Very inconsistent

[sudsmobile]

I've posted this before, leases are the detailers worst enemy. I washed a BRAND NEW Explorer a few months ago and showed the guy that his vehicle was rusting on the rear hatch door. I gave him a course of action that we could take to remove and stop it. He said "It's a lease, I'm turning it in in 18 months." Whatever.

I live in an affluent area as well, but it's a bedroom community and people here are working class rich, not I own AVIS rich. Most of the cars we do are new or newish, typically Cadillacs, MB, BMW, Audi, cars that soccer moms drive to Starbucks. We do Hondas and Toyotas and Nissans as well. People like to think that rich people are good customers, but they're really not. I mean they might be, but they're not the best. People that work hard for their money and want to keep their sh** nice are good customers. They have enough money to do whatever needs to be done to keep their cars looking new, but not enough money where a BMW is disposable.

I will add this. I've done 2 coatings in the last week, one today on a four day old RAV4. I'm surprised with the class of car you're working on, you're not doing more. Or doing more waxes. We wax almost everything we book, even if they just book a basic wash. Maybe it's time you evaluate your sales techniques and figure out why you're not upgrading more people to higher end work.

[RiverCityAutoSpa]

I've posted this before, leases are the detailers worst enemy. I washed a BRAND NEW Explorer a few months ago and showed the guy that his vehicle was rusting on the rear hatch door. I gave him a course of action that we could take to remove and stop it. He said "It's a lease, I'm turning it in in 18 months." Whatever.

I live in an affluent area as well, but it's a bedroom community and people here are working class rich, not I own AVIS rich. Most of the cars we do are new or newish, typically Cadillacs, MB, BMW, Audi, cars that soccer moms drive to Starbucks. We do Hondas and Toyotas and Nissans as well. People like to think that rich people are good customers, but they're really not. I mean they might be, but they're not the best. People that work hard for their money and want to keep their sh** nice are good customers. They have enough money to do whatever needs to be done to keep their cars looking new, but not enough money where a BMW is disposable.

I will add this. I've done 2 coatings in the last week, one today on a four day old RAV4. I'm surprised with the class of car you're working on, you're not doing more. Or doing more waxes. We wax almost everything we book, even if they just book a basic wash. Maybe it's time you evaluate your sales techniques and figure out why you're not upgrading more people to higher end work.

Is


My basic is a $60 in out for a car. I use a mix of meguiars citrus wash n wax and hyper suds followed by meguiars d156 mixed with either a little onr or Wolfgang the pink stuff. So I sell my $60 with a “spray wax”.

I upcharge $40 to substitute hand wax, $50 substitute hand sealant, $60 to apply c2v3.

I had a lady call today says she wants a “full detail” on a Jeep GC. I tell her it starts at 80 moves to 150 and so on she’s just “oh no no no no no oh man whew that’s expensive” all I say is yea she then asks me how long and what’s included for the 80 I break it down to her she’s reluctant. This is at noon she wants it done today. I usually never do same day details and I let this one walk because of it.

Can’t please everyone. I’m booked Friday-Sunday I’ll make about $420 +\-

I did google adwords with $10 a day budget and google bent me over no lube and stuck a cactus in me.
Facebook I try to pay for likes doesn’t work end up spending like $7 for 1 like and I cancel it.

I come across other detailers suggested posts of their work and like 18 comments asking how much for coating on this coating on that.

[sudsmobile]

We use AdWords. It works great. I spend about what you spent per month. Surprising it's not working for you. I ran one of those facebook boost your post things. I spent $30 on it, got about 1000 likes on Instagram because it cross posted my facebook post to instagram. I got zero business from it, best as I can tell. I did manage to get a guy that left me a negative FB review during that same timeframe because he was extremely hard to deal with and then texted my son with some nasty text the next day, which got me involved, which led to him "reporting me" which was leaving me a negative FB review. Oh, and I got a contact from a lady that worked for a local business. Same BS. She wanted me to wash 4-7 cars once a week. I gave her a price. Too much. Then she decided the boss wanted to try me out with a full detail on his Expedition. I gave her a price and made her an appointment. She called back and wanted to move her appointment to another day that I already told her was fully booked. She said "OK, cancel that appointment. Thanks" and hung up on me. So my opinion of FB is I wish it would burn in hell because honestly those are the two rudest customers I've ever had by a pretty wide margin. I use the word customers very loosely, as neither one actually bought anything from me.

[sudsmobile]

In fact, AdWords works so good for us that I'm going to be bumping it up. I have my first advertising campaign set to expire here in a couple months. One year of doing those quarterly magazines that go out in the mail to your community. We did our community and the community north of us. Our community was terrible, probably barely paid for itself, the one north of us has been excellent brought in a ton of business. However, it's a coupon type magazine, which means you've got to be discounting something. I'd rather take half of that budget and spend it on Google. I'm still debating keeping the good magazine in play for another year. As a new business, I still think it's a good way to get our name out into the community and build brand recognition, even if it's not making money hand over fist. And it has been responsible for getting us some great customers that have turned into regulars.

[sudsmobile]

I will add one more thing. You're on here kind of moaning about being slow, cursing Google for not beating your door down with business and you had a customer call and want to give you money today and you turned it away. I'll tell you the same thing I tell my son. You take the money when people are wanting to put it in your hand, the exception being that you're already doing a job and you can't take it. In these types of businesses, you never know where your next dollar is coming from and I think this thread that you started exemplifies that perfectly.

[RiverCityAutoSpa]

I will add one more thing. You're on here kind of moaning about being slow, cursing Google for not beating your door down with business and you had a customer call and want to give you money today and you turned it away. I'll tell you the same thing I tell my son. You take the money when people are wanting to put it in your hand, the exception being that you're already doing a job and you can't take it. In these types of businesses, you never know where your next dollar is coming from and I think this thread that you started exemplifies that perfectly.

Not really “cursing” google I’d be happy to share my adwords results with you. I’ve gotten tons of views just nothing amounted to an appointment. Yes I’m moaning in a way because I love what I do and I want everyone to experience my work.

The lady who called today wasn’t in my group of people I’d say are “preferred” customers. Don’t call me ask how much a “full detail” is when you think $80 is too hi. Idk if the conversation would of went hey what’s ur full detail I explain she says awesome I’d like to make an appointment we could proceed but the whole oh no no no no that’s really expensive leads me to believe she’s a one time client, she will be looking for more than I provide for that package and isn’t willing to fork over more money for more services. She was selling the car “today” and needed it cleaned.
I was at Home Depot in the middle of shopping for today’s yard work job, If I don’t wake up with a detail that day chances are very good I won’t be doing a detail that day, excludes neighbors.

Since 4pm I’ve booked 4 more cars for this week. It seems like they come out of thin air instead of being booked for a few days. No complaints. I have no merit to complain on, in my eyes my business is working it’s just taking some time to get out there.

Thursday will come around and people start calling for the weekend just to be told Monday’s my earliest.
It comes and goes in waves I wish my wave was a steady long ride.

Thanks for ur help and ur responses I see you on a lot of threads providing great info.

[sudsmobile]

I wish my phone would ring that much today. People thought it was going to rain today, never did. People think it's going to rain tomorrow, probably won't. When it looks like it's going to rain, it usually rains here at night. It did rain last night. I swear Californians won't wash their car if they see a single cloud in the sky 50 miles away. Looks like rain!

[LSNAutoDetailing]

A successful business takes 5 to 7 years before you're taking a draw. If you're not turning profit now, I wouldn't take on a shop... Rent, utilities, insurance, security, security cameras, parking spots (yup, you'll pay for those too..) and any renovations that has to be done.

My suggestion is to listen to some of the advice given previously, which seems sound. Another thing to do is use a CRM (customer relation database). I use Zoho CRM, the free version. Every customer gets loaded into the CRM. You can create events, etc..

Every customer you have, including new ones, MUST go on a maintenance plan starting today. You have to set that up front, then you determine what your maintenance packages and frequency will be. Set a reminder and then email or call them to schedule their maintenance. Residual business is key! If you have a customer who trades a lease you say "I will transfer your existing maintenance plan to the new lease".

What about referrals??? Always ask the customer that if they appreciated the service they got, can they please provide two names that you can contact. When someone receives good service, they usually like to tell other people.

[sudsmobile]

Good advice above.

I feel extremely lucky to be so far ahead of the curve money wise. I tell my son all the time "do you realize how lucky you are that we started a successful small business?" I think he believes that if you want to make money, you just start a small business and boom you're successful. LOL

We try to get the customers WE WANT on a maintenance plan. We're pretty picky about who we want to take on. We also have a few customers that have put themselves on a maintenance plan. They just call or text every two or three weeks and we plug them in. When I have spare time, I send out hand written postcards thanking them for their business. I'll try to sit down and do 15-20 every time I have a chance. A small investment ($75/1000 plus postcard postage) yields some pretty good return for us. For really good customers or customers that give good referrals, I go to BevMo and purchase a bunch of $12-20 wine on the buy one get one for .05 deal. Then we send those out with a thank you note, so $6-10 per bottle plus a few bucks for shipping locally. That's also well received. Cold calling customers is where I draw the line. I'm great on the phone, but I want you to call me.

[Calendyr]

Is


My basic is a $60 in out for a car. I use a mix of meguiars citrus wash n wax and hyper suds followed by meguiars d156 mixed with either a little onr or Wolfgang the pink stuff. So I sell my $60 with a “spray wax”.

I upcharge $40 to substitute hand wax, $50 substitute hand sealant, $60 to apply c2v3.

I had a lady call today says she wants a “full detail” on a Jeep GC. I tell her it starts at 80 moves to 150 and so on she’s just “oh no no no no no oh man whew that’s expensive” all I say is yea she then asks me how long and what’s included for the 80 I break it down to her she’s reluctant. This is at noon she wants it done today. I usually never do same day details and I let this one walk because of it.

Can’t please everyone. I’m booked Friday-Sunday I’ll make about $420 +\-

I did google adwords with $10 a day budget and google bent me over no lube and stuck a cactus in me.
Facebook I try to pay for likes doesn’t work end up spending like $7 for 1 like and I cancel it.

I come across other detailers suggested posts of their work and like 18 comments asking how much for coating on this coating on that.

Don't pay for likes! Same as Never pay for subscribers on youtube! These are fake accounts, it will dilute your message when you post. They are totally worthless!

If your ads are not working, then the problem is likelly the ad itself or who you are marketing to. Not everyone is your potential client, you have to be very selective in who will get the ad. In the US you have so much more choice than we do in Canada. You can go in the demographics tab and selelect the level of revenue for people you want to market to. In Canada, this is not an option. The closest I can use is education level. So what I do is I choose people with university degrees and college degrees. I block people with high school degree, no degree or still in school. Not as good as targeting people with 100K+ revenue but it increases the chance that the person seeing my ad is making good money at his job. Of course someone with no high school degree can be a multi-millionaire but I will take my chances LOL

Also, if you are gonna advertise, you need to make a lot more money per detail. 100$ details are kind of a waste of time to me. In order to make 500$ I would need to do 5 during a day, that is a lot of running around and talking on the phone to organize. Try to have bigger packages at higher prices. Leave the washes to car washes, go where the money is.

Again, I strongly suggest you join some kind of mentoring program, you would really benifit from having training on the business aspect.