The next 30 days: sell winter interiors to the people whose exteriors you painted this year
Exterior season is closing. The fastest way to fill the winter calendar is the customers you already served. A 30-day plan with the exact texts and timing.
The exterior calendar is thinning out, and in a lot of the country the last good painting weather is a few weeks away. The jobs that carry you through January need to be on the books before Thanksgiving, and the easiest ones to book are the people who already paid you this year.
They know your crew. They have seen the finish. Most of them have a hallway, a bedroom or a set of oak cabinets that they looked at while you were outside and thought, someday. The next 30 days are about turning someday into a date.
Week 1: build the list
Pull every exterior job from this year into one spreadsheet. You need four columns:
- Name and mobile number.
- Job date and address.
- Anything they mentioned about the inside of the house. Your estimator usually hears it.
- Whether they left a Google review.
Most contractors find 40 to 150 names. If your records are scattered across a CRM, a notebook and your phone, this is the week to fix that. It is the most valuable list in your business.
While you are in there, look at the review column. The median painting company has 11 reviews, according to our benchmark report. If a third of this list never left one, the text you send in week 2 can ask for both.
Week 2: the first text
Send it on a weekday evening, from a real person's phone or a business line that shows your name:
Hi Tom, it is Ana from Ridgeline Painting. Hope the house still looks good after the first rain. We start interior work in November and are holding a few December slots for this year's customers before we open them up. If there is a room or cabinets you have been thinking about, reply and I will come by for a quick look.
Why it works: it is personal, it gives a reason to answer now, and it asks for a look, not a commitment.
If they never left a review, add one line at the end:
And if you have a minute, a quick review would mean a lot: [link]
Week 3: estimates and the winter price
Book walkthroughs in tight clusters by neighborhood so one afternoon covers four houses. Price the job honestly. If you offer a winter incentive, make it about scheduling, not a big discount. "Book by November 30 for a December start and we will include the closet interiors" holds your margin better than ten percent off.
This is also the week to decide how you present options. A three-tier quote, walls only, walls and trim, walls trim and doors, lets the customer choose rather than decide yes or no. The pricing guide shows how to lay that out.
Week 4: the second text and the neighbors
Anyone who did not reply gets one more message ten days later. Keep it lighter:
Hi Tom, last note on this. We have two December weeks left for interiors and cabinets. If not this year, no problem, I will check back in the spring.
Then stop. Two texts is a follow-up. Four is a nuisance.
The same week, look at the streets where you did the most exteriors. A small Facebook and Instagram campaign aimed at a mile around those addresses, showing a finished interior and a line like "Booking December interiors in Oak Hills," can work well because the neighbors have already seen your trucks. The Facebook and Instagram guide covers budgets, which for a test like this can be as small as $15 to $25 a day for two weeks.
What this looks like in a real calendar
A hypothetical contractor with 90 exterior customers this year sends the first text. Fourteen reply. Nine book walkthroughs. Five sign interiors or cabinets, at an average of $4,000, for $20,000 of winter work. Nothing about those numbers is unusual, and nothing was spent on ads to get them. Your results will be different. The point is that this list is worth more per hour of effort than any other marketing you can do in October.
Two things to fix while you are at it
Your hours on Google. 39.4% of painting listings show no hours. A homeowner thinking about winter projects on a Sunday evening will move past a profile that looks closed.
Your winter photos. Add five interior and cabinet photos to your Google profile before November. Most painting profiles are all exteriors, which tells a homeowner you do not do insides. The seasonality guide has the full month-by-month plan for the quiet stretch.
The 30 days at a glance
- Week 1: one spreadsheet of this year's customers.
- Week 2: the first text, with a review ask where needed.
- Week 3: clustered walkthroughs and three-tier quotes.
- Week 4: one follow-up text, then a small neighborhood ad.
If you want any one piece of this run for you, the free 14-day trial of any service needs no card. See the free trial page or text or call (385) 526-5679.
Steven has spent the last several years running growth campaigns for local service businesses, painting contractors among them, and builds the benchmark datasets on this site from public Google listings. About the editor