Painting Contractors: How To Get Your Customers to Spend More With You

Do you want to get your customers to spend more money with you?

Before I acknowledged what I’m about to share with you, I was missing out on a tremendous amount of money on my jobs.

I’m going tell you what we started doing a little while ago that has proved 10 times more effective on every single piece of property we’ve painted!

I am Ron Ramsden, I’m a DYB Coach, and a painting contractor in Massachusetts.

I’ll start off by saying not all customers are all happy-go-lucky…

Some customers are a little pickier than other customers.

Have you ever completed a job where you think it looks great and then the homeowner comes and points out “this” and “that”.

It’s deteriorating, believe me, I know!

Not every customer is the same and we put them into 3-customer categories.

The first type of customer is pleased with anything.

They are pleased that you showed up because they have been burnt by so many other contractors.

The second type of customer we have knows a quality job.

They expect it and they don’t mind brush marks or little bump on the wall.

You can’t make every wall look like glass and they know that, they understand.

Lastly, you have those customers that expect unbelievable service.

They want their walls to be as smooth as glass.

Although your specifications, estimate, and your proposal, show what you are going to do, they always expect more.

It could be a cheap job for one contractor, but if you carefully weigh your labor and production costs, it could be a money maker for you, because you know exactly the type of value you’re going to deliver and you know exactly how long it will take.

But if you settle for a cheaper price then you might as well just write a check when you walk through the door, because you are going to lose money!

I want to tell you a couple of things that we changed.

We give two options for all interior paint jobs.

One option is a Regular standard, which is the basic paint job.

The other one is Gold standard.

What is the difference between the two?

First off, there is a price difference.

The gold standard is significantly more expensive.

In a regular standard, we typically

• Sand walls
• Caulk
• Spackle
• etc…

We’ll do the basics.

Of course we protect everything, however, we don’t move any furniture.

When we do all our interiors, no matter what, we don’t do new construction.

If that’s what your gig is, this probably won’t mean anything to you.

On a residential repaint, which is our bread and butter, we found that offering the two choices earned us more money and customer satisfaction.

In the gold standard, we found that customers want to look down their wall and they want it flawless even if we’re starting with a really bad wall.

Maybe it had been painted a few times.

There was a little fiber in it from the old cheap rollers.

Sometimes it takes a lot more work to make it look great and these customers don’t even want a brush mark on a piece of trim.

We all have these customers and they are not always fun to work with.

If you go in their pricing it to do that kind of work, you’ll feel better about doing it, and you know you can spend the extra time.

In my eyes, there is nothing worse than thinking you did a great job only to have the customer start pointing things out.

Later, realizing that the flaws weren’t your fault, it was because of two paint jobs ago.

To avoid all of the confrontations, stick to regular standard and gold standard.

It’s a little more work.

If you have QuickBooks set up, the difference between gold and regular is about 30%.

If you have a $5,000 job, with this setup, it would be $6,500, because you are bringing that much more value and lining each item or service on your estimate.

We could actually spend, labor-wise, $1,500 more on getting the gold standard job ready.

There is nothing worse than doing your best, which is the standard (what we usually do), and then having someone come in and not be happy with the job!

We give them the option so they can choose which one they want.

This could be a great selling feature for you!

If you are priced at $5,000 for the standard job and they want gold, but they can’t afford gold, let them choose which one they want.

If they want to pay this extra 30% or whatever you decide, let the customer choose.

With the gold standard, we also move larger pieces of furniture.

You can add those things on if it fits for you.

Our extra bread and butter on almost every single job is our lined item about moving furniture.

We don’t move furniture along with regular standard anymore.

We made this a lined item on our proposal.

We’ll have two guys move furniture, charging by half hour increments.

We ask the homeowner to move all the delicates and electronics.

The customers don’t always move the big TVs that are mounted on the walls, but any other furniture.

Make sure you taking into account that it will take time not only move the furniture away but to also move it back.

A lot of the time, we pick up an extra two or three hours on some of our larger jobs just moving those pieces of furniture.

The homeowners love it because they don’t want to move it anyways!

We just move it to the middle of the room and take care of it from there.

There’s a quick way to get your customers to actually want to spend more money with you.
I’m Ron Ramsden and I’m a DYB coach.

If you’d like to get in touch with me, you can contact me at Ron@DYBcoach.com

I’m just helping you make a few extra bucks in the painting world.

You can also send me a message on Facebook, I would be glad to help.

I’m a DYB coach, also a painting contractor, dealing with the same things as you are every day!

Have a great day everyone!