Painting is a heavily quoted trade. A homeowner repainting a four-bedroom house will get three or four quotes, and in our experience the job goes to whoever turned up first, seemed most organised, and followed up without being chased.
Which means the job is usually lost before the price is even discussed. If you get to an enquiry two days later, you are quoting against someone who already walked the house, built some rapport and set the expectations you now have to argue against.
The second problem is the quality of the enquiry. Painting attracts price shoppers, because on paper it looks like a commodity. Without anything in the funnel to separate a homeowner planning a full exterior repaint from someone wanting a bedroom done cash-in-hand, you spend your evenings writing quotes that were never going to land.