Uncovering Opportunities is an ongoing series of PPC magazine articles dedicated to finding smart ways to help professional painting contractors build and expand their businesses. For this story, we spoke with Paige NeJame, who has been the owner of CertaPro Painters of the South Shore since 2004, about the reasons pros should consider adding carpentry services to a residential painting business. Here’s what she told us:
Wood homes are the norm in my New England neck of the woods.
Our area has so much wood on our homes that some even sport cedar roofs and wood gutters.
This means that the clapboards, trim, and cedar shingles are often rotted and need replacing before we can paint the exterior. Once we started offering carpentry services, we noticed we were landing a higher percentage of projects.
Customer inertia is by far our biggest competition. If a customer must shoulder the burden of finding their own carpenter, they have to:
- Locate, meet and hire a carpenter for a fairly small project
- Coordinate the wood replacement to happen before our painting team starts
This extra work often proves to be too much. In fact, we’d often drive by these homes years later and notice that the house was still untouched.
Plus, you don’t want a carpenter to swoop in and also offer to paint the house.
To get comfortable, consider hiring a 1099 wood replacement contractor to handle these projects. Ask the contractor to prepare you to price various common wood and PVC replacement jobs, so you can do the carpentry quote while you’re on-site quoting the painting.
Adding carpentry to your menu of services reduces the friction it takes to land the job. Customers are busy and appreciate a full-service operation to take an involved set of steps off their plates.
Related stories
Here are links to more stories in the PPC Uncovering Opportunities series:
- 4 Reasons to Add Color Consulting Services to Your Painting Customer
- Is Now the Time to Add Remodeling to Your Painting Services?
- Breaking into the Multi-Family Market: Being a One-stop Shop Helps Ease Customer Pain Points
- Grow Your Sales with HOAs: Here’s how to get started in this fast-growing industry opportunity
- Is it Time to Grow Your Painting Business?
- 4 Rules on When Not to Be Cheap Investing in Your Painting Business
Paige NeJame is the owner of CertaPro Painters of the South Shore and a frequent contributor to PPC magazine. Read more stories about building and improving your painting business in the PPC magazine archive.