ProPainter   Advice   Blog

One of the biggest challenges for any painting contractor looking to expand is hiring employees.  We covered some of the basics required when hiring an employee in our recent infographic, Hiring Your First Employee Without Having to Fire Them Two Days Later.  This covers items to consider when posting a position.

That being said, meeting government paperwork requirements and creating a job posting aren’t the hardest part of hiring a painter.  The hard part is finding one that won’t let you down on the job.

If you’re looking for an employee in this market that doesn’t want a salary that breaks the bank, you’re going to be looking for someone with dedication, growth potential… and not much experience.  These employees are among the most difficult to assess.  You can’t call a list of references, because their career has been very short.  You also can’t judge them based on how well or how quickly they complete a job, because you’ll be training them on how to do that.

That doesn’t mean you have to take a shot in the dark – there are things you can look for when they’re interviewing with you.  Patrick Lencioni’s book The Ideal Team Player identifies three characteristics to look for in any job candidate:

Humble team players aren’t ego-driven.  They’re quick to talk about the people who have helped them succeed, and slow to assign credit to themselves.

Hungry team players are always focused on what else they can take on.  Growth and success are natural consequences of their self-motivation.

Smart team players understand how to interact with others due to their intuition and good judgement.  Smart in this context isn’t about book-smarts, but people-smarts – knowing how to deal well with people. This is especially important when you are working in customers’ homes.

If you can find an employee with these three characteristics, the sky is the limit for their ability to help your business succeed.  And although it’s somewhat implied by these, it’s also important to mention Honesty.  If your employees aren’t honest, nothing else matters.  You’ll lose every time.

To learn how ProPainter Websites can help your business improve its hiring process with our Hiring Assessment Survey, call us at 855-385-1134 or email us at Team_PPW@ProPainterWebsites.com.

There are so many factors that go into selling painting services.  We’ve covered the importance of process, response times, and great customer communication.  But there’s more to communication than what you’re saying – more than half of in-person communication comes from body language.

When you say it can be done next week, does your customer believe it?  When you provide your price, does your customer believe that you think it’s a fair one?  Here are a few ideas on how to convince a customer that you’re going to do a great job for them – and (almost) none of them involve words!

Convey Honesty

Seeming dishonest to a potential customer is a surefire deal killer.  The first rule of projecting honesty is to be honest.  If you know you’re more expensive than some competitors but try to argue you’re offering a very cheap price, for instance, it will be difficult to cover up your body language, which will be saying otherwise.  You should also avoid touching your face while you’re communicating; people sometimes subconsciously see this as hiding your face, and it makes them distrust you.  Don’t cross your arms, because it seems defensive.  Finally, make eye contact regularly throughout the conversation.

 Listen to Them

Some people can listen and think at the same time.  But it’s difficult to look like you’re listening and thinking at the same time.  And if a customer doesn’t think you’re listening to them, they aren’t going to trust you.

When a customer is talking to you, make sure you follow both their verbal and non-verbal cues.  If they reference a particular part of the room, take a look at it while they’re talking about it.  Otherwise, maintain eye contact while the customer is talking, and nod periodically to indicate you’re taking in what they’re saying.  Finally, don’t be afraid to repeat back to them what they said if you think it’s particularly important to them – it indicates that you heard them, and have committed it to memory.

Meet Customers Where They Are

You can usually tell what a customer is thinking based on their own behavior.  Are they in a time crunch?  Then what they’re looking for is confidence.  Lean into the conversation, and try to avoid long pauses that might indicate you’re having to move projects around in your head to fit this one in your schedule.

Are they looking for someone who cares about doing a great job?  Show them some excitement – slightly increase the speed and volume of your speech and use some hand gestures.   In many cases, this will flow naturally – if you take the time to consider the customer’s mindset, your body language will naturally adjust to respond to it.

To learn more about how ProPainter Websites can help increase your profit margins, call us at 855-385-1134 or email us at Team_PPW@ProPainterWebsites.com.

If you started your own paint company, it’s probably because you like painting and don’t mind working alone.  One of the things that you get away from is all of the rules and red tape associated with a corporate job – you get to set your own hours, take your own clients, and meet your own quality standards.

That doesn’t mean that you get to ignore process, however.  In fact, process is far more important for a one-person company than it is for bigger ones.  There’s nobody but you to make sure that everything gets done – even the parts of the job you hate.  You’ve got to perform well on the things you do best in a business, and the things you struggle with or don’t enjoy.  And no matter how you divide your time, there’s still only 168 hours in a week – hopefully with around a third of that spent sleeping.

Any part of your job that you can make more efficient and consistent by building a process is going to give you more time.  If you need more money, that’s more time to paint.  And if you don’t – hey, you’re your own boss – that’s more time to hunt and fish.

Here are three processes that every painting contractor needs to build.

Your Dashboard – Every business has six to twelve metrics that can help determine how the next few weeks or months are going to go.  Remember that backward-looking data (like last month’s profit or how many jobs you completed last week) can’t tell you where you’ll be in the future.  Your dashboard should help you figure out what the future looks like, so that when you need to make that picture look better, you’ll know what you need to do to make that happen.

Here are a few examples.  How many jobs do you have booked for the next month?  How many referrals each month are you getting from previous clients?  What will your expenses be in the next quarter?  How many jobs do you get in the next season, historically?

Try to store this information somewhere where you can gather it easily each week.  Once a week, take a look at where you stand, and determine how much time or money you need to allocate to sales and marketing efforts, and how you should price your work.

Your Finances – After a full week of painting, going through a bunch of checks and bills doesn’t sound like much fun.  But it’s essential to run a good business – and it will save you more in terms of stress than it will ever take away in terms of time.

Make sure you know your cash flow, expenses, and profit over the last few months.  And always put the appropriate amount of money away for quarterly taxes – a bad surprise from the IRS can take months or years to recover from!

The most successful businesses are those with consistent revenue and profits, and the only way to get there is by knowing what you need each month and making a plan to get there.  Unfortunately, this is impossible without (at least) monthly business accounting.

Your Sales and Marketing Funnel – The odds are high that you became a painter because you like painting, not sales.  Unfortunately, you have to sell jobs before you can paint houses.  Actually, you might not have to sell all of them – but somebody does!

Anything that brings a customer closer to a sale without you having to be involved is going to save you time, and that’s time you can spend making money by painting.  That’s why its important to have sales and marketing techniques that work in the background.

Of course, a website is a great example of that, because people can learn all about your business without you having to explain anything to them.  It’s not the only technique however.  Make sure your existing customers know how much you value referrals.  Make sure real estate agents in the area know you do great work and you’re affordable.  Make sure your name is known in the community, whether that’s by yard signs, sponsoring a Little League team, or even just a logo on your truck.

Finally, when people do call, make sure you have a process to present yourself and make sure they get everything they need to determine whether you’re the right painting contractor for the job.  You don’t need a script, but you do need a checklist.  Do they trust that you do high quality work?  Do they feel safe with you in their house?  If they are bidding the job out, will they give you an opportunity to counter any bid?  Make sure they aren’t left with questions you could have answered after that first introduction call.

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