Welcome to the Painter Marketing Mastermind Podcast. The show created to help painting company owners build a thriving painting business that does well over 1 million in annual revenue. I’m your host, Brandon Pierpont, founder of painter, marketing pros and creator of the popular PC A educational series. Learn do 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 series titled painter turned big business owner will Reyes of Battle Bourne.

Painting will be sharing how he has grown his painting company to over $5 million in annual revenue and will be providing some creative options for other owners. Looking for explosive growth. In episode one, we’ll discuss the mental transition he made from painter to business owner and the hurdles he needed to overcome along the way. In episode two, this episode will, will discuss how to create a killer client experience that builds a repeatable and profitable book of business for your painting company in Episode three will is going to outline some of the application tools, tricks and styles to paint that have allowed his team to create superior results for their clients and earn an enviable reputation in his local marketplace.

In episode four will will lay out his approach to employee retention and how maintaining key team members has allowed for sustained growth. And in the final episode, episode five will is going to deep dive into how to think about adding other trades or widgets to your painting business. When is it a good idea? And when is it likely Shiny Object syndrome? If you want to ask little questions related to anything in this podcast series, you can do so on our exclusive painter marketing mastermind podcast form on Facebook.

Just search for painter marketing mastermind podcast form on Facebook and request to join the group or type in the URL, facebook. com/groups/painter marketing Mastermind. Again that URL is facebook. com/groups/painter marketing mastermind. There, you can ask a little questions directly by tagging him with your question. So you can see how anything discussed here applies to a particular painting company. What’s going on, man? Well, it’s another glorious day. I woke up, you know, uh it’s uh I’m grateful I’m grateful to be alive. So I right side of the door, it’s a good, good way to start the day.

It’s, you know what? There’s somebody in the hospital bed, I promise we’ll switch places with you if you got a shit day. Yeah, 100% man. It’s a good attitude. Um So last time we covered everything about the mental transitions, the hurdles, the letting go of your pride and your ego and seeking out that education. Uh And now I think client experience I think is a, is another major piece that’s really quite frankly often overlooked. I would agree with you. You know, I, I think, you know, e even us at a point, you know, you get so wrapped up into, um, you know what I call counting money.

You know, you, you’re counting how much is going out for marketing, for payroll taxes, all that other stuff and then you’re counting all the money that’s coming in. And then a lot of times your c your, your, your clients become the, the by product, you know, of, of you counting money in and counting money out, you know, and, um, you know, I’m just as guilty as the next person. If anybody wants to admit, then they get caught up counting the money. Um, and so we had to change the way we were doing things where the client experience was more important.

Um, I wouldn’t say more important than money, but it had to be something that was really, um, focused on because you can’t put a dollar amount on that client experience and there’s just no way you can tell. Well, one bad client experience is gonna, you know, bleed off into you as opposed to, you know, 10 positive ones, you know, it’s, you always hear that for every 10 great positive reviews you get, you know, you might get one or two people there like I saw the review but you get one person that’s ticked off and now they tell 100 people, you know.

Um, so these things are all real and we do our best to make sure that we get everybody the experience that they deserve and they pay for it. So, yeah, so what, what are uh I guess what are the big issues you see, painting companies making this arena or maybe that you used to make when, when the focus is on counting money and not on client experience. You know, one of the biggest problems that we were having is that like you said, we weren’t giving an experience, we were counting the money.

It’s like, ok, we got here, we do the paint job, the paint job’s great. You happy with it? Cool. Pay me and then we go on to the next job and we are being completely forgotten, you know, we would call people back, you know, three months later, hey, it’s uh you know, uh will battle Warren just wanted to touch base. Who will about a burn painting? Who uh we painted your house? Oh, yeah. What do you want? What do you need? There’s yeah, in my check balance, what’s, you know, what’s going on?

And so you know, we had to start making a decision of how we wanted to, um, approach our clientele. Um, and, and, and, and see if that was really what we wanted to do. I mean, because there’s a lot of places out there that are very successful, you know, they were, they punch a number, you know, you go into little Caesars, you drop 10 bucks, you get two pizzas, you grab your pies and you walk out, you know, or you go to the little pizzeria in town where you walk in and they say, hey, you know, and, um, you know, they, they remember your name and they know your order and they got a booth for you.

And so, you know, that’s kind of what we were looking for more of, but then we have to blend the two because we’re such a high volume shop and we’ll talk about how much volume we do and how we do it and why we do it. But we couldn’t be one of, uh, you know, one of one way and we couldn’t be one of the other way. You know, we couldn’t give you all the service and stop the world for you and roll it all out, you know, and, and make sure I was on your Christmas card list and then we couldn’t go back and be like, hey, thanks for taking your money.

Cheers a great paint job. See you later. So we had to start realizing that not everything was aesthetic. You know, we couldn’t treat the job as a sale. Um, you know, and, and that’s not to say that people that make sales, that do sales training and, you know, there’s all experience there but, you know, um, when you’re making the sale, I totally understand that there’s a different topic right there. But when we get on site and after we, you, we, we discuss with them and we present our, our product and, you know, at a point it’s just not a sell anymore.

You have to connect with the person that’s in front of you and, and they, you have to earn their trust and there’s many different ways of doing that. But I feel, you know, once you earn their trust, um, it’d be foolish of you to just kinda wither it away or, you know, take it for granted. And so we had to really work on that. And so when we, um, started looking at ourselves, ok, well, what’s important to us? Well, we would get a lot of questions and, you know, you’d always get some people call it old fashioned.

Some people call it, you know, racism. You can call it whatever you want. I don’t really care but you’d get older people that ask, does everybody speak English? Yeah. Well, does the music loud? What kind of music are they playing? They’d always do like that hidden thing where they try to beat around the bush and ok, cool. So we started saying, well, hey, you know what, we’re gonna make sure everybody introduces themselves to you when you get to your house. So you understand who’s painting your house.

So when our lead gets on site, they’re gonna go over the project worksheet, they’re gonna verify everything and they’re gonna walk around the house and as they’re walking around, they’re gonna introduce everybody to you. So you understand who is painting your house. So it’s not just some random person, you know. Um And we’ll give you a little test at the end of the job. Make sure you remember everybody’s uh name, of course a little laugh ensues but it makes them feel comfortable, it disarms them cause they’re like, OK, well, if this person is gonna walk up to me and hey, I’m, you know, telling me I’m victor, you know, I’m Caesar.

Well, that’s a little, that’s that uh those little things right there are what matter to people. So at the end of the day when we say, hey, have we earned a good review? I mean, you know, we don’t want you just to give us a five star. That’s not a part of our speech. Our culture is give us a five star. Give us a five star. We always ask, hey, did we earn a positive review? And probably seven times out of 1003? They’ll name somebody. Oh, Tony was really great, you know.

Oh Joey was really, you know, he helped me out a lot. I didn’t understand how. So he, so he really explained it to me. So that was a part of our process. You know, we started realizing that, ok, if we started making everybody that walked over to their house, started introducing them, they were more of a friend. Well, oddly enough people were a lot nicer, you know, our guys were getting tipped out. A lot of lunches were being bought. You know, our crew gets lunch, bought probably three days a week, you know, unsolicited just because they walk in and they have a smile on their face.

Hey, how are you doing? You know, our lead walks around. Hey, that’s Tony. Hey, hey, hey, how are you? You know, if you got any questions, you can ask anybody on site. You don’t have to always come to me. If you don’t see me, ask the next guy, they’ll be glad to help, uh, uh, glad to help you. And if they can’t help you, they’ll come find me. And so people like that, you know, they like the fact that they can just walk up to anybody. Hey, instead of looking for the one guy that’s the leader that you can only talk to.

So we had to start introducing an experience as opposed to just the product, you know. So that’s what we were doing. Do you, well, do you guys run a subcontractor or W-2 model. Everybody’s an employee. Ok. So yeah, so then for, I guess do you think you would be able to implement this if you ran subcontractors? Everything I’m about to talk about you can do with subcontractors or W-2 employees. Some people are gonna be making some of those moves and, and calls and some people are not gonna be so not everybody’s gonna be doing everything we talk about but I mean your subs gonna get on site introduce, hey, you know um you know, will with, you know, Brandon pal painting, you know, I’ve been with Brandon three years.

Please ask me if you have any questions. Hey, let’s walk around the house. Let me introduce you to some of the guys. Oh hey, this is John, this is Marco, you know, this is uh whoever the name is and as you’re walking around, that person starts immediately giving you their trust as you’re gaining it. You know, trust is one of those things that we find that becomes very thin these days, you know, so many people are ready to distrust you. Something goes on social media. It doesn’t have to be true.

It’s just on social media. Often people believe that as as the truth. So you know, uh trust is something too many people give away and keeping me take for granted. So when we earn your trust, we wanna make sure you earned it number one and that you understand that as we earn your trust. We’re not gonna go ahead and disappoint you down the road. So that’s one of the things that we do to start off the, the customer experience, the client experience, you know, whatever you wanna call it.

So I don’t wanna make you feel too good about yourself will. Uh But I think I’ve done over 100 and 20 100 and 30 like podcast episodes somewhere in that range and I have never heard anybody talk about that about it. Every single painter introducing themselves, you know, making the joke about asking, asking their names at the end and, and then like, hey, if you can feel free to ask me a question if I’m not there, ask any other. I mean, that, that is awesome. I mean, I think that’s a crazy gold nugget right there. Yeah.

You know, when I started doing it, you know, it just really took off for us and people, I mean, and we didn’t really know what was going on. We tracked it like this. Oh, you know, Mrs Johnson bought lunch, you know. Oh, you know, Mrs Karen got us lunch today. Oh, she everybody a tip. You know, and you know, it’s when you break it down between X amount of guys, it’s not much. But when you give us a lump sum, you know, it’s, it’s, I i it’s a big number.

I mean, let me give you a good example. This just happens on my desk. Um, this came in last week. I went out to shoot some content for social media with our, you know, gal that does, that the homeowner comes out and, and she just runs into us and we start shooting the shit and, um, you know, I was there maybe 5, 10 minutes. I, hey, did everybody come by, you know, everybody and say, oh yeah, yeah, seizure has been great, you know, uh, uh Joey’s. Oh yeah, he got, they got guys spraying.

I got two crew spraying on this house at the same time. And you know, uh uh Daniel was really funny, you know. Um And so she just kind of knew the guy’s name and then I get this, hey, uh the lady paid, she said I had to give this, you can deliver this to you. I never told her who I was. I, so I go, ok, I there’s the check in there and there’s $200 and it’s been on my desk for a week, uh two weeks. Now, here’s a tip for the gentlemen, for the gentlemen who work so efficiently.

We are very happy with the amount of work that was accomplished today. It looks amazing. We will be recommending battle more to our friends and our neighbors. Thank you. Um That next day we got a recommendation we had to go out and do a proposal for a client. Well, you know, the future, I think they actually did sign, um, just on that alone, you know. Um, the lady was beyond nice. She signed up for a $10003,000 patio that we have to do for her, a coding job. And then we went out there today to, uh, put gutters on her house.

You know, that’s the kind of thing that happens, you know, I mean, our, our coatings isn’t cheap, you know, our gutters aren’t cheap. Our painting services aren’t cheap. So people don’t mind paying a premium if they’re getting a premium product. And I’ve always said, you know, you could be the best painter in the world. But if that person forgets who you are when you leave like they used to do to us, your paint job is worthless. You can take that same painter and he was, he is 80% as good as the best painter in the world.

But he says, hey, you know, introduces himself. This is my team, this is my crew. These are the guys that work with me. You know, you introduce them out. If you got any questions, do not hesitate to let me know, you know, you do a walkthrough in the house. I mean, that’s what matters. You know, that I’m not gonna say we’re perfect, not every paint job comes out perfect, you know. But what I can say is that is this is that every c every client, every customer comes through that works with us has a great experience.

Now, of course, we’re not perfect and you can’t please everybody. Um, but I’m gonna say, you know, we hold a high review rate and there’s a reason for it. You know, when we go through a house, it’s, we’re pretty meticulous about it, you know, and it starts with, you know, our, our intake call, they go through a series of questions that really help people open them up because a lot of times people don’t know what they want or what they need. And then, um, you know, when the consultant gets on site, they go through and work with him and then, you know, when they see the presentation and they love it and they, um, you know, they sign with us and then our crew comes out there, you know, our, our crew can come, our paint crews could completely ruin it.

You know, up until that point it’s like credit and you can have perfect credit history. You make one house payment late because you forget and they dock you 100 points. Well, that’s the same thing right here. It’s like we earned their trust, we’ve earned their trust and if my crew doesn’t deliver, we’re docked 100 points and now we’re fighting to get that, that trust back. You know, I get a call, hey, uh, you know, your guys, um, forgot to paint this thing. Ok. Well, did you guys do a rock round?

We did but, and then ABC happens and you’re like, oh shit. So the experience is what’s most important about it. And so long as we give them a good experience, paint job doesn’t have to be perfect. You know, I mean, we’ve gone back on touch ups where we look at it and face palm like, oh, I can’t believe we forgot that, but our client didn’t really give a shit because we called them a week later. Um This is part of our experience, you know, we call him a week later and we remind him like, hey, listen, we’re not perfect.

We know that, you know, we asked you to come and do the wfor with us. We ask you to walk around in both directions in the house. We tell you to bring your, your, your, your husband, your spouse, your wife, your picky grandma with a crazy eye, your neighbor. That’s really that knows that used to paint. You know, he was your stupid shit like that. You know, my uncle used to paint back in the bay area. Oh yeah, my uncle was uh you know, he used to paint the warships.

OK. Great story. I don’t care. Bring him, bring everybody you want, I want you to be critical. I want you to be picky. I want you to be a pain in the ass. Whatever that word is, we want you to be that word. And as long as you’re that word and we get through together. Great. And then we remind him, hey, we’re not perfect. You’re not perfect if you’re hanging around a week later and you’re hanging out in the backyard with an iced tea or a Jack and Coke and you sit there and you go, oh man, they missed the spot.

Well, we remind people like, hey, just because we collected a check and we did the walkthrough. We, we haven’t disappeared. We’re gonna call you a week later. And um some people, uh they love that, you know, a lot of times people will go, everything looks good. They don’t really look at it and then they come back two days later. Hey, it was your bomb. Ok, Derek’s gonna call you in a week. He’s got you on your schedule, you come out and take care of it. Ok, great.

And then we remind them after we get there, hey, if there’s anything else, just give us a call, we’ll come on and take care. We call them at three months and they go really, you called three months. And yeah, we got through the summer. You might have saw something or maybe one of the kids came back with a toy truck, drag it across the house. You know, we left you all the paint, all the extra paint. We’ll come out and touch it up and then we call them at six months.

We remind them, hey, we’re not just a painting company. We also help you with gutters you know, we’re a coatings, uh, uh, uh, a company, you know, we do refinishing your cabinets and then, um, you know, we have a new business where we nano coat and seal up driveways roof, uh, rooftops, shingle roofs and then, uh, a anything wood and they go, ok, cool. And then we remind them, we’re gonna call you nine months. Then we’ll call you at a year. Hey, just remember, just remind you guys, you know, it’s been a bad winter.

Your house is looking pretty dingy. We give you a free soft wash. We’ll come by and rinse off your house and I go, ok, great. So once I remind them like, hey, once we get your money, we’re not gonna run it down to the bank and cash that check. You’re never gonna hear from us again. We’re gonna bug you for the next year periodically and if there’s something that pops up, we’ll take care of it. You know, we used to be a company where it’s like, well, you get one touch up and that’s it.

But then you start doing the, the analytics on it. It doesn’t cost me nothing to send a guy out there and do a quick touch up. Cost me nothing but I gained thousands in, in, in marketing. Oh, I got the guys coming out. They don’t forget on it, you know. Oh man, I see a tattoo spot. He’s doing well. I know they’re gonna be calm and so, and we do and then, you know, there are people out there six months later there’s a touch up or, you know, the wife backs into the garage and then they’re like, hey, can you help us out?

Sure. We’ll come out there, give it a little sander ro and give it a touch up and move along, you know, or whatever the, whatever it calls for, you know. Um, maybe that, maybe you have to shoot the whole door. You never know. But those small things cost us a little and the uh the gain on it is, is it’s an immeasurable. You can’t figure it out, you can’t magnify that. And so that’s what it’s for, for us. It’s insane, man. And I think the, I mean, there, gosh, there’s so much gold here.

The, the way that most painting companies view painting projects is extremely transactional. And even when you were saying, well, I used to call them at three months and they wouldn’t know who I, who I was. Boy was. I terrible. You call them at three months. There are so few companies that will even do that, that will follow up at all once that project’s done, it’s just gone. It never happened, you know, it’s in the past. And so you were already, you’re, you’re, you’re kind of like making fun of yourself, but you are already actually doing much better than the vast majority of painting companies out there.

And then this idea of like o of three months, six months. Now you almost harassing the customer, not for the sale, but almost like the reverse sale. Like, hey, we’re gonna go work for you and not charge you and, and pay for that because we just wanna make sure that you’re taken care of, that’s so abnormal. Um But you’re right, like the referrals, the repeat if you figure out your average ticket value, if you figure out how many, you know, how many projects are being generated for you by referral versus maybe the standard competitor and the the price point.

And that you can now when you go to a referral and they’re like, yeah, this guy, man, he, they, they painted our house, everyone introduce themselves and then they keep calling me and then, yeah, my wife did this thing or the kid did that and they came out and they fixed it. They didn’t even charge me. They weren’t trying to sell me a bunch of stuff the whole time. Use them. Well, when you go in and you present a higher quote, there’s a pretty darn good chance.

They’re still gonna pick you than the guy who didn’t, you know who, who tried to lowball you. Yeah. And that’s the experience that we’re trying to give to people, you know, like I said earlier, like not everything is about the sale. So when we call people back, we’re not trying to sell them anything we’re just trying to remind them like, hey, there’s a reason why you picked us and we’d like you to pass that reason on, you know, at each point we call them up. And if there’s a problem with it, we make a note on it.

You know, we have it in our, our, our bold. So we write down on the, on the note called this day at this time, spoke to this person, you know, was a review given on, on paint job. No. And if anybody’s ever spent any amount of time asking a client who’s been over the moon for a positive review and gotten it. They understand it’s like pulling teeth, man. It’s a packet of Congress. You know, you can do the best paint job and they love you and they’re gonna tell everybody under the moon then you’re like, can I get that referral?

Of course, I got you. No review. I call him a week later. Hey man, I saw in here the notes. Everything was great. Was there something that needs to be touched up? Did we catch everything? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Hey man, you know, I saw in here that you, you tipped the guys out. We really appreciate that. I can’t tell you how much that means to the guys and then you hear something like, well, I know it’s not much and now we just say listen, it’s, it means more than you realize.

And then we go Hey, I did. We earn that review. Oh yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Hey, let me make it easy on you. Let me send you the link and at three months I’ll, I’ll do it. I’ll do it. Three months goes by. We pull up their paperwork, they send their review. No. Hey, Missus Johnson. It’s will about Warren. Hey, I just wanted to touch base and make sure the house is looking immaculate. Um Did you see anything else? No, no, everything is good. Everything is perfect. I hate to bother you but I mean you did say that you love the service.

Is there any way I can get that review out of you? Oh, I’m so sorry here, I’ll send you that link and if you would do that, I couldn’t tell you how much that means to me. It means more than you would ever realize that you would recommend us to all your friends and family send to the review. The review doesn’t come out. Yeah. Fuck usually nine months, nine months. A Miss Johnson. It’s spring time. You know birds are chirping. How’s that house looking? 000 You know what?

Yeah, when it was back, you know, I got the, the, the mud, the snow was up on it. Do you wanna cash in that in that free soft wash? Is that ok? Yeah. Yeah. No cost to you. We’re not selling you nothing. We just wanna make sure you got a great experience. In battle going. Yeah. Yeah, you can. Well, yeah. Can we do that? All right, MS Johnson, I’m gonna schedule it up. I have to ask you for one thing. Can I get that review that you said that you promised us?

Oh, I’m so sorry, I’ll tell you what if you get on the horn right now and you punch in that review. I’ll get that, that soft wash done on Saturday. Ok. Ok. Ok. Ok. Sounds great. And then it finally comes through but you know that one review is worth four phone calls. We already did the work. She already loves us. She’s already paid. You know, she’s told everybody at the Bridge Club, she’s ok. Everybody at church, you know, she told everybody at the doctor’s office, how great the house is.

She’s showing all the little pictures on her phone, look up where the house is, you know, but she didn’t give you that review no matter. I mean, you made it as easy as possible. Well, now at the end of that road we’re like, hey, listen, we need a little exchange. I’m gonna get that free stop watch, but I need that review from you and then they get it, you know, it cost me four phone calls a couple bucks in gas and an hour in labor because we’re not doing any serious washing.

We’re not pressure washing, we’re not looking to pull off flaking paint. All we’re doing is going over there and just hitting with the rinser roof, that’s nothing. So, what’s that gonna cost me? Maybe 100 bucks at the absolute most, a little water, a little gas and a little labor I can deal with that. That’s worth it to me. So that’s part of the, the, the process that we try to explain to people. Well, that we, that we, it’s part of our presentation and yeah, for, for listening, like this is creating a relationship, right?

Because when Mrs Johnson needs to get her house repainted and she’s been talking to Will for a course of a year after she got it painted. Who do you think she’s gonna use? Right. And then all the people at Church and Bridge club and everyone else now will, is creating this whole ecosystem. Uh whereas you or will’s competitors are basically just trying to get a foot in the door for the first time when maybe they could have already had the foot in the door if they had created this experience. Yeah.

You know, a part of like all that is like presenting a AAA trust, a trusted company, you know, um you know, a part of it like our, our presentation is like asking people like what, what matters to you, you know, does it, you know, and we get people that are like the stuff that matters, does doesn’t matter to them. Well, we, we talk to them, we talk about, well, does it matter that all of our guys have been background checked and there’s no predators and there’s no, you know, uh, uh felons on the crew, no one smokes on the crew, you know.

Does that matter? And like, oh yeah, because people see people that show up clean with their shirts tucked in, you know, and everything. Look, I pressed, they trust that person just inherently just trust that person cause they are looking clean, you know, uh I mean you can have a crazy beard like this and people still look, you know, they’re just still gonna trust you because your hands are clean. You ain’t got pain all over the fingertips. You know, your, your pants aren’t just dingy in pain. You know, you can’t whistle on the pants will crawl up and jump on your back.

So those are things that matter to people, you know, when we ask them, they, and then this is just something that we do here. Obviously, no one’s gonna do it. But when we ask them, when you go out and get other, you know, estimates proposal, however we go to, are they working from it or are they just hiring somebody that’s gonna do it cheaper? That’s one of the tactics that we use against somebody that’s using subs. So I mean, for subs, you won’t say that but there’s a workaround for everything, but that’s just one of the things that we do and staying in Nevada, it’s not very likely, but it’s something else that we introduce to them.

And so we’re like, well, all of our guys are pressed looking clean. You know, we supply a team of people that are taken care of. You know, we, you know, we tell them, then they ask, well, how, well, you know, all the guys, the boots are paid for, all the pants are paid for, all the shirts are paid for, all the hats are paid for and then we take care of our guys. All of our guys are paid a livable wage. All of our guys have the health insurance paid for by us.

Like, you know, we, we remind them like because when we have these conversations they go, oh, well, you know, your price is a little high. Well, yeah, that may be the change. But let me explain to you why you’re gonna pay a little more. You know, we have people that stay with us that have been with us forever because of ABC and D we trust them. So we’re gonna introduce you to them and they’re gonna earn your trust. And so that’s a part of the experience with us.

Yeah, that’s so good. And, and I think even for people who use subcontractors regarding sort of the almost like a forced callback um that you create here for a lot of your clients, you could have one painter even on staff like 1 W-2 and that person goes and handles all these things and you can create that. If you’re not calling your people back in a week, within a week, a week later, you’re missing a massive opportunity. I mean, well, I can say this, that Callback is probably saved us more bad reviews than we’ve ever gotten for small stuff.

Hey, you guys didn’t take the garbage. Well, that could have been a bad review. Hey, I’m totally sorry about that. It, when we talk to you in our presentation, we actually do say we leave it behind unless you wanna incur another fee. It’s paper, plastic and tape. You can turn it and recycled. Oh, you can. Yeah, there actually is no garbage in there. It’s all recycled. It’s the, it’s the mask. You do? Oh, I didn’t know that. Ok. Hey, you guys, you know, uh, the music was too loud.

Hey, let me first. Let me apologize. I know this is something that we’ve had two issues in the past, but that’s the only problem you have was that the worst thing? How was the pain job? How are the guys? Were they friendly? Was everybody showed up pressed and in uniform? Well, yeah, you know what? Then I can only apologize to you. Sometimes I’m out there with him and, and sometimes I turn the music loud because a good song comes on and we get caught up. Did you notice that the guys when they were working around?

Were they running around the house. Were they physically run it? No. What did you notice the most besides a loud music? And this is what I usually get. Well, most of the time they were laughing so they’re kind of enjoying working with each other and having a good time. Yeah. Actually that’s the one thing I noticed. These guys love music. Yeah. And they go, you see where we can kind of overlook the loud music and they go, yeah. Yeah. Ok. You know, or we had a touch up that we missed, you know, and they go, well, and they think, you know, they forget the speech because they talk to, uh, five contractors and they go with us, they forget that we talked about, hey, we’re gonna come back and we’re gonna, we’re gonna check on you.

We’re not just leaving you high and dry and, you know, these are the small things that we’ve noticed that make a massive difference and people calling us back giving referrals, you know, I would say a good portion of our business is based upon people’s referrals and how much they enjoy doing business with us and working with our team. You know? I mean, are you probably incur about 50 reviews a month? Which is a little low. I mean, we’re trying to get that number up high and every day, um, every day.

Well, uh, you say, wow. Right. But it’s, we, we want that number num, well, a few things we want that number to be a little bit higher for the ball and then there’s a number that I picked out of my head. There’s no data on this. I was like, I just wanna be here for what we do. That’s it. Um And I know we can hit that cause we’ve hit it in some months and it’s, I want it to be consistent, right? You know, we talk to our staff about it, we incentivize it and so we, we make it to a point where it’s really fun for the team to be here and then try to get that, that review, they wanna get their name listed.

And so these are the things that, that we do to give the customer good experience because if you incentivize you, us getting a review, a positive review with your team. Well, all they’re gonna, I mean, they have zero reason to bring a bad day in, you know, I mean, we’ve sent people home having bad days not malicious to you like, hey, you, you know, you act like a jerk, get out of here. If we see somebody having a bad day, we’re like, hey, listen, why don’t you just take the day off?

It’s obviously not going well for you cause we don’t wanna bring the energy down because when you come in, when you work with us, it’s a good energy. We wanna make sure our clients see that and they feel that experience, right? So those are kind of some of the things that we do to make sure that our client when they’re working with us, they see this positive environment, you know, how do you incentive all those years? We can talk about that later. I think we have a subject.

We got another one of that. OK, I think we have how to keep your, your employer attention. Yes. So I would rather, I am gonna say that. Yeah, we will talk about that too because that’s the presentation. Well, teaser. Um OK, so you guys do things pretty differently. Part of your presentation is that you’re gonna follow up for a year. Uh You’re gonna really make sure they’re taken care of. Do you have that the year follow up is after we get the business after you get the business.

So that’s not part of the sales presentation. No. Well, I mean, the sales team knows they gotta call them until they’re blue in the face, you know, I mean, they don’t say that they don’t, they don’t say that there. Yeah, they don’t go, hey, we’re gonna call you until, until you block me. But um which has happened a few times too, you know where I get, they blocked us. OK, put it on the block mark, you know, and then we call from another number. Um No, no, no, no, I will find you.

No, that’s after they accept with us that we go Hey, we remind them that like we’re not gonna just cash a check and we’re gonna hit the road. You know, you’ll never hear from us again. You know, we talked, we talked to people about the warranty and we explained to them like, you know, our, our warranty is only a year. Well, this guy’s given me is giving me 10003 years. Oh, really? How long has it been in business? I don’t know. What if I give you a 50 year warranty?

Would you want that? Well, no, why? Because I’m not gonna, I’m probably not gonna be here 50 years. And they go, ok, so like what’s, what’s the warranty worth? You know, we, I always reference Tommy Boy but yeah, I can put a warranty on the box but it’s only as good as a person putting the stuff in the box. Right? There’s a whole bunch of different verbiage for that. But, um, anybody knows Tommy Boy knows the warranty speech. Yeah, you’re shaking your head like you do. I, I vaguely remember, I haven’t seen Tommy Boy in a lot of years.

It has been a long time. Well, you’re a young pup man. That movie came out when you was, you know, young Whipper. Snapper. Yeah. So, yeah, I mean, I always remember, uh, I always remember him doing that SNL skit. I don’t know if you, do you watch SNL or did you watch SNL? Yes. With, uh, he was like a homeless guy by the, in a living in a van, by a fully motivational speaker. Yeah. No, I know that very well. Come on now, man. Yeah, that’s awesome, man.

So why would you, if you guys are doing this thing that’s very different that people find a tremendous amount of value in? Why would you not use it in your sales process? Well, we talk about how we’ll call everybody throughout the year. I just don’t call you to get the business throughout until we get the business, right? So for instance, I see. So you, you do say like, hey, after this project, we’re not gonna cash your check. If you choose us, we’re gonna make sure you’re taken care of for a year.

Yeah, we say after you sign with us, we never say if you Leo is gonna after you sign with us because we want them to know that we’re already doing business, you know, once you go in and then we display the amount of trust that we’re gonna be giving to them and then that, you know that we’re gonna be asking from them. Most people lower their guard with it. You know, I mean, there’s been countless times I’ve had, you know, from the sales um associates where they’ll come back and go, oh, this person’s uh personally help was this.

And so I had to work with them like this to get them to lower their guard. And if I had uh damn, I just put back to the way one of my um every day we have uh every se every sales call, there’s um a bold that we write information on and you have to write down information like, oh, this person was very addictive or a cousin was doing it, blah, blah, blah, whatever, whatever information had three Harleys in the book, all these things we write down.

And so one of the things was on Eric’s was very standoffish at first. And then he wrote down the details, you know, very stands up at first lower guard. After I started talking about this, ended up having a really enjoyable conversation. We’ll follow up and then he writes in his personal notes, I’m gonna close this. And so, and, and, and, you know, just because you don’t get the business that day doesn’t mean you don’t, you don’t ever get it. But then, you know, a part of that is like when you’re talking to them like, hey, this is me.

I wanna just, you know, you call them up and whatever your pitch that depends. So there’s a different call, there’s a different speech for every level of the call. So depending on when we call them back, but one of the first ones is, is like, you know, we remind them like, hey, we’re not just gonna be running and getting your money and taking off, you know, we wanna make sure that we’re working, we’re working relationship and it’s not just transactional. You know, it’s not like a cheap book or like a real deep rooted of relationship.

So you guys have a one year workmanship warranty. We give a one year warranty and a one year warranty only. And then when people ask about it, you know, we educate him like, well, you know, in the, in, in the 60 years experience in this house, I’ve ever only seen two failures in my personal, I’ve only seen paint fell twice in the last 1415 years. I’ve been doing this and both those failures happen within the first week, you know. Um, and so they go, ok, and then we kind of talk a while after we get through a full winter and a full summer.

If something’s gonna fail, it’s, it, it’s gonna fail. Then after that it’s, it’s dried, it’s here, the odds of it failing. I’ve never seen it. Not to say it’s never happened, but I’ve just never seen it. So, yeah, I’m gonna go ahead and work with that and they go, well, why does somebody give a 15 year warranty? I go. Have you ever been up to somebody’s house and just watch it paint magically fall off. You ever seen it just come peeling off and I go, well, no, I go right.

What do you typically see is at the base? No, gutters. The water is beating it up so it starts to flake away. You see at the house, the roof is not great. So it rolls back and then it starts peeling behind the, the, the facial board and the paint starts peeling off. Right. That’s not a paint issue. And they go, yeah, I guess. Right. I said, ok, well, I’ve never seen paint fail after X amount of days. So once we talk to them about it, we educate about it and they usually go, oh, that makes sense.

You know. Have you ever seen your car paint fail? Usually when car paint fails, it fails within the first year. You know, you never seen somebody? Oh, what year is that? 0, 2001 I paint. But starting thing doesn’t happen. You know, it’s, it’s usually within the first few months when it rolls off the line and you start happening, you know. So paint doesn’t work like that once pain cleared out. It’s pretty much that as far as I’ve ever been experienced with. Yeah. Do you guys have, when you’re offering this year?

Do you ever have people try to take advantage of it? Like, have you come back a bunch of times? No. You know, it’s, I think it’s that trust thing. You know, once you get to the point and, and we tell people like, you know, um, I, if somebody backs into it or your kids mess it up, they go, oh, man. You know, a kid was doing this and they dragged the toy across the wall, the back of the house or this, that and they go, you know, I know that’s not a part of the warranty, depending on who it is.

A bunch of variables. Most of the time R PM will just go, hey, you know what, let me just send somebody out and they go how much and they, and they’ll go, you know what the, they’re fine, they’re fine. If you wanna take care of them, you can, but they’ll just come after hours and knock it out real quick for them. You know, we’ll find out what part of town they’re in and then we’ll send whoever lives in that part of town because our guys live all over town.

So we’ll say, you know, hey, Tony, this person’s in North Valley, you might just run it over top of, you know, their kid was, got their metal, uh, you know, train track or whatever and they’re just beating the house up. So it’s, they don’t, our guys usually don’t have a problem for it and, you know, and we compensate them in other ways too. We can talk about that later but they don’t usually say no to us. Iii I don’t have anybody that says no, when we ask them to do a touch up, you know, especially one that’s right after the paint job.

They go, ok, we missed it, they own it and they go and knock it out. Do they ever get the the review like in person while they’re doing that touch up. Yeah. Yeah. There. So we talk about that every Monday, we meet with the staff and we say, hey, you know, so we have a board where we write down who’s got the, so we write down, you know what trade it is, how many reviews they got and every person’s names got a tick bite like this person got this many this week and it just goes for the whole month, right?

And so we go, ok, this, this and that and so, um when they’ll go through, they’ll, if that person, if they know like, you know, our PM will go, hey, man, you got a touch of three months old. I haven’t gotten a uh a review. Hey, you, I ask them about a review and so they’ll send them out and go, hey, you know, Tony or Joey or, you know, Cesar or Danny or whoever it’s gonna be that touches out and they like, hey, you know, is, is everything good, is there anything you want me to take a look at?

And you know, they’ll do their own little walk around, make sure everything is good and they go, hey, did, did you know, do we earn that good review when we were here? You know, sometimes you’ll get when the painters go out there, you know, the, the, the client will go, oh, he’s asking, I better go do it right now. As opposed to just somebody on the phone doing it, you know, when you get. Yeah. Yeah, I got you. No problem. But when you got the little, you know, you got the painter there, you know, with the hat and the hand like here’s everything good that I earn that review.

I really, really appreciate, you know, we earn that review. Do you mind, you know, listen to me. My name is just, and they go Oh yeah. Yeah. And they punch it out and then they get listed and then that’s how we incent on our guys, we’ll talk about that, how, why and how we incentivize them, you know. So, you know, every person is a part of the sales in one form or another in this team. It’s just in what capacity? So yeah. Yeah, I think that’s a super good point right there too.

And it’s one that, that is so often neglected like the the whole business is sales in some way, right? Especially project managers or the people on site, the whole process is a sale. Your business is sales. Yeah. Iii I couldn’t agree with you more. You know, you’ve gotta get there and when they call you on the phone, you gotta sell them on the phone like why they want to schedule with you, you know, cause you can call somebody up and they go Yeah. What do you want?

Oh yeah, we were, we were booked out four months Oh, ok. Well, can I still get a bid? An estimate? A proposal? A number? Yeah. But I can’t do it for four months. Yeah. Whatever pass in your money is no good. I wish my painting company would grow. Yeah. Right. Or you get somebody that’s like, hey, you know, they go through a series of questions and they, they’re digging for your pain and, and what your needs are and your wants and then you go uh that, that felt good, that person, I mean, I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been to a proposal and go, OK?

And then we go through those speech and I said, and, and you talk to the office. OK. And how was your experience with that? Oh, they’re really nice. Yeah, they’re, yeah, they ask me a lot of questions. OK, perfect. And I go, well, you know what, that actually helps me help you and I go OK, great. So that, you know the office starts it off and then you know, when the consultant gets there, they have their own uh their sale to make and then once they get done with that R PM has gotta make a sale because when a part of that R PM is gonna call them up and go, hey, you know I’m Derek.

I just wanna make sure you understand. We got you scheduled for Thursday. Here’s your colors. The start time is gonna be at 7 a.m. cause we call everybody the week before and they go. Ok, great. And then we go, all right. So our objective here is to make sure you got the best looking house on the block and we earned a good review for you. Does that sound fair? And they go, yeah, that’s great. Perfect. Hey, our um, our lead is gonna call you the night before to confirm everything you and I just said in case anything changes and then um they’re gonna uh go over everything and make sure you’re good.

So the lead calls the night before and goes, hey, I’m Caesar. I just wanna confirm all these information. So I’m gonna see you tomorrow morning. You’re gonna meet with me. The crew’s gonna be there at seven. I’m gonna be there about 15 minutes early if that’s ok. That way we can do a walkthrough and I can kinda explain you how things are gonna get done and they go, oh, great. And our whole objective here is to make sure your house is looking the best, best looking house in the block and your deposit review.

Does that sound fair? Yes. Get on site. You go through that speech again. You introduce everybody on the job site. The guys are out there. They’re trying to make sure they’re being remembered like, oh, hey, I’m Joey. Oh, hey, I’m Gonzalo. Oh, hey, I’m Victor. You know, if you need anything, let me know because they know they get listed they get rewarded and the review. So now they’re like, not competing but on low key, they’re like, remember me? Uh I’m, I’m a silly one. I’m the funny one or whatever you want to be.

And so those guys are making a sale too and then once they get done with that R PM has to go back and finish off the sell. So the client experience starts, you know, with the phone call and then just kind of goes all the way around and at the whole time, you know, we’re trying to make sure that these people understand that we’re creating a relationship. I know I talked about, not that anything is about a sale. Um And that’s kind of counterproductive what I just or counter to what I just said.

But at the same time, you know, you kind of are selling them and they made a good decision. You, you, I don’t want them to have buyer’s remorse or anything like that. Exactly. You know, there’s been plenty of times I, I’ve spent money, you know, I’m like, fuck man. Why did I spend that much? And damn it, this was a bad decision. Yeah. And there’s nothing more agonizing in the pit of your stomach when you realize you overspend, but there’s nothing better when you look to your wife, your spouse, your friend, you’re like, oh, this was worth the money, you know, you’re like, I didn’t want to spend it.

Then you look. Oh, this was worth the money. You know, you spend crazy money in a hotel in Cancun. You’re like, oh, man, it’s got good reviews you get there, there’s a water park, five star, five star service. 50003 different restaurants constantly. You’re like, oh, this is worth the money. Well, that’s what we want, we want people to go. Oh, this is worth the money because we aren’t by close, even near the cheapest painting company in town. We’re usually the most expensive and, and, and that’s something we all pride.

You know, we’re, we’re giving something that nobody else is doing in town as far as I understand. Now, there are a lot of great penny companies in this town that do a great job. But if you ask me and I could be biased in this, I like to think we do a little better. What’s your average ticket value? Oh, that’s a hard question to ask. I’m assuming painting on this question right here. So I 55 5800 somewhere around there. Do you remember the worst person to ask about this?

Because I look at, I look at the numbers literally every Wednesday, I look at them. If they trend the right direction, I’m not too big concerned. I look at percentages. Ok, we’re up 5% we’re up 10% great. Ok. And then, and then I move on, I don’t dwell on it when they drop. I go. How much are we down by 2% 3% 5% 15%. Then I started looking at it but I don’t even, then I don’t look at the number, I look at the percentage. So that’s what’s more, that means more to me.

So I think our average ticket is around 55 $103. I could be 100% wrong. But that’s what, that’s what I feel like the checks I get all the time looks like right now. How big of a difference does there exist between you and, and maybe like the average painter or maybe the guy who’s trying to lowball you because that’s obviously a big thing, right? A lot of painting companies, they think like, man, there’s no way and they get into this race to the bottom. But I think it’s really important to show somebody like you who’s dealing with the same problems, you know, you have the same obstacle but you’re not succumbing to it.

I would probably say we’re anywhere between 25 and 35% more than the next person that’s significant. And yeah, and so it’s, it’s significant. Yeah. And so, and we have this conversation all the time with, you know, clients and they go, well, why are you so much? Uh you know what? I maybe they mismeasure and then, but then I ask, I really, I ask him, I’m like, let me ask a really serious question. Why are they so cheap? Yeah. And then we go into the conversation, I’m like, well, you know, and then we start diving in.

Well, let me explain a little about our staff. Let me explain a little about us and, and all cura your, our culture and then I explained to them like, well, all our guys are, you know, decked out uniforms, that’s not cheap. It’s not free. But would you rather have a guy sitting here working in sweats and a tank top with a cigarette hanging in his mouth or would you rather the guy show up in a uniform? You know, the shirt tucked in the belt matches the boots and the hat.

The shirts are cleaned. Well, I’d rather have that. Right. Well, there’s a reason why we’re earning your trust but if a guy shows up with bad present tax and he smoking a ladder, you really want that around your kids. You know, you got two daughters here, you got your grandkids that they stay here all summer long. Do you want that around? No, I don’t want them wrong. Right. But if I gotta show up clean, pre looking, clean and ready to go, is that worth something to you?

And they go? Yeah. Well, this is how we, this is how we, number one get that help and how we keep it here and this is why we charge what we charge. So the better question is why are they so cheap or how are they so cheap. Yeah, I like, I like handling objections by turning them around like that. But one of the one point is some people would be fine with the guy in the sweatpants and the cigarette, right? If they, if you were achiever. So how do you guys disqualify or, or like, how do you qualify your prospects?

Well, there’s a series of things we’re doing before we even get to that part. But we, one of the questions we ask is like, what’s we go? We have, um, I think there’s six questions we ask and then out of those six questions that gauges in one where they’re at is they have stamp, you know, if I see somebody, they’re most, they’re mo they’re not worried about a reputation, they’re not worried about the material, they’re not worried about ma, uh, the timeline, they’re not worried about, you know, um, uh, staff, their biggest concern is how much, how much that’s not our, that’s not our client.

We go through, you know, we go through the presentation, we still go through the presentation, we look at it and then we, uh, you know, present a price and nine times out of 215. And we already know we’re not gonna be the good fit for, you know, probably 220 times out of 2100. We already know it’s not gonna be a good fit for them. We’re looking for people. What matters most is the reputation, the material we use and the people that we send to their house, you know, those are the three things that matter the most.

And for the most part, when we’ve been keeping that data, we’ve been tracking that data for the last six months and we found that our client cares more about reputation material we use and, um, staff that the crew that we bring to their house, they’re not, you’re not typically concerned with with um price comes in fourth or timeline comes in um fifth. How do you know that? How do you know like the top five things they care about? We have six questions we ask and we ask him those questions direct and we have the scale, you know what’s more important to you, you know, on a scale from 21000 to 21000, you know, his reputation, where would that land?

And they go five being the most important thing. Ok, cool. And so we ask all these questions and then we take that data and then we look at it and go ok. These are the most important things to our client. The people that aren’t booking that aren’t being their biggest thing they worry about is price. Yeah, material and price. I want a good paint product. I want the the best stuff but I want the cheapest price. I’m not saying we don’t close those people because we do.

But typically those people don’t end up for the majority being in our clientele. And so they don’t really care about the experience, the person that worries about who I’m sending to their house, you know, what material we’re using and our reputation, they’re not super concerned with price, you know, so that’s the client I’m looking for, they’re looking for experience and that’s what we deliver. You know, this, you know, that’s, this is how it is. The perfect example is my wife used to drive a Lexus and the Lexus.

Um, you know, you go get your car repaired, you drive up the door, shoot open, you pull in, someone runs out to you within a minute, full five star service. The car wasn’t big enough. So we ended up buying a wagoner. If you go into that service department, it’s a nightmare. Cars are stacked up, you gotta run and find somebody, you gotta hope they got the stuff, you gotta hope they’re ready. That’s not, that’s not the service we like. So our next car is gonna be back and be driving a Lexus and I’m not trying to pat myself on the back or a showboat in it, but I’m a person that wants to pay for service.

You know, that means more to me than the price. I think the, um, I think so often we just think that price is, is the motivating factor. And I actually was, uh attending a marketing mastermind recently and the guy brought up an interesting point. He said when he, when he pulls up Amazon and he’s shopping, he’s looking at the reviews, like, if you know what you want a lot of times on Amazon, it’s gonna be, might even be the same product, different price, right? Sometimes you, you get stuff from China sometimes made in the US. You don’t even know if it’s the same thing being sold by 25000 different brands, um, just white labeled, but he’s gonna look at the reviews and like how many reviews and, and what star reviews and then he’s gonna look at the price and if you think about that like pro that’s probably what pretty much everyone does.

We don’t go on Amazon like I wanna buy, I don’t know, I just bought a couple of power power, you know, extension cords, right? Like I’m gonna go on Amazon, I’m gonna buy, I wanna buy a long extension cord and then I’m just gonna look for the lowest price and I’m just gonna buy, you know, the other stuff who gives a crap like this one’s the lowest price we’ll buy, it’s probably gonna burn my house down, you know, it probably won’t work but I’ll just get the lowest.

No, I’m gonna first look at the uh at the reviews, make sure this is a suitable like great product, it’s gonna meet my needs and then I’ll see, is it reasonable? So the price kind of comes in? Can I justify it or is this out of control. Oh, it’s not that bad. Ok, then that sounds good. And it sounds like that’s what the approach that your clients are really taking when they’re assessing whether or not they want to move forward with you, the people that are moving forward to us, that’s absolutely what they’re doing.

You know, if they can sit here and talk about, um, hey, I’m really concerned who you’re sending my house. You know, we wanna make sure you’re not sending anybody, anybody shifting. You know, they wanna make sure the product that we’re using, they wanna know our reputation is good, you know, and then the way we talk about that is, is like, well, have you gone on and seen our reviews online? And, you know, it’s, it’s important to get the reviews in and like we were just talking about like, you know, I wanna be, you know, over 0003 reviews a month.

Um, there’s a bunch of reasons for that, but one of the good reasons is, is that if you pull up a painting company and you look at the reviews and they got five star reviews and you see 2000 star reviews, you’re like, this is impressive and then you click on it, but you haven’t seen a, a review come in in six months, three months, even 25 days, you’re like, hm, are these real, are these bought? Is these, these guys shut down? What happened? Did they change owners? What happened so for us, a part of that is like, you know, educating people, like, ok, yeah, I’m gonna, have you gone on there and seen that?

You know, we get some people and it’s always funny for us is, um, yeah, we saw your reviews. Ok. And then you saw the word at 26000 and they, oh, yeah. Yeah. You know, and what do you think of the reviews? Well, I read the one that I read the one star review. Yeah, I always gotta read those. Which one did you read? And they say, uh, the lady with the deck, uh, that’s my favorite one. What happened? Oh, you know what the review states, uh, I, I loved will.

He was nice. He was very charming and it looked great. But for the price they wanted, I got a deck built and they go, what does that mean? I said, well, they had a deck do instead of getting the CTS done. What is that? I don’t get it. I said, yeah, for the price of a car, I got a bicycle. I don’t know, one’s got nothing to do with the other and they go, what the hell are they talking about? Right. And so, you know, um, we just got a one star review last week so we call the team in to investigate.

Hey, what’s going on? What happened here? We pull up the paperwork, we look at it like I love this. Said he was gonna give us a good radio. At least he gave a review. A lot of people aren’t, aren’t given the reviews. Well, you said, right? I don’t know, Jenny. Oh, so we look at this and we figure it out. His wife gave us the one star review. This was a referral from somebody and I call this person up. I go, hey man, uh actually I saw this person in the gym.

I go, did he say anything like, you know, he once started this, what are you talking about? Well, he sent us pictures in the group text. How great it was. How you guys went above and beyond. We come to find out. He sent us the job down the street about six houses. The guy signs with us calls us up. Hey man, I talked to A B and C. He said you guys were great that I need to hurry up and sign the contract. So here’s my deposit check.

So he tells everybody and his coworkers look how great we were. He tells everybody, he tells his neighbors to hire us and we get a one star review. Come to find out they had a cabinet job scheduled us and they, they canceled it. An office does what the office does and says, hey, you know, you know, your refund is your, your deposit is non refundable. You know, you booked us out four months and now we have to shuffle to do all the work that blah, blah, blah.

And, uh, he goes, ok, the wife wasn’t happy. So the wife once stars us, sloppy loud music, had to tell him to turn it down. What am I gonna say to that? Not everything is gonna be perfect is the point of that, you know, and that client experience was perfect. You know, he told everybody at work, you know, he’s a, he’s a sergeant of the sheriff’s department told everybody at work how much he loved it. Sent pictures out to. Everybody referred us to the neighbor, the neighbor signed with us for $12,000.

These aren’t small paint jobs, but then we get a one star from the west because we didn’t refund their cabinet, which is a different division on the painting division. So then now we’re stuck with this one star review. So we’re not perfect. And how do you, how do you combat that? Do I call her up and go here? I’ll give you your money back if you take it down, do I call him up and go? Hey man, you know, I thought everything was great, you know, was there something going on?

We did everything right? They signed the contract and they understood the refund was non-refundable and still gives one star. So not everything you’re gonna do is gonna be perfect. Even if you give them the c the perfect customer experience. Perfect client experience. Sometimes it just doesn’t work out for you. What’s your, uh what did you guys, do? You guys just respond to the review or? It’s, it’s one of the very few we just let sit because I really didn’t have anything to say. Um, what was I gonna say?

Hey, your husband loved the job and told everybody at work and then told your neighbor to hire us, take down this review. Some people, am I gonna call her up and go? Hey, I know this wasn’t a sloppy paint top because you guys, your husband referred us to another person. Sorry about the loud music. When we go in to talk about people, we warn them like our guys play the music loud. If it’s too loud, let them know like, but they like it loud and if that’s the worst, the thing that happens, I’m like, we’re ok with it.

I like loud music. It’s hot outside. It’s 100 and five degrees outside. You know, they wanna hear music around the house. I’m like, and most people are like, oh, they don’t care. No problem. Big deal. They can deal with it but she found something to complain about. So like I said, just because it was a good experience doesn’t mean we’re always gonna win. Yeah. And I think what’s important here is like, you, you got that one star, you didn’t do anything wrong. That’s part of the game of business, kind of part of the game of life.

But he, but it’s not really gonna impact you that much because of the frequency and cadence of the five star reviews that you’re getting. And that’s what people can proactively control. You can’t, can’t make someone not give you a one this came out last week. But look, three more came in positive with the same crew. They look at it a week later. 02 or three more came in. OK. This is this OK? This person and then it says sloppy loud music, you know, it, it flagged me first because I’m sloppy and loud music.

Typically people when they complain or give you a bad review, they’re very specific. Paint drops everywhere, you know, left tools everywhere, you know uh smashed my, my plants, you know, they, they’re very specific just to say sloppy and loud music. I was like, that doesn’t seem right. And that’s when we start investigating, I’m like pull up all this data. Let me see here. I wanna dig deeper on cause normally um our, our gal that uh monitors all that would have said, hey, I’m sorry about that. Can I have, you know, we’ll call you and then we go through but something just hit me right?

And then when we did our search on it, uh there was nothing else I can do. Uh What am I gonna call her? Hey, sorry, sorry. You’re mad that we didn’t refund your $500. Yeah, I think the um best defense is good offense. In this case, the offense will be getting the five star reviews right? And then people are, are oftentimes it’s unfortunate, but if they feel negative about something, they’re far more inclined to actually give you the review than if they feel positive about something. But you have kind of that, that entropy sort of working against you.

So you’re really easier to get a one star review than a five star review, that’s for sure. And then if you actually sit down and do the math and let’s say you’re, you’re like you want to be a 47, right? Or 53 minimum and you actually sit down and do the math. Uh you need a lot of five star reviews to combat 11 star review. Yeah, it really gets you. That’s just the way the math shakes out. Um So get good at getting reviews. The another thing too is you mentioned like I if they, if they look up your uh profile and they say, OK, you have 200 reviews but you haven’t seen one in one month or three months or six months, people inherently distrust reviews older than six months, there’s actually been research on this.

So it’s within the last six months, it, it matters way more to them. And then on top of that Google, who you’re also trying to please with these reviews, the frequency, the cadence and the recency of your views matter. So you have to, if you don’t just go on some binge, you know, maybe they bought them, maybe they didn’t, but even if they didn’t buy them, they’re like, hey, we’re gonna get to 200. We’ve been operating for 15 years, 20 years, we’re gonna call up everybody. We’re gonna do a big blitz over these couple of months.

Well, don’t not do it, try to get the reviews. But if you just do it and you think, well, now we have all these reviews so we’re gonna rank and everyone’s gonna know we’re the best and, but you don’t build it in your culture, it’s not gonna work that way either for Google or for people. Yeah, I agree 100%. And that’s like what we’ve been talking about this whole time. You know, I have, uh, it’s, it’s like, you know, it starts with the phones and it goes through there and it becomes easier, you know, it, the, the journey of 1000 miles starts with a single step and the journey gets closer with everybody in your team getting you there.

And the ultimate goal after you get everything is to get that next review. So their cousins or their, their aunts or, you know, can see it, you know, I, I really, you know, I understand how powerful reviews are but, and then this is the business and I need to understand and I need to, I need to bring those in but I didn’t start understanding the full capacity of one. It’s about probably about a year or so ago. I know less than a year ago. You know, I was like, why don’t I do reviews?

I always get good service where I’m at. So I started posting it and then before I knew it, my reviews were getting 1000 people viewing him 5000 people, 10,000 people. And I’m like, man, this is insane. And I think to myself, it’s silly, you know, I, I got a picture of me in one Google review with three friends with our feet of all getting ivs because we were completely trashed the night before, you know, but that’s got 5, 6000 used to it. Like that’s how powerful that is. You know, me sitting there like a, you know, like a patient with an IV in my arm because I was trashed the night before I need to get, I need to get back to normal again so I can do it again that night.

So yeah, but that’s how powerful these reviews are and, and, and, and it’s like making your staff understand, you know, and your crew and your team, whatever you wanna call them, you know, it’s critical, they understand. It’s probably, and it’s probably the most expect most important single most important thing in the client experiences at the end that you get a review because it tells you, you guys did do a good job, you guys executed the job and that you were gonna do for these people and then that they appreciate it that much, you know.

So, you know, we have a speech on how to get those and, you know, there’s a script for everything, basically, basically around here for, you know, for what we do. But if you don’t have one to write it down and if you don’t have a customer experience, I’d say write it down, write down what you like to go, you know, when you like to go to a restaurant that you like to be served, write it down because once you put that in paper and it becomes reality, you can start executing with your team regardless if it’s a sub model or WT model.

Yeah, that’s powerful man. Write down what you would want and then, and then actually write down sort of the, the like this is what I would want. I’d want to be communicated with. I’d want to know that they’re gonna come back. If there’s a problem, I’d, I’d want to feel safe. These are all things I would want. And then how are you gonna actually build that in? You know, almost like a, like a chronological diagram of your, your buyer’s life cycle. How do you do steps? That’s how we had to do it.

Uh Will, man, this has been been epic. Is there anything you want to add before we wrap up the second episode. Uh Same thing as last time. If anybody’s got questions, please reach out. You know, I’m more than willing to share whatever is in my head, you know, you know, like someone taught it to me and I’m willing to share it with anybody out there, you know. Um And if you got information that you can share, don’t be selfish with it, man. Appreciate you will. Thank you brother, buddy.

If you want to learn more about the topics we discussed in this podcast and how you can use them to grow your painting business, visit PainterMarketingPros.com/Podcast for free training, as well as the ability to schedule a personalized strategy session for your painting company.

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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.