How do I get business?

[hls2010]

Hi everyone,

I have only being doing this for a few months and love delta kits headlight restoration kit. Now I have my website, facebook, tweeter, business cards, liability insurance, etc. I have pass out business cards at parking lots to the vehicle that i see that need the service. I place the card on the drivers side window. I have a really nice website and business cards, but I cant even get a single call. I had my price originally at $99.95 for the par and changed it to starting at $79.95 and still not a single call. What do you guys do to generate business and how much do you charge? I know this business is mostly referrals, but it's frustrating not to get a call. Any input would be greatly appreciated. Thanks

[Brent Deines]

The two things that have worked best for us is a new sign on our building, and referrals. We print brochures that we leave at businesses around town and ask them to hand them out with their name on them. Sometimes we also have a discount sticker or coupon on the brochure to give the customer an incentive to hang on to it, but what makes this work is that we also give a referral fee to the company that have them the brochure.

The building sign obviously will not work for you if you are a mobile technician, but good vehicle graphics has had the same effect for me when I did a lot of mobile work.

I really thought that everyone would be excited about the referral program, and it has been effective for us, but I am constantly amazed at how many people will still turn up their nose at this opportunity, especially in this economy. If anyone tells me that they will pay me for doing nothing more than handing out a brochure for a service that I believe in and I'm all over it, but most people just don't have any ambition. Still, there are a ton of businesses out there, and they don't have to be automotive related, so we have found a few that get very excited about getting a check every month for doing almost nothing. Some are skeptical at first but once you deliver the first check they know it is for real and they begin to see the potential. That's when they start actually selling for you rather than just allowing you to leave brochures at their business.

To make this work you need to give a pretty decent referral fee, at least until you get them hooked, so you have to make sure you don't start with two low of a retail price. I don't know about anyone else but I don't lose too many jobs due to my price, but if I set my price too low I can't afford to promote or advertise my service, making it much more difficult to build my business.

I don't know how many businesses are in our town of 150,000 people, but I would say they are in the thousands. That's thousands of potential sales reps for my business. My biggest problem is that since I also sell products to local businesses I have to be careful not to step on too many toes. In fact we only got to call on local businesses for a few days before a customer complained and we decided it was not fair to aggressively compete with them. Still, in that three days of cold calling we picked up several business willing to pass out the brochures for us, and started seeing results within a week or two. I can only dream about how many referrals I could get if I spent every spare moment calling on other businesses, which is what I would do if I was still running a mobile service and not selling products.

Smart managers and small business owners can split the referral fee with their employees to give them an incentive to participate. If I still had my glass shop and you were giving me $20 for every referral I would give my installers and my office staff $10 for every referral I get because of their efforts. What employee would not like to get an extra $20-$100 check every month just for explaining to a customer the benefits of headlight restoration? You don't have to pay $20 by the way, that is just an arbitrary number to illustrate a point.

I don't know if it will work for everyone, but it costs little to try and it has worked well for us considering how few businesses we have called on. If there are only 1000 businesses in your town and only 10% of those are willing to hand out your brochures, and each of those only hands out 10 brochures a week, and only 1% of those who take a brochure actually have you restore their headlights, you get 10 referral jobs a week. Now what if you have have 10,000 businesses in your town or some of the businesses hand out 10 brochures a day? How many cars does a busy car wash see in a day? I get very excited about the potential of this plan but the reality is that it all depends on you getting out there and talking to as many people as you can every day about what you do, and convincing them that they can make money by helping you make money.

There are a lot of people who are far better at marketing than I am so hopefully this is only one of many ideas that will help you get the ball rolling. If you want to discuss what we have done in more detail don't hesitate to give me a call. I don't really like to discuss $$ too much on the forum.

[Brent Deines]

The last few posts were moved to the windshield repair forum under the same topic title.

[Ricersux]

I have a referral program with a downloadable PDF referral card on my website and I offer $20 but I have still yet to get people to use it. I'm not really sure why people aren't taking advantage of it...I mention it to every customer but no results yet. I have NOT tried the referral program with fleets yet but once the weather breaks a little more I will start pounding the streets harder!!

[t4k]

I have found that the general public is most concerned with their car when they buy it and when they sell it. I do more with used car dealers than the general public because of this fact. If the owner of the car is passing it down to a child or sibling they become concerned about the safety issue at that time and they will then spend the money on it. It seems to be one of those "out of sight out of mind" phenomenons.

[roy]

what type of paper do you guys use for the brochures?
i checked on vista print,i was thinking in do nice brochures,but to spencive for me,and
i was wonder if i just use regular paper will be ok,so i can make them on kenkos,for cheap
roy

[Brent Deines]

Vista Print is usually pretty inexpensive, but you can go to Kinko's and have them show you sample brochures done on different types of paper to see which you like best. You want your brochures to look professional but you don't need to break the bank on expensive paper to do that. You can also buy the paper and print them yourself but depending on your printer they may not look as good and could end up costing you more.

[Frank EU]

roy:
I would go to a local printer shop, they have books with paper-samples to choose from.
You also will get a proper advice and be supporting a local business.
Your local printer will have customers with cars too and may be able to help you.
Life is good.

[roy]

thanks guys good advises like allways
roy