What Should You Do While the Phone Isn’t Ringing?

Many of the paint­ing con­trac­tors I work with have had to shut down oper­a­tions across the coun­try. It seems each day I hear of anoth­er client who has had to lay off employ­ees and go dark for a while.

Even in cer­tain cities where paint­ing is con­sid­ered ​“essen­tial” busi­ness, the phones have stopped ring­ing. The first half of March showed amaz­ing lead counts with our mar­ket­ing efforts, so we know the sud­den drop is 100% relat­ed to con­sumers hun­ker­ing down and wait­ing on paint­ing projects.

Until our gov­ern­ment and health offi­cials let the gen­er­al pub­lic light­en up a lit­tle on the lock­downs (flat­ten that curve!), my clients are won­der­ing what things they can do NOW to best pre­pare for when they are free to work again.

First, there are plen­ty of cre­ative ways you can keep pro­duc­tion run­ning, even if it’s just a mat­ter of effec­tive­ly com­mu­ni­cat­ing with clients. Check that out right here!

I’ve also been think­ing through all the pos­i­tive things that can hap­pen dur­ing this manda­to­ry shut­down. Here is a list that I am start­ing, and I’d love for you all to add to it. Share it with a con­trac­tor you know and let’s make the best use of our time to make our busi­ness­es bet­ter. I’m doing the same thing for my mar­ket­ing com­pa­ny, using this as an oppor­tu­ni­ty to clean up sys­tems and operations. 

7 Ways To Make the Most of a Qui­eter Time

#1: Orga­nize (and uti­lize!) Your Email List

Let’s get real: when things are busy it’s easy to let your com­pa­ny email list turn into a mess. Every­one gets thrown into the same hop­per, right? Now is the time to review your list, label con­tacts, see who opens most, the least, and nev­er. Clean up old con­tacts, cre­at­ing a lean­er, mean­er, more orga­nized list. Don’t for­get to update that CRM too!

Also, con­sid­er send­ing indi­vid­ual emails, calls, texts, or even let­ters to the top peo­ple who open up your emails the most.

#2: Learn How To Use Your CRM

You knew it was com­ing, right? Not to sound like a bro­ken record, but many of you have to admit that your CRM is like a junk draw­er. You toss a lead or con­tact into the sys­tem and close the file. 

This is a slow and time con­sum­ing project, but one of the most impor­tant things you can be work­ing on dur­ing this time. Your cus­tomer data is gold­en. The more you know about your cus­tomer the more you’ll know how best to com­mu­ni­cate and sell your services. 

If you have a well-orga­nized CRM, it will also make your busi­ness more mar­ketable to some­day sell, or more ready to pass on to a fam­i­ly mem­ber or employee. 

What should you focus on?

Go through and update things like: name, address, phone, email, type of work com­plet­ed, mar­ket­ing source, etc. You can even go a step fur­ther and start tag­ging Leads and Cus­tomers so you’ll build a bet­ter mar­ket­ing list! A tag is like a cat­e­go­ry. If you want to send a mail­er, for exam­ple, about exte­ri­or paint­ing ser­vices to all those who hired you for cab­i­net paint­ing, uti­lize the tag feature. 

Don’t have a good CRM? Check out Pipeline Deals or Zen­desk Sell (what I use).

#3: Review Your Vehi­cles and Yard Signs

What does the con­di­tion of your fleet say about your com­pa­ny? Wax on wax off, ensur­ing those vehi­cles look bet­ter than ever as they roll down the road. 

One of my first jobs when I worked at Chism Broth­ers Paint­ing was detail­ing the com­pa­ny vans each week. We had so many com­pli­ments from around town on how sharp our vehi­cles looked! 

While you’re at it, orga­nize your trucks and vans. It’s time to remove those 50 par­tial­ly-used rolls of tape, sweep out, and do a spring clean­ing. Are you as orga­nized as you could be? Maybe con­sid­er a bet­ter label­ing system? 

Make sure your vehi­cles are stocked with yard signs, too. One of the most com­mon things I hear from con­trac­tors when I ask them if they have a yard sign on a job site is, ​“I’m not sure. My guys are sup­posed to have it up. I’ll go check!” Yard signs are cru­cial mar­ket­ing pieces! 

If they are too busy, con­sid­er a redesign. My sug­ges­tion is to keep yard signs sim­ple and easy to read. Let con­sumers know what you do and pro­vide just ONE way to con­tact you: easy phone or web address. 

#4: Video Marketing:

“But I don’t have time to cre­ate videos!”

Guess what? Now you do! The first few might be ter­ri­ble, but you’ve got time to prac­tice, and you don’t need to pub­lish them or go live unless you want to.

Need some ideas for what to talk about?

• Get your guys who aren’t cur­rent­ly work­ing to share a paint­ing tip for a home­own­er. Maybe they are doing some paint­ing around their own prop­er­ty and can record their work. 
• Tell your sto­ry. A lot of you have a great sto­ry to tell, and now is the time to begin cap­tur­ing and shar­ing it. You can try edit­ing the videos your­self or look for some­one you can out­source the task to when rev­enue starts flow­ing again.
• You don’t have to use expen­sive equip­ment. Many of you can just use your mobile devices, an inex­pen­sive micro­phone, and so forth. If the weath­er is nice, record outdoors! 
• Some of you paint in your spray shop. This is a good time to start record­ing your process­es and show­cas­ing your craft. 
• If you real­ly aren’t set up to do any videos, then just make a list of the video mar­ket­ing you’ll be doing once things turn around. 
• I know a few con­trac­tors hav­ing suc­cess run­ning TV com­mer­cials this time of the year. There are more peo­ple sit­ting and watch­ing the TV or spend­ing time on their devices, and they aren’t in a hur­ry right now! If you’ve con­served cash, con­sid­er a few weeks of show­cas­ing a cer­tain service. 

#5: Social Media and Blogging:

• Face­book, Insta­gram, LinkedIn — these are hot right now. Most of the news is full of doom and gloom, so this is an oppor­tu­ni­ty to give your prospects and cus­tomers some good news. It’s a time to con­nect. You don’t need to push your prod­ucts or ser­vices. Just be available! 
• I know one con­trac­tor who cre­ates help­ful videos on arts and crafts that par­ents could do with their chil­dren while they’re at home dur­ing major hol­i­days. Why not do that sort of thing again? Use pic­tures and videos to give con­sumers tips on being cre­ative with col­or and paint! If they screw up, your team can fix it in a few weeks. 

#6: Vir­tu­al Estimating

Some of you are stuck with an old esti­mat­ing sys­tem. Now is the time to review your esti­mat­ing tools, make changes, and learn new tools. Two pop­u­lar, easy-to-use esti­mat­ing pro­grams for painters right now are Esti­mate Rock­et and PaintScout. I’ve worked with both of them. Esti­mate Rock­et has a lot of fea­tures and was not built strict­ly for the paint­ing con­trac­tor like PaintScout was, but it offers a lot of tools to help run your paint­ing com­pa­ny. My per­son­al favorite for esti­mates only is PaintScout. It’s slick and easy to use — per­fect for begin­ning to do more vir­tu­al estimates.

For a few more tips on vir­tu­al esti­mates, check out this blog! And, while you’re at it, learn and become a mas­ter at using Com­pa­ny­Cam. Essen­tial for every paint­ing contractor!

#7: Gear Up for Marketing

Some of you have dialed back on your mar­ket­ing, and some have com­plete­ly stopped. Regard­less of where you’re at, make sure you are ready to hit the ground run­ning as soon as things turn around. Review your mar­ket­ing plan and make changes as necessary. 

Keep these pri­or­i­ties in mind:

• Watch your web­site traf­fic. This will give you a good pulse on when things are pick­ing back up. 
• Make sure you’re avail­able to han­dle any email, call, or mes­sage that comes to you. 
• This is a good time to write blogs, make videos, cre­ate social media posts, and have them all ready to go out! 
• Review what dis­counts and spe­cials (if any) you will offer prospects.
• Prospect­ing: nev­er stop prospect­ing, and stay in touch like nev­er before. 
• Stay con­nect­ed with oth­er con­trac­tors via Zoom, LinkedIn Groups, or Face­book Groups. If you are a com­mer­cial con­trac­tor, con­sid­er join­ing the CPIA, or if you’re a res­i­den­tial painter, the PCA.

I hope I got you think­ing about how to stay busy and pro­duc­tive dur­ing the COVID-19 cri­sis. Let’s com­mit to stay strong and make our busi­ness­es bet­ter. I just scratched the sur­face with my list above — let’s keep this going and share!