How Successful Painting Contractors Are Rethinking Sales and Marketing to Drive Growth

When the market's booming, getting work through the door can feel pretty easy. Leads are flowing, crews are busy and new jobs keep rolling in.

But what happens when things slow down?

Suddenly, the referrals aren't coming in as consistently, advertising gets more expensive, and your sales team has to work harder to close the same amount of business.

Here's the thing: A slower market doesn't necessarily mean there's no work. It could mean your sales and marketing systems aren't as strong as you thought.

In our recent Breakthrough Academy contractor roundtable, BTA Co-Founder Danny Kerr sits down with three successful painting business owners: Joe Kelly of JK Paint, Mason Marquis of SprayTex Painting, Toby Woodiwiss of Woodiwiss Painting, and CompanyCam Founder Luke Hansen to discuss how they're adapting their sales and marketing strategies to keep growing.

These contractors have built multimillion-dollar businesses, but they haven't done it by simply spending more on ads or chasing more leads.

They've built systems that give them greater control over their sales pipelines, conversion rates, and long-term growth.

Here are five lessons from their conversation.

1. Stop Chasing More Leads. Start Tracking the Ones You Have.

More leads don't automatically mean more revenue.

You could have hundreds of inquiries coming in every month, but if they're poor quality, your sales reps aren't booking appointments or your close rate is low, you're wasting time and money.

Joe Kelly learned this as his company grew. Today, his team tracks each lead source to understand how many leads turn into appointments, how many become booked jobs and how much revenue each channel generates.

Toby Woodiwiss takes it a step further by having his sales reps rate the quality of their appointments on a scale of one to five.

That gives him insight into which marketing channels are attracting customers who value his service, rather than just shoppers looking for the cheapest quote.

Don't just measure the number of leads coming in. Track what happens to them.

Start monitoring:

• Lead volume and quality by source
• Cost per booked appointment
• Lead-to-sale conversion rate
• Sales closing rate
• Revenue generated versus marketing spend

These numbers help you identify what's wasting money, what's working and where your biggest opportunities are.

2. Build a Marketing Strategy That Works When Business Slows Down

If your entire marketing strategy depends on referrals and incoming inquiries, you're leaving a lot up to chance.

Danny emphasized the importance of balancing passive marketing tactics, such as advertising and your website, with active tactics that your team can scale up or down when needed.

Think outbound calls, reaching out to previous customers, networking, door-to-door campaigns and asking for referrals.

Joe Kelly knows firsthand how valuable this approach can be.

Rather than waiting until winter to worry about finding work, his team starts planning its off-season strategy in August.

They increase their proactive marketing activities, offer winter promotions and set weekly targets for activities like distributing flyers and putting out yard signs.

The result? Joe kept all 10 of his crews busy throughout the winter.

Mason Marquis takes a similar approach, using seasonal promotions to encourage homeowners to book larger interior painting projects during slower months.

The key is having a year-round marketing strategy that accounts for seasonality and gives your team clear activity targets.

That way, you're actively generating demand rather than simply waiting for the phone to ring.

3. Your Sales Process Could Be Costing You More Than Your Marketing

Before you increase your advertising budget, take a closer look at how your team handles the leads you're already generating.

• Are they qualifying prospects before booking appointments? 
• Are they presenting estimates in person? 
• Are they consistently following up?

The panel highlights several opportunities contractors often overlook when it comes to converting leads into booked jobs:

• Qualify prospects before scheduling estimates. Not every inquiry deserves an in-person appointment. Screening leads helps your sales team spend more time with customers who are a good fit.
• Present estimates on the spot. Joe and Toby emphasized the importance of presenting proposals while they're still with the customer. It creates an opportunity to answer questions, address objections and ask for the sale while the project is fresh in the homeowner's mind.
• Build a repeatable sales process. Toby's team uses structured training, role-playing and self-evaluations to improve consistency and identify where sales reps need support.
• Make follow-up valuable. Instead of repeatedly asking whether a prospect is ready to buy, share useful information, visuals or recommendations that help them make a decision.

As Joe explains, home improvement projects compete with dozens of other priorities in a customer's life. Just because someone hasn't booked doesn't mean they're no longer interested.

A well-defined sales process helps your team stay connected with those prospects, build trust and close more work without necessarily spending another dollar on lead generation.

4. Technology and AI Are Changing How Contractors Market Their Work

Contractors are sitting on a valuable marketing resource they often aren't using: the work they're already completing.

Project photos, customer conversations, job documentation and before-and-after transformations can all help attract future customers.

Luke Hansen shares how CompanyCam is developing tools that turn jobsite photos into marketing content, including social media videos, Google Business Profile posts and online project portfolios.

Instead of requiring contractors to create marketing content from scratch, these tools help them showcase the work their teams already do.

Danny also discusses how AI-powered meeting recorders can help contractors analyze sales conversations, coach their reps and identify common customer questions that can inform their marketing.

Imagine using the questions homeowners actually ask during estimates to shape your website content, advertisements and social media posts.

That's a lot more valuable than guessing what your customers want to hear.

As technology continues to evolve, the opportunity isn't just to automate more tasks. It's to use the information your business already collects to make your marketing more relevant, your sales process more effective and your team's work more visible to potential customers.

5. Strong Sales Teams Need More Than a Good Script

Sales training often focuses on overcoming objections, asking the right questions and closing the deal.

Those skills matter. But Mason Marquis believes something else is just as important: emotional awareness.

At SprayTex Painting, Mason prioritizes hiring salespeople who are self-aware, eager to improve and capable of building genuine connections with homeowners.

He even works with an in-house counselor to help his team develop interpersonal skills and understand how they respond under pressure.

Toby takes a more process-driven approach, using structured sales training, role-playing, self-evaluations and weekly accountability meetings.

While their approaches differ, both emphasize the importance of developing salespeople through:

• Hiring for self-awareness and coachability
• Consistent sales training and role-playing
• Weekly performance reviews and accountability
• Tracking sales activities against goals
• Self-evaluation and ongoing improvement

Great salespeople aren't just naturally good at selling. They're trained and supported by systems that help them perform consistently.

If your team's results are inconsistent, don't automatically assume you need better salespeople. You might need a better system for developing the ones you already have.

The Bottom Line: You Can't Scale What You Don't Control

One theme comes up repeatedly throughout the roundtable: successful contractors don't leave their growth to chance.

They know where their leads come from, understand their numbers, develop their salespeople, and build proactive marketing strategies that keep work coming in.

And when the market shifts, they don't simply work harder and hope things improve. They adjust their approach.

You don't need to overhaul your entire sales and marketing operation overnight.

Start by identifying one bottleneck. Maybe it's your lead quality or your follow-up process. It might be your lack of a consistent off-season marketing plan.

Then build a system to improve it.

Want to see exactly how these contractors are doing it?

Watch the full Marketing & Sales in a Digital Age Contractor Roundtable with Danny Kerr, Joe Kelly, Mason Marquis, Toby Woodiwiss and Luke Hansen for a deeper look at the strategies, tools and processes they're using to generate leads, close more jobs and build businesses that can grow in any market.