Painting Contractors: How to Get The Customers You Want
Are you still busy, the end of summer 2018? How busy is your schedule looking?
Well, I want to share something with you, I have shared it before but I want to remind you once again.
I am Ron Ramsden and I am a DYB coach, also a painting contractor up here… used to be Massachusetts, but now it’s New Hampshire, you can see behind me, it has changed a little bit. I sold the house in Massachusetts and moved up to New Hampshire for a small bit.
Anyways, what matters right now is that you are working for the people you want to work for, but not only the people; you want to work on the projects that you really want to work for -projects that are actually going to bring you money.
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We all have our little things that we love to do, but they don’t always put money in the bank.
So, what we want to do is we want to remind you of the 3 P’s, and these are Profit, People, and Process. You can mix these up any way you want but it comes down to the 3 P’s.
- Profit:
You can’t stay in a business unless you are making a profit, so it’s the profit at the end of the job, so we look at that.
- People:
How many times have you gone to a job that you know it is going to be a great job and then you find that very difficult customer?
Maybe you’ve met them at the estimate and you say, whoa, this is going to be a tough one and you still provide them an estimate and accept the work.
Or it’s that person who just says, well, I am very picky and I am going to watch everything you do while you are in my house.
Maybe these are a couple red flags, maybe this isn’t the person you want to work for.
Or maybe it’s somebody that you have already been warned by another contractor who said they are really, really tough to work for.
You want to look at that before you go to the job.
- Process
What do you like to do?
Do you like to paint kitchen cabinets, do you like to convert old wood into fresh white trims and doors?
Maybe you like stripping wallpapers, maybe you hate doing all those things, well that would be the process.
So, you would want to find your niche that would be a great process for you.
So, how are we going to figure out the 3 P’s for every customer?
We want to do a small chart, you can do this on the back of a napkin… then we’re going to list the person’s name.
What you do is, go back to your last 10, 15, 20 customers, and put them up on your CRM, or maybe your estimate program.
Pull up the last 10, 20 customers that you have finished jobs for, then list them out, and then list the 3 Ps, i.e. Process. People and Profit.
Then go through each customer, put a checkmark there, if it worked and if it made money (Profit).
Did you like the people? Put a checkmark there. If the process is something you like to do put a check mark as well.
For me, I hate stripping wallpapers, we hate taking down popcorn ceiling, so we would never check that down on the process.
But the People; maybe they were great, maybe they bought a coffee for you every day, maybe they wanted to make sure you had enough money before you even started, this might be some great people to work for.
And then, of course, the Profit, are you making money on those jobs? So, you want to do a small chart, you check off the 3 different places.
Also, some of the contractors I talk to are actually traveling great distances to do work and maybe they don’t have to do that. So, that might even be another checkmark for places they like to work.
Do they not want to go into the city? Do they not want to go an hour out of the country?
So, if you follow that chart, work through it for all your customers and any of them that have the 3 checkmarks for the Process, Profit and People; those are the ones you want to concentrate on.
You can then own your customer list and a few jobs to take care of those.
This is very important as we are so busy because we do not want to be taking jobs that don’t fit in the 3 P’s.
Anyways, I hope this helps, I am Ron from DYB.
You can contact me; ron@dybcoach.com.
You can also find me on Facebook, many of you have sent me a message, and we can chat on the phone, via messenger.
I am a coach, but I am also a painting contractor, so I feel this pain that you are going through when it is this busy.
Enjoy the rest of the summer, as we go into fall and put some money in your pocket. Have a great day.
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