Doing this helps to keep your painting business

Doing this helps to keep your painting business customers open-minded and from saying that awful negative "NO" word. Plus, it:

a.) Eliminates any stress or pressure on your part away from the customer and

b.) It also helps them to make an easy decision (something most people hate to make).

You are basically guiding them through the whole marketing process because they don't know anything about doing estimates or setting appointments anyway. You are the expert in that department.

Once on the job, customers can tell you what exactly they want painted and from their you can give them further choices.

Getting people to always say yes to you is like the story about the army cook that had a surplus of stewed prunes to get rid of. He couldn't get anyone going through the chow line to take any stewed prunes so he started asking, "Do you want ONE or TWO helpings of stewed prunes? They would answer "just one please". Case in point, nobody said "no" to him!

Now you don't have to go around trying to be overly-clever or manipulative. And you don't have to use this technique all the time. But I do use it for setting up estimates and it always makes everything run smooth and professional.

One more technique I use in my painting business is saying things in what is called the "third person". Sometimes you may have to convince a customer that you are right about a certain painting application. I will say something like "this is how the old-time Dutch painters told me to do it". Or "One of the older painters always told me that this is the best way to...".

Sometimes people won't believe what you tell them. instead if you say that "The Benjamin Moore Company says to..." or "According to the makers of Zinsser Primers...". This is called saying things in the third person and it works like a charm. How did I learn it? I learned it from the book called "How To Win Friends and Influence People" - an all-time best seller! See, I just did it again.