Every customer you ever serviced. In your pocket.

Here, Mike explains how his iPhone is as valuable as a $140 an hour accountant to him:

“The app I use is INVOICE2GO (iPhone or Droid) for my customers.

I am able to email my customers with my iPhone at the end of each job.   Not only does it look more professional, but I now have everyone’s email address & I can keep myself in front of everyone a number of times throughout the year with reminders that they’re due for a detail.

It organizes my contact list, and also tracks who has paid & who hasn’t. While most are my jobs are paid on the spot, there are a few that I need to keep a close I eye on & INVOICE2GO is perfect for that.

Mike Lynch: Mike's Car Cleaning

With this app I can pull up yearly comparisons, quarterly comparisons & of course monthly.  I can see my best customers at a glance & I can see their ‘sales’ history.

I can also see what extra I need to do in order to increase my income at any given time. it acts as an incentive.

For customer records, I track details like their vehicle, type of cleaning,  how often it is cleaned, how much I charged last time, and any other info that may be relevant to the customer, ie: don’t use fragrance etc.

This section also has room for special contact details, things to look at on my next visit or even possible new business leads.

On the whole, I have found this app to be indispensable.  INVOICE2GO comes as a Lite which is free or the version I use which set me back about $16AUS. The free version only allows three invoices to be open at one time, so depending on your need the choice is yours. For me the choice was simple.”

Car dealers struggle to find good detailers.

Late payments, no payments, haggling, and “miracle” requests.  Sound familiar?  These are the troubles we accept from car dealers in exchange for steady, predictable work.  But…what do they think of us?   What’s the other side of the story?

A Florida car dealer talks about his vendors.

Traci McMillan Beach is a freelance writer from Sarasota Florida who we asked to find a car dealer who would talk about his experiences hiring cosmetic vendors (PDR, interior, touch up, and detailing).  She found Mike Bonner of Southeast Auto Wholesale who spoke about his 12 years of experience hiring PDR techs, detailers, interior techs, and touch up techs.

Highlights:

• Bonner reveals that there are no contracts:  any vendor can show up, do a demo, and get the job.
• He tried in-house detailing briefly.  Too much management…”it was a headache.”
• Pays $100 for a full detail.
• Has had detailers ask him for personal loans, borrow his buffer, ask for rides to work.
• Advice for PDR, touch up, interior techs:  never stop “knocking on doors.”  Dealers are always looking for more options.

The full interview:

Traci: I’m actually working for a website that’s for car detailers, and we’re trying to talk to a few dealers in the area just to kinda figure out what you guys look for when you’re looking for cosmetic services…

M: She’s recording us

B: A website for car detailers?

M: I told her we don’t do no detailing here, but we send them out.

T: Well that’s actually what we’re curious about because we want to know about kind of how you make your decision on vendors.

M: We used to have on-site.

B: A nightmare.

M: Total mess, it was just messy, very dirty. Our facility in Bradenton had a six car garage and two bays was set up just for detailing. And it was dirty. So that’s why we got away from it and now it’s all offsite detailing.

T: How did you pick vendors?

M: We just, word-of-mouth. They solicit us.

T: What do you think is the most important thing to find in a vendor who is doing cosmetic services?

M: Car’s gotta look brand new.

B: In a timely manner too.

T: How do you rate price and reliability…

M: Prices are pretty much…

B: Pretty much across the board, the same everywhere.

M: Usually 100 bucks or around there [for a detail]. 85 to 110, around there, depending on what all you want done.

T: Okay and how do you find the new vendors, you just find them straight through them approaching you?

M: Yea, pretty much. We only need like two.

T: What were the two that you said? You said Tropical?

M: Tropical and what’s the other one on Pickney’s?

B: Eh, we just call him Henry

M: Yea, it’s actually a little private detailer that does it for a couple detailers or dealers, it’s not like open to the public.

T: And when did they approach you?

M:  Couple years ago. Three or four years ago. Actually we approached them., we heard about them and talked to them and we gave them a try. We’ve tried other ones since then, but you’ve gotta be up to our expectations.

T: How would you suggest that vendors approach dealers like you?

M: Go out there and knock on doors. Just like anything else…

T: What can they do? Can they give you brochures or tell you about themselves? What can they say?

M: Usually what they do is they do a car, some will do a car for free, or they’ll do a car for like half-price. You know, no one wants to do anything for free, so instead of  $100, I’ll do one for 50 and give you a try.

T: Then you can check out their work?

M: Yea, we usually just let them try a car. If it’s a $20 detail, and we still pay you $100, we’ll never do you again. I’ve been doing this for 30 years, I’ve been through a lot of detailers.

T: You know what’s good and what’s bad.

M: We had eight of them [detailers] at one time. We used to sell 100 cars a month at one time. Going back years ago.

T: Really. Do you have any good stories?

M: I have a lot of stories.

T: Vendor stories?

M: There’s tons of them. I repo’ed cars for nine years, I’ve done it all.

T: So what have the nightmares been?

M: I mean, you know I could just go on and on and on. Detailers are like tow truck drivers. They are not the best caliber of people. They’re not the most reliable, so…There are some out there that are dedicated to their work and run a tight shift, but most of them are day-to-day.

T: Which service do you find most necessary- between detailing and dent repair and paint repair…

M: You need them all. (phone ring) We have a process we go through when a car comes in here. You know if it has a scratch on the bumper, it gets touched up. If it needs to be painted, it gets painted. It’s just a process. We have dye guys, we have detail guys, we have touch-up guys, we have paint guys. A guy was just here a couple hours ago, he painted this black Impala SS, painted the front and rear bumpers. Like I said, me and Brad, we used to do over 100 cars a month.

T: So when you had eight different vendors, was that just because of the sheer number of cars?

M: How busy we were, yes.  You know not all of them will take all of your work. Some of them will say, look I can do two cars a day for you. If you are doing 100 cars a month, 25 cars a week, and one guy can only do two a day, well that’s only 10 cars. So we’ve gotta have other people to you know

T: Do you go to one guy for everything?

M: Nah, everyone does something different. They usually come on Thursdays. The Ding Doctor, the paint guy, the touch up guy comes on Tuesdays.

T: Do you have any advice for vendors looking for new clients?

M: Go out there and knock on doors. Just like I tell the Ding Doctors, when they come in here and are like, I’ve lost this account, this account, this account and I’m down so much a week… Well, you have got to go out and find new customers. The way you do it is, if you are a Ding Doctor or a touch-up guy, you just come up and say, hey, I’m looking to take on a couple new accounts, do you wanna give me a try? And that’s what they do.

T: Well this has been really helpful. Is there anything else that you think we should know, that we should be aware of?

M: Like I say, you’ve got to prove yourself. Just go out there and give them a try.

T: And when you were saying $100, was that for detailing? 

M: Full detail. You know if someone comes on this lot and says, hey, I’ll detail your cars for $45, you are not getting a good detail. And you can’t do, one guy, one manpower, person, can’t do more than three cars a day. I don’t care how good you are; it can’t be done. If you say, me, myself, Traci, right? Traci says I personally can do five cars a day for you…you can’t, because they are not done right. You can only do two-and-a-half to three cars a day, at most, in an eight-hour day. If you are going to work 15 hours, well guess what, the cars are not going to come out good. A real detailer. You’ll see carwashes that say hey, detail, $49.95, well guess what, they ain’t gonna buff the car, they ain’t gonna polish the car and they ain’t gonna wax the car. They’re just going to put a butter wax on there, run it through the car wash and that is it. It is not a real detail.

T: Any more stories?

M: As far as horror stories, I mean, it’s just you know, stuff you wouldn’t expect. Like I said, detailers are not rocket scientists, so they come up with the stupidest stories. I can’t come into work today because, you know, my car won’t start. Well, you only live two blocks from here, you know.  Comes to work, my buffer ain’t working. Well yea, so, go rent the buffer for $15. Well can you loan me $200? What so you can buy a buffer? If I give you 200, I’ll never see you again.  It’s just you know, I’ve heard it all, I’ve seen it all.  Show up with the two kids and the wife, I’m like, wait a minute, I hired you, I didn’t hire your wife and two kids. I’m not your babysitter. This ain’t a daycare, it’s a business. I could go on forever.

T: Do a lot of your friends and stuff, do you guys all use the same vendors?

M: No, there’s not a lot of competition here. There’s all big dealers here that have their own detailers in house. We’re like the only independent one here.

Online reviews.

Your 2012 goal: At least 15 positive online reviews.

I’ve written about this in previous articles, and I’ll repeat it here because it’s that important.  I’ve seen more than half of the detailing businesses in my town of Portland, OR go out of business in the last 5 years. The common denominator?  No online “buzz.”  None of them had more than 5 reviews online…if they had any at all.  The stalwart shops–the ones that never go away–have at least 15 positive reviews on Google, Yelp, or Yahoo.  I’ve never seen a shop with at least good good 15 reviews fail.  What does that tell you about the power of reviews?

Headlight restoration.

There’s been a big marketing push by 3m, Meguiars, and some new-comers to sell headlight restoration kits to pros and hobbyists. Although prices have come down on headlight restoration, there’s one bright spot: the public knows what headlight restoration is…and they want it.  It’s easier to sell than ever.  5 years ago, it took a lot of effort to convince customers that you could truly restore headlight lenses, but this has changed.  It’s a good time to add headlight restoration, and the kit I recommend is the 3M 02516 Headlight Lens Restoration System.

Waterless washing.

Optimum is selling cubic tons of their famous “No Rinse” waterless car wash solution, and for good reason:  it’s a fantastic product.  If you’ve held back on the idea of mobile car washing because of You didn’t want to haul around a pressure washer and a water tank, now might be the time to give it a try.  All you need is a wash mitt, bucket, grit guard, a gallon of water, and some microfiber towels.  You could fit that on a moped.  Just don’t wear those chaps.

Toxic Pricing.

Never forget:  you’re selling a service no one needs.

The most common mistake is “undercutting.” Undercutting is not just setting an “affordable” price. It’s pricing yourself 25% or more cheaper than the average price in town. “Hey, I’ll make it up in volume” says the undercutter. But he ends up losing it in volume when–months later–he calculates his true cost per-car cost and finds he’s losing money on each car. There’s nothing wrong with pricing yourself cheaper when you’re the new guy, but be conservative: maybe 10 – 15% less than average. After a few months in business, sit down and find your true per-car cost (including everything–the gatorade you drink while thirsty, laundry…everything). If you can afford it, and you think it will bring more business, drop your costs. But never make assumptions or guesses about costs. Only work off of the facts.

Excessive initial investment.

Be conservative with your money and crazy about your customers.

Careless customer service.

Never forget this: you’re selling a service that no one needs. I’ll repeat: no one needs car detailing. People need food, clothing, and a roof over their head. Detailing is a luxury and your customers have high expectations when they pay $200+ for a clean car. If you want to be a pro, and stay in business for years, never fail to: show up on time, finish on time and listen to and follow every customer request (with a few exceptions). You’re going to make mistakes (that’s a certainty), but customers forgive mistakes. What they never forgive and never forget is poor effort.

1. Equipment “tune up.”

Toss bad towels, old bottles, old polishing pads, all the junk you don’t use anymore. Change the oil in your compressor and pressure washer. Buy: new brushes, extension cords, filters for the vacuum cleaners, no-leak air fittings. Test, test, test EVERYTHING. Buy BACKUP EQUIPMENT: polishers, pressure washers, vacuum cleaners. These will inevitably fail, and fail at the worst time.

2. Run a special.

“Spring cleanup” specials (20% off…free premium wax upgrade…$40 off, etc.) were always very popular. Publicize on your website, Facebook, your postcards, your flyers and…your phone greeting: “thanks for calling Funkhauser detailing…would you like to hear about our spring special?”

3. Uniform “tune up.”

If you wear a uniform…congratulations. Toss dirty pants/shirts and replace them. Don’t have a uniform? At a minimum, get white t-shirts with your logo (lots of them–they will get stained) front and back. I make logos for detailers $99 at SEO 4 Detailers. I’ll set you up with in 10 days, and forward high-res files your printing or uniform company.

4. Add a new service.

If you’ve been considering adding headlight restoration, windshield repair, leather/vinyl dye, paint touch up, etc. NOW is the time. You still have time to practice, practice, practice. Don’t “learn the ropes” on a customers’ car!

5. Hire help.

Not hiring early cost me $1000s in my early years. We’d get rushed in July/August and I’d hire anyone who showed up. They needed so much training that they only did 3 or 4 hours of valuable work on an 8 hour shift. So hire now. There may be slow days. Take on some dealer work to get them the “repetition” they need.

6. Get in touch with your customer base.

Email or send postcards to your customers with a special offer just for them. If you haven’t been collecting your customers’ contact info, this is a MUST DO for 2012. Here’s a great check-in form that I used. 80% of customers gave me their email address…no questions.

7. Website tuneup.

Your visitors spend an average of 90 seconds there. In 90 seconds it should be completely clear: who you are, what you do, why they should hire you, where you service them, and how they should contact you. If your website doesn’t answer the who/what/why/where/how question…they leave. My “Website Reboot” special ends this month.

Finally, spend some time thinking about last summer. What went wrong? Where could you have been more prepared? How could you have made more money? Make adjustments NOW because it won’t be long until you don’t have time to think at all.

Meet Greg.

• Owner, Signature Auto Detailing, a New Jersey auto detailing service in Randolph, NJ.
• Signature Detailing’s Facebook page.
• Greg’s writeup of a recent nasty mold removal job.

The Interview.

What’s the most difficult part about running your own detailing business?
Difficult? I have challenges. Well I can always use more business, I am sure we can all use more business, but that is something we should all be always working on as a business owner. To me keeping up with all the social media. Constantly posting to FB, doing full message board write ups. Just keeping my name out there. These things to me take time that I could be using else where more efficiently. It is a necessary evil to me, but sometimes I wonder if posting all my pictures on a detailing message board are just being seen by other detailer’s and not by potential clients?

How do you plan to grow sales in 2012?
For 2012 I will be doing a complete website overhaul. SEO will also be optimized. I have also recently started accepting credit cards.  On top of this I am doing some local advertising. I will be running a Full Color flyer on Glossy Paper. My add will be part of 20,000 flyer’s distributed by a major pizza chain. I will include a “discount code” for customers that respond from this flyer to be able to track its effectiveness.

What are the the 3 most important factors for ensuring repeat business from your customers?
1.  Value.  the client needs to know they are getting what they pay for. I do this through education. I talk to the customer about proper washing and educate them as to why they can’t get the service I provide from your local car wash. As a paint correction specialist, I know I use only the finest sponges, products, and towels on a clients car ensuring proper technique.
2.  Convenience.  I do what I can to go out of my way to make my service as easy as it can be for the client. I am willing to work late, move to whatever location they need me, ETC.
3.  Personality.  We as detailer’s have to face a sad truth, we’re salesmen. Successful salespeople aren’t always the extroverted and persuasive salesmen. Zig Ziglar has a great book on selling, Selling 101. I highly suggest this to anyone. There are many other ways to learn about how to be an amazing seller, including lots of free information on the Internet.

Got any tips to get your per-car detailing times down?
For me having the proper tools/products are important. I can’t correct paint with a leather cleaner, just as I can’t correct leather with a compound. Its an investment in your business, to ensure you always have the proper product on hand to ensure you can do the job requested by the client, but well worth it. There have been times that I would need a specific product for a job and then go order the product needed. Now I have almost everything I could need on hand. For example, I purchased a steamer and have utilized it on almost every interior job I have done since my purchase.

How did you determine your pricing?
Each car is different. I ALWAYS give a flat-rate per car, rather than hourly pricing. I also do an in person inspection of each car before I start the work. There are reasons to my madness.   I could always do an hourly rate and give an estimate of 10-15 hours for paint correction. That could be a huge difference in pricing if it does end up being the full 15 hours compared to the 10.

Flat-rate billing is very clear, people prefer to know what their bill will be before they commit to something. It’s the very simple psychology of loss aversion, which ”refers to people’s tendency to strongly prefer avoiding losses to acquiring gains. Some studies suggest that losses are twice as powerful, psychologically, as gains.” Think about things you have bought knowing the definitive price rather than waiting to see how many hours it took to do. For example your cell phone, you pay for so many minutes a month, and may not use them all but you know the exact price of your bill every month.

Each car is different in my pricing and it depends on the customers’ expectations, work involved, and my own personal estimate of time spent on the car. For example, I was given pictures of a car with mold. From the pictures it didn’t appear that bad. After seeing the car in person I knew this would be a two day detail, and many hours of correction. Which allowed me to properly price the job, instead just going by the pictures.

Color coordination: work faster...work safer.

Grab the right chemical for the job.

At my shop, we kept paint thinner, degreaser, wheel acid, carpet cleaner, leather cleaner, tire dressing, plastic dressing, and even mildewcide in the same 24 oz. spray bottles. And when there’s 5 people scrambling to detail 8 cars (some of them fresh hires), it’s a DISASTER if they grab wheel acid when they meant to get leather cleaner. That’s why we bought spray triggers, bottles, and chemicals that were organized by color. My favorite wheel acid was Meguiars Wheel Brightener. It’s purple…unlike any chemical in the shop. Plastic dressing was white. Wheel dressing was blue. Even if I had a thousand things on my mind, I NEVER grabbed the wrong chemical because we organized our shop by color.  We bought into the Meguiars line of chemicals, bottles, and triggers and rarely had any “wrong bottle” accidents.

Don’t stop at chemicals. Coordinate your towels too.

Something we should have done better was separate our “heavy duty” towels (carpets, door jambs, seats) from our “princess” towels (polishing and waxing). We had an expensive policy: brand new towels for paint only! Let me share with you a company that can get your towels as specialized as ever: TowelPros. They’ve got the usual plush polishing towels and glass-only waffle weave towels, but the prices are pretty sweet because they don’t sell one at a time to hobbyists. They only sell in bulk. Their “Ultra Orange” polishing towel is just $3 a towel. But they take color a step further with their all purpose towels, which come in red, green, and yellow. This means you can actually categorize your “heavy duty” towels: red for carpets, yellow for seats and door panels, and red for door and trunk jambs. Why bother? Because you can separate the truly filthy towels (leaves, dog hair, pine needles, mud) from the delicate towels (seats and door panels) when it’s time to wash. No more picking through the towels manually. Just load them up by color!

Is your pricing competitive?

This might be the toughest decision an auto detailer makes. Price yourself low and you’ll be busy…but will you make money? Set your prices high, and you’ll make a healthy profit on each car, but just how many cars will you service?

We asked 47 detailers for quotes.

Review responses in this table.

Businesses we found on Google and Yelp in major cities across the USA were sent this email:

Subject:
“Full detail Saturn 4 door”

Body:
I’m selling my car and need a quote on getting my car detailed inside
and out but not the engine.

The interior is a little gross from my kids and the paint is scuffed
up a bit in some spots. What do you think this would cost and how
long would it take?

Erica

The email included these pictures:

Average quote: $215

Highest quote received: $399.
Lowest: $100.

Average time of service: 4.1 hours.

Longest estimate: 7 hours.
Shortest: 2 hours.

Average response time: 86 minutes

Longest time to respond: 10 hours.
Shortest: 10 minutes.

56% of shops didn’t respond at all.

This was alarming. We were expecting roughly a 25% non-response rate. Good news for the “good shops”: half your competitors are lazy.

What it means to you: 2 lessons.

Price matters: don’t be the high bid, and don’t be the low bid.
Imagine yourself as Erica. Your car might be worth $5000. A bid of $399 is not appropriate relative to the value of her car. But with an average quote of $215, $100 is suspiciously low. And she would be right to question that quote: it can’t possibly be a thorough service. She’s going to choose the bids near the middle, read online reviews, and probably call 2 shops before you finalizes an appointment. A few times a year, check in on your competitors’ pricing to be sure you’re where the customers are: the “middle” of the market.

Respond to every email within 3 hours: no exceptions.
Let’s face it…a lot of emails are tire kickers. When I ran Ace Car Reconditioning, only 20-30% of them became customers. But not responding is unacceptable. And responding late–anything past 3 hours–says to the customer “you’re not important to us.” Think of the last time you needed a plumber, electrician, or accountant. Did you hire the late responder? Be sure that all emails reach your cell phone. Check every 2 hours. Every email gets a response, every time.

Robert Keppel
Author
“How to Start a Modern Car Detailing Business”:

Search advertising gives small detailers the reach of BIG detailers.

Pay-per-click exposes small shops to big audiences.

Detailers hate advertising because they operate on such thin budgets, but you’ll notice one thing: the shops that stay in business–year after year–advertise the most. The “old way” favored the big shops: $4500 phone book ad kept you front and center, year after year.  Who ever looked at the “basic” entries?  But Google Adwords now sells the king’s seat–”front and center” on the first page of their search engine, for $1-$2 a click.

How Adwords works for a small Colorado detailer.

Allan Schlepp runs Pro Mobile Detail in Front Range, CO part-time. He bought my course in early 2010 and quickly set up a Google Adwords campaign. He pays around $1 a click to show his ad when people search for these terms:

detailing, auto detailing, car detailing, mobile detailing, mobile auto detailing, mobile car detailing

In these cities:

Castle Rock, Highlands Ranch, LIttleton, Englewood, Lakewood, Denver, Wheatridge, Arvada Westminster

On average, Allan says he gets a job for every 40 clicks.

The math:  spend $40 to make $110.

40 clicks/job x $1/click = $40 advertising cost per job.
Average profit per job before advertising: $150 (it’s rural Colorado).

Therefore, his net profit is $150 – $40 = $110 per job. Not all jobs are full details: some interior-only, some exterior-only jobs that take 4 hours including driving. And importantly, let’s recognize the value of a new customer. About 25% will use him again ($150 profit the next time). About 15% will refer him ($150 profit there).

So, for Allan, a mobile detailer in a rural area, Google AdWords makes his business possible.

Your Adwords campaign…in 15 minutes

1. Open your account at http://adwords.google.com.
2. Set your maximum cost-per-click to $2.50.  You won’t necessarily pay $2.50 per click (depends on how popular the search term), but that should be enough that your ad isn’t buried on page 2 or 3.
3. Sponsor the terms detailing, auto detailing, car detailing, mobile detailing, mobile auto detailing, mobile car detailing in every city you service.  You may end up sponsoring 20 – 50 keywords, but this is critical because your competition overlooks a lot cities and keywords, so for these terms the page is all yours.
4. Set a daily budget of $15 and an overall budget of $200.  Any less, and you just don’t have enough data to make a decision about continuing.
5. Ask EVERY customer  how they found you.  If they say “the Internet” ask further until you can determine if they clicked an ad or found you “naturally.”

If your website is any good, it’s hard to imagine not making money on an Adwords campaign.  Businesses (most of them small) spend $28 billion each year on Adwords…and that figure grows 15% a year, so there’s abundant evidence that it works.

These new phones (Droid and iPhone) are EXTREMELY handy for detailers, PDR techs, and other reconditioners for GPS, scheduling, photos, videos and more. I wanted to find out how many reconditioners own these phones, and more importantly, if they used them for business.

The results

Method

Posted polls in the following forums:
http://www.autogeekonline.net/forum/how-make-money-detailing-cars/45771-poll-use-your-smartphone-business.html
http://www.autopia.org/forum/professional-detailer-general-discussion/139432-use-your-smarthpone-business.html
http://www.doording.com/fusionbb/showtopic.php?tid/73739/post/new/#NEW

Conclusion.

Smartphones are surprisingly POPULAR among reconditioners. Roughly 90% of responders indicated that they do use their phones for business, compared to 49% of all business owners. Some quotes:

Don’t do everything on my phone…but, it definitely keeps me on the ball with customers. Getting my emails straight to my phone is SO handy. Customers really appreciate a quick response through email. in fact, I’ve gotten regular long time customers simply because they enjoy dealing with me, and I’m so easy to get a hold of. I hear all the time about people calling, or emailing shops and getting no response. I keep all my calls forwarded to my cell, and use it all day in the shop. I update my facebook page with it, and take most of my photos. Certainly makes life easier. Oh, and not to mention…now my schedule can be accessed right on my phone. Awesome!

I do everything except for invoicing and plastic transactions. Most of my customers are young and have the latest gadgets. They can schedule an appointment on my website with the service if it’s basic (Wash and Wax and Decon), they can schedule a consultation for paint corrections. I have rules on my availability (Lunch breaks) what combinations of services they can do(2 decons a day, 5 wash and wax etc..) and add-on’s if they wish (Head light restoration with any service, permanent wheel protection with a decon package etc). I can also set it to send them a e-mail automatically or text message ( but costs like 5-10 cents per notification), booking fees, cancellation fees, no-show fees. I also update my website, so clients can see what I am working on and where.

What it means for you.

If you aren’t using an iPhone or Droid…START. Detailers and reconditioners are more organized and efficient than ever thanks to these great devices, and you can’t afford to be “behind the curve” on mobile technology.