How to Grow Your Painting Business: 5 Steps for Growth

In this article, we will talk about how to grow a painting business. The average solo painter with “help” will never be able to scale past 3-4 jobs/week. If your average job makes you $1,000 in profit, this may be the perfect number for you.

However, if you want to scale your painting business past low six-figures while maintaining a work-life balance, you need to implement a few key strategies to grow your painting business.

Master The Numbers

If you don’t master your numbers, you’ll find it difficult to know where you have growth opportunities.

When you have a high-level overview of your numbers, you can make educated decisions on when to hire, what services to offer, and how much to spend on advertising to get the best return on your investment.

A few examples are:

• Estimates per week
• Closing percentage per lead & per estimate
• Average sale revenue
• Profit margin
• Cost per lead

Here’s an example of an educated decision:

You’re paying $25 per lead through Google and your direct mail campaign is giving you leads for $50. At first glance, you would suspend your direct mail campaign and stick with Google Ads. You dig deeper and see that your closing percentage on direct mail estimates is 4x that of Google. 

In conclusion, you should stick with direct mail and reevaluate how to close more Google estimates or if it’s worth ditching the paid ads to double down on direct mail.

An accounting software for painting contractors can help you get accurate data quickly.

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.

Don’t just hire, but create a hiring process that you can implement for every role. This process includes payroll, interviewing, checking references, bookkeeping, etc. Know who you’re looking for, their role, what value they’ll bring, and how much they’ll cost.

Develop people management skills to effectively train and keep good employees or painting subcontractors. Having detailed systems and good management skills can keep those rockstars around.

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.

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.

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 Thoughts

Growing a painting business is not easy, but with proper systems and a business plan, you’ll experience record growth.