As painters, we’ve all made mistakes. My goal is to convince you to change just 1 or 2 of these habits and your painting business will drastically improve.
You may feel trapped in a cycle of bad production, ineffective sales, or bad employees, but I guarantee you almost every one of your problems boils down to the list below.
Avoid These 6 Painting Business Mistakes:
First Mistake: Focusing on painting instead of growing your painting business.
If you are busy painting all day, when do you have time to market or grow your business? You DON’T have time. That’s why it’s important to get off the job site and put your time where it matters; selling & marketing your business.
When you paint all day, you’re worth roughly $25-30 per hour. Instead, pay a painter $25-30 an hour to replace yourself. Spending your time securing more jobs is worth exponentially more.
Let’s say instead of painting all day, you went out and did 5 new bids and sold 3 of them. Your value will be so much higher from the profits you’ll make on those 3 new jobs.
Or, instead of painting all day you hired a door-to-door canvasser who got you 15 new leads that day.
Basically, your value per hour is forever capped if you’re busy painting. The common rebuttal I hear from this is: “I HAVE to be on the job site painting because no one does their job and if I leave, everything goes to hell.” Which leads us to the second mistake…
Second Mistake: Not spending the time to find good people.
If you talk with a painting contractor long enough, you’ll inevitably hear; “There’s no good help out there.” It’s easy to hide behind this excuse, but it’s not true. There are plenty of reliable painters out there, business owners just don’t take the time to find them. It takes TIME to find good people, time you wouldn’t have if you were busy painting.
It’s really important to spend time finding the right people, like the old adage; ‘Hire slow, fire fast.’ Then you have to manage your crews well once you find them. This means paying people on time, setting good expectations and keeping steady workflow.
If you do what you say and treat people respectfully, people will work with you forever.
Third Mistake: Going to the paint store multiple times.
Painting contractors can waist a lot of time at the paint store. They can make multiple trips in the same day! You can easily burn half a day at the paint store. And if you’ve ever been to a paint store you know how slow the service can be.
Learn to delegate paint-store visits. Have your crew go and pick up anything they need; paint, materials etc. Better yet, have the paint store deliver materials to you. Especially, if the service is free.
Fourth Mistake: Not properly tracking my marketing efforts.
Many painting contractors sign up for different lead sources and don’t track the effectiveness of each one. This opens the door to misjudging certain marketing avenues. You need to track the marketing methods that work best and invest all your money there.
Fifth Mistake: Doing small jobs just for the money.
Small jobs can cause a lot of problems. They are usually the jobs that you say to yourself, “Whatever, it’s a quick $500 and it’s pretty easy”. But these are the jobs that can cause all the headaches and eat up all your time.
Sometimes customers who have the smallest job (and smallest budget) are the pickiest.
Spend your time acquiring large profitable jobs.
Sixth Mistake: Charging too little.
Many painting contractors feel pressure to lower their price in order to win the job. Don’t compete with low price leaders.
Homeowners usually don’t pick the low bid. In fact, they are often scared by the low bid. People obviously want to pay as little money as possible, but they also don’t want a hack-job.
Instead, get better at selling value and quality. Communicate the value of doing business with you.
Respect your price (and yourself) and charge what’s fair. Charge something that delivers a quality job to the homeowner, but also leaves you something for your effort.
Painting Business Mistakes: Bottom Line
Transitioning your painting business away from these mistakes can be difficult, but I guarantee you it’s worth it. You’ll look back at your business and say, ‘How did I even operate that way?’ Once you start doing things more efficiently and reaping the benefits, you’ll be unable to return to your old ways of running things. Try eliminating just 2 of these mistakes and see what happens!
So Amigos, do you recommend any other mistakes painting contractors should avoid? Comment below…
Also, check out Paint Amigo’s book recommendation on leadership below (Amazon affiliate links)…
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P.S. Download my free eBook The Profitable Painter. Click here.
