E186: How a Painter Doubled his business in 8 weeks (Any Trade Business can do the same)

In this episode you will learn how a painter doubled his business in just eight weeks. Welcome to Sales Growth Made simple the show helping seven to eight figure trade, construction and industry sales and business leaders. Finally end the stress of inconsistent sales by simplifying your sales systems so your team can close more deals and grow faster. I'm your host, Ben Wright, a leader who has been building businesses and sales teams just like you for the last 20 years. By the end of today's episode, you should have a really strong perspective around how a painter, which could be any trade business, once you get to the end of this episode, you'll see why. But how a painter was able to double his business in eight weeks. We're going to focus on three things that he did to be able to double that business. And I will add as a side note, he then tripled across the next six months and he quadrupled after 12 months. So his business 12 months later was four times the size of what it was. And he already had a team. He wasn't a lone ranger, he wasn't a sole operator, he already had a number of people in his team. But he was able to times 4 on his business across a 12 month period by making some sustainable changes. But certainly ones that I would say are achievable and absolutely in the grasp of many, many trade industry and construction businesses. So let's dive into what those are. Number one, the very first thing that this painter did, and I want you to think as we set the scene that this is a painter who does a lot of work in the residential space. Terrific person, really hard worker, really open to feedback, absolutely wants to grow, will put the bit between his teeth and his head down and just go for it. The type of person that's prepared to back himself and say, I'd really like, like to make my business succeed. And if you're listening today, he knows who he is and you've done a terrific job. So let's have a look in a general way how he was actually able to do the doubling of his business in that eight week period. Okay, so number one is the very first thing we did was we sat down and said, what are the lead sources for you that are converting? So in episode 185 on Monday, we spoke about diagnosing exactly where your sales process is breaking down. And we looked at four areas. Lead, lead into the first meeting, show up rates for the first meeting, first meeting to quote rates, and lastly, close to or quote to close rates. For this painter, the first thing we do is Say, okay, for all those leads that are coming in, what are the ones that are most successfully closing? And he had six or seven sources of leads, which is very, very common. By all means, have a quick think about how many lead sources you have for your business. But he had six or seven lead sources. But what was really clear was that two or three of those and two in particular were really driving sales. Now one of those, for example, was builders. Did a lot of work with builders and there was a certain type of builder that was really driving his sales. So as one of those three things being builders and the other two, one was referrals and the other one was, was very much around some local Google area marketing. But those three areas, what we decided to do was invest more time into those areas and less into the others. So we actually pulled back from six to seven predominant lead channels into three lead channels. So that was step one. So we were immediately saying, okay, we are going to spend more time on what works. And as you're thinking about this, perhaps have a think in your business to say, okay, is there anything that's really obvious in terms of what's generating more leads than others? For me, most business owners, most sales leaders in my experience, will know the top one or two. And then it becomes a question around, okay, how do we maximize our progress on these? Let's move into number two. The second thing that this painter did is make sure that he was far better prepared for his site visit and quotes. This one might surprise you a little bit because it was some non traditional approaches that actually got him prepared and it was things like making sure he put a clean top on. Now as a painter, you're on the tools. Sometimes he was on and off the tools, right, and you'd go to some quotes and you just weren't physically dressed and physically prepared to impress. So by saying, okay, we're going to make sure we've got a clean shirt on, it's hanging in the car, I'm going to put this on. For the quotes, we were able to actually have a nice mindset shift. That said, right, I'm walking in this door, it's game on. I'm focusing on what I'm here for rather than carrying what else has happened across the rest of the day into this site visit. On top of that, we also made sure that he really got his head clear before he went into quotes. Gave himself a minute or two to be off the phone, didn't hang up a phone call or park the car and rush in the door. Particularly in trade businesses, right. We've all been there, we live that, we're rush, rush, rush. Movement is part of every day. Well, what we did was we just instilled just a small amount of hey, slow down. It's not necessarily stillness, but slow down, get your head in what you want to do, have a quick think about what the customer might need and then go in and get ready. And the last thing that he did was just to make sure that he was walking in that door, that he was prepared to talk to the customer with a little bit of gratitude to say, hey, thanks for having me. So the very first time we meet anyone, first impressions are made super quickly. Super, super quickly. In fact, as a side note, I remember in a job when I worked in the FMCG market and we worked in the condom market. Yeah, really weird example coming here, Ben. But I Remember we had 6 to 7 seconds, 6 to 7 seconds when a customer came to the shelf before they decide on which product to buy. So the packaging and the presentation of our product was up, unbelievably important. Not dissimilar here. Right. Of course we're selling very different products but we have a very short period of time to make a good impression. So really focused on making that good impression. So number one was all about best lead sources and double down. Number two was all about making sure we were adequately prepared to do that quote. And the third one here, and I talk a lot about speed because it is so unbelievably important, particularly in trade businesses, is that he had a really fast turnaround of his quotes. So for me, the gold standard here was less than 24 hours and in some instances being able to quote on the spot and discuss the quote on the spot. But we rapidly reduced quote turnaround time from three to four days down to one day. Now, they were the three main things that we did hand on heart with this business. We sat down and they were able to double within eight weeks. Now, of course I was there guiding this person through. We had things that came up earlier across those eight weeks that we needed to cover. So it's not quite as simple as do those three things. Set and forget and away you go. However they are the fundamentals of what changed and with a real openness to learning and being challenged. And that's very much part of the sold out sales teams academy is we're in there to learn and grow and change and be the best we possibly can with that ongoing approach. Across that eight week period, he had a terrific result and I'm super proud of him. And again, if you're listening, you know who you are. Really super proud of what you've been able to do because you have such a level head on you. But for people listening, I think the aim for today and we're going to slightly change our Wednesday episodes. They're going to be more around some stories like this of businesses who have been able to make successful changes to their sales levels. But for me, I think the message coming out of today is, number one is you can make small changes that have significant impacts on your business. Right. But number two is to really focus in on where you want to improve. In this instance, it was all about determining the lead sources that work, getting really well prepared for when you're meeting those lead sources. Right. So we've determined the lead sources that are working. We're doubling down on them and we're really getting better prepared to go and meet them. And then once we have met them, is turning around a quote really quickly so that we can really keep that momentum and that excitement, if we can call it that, around moving forward into what's next. So as we finish up from today, I'm hopeful you've had an idea or two. If you're driving, you've been able to add a red light, write something down. If you haven't been able to write something down, you've got one idea in your head that you can go and roll out to improving your business. And then above that, I hope you've got some motivation to say, do you know what? If he did it, I can do it and I can get out there and really grow my business. We're dropping episodes every Monday, Wednesday and Fridays. So if the motivation starts to wane, you know, three times a week, you can jump on. We really try to keep these really positive episodes. We focused a lot on being 1% better each and every day. You hear me say it every podcast. If you can do that, it does make a difference. We'll see you on Friday. Bye for now. Are you frustrated spending hours of wasted time on sales quotes that you keep losing without changing something? Now you'll continue to get these same stressful results over and over again. My free Quote audit will pinpoint exactly why you're not winning more jobs and what you need to do to increase your close rates quickly? Click the free Quote Audit link in the show notes to get started now.