Hiring a Painting Estimator? You Need a Prospector, Not an Order-Taker

First, just a quick heads-up: this post is writ­ten pri­mar­i­ly for the paint­ing con­trac­tor audi­ence. If you run anoth­er type of home improve­ment busi­ness, I do hope you’ll glean a few ben­e­fits as well. 

“Paint­ing esti­ma­tor” is one of the hard­est posi­tions to fill. Don’t take my word for it: almost all of my clients have echoed the same sen­ti­ment over the years.

Think about it — you prob­a­bly start­ed your paint­ing busi­ness with you being the chief esti­ma­tor. You can go out and sell $1 to 2MM while run­ning your busi­ness too. Then you final­ly find an esti­ma­tor and won­der why he or she can­not close $500 – 750k a year? If you can do it and run the whole com­pa­ny, why can’t some­one else do it? 

It’s prob­a­bly because you’re hir­ing order-tak­ers, not prospectors. 

What’s the Difference?

When you go to a sit-down restau­rant, you review the menu and wait for the serv­er to come by, take down your order, and serve you what you asked for. 

It isn’t rock­et science. 

So, what makes some servers excep­tion­al and mem­o­rable? Typ­i­cal­ly, it’s those who don’t even need to write down the order, pro­vide an expe­ri­ence, and are engag­ing. Maybe they offer a sug­ges­tion or two, guid­ing you toward the best deci­sion pos­si­ble. You’ve prob­a­bly expe­ri­enced a few of those! 

It’s sim­i­lar in the paint­ing world. I have seen both order-tak­ers and prospec­tors sell paint jobs, but it’s the prospec­tors that win in the end. 

A prospec­tor, also known as a hunter, pro­vides the mem­o­rable expe­ri­ence and OWNS the process. They don’t real­ly need a lot of direc­tion, either. The mar­keters can share the plan and a few ideas, then the prospec­tor will get to work with­out rely­ing 100% on the mar­ket­ing team to pro­vide all the leads. No excus­es, no finger-pointing.

Let’s talk about Jon­dec Paint­ing, a res­i­den­tial paint­ing com­pa­ny in the sub­urbs of Chica­go. I’ve been work­ing with their team for about a year now and have had the priv­i­lege of work­ing along­side one of their esti­ma­tors, Chris Piatt, since day one. I am so impressed with this guy. He is any­thing but an order-tak­er. He is a learn­er. He will not set­tle with just what we, the mar­ket­ing team, will hand over to him. I am able to give him ideas on ways to prospect and grow leads through­out the year on top of the leads we already pro­vide. Chris lis­tens, asks ques­tions, and then gets to work. When we get togeth­er dur­ing our month­ly calls, I know that he did not just sit back and wait for the phone to ring. He hunt­ed! He prospect­ed! He got his hands dirty. It makes all the difference.

Your paint­ing com­pa­ny will be more suc­cess­ful when your sales team is con­nect­ed with your mar­ket­ing team and they play nice­ly togeth­er. Chris is a good exam­ple of this once again. He comes to our meet­ings with ques­tions and is always will­ing to learn and be teachable. 

What’s the Takeaway?

Hire peo­ple who want to learn. 

Look for a sales­per­son who does­n’t have 20+ years expe­ri­ence, but one who learns and will nev­er be found look­ing to you for leads. Don’t get me wrong — I am in the busi­ness of help­ing com­pa­nies get more leads! Yet there should always be a good bal­ance between self-gen­er­at­ed leads and new leads. If a hun­gry prospec­tor has a good sys­tem in place to not only sell jobs but knows how to nur­ture those prospects/​customers time and time again, your busi­ness will thrive. 

You as the busi­ness own­er then need to make sure you take care of peo­ple like this. Make sure you give him or her the tools need­ed to suc­ceed. Will you have open lines of com­mu­ni­ca­tion? Do you have ways to reward a key employ­ee? Will this per­son feel val­ued in your organization? 

5 Tips for Hir­ing a Prospector

A deep dive into hir­ing prac­tices is a top­ic for anoth­er day. In the mean­time, here are a few quick tips to keep in mind. 

1. Start in-house. Some of the best hires I’ve seen are made right with­in the com­pa­ny, espe­cial­ly from the paint­ing team. You might have a hun­gry prospec­tor right under your nose, just wait­ing for the oppor­tu­ni­ty to shine.
2. Expe­ri­ence isn’t always essen­tial! You can do a lot of train­ing and pro­fes­sion­al devel­op­ment to grow some­one who has the raw skills and dri­ve. Hir­ing some­one who already has their own process and may be unteach­able is a seri­ous gamble. 
3. Hone your inter­view­ing skills. Take a close look at the deep­er ques­tions, pro­vid­ing insight into who this per­son is and what they real­ly offer. Resumes can be only skin deep. Ask specif­i­cal­ly about how they would han­dle cer­tain sit­u­a­tions, too. 
4. On the oth­er side of the coin, there can be peo­ple who have a wealth of man­age­ment expe­ri­ence, but are ready to get ​“back in the game.” Maybe some­one who grew their own com­pa­ny and is tired of the day-to-day grind, and would pre­fer to rub shoul­ders with peo­ple and get out from behind the desk. Again, it comes back to ask­ing the right ques­tions and clear­ly out­lin­ing exact­ly what the role involves (and what it doesn’t).
5. Reach out to your own con­tacts. Putting out an email to your per­son­al list can be worth­while, let­ting peo­ple know who you’re look­ing for, and ask­ing if it lines up with some­one they know. You could be offer­ing just what some­one is des­per­ate­ly look­ing for. 

Hang in there! Hir­ing can be stress­ful, but it also can be extreme­ly fruit­ful. Keep hunt­ing for your hunter!