PaintScout X: Sales Unleashed

Jon Bryant: Michael, today we're talking about PaintScout X. This thing's happening April 23rd. I'm excited. Both you and I are going to be presenting at this thing as well as a bunch of other presenters. So today we wanted to just give people an overview of this awesome event that we're going to be throwing and give you a chance to decide which sessions you want to attend. Hopefully it's all of them. That's our goal that we've made this so good that you want to attend all the events. But the theme this year is sales, so Sales Unleashed is the title. There's two separate streams. There's one for sales reps and one for business owners, which is going to be kind of interesting. So yeah, let's go through some of these sessions and give people a little bit of a preview.

Michael Murray: Yeah, last year's PaintScout X I think was a lot of fun. I think it was a great value. I hope everyone else that attended felt the same way. And looking at the agenda, the schedule, I think we've taken it up a little bit here and hopefully deliver even more value than we did last year. I think that's the goal.

Jon Bryant: Yeah, absolutely. So just the thought process behind what this is, is we wanted to create a digital conference focused around sales for painting contractors specifically. And so if you're a painting contractor listening and you want to either learn how to take your sales knowledge, create a sales system or build a sales system, this is the place to be. As well as if you have a sales team, someone on your team who does sales, this is a conference where you're going to be able to bring that person with you and they're going to get a day of full on training for sales specific to what they do all day from people who understand this at a high level. So yeah, so we've got those two streams and maybe we can start off just giving people some of the overview of some of these sessions and what we're trying to do. So how does the day start, Michael?

Michael Murray: There's this guy from our friendly neighbors to the north, Canada. His name is Jon Bryant, and that's you. So you're going to get this whole thing kick-started and welcome everybody in and do all that kind of fun stuff.

Jon Bryant: He sounds like a magnificent sir. Absolutely. That's me. Yes. Yeah. So that's going to happen at 10 AM Eastern on the 23rd. I'll do a little welcome for everybody. And then we're going to follow that up with, I'm going to go over something I'm passionate about, which is competition and how we can as an industry get better by understanding the numbers, understanding how top performers operate and also understanding how to use all of that to our advantage as a sales rep and as a company.

We've got a lot of great data through the work at PaintScout, through our experience running painting businesses that we're going to be able to examine and look at in this session. And really, I think open people's eyes to what excellence means and how to do that for themselves. So I'm excited to do that. That's at 10 AM Eastern. And again, this conference runs from 10 AM to 6 PM Eastern time. So Pacific time is going to be a little early, 7 a.m. for you, but definitely going to be worth it. And we'll get you out early to get back to hopefully a sunny, beautiful spring day.

So that's what I'm going to be talking about. And then after that, I think could it be someone that we know very well as well? Is it possibly Michael Murray who's speaking next?

Michael Murray: I was going to say there's two sessions and one of them is an absolute rock star in our industry and then there's me. So yeah, but I can talk about mine. If I wasn't presenting, I would be at the other session because I'm really excited and I think his podcast episode was absolutely one of my favorites. But so my session is Your Money Mindset is Costing You Sales.

So this has been a passionate topic for me at Textbook this year, something that we've been teaching our, or I've been teaching our sales team about. We've been going through some exercises. I've been using some content that I've curated from others. And it's really just all about the unconscious, I'll say biases and just the ways that we think about money, how we were raised to think about money.

When we're talking about debt, we're talking about financing, we're talking about what do you consider things that are expensive? Do you like to buy lavish things for yourself? Or maybe not, maybe you're a little more frugal. I think we all kind of live in this world of everyone else thinks like we do, and everyone else thinks about money like we do. And the reality is that that's not true. And if we're not very self-aware of how we think about money, it's absolutely going to affect our ability to perform in a sales role, especially in our industry.

And so that's what we're going to be diving into. I have some, hopefully some challenging questions to kind of get everybody to think in maybe ways that they haven't before and maybe kind of identify some of their maybe biases towards money. And then we're going to talk about how that might be playing itself out at our appointments.

Jon Bryant: Fantastic. Who's that geared for? Sales reps or business owners?

Michael Murray: Yeah, I mean, I think it's either. I mean, it's certainly somebody who's out doing appointments every day. Right. So I think, yeah, I mean, I think both sessions here really could go either way personally. You know, you've looked at these as well. I don't know. How do you feel? Do you agree with that?

Jon Bryant: Yeah, we should talk about the other session just to make sure. Yeah, I mean, there's definitely important parts to both of these sessions for both roles, I think. And if you're doing appointments, this is going to help put you in a better mindset. I think. Well, we're going to have these recorded, isn't that right? For everybody who's asking, so you don't have to ask in the group in the chat while we're doing the presentation. Absolutely. It wouldn't be a digital conference if someone didn't ask. So I got to make sure that if anybody asks, I'm going to ask, is this recorded? And the answer is yes. So you will be able to listen to both of them. The second session, do you want to talk about that?

Michael Murray: Yeah, so we've got Eric Barstow. So Eric was my favorite session at the last PaintScout X. Personally, I got a ton out of that. Our team did. He's been around for a long time. He's got a lot of really good information. He helps, so his own painting company is very successful, north of $20 million. And you can go back and listen to that episode, if you want to learn more about that. He also has a really successful coaching program and a ton of content on YouTube. He always is super well-prepared, brings a lot of great value and content. And so his session is called From Salesperson to Sales Leader and really just talking about how to get through that ceiling that a lot of sales reps have as individual contributors and move into more of a leader-centric approach. So it seems like it's going to be some really new content that I haven't heard from him. I'm excited to kind of hear what that's all about.

Jon Bryant: Absolutely. I think what's interesting too about this session and what we see from hiring sales reps and also through the PaintScout community is that there is a difference between learning how to sell and being a sales leader. And there's some nuances there that once you become the sales leader, you can kind of reflect and be like, I think that's really important. And I'm hoping to learn a few things to pass along to not only our community, but our team just about how this plays out and how you can change that mindset. Not mindset, but just what it takes, I think at the end of the day. So yeah, definitely excited for that session as well. That leads us into our next two sessions.

Michael Murray: Yep, so we've got...

Jon Bryant: And those are, we've got Chris Moore and Brandon Lewis. So they are focusing on two different things. Chris is going to be looking at the blueprint for a scalable sales system. So how to build that system. If you're somebody who hasn't got a sales system in place or hasn't even considered that, or maybe just wants to refine it, I think this will be a great session for that. Sales systems, when I first started selling, I didn't have a system. I don't know about you, Michael. I think you got started different than I did.

Michael Murray: Yeah, I mean, as a college student, we were given a system. I would say it wasn't all that great, but we had something, I'll say.

Jon Bryant: You had something. Yeah. It was better than my approach, which was show up and look like a deer in the headlights and then give them a price. Once I learned about sales systems and we put that in place, it was such an impactful thing because then I knew what role I was playing versus just a guy who tried to pretend he knew something about painting, which wasn't the best role for me to try to sell a paint job. So I think that would have been super helpful for me to experience how to, you know, going back to the start of my career, just what sales systems mean and how to implement that. And even what, I mean, to your point, you had a sales system, but how do we make that better? The other session here is Brandon Lewis. So what do we know?

Michael Murray: Yeah, so Brandon's actually the following session, just if you're looking at that calendar there. But at the same time as Chris, there's actually going to be somebody from Benjamin Moore. And I'm going to leave that one a little bit suspenseful here. But the title is Selling What Your Customers Actually Want. And I love that title. I feel like too often as painting contractors, we just kind of show up with, this is our offering. And I assume I know exactly what the client's looking for and I kind of show up and throw up and hope something good happens. And for those that have studied sales, that's not a really good approach. We've got to make it individual to what the client's looking for. So I'm excited to hear what Benjamin Moore is going to bring to us there at that noon hour.

Jon Bryant: Yeah, there's such an interesting part of the conversation in sales. I find just thinking about giving the customer the project you think they want versus what they want. And I think to your point, so often we just believe we know what's best and that doesn't contribute to the best sale or the best relationship. So yeah, excited for that. That brings us to what are we going to do next?

Michael Murray: Well, you got Brandon, so you just mentioned Painters Academy.

Jon Bryant: That's correct. Yes, Brandon. Yep. Painters Academy. And I've heard raving reviews of Brandon's knowledge of commercial sales and how to get into it. Brandon's got a lot of great systems, strategies for doing that. And some of the people I've talked to just have such glowing reviews of his knowledge in this area. So I would, you know, it's funny when you're a residential company thinking about getting into commercial, doesn't it kind of feel sometimes like it's just a totally different space?

Michael Murray: For sure. It's very intimidating.

Jon Bryant: It's intimidating, right? And you think, man, I got to just kind of fake it till I make it here. And I think there's people here who have some knowledge we can take and make that easier for us and maybe more comfortable in the process. I definitely know a lot of people that will be attending this one as well, just looking to get into that space where you've got bigger jobs, make sure you don't lose your shirt on your pricing, figure out how to talk to the benefits to the customer, that type of thing.

Michael Murray: Yeah, commercial, you can get a commercial job or two by having a good SEO presence. But the reality is that most commercial work isn't coming from a Google search. It is coming from relationships and networking and doing that work. And so that's what he's going to be talking about. And I can just say, I've seen Brandon Lewis speak a few times at the PCA Expo. Typically, you and I are pretty busy with maybe some speaking or vendor stuff for PaintScout or whatever, but if I get a chance to see Brandon speak at the PCA Expo, I go out of my way to do it. He's very polished, very prepared and brings a lot of great content. So definitely looking forward to that one.

Jon Bryant: Awesome.

Michael Murray: And then at the same time, good last name here, Dave Bryant, Mastering Objections and Networking Like a Pro. So we've got a theme here at this hour about building these key relationships and kind of the work that sales reps need to be doing in terms of self-generating leads. So yeah, I think you know this guy pretty well. Should be a pretty good session.

Jon Bryant: I do, I do. I know him, some might say too well. So yeah, my brother's an interesting story. I know we've talked about this before on the podcast, just about this idea that in order to be a great sales rep, you need to have some special thing, like the gift of the gab, or you can almost hypnotize people with words and they just magically give you money. And when Dave initially took the role when we worked together, he had none of those things in my mind. He didn't have those special somethings. In fact, we've talked about DISC analysis before and how that plays into how we perform in these roles. And his DISC profile was nothing short of, you wouldn't consider this ever.

And Dave is, I believe in our whole community, finished third in all residential sales reps in a few thousand people who are in the PaintScout games. And you can't, you can't replicate that. Dave has something special that he does that's not typical, standard or identifiable on a personality profile. And what he does is he networks like a master. And it's not a crazy thing. It's actually just diligence and having an eye on it and learning how to have unexpected interactions or touches with customers to keep growing your tree, so to speak.

So, I mean, for anybody interested in that, this is powerful. This is where your best leads come from. This is where your best close, your win rate, close rate, size of job. I mean, in the painting industry, trust is a massive deal for the size of jobs you get. So I'm going to stop talking now. That's enough. I don't mind this guy. He's good. He's good.

Michael Murray: Yeah. I mean, I think there's a bunch of really good speakers. We've got business coaches, you know, a couple of guys that talk too much on the podcast. Dave's like the first one we've come across, I think, who's actually out selling millions of dollars every single year. So we've got a lot of, there's others on here, but we've got some really good speakers. Dave's going to bring great content. He has the advantage of doing it every day. The day before PaintScout X, he's going to be out selling jobs. The day after PaintScout X, he's going to be out selling jobs and probably during PaintScout X he'll make some sales too.

Jon Bryant: I bet you during his presentation he's going to look down at his phone and be like, great, closed another one. And that guy, exactly, exactly so.

Michael Murray: Yep. Well, I'm glad he's going to carve out, you know, what is it, 40 minutes of his busy kicking butt schedule to share some of his knowledge. So that's good.

Jon Bryant: Absolutely. So I think now we're on to our lunch. So we're going to give you some time for lunch.

Michael Murray: It's not catered. Don't you, we're not buying your lunch.

Jon Bryant: It's not catered. Should we send out maybe a recipe for everybody to make so everybody's having the same lunch? I'll do a little small cooking show. So after that we have our next keynote. Yeah, or not, whatever, TBD.

Michael Murray: Yeah, why don't you put out a little cooking show for us? I like it. Or not. To be determined. So the next session is much better than you doing a cooking class. This guy is another one that I think maybe people have heard of.

Jon Bryant: There is a chance. There's a chance if you take your painting business seriously, if you enjoy learning about the painting business, if you like hunting, you might've heard of this guy, possible. Nick Slavik is what he calls himself. Or maybe someone else called him that first. I'm not sure, but he still goes by that. That's how it works.

Michael Murray: I guess parents probably did.

Jon Bryant: So Nick is talking about Unlocking the Power of Your Data. Nick has a lot of data. Am I right, Michael?

Michael Murray: Yes. Yeah, that's just, I would say one of his many secret superpowers. And he runs his business not off of gut feel, but off of the actual data. I had the pleasure of doing a speaking engagement for Sherwin Williams, I don't know, about a month ago. And we were out at the Chicago Sherwin Williams Pro Show and I was speaking right after Nick, which is not a good spot to be in the agenda here. So I feel bad for whoever's going to be after this one.

But I will say, I learned a ton. So Nick was speaking about a lot of the data that he had. I got to see some of the marketing data. He's got these amazing spreadsheets. He's talking about the conversion rates on his direct mail pieces and all these different data points that he's able to bring to the industry and to help people who, let's be honest, maybe aren't tracking data quite as well that we can borrow from his expertise and make some conclusions that we can bring into our own business.

Jon Bryant: Yeah. Amazing. I never fail to learn something from Nick. And that's an impressive part of what he does. So he's always thinking ahead. He gets such great insight as the chair of the PCA and his involvement just with so many great painting companies is unprecedented. So very cool. Happy to have him.

Michael Murray: So I mentioned that it's hard to follow Nick, although we do have two great options, huge heavy hitters here. I'll start with this first one. So as many people as we can get from Cleveland, that is better, right? We've got Canada maybe a little bit overrepresented, but that's okay. So we had to balance it with some good Midwestern folks. Sue Wadden from Sherwin Williams is going to be joining us. Her session is Winning with Color: Strategies for Selling with Confidence. We've talked about that on the podcast before. You and I are huge believers that using color and making that easy for our clients is, I don't know, an advantage I guess for any painting company. And she's going to teach us how to do that well and bring a ton of expertise as the leader at Sherwin Williams who's in charge of this.

Jon Bryant: Yeah, I got a chance to meet Sue late last year and it felt like meeting the Oracle from the Matrix because I think everybody ever has talked about getting to name paint colors and Sue is the person who names the paint colors. I'm always, you know, whether I, well, jealous slash maybe don't trust her. It's weird. It's like, you name the paint colors. What else? What other reality are you controlling in my life that I don't know about?

But yeah, I mean, color is such a big deal. And I think at the end of the day, we all kind of sell color glue and most people are painting either to protect or to make it look better. And hopefully both those things at the same time. But it starts with color and you're picking one color out of the whole color spectrum. And that's a very daunting thing for most people to commit to a large project with that much choice. So Sue is going to help us understand that. I think that's super helpful for any sales rep to understand really at the end of the day, what you're selling your customer. So yeah, for sure. Absolutely. Make it easy.

Michael Murray: Yeah, and how to eliminate that stress. Awesome, we're going back to some commercial success, commercial sales here. Speaking of somebody who sells a lot of painting jobs, this next guest here, I don't remember the exact numbers, you probably do better than I do. I just remember that it was mind blowing. Talk a little bit about this next one.

Jon Bryant: Yeah, I mean, Matt Kiper, I consider him to be a friend. It's a good guy to learn from. Him and Maggie have created a great business in Nashville and have done it relatively quickly, honestly. So Matt sells a lot of commercial painting and I hope that he'll be able to talk a little bit about how he does that, but he is a top performer over the last two years in the PaintScout community. And, you know, we think it's tremendous to learn from someone like this. So yeah, honestly, I mean, if you want to learn about commercial marketing and sales success, this is your guy. This might be the guy in the entire industry to learn from. Take notes exactly. So yeah, totally.

Michael Murray: Take notes. Yeah, just do what he does. Yeah, moving on after that, we've got two sessions. We've got a great session from our friend, Dave Scaturo, who has a ton of expertise in this area. Dave works in the commercial space, but has a great sales team and has built that over the years and is going to help you guys understand how to hire a sales rep who delivers results.

And I think whether you're somebody who's trying to do this for the first time, or even I would argue for ourselves, getting another perspective on this never hurts because sometimes it feels like you're just constantly gambling and you just don't know. The more I can learn in this area, the more I can advance, the better our teams become, the better decisions we make because letting someone go is super hard at the end of the day. It's something I do, but I'm not always excited about it. And it's important to be able to put people in places of success. So, yeah.

Michael Murray: Yeah. Coaching sales reps is difficult, managing, coaching, whatever word you want to use there. I have, I think I've shared that a little bit on the podcast. I don't always, I will say that we've struggled with hiring top performers. Our team currently has a great group. But you know, been doing this a long time. I know that I had a lot that I needed to learn as a leader of sales professionals. I still do. I'm excited for what Dave's going to be talking about. So anybody that's listening who maybe has hired a sales rep, maybe struggled. How do I give this person feedback? How do I coach them? How do I help them reach their peak performance? Or maybe you're thinking about hiring that first sales rep. This is going to be a must listen. Dave has a ton of experience. He runs a huge business and is really going to bring a lot of practical wisdom here.

Jon Bryant: Beautiful. I think at the same time as this is going on, we've got Juan Vasquez. Is that right? That's right. And you want to introduce Juan to everybody. I mean, if you're in the Spanish community, Español community, this is someone you will know for sure and has a ton of insight into that area. So...

Michael Murray: Yeah, again, running a successful business, involved in the PCA. His title of his session is Sell More, Scale Faster. And so I think this one's, you know, also probably geared towards that business owner mindset. It's kind of what I'm hearing, without having the full description yet. But so yeah, I'm excited. I actually don't know Juan personally, so really excited to hear. I've heard his name before. I know he's run a really good business and involved in the PCA and things like that. So excited to hear what he's got to bring. Yeah, wrapping things up.

Jon Bryant: Absolutely. All right, so that brings us to our last session. Is that correct?

Michael Murray: That's right. Yeah, we got a keynote here kind of wrapping things up. Tell us about that one.

Jon Bryant: Yeah. So this is someone that I've followed for a while and his name is Matt Easton. He is a sales coach and what Matt brought to my life was a different perspective of sales. I think we sometimes get, there's a lot of rah rah sales coaches out there. You know, people that are, you know, sometimes it's a little disingenuous. And I've always liked the way that Matt has approached it from the words he uses to the ways that he interprets this stuff have been very effective for me in just challenging the way that I see sales and how I work for my customers to help them buy.

And where Matt's also very, very talented is just in how you can create goals, start to achieve those goals, break them down and how to just simply approach people and build your network. I think those things are super valuable to all of our businesses. If you're a sales rep, you're going to get a ton of info on just tangible things you can do. And I think if you're a business owner, it's a great chance to take notes and look at your systems, look at your approach and try to understand if you feel like there's any room for improvement. So yeah, you've done a little bit of looking into Matt as well, right? Michael, you've actually...

Michael Murray: A little bit. Yep. Not, you know, he's kind of a new one for me. You know, you and I have spoken about some of the stuff that you guys have participated in over the years. But I don't really have too much hands-on experience working with him. So I'm excited to kind of introduce him to the painting industry. Pretty much everybody we've talked about up to this point is very much painting industry, either coaches, speakers, vendors, sales reps, business owners. Matt's not. Matt's from outside of our industry. He runs an extremely successful sales coaching company and I'm excited to hear that outside perspective and that just sales mastery, that sales expertise.

Jon Bryant: Absolutely. Yeah. So that wraps it up. Well, we'll have a little ending session, essentially I'll be thanking everybody for coming, but also telling you how to reduce your accounts receivable like crazy and some strategies that have worked for us in that area. And that's going to be wrapping up by 6 PM Eastern time. So it's going to be a full day. Definitely worth checking out, I would say. We've built this as something that you and I would both want to see. And I think that you're going to get a lot of value. I mean, that's my hope is that people get a lot of value from this. Yeah.

Michael Murray: Yeah, that's why we do this. I mean, at the end of the day, you and I are both running successful businesses. Everybody that's participating is performing at a high level. But we also want to be helpful. We want to provide good value. So, you know, that's the point here. PaintScout X last year was two days. We really wanted to pack it into one. Everything is recorded and will be shared afterwards. We know people are going to have to make some tough choices. I think there's going to be some great content for reps and owners to consume after, driving in between appointments and whatever that might be.

Jon Bryant: Absolutely. Yeah. So when is it? Wednesday, April 23rd. Go to x.paintscout.com to sign up. It is free for a limited time. And we hope we get a huge group of people out who are wanting to take their sales to the next level, improve it, be the best that they can be and achieve honestly their dreams here with both work and their business. So come on out, go for it.

Michael Murray: I've got two final questions for you. Okay. So this sounds amazing, right? This is going to completely change my year, you know, and beyond as a sales rep or as a business owner. This obviously is going to cost a lot of money. I'm not sure if I'm going to be able to afford it, you know, sinking a bunch of money into marketing and otherwise. How much is this?

Jon Bryant: It's free. Free, Michael. It is totally free. Thank you. I forgot because I was so excited about the fact that it costs no money. There's no investment, but it probably has a value of what? A million dollars. At least, at least a million dollars. If you do not show up to this event, you are losing a million dollars.

Michael Murray: At least. You do need to register. Make sure you do that. But yeah, pretty straightforward. So I guess my last question, it's busy time of year, right? We talk a lot about the timing of these events. There's always a balance of providing the content when we can most use it. If we do this in the fall, by the time we get to the busy spring, some of what we had talked about, we will have forgotten. We all know that, right? How many things did we already forget that we learned at the PCA Expo just two months ago?

And so it's like, okay, so we're trying to time these things up. But then there's the balance of, Hey, it's late April here, people are out doing sales. Can I really commit this much time? Like, does it make sense to just block off my calendar and participate in PaintScout X versus just going out and doing more quotes? What would you say to that?

Jon Bryant: Well, I'd say if you can increase your win rate by a few percentage points, because you got some valuable data or valuable word tracks or approaches or sales systems, that's going to pay you extreme dividends, not only for the summer season, but for the entirety of your business. And this is something that if you can contribute the time, we've built this so that you will get value. And there's nothing like that type of education to really pay dividends down the road. So I don't know. Obviously we're putting it on. I'm biased, but would you agree?

Michael Murray: For sure. Yeah, I mean, I have a quote I'm going to share that actually resonates with me really well. I think of it a lot as I'm just kind of going about running a business. It's from Abraham Lincoln. I think many people have heard this before. He said, if I had six hours to chop down a tree, I'd spend the first four sharpening the axe. And that's what PaintScout X is all about. It's sharpening the axe. To your point, we're going to go out and sell better. We are not going to have to do as many estimates to hit our sales goals.

We're going to perform better, more efficiently in our roles so that we have maybe more time for all the other fun things in life. And that's kind of what our hope is here. And that's why we're putting this on. And it's actually very intentional as to why we're putting it right at the heart of the busy spring selling season so that you're getting practical tools to go out and use the next day.

Jon Bryant: Yeah, absolutely. That's so well said. So join us at paintscoutx.com. Sign up today. It is free for now. So don't, we might change our minds. So you better get on that right away. And yeah, exactly. Don't let them know. But yeah, we're excited to see you there April 23rd. Guys sign up today. See you then. Bye.

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