In Trollhättan, Paintab has made "never settle" a working method. Here are the moves that keep the order book full when the market shrinks.
A cracked pane in a window on a municipal building. Rotten wood in a frame that no one has asked them to look at. The painter from Paintab stops, takes a picture, sends a message to the office. By the end of the day, the customer knows about it.
By then, Mårten has already called a carpenter. And a glazier.
— We fix everything and the whole picture, says Mårten Mårtensson, general manager of Paintab.
— Why does that free up time for the client?
— He knows that if he contacts us, we'll solve the whole thing. He doesn't have to coordinate the carpenter himself. We take the invoice from them, add our percentage, and he gets one invoice line in his accounting system.
It's the small moves. Those are the ones Mårten points to when others in the HG League ask how 22 painters can do 1,500 jobs a year in a town where industrial customers are closing and framework agreements can fall through.
— How can you have such high turnover when you are so few people?
The question came up in Svalbard, during the HG League gathering, after Paintab had won the award for «Performance Improver». The answer is not a single solution. It is an entire working method, repeated every week, even when the order book is full.
The rule that must not be broken
The first tip is also the hardest. It's about what you answer when a framework agreement customer calls on a Monday morning and needs something you don't really have the people for.
— We never say no, but we make sure to solve it. If we don't have enough of our own people, we use subcontractors so that we get it done.
— What happens if you say no once?
— Then they pick number two on the list of people they can call. And that makes it easier for them to call number two again the next time. That's how you lose a customer — little by little.
The result is a mechanism, not a feeling. There shouldn't be any reason to call anyone else.
— We put ourselves outside the competition. That's because we have such good trust with them.
It's about communicating all the time
Paintab works a lot with framework agreements. Fixed prices. And small projects. Over time, almost imperceptibly, the customer can start to believe that something is included, which isn't actually the case.
— A small email to the customer about where we are with the work can be enough — and then you often get rid of those problems.
— What can go wrong if you don't clarify expectations?
— Then they can dig into the paragraphs about what is included. But if you are clear all the time and provide ongoing information, a lot of the dissatisfaction disappears.
The same goes for the quote. Paintab spells out what is included and what is not, before the job starts. What pops up along the way — a rotten facade, a broken window — falls outside the quote and is reported immediately.
— We usually hear from several people that we are good at being clear.
Or «ordning och reda» (order and clarity), as they say in Sweden. Fast invoicing. Documents in place. Not because it looks good, but because that's where the competitors drop out.
— A lot of smaller firms are at least very bad at administrative things.
No one between Mårten and the wall
The hierarchy among the 22 painters is deliberately low. No project manager. No site manager.
— We sit in the office, but are also out helping. It's not like 'us and them' — we do this together.
— How do you know they feel that way?
— You hear it from the customers. They tell us how the painters behave out there. Just because you're a painter, you're not just a painter — it's about having the right competence in the right place.
Paintab does almost no new builds. It's a conscious choice, and it's connected to who they hire. A service painter works in an office building while people are sitting and working next door. They have to be able to knock, explain what they are going to do, move a chair back afterwards. They have to be able to talk.
— If you're going to be a service painter, so much more is required — you have to talk to the people around you.
It's a different job than standing on scaffolding in a finished building with no people. Paintab has built the entire team around the first type. That makes them less suited for new builds — and better suited for what clients actually demand again and again.
