fbpx

Grow Your Painting Business By A Factor of 10 With These 5 Steps – Part 3 of 5: Work On Increasing The Closing Rate For Your Painting Business

Have you ever heard someone say – “People love to buy, but they hate to be sold to?”

I beg to differ.  That statement is unequivocally false. People love to buy AND they love to be sold to. 

The key, however, is that they need to have a quality sales experience.  They will love to be sold to!

What Constitutes A Great Sales Experience

As an example, think about buying a car. 

When you go to buy a new BMW or Mercedes Benz, the salespeople offer you unlimited Starbucks and snacks in their plush offices.  You get to hang out in a decked-out designer lounge while they prepare the cars that you want to test drive.  Typically, you’ll get to take a nice long test drive to check out all of the niceties of the car.  Then, after you purchase the car, you get cool little extras in the mail for the next few months.  Sometimes, they even invite you to special track events where you get to drive souped-up cars.

Now, let’s contrast that to purchasing a new Honda.  First, you enter a bare-bones sales floor where you take a number.  Once it’s your turn, you get to take a 10-minute test drive where the salesman glosses over the features.  When you return to the dealership, you get ushered into a drab cubicle and have the contract put in front of you.

Both cars will get you from A to B, but which sales experience would you rather have?  I think that most people would agree that they would rather have the BMW/Mercedes experience.

Selling Is A Process

The easiest way to get a client is for them to know, like and trust you.  You can start this process even before someone contacts you for a quote.

As mentioned in Step 1 of this series, create a set of videos that answer common questions that you hear all of the time from clients.  You can also make videos that address common objections that you hear from people that don’t hire you.

Then, run these videos on Facebook to your target audience.  They’ll get to know, like and trust you before they even contact you for a quote.

Why?

Because you have provided value to them and shown your expertise in the area without sounding salesy.  These videos are the first step of your sales pitch (and don’t take much time from you at all).  You want people to see you over and over again.  This way, you become cemented in their mind as the go-to business in the area for painting.

BONUS TIP: Testimonial videos are a great way to establish trust with potential clients and showcase the work that you did without having to toot your own horn!

Now, when someone contacts you for a quote after seeing your videos, you’ve already gotten the hard part out of the way.  They know, like and trust you from your videos…and people buy from people that they like.  It becomes a much easier sale for you to close on.

“Selling” Is A Dirty Word

“Sales” or “Selling” seems to have gotten a bad rap lately.  You think of sleazy used car salesmen or worse.  It just has a very negative connotation.

However, you must remember that you are HELPING PEOPLE when you sell them a quality paint job. 

Maybe you are helping them paint their kitchen cabinets and get a higher asking price when they sell their house.  Maybe you are painting the exterior of their home and helping them get it weather-proofed for winter.  Maybe you are helping a family have an amazing holiday in their newly painted living room.

Whatever the case, you are helping people achieve positive goals.  They are better off than they were before!  Keep this in mind the next time you go to close a deal.  You should find yourself in a completely different mindset, which will help your close rate.

Increase Your Closing Percentage

Create a quality sales experience that starts even before someone contacts your company.  By using the tips above, you should see your closing rate more than double. 

Let’s Return To Our Example Company With Double The Close Rate For Our Painting Business [h2]

Remember, ABC Painting started with $40,000 monthly gross revenue.  Then, we implemented a follow-up system, which will increase the leads by about 60%.  This took the gross monthly revenue to $64,000 with a close rate of 20%.

Next, we doubled our leads from 80 to 160 per month using the tactics in Step 2 of this series.  This resulted in 32 new clients and a monthly gross income of $128,000. 

Now, if we can double the close rate from 20% to 40%, we will have 64 clients per month with a monthly gross income of $256,000!  This is more than 6X the starting monthly revenue and we have 2 more steps to go!

Stay tuned for next week (Step 4) where we will talk about adding a special upsell that will score you some high-ticket clients right away!

Grow Your Painting Business By A Factor of 10 With These 5 Steps – Part 2 of 5

Are you looking to grow your painting company but aren’t sure where to start?

It’s difficult to know what steps to take or where to invest your time and money.  However, we have created a proven roadmap for you to follow that will help you 10X your painting business.

In part 1 of this series, we discussed how to set up a follow-up system on multiple platforms.  If you haven’t already read it, you’ll want to start here.

After the follow up systems are in place, your next step is to increase your number of leads.

Step 2 – 2X (At Least) Your Number of Leads

In order to grow your painting business, you will need to commit yourself to taking the steps to get bigger.  By doubling your leads (at least), you will have more work coming in than ever before.

This is where it gets tricky.  People will ask us, “How exactly do I double the leads for my painting business?”

The truthful answer is this – you need to test multiple avenues and see what works best for you.  In order to know what is working and what’s not, lead tracking tactics will need to be in place.

Let’s talk about a few ways (or combinations of ways) to double your leads.

Marketing Tactics To Try To 2X Your House Painting Leads

Tactic 1 – Facebook Ads

As mentioned in Part 1 of this series, Facebook Ads can be an effective way of attracting new clients.  Video tends to perform better than images, so make sure you take a bunch of little videos at your next work site.  

You’ll want to make two sets of videos.  Set 1 should have videos that do the following:

  • Answer a common house painting question
  • Talk about prepping a house for painting
  • Discuss when to paint certain areas and why
  • Discuss how weather affects painting 

Video set 1 should be videos that people would watch if and only if they were thinking about painting their interior, exterior, cabinets etc.

Video Set 2 should showcase your company and why they should hire you.  These videos should consist of:

  • Showing the quality of your work
  • Cool before and afters
  • How clean you leave the house
  • Anything else that makes you stand out

Set 2 videos should also close with a call to action of contacting you or scheduling an appointment.

Schedule Video Set 1 to show to people in your area.  To get your targeting a little more specific, we generally recommend the following settings:

Age – 40+

Gender – Female (Women tend to make the decisions)

Radius – Within 20 miles of your business

Then, after Video Set 1 has been running for a few days, you’ll want to schedule Video Set 2.  These videos should only be shown to people that have watched at least 25% of one of the videos from Set 1.  This way, you know that you are targeting people that are at least thinking about painting their house.

You can also show Video Set 2 to people that have been on your website if you have the Facebook Pixel setup correctly.

Tactic 2 – Google Ads

Google Ads can be a highly effective way of getting leads online.  In fact, we have seen leads come in for companies that we’ve worked with for under $50/lead.  However, Google Ads can be a bit tricky when it comes to the settings.  

Let’s discuss a few of the common Google Ad “gotchas”.

First, you need to decide what type of ad you want to run:

  • Search Ads are the text ads that you see at the top of the results page, before the map and the organic results
  • Display Ads are the image ads that you see across the web when browsing

Both types of ads have their merits, but you should never create a Search Ad that also targets the Display Network and vice versa.

Secondly, you need to make sure that you are using keywords in the manner that you intended.

Google has multiple types of keywords:

  • Broad match
  • Phrase match
  • Exact match

According to Google, a broad match keyword is one that “may show on searches that are related to your keyword, which can include searches that don’t contain the keyword terms”

For example, you may enter House Painters In My Area as one of your keywords.  However, your ad may show for people looking for famous painters or automobile painters.

Rule #1 of not overpaying for Google Ads – DO NOT USE BROAD MATCH KEYWORDS.

Google defines a phrase match keyword as one where “ads may show on searches that include the meaning of your keyword”.  To denote a phrase match keyword, you’ll need to put it in quotes.

To use the example above, you would define one of your keywords as “House Painters In My Area”.  Now, your ad would show for someone that typed in that phrase.  It also might show for someone that type in “Painters Near Me” or “House Painting In My Area”.

These are okay keywords to use (as long as you have a good negative keyword list, which we will discuss in a few moments).

The last type of keywords are exact match keywords.  To denote these, you enter the phrase in square brackets.  Google defines these as “Ads will show on searches that have the same meaning or same intent as the keyword.”

This type of keyword gives you the most control of when your ad is shown, but it also limits the audience.  Using the previous example, you would enter one of your keywords as [House Painters In My Area].  Then, your ad would show to people who type in this phrase or something very similar, like with the same words in a different order.

After you enter your keywords, you will also want to create your list of negative keywords as well.  This is a list of words and phrases that you give to Google that tells them – if this word is in a search phrase, do NOT show my ad.  It allows you to weed out unqualified buyers.

Good negative keywords to use for your painting company:

  • Any painting or store brand, like “Home Depot” or “Behr”
  • “How To” or “How Much” (People searching these phrases are typically in the education phase of their searching and aren’t looking to purchase
  • Automobile, car, auto etc.
  • Boat
  • Paint and Sip
  • Etc.

If you think of words or phrases that are associated with painting, but not house painting, put them on the list.

Finally, you want to make sure that your keywords match what you say in your ads AND that your landing pages that you send people to match your ads.  This is called “Ad Congruity”.  If you call yourself a “house painter” in your keywords and your ads, make sure that the page that you send them to highlights the fact that you are a “house painter”.

NEVER SEND YOUR ADS TO YOUR HOME PAGE!  This is a huge, costly mistake that we see painting businesses make all of the time.

Some Other Marketing Tactics

We wanted to review a few tactics in depth.  However, there are tons of other tactics to try, like:

  • Door hangers
  • YouTube ads
  • Radio ads
  • Appear on Podcasts
  • Networking
  • Find non-competing partners
  • SEO
  • TV
  • Get featured on the local news
  • And more!

Important to Remember – Measure Your Results

In order to know what tactic or tactics worked the best, you have to measure your results.  One way you can do this is through call tracking.  Use a different phone number for each tactic type and see what number brings in the most leads.  CallRail is one vendor that offers this service and makes it simple to set up.

You could try one tactic per month, although seasonality may affect these results a bit.

You could send each ad to a separate landing page.  Then, your site analytics would allow you to know which ad had been the most successful.

However you choose to do this, you just want to be sure that everything is measured.

Let’s Return To Our Example Company With Double The Leads For Our Painting Business

Again, let’s see how powerful doubling the number of leads that we bring in actually is.

Remember, ABC Painting started with $40,000 monthly gross revenue.  Then, we implemented a follow-up system, which will increase the leads by about 60%.  This took the gross monthly revenue to $64,000.

How to double the leads for your painting business

Now, through the tactics discussed in this article, we have doubled our leads from 80 to 160 per month.

If that 20% close rate remains, this will result in 32 new clients and a monthly gross income of $128,000!  We have already more than tripled the revenue using just 2 steps of the system!

Next week?  Step 3: Work On Increasing The Closing Rate For Your Painting Business!

Grow Your Painting Business By A Factor of 10 With These 5 Steps – Part 1 of 5

How to grow your painting business

Are you looking to grow your painting company but aren’t sure where to start?

It’s difficult to know what steps to take or where to invest your time and money.  However, we have created a proven roadmap for you to follow that will help you 10X your painting business.

Step 1 – Implement A Follow-Up System So Your Potential Clients See You Over and Over

Did you know that at any given time, only 3% of your market is ready to buy from you? 

This means that 97% of the people that see your advertising are going to need a little more time.  In fact, your average customer is exposed to about 10,000 marketing messages every day.

What are the chances that your marketing message is going to be the one that stands out among the 10,000 that your client is seeing (especially if they had never heard of you before)?

Typically, your potential clients need to see and hear from you multiple times in order to make an informed buying decision.  This is why you must FOLLOW UP.  In fact, a 2011 study from Google found that a buyer needs 7 hours of interaction across 11 touch points in 4 locations.

Let’s break that down quickly.  You (or your marketing) needs to interact (or be in front of) your potential client 11 times.  These interactions can be snail mail, videos, ads, phone calls, emails or anything that gets you in front of them.

Then, these 11 interactions need to be across 4 locations.  This means that you can’t just always call or email.  You need to expand the number of places that people see you.  You need to be “everywhere” your clients may be.  So, adding to phone or email, text, Facebook Ads, YouTube, the Google Display Network, LinkedIn etc.  To accomplish this task correctly, think about where your clients commonly are.

Finally, these touches need to result in about 7 hours of interaction.  In other words, you want a prospect to spend about 7 hours thinking about you.  This is when it helps to have video.  For a house painting business, customer testimonials are great ads to use.  It allows other people to “toot your horn”, so you don’t have to.

Another great interaction piece is a downloadable pdf that contains information about your company, examples of your past work, testimonials and more.  You can make this available on your website or social media.

How To Implement A Great Customer Follow-Up System – Set Up A 3×3 Contact Matrix

First things first – automation is your friend.  Don’t shy away from technology because it seems complicated.  In the long run, it will be worth it.

So, what is the first thing to set up?

Start using a CRM (Customer Relationship Management) system, like GoHighLevel, CorkCRM or Keap.  It will more than pay for itself in the long run.

In your CRM, you will want to set up what we call a 3×3 contact matrix.  You want a potential client that requested a quote to receive a call, text and email from you.  If they don’t respond, do it again 3 days later.  If they don’t respond, do it 5 days later.  This automatically gives you 9 interactions on 3 different channels.

A common fear that we hear from painters is “What if they get annoyed or tell us it’s too much?”

They won’t.  Remember, they originally contacted you.  The more information that you give them that allows them to make a good decision when choosing a house painter will be appreciated.

Another common question that we get is “What should I say in these emails, texts and calls?”

  • CALLS: The calls can just be follow ups to the original contact for quote, which most painting businesses are used to doing.  
  • TEXTS: The texts should be quick messages asking them for a reply, so you get them engaged.  This is also a great time to offer an exclusive discount that they can only get by replying.  Keep these short, sweet and to the point.
  • EMAILS: The emails are where you can shine and really highlight your company.  Send them more information about what it’s like working with your company.  Have a testimonial video?  This is a perfect opportunity to share it with them. Do you offer something completely unique in your area, like a guarantee or a special technique?  Share it here.

People buy with emotions and justify it with logic.  Use these 9 points of contact to get them emotionally invested.  Then, provide the facts so they can justify their decision.

How To Implement A Great Customer Follow-Up System – Play The Follow Game

Have you ever looked at a toaster on Amazon and suddenly, that toaster is everywhere?  You need to apply the same principles to your painting business.

The way to accomplish this is through the use of the Facebook pixel and the Google cookie.

Install these on your website (don’t forget to mention them in your terms and conditions) and they will start tracking your website visitors.  You can now show people ads on Facebook that have been on certain pages of your website.  You can use the Google cookie in a similar way.

Another way to interact with people multiple times based on their past browsing behavior is making use of Video Ads.  Create a set of 3 videos where you answer questions that people commonly have when hiring house painters.  Use the questions that you get from potential clients all the time.  These videos do not have to be formal or cost a ton of money.  A video shot on site with an iPhone will work for this.

Use these 3 videos to advertise to a broad audience.  You want to use them to weed out people.  Then, advertise your services in a follow up specifically to people that have watched at least 25% of one of your videos.  

Why 25% of a video?  

Because no one is going to watch a video on commonly asked questions about house painting unless they are in the market for house painting.  This is a great way to narrow down your audience.

You can apply this tactic on YouTube and Facebook.  

How To Implement A Great Customer Follow-Up System – Advertise on Multiple Platforms

To be “everywhere”, you need to advertise on multiple platforms.  

Google Ads are a great resource that lets you advertise on Google, YouTube, Gmail and the Google Display Network (GDN).  The GDN allows your ads to show up on websites that Google leases space on.  You can decide what type of website “lease” you want to rent from Google.  So, as a painting business, Home Improvement sites or Home Decorating sites may be good places to start.

Facebook Ads are another great place to target specific audiences with all types of advertising.  Videos perform better than static ads, so start filming!

Depending upon the type of work you do, LinkedIn advertising could help you reach certain professionals.

How To Implement A Great Customer Follow-Up System – Let’s Look At An Example

To really illustrate how powerful just this one step is, let’s look at an example painting business, ABC Painting.

Let’s say that ABC Painting gets 50 leads per month, their close rate is 20% and the average painting project in their area is $4000.  This means that they will get 10 clients and the company will gross $40,000 per month.

If you implement the follow up systems discussed above, you will increase your leads by about 60%.

To use the numbers above, this means that instead of 50 leads, ABC Painting will now have 80 leads per month.  They will close on 20% of them, which is 16 clients and the company will now gross $64,000.

How To Implement A Great Customer Follow-Up System

See, the CRM really will pay for itself…

Stay tuned for next week when we discuss how to double your leads!