Best Follow-up Strategies for Painting Companies

Jon Bryant: All right, Michael, let's talk today about follow-ups. Such an important part for sales reps to have a process to figure out. Let's dig into it. I think you and I both have some opinions on this. I think it's really relevant to the sales process and making sure that your win rates are high, getting answers on every quote that you do and making sure that you stay a successful salesperson or sales rep.

Michael Murray: Yeah. Absolutely. I think it goes along with a lot of what we've been talking about. Leads are a little bit lighter, leads are a little bit slower. We have to take advantage of every opportunity. And I think one of the things that in our industry, the sales professionals may have gotten away with some bad habits over the last few years in follow-up. Leads have been plentiful. If I don't book this one, it's okay. I can go book the next one. And I think we're past that point now. I think last year we were getting past that. We have to step up our game and close a higher percentage of the appointments we go on. And I think one of the biggest ways to do that is following up better. So yeah, love it. I love this topic. I'm excited to dive into it.

Jon Bryant: Awesome. Well, I think the first place to start is, for follow-ups, it really starts back in the appointment, I believe. And so with our team, even for myself, one of the things I had to learn was that I never want to surprise anyone in the sales process. And I want to have a relationship with my potential customer that's open and honest. And that starts with, if we're at the home, if we can't get an answer then and there, which we always try, we need to follow up and we want to be respectful of that person's time. And we also want them to know that they're respectful of our time. And so I think this process starts when you're with the customer to say, "Hey, look, today doesn't work. What's the next step here? What are we going to do? If I'm going to send you this proposal, in exchange for my time, are you able to meet?" I mean, that would be huge. And just to make that concrete, I know you're super busy. What's a good time? Let's get it in the calendar. I'm bringing out my phone. I'm bringing out my iPad, getting my calendar out and getting some commitment. So that's the way we do our thing, or at least the way we coach it. How do you feel about that?

Michael Murray: Yeah, I like it. I mean, I think we definitely agree on this topic that the follow-ups can't just be—I think sales reps have to take ownership of the follow-up. Oftentimes a homeowner might say, "Great, thanks for the quote. We're getting some more quotes. We'll give you a call if we decide we want to move forward" or something like that. And as a sales rep in that situation, it can be a little awkward, right? Because it's like, oh no, I've got to be a little more direct. I've got to maybe take control of the situation a little bit. Because let's be clear, that's not acceptable. That is not how we're going to end this conversation. It's too open, ambiguous. There is no commitment from the customer to ever get back in touch with you. And that is a really good way for a sales person to get really frustrated, because you're just not going to get any answers and you're going to have all these open quotes all over the place and you're not going to be closing nearly enough of them.

Jon Bryant: Mm-hmm. It's incredibly difficult once you leave the home, oftentimes, to get back in touch with the customer. I mean, that's really where things break down. I think a lot of people have questions and people take it really personally, right? But when you really look at it from having been a customer, having gotten estimates, I get busy. I have lots of conversations. Maybe there was something that wasn't quite comfortable with that estimate. Maybe it's higher than you expected. And I think conflict is really hard for people. I mean, I don't think, I know this, right? And this is a conflict moment for a lot of people. It's "I've got to tell somebody no." We're used to a really pushy sales process, I think. A lot of us have a lot of baggage about that when dealing with salespeople. And so learning in this process that that's what you're dealing with and you need to put in place a bunch of systems in order to kind of combat that behavior. To make them realize that, hey, you know, I'm going to follow up, but if you want to tell me to pound sand at that point, like please do. I don't get every bid. Like these kind of lines work really well to be able to have that conversation and to be able to get back in front of the client to see if it is the right fit.

Michael Murray: Yeah. No, I agree. I think the way that you posed it and specifically the way that we talk about it with our reps is this is—the only thing that the customer owes you is an answer, but they do owe you that. It is an exchange. I am going to come to your home and I am going to spend my time, maybe an hour or something along those lines. And I am going to help you make a good buying decision. It might be with our company. It might be with another company. You might decide to do it yourself, whatever it is. My job is to help you make that good decision and know the right questions to ask, get some information, so that you can compare your different options and feel comfortable with it. But in exchange for that, all I'm asking is you tell me once you've made a decision what that is. And I don't think we're asking for too much, but if we're not careful, customers can and customers will hide because I think it goes back to that conflict you just mentioned. Customers oftentimes don't like saying no to a sales professional. It's just easier to ignore the call, ignore the email. And if I ignore it once or twice, they'll just stop calling. Because honestly, too often that is the case.

But sometimes they're ignoring the call, not because they don't want to go with us, but because they're busy. They're at their kid's soccer game and then the next day they don't remember to call you back because they've got a thousand things going on. That's how—I'm guilty of that too often. There's probably people that have left me a voicemail recently that are wondering when the hell I'm going to call them back. And it's like, I wish they would just text me and it comes popping up in my mind, like, "Oh, I dropped the ball. Thanks so much for reaching back out." And it's the same thing that we teach our reps that you need to own that process because oftentimes a customer is getting in their own way. They reached out to us for a reason. They have a specific problem. They need something painted at their home. They didn't have us come out to their house just for fun. And until they've told us that they found another solution that works better for them, we're going to assume that they have not solved that problem and we owe it to them to help them solve that problem. And sometimes that means we've got to follow up really intentionally and sometimes it means we've got to follow up a lot.

Michael Murray: So we've made that—let's back up, right? So you said, hey, set a specific date and time. Is that what you're saying?

Jon Bryant: Yeah, essentially. Yeah, I mean, that's to me, one of the most important parts of the process. Because inevitably, like you said, I mean, customers will hide. And what's the answer that usually I get when I ask this question? "Would it be okay to follow up?" "Oh yeah, yeah. I'll get in touch with you when we're ready." And it's like, and I remember early in my career, saying, "Okay, yeah, sure, just you let me know." And then I wouldn't set that specific time. I would never hear from them. They would hide. It was kind of this perpetual thing that was happening. And so when we talked about setting the time, you need to honor that time because it's so indicative of how you treat their business as much as it is about urgency and as much as it is about doing what you say you will. And I think that's building trust.

And so I think a lot of people get this wrong. We get busy. We set this time. Then we get busy. We don't call or we leave it loose and open. And then we try to desperately get in touch with them later. And it comes off as very desperate. "Hey, sorry. I missed our call three days ago. I'm ready to chat now." It's like, that wasn't respectful of their time or your time. And it doesn't look good. And so totally what you're saying is like, be on time, do what you say you'll do, and make them feel like you care. I don't know, do you have a different opinion there? I know it's pretty basic, but—

Michael Murray: No, I mean, I think that's—it is just another opportunity to impress the customer and show them that you're going to deliver on the promises that you made. I think the biggest complaint that I hear from homeowners when it comes to working with a contractor is two things, I guess: poor communication and the lack of structured timing. When are you coming out to do this job and how long is it going to take? And then actually showing up when you said you were going to and actually completing it relatively on time. That and just general communication. And this is an example of how we can show somebody that we're not like that. So I'm at your house, "Hey, is this something you guys want to get on the schedule today?" "No, we're going to need some time to think about it." "No problem, no problem, completely get that. I'd like to give you a call so that you guys can let me know when you've made a decision. Would it be okay if I give you a call next week? What would be a good day and time that we could schedule that at? Tuesday at four o'clock? Does that work for you? Great, let me get out my calendar. I want to mark that down. I don't know if you want to mark that down, you can, but I'm going to write that down so that I don't forget. And I'm going to call you Tuesday at four o'clock. At that point, I'm going to answer any questions you have. Hopefully you've had a chance to look over the bid. If you haven't and you need some more time, that's okay. You can certainly let me know that. Or you can let me know if we're going to be able to work together on this project."

One of the things that I just mentioned that's so important is putting it somewhere, writing this down. You just mentioned as sales reps, we're getting busy. We've got a lot of quotes that we're running around, especially in the summer. And it's easy to forget to do those follow-ups on time. And that's where we have to use the tools that are available. For us it is using our CRM really well. We're using the Pipe Drive CRM right now. That's the one that we like. How about you guys? What software do you guys use to keep track of this?

Jon Bryant: Yeah, we use Zendesk, Zendesk Sell.

Michael Murray: Yep. There's a lot of them. I mean, most CRMs have very similar functionality. And then certainly some have different bells and whistles and things like that. But one of the things that they generally all have as a basic requirement is the ability to schedule activities similar to on a calendar. You can certainly do this on a Google calendar, your Apple calendar, or something like that. The CRM obviously is going to give you a little bit more robust information. When you go to make that call, you can pull up the quote and remember, "Oh yeah, I've got it. I remember who this quote was" and all that. But having some tool like that you're using is definitely important if not a requirement.

Jon Bryant: Totally. Yeah. I mean, it makes me kind of think a little bit as you're talking about this, like best method to follow up, you know, automated versus manual. Probably worth talking about a little bit. Because I think after that first call, if they don't answer, right, let's play this out a little bit.

Michael Murray: Okay, that happens.

Jon Bryant: Yeah, never happened before. So you've got the agreement, you call at four. And again, like I believe phone call is so important. It is for our company because relationship is really what builds trust. And so, you know, after that you might be able to follow up by text, email follow-up might be okay. But those are going down in levels of urgency and importance for me. Like relationships happen on personal level through verbal and physical communication. After that, you're kind of at a disadvantage. So I always suggest our team set the follow-up so that it is a phone call. If you can't get in touch with that person, we're probably going to leave them a voicemail. "Hey, I missed you, really sorry about that. Maybe I got the time wrong." Rarely we did, but we'll just say we did. "Don't know why we couldn't communicate. Again, would love to connect with you." Then we might send a text and an email as well. "Looks like I missed you. What's the best method here to follow up?" How do you guys do that?

Michael Murray: I always like to remind the potential customer that I'm calling at the time we agreed on. So again, let's say that Tuesday at four, it's Tuesday at four. I'm calling, "Hi, Mrs. Jones, this is Michael, giving you a call. It's Tuesday at four o'clock. I know when we spoke last week, we had set this time up as a good time to follow up, answer any of those questions and see if we're going to be able to work together. So that's why I was calling. I wanted to honor that commitment. Looks like I missed you. No problem if you could give me a call back when you get a chance." Number, whatever, right? Something like that. Then I'm going to immediately send a text message with a similar messaging in it. And depending on where I'm at, I'm soon thereafter also going to follow up with an email. It's just like a saved template of email. Again, kind of similar. "Gave you a call, following up, wanted to see where we stand, please give me a call back when you can."

So those emails, texts, I'm still asking for a call back, because to your point, I want to actually have a conversation. Sometimes what'll happen is a customer will say, if I let them, in a text message, "Hey, we found somebody else that we're going to go with." And they think that's like end of conversation, no more replies should be needed. And I see that as we're starting the conversation. But in a text message, it's very easy for them to just stop. Where if we're on the phone, and they say, "Oh, we found somebody else to go with," I can say, "Oh, okay. I understand. Can I get a little more feedback? Like, was the price different? Or what was the factor there for you?" And sometimes, not always, the reason for their decision is inaccurate. It might be, "Well, they were able to get us into the schedule in a few weeks, so we decided to go with them." And it's like, "Okay, to be clear, if I was able to get you in the schedule at that same time, would that be an opportunity for me to be able to earn your business?" And then that's going to give them a moment of pause, right? And they might say, "Well, yeah, I get it." Or they might say no. They might say, "No, we already gave them a deposit." And that's okay, but it doesn't hurt to ask. So I'm trying to avoid that hiding behind the text message or email if I can.

Jon Bryant: Totally. Yeah, they're really—both of those methods, we see very, it's just very impersonal, right? Like you start moving down that chain and it's dramatically less personal. You get dramatically less information, right? Like a text message might be three words, "Went with someone else." And then you're just like, wow, that was a massive waste of time. Right? And I think what's great about your point and why I like it so much, what you said was that most customers, especially for painting and trades in general, don't actually understand what they're buying. They're making a lot of assumptions. And us as tradespeople believe that we've delivered them all the details. But the customer understands, like what? 1% of the details. And so they're unintendedly making uneducated decisions. And I've always seen it as part of our team to help be there to make them—not make them, to help them understand what they're actually doing and the why behind the decisions.

So a lot of times, you know, material isn't spec'd properly. Coats aren't spec'd. I mean, there's a lot of things in these contracts that I've been burned personally. I had a concrete experience at my home where the guy short poured the concrete. It wasn't in the contract. There wasn't the right amount of rebar in there. The contract wasn't specific enough and I didn't understand. I didn't know what depth of concrete I needed, but had I had a better experience with a different sales rep from another company to say, "Hey, let's just stop. I totally understand your decision, but you mentioned you wanted a high grade concrete pad here for your garage. These guys haven't spec'd that. If you asked them—" I'd be like, "No, I have no idea." And in a lot of ways, I wish that rep had been there to be like, "Hey, I just want to help understand what your priorities are here." Because at the end of the day, I'm so furious with the end quality and I have to look at it every day.

And so I think a lot of times in this follow-up process of how we follow up and what we do, a lot of people get scared. I think a lot of reps kind of look at, I did this myself, like a lot of professionals, it's like, am I bothering the person? Am I being a nuisance? It's like, no, the follow-up here, the reason we're trying to talk is to try to help our customers avoid a regret. And it's so powerful. So that phone is really important, I think, as a method to get them on. Do you go in person, Michael? Like do you ever go back to jobs?

Michael Murray: It's funny, I was just going to say the same thing. Yeah, so I think, to be honest with you, I used to. So when I was earlier on in business, back when I felt like I actually had time—I'm sure I felt really busy then too, but yeah, I used to do that a lot more. And I think that actually is a really good thing to do. Yeah, I mean, especially for whatever reason, I think, especially when it's nicer out, oftentimes people are outside and you can catch somebody just out in the front yard, cutting the grass or whatever it is. And it's just like, "Hey, you know, Mr. Smith was in the neighborhood doing a quote, saw that you're out here, just want to stop by, say hi, kind of see what we're thinking on that painting quote."

I have done it where I schedule the time to come back. And I think that can be a great thing, especially if I'm meeting with a married couple, but only one of them can be home when we're doing the original appointment. Oftentimes I'm going to hear something along the lines of, "Thanks for the quote, I need to look this over with my spouse." And then at that point, the problem is that the spouse I met with has to go and sell the other spouse just as well as I would have. They have to be able to answer all their questions, explain the value, et cetera, et cetera. And the reality is that's not going to happen. It's not going to be anything close. And so that's a problem. And so I want to control that situation. And so what I want to do then is say, "All right, like let's say I'm meeting with a husband and he needs to talk it over with his wife, when she gets home from work or whatever." And so I would say, "All right, like I get it. How about, why don't we schedule a time, maybe this weekend, where I can come over, when you guys can both be home, and we can talk about the project, I can explain everything to her, answer any of her questions, and we can see if it makes sense for us to work together. Does that make sense? When would be a good time this weekend?" And I don't even send the quote. So I'm going to still have complete control over that quote, so that they cannot just hide behind, "We went with somebody else" or whatever. I'm going to keep control of that. I'm going to come over on the weekend at that scheduled time. We're going to go over that together. That can also be a really useful tool.

Jon Bryant: Yeah. I mean, when you have more time and I think when, you know, maybe leads are short, it's important. Kind of looking at that hierarchy of importance: in person, number one; phone number two; I think text is probably number three; and then you've got email. And so it's kind of like, how do we use that appropriately for following up when we need work and when we have time? Because that's kind of a direct reverse correlation with each other, right? Like when I have more time, I'm going to be able to do more in person. When I have less time, I'm going to be doing more email. Because those are things that we can actually automate potentially.

Michael Murray: Yeah, and you can also make the argument, though, like how much more time would I have if I was closing 75% of the estimates I went on? So I don't have to go on as many. And it is very much this finding the balance. And yeah, and again, I mentioned at the beginning, I think as sales professionals in the painting industry, I think there's more time. We have fewer estimates right now. We're going to have fewer estimates this year than we did at least two or three years ago. And now is the time to do the things that are going to help us close at a really high rate.

Jon Bryant: Yeah, cool. Love it.

Michael Murray: I like it. You mentioned the automated thing before. I'd love to come back and talk about that. So we just spent a lot of time talking about manual follow-ups. But I do think there's a place for automation. And so we use that. One of the things that we do, I would say, fairly recently within the last year, we created an automated drip email campaign that starts pretty soon after an estimate is completed and sent. But is meant to basically assist a sales rep in keeping in touch, to not replace them. And so the way that works is these emails—the problem I have with email automation is I think we've all been a victim of really bad email automation where it's like, right?

Jon Bryant: Absolutely. Yeah. Victim is the key word.

Michael Murray: You know, I get an email from the company that's like, "Hey, we haven't heard from you. Is this something that you want to do or whatever?" Right. And I'm like, I just talked to the sales rep like 45 minutes ago. And we scheduled time for him to come out and now I'm like, what the heck is going on? Like, why did you send me this email? And they're like, "I didn't send that email." "Oh my God." Right. And it's just like, oh my gosh. So, and I was always somewhat afraid that if we set up emails like that, that was what was going to happen. And so our email automation doesn't do that. It doesn't ask for the sale. It doesn't ask, can we earn your business? It's meant to support that. And so it's going to send out some useful information. It's going to be things like, "Hey, here's some of the most popular colors, and here's some links to some articles that might help you if you're stuck trying to figure out what color might be perfect in your house."

Because that's often a big challenge for somebody. We think we want to get this painted, but we probably shouldn't sign the quote until we pick out the colors, right? It's like, no, you don't have to do that. And so we can support that. Or, you know, you talked about paint products. We can send an email: "Here are the different paint products we use and why?" And it can be some more detailed information than perhaps the sales rep had time to go over. We also send just some reviews and testimonials. "Here are some of the things that our past customers have loved about working with us. Click here to read more" or whatever, those types of things. We see it as just nudging that homeowner a little bit closer to being ready to pull the trigger with us, but not the point of like, make the decision. Like, let's go. Because sometimes somebody needs a few days, a few weeks, few months, sometimes a few years to be ready to make that decision.

So our automated process, I think it's like three or four touch points. It lasts for a few weeks. They're spaced out about five to seven days. And again, it's meant to just support the sales rep with some helpful information. How about you guys? Do you guys use any sort of automated follow-ups or anything?

Jon Bryant: You know, we have in the past. And obviously, PaintScout was developed to have auto follow-ups as well. It was always challenging because, like what you said, and I think it's so smart and I didn't clue into that concept because that's a really smart concept. We would always use it for, "Hey, just following up on, do you want to do this job?" And I felt like we were pestering people. I think people—there's such a high degree of trust when it comes to having contractors at your home that I just don't believe, and you'll have to dig into the data to find out for sure, but the auto follow-ups really is what closes deals. I think sales reps close deals. I think sales processes close deals. And this is part of the process, but it can't get in the way.

And yeah, too often, like you said, I mean, being a victim of auto follow-ups, like, my goodness, like, stop. That's sometimes the way I feel because it's not used in a personalized way. It's not used in a way that makes me build trust. It actually starts taking away. And so, you know, we've then gone the other way where we're like, you know what? We have a process for our team. That process needs to be followed. When that process is followed, we win jobs at a very high rate. And so we haven't figured out quite how to get this in here. I know there's a lot of contractors who have and always excited to learn from them and hearing what you're doing, Michael, I mean, that's amazing. I think a lot of people can learn from that. Just hasn't been our style.

Michael Murray: Yeah, it's certainly a work in progress. Certainly trying to find new ways to add value. I hate getting bad emails and I get too many of them, just like probably everybody. But for the longest time it meant we were not going to send marketing emails and not send automated follow-up emails because my thought was if we can't send good ones, let's not send any. Which I guess I still agree with, but I also think it's like, how about we just send good ones? And so that's, yeah, again, that's what we're trying to do there. Useful information.

Jon Bryant: Yeah. So, yeah, I mean, one other area that I kind of—outside of automated versus manual, we're leaving a lot of messages for customers, I think, as sales reps. Whether we like it or not, I mean, they're not going to show up to all of these appointments, they're not going to honor it. What are you—do you have methods you feel work well to get back in touch with customers? You know, whether it's voicemails you leave or text messages you send, is there anything in your system you feel like is really working well?

Michael Murray: Yeah. I mean, what I hear you saying is like, if you're not able to get ahold of somebody, is that the idea? Yeah. So I would say one thing is I hate the generic, like, "Hey, just touching base" kind of thing. I want to be more direct with that. So I want to ask for the sale, ask for concerns and questions. I think the "Hey, just touching base. Please give me a call back when you can" is lame. And easily just forgotten and avoided. It's like, no, not going to do that.

Jon Bryant: And also strangely enough, I've heard it said before, it lowers your status in a way. You're now kind of desperate. Yeah, in a way that message has never been one that sets you up for a nice, even keeled conversation with the customer.

Michael Murray: 100%. Yeah, I agree. Yeah, I think that's such an important thing. I think it goes back to setting that expectation from the very first appointment at the very beginning of that appointment. "Excited to meet with you. We might not be able to work together, but the one thing I'm going to ask is that you're going to let me know whenever you make a decision. Is that fair? Can we agree on that?" That type of a conversation. It's not just the customer has all of the power and we're just begging them for a little bit of attention or whatever. So no, I think that's extremely important.

Jon Bryant: So what do you say then to avoid that? Everything that works for you?

Michael Murray: Yeah, I mean, like I said earlier, I mean, again, I think especially when it's this scheduled call, I'm going to remind them of that. I'm calling at our scheduled time. "We had set up a—we committed to talk today so that you could let me know where things stand, if we're going to be able to work together or not. And so I wanted to honor that commitment I had made by giving you a call here. Please call me back when you can so you can let me know kind of what you're thinking." Things like that. If it is—that doesn't mean they're going to call back. And so typically I'm going to wait a day or two and I'm going to follow up again. Typically by the third call/email, if I'm getting no response, I'm going to be a little more direct. I like the—I've heard it referred to as a breakup email or breakup voicemail, I guess.

Where it's basically something along the lines of, "Hey John, I've left messages a few times this week, appreciate that you're really busy. I know when we last spoke, this project was important to you. So typically when I'm not hearing back from somebody, it means that either this project is not something that you're interested in doing right now, or you found somebody else to do it. And so at this point, if I don't hear from you, I'm going to go ahead and close out that quote, in which case we would have to reprice that if it's something that you're interested in doing in the future," something like that. What I have found is I get some response, or somebody's going to say, "Wait, sorry. Nope, we were just really busy. We had some basketball games this week. I'm so sorry. I really meant to get back to you. We haven't made a decision yet, but we're definitely interested in working with you. Please don't close out that quote." And it's like, "Oh, got it. Okay, cool. Good to—you know, could have said that anytime over the last week or two or whatever, but—" Yeah, something like that. I have had pretty good luck with again. It's not perfect, but yeah. How about you?

Jon Bryant: Yeah, so maybe, I mean, everything you're saying is, I feel the same way about—I would say when we're following up, less is more on voicemails and calls. You know, once you get far enough away from that appointment not being respected, it's like you really don't want to seem desperate about the appointment. So a lot of ways we just say, "Hey, this is John from XYZ Painting Company. Hit me back on my mobile 403, whatever, whatever." Right. And I'm not even referencing the why or the how. I'm just pretending it never happened. I'm trying to change all that stuff. It never happened and I'm not emotional about it. I'm just following up and I don't even mention following up because, "Hey, I'm just following up, blah, blah." How many sales reps have ever said that in their life and how does the customer respond to that? It's like, "Oh, they just want my money, blah, blah." So it's like, "Hey, John from XYZ painting company. Hit me back on my mobile, whatever, whatever." End of call.

And then the breakup thing, I mean, I haven't heard it called the breakup before, but it's really about taking that estimate off the books in a way, right? So like what you said about like, doesn't seem of interest to you. We use some verbiage around like, "You know, this is what our job is. As we agreed, just getting that yes or no is super important. We don't want to endlessly call you here. That's not the point of our job. And so if you can just in one way or another, let me know. That'd be great." And then the other one is like, you know, permission to close your file. Sometimes when we send that as an email, it's like, "Hey, just wanted to get permission to close your file. I haven't heard from you in 30 days." The response rate on that's actually pretty good. People are like, "Oh, don't close the file. I don't want my job repriced." It's like, "Oh yeah, sorry I had to come to this. I feel like I was part of the solution not the problem here, but hey, I could be wrong." So yeah, I mean, at what point do you start sending texts? Like I know you said one after the—you're always sending texts, yeah.

Michael Murray: Always. The answer is always. Yeah. It's interesting. So we have a newer rep here and he was doing some, as part of training with our newer reps, we have them reach out to quotes that we didn't get answers on, like exactly what we're talking about. Right. And, you know, they just, they got closed out, but not because the customer ever responded. It's kind of like the no response bucket. And we keep following up with those people. It's just, you know, typically the original sales rep might not keep following up. Those are going to go maybe like office admin or new sales reps part of training. So anyway, just this week we have a new rep here and he's doing that part of his training. These are low value at this point. Right. Some of them are six, 12, 18 months old. Most likely they already had the work done or maybe they moved or who knows.

And I was talking to him and saying, "Yep, so you're going to call, you're going to leave a voicemail, and then you're going to send them a text." And he was like, "Really? Text message? That seems like a lot. That seems kind of personal. I don't want to invade their text message." And I'm like, "First of all, we have followed up with these people half a dozen to a dozen times soon after that quote was done. And they never responded. And they agreed with the original sales rep that they would give us a response that they never did. And so all we're asking them to do is just respond." And so what I especially like to do is have simple, yes, no questions in text message, something like, "Hey, we gave you a quote six months ago, wanted to see, have you guys had that project completed yet?" You know, introduce yourself, whatever, right? And then ask that and they can just respond yes or no. And that can open a conversation. They can just say yes, and it's like, "Okay, great. Thanks for letting me know. I'll update that and we won't bug you anymore on that. Let us know when you're ready for our next project. We'd love to be able to earn your business." Something like that, I think is low friction, not hard to do.

One of the things that we also like to do, even just going back, I mean, again, I am a big believer in text messages. I think more and more that is a preferred method of conversation. That's how I prefer. It didn't used to be that way. Yeah. I'm old enough to remember when I had to press the one button three times to get it to be a C. And I was like, text messaging is the dumbest thing I have ever heard of. But I've converted. I got my smartphone. I'm ready to go now.

Jon Bryant: Are you a dictator? You just got these long, endless, poorly formatted messages.

Michael Murray: 100%. Oh yeah, I'm driving around talking to myself. Yeah, that's all I want. All I want is AI to actually be able to do that. I'll be happy because I don't—we're not there yet.

Jon Bryant: Everybody talks about it, like the world is ending from AI and Siri can't even figure out what I'm asking her. So I don't know what's happening.

Michael Murray: No, no, I do. Yeah. Like the biggest tech companies, Apple and Amazon. I mean, these—I never, anyways, rough, just digressing here. Dumpster fire. So, you know, text messages, I think are vitally important. That's again, that's how I want to be communicated with most of the time. My phone is on do not disturb or certainly never is my phone ringing because I'm often doing quotes or I'm in a meeting or et cetera. But something like if you send me a text message, I can respond pretty quickly. If I'm at a quote and I can get a minute or two away from the customer, I can shoot you a text back much easier than I am going to call you at that time. Or if I'm at my kids baseball game or something like that, it's like I can text you back. I don't want to be that parent up there with the phone to my ear trying to watch my kids play.

So yeah, I'm a big fan of text messages. What we find is that we get great response to that. And yeah, I would encourage it, for sure.

Jon Bryant: Yeah. It's kind of interesting. I mean, I've had a lot of conversations with people about the future of sales. And I think younger generations are a lot more hesitant about interacting with people—I'm sure COVID didn't help that. And so it's like, how do we take that edge off? Right? Like, you know, we talked about the auto follow-ups. I don't think text auto follow-up—although, you're right. It can be built into the system. It's hard to make that personal and fit with the right timing, but communication by text—our reps are texting all the time. It's a great way to keep the conversation like a documented conversation to actually allow them to respond with less pressure. They can control their responses. This really seems to be a high impact way of communicating. So follow-up makes sense.

Like we've talked about before, it's just about figuring out how to get that conversation back in person to actually process it. So it's hard to process a lot of information through text. Yes or no questions. Totally makes sense. I get that. And it's kind of like, how do I use this appropriately so that it's not these long winded messages and, you know, talking about the paint quality or talking about—it's just like, these have got to be quick, snappy things, but yeah, it's huge. I mean, we find that we get a response a lot more through text and follow-ups just way higher. And it leads to conversations, like you said.

Michael Murray: Yeah, one of the things we're going to test out this year, it's on topic but slightly different, but is having our office admin send a follow-up text, manually, but it's templated, the day after every appointment, to basically just make sure that the customer—did you get your quote? Not asking you for a sale, something along the line—we don't do this yet, right, so we're testing—we're contemplating testing this, but the plan is to test it. But it's going to be something along the lines of, "I know the sales rep is going to follow up with you on the actual quote. I just wanted to make sure that you receive the quote in your email. Is there anything else that you need from us at this time?" Something along those lines. Because one of the things that we have found is that sometimes that's what happens. Email—we had the wrong email address or we sent it and it went to their spam or whatever it could be. And the sales rep scheduled the time to follow up a week later or five days later or whatever. And the customer didn't have their quote to be able to review it. And so completely out of sight, out of mind. Maybe they even feel like, "You know, what's wrong with these people? They said they were sending the quote and they didn't," things like that. So that's something that we're going to test a little bit. We've got to, you know, again, we don't want to step on the sales rep's toes with the follow-up, just like we were talking about with the automations. But to try to have that little catch, if you will, to make sure, yep, everything went well, sales rep got me what I need, just need that time to see what we want to do. Got it. Great. Thanks. Hope we can work with you.

Jon Bryant: Yeah, sweet. That's great. Where are we in the conversation? Yeah.

Michael Murray: All right, so what happens when, you know, we follow it up and I think, you know, we, again, we've kind of touched on this a little bit, but I just want to make sure there's nothing that we're missing. Like how long do we follow up? What if the customer says they just need some more time or we're just not getting in touch with them? Like how long are we doing this for?

Jon Bryant: I mean, you mentioned it a couple of minutes ago, just about like 12 to 18 months, we're still following up. When we get someone that requests an estimate from us and we're going to go do it, I've always felt like the exchange truly is in the response. And so we're going to—obviously we're really respectful and we are very focused on the customer experience of the whole thing, but we're going to follow up because we had an agreement. And so that might be, you know, two years later, like you said, or whatever it is, we're still trying. Now, most of our sales process, just to give some context, is done in the first 30 days. So we're—our quotes are valid for 30 days. Our process is for that 30 days. And so if we can't get in touch with you in the first 30 days, that's when we're sending that email of like, "Hey, guess what? You might not be okay with this, but we are, and we're going to close it because that's why we set that parameter, right? Prices change, but also we just can't wait forever." And so that's for us, 30 days. Yeah. What's that like for you guys?

Michael Murray: Pretty similar. Yeah, I mean, I, again, I would say we have booked a lot of jobs, dozens that were a couple of years old. And especially we find that on bigger projects, exterior painting projects, where, you know, maybe somebody moved into a new house, never hired a painter before, have no idea what this costs and it's a lot of money. We offer some financing options and different things like that, but not everybody wants to do that. Sometimes people just want to save up. You know, sometimes it's because we followed up and sometimes it's not even—to be honest with you, we've had customers that will call us and it's like, "Hey, you guys gave us a quote two years ago. We're ready to get on the schedule." And it's like, "Has anybody talked to this person in two years?" And the answer is like, nobody's really intentionally reached out to this person, maybe after the 30 days, just gave up.

Jon Bryant: And then you have to tell them that it's 40% higher than when you bid it. That's a fun one. Yeah, exactly.

Michael Murray: Yeah, there's that conversation, especially lately. Yeah, but again, I mean, it's a good opportunity, right? Doesn't mean—yes, prices have probably gone up or have gone up. And we've got to have that conversation, but most of the time customers understand maybe not 40%, but at least something. So yeah, I mean, again, it just reminds me, I'm like, why, you know, whether it's 30 days or 60 days or 90 days, it needs to be longer. Some people just need a long time. We're working with big ticket sales here. This is not immediate stuff. Most of our projects are more than $5,000, sometimes 10, 15, $50,000. And it's not an emergency service. You know, it is something that somebody can go quite a while without having to do the work. But again, it doesn't mean that they won't ever do the work. So that's where again, having a good automation or like email newsletters and stuff like that can help you to keep in touch.

Jon Bryant: Totally. Yeah. I think as you say that, it makes me start to think about our auto follow-ups and we do a lot of email. But I'm sure we could set some auto follow-ups in PaintScout to really follow up in a year because it's unlikely the sales rep is still in contact. Right. Like it's not going to come out of the blue to be like, "Hey, it's your one year quote anniversary. Have you made a decision?" That could be very much automated and come out of an email with a couple of fun emojis, have celebratory things and thumbs up. So yeah, I think, happy quote anniversary. It's actually pretty funny. I might use that too. It's a pretty funny email. Yeah.

Michael Murray: For sure. Yeah, you're not stepping on anybody's toes. Yeah. Happy anniversary. I like it. I would do that. Yeah. I think something too, I mean, we don't do this, but I think there's an opportunity—just something in the mail. You know, again, I think this is more of that long-term with those older quotes, call them six months plus old. It could be just like a piece of mail touch, because, you know, if we had a bad email address or whatever, it's like things have changed and it's like, it's just another—if we keep trying the same contact methods and it's not working, it could just be the contact method rather than the person has decided not to work with us.

Jon Bryant: Totally. Yeah, that's a very good point. I mean, mail, handwritten notes, handwritten note services, figuring out how to run those through your process. I mean, that's a huge part. I mean, we'll have to cover that in another chat, but you know, how to use direct mail to your advantage because there's so much clutter out there, even for text messages, like how many companies are texting offers and stuff now, email, but I think direct mail is still—people get it. People see it. And so how do we use that? But definitely discussion for another time.

Michael Murray: Yeah, for sure. Do you guys do any sort of follow-up after somebody has told you no? Like, "Hey, we're actually going to go with somebody else." Are you ever going to talk to them again? Are they ever getting anything? Or is that just like, "Great, thanks," end of communication?

Jon Bryant: Currently no, but we might start sending anniversary notes. Do you?

Michael Murray: Again, they're going to get email newsletter. Yeah, yeah. But specific to that project, I would say no. But I think there might be some opportunities for that. Yeah.

Jon Bryant: Cool. Well, that's kind of what I feel like a natural end to the conversation today. Maybe just to recap, my point of view here is that follow-up is important. When you're not winning enough jobs, follow-up might be part of your issue. It's for the customer's benefit. We need to remember that. And there's methods here that are really, really practical and help your process. Yeah, what's your final thought here, Mike?

Michael Murray: Yeah, 100%. I think, you know, we just need to—our company, I think our industry needs to do more follow-up. We need to be more understanding that customers are taking some time to book projects. These are expensive projects. We need to take the ego out of it. We need to not think like, "Well, you know, they're going to book with me. Of course they're going to, you know, when they're ready, they're just going to book." And if they don't, that's like, "Screw them," because they didn't call me back or because they didn't—like I left them a voicemail, they didn't call me back. So I'm moving on. And it's just like, no, like it's your job as the sales professional is to help them check this off their list.

Again, I said it before, I'm that person. If you come to my house to sell me something, I'm not going to make a decision on the spot. I'm going to want to look it over. I'm going to want to make sure I understand it. I'm going to want to probably ask you some questions and just make sure I feel really comfortable with it. I'm also really busy coaching my kids' sports teams, running the business, doing the podcasts, doing all the things. Right. And it's like, if you call me and you leave a voicemail as the sales person or whatever that came to my house, chances are I'm not going to call you back. Like I might—it's not that I'm intentionally not going to, but it's just like, "Oh man, I completely forgot. So sorry," kind of a thing. And it's like, please follow up with me again. Please send me a text message. Because that problem I had that I had you come over for is still a problem and I want it solved and I just need your help to get that off of my list.

And so my sales pros, we need to remember that. Customers—we're not wasting their time. We're not bothering them. And sometimes it's like—

Jon Bryant: Unless you're sending six texts a day. Let's clarify that. But yeah, there's a method here.

Michael Murray: That's fair. Yeah. Don't do that. But yeah, I mean, again, it's just like, yeah, be the professional, be the one who's like, "I'm going to keep following up because I know you need to get this done because you told me that you want to get this done and I'll be back in touch." Yep. Don't give up.

Jon Bryant: Awesome. Don't give up. Appreciate that. All right. Well, to everyone, if you're enjoying the podcast, you know what to do. You can like or subscribe, send us a note. We always appreciate it. And yeah, happy Price Sell Paint to everyone. Have a great day. Yeah. Take it easy.

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