House Painting Jobs
Friday, January 28th, 2011
When I first started painting back in the late 80s, I painted just about everything, from apartments to new homes. After a few short years, I found myself getting more painting jobs from homeowners. What I liked about these painting jobs was I did not have to wait to get paid. I did the paint job and was paid as soon as it was completed. No waiting 30 to 60 days, or in some cases with some accounts wondering when I was ever going to get paid.
One of the first things I invested in back then was painting yard signs. But it was not until 15 years later that my signs made full impact!
A few years back, I noticed one of those “take-one” boxes on a realtor’s sign and it hit me: I could do the same thing on my yard signs. So I went to my local box store and bought some take-one boxes, attached a few to my yard signs and to this day, I ask myself, “Why didn’t I think of this sooner?”
It’s not so much about the take-one boxes as it is about what you place inside the box. Just think of the possibilities. For the most part, people are shy and for whatever reason may not approach us while we are painting. But they will take our painting flyer or postcard from the take-one box, and they will speak to their neighbor about the paint job we did.
This really works well if you want to do more painting jobs in a particular neighborhood. But if you want to make a bigger impact, you need to include the following:
Place door hangers on the homes around the home you are already working on. Between the painting yard sign, the take-one boxes, and the door hangers, you will begin to get a steady flow of painting jobs in that neighborhood. But keep this in mind: A door hanger and or post card is only as good as what you place on them. Among these things you need to place on them are some references, your website address so they can get more information about you, and the kicker, “your painting special.” This painting special has to have a strong call to action or it will not be as successful as it could be.
A good painting special is designed to get you through the door in order to give an estimate on everything that needs to be painted including both the interior and exterior of the home as well as the garage and all surrounding structures such as play houses, fences and storage sheds. A $99 painting special should net you four or five; up to 30 times that amount and even more if you know how to sell well.
Now that you’re giving more painting estimates, you need to lock down the painting jobs, and you need to pull ahead of all the other painting companies that may be giving a bid on the same home. You need to e-mail your written estimate as an attachment. This gives you an advantage over your competition because after you e-mail the painting estimate, you get to call them back to make sure they received it. They will be impressed because you e-mailed so fast, plus you included links to the painting products you discussed along with a well-written painting guarantee. You also gave a link to your painting website and another link to your painting references page. Your path to a steady job flow includes doing these three things:
1. Place painting yard signs with take-one boxes in the neighborhoods you want to work in most
2. Distribute door hangers with a strong call to action around the homes you are already working on
3. E-mail the written estimate as an attachment with the proper links discussed above
If you do these three things well while giving your customers the best paint job they will ever get, you will be one of those painters in the paint store every day, come rain or shine.
Go here to find out more about how to get more residential painting jobs including how to start a free post card mailing campaign. http://housepaintingopportunity.com
Rich Horrell has 27 years experience advertising in the residential painting market.
