Marketing to past customers is one of the most cost-effective forms of advertising. You can do a mailing as simple as a postcard or as elaborate as a four-page newsletter. An email newsletter is even cheaper. Services such as Constant Contact and AWeber offer a variety of templates that make it easy to create professional looking emails. Whichever route you take, the goal is to stay in front of your customers and remind them that you want their business.

Another creative marketing method is what I call the “sign promotion.” This marketing involves placing a sign in the yard of past customers (with their permission, of course). At the end of the promotion, hold a drawing for those who participated and give the winner a gift certificate to a nice restaurant. You have a lot of flexibility in how you do this promotion.

For example, you can do it for a few weeks or an entire month. You can put out all of the signs at one time or stagger them over a period of time. You can give a single prize or multiple prizes.

The more concentrated you can get your signs, the better. Imagine the impact if you have a dozen signs in a single neighborhood—it will appear that your company is painting every house in the neighborhood. The repeated exposures in a short period of time can have a very strong impact on home owners in the market for a painting contractor.

No matter what you do, if you want this winter to be better than last winter, then you must take different actions. And that means marketing early and often.

To illustrate, let us say that you find your crews frequently doing work in the wrong order. They wind up wasting time and cause you unnecessary frustration. How can you correct this situation without being a baby sitter?   The first step is to identify the problem, or more specifically, the undesired result. In this case, the undesired result is wasted time. You can’t fix a problem if you don’t know what it is. The next step is to identify what actions (or inactions) are causing the result. The undesired results have a cause, and if you want different results, different actions must be taken.

Returning to our example, if the crew is doing work in the wrong order, the solution is to identify the proper order. For example, for an interior repaint this might consist of the following tasks:

• Clear the room
• Prep the surfaces to be painted
• Paint
• Clean up
• Put the room back in order

Of course, there are many steps involved in each of these tasks. For example, prepping a room might involve drywall repairs, sanding woodwork, caulking, masking, and more. The process of painting a room might involve dozens of separate tasks and steps. And that is usually where the process of developing systems becomes overwhelming. Many contractors think that they need to develop a procedure for every one of those tasks, and they think that they have to develop all of them at once. If they feel overwhelmed, they might wind up developing none of them.

However, the chances are good that the crew is generally doing the work in the proper order. It is unlikely that they are doing the clean up before they do the prep. Usually, the problem occurs in a fairly narrow range of activities, such as in the prep. That is where you should focus your efforts. In other words, return to step one above–identify the undesired result and then identify the action or inaction that is causing that result.

Let us say that you figure out that during prep the crew is doing drywall repairs last. As a result, they wind up waiting for the patch to dry and the start of painting gets delayed. Your solution then, is to identify the proper order for prep. As an example:

• Repair all drywall cracks
• Sand and caulk woodwork
• Remove switch plate covers
• Mask

This order allows the crew to be performing other tasks while drying occurs. There are, of course, multiple ways of addressing this issue. Quick set could be used or multiple rooms could be prepped at once. The point is, identify the order that you want followed, and then document those steps.

Your preferences may seem perfectly logical to you. You might wonder why anyone would do the work in a different order. But the fact is, unless you have a highly unusual crew, they are not mind readers. They don’t know your preferences unless you tell them. They may have learned a certain order to do the work, and have never questioned it. They may not be concerned with efficiency. Regardless, until you tell them your preferences, they simply don’t know.

Once you have addressed, and hopefully eliminated, this problem, you can move to the next. For example, you may then find that clean up isn’t as efficient as it could be and should be. Develop a process for that issue.   In short, this system allows you to address the things that aren’t going right, rather than trying to fix things that aren’t broken. It allows you to address the things that are causing the most problems. And, as you reduced or eliminate those big problems, you can then move to smaller issues.   You wouldn’t try to perform every task involved in painting a house at one time. Don’t try developing systems that way either.

Painting a single door is seldom an efficient use of our time. After applying the first coat, the paint must wait for it to dry before he can apply the second coat. If his only job for the day is painting a door, I have to charge an outrageous price to make it worth doing. Most customers understand this, but don’t want to pay $350 to have a single door painted.

A few years ago, I realized that there was a way to create a win-win out of these situations. If I could arrange for the painter to paint five or six doors in the same group of townhomes, I could charge a reasonable price, keep the paint busy for a day, and make a profit. That is when I discovered that I could sell paint jobs while I slept.

When I am contacted to provide an estimate for one of these jobs, I survey the community for other work that might be desired by the individual home owners, such as refinishing doors or painting balcony railing. Because these communities are small (usually less than 20 homes) and the homes are similar in design, I can quickly work up a price for this work for each home.

Once we are awarded a contract, we begin marketing to the home owners. We explain that we will be working in their community, and while we are there we can offer special pricing on other work. I direct the home owners to a web page that describes the work we are offering and the price. And–here is the really cool part–I provide a link for them to order the service and pay for it through PayPal. I literally sell paint jobs while I am sleeping.

The first time I did this I turned a $1,000 job into a $5,000 job. Because the home owners were paying via PayPal at the time the service was ordered, I didn’t have any collection issues. Other than a few hours working up the pricing, setting up the web page, and doing a little marketing, it was almost painless for me. And it was very convenient for the home owners.

Because we have been hired by the HOA or property management company, we have instant credibility with the home owners. The convenience we offer greatly reduces the chances that they will seek another estimate. I don’t have to spend hours giving multiple estimates for small projects. And we can schedule our crews much more efficiently.

Looking back, this seems like such a simple idea that I am surprised it didn’t occur to me much sooner. However, as is often the case, many ideas seem simple in retrospect. But whether the solution is simple or not, sometimes all we need to do is think out of the bucket.