This article by Tom Reber is the fourth in a series from PPC and the Painting Contractors Association (PCA) designed to help you understand and prepare for the challenges of business growth.

As the current year comes to a close, business owners are mapping out their plans for the new year. Most will put together revenue plans, marketing strategies and budgets for a successful new calendar year, as they should. Some will even determine how many jobs they need, the number of leads required to sell those jobs and what their overhead budget will look like.

These are all important and a must for any business to figure out with some simple math. However, in this short article, my goal is to focus on three key points that most people ignore or approach with less than casual intensity.

1. The brand promise

What controllable and measurable guarantee can you make to your clients? What promise that matters to your customers can you deliver on repeatedly?

In my consulting company The Contractor Fight, our brand promise is “fanatical attention.” All team members know that this is the standard and filter all decisions and actions through a simple question: ”What would fanatical attention look like in this situation?”

We created metrics around the number of client touches where we expect to communicate “we have your back.” Consider building your promise from the most common pains or complaints that the average consumer has regarding your trade. Things like communication, respect and clarity are among the biggest issues people have when working with a contractor.

Scale the unscalable

Most businesses are working hard to automate communication. Automation has its place and I’m a total fan of it.

However, don’t neglect the human touch. Sending a personalized “thank you” text to a recent client goes a long way in building your brand and client loyalty.

Example:

Hi Bob. It’s Tom from ABC Painting. I just wanted to take a moment to thank you for having us out to do your project last year. I hope all is well. Have a great day!

There’s no ask. There’s no agenda.

One contractor in our community who implements this strategy sends five messages each day to people in their database. The result? They average just under $100,000 in sales per month from this one simple action that takes them less than ten minutes per day.

Your recruiting plan

Raise your hand if you could use more people!

Recruiting and hiring should be approached like marketing for clients. This is a 365-days-a-year focus. Ideas:

• Use social media to highlight team members, share your values and bring prospective employees behind the scenes of your culture.
• Run ads year-round on all the major hiring sites.
• Create a “careers” page on your website.
• Hold multiple job fairs each year.

If quality talent doesn’t know you exist, they can’t apply. This also gives you a steady stream of applicants, so you’re not forced to settle for the wrong people when it comes time to hire. There are many highly qualified employees working for other companies who are dissatisfied with their current culture. They would love to join a company that is dialed in. When implemented consistently your recruiting plan will serve as a magnet, attracting the best talent.

View these three areas of focus as levers in your business that will help you surpass revenue goals, increase profits, build a rockstar team and create an unfair advantage over your competitors.

Remember, your success is a direct result of stacking small wins each day in areas that most business owners ignore.

Tom Reber is the founder of The Contractor Fight, a community of contractors bringing respect back to trades through their free content on The Contractor Fight Podcast and Contractor Fight TV, as well as paid coaching programs. Tom is a past member and now a valued Industry Partner of Painting Contractors Association (PCA), which is partnering with PPC to develop an ongoing series of articles to help painting company owners grow their businesses. Visit PCApainted.org for more resources designed by painters, for painters. This article was originally published in the Winter 2022 issue of PPC magazine. ©2022 Northbrook Publishing.