Finding clients, need suggestions

Calendyr

Calendyr

New member
Joined
Jun 9, 2013
Messages
3,996
Reaction score
0
Ok guys, I am running out of ideas so I need your advice.

I started my detailing business 10 days ago. So far here is what I did to find clients:

- Contacted 4 used car dealerships
- Sent about 400 emails to people in the process of selling their cars (10,000$ and up in value)
- Talked to everyone I know
- Sent about 1500 emails to the members of my poker league
- Contacted all the car owners groups in my area (only about 5 of them)

With all that work I received only 1 phone call and the guy was not even serious about doing the work.

So now I am not sure what to do next.

Tonight I liked about 100 pages from local groups here on Facebook, Renny Doyle suggests to do that, not sure how that will help...

I also contacted the 2 most popular Radio hosts in the city and offered to do a free detail for them in exchange for them talking about me on their show.

So that's where I am at. I am very disapointed in the non-response. I was expecting it to be hard to find clients at first but I was not expecting it to be impossible.
 
Have you tried car shows and meets I get a lot of customers form them. Most car shows you can set up a both for pretty cheap. Word of mouth is how I get 80% of my customers.
 
Oh, I forgot. I also placed adds on Craig's list and the more popular Kijiji (same kind of site) in our area.

I have not seen any car show yet. Once I find one I will go for sure.

I will have to do some research on how to make a Professional looking both. Any advice?

I understand the power of word of mouth advertising. Thing is, for this to work I need to have actual customers talking about me.
 
Just remember you will get 100 responses that are no or wont respond at all before you get a response or a yes. I know you sent a couple thousand messages/emails but just keep at it and don't give up. My next strategy is going to be professional flyers. FedEx Kinkos offers some good pricing. I design all my own material so all I pay for is printing.

I started with my friend base, did fB advertising and I now have a billboard through Lamar...not the huge ones but they have 8'x12' ones that are perfect for areas with high sitting traffic! Apart from that everywhere I go I leave business cards on all the cars that park around me ;)
 
I have a canopy with my logo on it and a banner for car shows and meets.
 
FullAttn2Detail said:
Just remember you will get 100 responses that are no or wont respond at all before you get a response or a yes. I know you sent a couple thousand messages/emails but just keep at it and don't give up. My next strategy is going to be professional flyers. FedEx Kinkos offers some good pricing. I design all my own material so all I pay for is printing.

I started with my friend base, did fB advertising and I now have a billboard through Lamar...not the huge ones but they have 8'x12' ones that are perfect for areas with high sitting traffic! Apart from that everywhere I go I leave business cards on all the cars that park around me ;)
Click to expand...

What has been your best response so far? I did flyers for my Poker League and that costs a lot of money even though I designed it myself and only had to pay for printing. Well, except for the 3rd time that I did it and paid for pro designer and distributing through the mail. Got 0 response for about 2000 flyers distributed and it cost a lot of money.

I had a billboard add at our local canadian tire, same thing, no response. That cost about 300$ for 6 months.

Business cards, I am tempted to leave one on the driver's door on the window (just above the handle) on nice cars I see like BMWs and Mercedes and the like. I just don't know how owners would react to that. I don't want to insult potential clients by making them feel their car is dirty or something.
 
Have you tried Google Adwords? It drives searches towards your site. Has always been a winner for me.

With the used car dealerships... how did you approach them? What do you mean by contacted? Every time I want to approach a dealership I send them a nice letter with my offered services, brochures, and most importantly, an offer to do a detail for them at NO CHARGE. They WILL take you up on the free detail, even if they don't intend on switching providers. This is your chance to pizazz them with your skills and show them how you can serve their business needs.
 
That's a nice size poker league :dblthumb2:.. 10days you have to give people time and plus we are getting into a holiday weekend.. You should give realtors a call they constantly drive there clients around and like to have there cars cleaned
 
10 days! Rome was not built in a day. All that stuff you are doing is good but you need to give it time. It takes years to build a business.
 
The best results at the moment is fB adverts and word of mouth and my business cards last. I leave them on vehicles just like you have done and usually by the time I check the analytics of my site I notice at least a 3rd that I put out have gone through pages. Some have become clients others return to the site it seems. Just don't throw in the towel!
 
rustytruck said:
10 days! Rome was not built in a day. All that stuff you are doing is good but you need to give it time. It takes years to build a business.
Click to expand...

Wow I missed the 10 day part! He has done a lot in that amount of time. Just keep it up and the phone will start ringing. You will be too busy eventually to market all day so use this time wisely.

Sent from my DROID RAZR using AG Online
 
I overlooked 10 days as well. My first three months I had about 5 new clients excluding friends.
 
You need Online exposer.
Web site.
Blog
Yelp or Canadia Velp? lol
Google ad
Google Map
Facebook
 
Three more months and ill be in (part time) business for a year. All I can say is when you present yourself as a professional who really does enjoy what you do people will see it and flock to you when their time is right.

Here are two things ive learned in that time:
1. The little customers you will have in the beginning go over the top with your work (to deliver the professional mentality to them) and under promise and over deliver everything you do. Do this and they might not be a returning customer but they will talk to people about you and spread your image.

2. Don't waste too much money on advertising as it returns very little customers compared to word of mouth. Your reputation and image take time to spread to your community.
 
I would think word of mouth is huge in the detailing business, both good and bad. See if you can detail some friends and family cars at a lesser rate. Assuming you're going to do an awesome job, have them show and spread the word around to people they know and work with.
 
i would start to clean up that website first.
- pic not aligned , the white front and the front used is weak with black background.
info page seem like a gogle search result page.
3 vids and no pic ? the way you present is how you sell.....
i think your website overall is a weak point of sale. forget about marketing , get that website tip top first.

if you just start the business and expect to be in full price range , than ... no good. keep that price but have an 20-50% off for a month or two, that way you don`t change the prices later, you just offer a low price now because of the start-up discount.
get some cars under your belt, at least some thin list of clients than put your prices to what you have now.
 
TopThatDetail said:
That's a nice size poker league :dblthumb2:.. 10days you have to give people time and plus we are getting into a holiday weekend.. You should give realtors a call they constantly drive there clients around and like to have there cars cleaned
Click to expand...

Good idea. I did not think of realtors.

What do you do, contact realtors firms and setup something with them? There are a few near where I live, so that would be very simple for me to do.

What kind of package do you usually offer them?
 
VP Mark said:
Have you tried Google Adwords? It drives searches towards your site. Has always been a winner for me.

With the used car dealerships... how did you approach them? What do you mean by contacted? Every time I want to approach a dealership I send them a nice letter with my offered services, brochures, and most importantly, an offer to do a detail for them at NO CHARGE. They WILL take you up on the free detail, even if they don't intend on switching providers. This is your chance to pizazz them with your skills and show them how you can serve their business needs.
Click to expand...

Well for all the dealerships, the directors are never available. I have left business cards asking for a callback. None did. I could certainly do what you suggest, I don't mind doing a free detail. I have no brochure though, did not plan on making any. In my experience they are expensive and useless. I guess I could put something together specifically for dealerships. Although money there is supposed to be very bad. So I am not sure I should go through so much effort... I need to upgrade my Equipment. I know dealerships pay little so that means I have to be able to do the work fast. My DA (Meguiar's) is just too slow at correcting paint. I think if I want dealership work I will need to get a Flex or a Rupes at least or a rotary.
 
Cosmin said:
i would start to clean up that website first.
- pic not aligned , the white front and the front used is weak with black background.
info page seem like a gogle search result page.
3 vids and no pic ? the way you present is how you sell.....
i think your website overall is a weak point of sale. forget about marketing , get that website tip top first.

if you just start the business and expect to be in full price range , than ... no good. keep that price but have an 20-50% off for a month or two, that way you don`t change the prices later, you just offer a low price now because of the start-up discount.
get some cars under your belt, at least some thin list of clients than put your prices to what you have now.
Click to expand...

Ok, picture alignment is something I noticed. Will fix that tomorrow.

Not sure what you mean with the front? What front?

Info page layout is something I have been struggling with. I just can't find a way to make it pleasing so that is why I went with a simple layout. What do you suggest? Adding pictures?

Ya my website doesn't reflect the special but I have a 25% discount till November. Will need to add that tomorrow when I work on the website.

I think videos are Worth a 1000 pictures. You disagree with that? I have an other video project I have not completed yet, these things take several hours to do so I am always struggling to complete them.

I have not taken pictures of cars I did not think were Worth seeing. So I don't have that many videos and pictures yet. I did videos of cars that were in really bad condition and showed good improvement. I see no reason to shoot a video of a car that looks like new and then looks like new but clean.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top