Very inconsistent

R

RiverCityAutoSpa

New member
Joined
Aug 6, 2016
Messages
115
Reaction score
0
I’ve been detailing for over 5 years now and been running my own mobile show for almost 2 years now. It does and has paid the bills but it’s so inconsistent from week to week. One week I’ll be booked up and the next week I’ll have nothing. I used to keep customers in my contacts and contact them once a month had passed to see if their interested again. I stopped doing that because I felt like 1. If they want my services they have my number and 2 I don’t want to seem like I’m asking them for money.

Ive made it with 1 customer that is weekly maybe 2x a week on his vehicles and he always pays full price. The others are like soccer moms with a Yukon xl they only get done every other month or quarterly.

Im thinking about getting a shop but I would hate to see it sit empty for periods of time.

Is there a way to make this more consistent?

I have a Facebook I get no new customers or local interactions on and I have a Instagram
i have google mybusiness and my numbers are always in the green
sometimes I run an adwords or others I’ll run a Facebook promo.
 
Before jumping into a shop situation which will add loads of overhead, try getting involved with a local HOA. One of my customers posted a review of my work on their HOA FB page and I have gotten a ton of calls (which turned into 2 immediate jobs and 2 future dates. I basically spaced all of those bookings out so that regardless of any other bookings that I get I will have those dates locked up and can add other jobs within that community on the same days without adding a ton of travel. As far as promotions or discounts, The only things I offer are referral discounts when repeat customers send me work, military/veteran discount, multiple car (same day) discount and senior discount. All of these are small discounts but the average customer loves to see a number come in lower than what you originally quoted or what they paid for a previous service. I wouldn't just start running promos and lowering your prices because that leads to an overall decline in what you're getting for your time and work.
 
garyg7133 said:
Before jumping into a shop situation which will add loads of overhead, try getting involved with a local HOA. One of my customers posted a review of my work on their HOA FB page and I have gotten a ton of calls (which turned into 2 immediate jobs and 2 future dates. I basically spaced all of those bookings out so that regardless of any other bookings that I get I will have those dates locked up and can add other jobs within that community on the same days without adding a ton of travel. As far as promotions or discounts, The only things I offer are referral discounts when repeat customers send me work, military/veteran discount, multiple car (same day) discount and senior discount. All of these are small discounts but the average customer loves to see a number come in lower than what you originally quoted or what they paid for a previous service. I wouldn't just start running promos and lowering your prices because that leads to an overall decline in what you're getting for your time and work.
Click to expand...

I stopped giving discounts it’s full price from about a month ago and on. I do offer multicar same location like 5-10 off package. My basic is $60 for cars $80 trucks suv next up is 120/150.

I’m in like 6-8 different neighborhood password locked community pages. I get quite a few from that. I’ve done nice cars 2 488’s and a 458 often. Usually do higher end cars.

I guess they’re talking just not enough. One week I make 300 and the next week 2200 when will it even out
 
You can look up car clubs in your area and try to meet with the presidents of the clubs.. I've got a friend who would be booked solid year round doing ceramic coatings from doing this. He also paid to be sponsore some of the Facebook groups which allowed to advertise on their pages. He has a Camaro ZL1 so he belonged to a couple of the Camaro groups in this area. I don't know where you are, here we have warm weather year round pretty much. You should be able to make 50.00 an hour doing coatings. Get the right kind of clientele and you can make more than that per hour. Also a lot of people who pay for coatings don't mind paying for maintenance washes.
 
I was in your shoes for a few years. For me it was difficult because I had a part time job that took a lot of my time and sometimes people would call while I was working and I could not anwer the phone. In my experience only about 20% of people leave message to call them back. Then last year I decided to quit my part time job and focus on detailing. I really improved the number of details I was doing but I still had weeks with no jobs.

This year I have started using Facebook advertizing. I have been crazy busy since May. It is just starting to slow down now. So if you have not started advertizing yet, do it. Make sure you have a good website first so you can send people there with your ads. What I do is make a focus offer for something I want to sell, and narrow the ad delivery to people I know can afford my services and might want to have the service performed on their cars. I use a 5$/day budget and make the ad last for a week. So it's not expensive and it keeps my schedule book full. Also, since I focus on coating jobs, every job I do is very lucrative. This year 80% of the jobs have been coatings, full details and Paint correction jobs as where in the past years I did have about 50% of my clients wanting basic details or such.

If you have not done so, you should think about joining a mentoring program. The one I am in is Detail Mentor (search on facebook to find it) by Mark Barger from Visual Pro Detailing. I learned a few things from him regarding coatings, and a lot from him regarding advertizing. He covers pretty much every aspect of running a succesful detail company. I know that there are several of these programs available, I have not tried any other so I don't know if they are better or worse but I am sure any of them will help you greatly. No matter how good you are, there are things you can learn from someone else. Also it help with focusing your efforts in the right places.
 
Calendyr said:
If you have not done so, you should think about joining a mentoring program. The one I am in is Detail Mentor (search on facebook to find it) by Mark Barger from Visual Pro Detailing. I learned a few things from him regarding coatings, and a lot from him regarding advertizing. He covers pretty much every aspect of running a succesful detail company. I know that there are several of these programs available, I have not tried any other so I don't know if they are better or worse but I am sure any of them will help you greatly. No matter how good you are, there are things you can learn from someone else. Also it help with focusing your efforts in the right places.
Click to expand...

I second this. Mark and I have been working together for the past few months and he's a great guy who is very helpful. I can't say enough good things about him and his mentoring service.
 
RiverCityAutoSpa said:
I’ve been detailing for over 5 years now and been running my own mobile show for almost 2 years now. It does and has paid the bills but it’s so inconsistent from week to week. One week I’ll be booked up and the next week I’ll have nothing. I used to keep customers in my contacts and contact them once a month had passed to see if their interested again. I stopped doing that because I felt like 1. If they want my services they have my number and 2 I don’t want to seem like I’m asking them for money.

Ive made it with 1 customer that is weekly maybe 2x a week on his vehicles and he always pays full price. The others are like soccer moms with a Yukon xl they only get done every other month or quarterly.

Im thinking about getting a shop but I would hate to see it sit empty for periods of time.

Is there a way to make this more consistent?

I have a Facebook I get no new customers or local interactions on and I have a Instagram
i have google mybusiness and my numbers are always in the green
sometimes I run an adwords or others I’ll run a Facebook promo.
Click to expand...

I've never had a $300 week, but I'm feeling you. It's either $2k and I can't fit another job on the schedule, or I'm trying to make jobs from thin air. I always try to figure out what's going on and frankly, I think this time of year, with the 4th in the middle of the week, alot of people are on vacation. Plus, it's been really hot here. I tend to think when it's really hot, people don't want to schedule a detail because that means they might have to leave the house for 10 minutes to talk to you. LOL

Luckily, my son has been on vacation for 9 days, so I don't have to pay him. I did $1400 by myself last week, which is a really slow week for us. I've done $400 this week, didn't work at all yesterday, and I have maybe another $600 on the schedule. Hopefully, it will pick back up. I'm somewhat grateful, being by myself until Thursday, that I haven't been slammed.
 
Work on joining auto enthusiast groups, forums, attend the events and really get out there. "earn" the right to post on say a specific forum and hit up their detail section. Have your customers vouch for you there and welcome you in. I don't own a BMW or a Porsche but I'm on various forums by invite and my customers end up posting their cars there for all to see and I get word of mouth only business. Customers who attend cars and coffee are great too. Locally, I donate some prizes for Cars and coffee related events and shows too. Always helps that I can stack the deck with my customer cars in hopes they win :) I do 1-2 cars per weekend and have been farming out a 1-2 per week for the past 2 months to a local fellow that I know and trust to do good work and mentor as we go. This is a side gig for me only but it's easily something I'm going to push into more and perhaps work to manage more than do.

I agree on the coatings piece. I do nothing but any more. Tomorrow is my second low-end basic clean up package for $350 that will involve an AIO likely D166 on a vehicle that is being sold. The rest have been coatings and decent size correction package.
 
So I live theoretically in a really good wealthy area. By I’ve only had lived here for less than 7 months. So I originally had kind of went through what is described here. Partly, people ARE on vacation.

A main part of my problem is what Mark from Visual Pro had mentioned a couple of years ago to me.

“Part of a failing business is obscurity.” — Mark

If they don’t know you , they won’t use you. So because I am new it the area, I knew right away this was going to be a challenge. In order to build up trust fast, I decided to do one thing well, FIRST before I can move to the next marketing effort. And that is building up my Google presence.

I have only been in business professionally since late 2015. Since then, I decided to work STRONG at my ‘Google it!’ game. What does that mean?

I don’t know about you, but anytime you need to know something online (as far as I can tell), the first instinct is ‘Google it!’

What did I do? I take in AS MUCH GOOGLE REVIEWS as possible.

From then till now, I proudly have 29 Five-Star Google reviews. It doesn’t sound like a lot. But in detailing world, it’s like having 300 restaurant reviews on Yelp.
you
EVERY SINGLE phone call, success or not, I ask them, “To keep track of my marketing effort, may I ask how did you hear about me?”

Them— “I Googled Car Detailing and you came up first!”

NOTICED: In my area, people top search phrase is car detailing. Just FYI...

Bottom line?

I hate being the new guy in the area, but ALL my successful calls had something to do with my reviews. I know this because I ask and they answer.

My newest client Google searched ‘the guy off of exit 7’ for his phone number and saw that he had zero reviews and that I have reviews overall. As a result? 7 cars!!!

Another guy because of Google reviews contacted me last night. The result? 3 cars. Not crap cars either. Like brand new 2018 cars. I’m not trying to be showy. My point is new car owners then to want it ALL at the beginning even if it means paying more.

Anyway, happy reading. And thanks for reading.


Dan Tran
www.thebuffingmoose.com
 
my thing was i had a full time job and quit cold turkey to detail about 3 years ago. its been going well but ive had a lot of unexpected expenses come about lately. bought a boat( cant stop breaking out another thousand for it), dog had a mast cell tumor surgery followed by an acl surgery. I went and got a part time cooking job locally at night to keep some consistent cash flow.

I live in a very wealthy area. Dont mean to sound rude or whatever it just is what it is ive never done a honda accord or a toyota camry. its usally a benz gls or a yukon xl to Ferrari 488 spiders and range rover svautobiography g63 etc.

ive found a lot of these cars are leases. My number 1 customer has a 18 rover and 18 650i, he gets them done weekly but could care less for a wax.

coatings ive done 3 on customer vehicles and 3 on my vehicles, have 2 coating jobs booked in august for the same guy.

Google has been my go to for advertising. I do have a website. My google i think has 8 reviews.

i operate under Ken the Detailer if anyone cares to check it out.

Ive done the CEO of avis, CEO of united airlines, Managing director of UBS, few former NFL players. I cant get them to commit though, usually just basic insides and out.
 
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.
 
sudsmobile said:
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.
Click to expand...
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.
 
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.
 
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.
 
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.
 
sudsmobile said:
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.
Click to expand...

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.
 
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!
 
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.
 
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.
 
RiverCityAutoSpa said:
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.
Click to expand...

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.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top