The Three Steps to Building a Lead Generation System for Painting Businesses
In my first year in business I would knock on doors from the second the job site shut down to when it was too dark to see. This is how I went from door knocking every single lead my business got to being able to fully systemize lead generation.
The Three Pillars to Build, and Scale a Door-to-door Marketing Team
Here’s how I went from marketing every lead my business saw to creating a lead generation system that reliably brought clients to my business.
The three things to evaluate for when hiring a door-to-door marketer for lead generation:
The three hiring fundamentals:
1. Pre interview surveys
2. Live pitches
3. Hire characteristics, train skills
Pre-interview surveys
Anytime I interviewed someone for a door-to-door position, I would send out a survey asking them to rank these five characteristics against each other:
-
Resilience
-
Interpersonal skills
-
Persuasion
-
Public speaking
-
Quick to learn
By far, the characteristic that was put most frequently in the number one or two spot was resilience. Followed closely by that was interpersonal skills. Having worked with a team of over a dozen people, this was a rule, not an exception.
The pre interview survey didn’t tell me everything I needed to know about the applicant. Asking questions that would prompt them to demonstrate these skills was key to gaining reliable insight.
Every interview I conducted included a live pitch. At first it was just across the table, I gave them an example of the pitch and asked them to mimic it. They would then be given objections and, with no script, asked to handle the objection. From there, I’d ask them to get up and join me walking around to knock on a couple of doors of real homeowners.
-
It was hardly ever a perfect pitch, and that’s okay. Evaluate for communication skills, body language, eye contact, and tonality.
-
All of my highest performers had an inherent understanding of persuasion and objection handling. In practice this looked like them being able to effectively counter at least 1 of the 3 objections I would give them. If someone wasn’t able to do this it didn’t mean they would be a bad fit, but they would need more coaching.
-
Door-to-door is not for everyone, getting someone in front of a real door will help both you and them realize if this is a good fit before an offer is made
Hiring for Skills Verses Character Traits
Skills are easy to teach someone. Characteristics are much more difficult to instill. Anyone new to a role will need coaching, if it were my business, I would choose to coach someone on learning a skill rather than developing a characteristic.
Skills
-
Public speaking
-
Persuasion
-
Accounting
-
Time managment
Characteristics
-
Resilience
-
Honesty/candor
-
Accountability
-
Work ethic
It’s easy to teach a script. It’s not so easy to teach someone to be resilient and keep knocking doors after they’ve heard their 50th no.
How to onboard people to set your team up for success:
The three onboarding fundamentals:
1. Learning the script
2. Performance expectations
3. Don't throw them to the wolves
Learning the script
-
You must test your script to make sure it works for your client base, once you know it works hold the line and don't let people venture off script. People will start underperforming and not realize it’s because they modified the script.
-
People should have access to the script and the objection handles and be practicing it either in front of you or a Marketing Manager with feedback before they’re at the door. Repetition with consistent feedback is needed to be successful
-
Utilize recordings of pitches from you and/or your highest performers to teach tonality
-
Most marketers who come in will not know painting terminology, they need to be trained on how to spot deficiencies on a home and what the different areas on a house are called (i.e. Fascia, shingles, siding, etc.)
Performance expectations
-
Set clear and measurable expectations for what success looks like and how they are expected to be performing (i.e. a lead to hour ratio that is expected)
-
Not all territory is created equally, make sure they are aware of the fluctuations and the expectations for lead/hr rates in each neighborhood
-
An internal locus of control should be the expectation, if someone is blaming their performance consistency on outside variables, they need to be coached to take accountability
Don’t throw them to the wolves
-
Early success is crucial for door-to-door, both so you can see if they have what it takes and so that they have positive reinforcement
-
Whether it is you, the founder, or an experienced marketer, someone should be with them the first time they are hitting the doors. Having immediate feedback, and the chance to quickly apply the feedback, is crucial for improvement.
-
Strongly encourage the behaviors you want, immediately give feedback for behaviors you don’t want (i.e. praise objection handling, reinforce how to objection handle when someone doesn't at a door)
In my experience, if a new marketer was unable to get leads within their first three shifts, assuming they have gotten the proper training and were marketing in an area that was proven to generate leads, they would not work out long term.
How to retain people on your door-to-door team:
The three retention fundamentals:
-
Track progress through metrics
-
Build community
-
Create opportunities and careers
Track progress with metrics, it creates motivation:
Seeing progress drives motivation. Being able to see where you started to where you are now creates a sense of accomplishment.
This can be done by tracking someone’s lead/hr ratio on a weekly basis or the number of houses they knock before they get a lead. Both you and the team member can reflect on performance and progress. Recording live pitches is also important to assessing progress and providing motivation and feedback when needed.
Actionable:
Find someone’s lead/hr rate or how many houses they need to knock to get a lead and convert that into dollars. If Sara is getting a lead every 30 houses she should know that metric by heart. If you’re in a neighborhood that has 20 houses per block, all of a sudden 1 ½ blocks = $.
Breaking out of slumps:
Progress is not always linear. With door-to-door it’s not uncommon to fall into a slump. These are often self perpetuating cycles. Someone feels like they’re not getting results, their motivation goes down which negatively impacts their delivery, and by consequence their results. This is why we track. Having recordings from weeks they were hot and getting leads left and right reminds them of what they are capable of. An in person check in from you or your marketing manager can often go a long way in pulling someone out of a slump.
Build a community:
Scheduling people to go out and market together in small groups goes a very long way to keeping morale high. Having done a lot of my own marketing my first year in business, it made a massive difference having a friend.
If you are working with people who don't know each other and there isn't yet a culture of being a team then throw events. Events that celebrate the team bring people together and give people the opportunity to bond outside of a typical work day. Having community and people to lean on when you’re dealing with rejection is crucial. Events foster friendship and build bridges so your team members can celebrate the highs together and support each other through the lows.
If you're leading a door-to-door team you're likely leading a team of competitive people. Leaderboards were a tool utilized by my team. It served as a source of competition while also showing what was possible to achieve.
Weekly or daily challenges was another tools my team utilized to set mini goals and make the day more interesting.
Some ideas of mini incentives include:
-
The first person to get leads on streets starting with the letters XYZ gets a bonus (spelling out a word with the first letter of a street name)
-
The first person to book a quote in these 3 neighborhoods gets a bonus
-
The first person to hit X number of leads this week gets a bonus
Create Careers and Opportunity
Retention is improved when people see long term potential with a position. Having frequent promotions does more to drive motivation than infrequent advancement. Having an associated monetary incentive will put value behind the title.
1. Marketer in Training --- 2. Junior Marketer --- 3. Marketer Level 1 --- 4. Marketer Level 2 --- 5. Marketer Level 3 --- 6. Senior Marketer --- 7. Marketing Chief of Staff
Promoting people in three month increments or when a certain volume of leads or estimates is created from their work is a good starting point in terms of promotional frequency. What you choose to pay people is dependent on your profit margin, your LTV, and your CAC. Once again, checking your LTV/CAC ratio per payroll is essential in ensuring a a profitable marketing system.
High performing individuals want not only a title and a pay increase but also to continually learn and grow within their position. Throughout my experience overseeing a door to door team, the ability to learn to be a leader was a big motivator as it allowed people to advance their careers.
Related Resources
It's important to know your numbers so that you can scale your lead generation system for your painting businesses profitably. This is done by understanding and evaluating your LTV to CAC ratio. If you're not sure where to start with creating a budget follow the link below for a step by step guide to understanding profitable marketing.
Internal versus external locus of control:
With door-to-door there will be external reasons why results may vary. The time of day and the neighborhood can all affect results. It is important, however, to focus on what you can control. Whether you are the founder knocking on your own or trying to train a new marketer, focusing on your pitch, your delivery, and your objection handling is the difference between spiraling down into a slump and progressing past slow shifts. You may not always be able to change the time you go out, or the neighborhood, but focusing on doing the best you can at each door will lead to far better results and a much more pleasant outlook.
Frequently, I’ve had limiting beliefs broken. In my first year of business I had all these ideas about the time of day I needed to go out or that there was some type of luck to it all but the reality was that it wasn’t true. When I thought all the pieces were in place I’d feel more confident, I’d speak differently, and clients would notice and be more receptive to it. It was only when I realized it wasn’t these outside factors that influenced my results but simply my pitch, that allowed me to get far more results at any time and place.
Do you have questions about scaling your business?
--
Submit them below.