How to Grow Your Painting Business: 5 Steps for Growth
Best strategies to scale your painting business.
A solo painter with help typically maxes out at 3-4 jobs/week.
At $1,000 profit per job, this may suffice for some.
But to scale a painting business beyond low six-figures while maintaining work-life balance, here’s what to do.
Growing a Painting Business
Master The Numbers
Understanding your numbers enables identifying growth opportunities and making educated decisions.
A few examples are:
- Estimates per week
- Closing percentage per lead & per estimate
- Average sale revenue
- Profit margin
- Cost per lead
- Average apartment painting costs in your service area
Example of an educated decision: Google Ads cost $25 per lead, while direct mail costs $50. However, direct mail estimates close 4x more often. This suggests sticking with direct mail and reevaluating Google Ads strategy or focusing solely on direct mail.
Hire, Train, & Retain
You can only do so many painting estimates, paint so many houses, and speak to so many leads on your own. Eventually, you’ll need to delegate parts of your business. Even if it eats into your profits and working hours, set time aside to focus on hiring employees or subcontractors.
Don’t just hire, but create a hiring process that you can implement for every role.
- Payroll
- Interviewing
- Reference checks
- Bookkeeping
Know who you’re looking for, their role, what value they’ll bring, and how much they’ll cost.
Hire Experts
Financial and legal mistakes can end a business before it even gets the chance to start. Hiring an accountant, attorney, and bookkeeper can help you avoid costly pitfalls that send you back to sole proprietorship land.
Automate Your Marketing
Running any service business can be broken down into lead generation, estimates, service delivery, and employee management. What separates lead generation from the rest is that it’s the only piece of your business that you can fully automate.
Methods like Google Ads, Facebook Ads, and SEO allow you to automate marketing online.
Pro tip: Building a professional website and maintaining active social media profiles can also help attract clients.
Create A CRM
When painting leads start to roll in, it can be hard to keep track of potential customers coming in. A common mistake growing service providers make is using old methods to handle a growing business.
Without a CRM (customer relationship management) system, you will get bogged down by heavy lead flow. Even if they’re not customers, unhappy leads can damage your reputation.
Bonus: Expand into Commercial Painting
Commercial painting contracts are much larger than residential painting contracts. Therefore landing just one job can keep your entire team busy for weeks, if not months. Learn how to bid on commercial painting jobs to increase your revenue dramatically.
Once Zach from Painter Pros expanded his business to the commercial space, he began offering a broader service offering that businesses are likely to need with painting projects.
“Once you develop a commercial audience, you can consider expanding your service offering to include larger retainer projects based on the skills your team already uses for painting jobs – general contracting, facility maintenance, and specialty finishing.”
Zach Tanner, CEO of Painter Bros
Final tip: Remember to leverage referrals from satisfied customers to build your reputation and attract new clients.
