STEAL THIS Referral System for Painting Sales Reps [Secret Unlocked]

Jon Bryant: Hey everybody, welcome back to the Price. Sell. Paint. podcast. Today we have a great guest on the podcast. I think someone that people can really learn from and is really going to expose you to what high level sales look like in the painting industry. Today we're going to be talking about referrals - how to get them, where they come from, how it works. It's a bit of a different format than you might be used to from Michael and I. We hope you find this interesting and we're going to keep this going.

Today we're with Dave Bryant. Dave works with The Urban Painter in Calgary, Alberta, Canada. Surprisingly, Dave is also my brother. So this is a real discussion - don't hold that against me. Dave, welcome to the podcast, man.

Dave Bryant: Thanks, Jon. It's going to be fun. I'm looking forward to it.

Jon Bryant: Good. We always have fun here at PriceSellPaint. Michael and I always have a blast.

Dave Bryant: That's good to hear.

Michael Murray: I'm excited - it's our first guest. It's finally not just the Jon and Michael rambling on for an hour show. We're going to get some real expertise today.

Dave Bryant: I didn't realize I was the first one.

Jon Bryant: First, number one guest. Don't let that go to his head - it's already big enough. He won't be able to get through a door.

Dave Bryant: No pressure.

Jon Bryant: Today we're talking about referrals. Dave, I'll do a quick intro for you so everybody knows who you are. Dave's a sales rep, project consultant with The Urban Painter. It's a family company that we've been running for the last 15 years. What Dave is amazing at is selling paint jobs, connecting with clients, and building just an insane referral network of people that have become fans. Past customers who refer us. That allows Dave to sell $2.5 million plus a year of painting projects and is one of the top performers in the PaintScout community. That's pretty special, and we want to dig into today why that works, how that works, how other people can do this, and really what kind of strategies you're implementing. Tell us everything. Anything you want to add?

Dave Bryant: Not really. I mean, I'm ready to go. I guess I've been doing it for four years, still learning a lot. That's the fun thing about sales - there's no ceiling to what you can learn. I'm sure I'll learn something on this call as well.

Jon Bryant: That's the hope. Michael, over to you. What questions have you got for Dave?

Michael Murray: So many. Thanks Dave for joining us. I'm excited. I'm going to learn quite a bit today. We actually did a call with you at my company, Textbook, last year just to chat about your referral system. I took away so much. I'm excited to have a similar conversation today to be able to share that with the PriceSellPaint audience. I know it's a really timely topic in the painting industry. Last year or so, all anybody seems to be talking about is leads are down and things are a little bit more challenging. Sales reps maybe don't have quite the abundance of leads just flowing in from Google and the phone and all the things. As sales reps, I think a lot of reality has set in that we've got to go out and find leads ourselves.

Here we are, it's February of 2024. This will come out probably in a few weeks in March or so, and we're gearing up for a busy season. I think for most sales reps in order to hit your goals this year, you're going to need to step it up a little bit in terms of getting referrals and building these relationships. I'm excited to dive in.

Let's get specific, Dave. How many referrals last year? Any idea as to where that might come for you?

Dave Bryant: I would say it was around the 300 mark last year.

Jon Bryant: Decent.

Dave Bryant: I have nothing to compare it to, but it seems pretty good, pretty regular.

Michael Murray: So approximately 300 quotes from referrals. Is that about half? What percentage roughly of the estimates you go on are coming from referrals versus just coming in through the office?

Dave Bryant: It depends on the time of year. The winter months, I'd say I do a lot more quotes for referrals and return clients. In the summer, that evens out a lot. So I don't know a specific number on that, but just like November, December last year, I think I did maybe 10 through The Urban Painter and at least 30 from referrals and return clients. It was quite significantly different.

Jon Bryant: I think it's definitely over 50% though for you. Based on your numbers, 300 would put you over 50% of your leads are coming from referrals.

Michael Murray: What do you attribute that to? I would imagine that is top tier in our industry, pretty elite. We're talking most of what you're selling is residential, is that correct?

Dave Bryant: I started selling quite a bit of commercial as well - repaint stuff for property managers, designers, different sorts of buildings. Not just residential, but last year still the majority.

You can attribute it to a lot of things. I think now that I've been in it for four years total in sales, there is something to say about naturally you're growing your network. Any job you close could turn into another job in the future. So naturally just return clients and people referring you happens more than just when I started when my network was zero. That is obviously a factor, but there's a lot of factors I'm sure we'll talk about today. They don't just always come to me without asking. There's definitely a part of it where I'm involved in asking and actively being part of groups to increase that number.

Jon Bryant: When you say that - they're coming from different groups - can you identify for everybody where a lot of your referrals are coming from? What type of people are referring you?

Dave Bryant: The world I'm trying to get into more, and I'm getting lots of referrals in this world now, is property management. Basically any building, any apartment building, downtown building has a property manager. A lot of my referrals are starting to come through those networks. The other ones would be realtors - quite a big one for me. Obviously there's two times of the year where it's really busy with realtors - the spring and fall being the busiest. When they're not too busy, I don't get too many referrals from them. But there's a mix - there's designers, there's other trades that we refer each other on jobs. Those would be the core ones.

Jon Bryant: Obviously Michael alluded to this - 300 seems like a lot. We only have 220 working days a year. 300 in those working days - it's almost one and a half a day. I think for those listening in, everyone's probably asking, is there a strategy to this? Is this just happening randomly? Maybe walk us through that.

Dave Bryant: Quite honestly, there's certain times it is a bit overwhelming, but I think it's natural - the more I service clients and get quotes to them quick and really want to help them, the more I get referred. Just being really quick and servicing everyone. If someone wants a quote, I'm booking them in pretty quick. I'm sending quotes to them fast. That's one aspect of it - just to know that if they refer me, I'm going to get in touch with whoever they referred me to right away. So they're not going to get the feedback of, "Oh, you referred me to Dave and I never heard from him." Everyone's going to have a very positive experience. That's number one.

The value to me doesn't matter either. If someone needs a bedroom painted but they're referred to me directly, I might end up going to their house. It might not be the best use of my time to go for such a small project, but the way I see it is I'm watering that person who referred me - I'm watering that tree because they're putting their reputation on the line by referring me. If they call Dave and they need a bedroom painted and I say, "You know what, that's a little small for me. It's not really worth my time. Maybe you should call someone else," I've essentially cut that referral line.

For me, the value doesn't matter because I believe in servicing everyone. That small paint job could turn into, "Hey, my friend is a property manager and has a building with 300 units that needs painted. I'm going to refer you to them." So I see it as a long-term game. Service everyone and you never know what happens because sometimes it does happen that way. It's crazy if you track it back to - yeah, I did a really small job and now I'm here quoting a big building.

Jon Bryant: You said something interesting there - you use the term watering the tree. I know you and I have talked a lot about this over the years, kind of honed in on a visualization strategy and a way to actually see how the network is developing. Maybe we can talk a little bit about that for everybody and why you use that term.

Dave Bryant: Jon's the one that got that into my head for sure. Watering the tree - what's your tree? The tree is, I have a ton of papers around my office with every connection, every person that I work with, every time they referred me. I basically draw a literal tree on a big piece of paper with lots of branches. It doesn't always have to be a tree - you could just have a bunch of names on a sheet that you're branching out from each name.

Essentially, if you have designer A, you put their name on the sheet and then you start making arms from that person to who they referred you to. So you can trace to see how it's all developing. You could be four people down the line and you're like, "I know where that referral started." It's a really easy way to keep track of it visually for me because I can just - it's in my office. I can see it anytime. Anytime I add a branch or add a new person, every week I'm adding names. So that's the tree.

Michael Murray: It's a money tree. That's what we're talking about here. Just printing money.

Dave Bryant: The money tree. It's your connections, your friends, where you make your money.

Jon Bryant: I knew there's a money tree out there somewhere.

Michael Murray: Dave's got clones. How many Dave clones are there out there doing quotes for you now? Come on, what's the secret? We got money trees, robots...

Dave Bryant: I've had roughly - I'm working on my third one, but I can do a lot of estimates.

Michael Murray: How many estimates do you do in a month? Give us some context, maybe last month. What does that might look like for you? Superhuman amount?

Dave Bryant: January is pretty slow usually, so maybe 30 in January. Last year, I think 550 estimates total. Yeah, so a lot of estimates. One of my goals this year is to do less estimates and somehow figure out a way to get the right connections to increase the value of the ones that I close.

Michael Murray: I want to talk a little bit about how do you nurture these relationships? What I hear you saying is it really just comes down to watering the tree, which is the analogy for nurturing the relationship. Is that a good understanding?

Dave Bryant: Yep, pretty much.

Michael Murray: One of the things that I've heard from our sales reps here at Textbook is "I want to get referrals. Sounds great. I'm too busy. I'm spending so much time going on these quotes. I've got to call them beforehand, make sure to do a discovery call to make sure that they're ready to go when I get there. Then I've got to do some follow-up activities. Somebody needs something and all the things." I never really have time to get around to doing these referral activities. I would imagine that there's other people that are listening that feel the same way. It's like, "I know I should be doing this, but I can't find the time or I'm not making the time." Can you talk a little bit about how do you spend your time? Maybe it is more in that spring months or whenever you're a little bit busier - how do you keep those relationships going even when you're busy?

Dave Bryant: It's a good question because I've been in the same headspace. There's times where I'm in that for sure - oh, there's no time for watering the tree. There's no time for trying to get new connections. But the more I've done this, the more I guess certain times a year you'll do less of it, I think, is just natural. Because if you're doing anywhere from three to six quotes in a day, it's a bit harder to network while you're doing that if you're on the road all day. But those aren't every day.

I would say overall, it's always in the back of my mind - who can I text, who can I call? Sometimes it's such a small thing that you can do. Even if in your really busy day you have five minutes and you can send two texts to people you know, just reaching out, seeing how they're doing - that might be all you can do some days, but I would stress that is a really important thing to do as much as you can. Some days you'll have a couple hours to work on it where you can really network more, try to ask for referrals. There's more time for that too.

Doing a little bit every week, it will pay off. In the slow months is really when it pays off the most.

Michael Murray: If you can be a little specific - I think there's two parts here. One part is how do we get started? But let's get to that in a minute maybe, because I want to just stay on this idea of when we're busy but we've got some referral partners. Probably everybody listening, if you've been in the industry for a little bit, even if you haven't, you probably know maybe a realtor or a property manager or somebody right now that comes to mind that you could reach out to, send them a text, maybe you haven't talked to them in a little while. To your point, stay top of mind. What does that look like? Give us a quick example of what that might look like. Are we specifically asking like, "Hey, it's Dave, what can I help you with?" or talk a little bit about how you keep in touch and what that might look like.

Dave Bryant: It's often not what you just said, just because my view of developing a relationship with anyone is becoming not just a business transaction. I view it as, I'm not their friend, but I'm a business friend. If they need help from me for painting, I will help them out as best I can. So that's how I view it.

When I reach out, specifically it would be, "Hey Michael, how's it going? Just wanted to check in, been a while since we've connected. Just wanted to see how your year's going so far." That might be a pretty quick, easy text if it's been a while. If it's a realtor, "How are things? Are they picking up for you? Selling any homes lately?" Just a quick check-in. Sometimes it could be personal if you know them better - just ask them something about, "Hey, last time we chatted, you mentioned that run you were going to do, how'd that go?" It could be something personal if you do know that. But yeah, it's usually pretty simple.

Sometimes I will just pick up the phone and call too. So it's not always just a text. It can be a call where I'll just say, "Hey Jon," and they'll know it's me when I call because they'll probably have my number saved. Then who knows where the call goes. Sometimes if I haven't connected with someone for a while, I'll say, "Would you want to grab a quick coffee or lunch sometime next week?" So leave more of the talking to a next time.

Michael Murray: How often do you do that? How often do you get together for coffee or otherwise?

Dave Bryant: I would say my goal is to have something like once a week that isn't at a job site doing a quote - once a week with someone. It's not a ton. Some weeks I do a few in the winter months. If I can try to even get out two or three times, that'd be a better goal. But yeah, it may average to one to two.

Jon Bryant: The types of activities you're doing - coffees, texts - are you doing lunches? What other activities are you doing to connect with people?

Dave Bryant: Recently, what have I done recently? I've gone to a few Flames games, hockey games, taking clients to hockey games. So we go for dinner first and go watch a game. Last summer, quite a few golf rounds. So taking someone out for half the day or at the end of the day, we'll go golf. Lunches - it all depends on the person. Some people, it might not be quite the connection where I want to have an hour, hour and a half with them, but the people I do, I'll just ask for a lunch. Sometimes it's just a coffee if it's just a quicker meeting. Those are the main things.

Jon Bryant: A follow-up question to all of this - when you do get a referral, what do you do? What's the process? Part of it, I think, is that we always need to reward people for the behavior that we appreciate. They give you a referral. I think probably a lot of people in your network might not need money per se. But what do you do to say thank you and keep encouraging that?

Dave Bryant: Just thousand dollar checks. If you come to my office, I've got a thousand bucks for you. Not quite that, but something similar. I think the most important thing is acknowledging that they've referred me, to be honest. That's just with a call. I'll call them and say, "Hey, thanks for referring me to this person. I'm meeting them tomorrow and I'll let you know how it goes."

I think at the end of the day, they're acknowledged that they've referred me and then I'm going to update them on how the process is going. So sometimes I'll often tell them, "Yeah, we got that job with that client, just so you know we're painting their house in a couple weeks." So they're kind of in the loop.

Second thing I'll do is we do a referral gift. So anyone who refers anyone, we'll send them a gift in the mail - like a gift certificate for dinner.

Michael Murray: Just to a local restaurant or something. Is that the idea there?

Dave Bryant: The ones we have, it could be a local restaurant. The ones we have are like a group of restaurants, so there might be - they could pick between 10 restaurants to use the gift card at. I'm sure every big city would have something like that.

Jon Bryant: Are you doing this just for jobs that you get or how do you work that?

Dave Bryant: In the past, that was our mentality - we'll give a bigger pat on the back for someone we get the job for, and maybe a smaller one for someone we don't, or nothing at all. I think our new mentality is just to thank everyone. If you're referring us, we get the job or not, it doesn't matter, here's your gift. I think that just tells people - if they're referring us, they're clearly happy with us, or they have in the past dealt with us most likely. So it's just saying thanks. Likely if they're going to refer again, they'd probably refer us again. So that's the hope with that.

Michael Murray: I want to go back to this tree idea. I see over your shoulder by the door there, there's a big post-it piece of paper that looks like a drawing of a tree. I think that might be an example of one of the trees that you talked about before.

Dave Bryant: It is, yeah.

Michael Murray: Talk to us a little bit about this process. We don't want the specific names or whatever, but explain this process a little bit better. I'm going to go buy a big piece of paper and I'm going to draw something that kind of resembles a tree and I'm writing names on it. Am I writing the activities that I'm doing on it? What am I using that for? Help me understand here.

Dave Bryant: The paper's pretty big. I don't know the specific size. Actually I do - 5.2 square feet is what it says. It's a big post-it note. It's got a sticky on the top. I have like six of them now. The main thing for me is I draw a tree down the middle and then off that, just anyone you know or you could even add some people you want to - some targets to work on. But mostly I put on the people I know and I'll make a line to a circle, put their name in it.

Then from that circle, if it's like a property management office, I'll put the company and then I'll put all the arms of the people I know from the company. If it's say a realtor and they've referred me another realtor or another designer to connect with, I'll branch off from that realtor to those names.

One way to keep me going - especially with companies, you can kind of figure out on LinkedIn or just Google them to know how big they are - I only have two branches on that company, but there's at least 20 that I could have at that company. So trying to expand - you're already there, you know one person in an office, but they don't always talk about who to use for a painter. I don't think it's a common thing until you have the mass of the business that they're referring you.

If there's 10 people working at the business and maybe five of them work with you, at that point your name might get around more. But if there's one, you have to figure out a way how to get more. So it keeps me on my feet a bit to be like, "Okay, I should go visit that company. I should go with the one person I know." I'll call them up and say, "Hey, could I..." Usually I bring them some sweets or some donuts. Bring them to their office and have a meeting and they'll introduce me - most times they'll introduce me to all the other people there. Now I'll create branches with those people because I have their emails and I'll connect with them.

Jon Bryant: One other comment about this too - one of the things that you and I have worked a lot on, Dave, is just that this concept of making relationships visual. It's inspiring and also adds some gamification to the whole thing. It becomes fun. Versus just throwing a name into a spreadsheet, you now get to see something blossom and flourish. Be like, "Wow, look at the work I've done." Every time you're adding in a new branch or a node to this tree, it offers a reward for the hard work that's been done.

Whereas I think in the past when we were looking at this problem and looking at building spreadsheets and contact databases, it's rather boring. You keep going back to the list and being like, "Oh, I'm thinking of another person in the list." This becomes something that is just very different and alive. I think that's what's fun with it.

Dave Bryant: It's definitely way more exciting to write a name on an actual piece of paper on your wall than just maybe an Excel spreadsheet or just in your phone. It just gets lost in those places. You can definitely have both, but if I'm going to figure out, "Hey, who should I connect with today?" I just look at my wall. It's just a lot easier to visualize it all.

Michael Murray: I think it'd be cool to use the dry erase paint and just make the whole wall a big writable surface and the whole room becomes a big tree thing. That'd be sweet.

Dave Bryant: That's an option. Once you get to that point, it's like, "Hey, I need the whole office dry erase."

Michael Murray: Do you keep track of specific activities in something like a CRM as to when was the last time I texted this person or stopped by with donuts? Or is that just kind of happening, you just kind of remember and you just keep in touch often enough?

Dave Bryant: My strategy is more just remember. I don't really write it down. I find sometimes tracking too many things for me is just - it gets hard to keep track of all the different lists that you have to do. I'll just have a spidey sense a bit. Look at some names on the wall. "Hey, I haven't connected with them in a while. I should bring them donuts." If you do that to each office once, maybe twice a year would be a good amount. So if you're like, "Hey, it's been a year, I should do that again."

Michael Murray: I thought you were going to be the first sales rep to say he likes using the CRM, but nope. Spidey sense. I like it.

Dave Bryant: Sorry, I can't have too many firsts today.

Jon Bryant: Dave, super interesting. Obviously we've seen some great results working this method of visualizing, moving towards activities, specific activities that water the tree and give that tree more life. Someone who's new to this, what do you suggest? Obviously they're going to look at a piece of paper, it's going to be pretty blank. They've got to do something. Walk through what you think is the best way to get started.

Dave Bryant: I think everyone at the very least would have two or three names - "Hey, I met this person once, I have a friend who's a realtor, my mom's friend is a designer." Your old neighbor - one of my old neighbors is a realtor and I connected with him and I didn't know him very well. There's always, I think there's at least a couple names to start from. It can almost seem like, "Yeah, I don't have a network," but it gives you somewhere to start.

Those people might be dead ends - they may not lead to much. Developing new relationships, it can come from - if you truly have no leads for people to refer you to someone new, sometimes you have to go the route of - I've done this before - I've gone online to the realty listings in the city and every house is listed online and who's the realtor. So there's hundreds of people you can call to say, "Hey, I just drove by one of your signs, you're selling a house by one of the houses we're painting. I'm with The Urban Painter. Do you ever have a need for a painter?"

You could make a hundred calls in a day just by going on, finding the listings in your city. It's cold calls, but it's also a pretty easy call to say, "Do you have a painter in your network or would you like a new one?" That's one way.

Business networking groups is another option to join. There's a lot of groups you can join that are weekly groups. The group might be anywhere from five to 15 people. There's a lot in our city - they're called BNI, Business Network International. They're all over. It gets you in front of new people. So if you don't have a network, it gets you in front of potential new referral trees.

Jon Bryant: For anyone listening, I tend to agree - it's about identifying who your connections are. More importantly, it's about learning how to build connections off connections. I think far too often we feel that that's a dead end or we forget to ask the question or we forget to even ask what we're looking for.

It sounds like from your approach, Dave, what you're saying to people is get a couple key people in your life - we all have them - and figure out the questions to ask in order to get one more step, one more step. That's really what we're looking to do here with the tree - build it out large so that you're continuously thinking about the next step. Does that kind of echo with what you're saying?

Dave Bryant: It does. If always trying to build a connection is what the goal is. With a lot of people who I call friends with now that I've dealt with them a lot of times, I can get to the point where you can ask them, "Hey, is there anyone else you know?" Be specific - don't just say, "Is there anyone else you know?" Say, "Is there anyone else you know in the property management world? Do you know any property managers in your life?" Just ask them one specific thing. They'll often tell you someone they know.

But you don't get there until you have a closer relationship with them. So to start it, you have to do all these starting things that we've talked about. That's the only way to develop your own tree. There was a time, same thing, I looked at a paper, I was like, "I don't have any names to put on here. Where do I go?"

This is a quick example. I was at a quote this week and I asked her, "How'd you hear about us?" "Oh, I found you through Google." "That's great. That's how a lot of people find out about us." I found out she was selling her house. So I said, "Oh great, who's your realtor?" She mentioned, "My sister is my realtor." "Oh, that's awesome. I've heard of the company before. I love it. Could you connect us?"

Now this is asking someone I've never met - it's a random lead through Google - and I asked her to connect me with her sister who has a realty company with 20 realtors. So when I sent the quote, I said, "Hey, also, would you mind sending that intro email to me and your sister so we could connect? I'll take it from there." That was just asking questions through someone that didn't know me yet and was comfortable doing that.

Michael Murray: Seems like realtors are a big part of this strategy. Is that pretty accurate or is that just the example that we've settled on for the day? I heard property managers and realtors. Is that a big piece?

Dave Bryant: Realtors are big. I would say property managers are bigger for me now. Those are two really good ways to get referrals. The property management world for me, they just lead to bigger jobs. When I mentioned visiting an office, it's always a property management office. I typically bring them some nice stuff from a bakery or fancy donuts to their office. That's a way for me to meet other people in the office.

Michael Murray: Are you scheduling that or are you just random, like a cold stop by - "Hey, I was in the area, wanted to introduce myself, here's some donuts"? Or did you pre-schedule it?

Dave Bryant: I always pre-schedule it. I usually know someone and I connect with that one person that I know. I've toyed with the idea of just showing up, but I do like it better when they have a time set in their schedule. The one I did this week, I was there for 45 minutes. So you get to know someone pretty well. She had a second person come in the meeting and we didn't talk about paint much. We did a little. But the main thing is just becoming more familiar with each other.

If I set up a meeting, I get that time. Whereas if I just show up, they might give you a few minutes, but that's about it. They're probably busy or they might not even be there.

Jon Bryant: Michael, do you have any other questions here?

Michael Murray: I think there's probably a hundred more questions, but I think we've given a pretty good overview. I know we're trying to keep it fairly short and sweet. Dave's got lots of stuff he's got to go do. He's got some watering of plants he's got to get to after this. I think it's probably time we start wrapping things up here. Hopefully we can have Dave come back on and chat more about some of these high performing habits that he has.

Jon Bryant: I think it's such an interesting thing to dig into. Obviously thanks for sharing, Dave. As we kind of wrap things up, what do you suggest to someone who's new, just getting into this? How do they get started?

Dave Bryant: Someone who was just getting started, I would say read some material, read some books, or get some recommendations on some books that you could read, or people you could talk to. Learn from some people in the industry already. Those would be some good ways to start, just to get thinking about different strategies and different things to do.

Jon Bryant: I think for those listening in, a great takeaway today is just to get started. I think a lot of us have done painting sales and have tried to build networks, but just forget about the day-to-day activities that actually lead to long-term success. Getting started in this area - whether you set up your own referral tree, of which we're going to have an example at paintscout.com/education, I believe, or in the link in this podcast as well - you can use to get started and just start visualizing and starting to use simple activities to build your referral network and to start to have a community that supports you in those slow times.

That's my major takeaway from today - just try it, see where it goes. It's going to take time. Don't expect immediate results. This is probably a - we always say it's a four to six week turnaround to see some results. So really we're talking about a longer term strategy here. But if you do it consistently, you're probably going to see results every four to six weeks, which starts to compound. Huge encouragement to you - get started. Start trying today.

Michael, Dave, thanks for tuning in today. Great discussion. Appreciate having you.

Dave Bryant: Great tuning in.

Michael Murray: Thanks guys, thanks for being here Dave.

Dave Bryant: Thanks, Jon. Thanks, Michael. That was good. Look forward to more.

Jon Bryant: Absolutely. We look forward to having you back on. As per usual, if you guys enjoyed this, like and subscribe. You've made it to the end, so there must be something you found valuable here. We look forward to continuing the conversations with more guests, more elite salespeople in the painting industry who are really changing the game. Thanks for tuning in. Have a great day.

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