Survey: 47 Detailing Estimates
Saturday, February 18, 2012 at 12:10PM 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
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