Painting Contractors Boosting Sales While Reducing Stress

There are a lot of “husband/wife” teams in painting. Often, they are unsuccessful because they do not have a proven system to use that let’s them “divide and conquer” like they need should. Tonya and Ray are a shining example of two owners who are on their way to the top of the painting profession. Here’s a path that helped guide their way….

Why do you need painting business coaching? Chances are you don’t even realize what you are doing wrong. When dealing with a business coach you get an outside perspective of the good, bad and ugly business methods being utilized within your company.

Meet Ray and Tonya.

One of the most neglected areas in the painting business is past customers. So many contractors do their work and that’s it. Ray and Tonya were showed how customer activation can corral those past customers into more business netting them an extra $84,000.

Hi, I’m Ray, and I’m Tonya with R&J Painting.

We went to a APPC Summit in Chattanooga, Tennessee in 2018 on a whim. We had gross revenues, at that time, at the end of the year in 2018 of $503,0000, yes. We inevitably joined right away. We fell in love with the program and the companionship of other painting contractors that we’ve started talking to while we were there.

And then, in 2019, we went to $818,000 in gross revenue. A huge increase for us in one year. We had a closing rate increase from 31% to 44%. And the last spring customer reactivation program, netted us $84,000 in extra revenue, which would not have been possible without Brandon Lewis and his tools, and the APPC’s program that they offered, gave us all the tools. All we needed to do was activate it. And that was revenue and we were just throwing away. We didn’t even know it was there until we joined APPC.

Yeah. And before that we didn’t do any customer reactivation. So, imagine not doing any customer reactivation, meaning reactivating your old customers that you’ve already done reaching out to them and talking to them. And going from zero to 84,000 and that’s increased in gross sales at the end of the year, so that was fantastic.

In fact, we never kept up with our current client list. Before APPC our customer list was minimal, we didn’t have very good a CRM system, we didn’t keep in touch with them. We may have got a couple of 10,000, 20,000, if lucky in a year by just running into people around town that used to hire Ray. So, thank you APPC.

Yeah, and before joining the APPC I was very stressed out, to make that $503,000, I was extremely stressed out. I was wearing all these different types of hats. I was in sales, I was a painter, I was a crew leader, so to speak, everything. And everything that Tonya didn’t do, I was doing. And that didn’t work out too well.

Since joining the APPC, it was stated that I need to get out of the painting, I need to get out of the field. And I’d heard this before. And when I decided to get out of the field and actually concentrate on the business I do believe that because one of the reasons that we went from 503 to 818 with Brandon’s systems was for me getting out of the field and implementing those systems. I know that for a fact.

There’s a 60 minute phone call that we did with Brandon initially, it was a great call. I thought I had everything together and, after talking with Brandon, realized that I don’t. And he had a lot of good advice, but that 60 minute phone call is worth its weight in gold as far as explaining everything that we were doing. And then, he could figure out what we need help with.

Which was a lot.

Yeah, which was a lot. And before going into this, I didn’t think we needed a lot of help, maybe just a tweaking here and there. And since implementing his systems it has worked out very, very well.

And we’re still working on the systems.

Yeah, correct. So, if anybody is nervous, or apprehensive about going on that 60 minute phone call with Brandon, don’t be, it’s okay. It’s good to humble yourself and let somebody else know what’s going on in your business, the ins and outs of it for, maybe, some constructive criticism. And it’s paid off. It’s paid off very well. And if it wasn’t for this coronavirus, we would, probably, be having a record year.

And we’d have haircuts.

And we’d have a haircut. My hair is getting quite long.

So, thank you APPC for everything you do. And Brandon, we look forward to hearing you on our monthly Q&As as well.

Yeah. And thank you Brandon, I do appreciate it. It’s funny, I was always looking for a business mentor, and I owned a painting business. And then Tonya came across you and you were a painting business mentor and it’s fantastic.

And a former painting business owner.

Yeah, right. So, you know what’s going on, and how to fix it. And I can’t thank you enough.

Thank you. Bye Brandon. Say Bye, Ray.

Bye. Bye …