How Painting Franchises Stay Profitable Year-Round
November 14, 2025
Seasonal slowdowns don’t have to stop your success. Discover how Klappenberger & Son franchisees plan ahead, market smarter, and stay profitable all year long.
Maximizing the first-year profits with a painting company takes intent, and attention to detail. Starting any business from scratch takes a lot of work, long hours, and no one grows a business with any significance without getting some battle scares.
Legally, I cannot give a rate even a range of how much you can make in the first year because I could be held liable. What I can do is I can give you a formula and show you what the averages are in the industry are and how if you follow this formula, you can maximize first year profits with a painting company.
And from the examples I will lay out you can see what you would need to do to have an income of say 100 $200,000 or more.
The first thing we need to take a look at is, how many estimates are required to reach a certain income? An established painting company could easily have 6-8 estimates scheduled a week and twice that many during busy times of the year. It certainly isn’t unheard of, but a new company that’s just getting started is might only be averaging about three and a half estimates a week. With an aggressive marketing campaign, certainly a first-year company could average more than 3.5 estimates a week, but in this scenario with a moderate marketing budget of say $1,500 a month, 3.5 is realistic number of estimates.
3.5 estimates a week comes out to 182 estimates a year.
The average job size in the painting industry is $4,500.
182 estimates multiplied by $4,500 gets us to $819,000 worth of work that was estimated.
Now we’re not going to close everything we estimate. The industry average is 30%. A first-year business owner might not close 30%. But not everyone will. IA bad close rate is 10% and a master salesperson might be 60%. But the industry average is 30%.
Under this scenario a 30% close rate means closing $245,000 worth of work.
What is the net profit? Industry averages are between 15% and 25% but I know owners who do much worse than 15% and some people who do better than 25%, but the average is between 15 to 25% your results may vary, but for the case of this scenario, which is just a scenario, I’m choosing 20%.
20% profit of that $245,000 gross sales is $49,000.
There are five factors that really influence whether your margins. Estimating a job in no way guarantees that you will get it.
Paying performance based on a flat rate or piece rate will help maximize first year profits.
Too often when people are paid by the hour there is little hustle and effort to save time. Most people work more diligently when getting a flat rate.
Paying a fair flat rate generally works out best for all parties including the customer.
As a Klappenberger & Son franchisee, estimates are calculated by entering measurement and quantities into a Klappenberger & Son Excel Spreadsheet. The spreadsheet has hundreds of production rates for a multitude of commonly painted surfaces.
As the information is added the Spreadsheet calculates the hours, materials, profitability, and total cost.
In this example, to keep things simple, we’re going to say this job takes 100 hours. and 10 gallons of paint.
Whether you use in house painters or subcontractors, the typical hourly rate for a skilled painter is between $25 – $35. However, we are not going to pay at an hourly rate, but rather a fixed price based on an hourly rate.
The benefits of a flat strongly outweigh the negatives. The benefits include:
The disadvantage is:
To maximize first year profits, we to recognize and avoid pitfalls. I have 17 years of experience paying at an hourly rate and 12 years paying at a flat fixed rate. There is no debate in my mind, flat rate works best for, the owner and the painters.
In this scenario, the 100 job would have a payout of $3,000 to the painters if hourly rate was based on a $30.00 per hour.
Regardless of how long the job took, the payout would be $3,000 divided amongst the painters.
I recommend marketing up the materials 50%.
The customer is charged $65.00 per hr. x 100 hrs. = $6,500
Materials are $500.00 x .50% = $750.00
This leaves a gross profit of $3,750.00.
There are other expenses besides your labor and materials. Insurance, gas, marketing, royalties, all kinds of things that are going flush net profit in the 15 to 25%. Whether you use subcontractors or employees when paying at a piece rate, as opposed to an hourly rate, you lock in your profits and minimize the risk.
Now, let’s talk about how to improve your close rate so we can get more jobs. Whether you use employees or subs, the quality of the crews out there doing the work will both directly and indirectly affect your close rate and the profitability of inconsistent average painters. Believe it or not, they need to be replaced.
You need to upgrade continually to get rid of inconsistent workers. Regardless of why the painters are failing to be consistent, if they are failing to make 93% of the customers happy, it’s time to replace.
From my experience, I tried to complement their strengths and correct their weaknesses, but it rarely worked. Unfortunately, this rarely works. I absolutely believe in giving second chances, additional training, and trying to fix problems.
However, if change does not occur, I’d rather see them working for my competition. As a friend of mine said, “When someone shows you who they are believe them.”
A second thing that will directly impact how much money a painting company makes in its first year is how professionally written your proposals are. A professionally written proposal not only has a detailed list of what’s included, but it also has what’s excluded. This will eliminate gray areas, for example, whether the closets were included or not, which will cost you time and written proposals cost time, money and hurt the relationship and cause the customer to question the integrity of the company.
A good, well-written proposal will include details specific to the customer’s needs, such as whether the job is time-sensitive or how much prep work needs to be done. Taking a few extra minutes to detail the proposal shows that you are listening to the customer.
Now that you have your well-written proposal, get it out promptly. Time kills deals. While you are doing something other than getting that proposal out, your competitors are getting it out, and they’re closing the jobs. Companies that send details promptly close a lot more jobs than those that do not.
Google reviews are so crucial for organic lead generation, in other words, for free work. Our franchisees have business cards with QR codes that take customers directly to the Google Review site. This increases the chances of them taking a few minutes to write something positive.
The final piece of the puzzle is sales. It does not matter how many leads you get, how well-written the proposal is, or how quickly you get it out; if you haven’t built value, the customer just might not be interested in your offer. Consider that at some point, the customer will be looking over the three estimates, and if none of the painting contractors built any value, then the customer will decide based on price or perhaps timing.
Value can be built through peace of mind or fear in the painting business. If value has not been created in the customer’s mind, the only alternative is to win on price.
The salesperson who built the most value has the highest chance of closing. Why should that customer pick you? How to build value. It’s so important.
At Klappenberger & Son, we teach and preach the importance of building value through warranties, testimonials, and other means.
Owning a Klappenberger & Son franchise is a great way to maximize first-year profits because we have the tools you need to:
Whether you are ready to become a franchisee or just exploring the idea, you can schedule a one-on-one conversation via email or telephone.
david@klappenbergerandson.com
843 306 2107
Seasonal slowdowns don’t have to stop your success. Discover how Klappenberger & Son franchisees plan ahead, market smarter, and stay profitable all year long.
Want to know how successful franchisees keep their calendars full year-round? At Klappenberger & Son, our proven marketing funnel helps franchise owners attract the right customers, close more jobs, and build repeat business — without guessing what works.
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Email: dklappenberger@klappenbergerandson.com
Address: 902 Bluff View Dr. Myrtle Beach, SC 29579