12 Reasons to Attend 'PaintScout X' [Painting Sales Conference 2024]

Jon Bryant: Hey Michael, today we're going to talk about the PaintScout Experience, which is coming up here April 10th and 11th, 2024. I wanted to break it down for everybody as to what is going on, why we're doing this thing, who you can expect to hear from, what they're going to be talking about, and really why it's worth it to attend. So I was hoping we could go over the list today and dig into who these people are. I'm super excited for this thing. For us at PaintScout, we've been doing this now for five years, and we've never had an opportunity to really involve our community, hear from the people that have been big supporters of the product, and really who have a huge insight into the industry to help us all price, sell, and produce more work. So I'm pumped.

Michael Murray: Absolutely. Yeah, man, I'm really excited. I think it's going to be awesome. It's about a week away. And if anybody hasn't heard of it yet or hasn't signed up yet, I'm excited just to give maybe a little bit of a reason as to why. At Textbook, we've got our sales reps signed up. And I think the timing is awesome. We're about to head into that busy spring and summer season, so it's a good time to sharpen the saw a little bit, refresh some of the skills, learn some new skills, and hear from some really industry experts.

Jon Bryant: Totally. So to give people an overview, we're doing this for two days. It's a virtual conference and we've lined up 20 speakers overall. Some of them are on panels, some of them are individual, but overall, a lot of experience here. A lot of painting sales have been done by this community and we're going to showcase that there. There are 45-minute sessions with some question and answer going all through the day. Great for business owners as well as sales reps. We have some awesome sales rep-focused sessions as well. So if you're a business owner who's tuning in, great to bring your team—they're going to learn a ton. And if you're a business owner, I think there's also a lot of value here.

Michael Murray: Yeah, well, you're the first speaker, so we're going to need you to be ready. The whole thing kicks off at 11 a.m. Eastern. I think it's 11 to 5, if I remember correctly, each day.

Jon Bryant: That's right. And I am the first person that's going to be talking. My session is going to be geared towards where the state of the PaintScout community is at, some of the questions that have come up and addressing those, and then I want to get into three awesome features that we've developed. I've been the person who has directed the design of this program from the start. And that's my passion. So I'm going to dig into these three features—we call them Ninja PaintScout features—but they are things that are maybe a little more advanced or just a way of looking at the program and how you deliver estimates and the experience for your customer that's really going to help you win a lot more work. And we've actually gone and looked at some of the data to show that these things have made a difference, and I'm excited to dig into that because it's something we've never really talked about. We've highlighted some of these features, but this is a chance for you to see in real time how these things work and how they should be used by their design.

Michael Murray: I would envision you're going to be doing some screen share and walking through some demo estimates or some real estimates to show off some of the things that maybe not everybody is utilizing that can help them either do their quotes quicker or just give a more attractive presentation or different things like that. This one seems like it's geared towards the PaintScout user, but the entire conference isn't. And I think that's important—while this is part of PaintScout, you certainly don't have to be a PaintScout user to attend. There is a cost. The cost is $99 for a non-PaintScout user. But for anybody that is an active PaintScout user, they should have received an email or a code in their email to get basically the whole event for free. So I think that's a really important thing that we want to make sure to mention.

Jon Bryant: Yeah, I mean, this is the only one that's geared towards PaintScout, but at the same time, these features are things that if you can do in the program that you use, they're going to be valuable too. So it's more principles that we're getting into and the data behind why those work. Definitely, I think it's still worth attending. It might also give you a chance to experience the program if you haven't seen a demo yet or haven't understood how the program works. It's a good chance to check it out.

Michael Murray: Yeah, not everybody gets to have a demo with the owner and the creator of the program here. So next level. I like it.

Michael Murray: Speaking of next level, one of the godfathers of the painting industry, I would say—Kevin Nolan. Kevin is a published author. I've got his book right here. I'm a big fan. It's called Organizational Muscle that came out, I don't know, last four to six months. Kevin is the founder and CEO of Nolan Painting in the Philadelphia area. Definitely one of the largest residential repaint companies that is employee-based in the country. And he is also a co-founder with his brother of Nolan Consulting, which is one of the biggest coaching and consulting organizations that work with a lot of large painting contractors in North America. So Kevin brings a ton of experience, a lot of expertise. Kevin was my personal coach for about a year and a half, so I learned a ton from him.

Jon Bryant: Absolutely. I think what's really impactful about listening to Kevin is he's done it. And there's a lot of people out there who will talk, but talk is cheap and Kevin is not that guy. If you're trying to really take your business to the next level, this is a person that has done it and knows how to do it. And I think that's one reason to tune in to what Kevin's saying—because there's no fluff to this stuff.

Michael Murray: There's no BS. Kevin's going to bring it. He's direct. He's going to tell you what you need to hear. For me, it was certainly really pivotal when I got involved with Nolan Consulting, whatever it was, six, seven years ago. I think it's geared probably a little bit more towards somebody trying to grow a business, business owners. He runs a huge business, so if you're a business owner and you're thinking about tuning in, this is going to be one you really want to circle. Definitely make sure you set that aside for session two on the 10th.

Jon Bryant: We wanted to bring someone in who could talk a little bit about Facebook. There are so many voices out there, so many people saying, "Pick me, pick me. I can do Facebook stuff." And really it's hard, I think, to know who to trust. It's a very difficult decision to make as a business owner because I think we all know we need to do that. But it's not clear as to what the knowledge base is of the person. Jacob is someone that I've worked with, and I'm curious to hear from him about how to use Facebook appropriately to set up the sale. Facebook's not just about lead generation because we all know you can get a lot of bad leads. That doesn't mean it's going to lead to business. We're approaching people at a time when they could be seeing what their ex-girlfriend from high school is up to, and then you're putting a painting ad in front of them. And that's not great. So figuring out how to position this properly and use it properly, I'm excited to hear what he has to say and to bring some insight because he also owns a painting business. So this isn't somebody who has taken a class and then tried to just do that for a business. This is a guy who actually is using it for his business, and I'm excited to hear from him.

Michael Murray: Absolutely. Again, I think we're continuing that theme. Kevin runs a really successful painting business, Jacob runs a successful painting business as well. So it's more of that industry knowledge, people that are doing it and doing really well with it. I'm excited. Certainly, Facebook ads—I think we've talked a lot in the last year or so about how leads have gone down in our industry. So this is going to be a really important one on how to utilize Facebook to fill that top of the funnel and generate some demand. And it might not be like, "Oh man, I might not need to do that because it's spring," but guess what's coming up? Winter. It's not too early to start getting ready for that slow season, and the best contractors know that it's never too early to start learning some new tips and techniques to generate some leads.

Jon Bryant: Absolutely. The other thing I'll say too is this is the only one about Facebook. We're not—there's not many here. So we're trying to focus these each individually on topics and try to get some people with some real knowledge in there. So if that's of interest to you, check that out.

Michael Murray: Session four on the 10th at 2 Eastern is going to be with Chris Kiefer. I've known Chris for years as well, probably three or four years. He has started a company called Boolean Automation and Review. Started that maybe two years ago. What is this all about? So Chris is going to be talking about using automation specifically to help in the estimating and selling side of the painting business. How do we use the CRM? How do we use automated follow-ups? Some different things like that. I will say that I love talking to Chris. I think we have similar hobbies and interests and personalities and things like that. But I remember the first time I talked to him and I was like, "Oh, I'm pretty good at doing some automations. I've got lots of Zaps set up and I like doing that kind of stuff." And then I met Chris and I realized that there were like 10 levels above me where Chris is at. Every time I talk to Chris, I learn a lot. I get inspired. I figure out ways just from being around him to improve what we're doing here. He is also just a really good speaker. I've seen him present at a few different industry conferences. And again, he takes the time, he prepares, and he always brings a lot of good information.

Jon Bryant: Such a hot topic right now—automation. And I think one of the principles of PaintScout is that we are specialized and the best at what we do. And so we need to fit into a group of softwares that are also specialized and the best at what they do. Automation is so critical to that because you don't want to have double entry. You don't want to have a bunch of extra work. This is really a hot topic for a lot of people—how are you putting into this stuff and avoiding double entry? Because I think people that believe they want to use the best tools also know that automation is important. So yeah, I'm very interested to hear what Chris has to say about this stuff, and especially in the selling process. How do we make this easy?

Michael Murray: Yeah, when I first met Chris, he was working at one of the largest painting companies in North America. He was the marketing director there and he was a big part of them scaling fairly quickly in terms of their revenue and profitability and things like that. And then for some personal reasons and family and life and where he wanted to live, he decided to move away and start his own company and start working with some of the largest painting companies. We know a lot of his clients personally that have gotten tons of value and benefit. One of the things that's cool about talking with Chris is he gets to see kind of under the hood at some of these really large, successful painting companies. He can talk about what's working, what's not working, and that data-centric approach that we both love. He definitely is going to bring that.

Jon Bryant: Session five. This is with Christian Manhard from Moose Painting. He's got a great name. What's phenomenal about Christian is that he's really tapped into what makes social media work, and watching him and what he does on Instagram, TikTok—it's inspirational. I think he's got a following of 140,000 people. And if you haven't seen some of his videos—

Michael Murray: That's more than the Price Sell Paint podcast, by the way. Just saying. We've got some learning to do. I'm going to be at that one. I think my mom listened once. Does that count?

Jon Bryant: There's a couple zeros more, I think. What are we at, 14 fans right now, Michael? We're on our way, Christian. We'll be there soon. Yeah, so I mean, if you're trying to use Instagram, social media to showcase your work, we know that works, but it's a hard one to navigate too. So I'm hoping for Christian to just blow our socks off and really give us some information that we can take away to set up sales and position our companies and generate some type of a system into how we're going to be the front runner without having to do much. People watch the videos and they think they know you. And I think that's incredible. It's something that I know we need to do a lot better. So I'm excited to hear that.

Michael Murray: Yeah, we've got a lot to learn. We certainly post a lot on Instagram and we don't have that many followers. And I feel like it's not just about posting stuff. It's about posting the right things. It's not as simple as it was maybe five, six years ago when Instagram was newer. There weren't as many painting companies on there. Now you've got to take your game up a little bit if you're going to do well there. I had never met Christian—I met him for the first time at PCA Expo about a month ago. Just a really good dude. I liked hanging out with him. Down to earth, very humble. So I'm excited to learn from him.

Jon Bryant: He hasn't let his name go to his head. Nice job, Christian.

Michael Murray: Then the last one at the end of day one is Eric Barstow. He is the owner of Painting Business Pro. This guy runs a really successful painting business, and that's how he started. But he has broadened that into, I would say, one of the biggest educational platforms in our industry. He works with a lot of successful painting business owners, specifically those that are maybe newer to the business and getting started and really scaling up through that like one million plus into the multimillion-dollar stages. So again, another person who has a lot of experience working with a lot of different painting companies and seeing what works, what doesn't work, and bringing some of that knowledge to the audience.

Jon Bryant: Yeah, I think in his session, he's going to be talking a lot about how to diagnose sales issues and how to improve. And I'm pretty sure that Eric can bring a huge perspective, just a really good perspective overall, having seen so many businesses and how they operate and coaching so many businesses. So if you're coming to the PaintScout X and not tuning into something like this, where you're getting that information to help you diagnose your problems, I think this is a phenomenal chance to hear from somebody that has that experience and that perspective and overview. So don't miss this one for sure.

Michael Murray: Yep. I think it's going to be some six tips on how to be more successful, how to win at a higher rate. That's what I'm expecting to get from this. I'm excited for our sales reps here to listen to this. We've got maybe fewer opportunities than we did a few years ago. We have to win at a higher rate in order to continue to crush sales goals and things like that. So it's going to be a great way to end day one.

Michael Murray: So we're going to start on the second day at 11 a.m. But I'm going to be interviewing your brother, Dave Bryant, who we had on the podcast recently. Dave is a sales rep and he is crushing it. Dave sells more than $3 million annually and puts up huge numbers. Dave is a ninja level at referrals and networking. I've got a lot to learn. So I am excited to get a chance to interview Dave and bring some common questions and concerns and maybe the psychology and the emotions behind why am I not successful with networking from having sales reps at my company that maybe weren't successful with networking. So I'm excited to get a chance to talk with Dave and share that conversation live with everybody. Hoping to have Dave bring some real-world examples on how his system works. What kind of things is he saying? Who is he reaching out to? This is going to be very practical. Our hope would be that somebody walks out of this session and immediately is able to put some action items in place to start networking and building a bigger referral network, if you will.

Jon Bryant: Yeah. Dave's a great guy to talk to about this because he's implemented some systems, and systems are really critical in this conversation because it is tangible. It's not just like, "Hey, people like me and I just go and they just talk about me." He's strategic about it. When you get to hear live from another rep, this is super valuable for sales reps. If you're not—I just think of the value you're going to get from this. This could make your year. The couple of things you might take away from what he's doing. And if you're a business owner, getting these things and understanding the systems and how to implement them is invaluable. We've seen that with Dave being my brother—I've got to see it firsthand of how the systems have worked and we've tweaked them, we've worked on them. And really that idea of master level is—he'll get into how many referral leads he's actually received, and the numbers are staggering last year. And we know that referral leads win at what is it, like 70, 80 percent. So this is some of your most valuable business that I think a lot of us overlook. We keep going back to the Google gods, just dropping you down like a little worm. Here you go. Here's another worm to feed you. Take your money. And what Dave has done is he's almost gotten himself off of that conveyor belt because he doesn't have to do that stuff. These are just a different way to look at business and a different way to try to approach what you're doing, but it really generates high-value leads that win more often that are based on trust. So man, huge amount of information and value to come from that.

Michael Murray: Yeah, I'll share real quick. I had a prep call with him a couple of weeks ago, just trying to get ready for the session. We obviously want to bring some really good value. Just to start the call, it's like, "Dave, hey Dave, how's it going, man?" He's like, "Oh, you know, just out doing some sales and whatever." I was like, "Oh, sweet." And he's like, "Yeah, I bought lunch for a few property managers and then I went and sold this job for somebody I'd quoted a few months ago and kept in touch with and actually added a couple thousand dollars to the original quote." I'm like, "Dave, just teach people how you—just talk about what you did today and I think you're going to bring a ton of value."

Jon Bryant: Session number two on Thursday. This is with Mike Katunas from Consulting for Contractors coaching group. If you're looking to grow your business, Consulting for Contractors is a great option to check out. Mike is a coach with Consulting for Contractors, also a painting contractor himself in the past with growing a successful business. Mike is going to be talking about pre-selling your services. This is a topic that we hear a lot, whether you talk about it as qualifying or pre-qualifying, whatever it is. We need to think about the sales process in a much more holistic way and how we're getting to yes as fast as possible or setting ourselves up for yes as fast as possible. And I believe this session is going to be super helpful for us to understand how to do that. Great for sales reps, great for business owners. Yeah, just such a valuable piece because I don't want to waste time.

Michael Murray: Yeah, that's one of the things we're working on this year, so I'm excited to hear from him.

Michael Murray: We've got some friends here from Nolan Consulting. So Andrew Amrein and Jay Rogers are going to be talking. The title of their talk is "Make a Friend, Earn a Fortune: Get Past the Selling Games and Into a Process of Mutual Respect." What I'm looking forward to is just the system as well as the psychology behind these most successful sales reps. Nolan Consulting, again, works with some of the biggest, most successful painting companies in North America. And both of these guys have a lot of hands-on experience with coaching sales reps or business owners who are doing a lot of the right things and getting some great results.

Jon Bryant: I've never gone to a session where I haven't learned something from these guys. So I believe even after having interacted with them for a long time, I'm going to get something out of this too. A lot of these sessions I'm excited to learn from, whether it's Nolan Consulting or Consulting for Contractors. There's just such great information here from people that have really done a lot, and learning anything from them has been invaluable for me. So I'm excited for it. Great for sales reps, good for business owners for setting up your system. I think they're going to talk about that in-home sales system and how it works and how to develop one for yourself and how to refine the one you have. So great information there for sure.

Jon Bryant: Session 10. This is an interesting one. We talked about this at PCA. The title is "Winning at Sales: Untold Secrets from the $2 Million Plus Sales Rep Club." We had the opportunity to dig into PaintScout data to really pull out the top performers, look at what they were doing, interview them, survey them, just try to figure out what these people are doing that's different than the rest of the group. Selling $2 million annually is a huge accomplishment. And I think the one thing that came out of that was that people were like, "We want to hear from these guys more. How do we just hear what they're doing and talk to them?" So this is going to be another panel, I believe. And we've got—

Michael Murray: Yep. You and I are facilitating a conversation with these three at the same time and asking them questions. I have questions. I have so much that I'm excited to learn from these guys. But we've also—we did the podcast talking about the presentation. I don't know if that one's been released yet, but I think it's about to be. And we talked about this at PCA. And we got a lot of feedback from people that were asking specific questions on how do they do this? What do they do about that? How many follow-ups? Are they automated follow-ups? Are they personal follow-ups? All sorts of different, very detailed questions that sales reps and business owners want to be able to ask of specifically these three who are selling at such high numbers annually. How many estimates do you do a week? In the winter? In the summer? Can you do too many or what does that look like? All sorts of those questions. We're going to have a chance to hear from them and probably hear maybe some different opinions. I don't expect that they'll all say the exact same thing because there's certainly more than one way to be successful in this industry, but I'm excited to certainly be a part of that.

Jon Bryant: Yeah, I think this is also a great chance to bring your questions. If you're going to be attending PaintScout X, we'll be taking questions for a large part of this session, and it'll give you a chance to really talk to these people who are really killing it out there. What are they doing and how does it work? Whether that's you're aspiring with your business to hit those marks or you have people on your team or you're on a team and you're trying to figure out how to really get to that next level, you're going to get some insight from these guys and a chance to interact with them. So I think it's exciting. And honestly, what was so fascinating when we did our presentation was that this is one of the first times ever where people have been able to hear from other reps and what they do. And that's a big part of what we're trying to do here at PaintScout—we want to build this community of top performers and give you a chance to get that information and interact and really level up, go to the next stage with your business and your sales game. I'm always excited, and it's pretty cool just to hear in their own words. We'll do some roleplay. I'm sure, see what they say to certain situations. That's invaluable. Really, really interesting.

Michael Murray: For sure. Yeah, how do you handle price objections? We can walk through, what would you say if a customer says this? But I think, to your point, I think our goal for you and I is to talk as little as possible. And I think that's what the audience wants, and anybody that's attending is going to want. It's going to be basically hearing from these three. And it's our job to keep the conversation moving. And while we'll certainly have some questions that we have prepared, we're hoping that it's almost all audience questions from the reps and business owners attending.

Michael Murray: Commercial Painting Insights: Pricing, Selling, and Transition Strategies. So it's another panel. We have four people on this panel. My understanding is David Chisholm is facilitating the conversation. And then that's going to be with Brian Struble, John Pusick, and Matt Haseler. So I know a couple of these guys personally. I think you know them all personally. Commercial painting is, for those of us like me that really are focused on residential, it seems like a mystery box that is an enigma and I don't really understand it. And maybe I need a whole different sales process and what am I supposed to be doing? Again, personally, I'm looking forward to this one quite a bit to hear from some of these guys that are super successful in this side of our industry.

Jon Bryant: Yeah, that's a great way of phrasing it. It is a bit of a black box. Like, how do you do this? How do you get into it? How do you price it? It feels like, as someone who's done residential, you're not welcome in that commercial world or you're going to do something wrong or somehow you don't understand the contracts and you're going to mess it all up. So this will be very interesting to get the insights from these guys who have done it, are doing it, are successful at it. I even have a lot of questions. So bring your questions for this group. I think even if you're in commercial, you're going to learn something from these guys. And if you're aspiring to get there one day, definitely tune into this because that's where you're going to get just a bunch of tips and tricks and hopefully set you in the right path. Because there's a lot of false information out there too. So let's get it directly from the source and the guys who do it. David also runs a podcast for commercial painting. So he's going to have some great questions that are really relevant. And David just has a ton of experience with that community and that subject matter. So I'm excited to tune in.

Michael Murray: Also a marketing expert. I don't think he's necessarily doing presentations, but certainly a guy that works with a ton of really successful painting companies on the marketing side, lead generation, and all that kind of fun stuff. So again, I don't know that he's going to be the main focus there, but certainly a great person to hear from and get connected with.

Jon Bryant: Yeah, so we've got Brandon Vaughn and Brandon is the CEO of HireBus. Brandon's done a ton of stuff in his life and continues to, and so he brings a lot of insight from a coaching perspective as well. He started and ran the Conquer Coaching Network and has also owned businesses in the space—soft wash previously, and then in concrete coatings currently. So just a huge amount of experience industry-wide, someone who's a great speaker who can deliver a lot of insight into what we do as painters. And so he's going to be talking about how to hire and build what he calls the ultimate hiring flywheel. And for those of us who are looking to bring on successful sales reps, team members in that area, Brandon's going to shed some light on how to do that and how to set them up for best success. So I think for a lot of people tuning in, if you have not hired a sales rep, or if you're like us and you have and know how challenging that can be to find the right fit and to get the right person in the role, I mean, this will be great.

Michael Murray: Yeah. My feeling is either you're always looking for a sales rep. I'll speak for myself where it's like either our sales reps are performing like rock stars—we've got some really great ones at our company right now, which is awesome, which means we're growing, which means we need another sales rep. Or we have our sales reps that are struggling, which means we need to hire another sales rep. So we're basically always looking to hire. I feel like the next phase of our business is always just one or two key hires from happening. So I think you and I certainly have a lot of battle scars from hiring, whether it's sales reps or otherwise. So it's always welcome on my end to hear from somebody with this kind of experience and expertise on how to do that.

Jon Bryant: So that's our 12 sessions, and there's a lot there. I'm excited. Also, this is our first time doing this. So we're going to learn a bunch together as we do this. And I'm excited for that. I think all feedback will be welcome. Come check it out. If you can't get $99 worth of value out of this thing, I don't know where you're going to get $99 of value. It is pretty epic. The amount of experience and just real life, tangible expertise here—I just think if you're a painting contractor, you're going to learn. 99 bucks, I think it's super cheap and PaintScout users are free. So come and join us.

Michael Murray: I mean, again, I'll just say this about the cost. If somebody said to me, "Hey, I've got a sales rep on my team who sells two and a half, three, three and a half, four million dollars of painting jobs every year, and they have an hour on their calendar. Would you like to have a—would one of your reps like to have a conversation with them? We're going to charge 99 bucks." I would say yes, and I'd pay you more for that. I'll sign up right this second. For a hundred bucks, it is such a small investment to get a chance to talk to any one of these power users that we're bringing into this panel. And I think, again, with this type of a lineup, it's millions. I mean, I think we're talking about millions in value over the course of the next handful of years that I'm hoping personally to get out of this, and I think everybody should have a similar expectation.

Jon Bryant: Absolutely. Yeah. So tune in April 10th and 11th, 2024, virtual conference. Again, you can get the info at paintscout.com/X and sign up for that today—PaintScout Experience. Check it out. We'd love to have you and see you there, and we hope you get an insane amount of value. We're excited to put it on. This has been something we've had on the roadmap now for a couple of years. And we couldn't be happier with the scope of solid content we're going to get out of this. The community is growing and that's exciting.

Michael Murray: Yeah. If anybody's gotten any value from you and I talking, then they're going to be blown away by the amount of value that they're going to get when we get the real experts on at this conference here. Of course, if you're getting value, you should like and subscribe and tell your friends about the podcast. But more, maybe more importantly, about the PaintScout X that's coming up because that's going to be some true value there. I'm excited, looking forward to it.

Jon Bryant: All right, we'll see you there, Michael.

Michael Murray: See you guys soon. Thanks, have a great day.

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