For those in the professional painting trade, there’s no better reward than seeing your crew transform a client’s home or business into a beautiful space. For franchisees with Halifax-based Elite Trade Painting, completing a successful painting job is a great source of personal reward.
Luckily for them, there’s no short-age of projects to fulfill.
What sets Elite Trade Painting apart from other offerings in the residential and commercial painting space, from a franchisee’s perspective, is the system’s innovative franchise technology systems. Utilizing state-of-the-art software and CRM (Customer Relationship Management) tools, Elite Trade Painting has developed a seamless business flow process that saves time, insures quote accuracy, increases sales, and reduces costs to maximize profits and productivity.
The bottom line: Franchise owners can spend less time managing project proposals, employee communication, pricing, expenses, billing and payroll, and more time growing the business or enjoying an ideal work-life balance. It all amounts to a system that automatically follows up with leads and invoicing to save time and produce better results. Based on three years of reporting, Elite Trade Paint-ing fran chises see an average con-tract sign ing rate of 42.5 per cent, an average job value of $3,400, and $415,000 in average yearly production, with the system’s top units producing over $1 million.
“One of our greatest successes is the ability of our franchisees to operate in the most effective and cost efficient way possible,” explains President Mike Benteau, who’s been in the painting business for more than 35 years. “This is achieved through our many years of experience operating within the painting contracting industry. This success can also be attributed to our systems, which include our advanced business management software.”
The Right Franchise Fit
When Benteau began Elite Trade Painting back in 1991, he did so with a simple value proposition: Provide the highest quality painting and customer service for all residential and commercial customers at a reasonable price.
Benteau began franchising the Elite Trade Painting concept in 2012. Since then, the franchise has expanded across the country, with locations in British Columbia, Alberta, Ontario, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, and are currently working to expand in all of the provinces of Canada.
To join the Elite Trade Painting family, a prospective franchisee will need between $85,000 and $110,000 to invest with the system. They’ll also need to operate within a territory that has a minimum population of 150,000. In return, they’ll benefit from the procedures, policies, and general operations that have been built upon a foundation of 80 years of combined experience in the painting business.
In prospective franchisees, Benteau says he looks for candidates with experience in sales within the home service or trades industry, however, sales experience in any sec-tor is an asset. Elite Trade Painting franchisees should also possess stellar interpersonal skills, as they will be managing staff, speaking with clients, and interacting with suppliers.
“Our potential franchisees come from a wide variety of backgrounds and have diverse experience. These include people who have worked in skilled trades, and those who have not. Ultimately, it comes down to their motivation, organizational skills, and the assets that they bring from their past experience,” says Benteau.
Franchisor and franchisee: Partners in success
Franchisees in the Elite Trade Painting system aren’t investors, they’re partners. According to Benteau, the franchisor-franchisee relationship within his system is all about balance.
“We best describe our relation-ship as a partnership between two equal individuals,” he explains. “Our franchisees leverage our resources, experience, and services to achieve their targets and goals. We work with our franchisees to answer questions, provide guidance, and consultation to ensure that their business runs in a cost effective and efficient manner.”
The Elite Trade Painting corporate team has been in the trenches, and is eager to impart their wisdom onto franchisees in the form of extensive on-going support.
Initial training includes a week of training sessions held at head office, field training to familiarize franchisees with operations and working directly with clients, techniques for painter training, and access to an online learning portal with manuals, videos, and testing.
From a marketing standpoint, the Elite Trade Painting head office provides franchisees with marketing materials, branded clothing as well as design work to fulfill a wide range of marketing needs. All franchisees are set up with a locally SEO-optimized website specific to their business. What’s more, they provide sup-port with traditional and digital marketing programs, their National Marketing Program, ongoing social media management options and reputation management. In addition to this, they also provide payroll and accounting services for all franchisees.