Welcome to the Painter Marketing Mastermind Podcast, the show created to help painting company owners build a thriving painting business that does well over 103 million in annual revenue. I’m your host, Brandon Pierpont, founder of Painter Marketing Pros and creator of the popular PCA Educational Series to grow marketing for painters. In each episode, I’ll be sharing proven tips, strategies and processes from leading experts in the industry on how they found success in their painting business. We will be interviewing owners of the most successful painting companies in North America and learning from their experiences.

In this episode, Brandon Pierpont moderates a Residential Painting Success Panel on what will actually work in 2026. Hear the exact, ROI-driven plays: disciplined speed-to-lead follow-up, in-home review capture with QR codes, value builders like free touch-ups for life and color consults, smart upsells after the sale, ethical downsells, and a balanced mix of direct mail, local outreach, and paid ads to keep pipeline and profit strong.

If you want to ask him questions related to anything in this podcast series, you can do so in our exclusive Painter Marketing Mastermind Podcast Forum on Facebook. Just search for “Painter Marketing Mastermind Podcast Forum” on Facebook and request to join the group, or type in the URL Facebook.com/groups/PainterMarketingMastermind. There you can ask them questions directly by tagging him with your question, so you can see how anything discussed here applies to your particular painting company.

What’s up, Will? What’s up, Skyler? Well, you are on mute. What’s up guys? What’s up, Scott? What’s up, Garrett? Hey. How are you guys doing? It’s a good day, man. It’s a good day. I like your hat, William. Right. Contractor freedom hat can’t go wrong with that. It was a good fit. I didn’t shave my head, so I didn’t want it to be looking kind of funny that beard. Yeah, well, you look, you look good, man. What’s you guys focus on the beard. Yeah, focus on what’s important.

So guys, we’re, we’re gonna, I appreciate you all sharing your time here. We’re gonna dive into residential painting success. If you could just introduce yourself, your company, where you’re based, and what services you offer. I’ll go kind of around the screen. Will, if, if we could start with you. I’m Will Reyes I’m a Battleborn Painting. We also do gutters, floor coatings, uh, cabinet refinishing, and we started doing hanging Christmas lights this year. That’s. Uh, Garrett. Uh, 2-day painting out of, uh, Waukesha, Wisconsin area. Uh, we did about a little over 8.5 million last year, um, mostly residential painting, a little commercial.

Um, we just started doing deck resurfacing this year, so that’s a new service for us, and it’s at a good start. Um. Awesome. Nice. I did not know youaa’re doing that now. Skyler. Cool. Skyler out of Pittsburgh, PA with Dino Painting. So I’ve been doing this a little over 8 years now. Um, we do all painting, um, pretty much all residential, um, and then we got into commercial about 2 years ago, so that’s probably about 20% of our business now. Skyler is so cool. I follow Skyler on social media and he puts up a bunch of cool stuff that he’s doing that makes me kind of question my life decisions because it’s just his, his life is very cool.

I wish that was Skyler is this month. Yeah. No, super, super pumped. So, let’s dive in, man. 2025, it’s, it’s been, I don’t know, I, I think it’s, I think the last two years have been a little weird, quite frankly, and, and politically and tariffs and everything. What have you guys seen in the residential market? Have you seen any shifts in, in maybe how long it’s taken people to buy, costly, how many quotes they’re getting, or anything else? Uh, yeah, we’ve seen, we’ve definitely seen a little bit of a shift.

Our marketing costs, uh, per lead definitely went up a bit compared to last year. Our closing rates went down a little bit as well. I think there’s a lot more competition in the market. A lot of painters are undercutting prices a little bit more than they have been in the past few years. We still had a fantastic year, still had a growth year, but definitely a little bit more challenging on the sales and marketing front. Yeah, yeah, I, I can echo the same thing. I mean, I’ve seen our, our marketing this year is probably about 12%, which, you know, last year we were 10%, so that’s up 2%, um.

And then I mean I hear all the time from my sales guys. I don’t know if it’s 133% true or not, but they always like to say everybody’s getting way more quotes, um, so I hear that a lot. You guys are all doing quite a few million. So, you know, people listening might say, 0, 10%, 12%, but when you magnify it by a lot of millions, it’s a fair amount of dollars. Adds up pretty quick. Yeah, yeah, for us, we, um, Uh, our biggest, uh, hurdle this year was the at-bats weren’t there, but our gross percentage went up like 3% and our close ratio went up to like 3%.

So that helped us mitigate from last year’s loss. So we’re, we’re making more money. Um, on the jobs and we’re selling more jobs, we just don’t, we’re not getting as much at bats as we’d like to get. So how are you, so will, you’re, you’re making more money even though the cost has gone up because you adapted, you pulled other levers successfully, your close rate went up. How are you doing that? How are you adapting to this? Um, for us, you know, our sales methodology is pretty solid, um, you know, we have a mixture of, you know, contractor freedoms, um, system that we use, and we have a coach that we, um, meet with weekly, or excuse me, biweekly, Carl Utter, and then, you know, I, I wrote a sales program that was highly successful for us for years, and we kind of blended those three things together and, and, um, you know, anybody can hear, I’m.

I’m sure everybody here’s got, you know, a sales methodology that they reach and they use and it works, um, but we found that if you’re not meeting your sales staff at least 3 to 4 times a week then that’ll start to get lax real quick, you know, we have a sales meeting every Tuesday, Tuesday, Thursday, Friday or Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, so we don’t even let them up on it there’s no like oh you’re doing a good job, go ahead and get out there and kill it. It’s like.

Every day if you’re killing it, you know, and, and any of these guys will tell you, you know, you’re only as good as your last cell, um, your last closed cell because, you know, tomorrow there’s another one waiting for you. So we were really, um, stringent in keeping top of our sales methodology and making sure that our staff was really doing what they needed to do and not letting anything slip by, um, especially because we weren’t getting as many bats as we would want to we had in the past.

Yeah, so, well, I, I must have misunderstood. I always thought it was that you show up and you just kind of stand real close to the homeowner. Like, do you want, do you want this project? Yeah, that’s what was so successful. That’s what we used to do. I would just lean into this sign here and then I’ll give you some space. It’ll be awesome. That’s, yeah, well, you can see Skyler starting to grow that beard, so he’ll understand soon enough here next year if he lets it get out this, you just get into somebody’s bubble inside here, some physical encouragement. Yeah. Cool.

So the, you, you guys all mentioned a little bit more challenging of a marketing environment, costly going up a little bit, the other contractors, Chuck’s getting a little, a little spicy there with his pricing, Chucking the truck. How about the homeowners? Are you guys seeing any, any shift in homeowner expectation, how they, how they’re thinking about things? I think we’re, I’m done. Go ahead, Garret. Oh, I think we’re seeing, uh, less movement in like, uh, home buying and, you know, larger projects. So, um, so people aren’t, we’re not getting as many sales from people moving or trying to sell their house or moving into a new house, so that’s affecting things a little bit as well.

Yeah, we’re we’re seeing people take longer to make, it seems like the same decisions they made before, um, or like closing on the spot rate is down this year from last year. So people are, and we’re getting a ton of deals that are taking like multiple weeks to close, and in previous years that job would already have been like sold and completed and people are just taking longer to come to that same decision. Um, for us, we, um, decided to not make a, uh, conscious decision to not spend more on marketing.

Um, we really just kind of drilled down and was like, let’s just make sure we close more than we got, and so our, our growth is always incremental and so, um, after the first quarter into the half of the 2nd quarter, I knew we weren’t gonna finish what we wanted to do and that we’re gonna have a slide back, but you know, our focus was set on like closing more of the people we see. And getting more money out of them, being more efficient in our jobs, and then, you know, charging what we need to charge to keep ourselves in the lifestyle we become accustomed to.

Um, as far as buying cycle, we have noticed that people’s buying cycle is, um, a lot longer than it used to be. Um, I would probably say our callback rate is easily doubled from what it used to be, you know, uh, like if you’re not in here in sales meeting and you don’t tell me a story about like what the call, the call, how your callbacks went yesterday, then we have a problem. So it’s, I mean, it’s these guys are calling back probably every client 2 to 103 times a week just to be like, hey.

We’re, we’re, you know, what’s going on, you know, we, we have a solution, um, so it’s, um, I would probably say that the single biggest thing for us in our close ratio going up is, is staying on top of that, that callback because people forget you real quick when they got somebody that’s gonna discount by 5 or 10%, you know, in the beginning of the season we saw a lot of people, 2030, 40%, and then by the end of the season we had guys coming in for jobs every day. So for guys out there thinking that their, their, their, their, their strategy is to cut the job or cut your price by 30, 40%, you’ll just end up out of business.

So that part is so important and it’s something that I was talking about, something I talked about yesterday. Someone here had, had messaged and said, what if you text them, they didn’t call you back because the fortunes in the follow-up and, and when there’s an Any kind of economic downturn or any kind of market challenge, I would argue that buyers taking longer to close is a challenge. It’s going to magnify either the strength of your process or the weakness of your process because Will and over here in, in Garrett Schuyler, if they’re, they’re increasing their close rate from doing the right things, but other people are gonna decrease decrease their close rate from doing the wrong things.

I would argue that, that for, for people who are following up, you almost want a longer buying cycle. Because, because all the other contractors are gonna walk away, I think the project didn’t get completed, but the ones that are doing the right thing, now your, now your closure rate is gonna go up because the other, you know, the idiots just, just quit. You, you’re 100% right, and, you know, and I’m sure Garrett and Skyler know this too, but all voice it. Um, the only trick a guy has when they cut your price by 30 to 40% or even 133%, they only have one card to play, that was it.

They, they burnt their, their only card, that’s all they know is just get it as cheap as they can to keep the wheels going, to get the business, and that’s it. And they might do one follow-up callback, but if your sales staff is continuously doing it. You know, they’re burning through every, you know, rebuttal there is, you know, it’s, it’s the product, it’s the quality, it’s the service, and so we’re throwing our, you know, we’re throwing everything we can at our clients. And that guy that called once and was like, I can do it cheaper, that was his only card.

So once he lays that down, he’s pretty much cooked. So that, that I’m OK with a longer buying cycle and I’m OK with guys. Um, burning their card from minute one in the beginning of the season at 30 to 40% because they’ll just end up working for us, which, which does happen, um, and or they just go out of business, and so I’m, I’m good with that. Yeah, are you, I mean, with the longer buying cycle, why do you think that is? You know, I think, you know, everybody here knows everyone’s a little touchy about the economy and, you know, tariffs is scaring, scaring everybody and then the, the, the, the, the, where the, the country is economically and and politically.

So I think people are just kind of waiting and seeing, but that wait and see fades out, you know, like the buying cycle used to be within 3 days and then it got into like a week and then it was the 10 days, and now it’s closer to 2 weeks. And so you know for us who, you know, we’re probably one of the most, if not the most expensive penting company in town, I’m OK with a with a long buying cycle because I know our sales team is gonna stay on top of it, you know, whereas the other guys, they’ll just fall apart and they’ll do exactly what you say it was like, oh well, maybe they didn’t want it or you know, they can get rocks whereas like, you know, it’s like I, I got a call yesterday.

Oh yeah, you know, this is like the favorite call I love getting and maybe people that disagree with me, and it’s like, yeah, can you tell your guys to stop calling me? I don’t wanna, I don’t want to buy from you. And I’m like, OK, no problem, we’ll put you on the do not call list. But, you know, if I don’t get these, I don’t get that once or, you know, every month, every other month, and I’m like, we’re not calling enough, so. Love that. That’s exactly what Jason and I were talking about, right?

It, it’s, there’s this idea in sales, you gotta hunt for the no. A no is a good thing. If you never hear no, people, people, they don’t wanna, we’re afraid to know, right? We, we run away and we don’t wanna fall, we might bother them, um, and then the, the, the opportunity is always there if they haven’t told us no, so, I think there’s a piece of us that may be safer because now I have no hurt my feelings, but you, you better be here and no. Agreed. Yeah.

We, we had to make some changes on the sales team. I mean, a couple of years ago, we could run 4 appointments every single day. My top sales guys, you know, knocking out 20 quotes a week. And he could do that because we’re closing a lot of deals in the home and just very quickly, like next day. And now with this, with this longer cycle, I’ve actually had to cut down his appointments he can run every week because he was just getting burned out, you know, running a full appointment schedule and then having like hours of follow-up after he runs appointments to keep on top of everything, which before, you know, 2 years ago, he maybe had an hour of follow up and he was done and it was manageable and it’s just, it’s not manageable anymore, so.

So for the, the people who are Maybe not accustomed to following up as much. Maybe they’re, they’re kind of looking for the immediate buyer and, and they never really followed up. Do you guys have any recommendations for scripts or kind of ways that they could do that tactfully or productively as opposed to, you know, every day or every other day. Hey, have you made a decision yet? Hey, have you made a decision yet? What are some ways that they could maybe do that more productively? I don’t know if it’s uh uh go ahead, Garrett, were you about to say something?

No, you’re good. I don’t know if it’s like, can we suggest the ways it’s, you know, if you, if you’re running a a painting company, you have to make sure it’s part of your culture of like people have to call, you know, too many times I’ve spoken with, you know, contractors where they’re like. You know, they want to tell you how great their sale system and they want to tell you about this, they want to close your ratio, and they’re the greatest thing since sliced bread, but they’re like, how often are you calling back like, um, not a lot, and it’s like when you talk to their staff, like how often are you guys calling back and it’s one of those things where people just don’t like to do it, you know, and I’m not excluded from it.

I don’t want to call somebody back after a few times, but I make it mandatory here. You know, that’s why I’m not doing sales anymore. It’s like I make it mandatory that our sales staff is out there calling people back repeatedly over and over, you know, it’s, it’s, it’s a, it’s a, it’s a call, call, text, email, like at any point the way you can get a hold of them because I’m one of those people that doesn’t answer my phone if I don’t have your number, right?

And then if you text me and I don’t get back to you. I looked at your text message and then I’ll forget it, but if you email me and I go through and I see your email and I’m like, oh, I’ll leave that email for a while, I’ll get back to it. So it’s like how you train your your brain on how you receive the information. Um, so I try to work off of that. So it’s like we don’t let them just, it’s not just a callback, it’s the text messages, you know, it’s with the emojis, like, you know, with a, with a frustrated person.

Hey, I know you have a problem at your house, bro, frustrated emoji, you know, like we have the solution, cool head, da da da da da, and it’s like those little things. Mean a lot to certain people and so if you can tap on all those things that’s really what’s critical. Um, there’s no trick to calling people back. It’s literally pick up the phone and call your client back and you know there’s 101 sales coaches out there, right? You know, some better than others, some will say don’t say this, some will say don’t say that and.

You know, it’s like I can give out any advice and so can Skyler, you know, he’s a great salesperson. Garrett, I’m sure can, but there’ll be somebody saying, no, you’re not supposed to say that, or you, you can’t say it like that because then you’ll look desperate or you’ll look, but I think really down to it, just calling him back. I mean that is just the callback is critical. There’s no, there’s a bunch of psychology you can get into sales, but first start just calling back, make that a part of the system.

Yeah, we have a system where our sales reps call about at least 1003 or 5 times within the 1st 2 weeks. Um, we always call back the next day, a few days after that. Um, and then after, uh, 2 weeks, the sales rep might still take it for a few more weeks if it’s really hot. Otherwise, it goes to our office and they contact, um, at least 10 or 12 times until, uh, you know, they, uh, end up marking it dead. And, uh, we contact in multiple different forms. Whenever we call, we always leave a text with it.

You know, where we email in different ways and. It works. Yeah, I think action is the most important thing. I think what you guys are saying, you know, taking the, the action, we all want to perfect it. We want the silver bullet. We want, well, if you say this exact thing and this intonation and you pause right here for a half a second, then it guarantees that, that they’re going to say, well, thank you so much. Here’s all my money, like, wow, you’re the best thing since sliced bread.

Sometimes it’s messy, and if you just put yourself out there in uncomfortable situations, even if you’re not doing it perfectly, you’re going to be infinitely farther ahead than the guy who’s not doing it, right, the guy or the girl who’s not doing it. I mean think about how many people don’t do it so it’s like I, I want people not doing the callbacks because then that leaves it a better chance for us to be doing the callbacks. Yeah. It, it’s, it’s crazy cause it, we’ve had over 1000 people come through this event.

And listen, and I’m extremely grateful that so many people have done that. But uh, maybe, maybe 50, probably fewer than that are actually gonna take any meaningful action from this, right? Probably about 5% of people are actually gonna take something and then implement it. So, I’m gonna cover that a little bit in the close, but that’s what the data tells us. You know, people like, like. To listen and, and mistake activity for achievement, take action. So if you guys, if you’ve been here, tuned in here for the, for the whole two days, thank you, number 53.

Number 2, if the only thing that you do from all the stuff you heard is just start calling people back more, your business will substantially benefit in 2026. Cool. So, as, as we, you know, as the, the homeowners taking longer to decide, longer to buy, you got Chuck being more aggressive on his pricing. Um, how do you guys build value? So there’s a thing called like unique selling proposition, you know, differentiate your company, uh, not just following up but kind of your whole sales process. What are you guys putting either in your proposals or your communication or, or your website or something to differentiate from the competitors, some stuff that you find effective.

There’s a few things that we do that might be a little unique. Um, we have a free touch-ups for Life program where we basically, um, come back for up to 5 hours, uh, sometime in the future, um, and basically do whatever touch-ups that they want on the house. Um, customers love that. To be honest, they don’t redeem it that much, but they love that it’s there. Um, so that’s an effective program for us. Uh, and, um, if they call you back 5 years later, you do 5 hours of touch-ups, now you might get another job in the future because of it.

Um, so that works well. We do free full-service color consults, not just a color consult, but we’ll, uh, test the samples on the wall for them. We’ll go to, um, Sherman Williams, buy a few quarts of paint, physically paint them on the wall, and, you know, discuss the results with them. And that’s a huge tool as well that helps add value. Um, and we really, um, just add value throughout the whole sales presentation about our project managers, our whole system. We have a 90 minute sales process and, um, it, uh, by the end of it, it’s rare that they’re questioning like the product or a service or a company.

Um, you know, we also have over 1300 5-star reviews. So that goes a long way in general to building trust. So between all that, at, at the end of the day, it usually just comes down to price if, you know, they’re not gonna buy it from us or not. Yeah. Do, do either, Will or Skyler, do either of you have a substantially lower, um, I guess, time count for your, your sales process, like, Garrett’s taking 90 minutes. Are you guys like in there and out, you know, 133 minutes, 30 minutes?

What does that look like? So, for us, we definitely, we’ve slowed it down. Um, we used to be in and out in 30 minutes, and, you know, I think also our, our local competition has gotten a lot better. I think. A couple of years ago, if we were in there for 30 minutes, explained our process, and gave them the quote on the spot and they saw a couple 100 5-star reviews, we were already the number one choice, but now we see a lot of our competitors that are willing to do the same thing.

So we really like slow that process down when we’re in the house, we like to really kind of like paint that picture of exactly what the job is going to look like for them, um. We try to send some pre-sales emails just to put some thoughts in their heads, like what kind of things should you be thinking about when you’re getting your house painted, cause we do this all the time, but for a homeowner, it might be their first time or it might have been 15 years ago, the last time they painted their house.

So they have, they just don’t even know what to look for, so we’re trying to give them that that education, um, so that they can make a good choice, which obviously we check all those boxes. So both, so two of you have met, have mentioned the reviews. Everyone listening to, if you, if you’ve been here throughout the day, if you’ve listened, we, we’re having 2020 contractors. So 20, we have more than 20 painting, painting contractors speaking, but 2013 that are not even selling anything. So just, just contractors like the 3 here.

There are themes. There are themes. There are, there are a few themes that you’re gonna notice over and over and over again if you’re paying attention. Number 1 is follow-up. Number 2 is getting reviews, right? Making the, the leads more valuable. Number 3 is charging a lot, charging enough that you can attract a good team, that you can pay, that you can serve at a high level. Garrett. For him to go do a full color consultation for free, for him to be able to put the color on the wall.

Why do you think he can do that? Because he charges enough that it makes sense for him to, he’s not undercutting, he’s not, he’s not competing with Chuck, or he can’t do that. So they’re playing a different game that a lot of people are afraid to play, and, and that’s why they stay stuck. So just internalize these themes as we’re going, um, because a lot of companies aren’t doing that, but the winners are. So Paul, Paul asked, I want to get this question from him. He said, besides financial incentive, AKA discount, how do I politely remind a finished client to give me a review?

I have had many just not take the time to review. OK, well, go ahead. Um, he didn’t even, he didn’t even lean into you. He just did that. That was enough. Yeah, we’ve all met. If you haven’t met Will, he is a, he’s a small guy. He’s a little itsy bitsy guy who can lift the car. I’m a meek fella, um. Uh Paul, I would, uh, well, I would suggest to you, Paul, is that I think the last painter marketing pros, uh, event you had. Is that right, Brandon, that I did a full hour on this?

Yes, yeah, you did. You did. I don’t want to go through it again, Paul, but I would highly suggest you hit up Brandon or find it and listen to that hour, um, because it literally gives you a step by step. Um, on how to, uh, get a review from your clients, um, but I’ll make it really brief. We treat the review like a sale, and so our boots on the ground, our leads, um, our salespeople as well. And so, there’s a three-step process. The night before, we ask for the review, when we get on site and do the initial walkthrough, we ask for a review.

And then, um, once we, uh, finish the job and we get them to verbally commit, they got the best looking house on the block that we got them to verbally commit that they’re about to pay us we collect because we select, we collect payment as soon as we’re done and then we, um, uh, ask them, did we earn the review as soon as they say yes, we shove a piece of paper in front of them and go, hey, then just go ahead and take a quick picture of this right here and just pop it in.

Because once they give you the verbal review, the likelihood of them doing it and everybody knows it’s like 5%, right, as soon as you walk out. But if you have a piece of paper, you know, you’re like, oh hey, you know, uh, would you agree this is the best looking house on the block? They’re like, oh yeah, I love it, and so would I. These guys really kicked ass, you know, you know what, can I just get that final payment from you? It looks like you owe 8522. And they’re like, oh yeah, I got a check for you right here.

And I go, oh, I really appreciate it. hey, did my guys earn that, that, that, that good review they earn that honest review? We say honest review, um, but a lot of people say 5. Did we earn that 5-star review? And they go, oh yeah, yeah, and you go, great. Can you just pick that QR code right there? And they go, oh, yeah, yeah, cause nobody walks around without their phone anymore. So as soon as you get them to verbally commit yes to it. Um, the day before, the morning of, and then you get them to say yes to getting the best looking house, yes to going collecting your payment, and then as soon as you get that, you’ll get the third yes of like, hey, can I get that review?

And they go, yes, and you go, boom, just hit that QR code. I appreciate that. And if they start to stumble on it, we have, you know, scripting that says, you know, it doesn’t have to be something fancy, and even if you just give it a 5 star on these guys and just say these guys did great. You know, do you mind taking a quick picture of us, and I’m telling you, um, our, our worst month was last month and we had 103. That was our worst month this year.

So it, I’m, so yeah, I would suggest go into that hour and, and listen to it. Um, but there’s, there’s a lot of good information there for you to get reviews. Yeah, we do a somewhat similar process as well, and that’s amazing. Um, we, um, our project managers are the ones who focus on getting reviews in our company, and we do reward them based upon getting reviews. We do not give anything to the customer for it. But what we, uh, tell them at the beginning of the job is like, hey, I wanna make sure that this job goes amazing for you, um, you know, I want you to have the best experience possible, um, and my job is heavily, you know.

You know, rewarded based upon making sure that you’re happy. So if at the end of the job, if we wowed you, you’re really happy with everything, would you be willing to leave a review for us? And then once they commit to that, which they always do in the beginning, um, then when you go at the end, we, you know, remind them of that and, um, Uh, and we show them, like you said, a QR code. We have a laminated sheet. We do not leave behind QR codes.

We used to a while ago. People just take it and they never leave a review. So we just have one if they ask for it, just like, I just have one copy, um. You know, um, it would mean a lot to me, um, and my guys, if you leave us a review, and, uh, get them to scan it there in person with you. If you don’t do it in person, your success rate drops substantially, but if you do it in person, most people are happy to do it.

Um. But you gotta get that pre-commitment, or a lot of people at the end will just be like, oh, no, I’m good. But if you get that pre-commitment, it’s tough for them to, you know, take back. But then you actually have to go in and deliver an amazing job. You have to stand up, you gotta do everything right. You gotta make sure that they’re happy. You gotta deliver on that experience and that, um. Extra bonus, we give um our team $75 you know, for the Google review that they get our project managers.

So that adds up a lot if you’re getting like Will said, if your average PM is getting $3 a week, 3 $210 a week, um. It’s G’s. Uh, so, that motivation is huge cause it’s a confrontational item. Most people won’t want to create confrontation unless you really train them well and have them push and give them incentive to do so as well. Yeah. So if this stuff, if this stuff seems kind of uncomfortable, it’s like, well, calling these people over and over, that seems kind of scary, uncomfortable, charging more, you know, putting that number in front of people seems kind of uncomfortable.

Asking for a review and getting it in person, it seems kind of uncomfortable. Good. That means you’re growing. If you wanna, if you wanna stay exactly where you’re at, then stay comfortable. If you’re being uncomfortable, then the odds are good. When I started out entrepreneurship, I, I adopted the phrase, get comfortable being uncomfortable. This was really scary for me to put stuff out like this event. You just got to get comfortable being uncomfortable. That’s how you grow. We have some awesome questions coming in here. So Ethan asked, where and how do we find skilled employees, real painters that can be unsupervised?

Well, I think Will is the only one with real employees, so. Um, well, I mean, for this, I mean, I can, I, I can answer this pretty, pretty passionately because, you know, I, I still paint. So for anybody who knows or doesn’t believe, I mean, I still paint and, you know, I’m still out in the field. Here’s my paint shirt on, if you can’t see it, it’s covered in paint. I don’t know, um. So for us, what we found is, um, we like to grow our own.

Um, we’re not, I’m not a huge fan of finding, you know, uh, already painters. Because, uh, they have a lot of bad habits, and, um, I’m sure Garrett and Skyler could tell you like, how many painters have you met were the best painter you’ve ever met, like, oh, you don’t, I’m the best, I’m the best. I mean, I can’t tell you how many times that people have gone through that, and we, you know, they just get utterly embarrassed in this house, you know, our, our, our big lead right now was one of those guys, and then he couldn’t hold the pole in the left hand.

He can only spray with the right hand. And so that was just comical to us. Um, he was really humbled after he came and worked with us and so he, you know, now he’s running the cruise, but for us, we just think it’s better to grow our own as opposed to looking for somebody to, uh, hopefully to readapt to your style. Um, we’ve hired exactly one new person this year, you know, they, most people don’t make it through the day and if they make it through the day, they usually don’t make it to the end of the week and the one person.

Who has made it is the only guy that’s humble about his, his like, OK, I don’t know as much as I thought I did. I still have a lot to learn. And so for us we just grow our own. I’d rather get somebody that doesn’t know anything and I can just teach them to do it the right way, our way the first time, and then trying to retrain somebody who thinks they know it better, you know, the odds of a guy knowing what the tip, you know, numbers mean is like 213% and that, and then then they can’t even tell you why those numbers are on there and that’s that’s beyond frustrating.

Yeah, we only have about 2100 in-house painters, uh, mostly 25. Um, but personally, I don’t believe that any painter can be unsupervised. I think every painter needs management. Every painter needs a project manager, even if they’re a foreman level, they need some sort of advice, budget tracking, some sort of overall management to be successful. Um, so I think trying to put any product outside unsupervised or without any of those systems is just a recipe for disaster, no matter how good they are. Yeah, it’s definitely a unicorn. Um, I mean, I’ll just speak from we have all subcontractor crews, um, and for whenever I’m looking to bring on those crews, I’m really looking for somebody that’s already basically been in the exact same situation that we’re, we’re hiring for.

So I’m not looking for, um, you maybe just a painter that’s slow, that’s looking to pick up work. And I’m, I’m really great, it’s really great if they’ve came from maybe one of my competitors or they’ve maybe worked in a different area and have recently moved to town and are are familiar with the submodel. Um, I find whenever I hire guys that are slow, they’re just, they, they don’t understand how to, you know, profitly make money. In that model, um, and with what Will was saying, a big red flag is what there’s a lot of guys that will come into these interviews and they’ll tell you how they can do every single thing and you know, we have multiple lines of work, interior, exterior, residential, commercial, and I’m trying to see what they’re most experienced about and when guys tell me over and over again, oh, I can do every single thing great.

Um, it’s just a huge red flag cause nobody can do everything great. Someone’s, so I’m sure they’re great at something, and if they’re not willing to say that, um, red flag. Comment by, by Paul, LOL. Everyone I talked to says they can paint. I hired the one that says, I don’t know shit, but I’m willing to learn as long as the work ethic is apparent, the patience and the humility is there. Uh, Sean, Sean’s got a, a neat question here on, on sales. How does your pay scale work for your salesforce?

Uh, ours is pretty simple. We have an 213% commission rate. Um, some of them have draw salaries that we, um, comp the commission against, especially as a safety net over the winters, but. Yeah, we do, we do a draw as well, uh, but then we pay our commission, uh, based on the gross profit of the job, so the better the job is sold, um, the more the sales person is making. Can you guys say what a draw is because maybe some people don’t know. Yeah, so a draw is essentially like a, just a weekly, um, like prepayment.

So we do $22025 a week draw. So whenever they come into the winter, for example, and they maybe are only making $403 of commission that week, they’ll still get their $240 but it’s much like a credit. So then when they come into the beginning of the busy season, that first month or two, they may be paying back commission that we already paid them before they start getting those big, you know, $211 plus paychecks each week. So, Garrett, I think this question is for you. I absolutely love this strategy a lot.

Andrew says, free touch-ups for life, for full interior or full exterior repaints. This is something I’ve been considering doing. How long have you done this? Yeah, so we’ve done it for about 200 years now. Honestly, we do it for every project, no matter the size. We, um, but we only do it 1 per customer, per household. So if they do 10 little 1-bedroom paint projects, we’re gonna come back one time for 5 hours for free and do touch-ups with them in the future. Um, we see it more as a customer, um, acquisition or customer, um, retention strategy compared to the cost, and we just kind of eat that cost from marketing and it helps build our sales.

You know, it’s all these little things that you do to add value that just add up throughout the sales process and then. Help push you over the edge and help you earn more sales and customers just love it. They think it’s the coolest thing ever. They’ve never heard of it. Anyone we talked to, they’re just like, wow, you do that, they’re like shocked. So it goes over so well with the customers and. It’s worth it for us. All right. Let’s get into um upsells and down sells.

So we’ve talked about close rate, talked about the, the cost per lead and how, you know, if you improve your close rate, you can offset that. Another thing you can do is you can make more money, right? So you can, you can, someone called you out there for whatever they called you out there for and you could potentially add something to that project or upsell with a premium paint or whatever it is. Do you guys have good strategies for upsells? So for us, what we do is um we get most of our upsells after the sale has been made.

So, um, we have so many people trained in our, and, you know, motivating our company to get upsells. So if our color consultant goes up there, she’s trained in how to bid everything and to upsell different areas and a process we’re doing it. Our PMs, um, as soon as we review the job and we do a pre-call with the customer to set it up, we’re writing down a list of things that we think that we could get an upsell on and then when we go up to the customer.

It’s pretty simple. We just always teach them to find a benefit for the customer, you know, um, hey, Mr. customer, I think it’ll look really nice if you painted this bathroom as well. That way, it could blend in with the whole rest of your main floor area, you know, um, or whatever the case is. I noticed you have peeling paint on your deck. Have you considered staining that? Uh, whatever the case is, um, they kind of just mention that, they give them a reason, they ask for it.

The customer’s like, no, we’re good, we don’t like force the issue. But, um, a lot of times they bite, we give them a price and we get upsells later on. And upselling paint product and quality is a huge and easy one to do, you know, we do a lot of emerald rain refreshment purchased by Sherwin Williams. Um, uh, over half of our exterior jobs are top tier level products. Because we do really explain it well, the benefits of it, and we don’t really mark up our, um, material upsells that much.

We make a little profit on it. We cover the commission cost, but it’s a huge benefit for our customers, and that’s really easy to do after the sale. We also try to get it during the sale too, but, you know, it’s easier afterwards. How about downsells? So, obviously, sometimes you come out and maybe the, the price, maybe there is, you know, usually a price objection is really a value objection. It’s usually not price, but some people might actually be limited by how much they, they can spend, right?

How many, how the funds that they have available. Do you guys have any effective downsells? No, OK, uh, well, no, the business of it. I mean, there’s been plenty times we tell people they don’t need something they think they need, you know, they’ll be like, I need this whole house repainted. I’m like, no, Ethel, you just need the front door repainted. No, no, look over here. No, that’s just flat paint. It’s, that’s, that’s the color, and, or, you know, or somebody will say, hey man. My driveway is toast and I’ll go, no, you don’t need a full coatings job, you just need to protect it and we’ll do it like this.

And so there are times that we downsell, um, just because it’s more of a, a morality thing for us, um, but it’s pretty rare it happens. Same, but, um, a lot of this applies when you’re, you know, you present the price, you go over everything, you find the perfect solution, and they’re like, you know, wow, that’s a, a lot more than I was expecting. And then, um, you know, you ask them, you know, um, you know, what, you know, Ron, what they were expecting. You go through the whole sales process, you find out what they’re expecting price-wise, why they were expecting that, um, you know, if it’s a budgetary thing, like maybe they only have $5000 to spend on a project.

Then now you can go and you can just craft and find a new solution for them that meets like their best needs for $5000 or you can incorporate financing or um. You know, sometimes you can, you know. You know, if it’s a competitor quote, you know, you can look at that, you know, try to find the value points, try to meet them somewhere in the middle, or, you know, um, there’s a lot of different solutions, but we try to do that after the fact, unless they tell you to budget upfront, it’s usually let’s find the perfect solution for them, present that, and then, you know, adjust from there if needed.

So I, I have kind of a fun one here, Garrett, mainly for you, Dan Hendrick, what’s up, Dan? I’m glad you’re here, man. Good to see you. Uh, I, I’m gonna input my thoughts, and then I wanna see what your thoughts are, Garrett. So, and, and, and Will and Skylar, you guys are allowed to participate. Uh, Dan said, yeah, Dan. said, I painted an exterior in 113. Now, they sent me a photo of the West, West fascia that needed repainting, so I gave them a price and accepted.

Had I offered touch-ups for life, I would have been doing that for free. My thought on this is, is you could look at this and you could say, hey, I shouldn’t do it because I got paid for this product. Has that customer painted anything else in the past 13 years? Because we’ve basically got 13 years where we haven’t been selling to them, where we could have effectively selling them. How about their neighbors? How about their friends? How about their, we basically have a 13-year gap where we could probably have sold 10 other things, but, but we’re counting it as a, a win and well, thank God I didn’t offer it for free because we’re doing this little thing, you know, getting paid 13 years later.

That’s my take. Also, There’s always pros and cons, right? You could follow up and, and you follow up and, and, and one customer gets so mad that you followed up with them, they left you a one-star review. I’m never gonna follow up again. You’re gonna net out super positive, nothing’s, you know, 100%. What are your guys’ thoughts on this? So, in Dan’s case, um, there’s a good chance that more of the house needs painting or it will very soon. By going up there and just taking care of that Westfasa touch-ups, making them happy, they’re thrilled with you.

They’re almost guaranteed gonna go with you again next year versus someone else, um. It’s, it’s a service I love. I mean, you stand up and you go through it and you, you go take care of it, but now you go up there, you paint for about 5 hours, you recognize like, hey, I noticed chipping and peeling paint throughout a lot more of your house. It’s been 13 years, you know, what do you think about painting at all, so it all looks nice, it’s uniform, um, and now there’s a good chance you just sold the full exterior instead of just a touch-up job as well.

And they’re likely going to use you for most of their painting needs because you did that, you know, freebie for them. Um, to answer Dan’s question, um, If, you know, I’ve got a buddy, you know, everyone knows Nick May. Nick May does touch-ups too, and so him and I have talked about this, you know, time and time again. It’s something we’ve been considering for a while, but, you know, a touch-up just needs to be defined, you know, if it’s a whole facial board, then that doesn’t fall under the category of touch-up.

A touch-ups if you back into something, you scratch the wall, something that’s chipped off, you know, where your whole facial board gets smoked by the sun, that falls under repaint, not touch up. So I mean, for us, we would have never repainted that, that would have never fell under touch up, that would have fallen under uh repaint. Love it. That was a great comment. Thanks, Dan, for that. That was good. Um, OK, cool. We, uh, I, I wanna, I wanna make sure I ask a good marketing question.

So, throughout 2025, with the costly going up, with, with things shifting a little bit, homeowners taking longer to make a purchasing decision, what have you guys found your, uh, I guess your most effective marketing channels right now? For me, personally, everything has gone up, but for me it’s direct mail. That’s my bread and butter personally. I do it in a lot of different ways, um. One more unique thing I do with direct mail is we send like basically handwritten letters laying the know that we’re in the area, you know, um, and people respond very quickly.

We uh mentioned, you know, hey, we got some special discounts if we can come by cause we can basically move our ladders and stuff, and it gets them to pick up the phone right away, which is the advantage. The disadvantage to that strategy is, um, you do get a lot more small jobs here and there too. You get people, oh, you’re in the neighborhood, yeah, come paint my one bedroom or. You know, come paint a couple boards on my own. So you do get some of that, but But in general, direct mail it like cost per lead has gone up, you know, since it had over the past few years, but it’s still my most effective mechanism personally.

Yeah, I think the offline is, is working well for us too. Um, we’re, we’ve really been leaning into doing door hangers. I think it really breaks the noise. It’s a, it’s actually on their door instead of just in their mailbox with a lot of other mail. Um, we do direct mail as well. I think it works good. Um, but I mean it’s not 10 years ago. Every single painter has Facebook ads, Google ads, like everybody’s doing it, um. I’m still spending money there, but I think it’s where everybody is, and I, I honestly don’t think there’s, you know, maybe a couple other companies in my entire market that are even doing door hangers, and I don’t think anybody is doing them at scale, so it really helps to break through the noise.

Um, for us, I think it’s the, I, I mean, Brandon, you’ll probably echo this, but I think it’s, it’s the always be marketing. You can’t stop on one thing. You have to have your. Um, your, your flywheel of stuff going or your funnel or whatever you wanna call it, everyone’s got a name for it, you know, but it’s like tried and true. Nothing’s, it’s, it’s when somebody comes in and they wanna pitch to you a marketing company and that for us a red flag would be somebody saying they invented something new, and Brandon, you’ll probably agree, it’s all been done before.

There’s nothing new. You know, whether it be door to door, direct to mailer, that’s, that stuff has been around for, for eons, right? Facebook, since that started coming out, that’s so it’s for us it’s just keeping consistent. We actually went over through, we went through all our numbers, uh, this year yesterday, and what it turned out was what was working was just staying consistent, you know, keeping your, your market and then knowing the difference between marketing and branding. Um, you know, if you’re marketing, making sure you’re marketing dollars for that, and if you’re branding, make sure you’re branding dollars for that, and if you don’t know the difference between between those things, you probably should call it branding and have a conversation because you’ve got to allocate, you know, money for those two things, and for a lot of times and a lot of newer guys.

They think they’re branding, but they’re marketing and you know, and and then if you brand too much, you can get yourself into a hot water because you’re not marketing enough. And so for us it’s just keeping consistent with all of our stuff. It’s, we’re marketing everywhere, you know, whether it be, you know, it starts with the brand of the billboard and then it goes to the high school and it’s like the backdrop and then it’s the. You know, the Facebook and then the direct ads and it’s the follow up and then it’s, you know, making sure our trucks are running as many days as we can and you know everyone’s wearing all of our shirts, you know, all of our shirts are always usually brand new.

We buy 40 shirts a month so our guys are never looking crusty, you know, making sure like every time you can get a chance to get your name and colors out there, it’s, it’s, it’s pretty critical regardless of where you’re going and, and, and, and where you’re at. Um, so it’s, it’s just keeping consistent. Don’t let up on what’s working in the past, like right there, Garrett said it. Our bread and butter is, you know, the, the, the door metallers, right? And so it’s like don’t let up on that just because you got a little, you know, a little fat, you know, over the summer, you know, don’t, don’t go starving in the winter, like you have to stay on top of that thing.

So for us it’s just be consistent. 11, bit of a unique thing I’d like to mention while I’m here is, um, for winter marketing. One thing that we find works really well is, um, giving our previous customers some sort of reward in the winter. We offer them a free painting room, we mix it up a little bit. This year, we’re doing a gift card, free room, but they love it. They oftentimes do more. We’ve also done it for a lot of just in general charity projects and stuff like that.

But we find our previous customers almost always add a decent amount more. It gets you in the door, especially in the winter months when things are tough. And they love it. They love that you’re giving them a free room for free. And on average, some of them just take the free room, great, no problem, but on average, you end up making a little bit of money, but you also keep your guys busy, you keep your sales team happy, you know, your painters basically putting money into the pocket of your guys versus, you know, with this strategy.

And another thing that I am huge into charity work in general, but I found, um, we’ve done a lot of it, and I found that we’ve made money on the vast majority of those projects and almost guaranteed moneymaker is doing small to medium sized charity projects for a lot of different nonprofit organizations. Get them to put a little plaque up, you know, which they almost always do, get them to send an e-blast to their following, you know, get them to market or put you on their Facebook page.

But if you do a lot of work for charity and you can promote that, the diehard people in those organizations, the people who really support them, they’re gonna call you up, they’re gonna use you over the competition, you know, it’s hard to quantify how much it does, but over the years of doing it for a lot of these nonprofits, like there’s so much jobs that we’ve gotten because of it that. You know, not only are you doing good, you’re putting money into your guys’ pockets over the winter months, but you’re making a difference in the community, so I wouldn’t definitely encourage that as well. Awesome.

There, there’s a couple more themes, guys, that you’re hearing, always be marketing. So don’t, don’t wait. A big mistake we see is, 00 crap, you know, winter happened. I didn’t know it’s gonna happen this year, and now I need leads. So always be marketing. Marketing is a leading indicator of success, not a lagging indicator. And then using different channels like Skyler said he, one channel might be working better, but he’s still using the other channels, even though it’s a little more competitive. You don’t want to be overly dependent on one channel, especially as you scale because things shift and then that puts unnecessary risk in your business.

I wanna wrap up. Um, guys, if you have, if you have one piece of advice, just one thing you want them to, to walk away, the listeners to walk away from this panel with what is it? Well, with the aggressive fast, uh, you know, the one piece of advice I would give, and people have heard this time and time again, don’t do everything yourself. I mean, for the last two days, Brandon has brought on. I mean, guys that are just so far ahead of where I will ever be in life when it comes to marketing, when it comes to coaching, when it comes to sales.

I mean, I can tell you I was an ignorant fool years ago when I walked into the PCA and I met a bunch of people and I thought I knew all of it and I was the cock of the walk and, you know, no one could teach me shit. Uh, because I was doing it all. And, you know, I look back, laugh because I was such an idiot back then thinking I could do it all. Now I don’t want to do anything, you know, but hang Christmas lights because it’s fun.

The piece of advice I would do, don’t try to do everything, hire somebody that’s gonna do it a lot better than you can. I can only stress that will get you to success a lot faster than you trying to wear all the hats. It’s good nice. Garrett Schuyler. Uh, one thing that, um, we haven’t really talked about is employee culture and retention. Um, we have, we have not had a non-like painter role turnover in over two years now. Um, you know, having a lot of systems around treating your team with respect, you know, paying proper benefits, you know, um, making sure they have career progression paths.

They always have something to work towards, some sort of extra goal to achieve. Um. And in general, just doing good company culture events. Uh, I think that in general has been a, made my life a lot easier, not having to constantly retraining people, having a good team of people, a good culture, we don’t have any toxic energy, and that’s one thing to focus on. It’s huge. Yeah, I, I’d say going into the winter, um. When I first started going in my winters, I mean, in Pittsburgh, we get a lot slower and I tried to, I drove myself crazy in the beginning years, always trying to hit the same revenue numbers that I was hitting in the summer and you’re just, you’re just not gonna do it.

Maybe someone’s figured it out, but, uh, I mean, the market is the way the market is and um. I, I mean, there’s all these great events going on in the winter. I think this is the time when there is a little bit of space and you can take that time to really work on your business. I mean, I really approach these couple months here as a lot of planning time and, and getting ready for the summer rush, um, and that’s when we make all our money, so.

That’s awesome. Take a negative, turn it into a positive, use it as an opportunity to work on the business. Can I get one thought, last thought? Let’s do it. Um, I saw in the questions here, um, a few people asked, what if they don’t have a Google, um, profile or they don’t want to put it on Google, um, put it on Facebook, put it on Yelp, um, but for us, if they don’t have a Google profile, what we ask them to do is like, do you mind just writing it by hand because a lot of older people don’t have computers, they don’t want to deal with it.

And we’ll just take the handwritten letter and then post it on our Facebook or on our social medias and go, hey, this is so great. It’s every, you know, and then we, we, we talk about how like Sometimes it’s nice just to get a handwritten note and not have a digital one. It means a little more when you give somebody the time to, you know, put pen to paper. So if you got somebody that doesn’t have those, those, um, those platforms, get a handwritten note and just post it on your, um, your social media because that’s just as good for us.

It’s just as good. Yeah, it’s huge. You can use that in a direct mail too, like a picture of that. Another option is BBB.

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Hey there, painting company owners. If you enjoyed today’s episode, make sure you go ahead and hit that subscribe button. Give us your feedback. Let us know how we did. And also if you’re interested in taking your painting business to the next level, make sure you visit the Painter Marketing Pros website at PainterMarketingPros.com to learn more about our services. You can also reach out to me directly by emailing me at Brandon@PainterMarketingPros.com and I can give you personalized advice on growing your painting business. Until next time, keep growing.