Painters lead qualification: which quote requests deserve a site visit

Interior, exterior, strata and commercial buyers weigh different things

Each type of painting buyer judges something different. Interior buyers care about timing and mess: when you can start, and whether floors and furniture come through untouched. Exterior buyers care about preparation and how long the finish lasts on weatherboards or render. Strata and commercial work is often decided by people who never meet you, such as a body corporate committee or a builder's estimator.

Commercial and builder subcontract enquiries need their own questions: is it an open tender or an invited price, and how many painters are pricing it? Ask for the written specification or finishes schedule you'd be pricing against, because without one every painter prices a different job. In occupied shops and offices, check whether the work has to run out of hours or in stages around trading.

Urgency in painting usually comes from a date rather than a fault. A sale campaign, a tenancy handover or a builder's handover sets it. Exterior work also waits on dry days, so a wet stretch pushes starts back and bunches enquiries together. Local SEO seasonality explains how to read the month-by-month swings in enquiries.

Questions to ask before you book a measure and quote

Put these on your enquiry form or ask them on the phone. Each one shapes the price or tells you the job isn't yours.

Plenty of enquiries arrive as one line, such as "need the walls done downstairs". One question turns that into something you can price: which rooms, and is it a fresh coat on sound walls, or are there patches, cracks or water marks to fix first? Say the reply is the lounge and dining room walls, no ceilings, plus three patched holes left by a plumber. Now you know the rooms, the prep and that the leak is already fixed, so you can give a written range or book a short visit.

The photo request does two jobs. It fills in condition and access, and it shows how ready the buyer is. Someone who sends a street shot and close-ups the same day is usually ready to compare quotes. Someone who still hasn't sent anything after two friendly requests is often collecting prices for later. For a plain interior repaint with good photos, a short video call where the owner walks you room by room can replace the first visit. For exteriors, older homes and anything with signs of damp, go and look.

1. Inside, outside or both, and which surfaces? Ceilings, doors, skirtings and trims, or walls only? Quotes stop matching fast when one painter included the trims and another didn't.
2. When was it built? Healthdirect, the government-funded health information service, names house paint in homes built before 1970 as a source of lead, and says homes built after 1990 are unlikely to contain asbestos. An older home simply means planning testing and safe preparation into the quote before anyone sands or pressure cleans.
3. How many storeys, and how's the access? A second storey or a sloping block usually means scaffold or other access gear, which moves the price and the start date.
4. What state is the surface in? Ask for close-ups of any bubbling or mould. The QBCC says bubbling or blistering typically indicates damp surfaces or not enough drying time, so a damp wall may need a plumber or roofer before it needs a painter.
5. Have you set aside a figure, or are you still working out what it costs? You don't need a number. You need to know whether there is one, because an owner with money set aside for a full exterior is a different conversation from a tenant gathering prices to forward to the landlord.
6. Who decides and who pays? An owner-occupier, a landlord through a property manager, a body corporate or a builder. The person enquiring often isn't the one signing.
7. What's setting the date? A sale campaign, a tenancy handover, a builder's program or a meeting tells you how firm the timing is.
8. Can you send photos: a wide shot of each room or wall, a close-up of any damage, and one from the street for exteriors? Keep uploads optional on the form so people without photos still enquire, then ask in your first reply.

Book the visit, ask for one thing, or decline

Once the answers are in, every painting enquiry should end in one of three moves, and the buyer should hear which one within a day. Booking a visit for a job that was never yours costs an afternoon. Asking for six things at once loses buyers who would have sent one. So ask only for the single item that blocks the decision, and say why you need it.

Write the reason down each time you decline or park a lead. Over a season, the pattern shows which ad, directory or referral partner sends painting work that fits. Why Google Ads produce the wrong leads covers the campaign side of that fix, and the matching lead qualification guide for builders shows how renovation enquiries sort differently from repaints.

Where the enquiry came from changes the checks

The source of a painting lead tells you which questions are already answered. A past customer asking for the fence to match the house needs a date and little else. A request copied to several painters by a quote website needs every check, and fast, because the buyer is comparing replies in the same hour.

Your own ads and listings decide a lot of what arrives. Lead with cheap or discount and you'll get buyers who sort by price. Lead with prep, product names and written quotes and you'll get buyers who read the detail. Keep every claim provable: the ACCC says a business must be able to prove any claim it advertises and should take extra care not to mislead about price. A "lowest price" line you can't back up is a legal risk as well as a magnet for the wrong jobs.

Some sorting can happen inside a Google ad. Google Ads Help describes qualifying responses in Search campaign lead forms: a required multiple-choice question where a qualifying answer tags the lead as qualified. With conditional answers, the answer to one multiple-choice question can change the answer options offered in the next. If the next question asks about surfaces, choosing Exterior could change its options to weatherboard, render, brick and eaves. Check the search terms report too. Google Ads Help says a search term that isn't relevant enough can be added as a negative keyword, which is how car paint and spray can searches stop costing you clicks.

Reply fast and follow up on a schedule

A buyer who has asked three painters for a quote often books the first one who replies with a sensible question. Speed also protects your qualification work: the answers you need come back while the buyer is still thinking about the job. Painters are often on a ladder all day, so set up the plumbing for speed rather than relying on memory. Google Ads Help says you can get an email for each lead form submission, send leads straight to a customer management system through a webhook, and should download lead data often because Google only keeps it for a limited time.

A workable follow-up rhythm for a painting business, offered as one example rather than a rule:

1. Same working day: acknowledge the enquiry and ask for the one missing item, usually photos or the build year.
2. Next working day, if there's no reply: one phone call. Many people will answer a question on the phone that they'd never type out.
3. Within a day or two of the visit: send the written quote, and say in it when you'll check back.
4. Two or three working days after the quote: ask what's still undecided, such as colours, timing or a second price, rather than asking whether they've decided.
5. Strata and commercial jobs: skip the generic chasers and follow up the day after the committee meeting or tender closing date.
6. After two unanswered follow-ups: send a short closing note saying the quote stays open until a set date, then park the lead and log why.

Quotes, licences and contracts that hold up

The quote is where a buyer decides whether your price and a rival's describe the same job. The QBCC's Home Owner Hub recommends getting more than one quote and not choosing on the lowest price alone, and gives owners a checklist: compare scope, materials, finishes, labour and timelines like for like, look for hidden costs and exclusions, ask for materials by quality and brand, and ask about product warranties and start and finish dates. Answer those up front and a cheaper quote that skips preparation is easier to see through. Each item in the checklist below answers one of those comparison points in writing, so a buyer holding two quotes can see exactly what yours includes and the other leaves out.

In Queensland, painting and decorating is its own QBCC licence class, covering surface preparation, paint and other coatings, texture coatings and wallpaper. The QBCC says a licence is mandatory for painting work above its value threshold. Smaller jobs can go to an unlicensed handyman, but the QBCC's advertising rules make unlicensed operators state that value limit in their ads. Its home owner series says internal paint application is the most commonly reported type of defective building work in Queensland, and urges owners to use a licensed painter even below the threshold and to check the licensee register. Showing your licence number where buyers look answers the question the regulator tells them to ask.

The paperwork changes with the job's value too. The QBCC counts painting a house, duplex or unit as domestic building work. Above its contract threshold, its Home Owner Hub says the job needs a written regulated contract that names the contractor and licence number, describes the work, and sets out the price and completion date or how each will be worked out, and the owner must get a signed copy within five business days. So the scope you pin down while qualifying the lead becomes the contract's description of work. Vague answers at the enquiry stage turn into vague contracts.

Records start at the enquiry. The QBCC advises licensees to keep photos, contracts, messages and payment records, which help show that surfaces were prepared properly, the right primers, sealers and coatings were used, the weather suited the work and product instructions were followed. Condition photos gathered while you qualify the lead are the first page of that file.

A strata repaint moves at the pace of the body corporate. The Queensland Government's body corporate guidance, for schemes under the Standard, Accommodation and Small Schemes modules, says spending above the scheme's major spending limit generally needs at least two quotes, and a motion at a general meeting goes out with both quotes attached to the notice. Its worked example is painting the building: paint, scaffolding and labour can't be split into separate projects to slip under the limit. Lot owners read your quote without you in the room, so it must stand on its own. Other states set their own licensing, contract and strata rules, so check your regulator before borrowing Queensland wording.

• Every surface included, room by room or wall by wall, and anything left out
• Preparation: washing, sanding, filling, priming and repairs, and who does the repairs
• Product name, sheen level and number of coats for each surface, plus any primer or sealer
• Access equipment, and how you'll protect floors, furniture, gardens and paving
• Start date, and what happens when rain stops work
• Your licence details, and how the final walkthrough and touch-ups will run

Worked example: one month of enquiries for a hypothetical painter

The business, enquiries and numbers below are made up to show the method. They describe no real painter or customer, and the hours are illustrative, not benchmarks. Say a two-person painting business in Maroochydore logs every enquiry for a month in a simple sheet with seven columns: source, job type, qualification move, quoted, won or lost, reason, and hours spent on the lead from first reply to final answer.

Step one is sorting. A property manager wants two bedrooms and a hallway repainted between tenants. The painter confirms the landlord has agreed to the spend, books around the handover date and wins it. An owner in Nambour wants a 1960s weatherboard house done before listing it. The build year puts lead testing and safe preparation into the quote, and the listing date sets the deadline. A body corporate manager sends a townhouse complex. The painter asks for the specification and meeting date, quotes, then follows up the day after the meeting.

Step two is the vague and the doubtful. One website enquiry says only "walls need doing". A single question about rooms and damage turns it into an interior quote. Two requests arrive through a quote website that sends each job to several painters. One sends photos within the hour and gets booked. The other never replies and is parked after two follow-ups. A caller asking what it costs to paint a room, with no suburb or photos, gets the photo checklist and doesn't come back.

Step three is the review at month's end. Add up the made-up hours by source and divide by the jobs won from that source. The two quote-website leads took 4 hours for one win, so 4 hours per won job, because the painter answered both and won only one. The two website enquiries took 3 hours for one win, so 3 hours per won job. The property manager referral took 1 hour for its win, the lowest, because the landlord's sign-off and the handover date were settled before the first call. The strata referral (3 hours) and the phone call (1 hour) have no win yet, so they count as time spent with nothing to divide by until the meeting decides. The decision that follows: keep the quote website for quiet weeks only, ask the property manager for more turnover work, and add a build-year question to the website form so the next older-home enquiry arrives with that answer. Call tracking and conversion reconciliation explains how to tie phone leads to the same log, and marketing for painters covers the search and review side of the pipeline.