When it comes to paint sales, dedicating enough time to each customer and their questions while also staying productive and completing daily tasks in a timely manner can be tricky to balance. Small tasks like sampling the paint color on the can provide customers with easy ways to choose the paint shade they’re looking for, but can also be tedious and slow down employees.

At Town Line Wallpaper & Paint in Malden, Massachusetts, employees do not automatically dab the paint color on the lid, although exceptions can be made if a customer has specific requests.

“It’s an unnecessary extra step that slows down production and negatively affects the customer experience,” says Todd Zigelbaum, CEO of Town Line Wallpaper & Paint.

Alternatively, at Mallory Paint, with over 30 locations in the Pacific Northwest, sampling paint on the can is an essential part of the sales process.

“Sampling paint on the can is a double-check for store employees to confirm that they have tinted the correct product,” says Sarah Ross, brand manager at Mallory Paint. “It also helps customers who are unfamiliar with color names and numbers to identify the paint they need from the swatch on the lid.”

Paint & Decorating Retailer conducted a social media survey asking multiple retailers about this topic. While the survey received mixed responses, the majority of retailers agreed that sampling the color is a necessary and beneficial step in the sales process. While there is potential that this task can slow down productivity, this step acts as a security check before a purchase is made. Human error is possible when tinting paint, and sampling on the can eliminates mistakes.

“If you dab the top, errors become apparent before it goes on the wall, and it’s one last safety check before the paint goes out the door,” says Darrell Baker, founder of Prescott Business Advisors. “The bottom line is most retailers agree it’s a good thing to dab the paint. The questions then become: ‘Is it worth the time?’ and ‘Do you do it in every situation or do you allow exceptions?’ If implementing the initiative, you may want to give staff the discretion to send something out without dabbing. But the policy would need to be clear. For example, the expectation would need to be that 90% of the paint that is sold has a dab on the top.”