Survey: 47 Detailing Estimates

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. The results:

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.

Read the entire survey, including our methods and data table, here: Auto detailing pricing survey

Turning $40 into $150 with Google AdWords

"Early to bed, early to rise, work like hell, and advertise." Laurence J. Peter Author of the "Peter Principle."

Search advertising gives small detailers the reach of BIG detailers.

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 car detailing 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.  

Survey: Use your SmartPhone for business?

Are reconditioners using their Smartphones for business?

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.

Original article on smartphone use among detailers.

Survey: Detail for Car Dealers?

The question of whether or not to service car dealers is a difficult one for me. On one hand, dealerships always have vehicles that need some kind of detailing work, and so can keep a reliable detailer busy. This is sometimes critical for detail shops that keep a small staff. You just can't afford to lose any employees during the slow times - because you're going to need them come summer or spring. A steady flow of work keeps good folks around for the more lucrative seasons of retail work through the detail shop storefront. The main drawback to working with dealerships? They want to pay less for your service.

Half of detailers won't service car dealers

I wanted to find out what other detailers thought about working for dealerships, so I asked them through a couple of online forums. “To be or not to be” a dealership detail man is a hot topic for lots of experienced detailers, and lots of them have interesting opinions on the matter. Only one of the twelve detailers polled reported that they worked exclusively with dealerships. On the other end of the spectrum, there were three detailers who reported that they never worked with dealerships, but for different reasons. I asked detailers whether or not they regularly accepted detail work from dealerships. See the results below.

Average price to dealers:  $160

Some detailers responded with specific prices they charged for dealership work. The amount charged varied widely - one detailer charged $100 per car and another $180. Perhaps the best way to establish a price point is to find out what dealerships are paying - by asking nearby detail shops, not necessarily the dealerships - and then run the numbers on what would be an economical, similar price for you to charge.