How To Bid Painting Jobs - 6 Important Things To Consider

How To Bid Painting Jobs - 6 Important Things To Consider
Estimating or bidding house painting jobs is something that
grows on you over time. I can go into any house and go from
room to room and tell you by eye exactly how much paint you
will need to do the ceilings, walls and woodwork.

I can even tell you just about how long it will take to
paint each room in general. But estimating many times goes
a lot deeper than just eyeballing a few simple rooms. So
here are 6 points to help you when figuring your bids or
estimates.

1.) Know Your Target Market

When getting prepared to do a painting estimate you first
need to know your target market or markets. Are you going
to be painting in middle-class neighborhoods or are you
going for the high-end glitzy neighborhoods? Or are you
going after commercial or industrial accounts?

Now you can you gauge how high you are going to set your
bid rates. You can have have high-end rates for larger
homes, or for commercial or industrial painting, and mid
prices for the rest.

Personally, when it comes to painting for residential
customers, I keep my rates the same. I do not care if it's
high-end or middle class. If they cannot afford my painting
services, I am out of there. Once you have painted at a
higher price, it's hard to go lower unless of course, you
are hard up.

If you are estimating painting jobs for big business you
can and should aim competitively high without worrying
about much competition as you would in residential
painting. Plus larger commercial customers have deep
pockets. Also to consider, if you are tackling those types
of accounts you will need extra painters anyways so you
definitely need to aim high in your bidding to cover their
wages and benefits.

2.) Fool-Proof System

You need an accurate estimating method that works perfectly
every time without fail. Whether inside or outside. You can
stand and stare at a project all day and try to guesstimate
exactly how long it will take you to paint something or you
can use an accurate method for bidding paint jobs and walk
away smiling and not wondering if you might bite the bullet
on that one.

3.) Allowances

You need to allow for fuel, travel time and even giving
Uncle Sam his cut. If your going to be driving long miles
you definitely want to account for fuel and travel time,
even overnight expenses if you get that radical in your
painting business. Again, if you have employees you will
need to account for their wages and benefits in your bids
also.

4.) Hidden Expenses

You need to be aware of hidden expenses or projects that
add extra time and extra materials to a job. Things like
hard to cover colors, excessive prep time, high-work, down
time due to outside sources that are common in new
construction, etc.

5.) Cost of Materials

You need to know how much paint and materials you will be
using. (Note: A good estimating system will automatically
include all your paints and materials.)

6.) Flexible Methods

Your estimating system should have several ways of figuring
your bids. Just like a set of golf clubs, some times you
need a different driver to make it on to the next green.
Different jobs require different painting estimating
techniques.

For example: painting ceilings, walls and woodwork
estimating can change if you have excessive woodwork like
walk-in closets with tons of shelving. Or rooms with high
walls.

The same goes for exterior work in residential painting.
Are the surfaces smooth and clean or is there stucco or
shingles that require extra time and materials? When you
have an easy system in place you can build up an estimate
to meet the type of project you are facing.

Many times on larger estimates, I will cross-check my
painting bid from different angles by using two different
estimating techniques just to make sure I have it all
together and did not leave anything out of the big picture.

----------------------------------------------------
Lee Cusano has owned and operated his own successful
painting business for over 16 years. He has also helped
many others to start their own painting business with his
Paint Like a Pro Estimating and Advertising CD-ROM.
Lee also offers a free report titled "How To Gain a High
Success Rate For Getting Painting Jobs". To get it go to
http://www.painting-business.com

9 Steps to Boost Business Purpose and Profit

9 Steps to Boost Business Purpose and Profit
There are many parts to building a successful entrepreneur
business, but it first and foremost begins with
understanding and remembering why you do the work you do.
Then it's about clearly understanding who you serve, what
their major struggles are, and how what you offer will make
their life better. Finally, it's about reaching your ideal
client in a way that has them eager to work with you. But
most importantly, it's about managing your energy through
it all.

Here are the 9 steps that I've found to be essential in
building a business that's just loaded with rewarding
purpose, joyful productivity and consistent flow of profit:

1 Claim Your Core Value Offer

It's important to be very clear about what you do and WHY
you're doing it. There are no mistakes. Everyone and
everything has a purpose. You have a unique gift to give -
something that no one else can give. When you uncover this
part of yourself - you truly begin to SHINE. This clarity
also establishes an instant energy of enthusiasm, which is
very attractive to prospective clients. The intention is to
turn all that you do into an "energy magnet".

2 Magnetize Your Client Attraction Plan

Then you want to establish who would benefit most from
working with you (your target market), the qualities of
this client or customer and what is it exactly about the
way you do what you do that has your work standing out from
all others (your niche).

You use these discoveries to craft a message that has you
extremely at ease with speaking about what you do, from
having a conversation one-on-one to creating compelling
copy for every piece of marketing material you use. It's
important to be able to communicate your value to the
people that need your services in a way that is honest,
authentic to you, rooted in integrity. This is what gets
you more clients because you're conveying what you have to
offer to as many people as possible with an energy that
naturally draws business to you. This way it's easy-breezy!

3 Move Beyond Entrepreneurial Fear

There are two major factors I've found that get in the way
of womenpreneurs succeeding: fear and doubt. More often
than not we get scared about what the "right way" to build
a business is, what will happen if we actually DO succeed,
and then feel doubtful about our ability to make a lot of
money doing what we love, in a way that gives us plenty of
free-time to do the other things in life we really enjoy.
This is a big barrier to getting what you want. You want to
nip this (or any type of similar block) in the bud right
from the get-go so your energy is available for your
clients and for taking your business to a bigger place.

4 Serve Your Business' Dire Needs

It's a MUST to prioritize what needs to get done and when.
You can't do everything at once (although I know you often
wish you could) and can actually get more done when you can
identify what needs the most amount of your time, energy
and focus first and then to distribute your resources from
there. This is an invaluable skill to define and strengthen
that will consistently put you in a place of growth: that's
more clients and more money.

5 Establish Powerful Business Systems

It's such a relief when you put in place systems that have
your business and your marketing (so important!) operating
on autopilot. This frees up energy for you to use to
consistently generate new business so that there is never a
lull in clients or income. Start setting these systems up
right away. It's the New Year - perfect timing. No need to
get yourself distracted by this though. Start with the most
important systems (operations, your offerings and your
marketing) and let them improve over time as you develop a
greater sense of what your system needs are (I always say
the Universe is constantly handing you the next steps to
your business - just open your eyes and ears along the way!)

6 Shift From Selling to Serving

Selling is really just about finding energetic matches,
right?

When you are able to understand that your business is the
optimal opportunity for you to provide a serving
experience, everything changes. You want to have in place a
specifically designed energetic process that allows your
potential clients to come to a place of understanding and
self-discovery that they want what you have. It's both an
art and a science at the same time that strongly calls on
the energetic power of partnering with Spirit to create
more business for you, more results for those that you
serve and a true sense of joy and ease for everyone.

7 Move Prospects to Profits

This is such an important system it gets it's own step J
Put in place a strong, solid, specific system that has you
moving prospects into high paying clients, consistently.

Remember, folks need to have their hand held as they walk
over the bridge from where they currently are to joining
you in your business (whether service or product). You are
asking them to do something new by partnering with you.
This process needs to be both served by you and respected
by you. You MUST also be able to take a stand for the value
of what your service can do for them (if it is a right
match) while simultaneously being detached from the
outcome. (This is the power of the EnergyRICH Prospects to
Profits Process that I coach and teach on.) It's truly a
place of confident serving. It changes everything about
being in business. It makes it a whole lot easier and more
fun! Doesn't get better than that, right?

8 Create Balance

Every entrepreneurial expert speaks about the need and the
benefits of having business-life balance, but rarely do
budding business owners put this into practice. Begin to
focus right now on developing specific strategies tailored
for you that consistently have you serving both your
personal and professional needs so that you experience
success on all levels (health, wealth, relationships--you
name it). Let's face it--as a solo-entrepreneur if one area
is out of whack you'll experience it in the others. You
want success on all levels, right?

9 Be Considerably Huge: Mastering Mindset and Marketing

You have an incredible gift. It is literally a disservice
to others for you to keep your talent and ability hidden,
tucked away or reserved for only a few. You have an
obligation to share what you do--on a large scale. It's
time for you to shine.

Be sure to, on a daily basis, put in place a practice that
supports bringing you to this bigger place from your
mindset (if you find yourself asking "Why?" I would give
you a coach's challenges to ask, "Why not?") to your
marketing (find the best avenues that effectively work for
you; whether that be networking, strategic partners,
various uses of the media and more.)

EnergyRICH Call To Action:

Create a plan for the year that covers all 9 steps of the
above system, even if it is short-sweet-to-the-point.
Include time for yourself to work on your business, not
just in your business. Give yourself space to develop and
re-work your systems as much as needed - it will save you
energy in the long run. You'll not only put your business
on a smooth operating track, but the intention is you'll
also more clients from your efforts.

----------------------------------------------------
Heather Dominick, EnergyRICH(tm) Entrepreneur Success
Coach, has over 11 years of teaching and coaching
experience. Heather's primary focus is in coaching
entrepreneurs to identify inner and outer sources for
attracting clients and increasing business profit. To sign
up to receive your free 5 Part EnergyRICH Entrepreneur
E-course go here now http://www.energyrichcoach.com

Join Forces: Don't Fight the Irresistible

Join Forces: Don't Fight the Irresistible
Do you want results . . . or are you satisfied with excuses?

The barrier to irresistible growth is not the unstoppable,
uncontrollable external change, but fixed (and frequently
unexamined) ideas of how to respond to those changes.

John Kenneth Galbraith, the late economist, noted that "The
enemy of the conventional wisdom is not ideas but the march
of events." And the tide of expected future change in our
society is now rapid and breathtaking to most -- whether we
consider irresistible forces like the advent of the
Knowledge Age (with knowledge doubling in many fields
within a few years, months, or even days), the electronic
improvements in communication choices (the potential number
of ways for you to receive or send a message will continue
to grow rapidly for many more years), shifts in work
activities (from routine fulfilling of standard tasks to
Peter Drucker's knowledge work) and stability (as a result
of down-sizing and a "free agent" work force),
demographic-driven social changes (ever older populations
in the developed countries and ever younger ones everywhere
else), weather volatility (both in temperatures and
storms), the movements of currencies and markets, social
mores of the moment (fads get shorter and shorter), or
personal styles of the young (differentiating from older
teenagers, not just from adults).

There is no doubt that today the world has become much more
complicated and interconnected. For businesses,
globalization means that the number and distance of
customers, suppliers and competitors have grown
geometrically. Such interconnectedness also means that what
affects one can quickly spread and affect all, like the
rapid expansions of computer and human viruses. These
connections mean that economic and financial adjustments,
especially in prices and currency values, travel faster and
further than before. Your irresistible growth enterprise
must be agile in adapting to these changes. I believe that
making rapid and best use of sudden changes in powerful
conditions no one can control is the key to becoming an
irresistible growth enterprise.

When asked in the 1950s about how much control they had
over their business's success, U.S. CEOs felt they had a
great deal. By the start of the 1990s, CEOs often felt that
irresistible forces had more impact on the company's
success then the employees did.

We only have to look at charts measuring events over the
last 100 years to see that the volatility of many
irresistible forces is also growing. In the last 30 years
alone, this volatility has included an unprecedented
success by a commodity cartel (the Arab oil embargo), the
fall of a major government type around the world
(communism), stock prices have experienced unprecedented
growth in the United States and many other countries,
interest rates have fluctuated from over 20 percent to as
low as 2 percent in North America (and more widely
elsewhere), and the advent of the service economy (of
stores and local brokerage offices) was diverted into
creating an information-based economy.

As these examples suggest, the degree and speed of change
are both accelerating. At one time, corporate leaders could
conduct leisurely studies of such changing phenomena after
they began to occur, thoughtfully select the right actions,
and then experiment with the best way to proceed. In many
cases, the time involved to deliberately study its choices
today costs a company its biggest opportunities, and can
even lead to failure.

Consider Barnes & Noble, the leader in physical book
stores. Before launching its electronic commerce business,
it decided to watch what happened with Amazon.com for a
while as it studied its options. By the time Barnes &
Noble was ready to act, Amazon.com had built a commanding
electronic lead that will be very difficult to overcome.
Naturally, it is nice to be able to find one trend and ride
it for a long time. The results can be wonderful.

McDonald's is one of very few companies that have had this
experience. The company's premise is based on customers'
desires for dependable, inexpensive food, served quickly
and effectively in convenient clean locations. From its
beginnings as a single hamburger stand in the 1930s in San
Bernardino, California, it has become a global giant today.

But even McDonald's had to learn eventually to adapt to the
irresistible force of consumer food preferences as it moved
beyond North America. The familiar hamburger, fries and
soft drink menu had to expand to offer curry in England and
a glass of wine in Paris.

Today's enterprises will find such long-term rides to be
the exception to the rule. Consider how Microsoft flirted
with disaster in the 1990s by missing the early
significance of providing software and services for the
Internet. Intel was originally a memory chip manufacturer,
and shifted into microprocessors as its primary business
somewhat by accident.

The world is full of shuttered stores that failed to meet
customer needs. Their boarded up windows are mute testimony
to the need to shift with the changing trends. Many of the
most significant irresistible forces (such as new
technologies, improved communications, the weather,
demographics, user preferences, and economic conditions)
have grown much more volatile and unpredictable in just the
past five to ten years. Analysts suggest that this trend
will accelerate due to the "chaos" effects of how a small
change in one place in the world can cause an enormous
change elsewhere.

Simply consider all of the changes that Jack Welch went
through to turn General Electric from a
slow-growing-industrial goods manufacturer into a financial
services powerhouse with high-margin manufacturing
specialties. Any one of these changes would have
overwhelmed most organizations, yet Welch succeeded with
several.

How well the company fares under Welch's successors will
reveal a lot about the difficulties of continuing as an
irresistible growth enterprise.

This multiplier effect will increasingly happen with all
irresistible forces, and this is the key insight upon which
you must act now. While most organizations will react to
such forces and their changes only when it is impossible
not to (out of self-preservation or fear), the irresistible
growth enterprise will see the creation of broad
unstoppable change, the accurate anticipation of such
changes, and the steady beneficial harnessing of such
changes to achieve its purposes as its primary tasks.

Are you ready?

Copyright 2008 Donald W. Mitchell, All Rights Reserved

----------------------------------------------------
Donald Mitchell is chairman of Mitchell and Company, a
strategy and financial consulting firm in Weston, MA. He is
coauthor of seven books including Adventures of an
Optimist, The Irresistible Growth Enterprise, and The
Ultimate Competitive Advantage. You can find free tips for
accomplishing 20 times more by registering at:
====> http://www.2000percentsolution.com .