Questions for Professional Detailer Businesses

[Coach Steve]

I will give you my thoughts, which may or may not be applicable to your situation.

You will not command the highest price at first. If you do, consider yourself extremely lucky. You will also not get the plum buffing and polishing jobs at first. Again, if you do, congrats to you. You have to pay your dues. When I opened up, I took every job from every person that called. Literally did not turn a job down. Some were great, some I got beat to hell on. For the first few months, we were averaging about $40/hour as two man team, about $30/hour when I was alone. I did it to build my name and my clientele.

Slowly I inched my pricing up every few months. We also improved our skills and started to realize that we were going to have to turn little jobs into big jobs using salesmanship. As of today, I get about $50-55/hour when I'm alone and $75-80/hour with my son as a two man team. Our average ticket has gone from the $70 range when we first started to around $150-160 per job.

I'm busy enough now where I still quote jobs I know will be ####, but I quote them high enough where it's worth my time. I don't do stupid stuff like quoting somebody $500 for an interior detail, but I quote them higher than normal.

Oddly enough we don't do many "washes" anymore. I did two basic washes last week.

Now, it sounds like you're not mobile, which is slightly different than our model, but business is business. I don't know if you've ever started a business before, but frankly go into it knowing that most small businesses fail and the ones that don't usually take a while to become profitable. You'll be grinding your ass off to pay the bills at first. Again, if you start up and day one you're successful without doing much except hanging a shingle, congrats to you.

As for pricing, really only you can set your pricing. In my area, people are "trades" rich, not investment banking rich. They're hard working people that bust their ass and own their own business and probably make a couple hundred grand a year. They're not up for $800 details or $1500 ceramic coatings. So knowing your customers is important, knowing how much is too much, knowing how much expendable income they have for car maintenance and knowing how much your competition is charging.

I will offer you one last bit of advice. As long as you're close, people don't really care about price as much as most people think. People that have a household income of $250k-300k or more don't give a #### about $10 in either direction (saving it or spending it). Here's what people like that care about. They like professionalism. They like it when you answer the phone when they call. They like it when you deliver what you promise for the agreed upon price. They like it when you're personable. They like it when you're well groomed. If you give people those things, they're not going to care about a few extra dollars. It's the reason why people will take their cars to big box stores for tires and brakes instead of the little hole in the wall auto repair shop that's probably cheaper and better.

Good luck to you.

Couldn't have said it better. I will add that your pricing platform needs to include both a la carte and pkg deals. You will have people who just want headlight clarification or engine bays, or need a spill/stain taken care of and you don't want make these types of customers feel alienated. On the same token, you need to have a few pkgs. to offer customers but not more than 3. That's kind of the unspoken rule of thumb and is also what his royal highness Prentice St. Claire states. A really nice thing about having the a la carte menu is you can include an item in a pkg if necessary to close the deal without having to lower your price. It's always better to throw in an extra service (within reason, obviously) than to lower your price.
How much you end up charging/getting for your services depends on what the market will bear but ultimately, as stated above, you have to pay your dues and get a lot of vehicles under your belt and to do that, you're going to need to charge a little less than your competition and deliver a far superior job/experience to your customers.
Communicate with them during AND after the job. Touch bases with them 2-3 days after to follow up and make sure they were completely satisfied and to tell them one more time how much you appreciate their business. This is something that a lot of detailers neglect to do.
Check out my post linked below to see some other things I do to stand out from the crowd.
Sharing Some of My Extras That Help Me Stand Out in the Crowd

[sudsmobile]

Steve, I remember the first time I read that and what an impact it made on my business. I was already doing several of those things but it was nice to know I was on the right track and it gave me some other things to think about. You truly understand what a service business is all about, customer service.

[Coach Steve]

Steve, I remember the first time I read that and what an impact it made on my business. I was already doing several of those things but it was nice to know I was on the right track and it gave me some other things to think about. You truly understand what a service business is all about, customer service.

Thanks, Brother. I appreciate that.
Ya know, the thing is, at the end of the day, for those of us who do this to put food on the table, put our kids through college, keep our wives flush with spending money, etc., one thing has to be kept in focus at all times, and that is that having one's vehicle professionally detailed is a luxury that is afforded only if one's disposable income allows it. No one is going to pay to have their car serviced before or instead of paying their utility bill or insurance premium or..... It's easy to get caught up in our own self-importance and view what we do as something other than what it really is, and that's a luxury service that customers pay for when, and only when, they have disposable income left over - no matter their financial status.
If we keep that in mind with every customer we service, it's easy to remember just how important their business truly is to our overall success.
As customer service has increasingly lost its importance in the past decade by so many companies, people have become accustomed to the lack of appreciation they receive from just about every company/business they deal with. When they are shown genuine appreciation (without having their proverbial a$$es kissed an sucked up to) it's something they notice and it means a lot to them.

At the bottom of my invoices there's a short paragraph that reads...
"I realize and appreciate the fact that there are numerous businesses with regard to whom you choose to care for your vehicle's appearance. I strive to provide the best possible product and customer service available every day, with every vehicle I service. If I fell short of these goals somehow, please let me know and I will take care of it immediately. I truly appreciate your business and look forward to working for you in the future."

[Vanquish Auto]

All of this is great advice for someone starting out and for some that have already been established for awhile. The only thing I would add is that when I started out and still to this day. I’ve had several customers buy my cheapest package (wash, wax & vac). Then come back a week later to get one of my top tier packages (full coating, engine detail, etc).
Some customers want to see that you do good work with their own eyes before they hand over $500-$1,000 on the first time using your services. Always treat your customers equal. You never know where it will end up leading to.

[sudsmobile]

I was actually going to mention that some customers will test drive you first before scheduling more work or higher end work. I know I've had several customers do it to me.

[Coach Steve]

I was actually going to mention that some customers will test drive you first before scheduling more work or higher end work. I know I've had several customers do it to me.

Good point!
Whenever I'm looking at dropping 500 to a G on anything, I do my homework by learning as much as I can about whatever it is I'm buying and testing it out if possible.

[sudsmobile]

We hired a new landscaper recently and we had a rather big job that we wanted done in addition to cutting our grass. I tasked him with a couple smaller jobs first before I plunked down $700 for the bigger jobs. Of course, he left my gate open for the third time since July yesterday and my dog was roaming around the neighborhood trying to get me involved in some kind of lawsuit.