Whenever dealing with painting business customers a good thing to remember is to get them to start saying "yes" to you right off the bat. A good way to do this is by asking questions that they can never reply "NO" to. No is a negative word.

For instance, when you were a kid and you wanted to go out and play you were probably very creative at getting your mom or dad to say yes to you.

The art of getting "yes – yes" answers to anything you ask people keeps them open minded during the sales process whereas a "no" answer to any question you ask them may begin to close their mind due to the negativity of the word "no". Now I know that when someone calls me to have some painting done that they really want the work done and this yes-no stuff doesn’t really matter all that much. But I still use this technique to make my phone calls and estimates run smoothly. I just want to let you be aware of this handy little trick for your people handling skills.

When someone calls me for a painting estimate I always give him or her a choice of two days and two different times of day for me to come out and do the estimate.

To set up an appointment I always ask them, "Would Monday or Tuesday be better to come over and do the estimate for you?" and "Would mornings be O.K.? Or I can do an afternoon estimate for you."

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

1. Eliminates any stress or pressure on your part away from the customer and
2. 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, they will tell you what 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 approach 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. But 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.

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 "Bid Like a Pro Estimating and Advertising CD-ROM".

Lee also offers a new free report titled "How To Quit Your Day Job This Week and Double or Triple Your Income". To get it go to http://www.BidLikeaPro.com