Mastering a Sales System: The Key to Success in the Painting Industry

Jon Bryant: Hey, what's up everybody? It's another episode of Price Sell Paint. I'm Jon Bryant. We've got Michael Murray here, co-hosting. And we've got Colton Bethel from Kennedy Painting in St. Louis. Welcome to the podcast, Colton.

Colton Bethel: Hey, thank you very much. Thank you very much for having me.

Jon Bryant: So we're excited to talk to you because you know a thing or two about residential painting sales. And we're going to get into that. But first, can you just tell us a couple minutes, first couple of minutes here, how you got to be an expert painting sales rep.

Colton Bethel: Okay, I'll take you way back. We're going to go back to 2015. Okay, so we're going back 10 years now. I was homeschooled and a gentleman actually, let me back up just a hair more. I was homeschooled. I wanted to do something during the summer.

Michael Murray: He was born. Colton was born. And then he started selling painting jobs.

Jon Bryant: Yeah, go all the way back.

Michael Murray: Damn, you're young.

Jon Bryant: It was just about 2000. People were freaking out. It was Y2K.

Colton Bethel: But it was over the summer. I wanted to get a job. And I got a job at Six Flags, got hired. I was really excited, get to look at the girls all summer long. I was going to be a lifeguard, man. I was pretty stoked, but I had an older gentleman that I went to church with. He came up to me and he had owned his own painting company. Basically just him and maybe a couple other guys. That's about the size he kept it, you know, his whole career. And he came up and said, hey, I'm actually short on basically a gopher, you know, go for this, go for that. This summer, would you want to come work for me? I'll teach you how to paint. And I said, yeah, I got a job at Six Flags and it's look at girls or learn how to paint. But at the end of the day, I...

Michael Murray: Goodness, I was in high school.

Jon Bryant: How many girls are there at the painting company? Yeah.

Michael Murray: You went...

Colton Bethel: There was his wife.

Michael Murray: Please say you went with Six Flags.

Jon Bryant: Yeah.

Colton Bethel: I should have, because now look where I am, I'm stuck. I'm stuck in the painting industry. No, but it's funny how things work out. I thought, you know what? I probably could learn something by going to work with him. And so I told him, yeah, I worked for him all summer long. Like I said, I was homeschooled. So I just ended up continuing to work for him for the rest of the year. I did my schooling at night, worked for him full time. I worked for him until I turned 18. And he was great to work with as a teenager because it was like, hey, he was older, we would golf a day or two a week. And sometimes I'd show up to work and he'd say, let's go fish. And I'd say, sweet, you know, I didn't feel like working a day anyway. It was great, but I got engaged when I turned 18 and I was really looking forward to marrying my wife and I just, it wasn't stable. It was not a stable income there. So I decided to start looking for a company to work for somebody with good benefits, somewhere that I could maybe establish a career. I started looking around in St. Louis, you know, there's so many, I mean, you Google painting company. I think everybody has probably at one point Googled painting company. Everything comes up and I found Kennedy Painting. Started looking on their website. I read just about everything there was to read about Kennedy Painting and I thought, hey, this is the company, this is the company I really want to work for. Got an interview, got hired, I worked for Kennedy Painting for about two and a half years as a painter. Never once in my life did I ever think about sales. I was just going to continue on the painting route, become a crew leader. You know, it's just what I thought I was going to do until I saw the sales guys. I can remember one of the first times I saw sales guys, it was beginning of the year, and they had just walked up to each other and they said, back to zeros, you know, everything is zeros. And that just intrigued me. I was like, whoa, that's crazy. You know, you're basically starting over like that. I knew, I had to do this position. I waited until something kind of came available and the hardest part was convincing Sean Kennedy to, you know, give this position to a 20 year old. That was my first sale though. So, I didn't, yeah. I didn't, I kind of thought it would be totally different. I got to be honest, you know.

Jon Bryant: So John.

Michael Murray: You thought there was going to be a lot more golf and fishing involved.

Colton Bethel: I did, I thought it was going to be crazy, I'll be honest. I thought it was going to be a little high pressure. I just thought it would be totally different. What it is, is there's so many systems, follow the systems. And I don't know, I just extremely enjoy it. But yet, you hate it at the same time. Anybody who's done it understands it. It's a thrill. And you hate the thrill, but like you would never want to get off the ride. You would never want to think about going to a nine to five or something like that. So it's great. I've been doing this position now for what'll be close to five years, about four and a half years now. So I'll be with the company, I guess it is five. Yeah, it's five years. So I'll be with the company seven years this October. So great company. I couldn't say better things.

Jon Bryant: Colton, and the marriage worked out.

Colton Bethel: Unfortunately, it did. So now I got... I now have a...

Jon Bryant: Unfortunately.

Michael Murray: He said, and fortunately, just in case anybody's tuning in. Yeah.

Jon Bryant: Okay, I think there was a glitch there.

Colton Bethel: It might sound, I said unfortunately, but it was a joke. It was a joke. Yeah, now I've got a little boy. I've got a two year old boy and a five month old daughter. So, yeah, it's great. It's the best thing in the world. It's the only reason I come to this job. Don't get me wrong. I enjoy it, but, shoot, if I didn't have a family, man, I'd be down in Key West, Florida. I'd be a spearfishing charter guide. That would be my dream life, but I think I'm pretty happy with this.

Jon Bryant: Cool. Well, I mean, one of the reasons we, one of the reasons, a big reason why we got you on the podcast is because, you know, in that five years you've become world-class at what you do. And I think it's so fascinating for us to talk to people who are on the PaintScout system, who are our lead performers and try to figure out what they're doing. Because we've got this unique position now where we actually can see how people perform against each other. It's kind of one of our goals here for the next year is to bring more data to people to understand how they do. But we're excited to talk to you because I mean, as we told you before, you're in the $2 million sales rep club. And so you've taken that five years of experience. You've done really well. There's not a lot of people in that group. There's 32 in our system and you rank number 17 for residential sales. So, there's got to be some stuff you're doing here that other people aren't doing that they can learn from. And we just want to dig into that. So quick overview though, just, I mean, are you okay sharing some numbers? Is this okay? Just to give people a little bit. Okay, yeah, so we, so 2023, so that's like full fiscal year, full calendar year, sorry, of 2023. No. Okay. Over to you, Michael. Yeah.

Colton Bethel: Hey, go for it. Go for it.

Colton Bethel: Don't share those numbers. No, I'm just kidding.

Michael Murray: We're going to anyway.

Colton Bethel: No, I'm just kidding.

Jon Bryant: So yeah, close to $2.2 million sold. You did a lot of estimates, so we're kind of curious to how you manage your time. So it says 879. Of that group, one of the higher number of estimates sent out, not actually performed. So that's kind of interesting. We've got an average job size of about $5,000, which is also indicative of closing a lot of work to get to $2.2 million, selling that average job size. You've brought in a lot of, closed a lot of jobs. And so we want to dig into a couple of those things. I think there's some stuff in there for sure. People can learn from. So, let me see here. What's another interesting fact. I mean, you're closing at about 50%. So you, you're closing, you've got a ton of jobs. Like the Colton Bethel engine is working really hard. So let's yeah, Michael, what kind of questions do you think of when you hear that?

Michael Murray: Yeah, I mean, that starts there. So, you know, we're, as we're recording this, it's coming up on the end of May, right? So this will get released sometime over the summer. So we're in busy season. I think this is a good indication. Just this week or next week, or however you think of it this month, how many estimates are you doing on a weekly basis, monthly basis during that like peak busy spring and summer rush?

Colton Bethel: You know, I need 44 a month. That's what my cookbook comes out to. I need 44 a month in the winter time, especially this past winter. That was a little difficult to obtain, but now, like you said, being in the peak busy season, I let the office schedule 17 a week. And I normally throw on just from my previous customers, from, you know, some of my business development partners reaching out. I normally throw on, let's just say, average three to five on top of that, probably closer to the three mark. We'll say three. So typically run 20 to 22 bids a week. I've been really thinking a lot, not to go totally off subject, but I would really like to get to that 15 number. I think that would be a very good sweet spot. And definitely, you know, when you start off, you know, newer rep, you just, you think the more leads, the better, right? You know, shoot, man, if I could get 25 in, that's a hundred a month. That's so many more opportunities when not, that's not necessarily the case. Sometimes you're too busy for your own good. And I think that's where I am a little bit. 17 is definitely manageable, but when you start throwing it up into the 20s, I think that's where I start, like you said, that's a higher amount of jobs looked at on average. And I would agree with that. And I would say that's actually something I would like to change.

Michael Murray: I think I know the answer based on some of the family situations you talked about, but what are some of the other reasons why you want to lower that down to 15, 17, somewhere in that range? What do you think some of the benefits of that will be?

Colton Bethel: More time not spent in a face-to-face meeting with another customer. I know that sounds bad, but if I could do three a day, three a day is extremely manageable. I would also like to, because it's not also how much you sell. Anybody can attest to this. It's if you, did you sell it? Did you sell it well, right? You know, did you estimate the project well? Right now, I don't have a set time for me to go out and take a look at the jobs that I have already sold. I would really like an appointment slot, you know, once a week for me to go buy jobs that I've sold, see how things are going, get feedback from the crew. So it would allow me to do that. Hey, just to be forward with everyone. If I get too busy, like Thursdays, I run five estimates every single Thursday. That's a busy day. If I get too busy or if I do, let's just say five large exteriors, back to back to back appointments, what really suffers is my follow-up calls. That kind of seems to be the first thing where I go, you know, get to it tomorrow. So if I could scale back a little bit, stick to my systems. I think I would actually have a little bit more success, but it's a hard line. I've always run close to 20. I think that my management would be okay with the switch, but I've really got to put some thought into how to make that switch.

Michael Murray: Jon Bryant, I feel like you guys do pretty well there. Talk about your company. How do you guys think about how many estimates a rep should be doing? And then what are some things that you do to try to manage to that number?

Jon Bryant: Yeah. I mean, it's, this is a big subject for us these days because we were finding that, and I don't know how you feel about this, Colton, I'd love to get your opinion, but we have two types of leads that come in. We have one that's a, what we call a picture lead tracker. And that's one that customers are sending more info and pictures so we can get them a price without having to go see it. And we have an actual appointment tracker. And right now it is busy season. We are getting a ton of leads in our estimators are doing, I'd say on average eight estimates a week. And it is shockingly low. Obviously our sales numbers are also low. And so our, you know, our theory has always been like, it doesn't matter how many leads you get. It matters how many quality sales you can do. And it's really about managing that quality. So are you, if you can get all of your quality sales done in five bids, what do we care? Right? Like that's the sales professional's choice. The issue becomes that when, you know, when you don't hit those targets, the first thing we look at is what your activity has been. And so, so I guess breaking all that down, this is kind of what you want me to talk about, Michael. Yeah, that's yeah. So.

Michael Murray: Yeah, that was great.

Jon Bryant: We're trying to understand that. And so on the other end, I'm curious for you Colton, like when you get those 20, 25 leads, are you doing anything to vet the leads at all to make sure they're worth your time? Or do you just go see everything? How does that work?

Colton Bethel: When I get up to that point, more just, you know, if it's put on the calendar, I'm going to take a look at it. The commercial ones, I really like to vet. You know, the residential ones, they, you know, they pretty much just slide on in. Like I said, I just got to be forward with people. Most of the time I'm looking at them, you know, the morning of, I'm kind of checking out, seeing what do I got coming forward. Ideal is I like to look at them first thing Monday morning. I like to see what's coming up for the entire week. The commercial ones I really like to vet, they've really got to be a good fit for us, for me to take the appointment.

Jon Bryant: So when you, are you willing to sell like any type of job? Like if someone calls and is like, I've got one windowsill to paint and they schedule it in your schedule, do you just go see that? Is that okay?

Colton Bethel: No, so that is a good point. I probably should have brought that up. Now our front office does do a good job of vetting. You know, they talk to the prospect or the potential customer about scheduling, you know, how soon do they need it done by. They let them know where we're currently scheduling, how many weeks from a signed contract they'll be looking at. They talk to them about, if they get a feeling that it is a small, you know, if somebody says, I just have a door I need painted, they're going to have that minimum job size conversation with them. But for the most part, you know, if it makes it through the office, I go take a look at it.

Jon Bryant: What's the smallest sale you'll do? One person one day.

Colton Bethel: $800 is our, yeah, one guy, one day. Obviously the sales rate changes a little bit. In the winter it's going to be a little bit less. Maybe think like $680 in the winter, maybe like $800 during the summer. But it's a man day.

Jon Bryant: Kind of just shifts based on your supply essentially.

Colton Bethel: Yep, it's got to be a man day, you know, we're not going to sell something. For a previous customer that I've done, you know, some great work for, if they need something, you know, it's like half a day, hey, they've been great to us, I'll try to be good to them.

Jon Bryant: Cool. Do you, so one thing that's really interesting about your numbers is like, even with that volume, so going back to just like the amount you're processing, which is yeah, currently, like even on these numbers, it's more than 20 a week. No, a little less, a little less than that overall, but you've got a 50% win rate. Like even with all of that stuff coming at you, you're still closing at 50%. Is there anything you attribute that to? Like, is it something in your system that's different? Is it you just like showing up, being super aggressive, being like, you're going to buy this or I'm going to egg your house. Like what's the approach here? Because that's really impressive.

Colton Bethel: I tell the customer the very first time I meet them, I know where you live now. No. Again, what I really think it is, is I think it's sticking to the system. I really try to shoot for 60. I mean, there are some, I mean, I bet if you look in the top 10 of that list that I'm on, I bet those guys are, I bet those guys are into the sixties, if not some of them into the seventies. I really think that's sixties the number to shoot for right now. But yeah, I fell a little bit short of that. I think I'm running like 55, 50. I'm currently running 54% so far this year. So making a little bit of a gain, but really what I can maybe attest that to is following a system. Hey, look, maybe I definitely can improve the system 100%, but I do follow the system. You know, I don't get outside of the system. I try not, you know, I don't just go a month or something without doing a follow-up call or something like that. You know, I don't go a week without making a follow-up call. So following a system and sticking to it is what I would say, being consistent.

Michael Murray: Colton, I want to talk about the system. I think anybody listening is sitting here going, this sounds great. I want to sell 50 to 60%. I want to sell almost $2.5 million. You keep mentioning following the system as being one of the big secrets here. Can we dig into that system? Do you mind giving us some overview of how that system works, what that looks like?

Colton Bethel: Yeah, I'd be happy to kind of give you guys an idea of what I do. Like I said, there's definitely areas to improve, but I'll just give it to you straight how I do it right now. And then maybe some of the things I'm embarrassed about, I'll say that I'm wanting to work on them.

Michael Murray: We're all a work in progress. I love it.

Jon Bryant: Speak for yourself, man.

Michael Murray: Except Jon Bryant. Look at that hair.

Jon Bryant: Yeah.

Colton Bethel: Please don't talk about hair. Yeah, you're talking about the engine, you know, the Colton engine burning, man. It's burning out. I don't know what the deal is. No, no. But as far as the system goes, tell me if I'm getting too far into detail with this. So if you're like, hey, man, that's way too much detail. Give us the overview. Just let me know. But I'll try to go somewhat as detailed as possible. Just kind of what a regular day, what a week looks like. Get to the estimate five minutes early. Man, if you say you're going to be there at 10 AM, and hey, I'm a hypocrite on some of this stuff, but if you say you're going to be there at 10 AM, you know, be there 9:55 sitting in front of the house, ready to go. Whenever I walk in, I try to have the same line of conversation with people, you know, on every single project. Thank you for inviting me in. I want to give them an idea of what this process is going to look like. Before I say that, I always want to build up a little bit of small talk. How'd you hear about us? Are you originally from the St. Louis area? And then obviously the small talk runs out and it's time to get down to business. So I give them an idea of what we're going to do today. I ask them to basically give me a tour, show me what you want, and I'm going to ask you questions along the way. That's okay. That's a huge one for protecting someone's okayness. Asking them can I ask you questions? Nobody's going to tell you no you can't, but just asking that makes them feel more comfortable with you. So ask them. Hey, show me around. I'm going to ask you questions if that's okay, and I let them know please feel free to ask me questions. It's about the only thing they keep me around for so please while they're, you know, kind of like, then they'll start walking. We'll start going to look at something and I'll say, you know, hey, I have about 35, 40 minutes set aside for this. Is that okay? You know, I think all of us have probably just done a bid and then you get to the end and they're like, hey, I kind of, I had to go to work. Like I really needed to leave for work 15 minutes ago. I really got to get out of here. And it's like, man, that's not a great way to start things off.

Jon Bryant: Ha ha ha!

Colton Bethel: So, just making sure that they have the time set aside. And then let them show you through. Let them show you through what they want. Be as detailed as possible. There's so many different things. I was actually listening to one of your guys' podcasts not too long ago. And I think you said, I think it was you, Jon Bryant, that said that the customer maybe understands 1% of the painting process. And I don't think that you could have said anything more true. I mean, I think about industries other than painting, like literally any other industry other than painting, and I have like 1% knowledge on how that works. I would have zero idea what HVAC system entails, you know. So really helping, just breaking down the painting process, you know, what's going to happen, how many coats of paint, you know, if you see a water stain, explain to the customer how you're going to fix that, not just, water stain. We're really good at fixing water stains. You might be, but explain to the customer, explain that to the customer. And then also, like I said, if I'm getting too detailed, let me know. But if the customer is asking for things that are not, you know, aren't the best in the end, you're the professional. It is your job to protect the customer's okayness, but to tell them, hey, you know, this is opinion here, but I really think that maybe you'd be better off going in this direction. Or like, for example, painting brick. There's a lot of companies out there who will just, you know, spray a few coats of paint on brick. And then all of a sudden they've got, you know, peeling paint. I always tell a customer, hey, whether you use us or not, whether you use us or not, please make sure you talk with the painting company about the primer that's being used on the brick. That's a big thing. You could have many years of heartache if you don't just have this quick conversation up front. Sorry, I went down some rabbit holes there. But after the homeowner gets done showing you around, I like to do the estimate by myself. I ask the customer if it's okay for me to go back through in the way that they showed me the project.

Michael Murray: No, you're good.

Colton Bethel: And I'm going to take notes, photos. I ask permission to take photos and then I'm going to take measurements. And then I give them an idea about how long that'll take me based on the amount of work they showed me. But then I also let them know, hey, be maybe a little bit prepared. Because once I finish, I'm going to have an idea of a ballpark cost. And I tell, I tell people, hey, think about what you want this to cost. And then just keep that to yourself. I think reps do this a little different. Some reps do it a little differently, but ultimately right out of the gate, what the customer wants it to cost really doesn't matter. Not at first. I tell them...

Jon Bryant: You could probably have a quick game too, where like you both write it down and then you show it back at the table. And then on three, you both flash the number at each other and just watch the shock on everyone's face. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. So, okay. Yeah.

Michael Murray: And we just go with the higher number.

Colton Bethel: That would be... Yeah, their numbers are like way higher than what I did. I'm like... Most of the time it's the opposite.

Michael Murray: Sold!

Colton Bethel: But I tell them, you know, think about a budget in mind, and then just keep that to yourself. I'll share with you what I think it will cost for Kennedy Painting to do this project for you. You just got to be really careful on that. I don't like to spend too much time right on that because you don't want to make, you don't want to do a really nice job and then boil it all down to price right at the end, right? You know, you're looking for the, I mean, the whole time they're walking you around, you're looking for the reason that they had you out here, you know, why? Is it so it looks better? Okay, well, cool, let's, you know, they want a new look, let's talk about that new look. What do you want? Are we the company to provide that for you? Or not. So you don't want to boil everything down to just price, but I tell them, you know, think about a budget and then when I'm finished, I'll give them an idea first and then we can talk and see if that matches. So that's kind of what the estimate process looks like for me once I get to the end. This is something I really would like to do better about is setting set times to follow up with people. I let everybody know that the only thing I ask is just for a yes or no answer. You're not going to hurt my feelings. If you did, I should get out of this trade. But what I really ask for in exchange for my time is just a simple yes or no answer. That's really the only thing I'm after here.

Michael Murray: What percentage of the project would you say you get a yes or a no while you're there versus on a follow-up and then what is like the total percentage you know how many people do you never get an answer from you never get closure on what percentage so on the spot versus ever guesstimate.

Colton Bethel: You know, no's on the spot are very rare. I don't get very many no's on the spot, you know, less than 10%. Yes's on the spot, this depends, you know, during the winter, this is higher. During the summer, this is lower. But yes's on the spot, you know, maybe 10, 15%, maybe 20, maybe bump that up. So somewhere around there, I would say probably 10, 15, something like that.

Michael Murray: Okay.

Colton Bethel: And then what amount of, you know, the amount of closure that I get. I was trying to think about this because I actually thought maybe you'd ask me this for the most part, people do tell me yes or no. It's not too often that I have to, you know, just click lost on somebody that isn't following up with me, but I would, you know, it definitely is a percentage. I would probably say, you know, 10 to 15%, something like that.

Michael Murray: Overall.

Colton Bethel: For the most part, I do get a yes or a no, so I get closure. But yeah, there are some people who, you know, they just don't get back. They just don't get back with me. And I don't really think that's the customer's fault. I think that I didn't set a clear enough expectation with that customer. Or yeah, there's something I could have done better with that customer for them to totally ghost me like that.

Michael Murray: That makes sense. Yeah. One of the things I wanted to ask you about, you mentioned at the beginning that you want to get to every appointment five minutes early. But you're also doing a lot of appointments and talk about how you manage that schedule. Like how much time do you give yourself for an appointment and then maybe drive time as well as are there specific times of the day that you find or days of the week that you find it to be more optimal for doing quotes. Just talking about that schedule a little bit.

Colton Bethel: Yeah, I'm not really a huge fan of quotes on Friday. I only do two on Friday. Just everybody's got that weekend on the mind. So nobody really wants to do the, you know, the nitty gritty. Nobody wants to do a painting estimate. It seems like, you know, when you get later on in the day on Friday. And I, hey, I don't want to do them either. I'm not even going to lie. I want to, you know, weekend, right? So I think that, yeah.

Michael Murray: Go fishing and golfing.

Colton Bethel: I do four estimates on Monday. I do from 11:30 to 4 o'clock. Each estimate is an hour and a half block for me in my schedule. So you have 11:30, you have 1, you have 2:30, and then 4 o'clock. They used to make us do 5 o'clock and we rebelled. So we don't have to do 5 o'clock anymore. Yeah, we did. We had a good mutiny.

Michael Murray: There's a mutiny.

Jon Bryant: You rebelled?

Colton Bethel: Like right when I came, right when I came into this position, I only had to do like several 5 o'clock and it was terrible. Honestly, the reason being is if people don't value their project enough to take off work for it, then they're probably not a customer that we're going to do very well with. We really want to look for people who, you know, this is their home. This is a big deal for them. You know, they're putting time into this. I want them to match, you know, the amount of time that I'm putting into this to give them the estimate. I want them to match that. So that's why 5 o'clock are honestly kind of no good because you get a lot of the people who are, they don't care about it enough to take off work or reschedule. You got people eating dinner in front of you and that's weird. You know, that's not a good, I didn't like 5 o'clock at all.

Michael Murray: Sure.

Colton Bethel: But then I take three.

Michael Murray: Yeah. Right. I was going to say real quick, you want to get to your family life, but they do too. Right. And so there's that challenge, but it's also, you know, the challenge of maybe trying to have all the decision makers there. Right. We might have another guest come on who says, hey, I only like to do appointments in the evenings on the weekends, because oftentimes, you know, I can get both decision makers present, you know, in a residential situation, there might be two decision makers. And so I think, you know, I don't know that there's a right or wrong answer. I just think there's trade-offs kind of either side there.

Colton Bethel: No, that's definitely true and it probably does fall down to some personal opinion. In my experience, we started doing some backtracking of the 5 o'clock appointments and our close rate was just not very good. And maybe that was our fault because we all had it in our mind that these 5 o'clock appointments sucked. So it could have been us skewing the system, but for better or for worse, we got rid of them. I'd say for better.

Michael Murray: Everybody's out there doing 15 minute appointments so they can get home and get to happy hour or whatever the heck, right?

Jon Bryant: The interesting thing though, Michael is like, I think a lot of people intuitively, I hear that argument a lot where it's like, if only both decision makers could be home, I'd have a better chance. And we did the same experiment. Like I'll challenge a little bit that because data is so important because like we started tracking that evenings and weekends stuff too. We're like, this is a waste of time, but somebody else might be having some success. I would just say, let's talk about data instead of feelings. I feel like it's better if the decision makers are home. It's like, show me the data, you know?

Colton Bethel: Yeah.

Michael Murray: I agree. I do. You know, the challenge though, that I would have is that like none of that is going to be an actual science experiment. Right. I mean, to Colton's point, if the sales rep doesn't want to be there at 5 o'clock and both decision makers are there, we might not book that job. And it has everything to do with like the sales rep, not putting a good effort into it or rushing the process, not asking the questions, not doing all the stuff that Colton's talking about. Versus, you know, look, it works really well at those mid afternoon appointments. It's like, well, yeah, but the effort given is completely different. It could also be though, like to go to the point from before, like if it's your fifth estimate of the day and it happens to be at 5 or 6 o'clock at night, you know, that's a big difference. Like you're probably burned out. You haven't had anything to eat. You haven't been able to go to the bathroom in the last six hours because you're driving from one appointment to the next. It's like, yeah, I mean, I think. You know, anyone that's listening, that's a sales professional can relate that. It's like, I'm probably, I'm going to be at my best then. So yeah, it's hard. Yeah. I think there's, yeah, it's a challenge there. We lean the same way. I mean, we're much more like we're doing our appointments during the day, Monday through Friday. We'll do a little bit of stuff like Saturday mornings. You know, I do personally, when my like home schedule allows, I love doing those Saturday morning appointments. I just feel like I'm less busy. I have like more time. Homeowners feel less busy. We're just having like real casual conversations. And oftentimes like I can have both homeowners home or having a good conversation. I find that I book a higher percentage on the spot in that situation. But it also like cuts into home life and family and things like that. And so, you know, at certain points, that's just not a sacrifice I'm going to make.

Colton Bethel: You know, to that point, I, as of right now, you know, there is not really a realm in which I would consider a Saturday appointment. I think maybe I've done a couple and it's always been, you know, for obviously a larger job that enticed me to, you know, come in on a Saturday, but it's all that work life balance, right? If I was running maybe fewer appointments and had a little bit more home time during the week, it probably wouldn't be so bad to, you know, use up the first part of a Saturday morning. So I actually, that's actually a kind of a unique idea. I haven't really thought too much about.

Jon Bryant: Yeah, that's very interesting, Michael. I think, yeah, so much of it is the balance of work life for sure. I mean, closing 50%, something's working. Something's doing okay. To your point earlier about, you know, the top guys being at 60%, not really true. It's probably a bit of a falsity. 50, 55, high fifties is kind of a good spot unless you're a few of these people that don't. Yeah. So.

Colton Bethel: Really?

Jon Bryant: Unless you're a few of these people that sell purely on relationship. So if you just sell on referrals, maybe 70%. But if you're doing cold out, like meeting people for the first time, figuring out where they live and reminding them of that, which by the way, I mean, even more impressive if you're starting a conversation that way. I just, I think that's super impressive. So like there's something in there in your system that you've crafted. It's working. And I think that watching that and watching how things flow is just the data can help you distinguish what's working for you. And some people are going to find different avenues. So.

Michael Murray: I also think there's an aspect of just like time in the job, for two factors there, right? You've been in the sales role for about five years, Colton. And I would, I would imagine that your win percentages have somewhat gone up fairly steadily over those last five years. And I think it's one just based on experience and you're getting more comfortable and that all makes sense. But I think you also, that as you get into it and you get into like that five to 10 year, 10 to 15 year range. You find that it's like more and more percentage of your quotes are going to be on repeat customers and referrals and you know, those like referral partnerships that you talked about earlier. And just like Jon Bryant just mentioned, it's like, we're not getting the Google leads and the Facebook leads. You know, we've looked at some of the data that says there are people that are selling 65%, but like, those are the key differences is, you know, where are those leads coming from is a huge factor at that point.

Colton Bethel: Yeah, I mean that makes perfect sense.

Jon Bryant: Seems surprising though. I mean, obviously you're like shocked. So that's new information, I guess for you.

Michael Murray: Yeah.

Colton Bethel: Yeah, I just figured, you know, every top performer was like Jim Falk, you know? So, he's so good. I just...

Jon Bryant: You know.

Michael Murray: Yeah, I mean, we saw, I think we saw Jon Bryant, if you remember, it was like the top, the people that have sold over 2 million last year, on average, their win percentage was around 47, 48%. And those are the people that sold over 2 million. So we're talking top performers at this point. So yes, there are some outliers in that 60 plus percent range, but it's very few.

Jon Bryant: Yep.

Jon Bryant: So yeah, but I mean, to your point, like that 50% is a bit of a sweet spot in that like something about your system's working. And I think we can learn something from that as well as I think once you do get too far up in the win rate, sometimes your price might be too low. So I think like you're in a really, really good spot there to be honest. I'm just trying to think. I mean, what else can we, what else can we talk about here? I...

Colton Bethel: One thing I think you kind of asked earlier, you know, what could help people out? I really think, you know, when you're doing 20, because I'm in a peer group with Summit, a great peer group, I talked with, you know, met with a lot of different reps, all different parts of the, you know, all different parts of the country. And, you know, I've definitely talked with guys who run 10 bids. I've talked with guys who run 30 bids, you know, they're just going crazy but I've talked a lot with people who run about 20 bids and in my opinion the biggest thing is you just got to be really careful because you can get underwater so quickly, you know if you don't do what you're supposed to do for half a day that can turn into a messy day the next day and then you're underwater two days. So getting those bids out, I have really appreciated, Jon Bryant, you own PaintScout, right?

Jon Bryant: Yeah, I'm a CEO.

Colton Bethel: So I've been, you know, using PaintScout. I do, man. Nastasia knows me by name. No, but like I have really appreciated...

Michael Murray: Direct all of your complaints towards Jon Bryant.

Jon Bryant: Yeah, right. They're just coming in hot. Yeah.

Michael Murray: I'm just the guy on the podcast. I have no impact on anything.

Colton Bethel: I really appreciate like the way that PaintScout has progressed. Just like with the photos and everything and how you can attach it, you know, you're there on the job. Get all the information while you're there at the job. Get the photos. You know, most everybody probably uses CompanyCam. If not, try it. It's awesome! For the most part, you know, get the photos into the contract you know get them marked up. Get everything packed into that proposal while you're there at the job and then get rid of it when you get out to the car, get rid of it. Those are anchors man. You know you wake up, I'm a prime example, I had to get up at 5 AM this morning because I had six bids to send out because I got underwater yesterday and I didn't do what I was supposed to do. I wasn't sending bids out right after the right after the estimate. So once you get done with the estimate, get them out. Get them out. You know, if you tell yourself, I got to finish up this a little bit later, you'll forget. Get those estimates out on the spot.

Michael Murray: That was huge.

Jon Bryant: I'll follow up with just a quick point. Like we found that from our research and data, every hour that goes by after you do an estimate and you don't send your bid, you're decreasing your likelihood of winning that job. And so for those of us that think you've got two days to get that price out, they've moved on. They're looking at something else. They have two other bids they're looking at. And so.

Colton Bethel: Really?

Jon Bryant: The faster you get this out, the better chance you have at winning. And that's a core principle of PaintScout really at the end of the day. Just speed.

Colton Bethel: I think it sets you apart too because you ask every now and then a customer will ask, hey, when am I going to get the proposal by? And most of the time you ask them when are they looking to make a decision by? Then they'll say, when can you get me the bid? When you tell them, well, give me 15 - 20 minutes when I get out in my car and I'll get this to you. You make it sound like I got to get it to you, 15 - 20 minutes. They go, whoa, what? That quickly? You know, at least for me and my area, I mean, most companies are waiting two days, three days, a week to get the proposal. So whenever you show the customer that it's a standard practice for you to give them their proposal, basically on site, I love the preview feature. My gosh, that's awesome. So when you can show that to the customer, they really like that.

Michael Murray: Well, I think the other thing that it does is it like just takes away a lot of the stress as a sales rep. You know, I think there's so much stress in our lives of all the like to do's that we have. And when, as a sales rep, you get home at the end of your day and you did four appointments and you haven't sent any of them and you look at your calendar and you have four more appointments tomorrow and you're just like, crap, I have to find time to, you know, finish up these quotes and email them off to the customer. And if I wait, you know, a couple of days, Jon Bryant told me that I'm not going to sell any of them or, you know, and he's right. And it's like, all right, so what, you know, now all of a sudden, you know, maybe I don't get those out today. And so now I'm at the next day and I've got, you know, four more appointments and now I've got eight and these things are starting to build and it's building this like stress of a to-do list of all these things that I'm going to have to do. As opposed to. You know, our like a whole approach and we don't, we're not perfect here, but the goal is to always send the appointment, send the quote before we leave the appointment. So whether you do it with the client and you're just like, great, we went over everything. This is your email. Great. I'm clicking the send button. There you go. You have that now, or I'm going to do that in my car before I drive away. And it's just like out of my brain. I can mark it in the CRM. I can set up my follow up time. And I just leave and it's just like, I'm going to get notified when I need to follow up with that person. It is so freeing and takes away so much stress.

Colton Bethel: Yeah, I couldn't agree more. You know, then you got two from last week that were difficult. So you weren't able to, you know, you had to ask one of the field supervisors a question and see, you weren't able to get those out. And then, you know, all of a sudden analysis paralysis, right? You're just so far underwater. You don't know where to go. You know, the only time you should get that is when you come back from vacation. So you shouldn't, in my opinion, you shouldn't do any work on vacation, but that's my opinion.

Michael Murray: There you go.

Colton Bethel: Hahaha!

Michael Murray: Colton, I'd love to finish up with one more question. So you have a unique background in that you came into your sales role having had painting experience. You talked about it at a previous company, but specifically at your current company. You made the transition from painting in the field to a sales rep. And I would say that's not uncommon, but it's also not like not everyone comes that way, right? Sometimes people come into the sales role without any painting experience, or maybe there's a business owner that's listening and they're thinking about hiring a sales professional, thinking about, hey, should I hire somebody with painting experience or not? How's that going to affect them? From your own personal experience, how has having painting experience before your sales role affected you both positively and maybe even negatively?

Colton Bethel: So let's see, we'll start with the negatives. The negatives are you really start to think, you stop thinking how long will it take an average crew to do this project, and then you start to think of yourself and your memory, the best painter that ever was, and ever will be, and don't get me wrong, you got that price in the back of your mind, kind of always trying to tempt you to go, you know, go lower, go lower, you know. They won't buy it if it's higher, you know, you got to get rid of that head trash. But yeah, you start to, you know, you kind of think, well, it'll only take me this long to paint that. So you start to mark that off. When in reality, it couldn't matter less how long it takes you to paint it. It is, how long is it going to take for you know, your crew to complete the work. So I would say that's a little bit of a negative sometimes. The positives are it builds a little bit of credibility with the customer. And I say a little bit, because it's not like it goes that far. And at the end of the day, maybe one or two people ask me that a month, you know, find out that I was even a painter from before. So if somebody asked me, hey, is painting experience necessary to become a sales estimator? I would say absolutely, absolutely not. I do think it is a positive whenever it's the little things that unless you did the job for just years on end, you wouldn't know about just what kind of primers to use in certain areas that I didn't really have to have a learning curve on. I just kind of already knew that. So that helped me in the jump up, but I would say how much has my painting experience helped me out in this year's amount of sales? Not much, really this is a whole different process. What you need to know to do this job, you can learn.

Michael Murray: Yeah. Yeah, no, I think that's great. I mean, I think there are just like anything. I think there's positives and negatives and, you know, I think generally speaking, if you have the right person having that background, like you mentioned, is going to help to speed up the learning curve and help you to have that expertise when you're meeting with somebody. So, well, this has been great. I mean, Colton, I really appreciate everything that you've been able to, you know, educate our guests on. I think we had a lot of fun hearing about your background and how you got into this, you know, crazy painting industry and. You know, at least until you're ready to go. What I think you said spearfishing is going to be the next career path. I think you're doing pretty well on what you're doing right now.

Colton Bethel: Thanks, I think I'll stick with this, so...

Michael Murray: I like it, man. Well, we really appreciate your time and you know, anybody, everybody that's listening in here, we would appreciate it if you would like and subscribe. I think one of the best things that you can do is share this with somebody else. You know, really our goal here is to help just provide some good education for those that are selling painting projects. And you know, we want to be able to bring on some really awesome guests like Colton. So if you are somebody who has, you know, an awesome story and is having great success, we'd love to talk with you and perhaps have you on as one of our future guests. But please share this with some of your friends so we can continue to get the word out there and help to elevate our industry. Colton again, thanks so much, Jon Bryant, as always, a lot of fun. Look forward to doing this again with you here soon.

Jon Bryant: Thank you, Colton.

Colton Bethel: Thank you guys, thank you very much for having me.

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