Are You Treating Your Painting Clients Like a “Human ATM”? 🏧

When you communicate with your clients, are you treating them like a human ATM machine, but you don’t even know it?

Let me explain. Do you ever have a friend or a family member, and I know I do. I can think of the individual right now that the only time you ever hear from them is when they need money, when they need help, when they need something, move, when they need something. Now, if you need something, they they’re inconveniently uh not around, can’t be can’t be bothered to help.

What I see in the painting industry as it relates to the people that have fed your family, the people that have provided your income, namely your customers, everything you have was from a client. Every check, every credit card swipe, it is the source of your income.

And as you get ready to sell your painting business, it’s the primary source of your equity. And I see two mistakes that people make. The first is far more common, and that is we don’t even communicate with our clients. We’ve got this massive list of past clients and unconverted leads. We can’t be bothered to send a newsletter by mail or email. We don’t run reactivation campaigns, no text.

We’re always chasing new clients, which are the smallest jobs at the greatest expense and the lowest close rates. That’s 90 some odd percent of people in the painting industry, probably more. The other thing is that people realize, duh, I’ve got to contact my clients if I want them to repeat and refer. Every business on planet Earth does it. every hotel chain, every restaurant, every retail outlet that has their act together, every political campaign, every online purchase.

That’s why your email and your text message box is full of folks saying buy again. But you’ve got to be careful with your clients and how you communicate with them. If every time you communicate with your clients, it’s buy this, here’s a discount, here’s a new stain, the five different colors that make you feel happier, the color of the year, look at our painting project, give us money, give us money, give us money. That’s treating your clients like a human ATM machine.

How do you feel when people do that to you? Probably not positive, probably not good. So, when you communicate with your clients, there is a time to take from the list, typically heading into the spring with a genuine multi-step, multi-medium reactivation campaign to really shake the bushes and say, “Hey, spring’s starting. If you want to get on our schedule, please buy now. Please book now. Please schedule now.”

We give priority to our past clients and people who have requested estimates previously and maybe again headed into the winter. However, if you start communicating with them monthly through some kind of automated robot belching service, there’s a couple that spring to mind I won’t mention where it’s discounts and giveaways and hey, we need work. And if that is all your clients ever hear from you and you fail to make a personal connection with your content mix of personal communication, you would think it’s irrelevant, but it absolutely isn’t. If you don’t have a brand, there’s hardly any branding in painting.

It’s all about personal relationships. The owner and the staff is far more the brand than the logo and the company.

You’re not Gucci.

You’re not Lexus.

People don’t talk about the brand of painter they use at a cocktail party because nobody cares. When people ask for a referral, they don’t ask for what brand of painter do you use. No, I just got asked for a referral today before we started recording these videos for a painter and it was who do you know? Not what brand. Have you ever been asked for a referral for a brand? Never in your life, but you’ve been asked for a referral for a painter.

So, the connection between the painter, the owner, the estimator, the staff has to be personal. You need to give them helpful information. Home improvement tips, how to live their life better, things that are funny, that are engaging, that are entertaining.

If you look at the restaurants, you go to doctor’s offices, when you check out at the uh grocery store, and you see the magazines, you see the book section, is there anything there about painting?

No, because nobody cares about it. Is there do you spend any of your free time reading about painting? Probably not. You spend your entertainment time doing something else. And you own a painting business. If you’re not interested in paint, imagine how uninterested your clients are. And so you’ve got to get the content mix right in your outbound correspondence. If you don’t and you treat them like a human ATM machine, what you will find is people tune out, turn off, unsubscribe, block you, and now the communication channel that you could have open by giving to the list closes up because all you ever try to do is take from the list.

So, do not treat your clients like human ATM machines as you communicate with them because it will cost you more money in the long run than you can ever imagine. If you want to communicate with your clients, you know, it should be done, but you’re just not doing it. I’d love to teach you how.

I’ve been publishing newsletters and newspapers and communicating with large lists of people for 20 plus years. It’s something I’m an expert in and I would love to pass that expertise along to you and provide you the tools, resources, and even done for you services to communicate with your clients properly.

Until next time, I’m Brandon Lewis.

Email me brandon@paintersacademy.com. Call the office 4238000520 or visit our website paintersacademy.com. And if this has helped you, please like and subscribe.

I’ll see you next time.