Marketing your new painting business

Brian Phillips

A frequent question from those starting a new painting business is how to obtain work. With few, if any references, no market presence, and often little money for advertising, the new business owner is in a quandry.

While I would recommend developing a business plan (including a marketing plan) prior to launching a new business, this does little good for someone who has already opened the doors.

Perhaps the easiest and least expensive method is door hangers. When I started my business 22 years ago I distributed thousands of door hangers. When I didn’t have a job to do, my job was handing out door hangers. It wasn’t fun (particularly in Houston’s very hot summers) but it worked.

The following can serve as a crude marketing plan:

Select a small area to target (1,000 to 2,500 homes). Get the door hangers out as quickly as possible. When a job is sold, get a sign in the yard immediately and leave it there as long as possible. At the same time, market to the neighbors with more door hangers or direct mail. This provides consistent and regular exposure in a small area and increases the effectiveness of each piece. Rinse and repeat.

As money permits add the following to your marketing plan: vehicle signage, customer retention, and newspaper ads or inserts. Again, keep your marketing focused on a small area to maximize exposures.

No marketing plan is perfect. Nor will the results be immediate. But persistence and consistency will produce results in time.

June 2nd, 2010 | Tags: | Category: Marketing, Starting | Comments are closed

When the customer won’t call back

Brian Phillips

If you spend much time on any contractor discussion board, you will quickly come across someone asking how to handle a customer who won’t respond to emails or phone calls. “Should I just blow them off?” the poster typically asks. Often the poster concludes that the customer is a “tire kicker”.

I must admit that I find such an attitude rather puzzling. I think that there are two problems with it.

First, the fact the customer does not respond to a phone call or email doesn’t tell us much. There are myriad reasons this could happen, and to jump to conclusions is both fallacious and potentially harmful. The customer could be out of town or has more pressing issues at the moment. As an example, in late June I met with a customer and submitted an estimate. We did follow up phone calls throughout July, but the customer never responded. In late August he contacted us, ready to move forward with the project—he had been busy with a family emergency and then getting his daughter to college. Our repeated phone calls let him know that we wanted his business, and when he was ready to move ahead with the project, we got the call. Had we concluded that he was a “tire kicker” because he didn’t respond to the first phone call might have resulted in a much different outcome.

The second problem I have with this is that it sounds as if the contractor has very few estimates in the pipeline. If a contractor is fretting over one particular estimate, it doesn’t sound like he has much else going on. Certainly there may be particular jobs that we desire more than others, but if we have enough leads, this issue simply does not exist.

Of course, to have enough leads, we must be marketing consistently. Generating a steady stream of leads makes many aspect of running a contracting business much easier and less stressful. No particular customer or job becomes overly important. While we need jobs, we don’t need any one particular job.

However, when we don’t have enough leads, each one takes on added importance. Each job becomes more precious. And with that can come all types of bad decisions, from cutting prices to taking on work that we shouldn’t. We can easily start doing things that make no business sense, and then try to justify our actions because we need work. Or we can spend time worrying about why a customer won’t return our phone calls. The fact is, if you have a lot of leads you will be spending your time looking at jobs instead of wondering why one person isn’t calling you back.

Our business is an integrated whole. We might be the best craftsman in the world, but if we fall short in other areas, the success of our business is threatened. And it all starts with leads.

May 28th, 2010 | Tags: , | Category: Marketing | Comments are closed

Getting Out of the Bucket

Brian Phillips

Do you want to take your painting business to the next level?

Do you want a steady lead flow? Do you want to sell jobs at the right price? Do you want to have motivated crews?


From: Brian Phillips

Dear Professional Painting Contractor,

Let’s be honest. You want to improve your contracting business. I have an e-book that will help you do that, and I want to sell you a copy.

I’m not going to waste your time telling you how great my book is. I’m not going to make wild promises about how much money you will make if you buy my book. But I will tell you what is in my book and how it can help you build a better contracting business—if you apply the ideas.

I have owned a paint contracting business for 25 years. For much of that time I struggled, enduring the same frustrations as most contractors: insufficient leads, customers telling me that my price is too high, painters who wouldn’t show up, and more. I made a lot of mistakes. And then I discovered the power of business systems.

You know how to paint a house. You know what steps that you must follow to produce a durable, attractive job. You also know that if you skip one of those steps or do them in the wrong order, the job probably won’t turn out well. You won’t get the results that you want. This same principle applies to every aspect of your business—do the right things time after time and you will get the results you want time after time. Systems will allow you to get predictable, consistent results.

And Getting Out of the Bucket will help you develop systems for your business.

This powerful 330-page e-book covers every aspect of a paint contracting business:

  • Marketing
  • Estimating
  • Sales
  • Finance
  • Production
  • Administration
  • And more…

Getting Out of the Bucket comes with forms, worksheets, sample marketing materials, and action steps to help you build the business you want.

What’s Your Problem?

Do you have trouble finding good employees? Do you wonder why they won’t do things the way you want? Do you ever think that if you want it done right, you need to do it yourself? Getting Out of the Bucket will help you:

  • Hire employees who don’t need baby sitting
  • Set quality standards to insure that the work is performed properly
  • Develop a compensation system that rewards your employees adequately
  • Develop forms and checklists to help your crew leaders operate more efficiently and with greater customer satisfaction

Getting Out of the Bucket comes with sample employment ads, an application and employee test, interview tips, and more.

Do you have trouble generating enough leads? Do you often wonder where your nest job will come from? Are you tired of “tire kickers”? Getting Out of the Bucket will help you:

  • Systematize your marketing to develop a steady lead flow
  • Analyze your marketing to make informed decisions about your marketing
  • Develop a low-cost, effective marketing plan

Getting Out of the Bucket comes with sample marketing materials, a simple yet effective marketing plan template, a spreadsheet for analyzing your marketing, and more.

Do you worry about estimating jobs accurately and profitably? Do you find yourself fretting over estimates, wondering if you have the right price? Getting Out of the Bucket will help you:

  • Develop an estimating system that will produce accurate, consistent, and profitable pricing
  • Calculate the selling price you need to be profitable
  • Monitor and improve your estimating skills

Getting Out of the Bucket comes with estimating forms, sample production rates, a sample spreadsheet for estimating, and more.

Do you have trouble selling for a profitable price? Are you tired of hearing “your price is too high?” Getting Out of the Bucket will help you:

  • Develop a sales process that fits your style and personality
  • Develop trust and confidence so that customers will pay a higher price
  • Sell more jobs at the price you need

Getting Out of the Bucket comes with a sample contract, sales forms, a spreadsheet to calculate your selling price, and more.

Do you seem to always run out of time? Are you tired of working nights and weekends? Do you struggle to find time for your family and hobbies? Getting Out of the Bucket will help you:

  • Delegate tasks so that you can focus on your priorities
  • Identify and focus on your long-term goals
  • Reduce time consuming and stressful emergencies

Getting Out of the Bucket comes with tips on identifying solutions to those nagging problems that waste your time, create stress, and cause frustration. You will also get hundreds of sample procedures that you can modify to fit your business.

I am blown away by the depth of your systems and excited about implementing it ASAP. Jamie

Getting Out of the Bucket addresses all of the common contractor complaints and more.

BONUS #1: As a bonus, you will also get our Operations Manual Templates. These templates include hundreds of sample procedures in sales, estimating, production, and administration. We sell these templates for $79 and they are yours for free when you buy Getting Out of the Bucket.

BONUS #2: We’ll also include seven hours of audio recordings from our teleconference on estimating.

This powerful business building e-book and both free bonuses are now only $109. After payment you will receive an email from BEP Enterprises with download instructions for immediate access.


September 28th, 2009 | Category: Administration, Estimating, Finance, Marketing, Production | Comments are closed
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