In this conversation, Caleb and Nate discuss the evolution of door knocking for Paris Painting, a residential painting and roofing company targeting $20 million in combined revenue this year. Door knocking has become their fastest-growing marketing channel, with a budget split across flyers, direct mail, Google retargeting, and the door team. Initially, their door knocking struggled with 25–30% success rates and high slippage, but through targeted changes, they’ve transformed performance. The team now consists of five knockers, each working 15–20 active hours weekly, with top performers booking 12–20 appointments per week. Success hinges on a "first date" approach: making homeowners feel safe, engaging them about their homes and painting needs, and naturally guiding them to book an estimate on the spot. This method, combined with compensation tied to job sales, has boosted success rates to 35–45% for engaged knockers and reduced slippage to 5–10%. A standout knocker, Angel, has sold over $250,000 with a 35% success rate. The culture is a key differentiator: low turnover, high camaraderie, and daily coaching through self-recording, peer feedback, and an active field manager. Monday huddles, transparent earnings, and group goals like trips at $3 million and $4 million in revenue keep the team motivated. By focusing on fewer, better-trained people rather than churning through hires, Paris Painting has built a sustainable, high-performing door knocking team that could scale to 40–100 appointments weekly.
Some of the people we've trained this year, they went from 15% success rate to 35% success rate. It's about making the person feel safe at first, getting them talking about their house and their painting, creating a natural path to the estimate, booking the estimate right at the door of there. And then once you kiss the person, don't run away. The irony is, hello, hello, we have not done this in a while. Excited for those of you that don't know, this is Caleb. He is the marketing director half-pairs painting. So new fancy title price and the last time we did a podcast event. And then I'm Nate Streeter, I'm the marketing director at all of and I think we're just kind of going to check in with people. We're kind of in the middle of the spring, May 15th year. We got all kinds of things we're working on. Caleb oversees everything to do with the marketing at Paris Painting and you guys are on track for what 18 million this year. I guess I don't even know what your goals are. We're on track to do 18 to 19. And you also do a couple million in roofing? Yep, yeah, that's closer to 3 million. Okay, so probably top 20 million between the two. And almost all residential, right? Yep, almost all residential. So that gives people an idea of kind of, and then a lot of your budget is neighborhood marketing. So direct mail, flyers, door knocking. Yep, mostly. Let's talk about it. Yeah. Yeah, our campaigns are split into like kind of like pillar campaigns. Like we've been to quarter million and flyers, roughly quarter million and direct mail, quarter million and like PMAX campaigns. How does Google retargeting? Yep, Google retargeting, mostly retargeting but then competitor websites and display ads in general. And then the rest of it's going to door knocking, which has been the biggest increase of spend for us this year has been door knocking. Yeah. And really, I mean, when you came to work here back in, was it 2022? Yep, 2022. I mean, that we were just starting to try and test it out a little bit. Yeah. And I think we felt like in 2022, 2023, it was okay, but there was a lot of things about it. That it was hard for us to get the success rate up. We had a lot of slippage. So how many jobs actually sell? That's the success rate. How many appointments we booked that cancel? That's the slippage. And so we were having hard time getting like our success rates were like 25 to 30% if I remember right. Yep. And our slippage was like closer to like 10 plus percent. So one out every 10, can't sold or something happened where we didn't end up giving them an estimate. Dendrite. Yeah. Oh, yeah. In some cases, it was even higher. Yeah. Yeah. So, um, and that's something that you've been working a lot on as we re sort of booted last year. Is how do we get those? Oh, job sizes too. Like, I think our job sizes tend to be a bit smaller when we were door knocking compared to our other marketing tools. And so those were all the things that as we rebooted our door knocking, we were like, how do we get these things up? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, we've made a lot of changes this year. Our goal is to be like to make it one of those like color campaigns, like I mentioned, where it's a campaign that can actually be over 2 million, which is over 10%. Honestly, it's hard for me to focus on campaigns that are like 1% or 2%. Like, if it doesn't have the opportunity to scale, then it's hard to invest a lot of time and energy. But this year, door to door was like the one thing where like, hey, we really want to figure it out. This year, we actually want to hire a door to door manager. So it's not me in the field have like, fractionally in it. So we've done that. We've had good success with the door to door manager and really integrating with the sales team to produce a better success rate on the jobs as well. But we're still okay. Tell me, yeah, tell me some of your numbers. So like, because I'm sure people will be interested. So how many door knockers do you guys have on your team? It's like, how many people? Yeah, we're only at five. Five, okay. And they knock how many hours a week? We can about, we're working towards 100 active knocking hours per week. So about 20 hours each? But right now we're about 80. So you're doing about 15 to 18 active knocking hours per week. Like actually, I usually say 16 is what I'm aiming for. And then if I have a few people here on the teams that are at 20. And then I might have a couple exceptions where I'll let people work 12. I have really found if I'm under 12, it's hard for them to have the reps or for them to take it seriously. Yeah. And to your point, we we've implemented the Monday hot old time and the two people that consistently show up to that are at 35% and almost 45% SR. Right. So people that are showing up to the huddles, like most engaged, are doing really well. So the people that are like half engaged working other jobs, they're not in this space enough to actually provide. How many, so how many appointments are they booking a week? Like your top people compared to your lower people? Yeah, we've had weeks where the top person books over 20. But more like 12 to 15 is like a top performer. This time of the year, obviously when it's colder in minutes, sort of maybe not. A little bit. Yeah. Then lower performer around that eight appointments, a bad week would be five. Yeah. But I think we've we've set up pretty like five is like, doesn't happen too much anymore. We're usually closer to that eight. Five years to be earth threshold and now eight's like, I was just going to say like, this is a movie target a little bit based on training is what I've experienced too. Like for people who are building their skills, everything Caleb just said, I would say somebody who's got several months of decent training and has been doing this is going to book eight to 20 appointments a week, depending on kind of how good they are and somebody who doesn't have a lot of skill, who doesn't have a lot of training, I would say it's going to be more like four to 10. And yeah, once you start getting down to like three appointments a week, it's just hard to make the numbers work for anybody. So the and you guys book right at the door, right? Like you're not trying to bring in warm leads or anything like they're booking right onto the sales reps calendars at the door. Yeah, right. And that works pretty well. Everybody in our all the partners who do door knocking do that. Yeah, we've done specific links for them in different round robin with different sales reps. Like we've tested all that stuff out over time to kind of see which sales rep does best to see like to be having a big enough sales team where we've been able to do that. Just out of the year we can't because it's just we need we're pretty booked. We need appointments. Yeah, but in like slower season we'll kind of focus the energy on the sales reps that are going to close at the highest rate. Yeah, I'm just looking. Put you on blast here. You aren't going to know what I'm about to do. It looks like your door knocking team book 35 appointments last week. Right, so that kind of fits with what you're saying. That's in the week before that. I think it might have been a bit higher. Yeah, 45 the week before that. So that gives me an idea. Okay. And the pitch at the door. What was that? Oh, yeah, for paint. Oh, yeah, because you guys have home mixed tears. That's right. Yeah. Dex, so I know that that's kind of given us an advantage or like helped people reach a higher compensation is like they've been able to book deciding jobs that were paying. Like I went out the other week and I booked a professment even though we asked for painting at the beginning. So that's been something that's evolved. Like having more services definitely does help. Sure. Have more options for the Yeah, yeah. Let's talk about the pitch at the door a little bit like a man we have you know dozens of people across the country knocking every single day. This I would say there's some variation in this but there's probably more in common just because they've all sort of trained through our system here. We've learned a lot. Shout out to the guys over at foothills and that whole world. We've learned from them. We've learned from
I mean, who, I mean, man, there's so many people we could shout out, I suppose, for door knocking training, but we've also learned a lot ourselves that feels like, what, yeah, exactly, right? Like, because I think for us, we got hyper focused on how to get good quality appointments. And we figured out like if you use a lot of a SumpTive language, you could book way more appointments at the door, but they don't, it doesn't translate into dollars necessarily, so it's just like learn, you know, you spend your tires. So I think we've kind of moved away from that to a little bit more like a first date. I think is what, at least the way I like to talk about it, where it's like, okay, you need to make a natural progression to that kiss. The kiss is the appointment and they both need to want it for it to feel natural, right? And, you know, your job as the door knocker is to get them talking about their painting in their house and then come to the natural conclusion, both of you that you should get a free estimate. Yeah, and I think we've aligned our compensation more and more over time. I know you have to sell it out. Oh, absolutely. So job percentage of revenue or a bonus every time the job sells, I think that, again, it's hard for them to fully control that, but the team is getting more and more bought into like, how much revenue did I sell last week? You know, didn't sell it, but it's that cool for them to think through like, did that job sell? That was a big job. Well, I'm getting more and bought into this because we're watching the numbers so closely. I actually think sales staff at painting companies are not high level. In my opinion, you guys are going to hate me for saying this, but they're more estimators more than sales staff, right? So it's actually, there's quite a lot of burden then, in my opinion, on the door knocking team to bring people further into the buying process. And they have a huge, Caleb, I guess I would say, like, no, I think that the door knocker has a huge impact on how much sales. And I could just tell you because we've watched it, like some of the people we've trained this year, they went from 15% success rate to 35% success rate. I think we have one last month. He was at 40% success rate. You know what he was at earlier in the year? 18. The sales team's exactly the same. It's just he's changed his entire way he deals with people at the door. And so it's about like making the person feel safe at first, getting them talking about their house and their painting, creating a natural path to the estimate, booking the estimate right at the door there. So you need to talk about who's going to come to their house? What's going to happen at the paycheck estimate? Everything about the paid-a company, their Google reviews, everything about the owner. The more stuff you talk about, it only, the irony is, is I've listened to enough of these two. It only takes like 90 seconds to two minutes to actually do all that. So it's actually not that much time, but how many more people you bring them way further into the buying process and then by the time the sales rep gets there, it's way easier. So yeah, I think a lot has to do with that the door. Like if you get really good at this, you could like increase the success rate a lot. In fact, I'm starting to feel like you could have success rates just the same as Google or anything else if you just have a really good door knocker. Oh yeah. Like I would say you could consistently have 45% success rates if you just do this correctly. It's like very low like 5 to 10% slippage. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, one of our knockers, his name is Angel, he's at over a quarter million. He's at 35%. I saw her. Success rate, okay. Oh yeah, I suppose I could look with you. We've spent 6% marketing. On gross with him. That's fantastic. He's a former painter. I think what you're hinting at, like all that stuff is maybe people are like, oh yeah, that's that makes sense. But what about like retention and recruiting and keeping people long enough to actually, because I think what you're, what we're talking about is a long process. Like Angel's been knocking for well over six months. He's been consistently doing it almost every week. That's not easy to keep someone that long and keep them engaged in the role. $7,000 average job size I'm looking at for him. It's not like he's getting literally any jobs. And it's pretty consistent. The difference. He has bid jobs are 6,500 sold jobs are 69. So actually that's fantastic. Even higher jobs sold than what he's bid. You know, the ones that are big. Yeah, that's so great. Tell me about the culture that you guys have been building at Paris because the other partners we have lots of door knocking teams we built all over the country. But I do think what we have at Paris is something quite special every time I'm out with you guys. I'm usually out. I've been out with you guys about every two weeks or something. That because we have people coming in who are doing trainings here. So consistently now. So I've been out, been out to order hockey with you guys a couple of times a month. And I'm just continued to be impressed by the culture you guys are building. The turnover you have is very low. The camaraderie you have is very high. Like they just seem to love to work together. They're very competitive with each other each day about how many appointments they're booking. And tell me what you guys have done to make that sort of wonderful thing you have right now. I mean, most of the credit has to go to the field manager. He's active in the field all the time with the team putting up numbers for them to compete with them as well. I think the manager there needs to be a leader or someone in the field to really show them the path. That's obviously a big point of success. But I'd say we've implemented a lot of different rhythms, including like the Monday huddle, that's always open. We have free food, like come to the office. Let's talk about the numbers from last week. You know, put it all on the white board. Like talk about what's going on. Look at who has the most sold jobs. And they're hyper aware. I mean, like when I've been out with them, they're like talking. They're like, oh yeah, I'm making like $1,500 a week, Nate. You know, and this is a part-time job. You know, so I think they're real proud of how much they're making. They're talking to each other about how much they're making. So there's quite a bit of transparency too. And even when they talk to people who aren't in the role, they're telling them, like they're quite proud of how much money they're making. You know, I think they're probably making what, like, $6,80 an hour, a lot of times in this, you know, I'm trying to, I guess I could have done the math there. What is it? $15,000 a week. $15,000 a week. Yeah. Maybe as high as $100 depending on the hours, I suppose, right? Like, there's some hours where the rate could probably over, out of $1,000 an hour. But, you know, when you start pulling it backwards, it's somewhere close to that 60. But these are people where they'd be quite proud of that. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I also heard, like, they have a group goal, right? Because I see so far this year, you've done 570 appointments for painting. I don't know what roofing I'd have to pull up the other numbers. So you're not, yeah, 150. Yeah, and you guys are up over a million already sold. It's pretty early in the season, right? Tell me, because I know Johnny said if they get over a certain number, they're going to go on a trip together. That does seem like it's a glue factor, right? Of like, they've got this camaraderie around this trip. They're going to go on together. Yeah. And that, and the monthly connects as well. Like, they went scuba diving the other month. Yeah, that was wild. It's random, like, weird activities that the team wanted to do. Stuff that they wouldn't have maybe done on their own. Right. So they think what's keeping the team together is they're doing stuff that, like, goal-carting. That's kind of expensive. Yeah. And they maybe not have done that on their own, but they did it as a team so that it keeps them together. But, yeah, I don't, I can't remember what their goal is for revenue. But if it, like, to hit that vacation, we were saying, hey, if we really hit the goal, I think it was like 3 million, something like that. Yeah. We'll do like a small trip at 3 million and get to 4 million plus. We'll do like maybe an international trip or something. Okay, okay, okay. We'll see. Now I'm going to try to join Caleb's team and start doing, I think I could be a top producer on your team. I'm quite confident of that. So, okay. I think what I'm most impressed about though is, I'm not going to call up, but there's some big home service businesses in the country that do a lot of door knocking. How about if I just say that? Maybe a few, you know, the names of them. And their turnover is crazy. I mean, we're talking about they bring 12 people in each month and only one makes it to month three. You know, like, it's just like 90% turnover, kind of situations. So when I look at some of the teams that we've been building where they, it's like almost the opposite of that, right? You guys have lost one person this year. You're growing the team slowly and surely you have a whole bunch of door knockers that started with you last year.
you're seemingly they have no interested leaving. You know, they're excited to be on the team. They're excited to be growing their skills. They're excited to keep growing their compensation, you know, month over month. The reason I know Caleb is because when I talk to some of the guys on your team, they're talking very far in the future. Like, and I'm not just talking about compensation or like these trips, I'm talking about skill. Like, I know that you guys are building a lasting culture because they're like, well, I know I'm gonna have the skill to book those kind of appointments like in the fall. Like, they already see their trajectory from like a coaching standpoint. Does that make sense? And that when I start hearing or seeing people talk like that, I realize like, oh, they're planning to be here for a long time. They're thinking of themselves as like growing professionally here. You see what I'm saying? So, but it's a lot of work, right? We're talking about coaching sessions every day, you know, not with every person every day, but certainly everybody has like coaching sessions every week. So what I see from your team is three things happening. Like, they are self engaged, right? Like, what do we call it? Self, uh, regulating. That's the word I'm trying to ignore. So they have, they do some of their own coaching, whether they record themselves or they, you know, they're doing stuff on their own. Then they also do it amongst each other. I've watched them do it. They do buddy knocking. They record each other, listen to it. And then of course, the third one is they have a coach that's there every day with them, not literally every person, but he's cycling through and he's coaching people all through the week. And if you can create a team that has all three levels, self regulation team support for one another, a coach that's active and present constantly. Like, there's a lot of room. Like, you could start booking. Yeah, like, probably even in a small team, like, 40 to 100 appointments a week. Right. Yeah, I initially thought that we were in a scale of the team to get much bigger. But I think we've focused on less geography. And then like, focus on developing less people. Like, we're not just churning. And like, we've really turned down. Like, we're not hiring people that only want to work off for a couple months. Like, you're not even going to be good until month three. Like, you can book appointments right away, but you're not going to get to that good compensation level. And be-- So people who are listening, they don't have any idea. And I can't put up a picture. Anything that wouldn't be appropriate, Caleb. But I'm going to describe to them. Caleb's team has no college bros on his team. So what you guys have in your mind of the traditional door knocker, he has none of those people on his team. I would say the way I would describe the demographics of your team are like, people who grew up probably poor, like I did, and like, who are hungry to earn money. And they're willing to hustle. Yeah. Right? They fit the all of values engaged, accountable, exceptional, and grateful. And grateful is one of the most important values. If they're not going to be grateful for the work, then we don't want to work together. We all want to-- I wish we could go back in time to 2022 and talk to ourselves about this because to me, the difference there is you can hire college students that would be grateful. So I don't want to give you guys the wrong idea. But I would say the traditional college bro who's got a door knock, he has this sort of attitude, like, well, yeah, man, I'm going to do this for a few months because I've got to get my hustle a little bit, and it'll be good for my resume. But he does it very begrudgingly, and he's definitely not proud of it. Yeah. And for that reason, he's really not that grateful. It feels if anything a little bit more like an obligation, or almost like he's doing us a favor. Right? And that rarely seems to work for us at least because when you have someone like that, they're not engaged. They don't show up on time. They are definitely not going to work here in a year. At least that's what we felt. He's not going to definitely work. I always find it funny because, well, of course, they're not going to be here for a spring break. They're not going to be here for Mother's Day weekend. It's just like the excuses sort of go on and on and on about all the days that they're not going to work, too. It's finals. Of course, I have recency bias here, but just in the last six weeks, it's finals, it's Mother's Day, it's spring break. And then they end up working half as many hours. And it's just like, yeah. And then their skill level is not going up consistently because they're just not taking it very seriously. My preference is someone that's highly engaged and who would take this very seriously. When the weather's a little bit bad, guess what? Caleb's team, they bring umbrellas. They want to work. They want to make the money. There's no-- the excuses aren't like-- Hi. Yeah, there's that, too. Thank you for taking to work. And yeah, I think that's a big change in the team. I almost had to beg people to work when I was starting in 2022 with all of my friends and different people from college that we've recruited. It's like, hey, bro, come out today. It's like-- Right. How it's just like, they want to go out and they're like, can I go out early? Can I knock more? Yeah, isn't that a different culture? Almost completely opposite. Right. Yeah. So-- Yeah, I'm with you on that. I just-- I'd spend really wonderful to watch that all happen. You guys, Hank Flyers, at the same time as you doorknock. I'm really surprised when people do that. I'm just looking. You guys got 51 appointments just off that. So I mean, a whole chunk of his-- it's like, yeah, 10% of their appointments are coming just for the flight. It might be more than that, too, right? Because that one's really hard to classify, I'm sure. So-- All of the other-- Yeah. But yeah. For those of you guys that have been hanging around with us, you know how important neighborhood marketing is. And part of that is the history I've got, of just coming in at Paperboy. And then Caleb came in and just like-- he put so many systems and so many processes in place that I just never did. You know, I'm a little bit more visionary and he's a little bit more-- get things done, right? So Caleb has taken everything that I thought about to a whole other level here over the last couple of years at Paris. And you know, it was so apparent to me, Caleb, how far ahead we are in this way of like what I mean is, when you go out and knock with Paris, I think like one in four houses know who you guys are. Like I've been out with a lot of painting companies around the country. And I would say it's not uncommon for like one in 100. Like you knock a whole day and one person wouldn't know who you are. Whereas Paris, it's like every few minutes somebody knows who they are. But that's very purposeful marketing, right? Like we've been marketing to those neighborhoods. Those very specific neighborhoods over and over and over for years and years and years with lots of messaging. And you just-- you can't go back in time. Like in this way, Paris is sort of like a jug or not of momentum in very specific neighborhoods. Yeah, I would say that the door to door team, a big shift in thinking it's harvesting. Like you're not even-- it's harvesting from all the other things that we're doing. Like yes, we're sometimes getting people that didn't know us. But if we did a survey, I would guarantee you that probably like 50% to 75% at least of the appointments we booked previously knew us from live as male yard signs, as clients, neighbors. Just because of the streets that we're knocking on, almost every day, I look at the daily map just briefly. And usually there's at least eight to 10 past clients in each person's map. And they're only knocking-- Hard home. Yeah, I was going to say they're knocking a very small bout of homes each day. Right? It's like 100 to 200. 150-- yeah, we usually-- Yeah. 50. Usually like eight. So sometimes there's 10% of the home-zero past clients. It can be that high. Usually close to 5 to 10%. Yeah, it's totally different. And when you knock in an environment like that, I mean, that's really the environment that we've so beautifully created that I want for all painting companies, honestly, because it's just so different. And I know I'm looking up on the board. You spent $58,000 on retargeting with Google this year. Or it's probably $50,000 because a little bit of that search probably. And you've spent $5,000 on social. A lot of that's retargeting, too, right? So these are people who've gotten a flyer, a postcard, or something. And they've gone to our website. And then we've retargeted them on Metta and Google and places like this. So when we're talking about neighborhood marketing, even though a lot of times we're talking about yard signs and flyers and door knocking and direct mail, The truth of them.
matter is is it extends completely into our digital marketing too we're just as soon as we get them to our website we're going to follow them forever and spend you know we're going to we're going to go after them with hundreds of impressions let's put it that way so tell me okay so you told me last week you guys are doing 20 different postcards every single week do you include mail and everything there's probably at least 10 to 20 designs every week so I think people just don't have a scale yeah I know but like if you do extrapolate that out over like quarter to quarter three because I think I've told people before that Paris had 80 different postcards and I'm I'm realizing like it's actually more than that but people actually don't believe me when I tell them that Paris has 80 and then our partners probably have let's call it a dozen to 20 okay so they're like you know they're they're definitely not the same level as Paris but people don't believe me when I've told them that you have 80 but actually that's way lower than you're actually doing right it's it's yeah there's what yeah tell tell tell people like what why so many unique messaging you know like what's the unique messaging that you're looking for in a fire or postcard like what is it that you're putting on the postcard and like why I think something broke in my mindset when I saw that we had several neighborhoods that were 500 homes to a thousand homes that were producing more revenue than zip codes with 10,000 homes so then I was like oh like logically I was just like these neighbors like how much revenue like a a thousand houses how much revenue last year yep like some like some a hill or some of our core neighborhoods like that area it's a thousand homes what consistently do like close to sure 300 to 500 our top carrier route from the last four years we've done almost a million dollars of revenue and it's only 400 homes right it's it's the line of historic homes where we just keep going back and we get very large jobs and I do I can't wait to see our CRM doesn't keep track of this right now just so you guys know but I can't wait for to because yes like you're talking about four hundred dollars per per household revenue and that number I think is meaningful because when you ask the question of like Nate how do you I know if I've got my neighborhood takeover program is working or how do I know if my five mile famous is working I think that metric watching that number go up you will start seeing like all of your metrics will get better as that number goes up yeah I'm just looking at dollars per resident is what I'm saying like I looked at our highest last year was 250 homes and we were at $760 or revenue per single family home right so we almost 200 thousand from like 250 homes yeah I mean if your mind's not being blown right now I don't know if you're listening closely because if you if your mind's not blowing right now with that number you have no idea how much saturation that is it gets extraordinary saturation because people don't pay their house every year right so like I you know if you really start extrapolating that it's like oh man you guys are really dominating in certain specific geographies yeah I mean if you look at that that's only coming from 15 jobs actually yeah so some of it's like big jobs to how you you're working on some historic homes where it's many several tens of thousands although your average job size across the board year to date right now is like 6700 so it's not like you guys are doing all you know 40 thousand dollar projects right but yeah so okay how many times a year are we talking about door knocking how many times a flyer how many times a direct mail like what are you sequencing for yeah it's a good question it depends on the neighborhood like our top neighborhoods obviously get the most attention where they're going to get 3 to 5 mail pieces and then they're going to get like 3 to 5 neighborhood touches like which is a flyer on the door slash door knock so they're going to for sure get yeah 3 to 5 mailers and then they're for sure going to get we're probably going to knock on the door at least a couple times and then a couple other times we're just leaving a flyer with our flyer delivery people so we're definitely doing like closer to 10 touches per year yeah it's great yeah yeah I would say the partners it's probably it's 3 flyers to door knocks and maybe a mailing so I would say it's probably closer to 5 right and we just aren't quite as advanced as we're paris is that because the more touches also you have to think through the the content there's just a lot more the more movie parts in a single it's like that requires a lot more design a lot more everything and it's not as necessary for a 3-8 million dollar business as it is for a 18 million dollar business so you don't have to be quite that complicated when you're at a smaller level oh yeah I think our we always try to come with something unique or a new message but it doesn't always happen but or at least a different creative yeah that makes it very tricky because you have like 50 plus neighborhoods and then you are touching them like a bunch of different times and sometimes we group them into sections of the city if you it's not always neighborhood specific but it's still the local yeah but even if you had 40 different you know and then you're all of a sudden doing three it's like yeah it's 120 different designs right there right that's like yeah that's probably like you know the and that's like quite a lot of uniqueness too we're not talking about just changing a headline we're talking about pictures lines content everything's different about each postcard so it's pretty involved yeah as people's BS meters if you just change because I tried that I was like oh just change the headlines it's like people realize if the pictures are pictures of houses in their neighborhood if you know you're talking about houses right in their neighborhood on thing like there's all these little things that make a big difference yeah and I've seen other companies that are using AI to like do the before and after of their home and stuff like that but I'm I think what there's nothing more powerful than a project completed near you I just don't think we're ever going to advance beyond that because it's real you can't argue with it like it it happened here's the proof here's a homeowner with a happy home like they're happy with their home in our project there's nothing more dominant than doing that yeah but that it's hard to do that across multiple neighborhoods and like obviously you're going to provide a good experience yeah it's that local present competent right and I know Nick Slavic has been talking a lot about it too because he's winning quite a bit with that strategy and we've been winning with that strategy for many years like we it works so okay I know we're at time we'll have to pick up more maybe people have some questions and then we can answer them we can pick it up at a couple weeks yeah thanks so much Caleb yeah thanks Nate
Podcast Summary
Key Points:
Paris Painting is on track for $18–19 million in painting revenue plus ~$3 million in roofing, mostly residential.
Marketing budget is split across flyers, direct mail, Google retargeting/PMAX, and door knocking—the latter being the biggest increased investment this year.
Door knocking success rates improved from 25–30% to 35–45% for top performers, while slippage (booked appointments that cancel) dropped from 10%+ to 5–10%.
The team has 5 door knockers, aiming for 100 active knocking hours weekly (currently ~80), with top performers booking 12–20 appointments per week.
A key change is booking estimates directly at the door using a "first date" approach—building trust, discussing the home and painting needs, and naturally progressing to the appointment.
Compensation is tied to job sales and revenue, boosting buy-in; one knocker, Angel, has sold over $250,000 with a 35% success rate and $6,500–$7,000 average job size.
Low turnover and high camaraderie result from daily coaching, Monday huddles with free food, transparent earnings, group goals (e.g., trips at $3M and $4M), and monthly team activities like scuba diving.
Training includes self-regulation (recording themselves), peer coaching (buddy knocking), and an active field manager, creating a sustainable culture versus industry-high turnover.
Summary:
In this conversation, Caleb and Nate discuss the evolution of door knocking for Paris Painting, a residential painting and roofing company targeting $20 million in combined revenue this year. Door knocking has become their fastest-growing marketing channel, with a budget split across flyers, direct mail, Google retargeting, and the door team. Initially, their door knocking struggled with 25–30% success rates and high slippage, but through targeted changes, they’ve transformed performance.
The team now consists of five knockers, each working 15–20 active hours weekly, with top performers booking 12–20 appointments per week. Success hinges on a "first date" approach: making homeowners feel safe, engaging them about their homes and painting needs, and naturally guiding them to book an estimate on the spot. This method, combined with compensation tied to job sales, has boosted success rates to 35–45% for engaged knockers and reduced slippage to 5–10%.
A standout knocker, Angel, has sold over $250,000 with a 35% success rate. The culture is a key differentiator: low turnover, high camaraderie, and daily coaching through self-recording, peer feedback, and an active field manager. Monday huddles, transparent earnings, and group goals like trips at $3 million and $4 million in revenue keep the team motivated.
By focusing on fewer, better-trained people rather than churning through hires, Paris Painting has built a sustainable, high-performing door knocking team that could scale to 40–100 appointments weekly.
FAQs
Some trained door knockers improved from a 15% success rate to a 35% success rate, with one reaching 40%.
Make the person feel safe first, get them talking about their house and painting, then naturally progress to booking an estimate at the door, similar to a first date.
The team aims for about 100 active knocking hours per week, with each knocker working around 15-18 hours, though some may work up to 20.
Top performers book about 12-15 appointments per week, with some weeks exceeding 20, while lower performers book around 8, with 5 being a bad week.
A well-trained team can consistently achieve around a 45% success rate with very low slippage of 5-10%.
With a good door knocker, success rates can match those from Google ads or other campaigns, and it has the potential to scale to over 10% of revenue.
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