How One Painter Added $100K with a Service Nobody Wanted
Cabinet painting, property manager contracts, and paint store relationships. The painter's client acquisition playbook.
Dave ran a three-man crew in Charlotte. Interior repaints, exterior touch-ups, the usual rotation. Revenue had flatlined at around $280K for two years. He was busy but not growing.
Then a realtor asked if he could paint kitchen cabinets. Dave had never marketed the service. He quoted $4,800 for a standard kitchen, spent a weekend learning spray technique on his own cabinets, and delivered a result that looked like a factory finish.
That one job changed his business. Cabinet painting averages $3,500-$7,000 per kitchen with labor at 70-85% of cost, same as any paint job, but the perceived value is dramatically higher. Within a year Dave was doing two cabinet jobs per week alongside his regular work. That single service added $120K in revenue.
The lesson is not about cabinets specifically. It is about finding the high-margin service hiding inside your existing skill set.
The Paint Store Pipeline Nobody Uses
Every Sherwin-Williams and Benjamin Moore location has employees who get asked the same question multiple times a day: "Know a good painter?"
Most painters never think to build this relationship. Dave did. He dropped off business cards at three local paint stores, introduced himself to the counter staff, and started buying all his materials from one location. Within two months he was getting 3-4 referrals per week from that store alone.
The math: paint store referrals close at roughly 50% because the homeowner already trusts the store employee's recommendation. At zero customer acquisition cost, these are the most profitable leads in the painting business.
Build the relationship by being easy to work with. Pick up your own paint (do not send someone who does not know the order). Refer customers back to the store for color consultations. Become the painter they think of first.
Realtors Want Speed, Not Perfection
Real estate agents are a goldmine for painters, but most painters approach the relationship wrong. They pitch quality. Agents do not care about quality beyond "looks good in photos." What agents care about is speed.
A listing needs paint before professional photos on Thursday. The open house is Saturday. Can you get a crew there Tuesday and Wednesday?
Dave built a "pre-listing paint" package: neutral colors, 48-hour turnaround, flat rate by square footage. No back-and-forth on color selection, no lengthy estimates. The agent sends a lockbox code, Dave sends a crew.
He now has seven agents who use him exclusively. Each agent generates $30K-$50K in annual revenue. The jobs are not glamorous, but the volume is consistent and the pipeline is almost zero-effort once established.
Property Managers: The Volume Play
A single 200-unit apartment complex repaints 15-20% of units annually at turnover. That is 30-40 units at $800-$1,500 each. One relationship, $30K-$60K per year, mostly scheduled weeks in advance.
The approach is simple: visit property management offices with a rate sheet. Not an estimate, a rate sheet. Per-room pricing, per-unit pricing, volume discounts at 10+ units. Property managers want predictability. They want to plug a number into their budget without scheduling an estimate for every unit.
Dave landed his first PM account by undercutting the existing painter by 10% and guaranteeing 24-hour turnaround on unit turns. The PM switched immediately. Fast, predictable, and reliable beats everything in property management.
The "Free Color Consultation" Close
Here is a conversion trick that sounds too simple to work: stop offering "free estimates" and start offering "free color consultations."
An estimate feels transactional. A color consultation feels like a service. The homeowner spends 30 minutes walking through their home with you, discussing how light hits different walls, looking at swatches together. By the end they are emotionally invested in the project and in you as their painter.
Dave reports that his close rate jumped from roughly 40% with standard estimates to over 70% with color consultations. Same visit, same time investment, completely different framing. The consultation positions you as an advisor, not a vendor.
One more detail: only about 30% of painters hold EPA lead paint certification, yet it is required for any home built before 1978. Getting certified takes one day and immediately separates you from the majority of competitors. Homeowners searching for painters on older homes specifically filter for this credential.