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One of the great things about painting services is that they are in constant demand.  There are around 140 million housing units in the United States, including apartments and townhomes, and they should be painted every decade or so.

The bad news is that there are upwards of 30,000 painting contractors in the United States, with nearly 200,000 employees.  That doesn’t include painters working for general contractors or employed by other businesses.

Some areas have more painters than paying painting projects.  In many other areas, there’s plenty of business to go around during the summer, but cold winters put outside paint jobs off limits, leading to heavy competition for inside work.  If either of these sound like something you’ve encountered, it might make sense to add additional services to stabilize your income.

But how do you select which ones to add?  Some painters provide drywall repair.  Others offer power-washing, handyman services, or even hanging Christmas lights during the winter.  Each service added can change how you market your services, require different equipment and have different profit margins.  Here are a few things to consider when selecting which services to add.

Determine customer demand

Before you begin offering a service, you should make sure there are customers who want that service in the area.  One easy way is to ask satisfied customers after you’ve painted their house if they have ever needed the service, or if they know someone who does.  If they do, ask them how hard it was to find someone, and what the price was if they don’t mind telling you.    If they’re happy with your painting work, and you tell them you’re planning on offering the service in the future, they likely won’t mind giving you a ballpark price for what they had done.

Think about profit, not revenue

While it’s always great to have more services for offer, don’t forget that they aren’t free to add.  Services like power-washing and steam-cleaning have up-front equipment that can be substantial, and you’ll need to complete many jobs before you even get your investment back.  Drywall repair and Christmas lights, on the other hand, require less revenue but may not make as much money.  Make sure you have a good idea of how many jobs you’ll need to break even, and how much money you’ll make off of each job after that.

Don’t forget your marketing!

If you’ve been a painter for a while, you’ve probably invested in marketing that promotes your painting business.  But if you add a service, you’ll need to change that marketing content.  Do you want to promote the services on the same marketing material, or do you want different flyers and websites for each one?  Will you promote them in the same places, or will you need to advertise in different places for your new services?  Each new advertising avenue can open a new market for you, but that market comes at a cost.  If it’s a service that you can promote along with your painting, your costs will be lower.

To learn how ProPainter Websites can help your company earn more business, call us at 919-424-6121 or email us at Team_PPW@ProPainterWebsites.com.

It’s expensive to gain a customer.  That’s because other painting contractors want those customers, too.  Some painters (especially those big franchises) spend tons of money trying to get people to recognize their name in cities across the nation – sending coupons or mailers to their houses, buying Google ads, and in some cases even buying TV or radio commercials.

It might make sense for franchises that can spread out all of those costs across the entire country.  But for most painting contractors, it’s taking profit out of every job you get.

Great Customer Service is the Best Business Hack in the World

It also requires plenty of up-front cash – cash that most painting contractors don’t have laying around to buy business like this.  Fortunately, if you’re providing fantastic customer service, you don’t need to.  If you’re just starting your business, you might need to work hard to get your first customers, but once they’re there it’s not hard to provide service that far exceeds expectations. 

Patiently explain options to customers and give them choices on when and how to get the job done.  Make sure you’re answering their questions when you’re talking with them.  Earn their confidence before the job, and make sure they’re even more confident in you after the job is done.

When customers feel like you provided honest service and took their needs and requests into account, they won’t need a coupon book mailed to them to remember who painted their house.  If you go out of your way to help them meet a deadline, or work around their schedule and leave the house spotless,  they’ll turn into loyal customers that will call you whenever they need painting work.

Even more importantly, these won’t be passive customers – they will be active ones.  That means you can rely on them for referrals and online reviews, especially if you ask them for the favor.  Both of these things will bring you new customers, but they don’t cost a dime.  All you have to do is to keep knocking customer service out of the park.

Don’t get complacent!

It’s easy to focus on customers when you don’t have many of them.  It gets a lot harder when you’re already booked and a job is running behind.  You’ve still got to make sure your service is top notch – even phone calls with customers you don’t have the time to help.

A great reputation can be destroyed even more quickly than it was created.  An unfriendly response from your business can turn into a one-star review whether you perform services or not.  Negative word-of-mouth and poor reviews will have immediate impacts.  It might be the off-season before you notice that your referral business is slowing. If this happens, all of those expensive ads might start looking like the only way out.  It is much cheaper to keep the focus on customer service, even if it reduces the number of customers you can serve!

To learn how ProPainter Websites can help your business thrive, call us at 919-424-6121 or email us at Team_PPW@ProPainterWebsites.com.