The Online Resource for the Painting Industry
PEP announces the eBid! How does it work? You put together a company profile to highlight your latest projects, your history, your values – a professional estimate is what sets you apart from the rest. When it comes time to make a bid for a job, you can select to include this company information as […]
It seems apparent these days that using paper time sheets can be time-consuming and expensive for you and your business. My name is Neville Solomon, and after personally interviewing over 50 painting business owners across the country that still use time sheets, the majority have told me the challenges it brings them, and how it’s […]
My estimating was guesstimating at best. When I first started my business I had no idea what to charge my clients for the work I was doing. I knew how to charge by the hour, but I wasn’t always sure how long it would take me to finish tasks. Eventually I had a pretty good idea […]
How do you pull it all together? Keeping track of customers, proposals, contracts, employees, payroll, appointments, is hard if you don’t have a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system in place. Most people I talk to use some combination of Outlook and Quickbooks along with paper documents and appointment scheduling software. Doing it that way worked […]
When I go to PDCA conventions, I often run into friends and fellow painters that know me as an estimating buff. They know that I’m both the owner of an estimating software company and also a paint contracting business. Don’t get me wrong, estimating is critical to being successful, but it’s also really important to […]
It’s a daily occurrence all over this grand landscape of contracting. We run out and give away our time and experience for free hoping we will get a certain portion of the business. It’s one of the few professions where we give away our expertise doing free estimates
Nobody really likes to sell. If you’re like most people, you’d rather just get down to the business of painting your client’s house. There’s nothing less pleasurable than digging up leads. In an ideal world, a professional could hang out his shingle, be really good at what he does, and never lack for phone calls. […]
The Questions You Must Discuss on Every Estimate Last year, we wrote an article about selling. Basically, it’s tough! For seasonal areas this time of year, everyone seems to be calling at the same time. When it gets busy, we can easily get caught up focusing on the work to be done. We forget that […]
“Everything gets Measured” That was biggest takeaway from an Estimating course I took from Bob Cusumano last year. Measuring and Estimating was one thing my husband and I had always disagreed on. He could walk a job, know how long it would take and be able to say how much. Of course, he had been […]
Painting contractors frequently complain about customers who focus solely on price, rather than value. While it is easy to blame the customer, contractors are often the ones at fault. To put this in context, consider your own buying habits. Do you ever buy anything based on price? Do you ever shop around for the best deal on a spray rig, a […]
If your business was losing money, would you simply conclude that you need to raise prices and do so by some arbitrary amount? Or, would you sit down, analyze your finances, and determine a specific cause for the loss?
Read my recent article in American Painting Contractor, The Agony of Estimating
Most professional painting contractors understand the importance of developing systems for their business. For those who want to get out of the bucket, it is absolutely imperative. Unfortunately, developing systems can be a very imposing task, and many contractors don’t know where to start. However, it doesn’t have to be a daunting task. If they use a system, the process can […]
