When to upsell and when to do the right thing?

[Mike Phillips]

I asked him how he cleaned the car, car wash, and if it slept outside, it does.

Perfect.

The very first thing I do when talking to a potential future customer and the thing I teach my class to do when detailing cars for money, is to ask the customer,

How do you wash the car?


This tells you pretty much everything you need to know as to what type of service to offer. There is one exception. If the customer normally takes the car to a spinning brush style automatic car wash, nothing is going to last and the paint is going to get scratches.


If when talking to the customer, you can explain to them to use any other method and they both understand why and confirm they can use another car wash in their area, then you upsell to a ceramic coating.


Off the top of my head, I would say the best to worst options are,


1: Safest option - Take ownership of the car wash process

So the safest wash is to carefully hand wash the car and this can be done by the owner or a pro detailer. The technique for safely washing a coated car by hand besides using a quality car wash and a source of running water, is reduce the amount of cross contamination that can happen when you only use a single wash mitt for all body panels.


The easy fix to avoid cross contamination is to simply use lots of wash mitts or as an alternative option, use lots of microfiber towels. This is real simple stuff but like a lot of things in life, until you see it - you cannot believe it, or at least wrap your mind around the idea.

I recently wrote an article sharing how to carefully wash your car using this technique of using lots of microfiber towels. Wash mitts are not that much more expensive so feel free to follow the technique shared in this article only swap out wash mitts for microfiber towels.


2: Touchless Car Wash

A touchless wash, that is a car wash that use high pressure water sprayers with high pH alkaline soap and a low pH acid to chemically dissolve dirt and road grime off the car. This is safer than all of the above options in that nothing is physically touching your car's paint but repeated exposure to these types of aggressive chemicals can't be ADDING more coating your car's paint. What's the opposite of the word adding? And while a quality coating will hold up to this type of chemical cleaning action, most traditional carnauba car waxes and synthetic paint sealants will not hold up.



3: 100% Hand Car Wash

Hand car washes can invoke the noble and nostalgic IDEA of a safe wash but it's only as safe as the cleanliness of the mitt being used to wash your car as well as the carefulness of the person pushing the wash mitt over your car's paint. Factor in that with time and wear-n-tear most wash mitts become tatty and contaminated and this means swirls and scratches. The only SAFE hand wash is where YOU control both the mitt and the carefulness of how the mitt is being used on your car's paint and with all the commercial 100% hand car washes - you're at the mercy of the owner and their staff. The good news is there ARE hand car washes where the owner is smart and empathetic to his customers and has a clean wash mitt protocol as a part of his car wash business model. The trick is finding this type of hand car wash.

NOTE: As an option to make this a safer wash - ask the owner if you bring your own wash mitts can his employees use your mitts? If yes, bring your own mitts, get them when they are done, take them home, wash and dry them, store them in a clean place and repeat.




4: Soft Mop Automatic Car Wash

Soft Mop car washes are much better but as you can probably figure out, the material the soft mops are made of become contaminated and then these contaminated mops scratch your car's paint. Anytime your car's paint is being scratched it means paint is being removed and along with it, the coating.




5: Spinning Brush Automatic Car Wash

If you run the car through a swirl & scratch car wash, that's the spinning brush style of car wash, then the coating is not going to last very long at all because the spinning brushes used for these types of automatic car washes SCRATCH the paint. This means the brushes REMOVE paint and while they are removing paint of course they are removing anything applied to the paint including any brand of ceramic, quartz or polymer coating.






Switching how a customer washes their car

Some people can be educated and changed, some can't. Our job is to figure out who is who and then provide the right detailing package. When installing a coating is not an option, I would say that using SONAX Polymer Net Shield is a longer lasting option for the LSP than most car waxes and synthetic paint sealants.

See my article here,

SONAX Polymer Net Shield - Closest thing to a coating without being a coating




How to wash a coated car safely

Click the link below to see the multiple microfiber towel approach to safely washing a coated car.


How to safely wash a ceramic coated car by Mike Phillips - Traditional Hose & Bucket Approach

[Paul A.]

I think you did the right thing, DR. Rlmccarty brings up another good point and is a concept I've used myself i.e. delivering my highest service for a deep discount to get even MORE referrals from that particular customer.

I've even bartered my services in exchange for their services.

I think you made a wise choice for that job AND the important thing to me (like Mike said) was how you educated the customer so they understood your approach.

[Stormin08]

i always try to ask, WHAT ARE YOUR EXPECTATIONS ?

then describe what each process can do, and the pro-con side of both...

i just did a ZL1 for a guy who wanted his products...i did just that. even after several discussion, pro-con and everything. HE is very satisfied...I on the other hand, was OK with the outcome. i did do a light correction with 205 just get the majority of the previous owners auto wash swirls out.

[SWETM]

Thank you for the responses!

TTQ, that's a great idea, just to offer a basic wash and protect option.

SWETM, I keep telling him to go touchless and his reply is always "this wash helps keep you in business." Lol no argument there.

Sent from my SM-N960U using Autogeekonline mobile app

Nope not much to say after that than Thank you LOL.

TTQ that's seems like a great offering. And gets it deep clean and protected. While you don't take off that much of clearcoat. It's crazy how some paints that you think you got clean with chemical and mechanical decon. Still when you have done a panel or two the polishing pad is loaded with dirt build up. If it would be clean it would just be the polish residue and a very little abraded clearcoat on the polishing pad. Even some paints that are well maintained you pick up a little dirt from polishing it.

[TTQ B4U]

[QUOTE=DETAILROOKIE;1638350]TTQ, that's a great idea, just to offer a basic wash and protect option.

Nope not much to say after that than Thank you LOL.

TTQ that's seems like a great offering. And gets it deep clean and protected. While you don't take off that much of clearcoat. It's crazy how some paints that you think you got clean with chemical and mechanical decon. Still when you have done a panel or two the polishing pad is loaded with dirt build up. If it would be clean it would just be the polish residue and a very little abraded clearcoat on the polishing pad. Even some paints that are well maintained you pick up a little dirt from polishing it.

Thanks. I've built my entire offering of services around the customer needs but since they don't often know what is best, I balance it with what I know best and would do if it was my vehicle. The basis of my offerings is around the amount/how much correction of the defects and swirls present they wish to see occur balanced against how they use and care for the vehicle. In the case here it's a daily driver that will see car washes. I think that defines most of the driving population thus why paint correct it if it's going through a car wash next week right?



The key points within my Basic Clean and Protect Detail package are that:

• That it is NOT a paint correction package, but does involve the use of a machine polisher
• This detail option is perfect for removing oxidation Road grime build-up and scuffs from heavily weather-worn finishes.
• The product used is a super-micro abrasive technology polishing agent that smooths out fine blemishes, lessons the appearance of swirls and imperfections and brighten the paint’s color to enhance the gloss of the final sealant.
• The industry leading hybrid sealant adds gloss to the finish & seasonal protection using an known for its durability.

From there they can go to my Single Step Premium Enhancement Polish up one more to a Dual Step correction which is my Elite Enhancement Correction or finally to a multi-step Signature Level Perfection package.

In addition I offer a Clean & Prep for Sale or Trade and a New Car Prep & Protect package.


Again, all of the above are based on the customers needs and for me the service provider, I balance the pricing against how much time I will have involved. I feel I have the processes and timing nailed down. I began by tracking each step on every single vehicle and did so for the first few hundred thus enabling me to see progress in skill, product and tool selection and ultimately the time involved for the various vehicles.

Not all vehicles are the same but I know what it takes for me and the products and tools I have at my disposal to correct a vehicle once I inspect to hit that 50-75% plus the 75-90% plus or the 90-100% levels of correction. Everything is given a range and I rarely if ever don't exceed them. The last Volvo XC90 I did was a Premium Enhancement polish and it started off pretty swirled up. However the customer will continue to hit car washes thus knocking it down 50-75% is what they were looking to achieve. I'd say it was solidly within the top end of that range using an AIO and a light cutting pad.