We recently heard the story of a local cabinet painter who was spending 30 minutes pulling together every quote that she did and doing an average of eight quotes a day. She was dedicating at least four hours a day to creating quotes on top of all the time she was spending doing the work. But the worst part was, only about five percent of these quotes were turning into jobs.
Like a good businessperson, she made it very easy for potential customers to ask for quotes on her website, so she was getting a lot of leads. But the challenge was that she had to manually put together a quote for every single one of the leads, which led to a lot of wasted time with a five percent conversion rate.
Do you have a similar story? Are you spending too much of your all-important time creating quotes for a lot of leads that will likely never turn into customers?
If the answer is yes, I’m hoping the solution she came up with will help you too. She changed up her website so that if somebody clicked on a “Request a Quote” button it would ask the person how many doors and drawers they had in the cabinets they wanted painted. When they typed in the number and hit the “Submit” button they would be taken to a new page that gave them the typical range of cost that she would charge for cabinets with that many doors and drawers.
The web page said that if that range of cost looked good to them to please go ahead and fill out the form to provide additional information so that she could get right back to them for a more specific quote.
This may be somewhat counterintuitive. As business people we are often looking for reasons for why a sale could or should happen. But really, our best bet is to go for the quick “no” from the potential customer so that we only spend time with those potential customers who really fit the profile of our best customers. If somebody is only going to base their decision on cost, there will always be somebody out there who is willing to undersell you.
Importantly, this doesn’t just apply to those who ask you for an online quote. When a potential customer calls you, or asks you in person, you can always give a rough estimate during your conversation. Take in what their reaction is and then decide if they will be a potential customer that will be worth spending time with.
To learn how ProPainter Websites can help your painting business gain more customers and earn more money, call us at 855-385-1134 or email us at Team_PPW@ProPainterWebsites.com.