a web presence.  Because most potential customers believe that the quality of a paint job can be measured in the time it takes to view a few pictures, it can be quickly evaluated online.  Because dozens of customers can leave great reviews, you can get an idea of how happy a painting contractor’s average customer is – not just their best three references.  And because these things can be made available to anyone who’s looking for them, you don’t have to go find customers – they can find you.

That’s why a web presence is so important for a painting company. With a powerful web presence, your customers can determine a fair price for your quality work.  Without one, they can only determine whether your price is the lowest one they can find.

To learn more about how ProPainter Websites can help you build a great web presence, call us at 855-385-1134 or email us at Team_PPW@ProPainterWebsites.com.