How to Double Profits from Your Pole Barn Business

While most contractors fight over the same pool of kitchen remodels and bathroom upgrades, a different market is wide open: 7% of single-family builders now build barndominiums. The other 93% haven’t caught on yet.

The opportunity exists because nearly 75% of U.S. households can’t afford a median-priced new home—buyers need $141,000 in income just to qualify. And it’s creating massive demand for affordable alternatives.

Pole barns and barndominiums cost around 30-50% less to build than traditional construction. For millions of buyers priced out of conventional housing, post-frame is the path to ownership. Barndominiums have moved from Pinterest curiosity to mainstream housing solution, particularly in the Midwest and South where land costs are reasonable and zoning is favorable.

For contractors who position themselves now, it’s a market with less competition, strong margins, and growing demand.

Here’s how to build a pole barn business that captures it.

Choose your business model

Not all pole barn businesses look the same. Your model determines your revenue potential, complexity, and capital requirements.

• Materials-only: Sell kits, and customers build themselves or hire an installer. Lower margins, but simpler operations and minimal liability.
• Labor-only: Customers buy kits elsewhere, you install. Typically runs about 50% of kit price in labor revenue. Simpler supply chain, no materials markup.
• Full-service/turnkey: Handle everything from permits to completion. Captures the most revenue but requires the most complexity—and the most trust from customers.

“There’s a tension in the post-frame industry regarding how hands-on you want to get,” says James Charles, COO at E Impact Marketing, which serves 40-50 pole barn and shed companies. “One segment wants a simple materials package. But there’s a whole other segment that wants a turnkey solution. They want somebody to help with permitting, site prep, everything.”

The contractors leaving money on the table are those unwilling to solve what Charles calls “shoulder problems” like permitting, site prep, even initial land search for residential builds. “The more of those problems you can solve, the more appealing you become to a wider range of the market.”

The profitable middle ground: General contracting without doing all the work yourself. Manage subcontractors, coordinate permits, and oversee quality while capturing the full project value.

Know your startup costs

Starting a pole barn business doesn’t require massive capital, but you need the basics covered.

Insurance (budget $300-450/month):

• General liability: $54-221 per month, with around $80 typical
• Workers’ compensation: around $166 per month
• Tools and equipment: $33-63 monthly

Equipment: What you need depends on your model. Labor-only installers need basics: post hole digger or auger, circular saw, levels and measuring tools, ladders, and safety gear. Full-service operations may need a skid steer or telehandler for setting trusses on larger builds. Rent heavy equipment until job volume justifies buying. “Equipment is a liability,” Charles says. “Get what you need to get the job done, but there’s no reason to overspend.”

Licensing: Varies by state. Some require general contractor licenses with bonding; others have minimal barriers. Research your state’s requirements before investing in marketing.

Accounting: Set up an LLC, open a business bank account, and implement basic job costing from your first project. You can’t improve margins you don’t measure.

Price for profit, not survival

Don’t aim for average. The average builder nets 8.7%, but that number hides a brutal truth. The bottom 25% of builders actually lose money—posting -1.4% margins—while the top 25% net 17.7%. Same industry, wildly different results.

The difference? Pricing discipline and operational efficiency.

Your targets:

• Net margin: 10% minimum
• Gross margin: 25% (the benchmark for custom builders)
• Markup: ~33% to hit that gross margin

If you’re pricing jobs at 15-20% markup, you’re probably losing money after overhead.

Productize your offerings. Charles recommends creating base packages rather than treating every job as fully custom. “Here’s a 40×60 building with these doors, these windows, at this price. Now we can upgrade to our silver tier, gold tier,” he explains. “It simplifies the sales process and gives you opportunities to upsell.”

Standard packages create efficiency: you price accurately because you’ve built the same configuration before, you order materials in bulk, and your crew gets faster with repetition.

Build in upsells: Site prep, permitting assistance, upgraded finishes, extended warranties—these additions improve margins on work you’re already doing.

Find and win customers

Quality builders are scarce. That works in your favor if you show up professionally and follow up consistently.

Optimize your website for how people search. Charles has seen clients grow organic traffic 300%+ by creating specific pages for specific building sizes like 40×60 pole barn, 30×40 horse barn, or 60×80 agricultural building. “There’s a lot of search around specific sizes and combinations,” he says. “Structure your website in a way that aligns with how users search.”

Respond fast because speed wins. 35% of homeowners say answering their first call is the most important factor when choosing a contractor. Nearly 40% refuse to hire someone who doesn’t respond. 60% make their decision within 72 hours. By the time you’ve called back, they’ve already hired someone else.

Collect reviews strategically. Google reviews matter for visibility, and where those reviews come from matters geographically. Want to rank in a town 15 minutes from your office? You need reviews from customers in that town.

Build systems that scale

Pole barn sales cycles can stretch for months. Without systems, leads slip through the cracks.

Implement a CRM before you lose your first lead. “Particularly with post-frame where it can take a while for that job to close, you want to be keeping track of the leads you’re paying money for,” Charles says. “You send them a quote and forget about it—you lower your chances of getting that sale.”

The contractor who sends the initial quote, follows up consistently, and checks back when the customer said they weren’t ready? That’s the contractor who closes.

Use bill of materials software. Tools like SmartBuild generate accurate material lists from designs, preventing both over-ordering waste and costly mid-project supply runs.

Track these KPIs monthly:

• Cost per lead (not cost per click)
• Closing rate
• Cost per acquisition (cost per lead ÷ closing rate)
• Average sale value

“When you combine those, you know how much it’s costing you to sell a single building,” Charles says. “And knowing your average sale value and approximate margins tells you how much you can afford to spend on marketing while maintaining healthy profit.”

Compare 30-day rolling averages year-over-year to account for seasonality. Week-over-week comparisons mislead since a rainy week tanks search traffic for outdoor projects.

Control labor and quality

Bad hires kill margins. Poor quality kills reputation.

“Bad hires cost money—training and then retraining if you have to let somebody go,” Charles says. “And the underperformer is taking up a seat that could be held by a much higher performer.”

If you use subcontractors, their work becomes your reputation. “Where contractors go off the rails is when the sales process is great, the salesperson promises everything, and then the crew that shows up does poor quality work,” Charles notes. “That’s the customer’s perception of your company. They don’t know who works for who.”

Your options:

• Company-owned crews: Highest control, highest overhead
• Preferred subcontractors: Vetted subs you can quality-control
• Hybrid model: Core crew plus specialty subs

Whatever you choose, the on-site customer experience is how clients perceive your company. That determines whether they leave a five-star review or a one-star warning.

Reinvest strategically

Growing a pole barn business requires ongoing investment. Charles sees successful post-frame companies reinvesting 2-5% of gross revenues into marketing alone.

But marketing only works if you can fulfill the work. “If you grow past what your fulfillment capabilities are, you create a poor customer experience, which turns into bad reviews, which hurts your marketing,” Charles says.

Where to reinvest:

• Marketing: Generate consistent lead flow
• Production capacity: Crews, equipment, processes
• Systems and training: Let the company run efficiently without you in every decision

Growth rate has to match fulfillment capacity. Scale too fast and quality suffers. Scale too slow and competitors capture your market.

Close more deals with financing

Price is the most common objection. Often it’s not that customers can’t afford the project, it’s that they can’t afford to pay all at once.

When you show a customer what their $85,000 pole barn looks like as a monthly payment, “we can’t afford this” becomes “when can you start?”

Acorn Finance lets you offer financing without taking on credit risk. Customers get multiple lender options competing for their business. You get paid upfront. They get manageable monthly payments.

The result: larger projects become accessible to more customers, and your average ticket size increases because people aren’t limited by savings.

The bottom line

The pole barn opportunity is real, but winners won’t compete on price. They’ll compete on systems, service, and professionalism.

Start here:

• Track every job cost from day one
• Implement a CRM before you lose your first lead
• Create standard packages you can price confidently
• Build a follow-up process that doesn’t let prospects slip

The housing affordability crisis isn’t going away. Three out of four Americans need alternatives to traditional construction. Position yourself as the professional who delivers quality post-frame buildings on time and on budget, and you won’t be competing for scraps. You’ll be building a business that grows with the market.