Marketing ideas - Lets brainstorm

[paintlessplus]

The purpose of this thread will be to throw out marketing ideas. They can be proven methods that have worked for you..... or ideas that you may be thinking about trying.

Post your idea and explain why it works, or why you think it may work. You won't need alot of windshield repair experience to participate so newbies and lurkers are encouraged to respond.

Let's try to keep this positive and motivating. We're just looking for fresh ideas......Please no over-analysing - requotes - or negative comments.

O.K I'll start....... This year I am planning on attending some local car shows. I have always enjoyed classic, custom, and antique automobiles. I think that most people that share this interest, would be curious to see exactly how windshield repair works.

My idea is to stake out an area at these shows and give live demonstrations to the crowds that attend. I think that if I offered to kick in some money for trophies ect. to the organizers, I would be welcome to take a space and possibly conduct some business.


Worse case scenario, I educate the public and get my name out there to people who are passionate about good looking cars and car care.

Who's next ??? Bob

[repare-brise]

Good idea bob, here is a rehash of a prevoius post but well worth the read


Dealerships

My favorite approach with dealerships is with the used car sales manager. They are usually sceptical of windshield repair, having had bad experiances in the past. The easiest way around this is the free demo. Before speeking to the manager, walk the lot and pick out a car with a large bull’s eye or combo break, when a sales person approaches you to ask if they can help, say no but that you can help them! Do a great repair, and follow up with some literature aboput your company and services, your card, and a list of the cars that could use your services. Some dealers do repairs in house, this is not as big an obsactle as you may think. Point out that you are a dedicated windshield repair technician(WRT), and that you doing the repairs frees up there technician to do other work. Also by you doing the work they are released form the warrenty obligation.

Another approach for dealers is through the service dept. At a dealer that doesn’t do repairs you can offer your services as a sub contractor on a on call basis or with a regular schedualed appointment.

If you get turned away from a dealer keep going back on a monthly basis, managers and policies change on a frequent basis.

Service shops

The small local garages are a great source of steady income. Their goal is to keep there customers, not send them to another shop for any reason, they risk loosing there customer. My first approach is to ask them if I can give them a $1000.00, they always say yes, and I have there attention. I explain that if they call me just once a week at the end of the year they will have an extra grand. I charge them the same price as the dealers, and they bill there customers cost + $20. With regular visits they will start asking there customers that call to book an oil change “how’s your windshield?” ,then call to book you. I try not to completely book all the hours in the day, so that I can respond to “emergency” calls same day, while the car is at there shop.

Insurance brokers

Insurance brokers can be you best form of advertising, they are paid on a sliding scale that relates to the number of claims VS the number of clients. The less claims their customers make the more money they make, they love windshield repair when done with them in mind. When you are contacted by an end user to get a chip done, it’s your job to educate them. You must tell them that they can pay you $50.00 now or pay nothing now and risk getting an insurance increase of $50-$300 per year for 5 years, any one would be crazy not to pay you now. How does this translate to brokers. If you tell them that you educate their customers to not claim for trivial amounts, they will soon catch on that you will save them money. Also the fact that we do superior repairs to most glass shops, will asssure that their customers will be satisfied with our repairs, and there-fore their broker for refering them to us. One other thing that you must know about the insurance trade is that they are accustomed to pay-backs from the glass shops(legal- no, commun-yes), I don’t subscribe to this method of business, but I will do free repairs for the employee’s of a broker that refers me(think of them as demo’s).

Fleets

Fleets are a good avenue for us as well, they can be slow to adapt, but they eventually come around. For trucking companies, windshields have traditionally been cheap(flat glass), but with the new aerodynamic trucks with curved glass they are finding out that a windshield costs more than $50(more like $5-600.00) and repairs are becomimg more interesting. Trucking companies are big customers for scratch repair, as well as bus companies. By offering one stop shopping for their glass needs(other than replacement) you become a good friend. Another approace for fleets is a service contract, where on a regular basis you visit them, and charge a flat fee for each visit depending on the number of trucks in the fleet. Below is a chart form a french company (http://www.spb2000.com/icontrat.htm) they work on a contract basis with trucking and bus companies, the charge is on a per vehicule, per year basis (if the company has 37 trucks it will cost them 1594.70euros per year and they will get 12 visits from a technician)

#of trucks cost/per truck/per year # visits #of trucks cost/per truck/per year # visits
5 à 10 54,30 euros 9 11 à 15 52,50 euros 9
16 à 20 50,20 euros 12 21 à 25 48,10 euros 12
26 à 30 46,80 euros 12 31 à 35 44,80 euros 12
36 à 40 43,10 euros 12 41 à 45 41,80 euros 12
46 à 50 40,20 euros 12 51 à 60 38,20 euros 12
61 à 70 36,10 euros 12 71 à 80 34,80 euros 12
81 à 90 32,20 euros 12 91 à 100 29,80 euros 12
+ de 100 per estimate




Factories

These are are great source of income that requires some planning and salesman-ship, but more than worth the effort. The procedure starts on a Monday(for example), that day you ask to meet with the person responsible for their liesure committee, or employee group, or union leader. When you meet with this person your objective is to get free reign of their parking lot. The best approach is let some money talk, offer the employee’s a rebate since you don’t have travel expenses between jobs, or the approach that work 90% of the time is to offer $5. per repair to the liesure commity of union. Once you have acces to the lot, on all cars that have a repairable windshield leave a brochure with detail about you, your repairs, the cost(with free if insured , and a short text spelling out why not), and who to give the brochure too. On Wednesday, return to collect the filled out brochures, then contact the insurance companies for those involved to get pre-approved. On friday(weather permitting) show up 45 minuits before the start of the shift, and have all the employee’s whose cars you are repairing park side by side. Start repairing once all the cars have arrived(if you have more than 40 it’s advisable to have an assistant with you to do the invoices, clean the windows, and make-sure all the cars are locked up). After a car is repaired lock the doors and keep the keys. At the end of the shift, return the keys to the customers once they have paid or signed the invoice and your almost done. Give the contact person a cheque with the commision, and if you have some give-aways(hats, pens ect) give them some for their next activity. A few days later send a thank-you letter with some coupons for the employees that were unavailable that day. If the factory has mulitple shifts you can do miltiple visits in a short span of time(no more than 2 weeks total). Be aware that the night shift also needs your services, and if it takes you less than the whole shift to do the repairs catch a nap in your car and set an alarm to wake up 30 min before the end of the shift. Once in a factory visit at least 2 times a year, and make sure they know you are avialable on call at all times for emergencies.


The General Public

These are the hardest customers to get, but in the long run the best(word of mouth is the best form of advertising bar-none) and most profitable. In point form here are a few sugestions.
- Yellow pages
- Coupons, either through direct mail or weekly news paper/ shopping news.
- Flyers, put flyers on cars you can repair indicating the price and time required(a small pictogram of a windshield to indicate the location of the chip is good on the flyers, some people don’t know it’s broken). Don’t put the flyers under the wiper, it’s considered garbage before they read it, instead slip it in the rubber on the drivers window, it’s more personal.
- Charity activities, volenteer(they charge $50.00 per repair and you charge them just your cost $20.00 per repair works well) your services for a local organisation. A tent location in a mall parking lot works great, and for these activities the mall doesn’t charge rent, the papers will advertise for free. The charity people will canvas the parking lot for you. Have an assistant or 2 that day, to clean windows, invoice, chat up customers, help with repairs. Do only chips that day, schedule cracks and scratches for a later date, assuring the customer that the charity will profit from the repair as well. The good will generated from this is astonding, and it’s a repaet occasion every year.
- Tent locations
- Your imagination
- Lost pens, have pens made up and leave them where appropriate(bank line up, restaurants, dealers, ect.
- Offer a lifetime warrenty, with our resins this is not a problem, and is much better than the competitions 30/30(30 feet or 30seconds)
- Have the news paper write an article about you(local person does good, new service, a caution about insurance rates VS claims, the inherant saftey concerns of windshield repacement, ect
- Be visable without being gaudy. Having a rare vehicle is a bonus(I drive a 73 Volvo). Showing up to the Ford dealer with a new Dodge is not good marketing, but showing up in something off the beaten path gets everyone talking, and gets you noticed in the road.
- Have a winter location, arrange with a small garage to rent an un-used bay to do repairs in the winter, when the customer has no garage, and the weather is bad. You can usually rent a space for $10.00 per repair.
- Follow up calls, a few days after the repair have some-one other than the technician that did the job call the customer and ask them about the experience, this re-assures the customer about you commitment to customer service.

Finally have fun and use you imagination and judgement, you can’t beat commun sense. If you would like any of these points elaborated of have other great idea’s to share please contact me.

As Bob said Next

[mr. P's Mobile Detail]

Great thread Bob,

I have a mobile detail business and strated doing windshield repair about 1.5 years ago but haven't been confondent enough to promot windshield repair untill about 6 months ago.

The marketing tool that I have going that gives me the best results ( next to great work and word of mouth and CUSTOMER SERVICE) is putting my business card in as many businesses I can. Just 3 days ago I landed a fleet account of 9 trucks for the gas company here ( which I feel will expand to their units in other towns) for biweekly washing and windshield repair! All because he saw my card at the local janitorial supply store!

mr. P

[Jeremiahswindshieldrepair]

I don't do any form of passive advertising at all. No cards, no advertising, no mailers ... none of that. I do only direct face to face selling .. that way it is up to ME to decide how much I make rather than up to someone else to make the dicision to pick up the phone and call me. On most any given day I can go out and get a new fleet account, not just 1 a week but 1 a day. It's not because I am a super seller either it's because I have a different view on things than most people. What most salespeople do is they set a predetermined number of calls they are going to make in a day and they hurry through them with their eyes closed hoping they don't get hurt too badly and when it is over they have nothing but they feel good that they got it done. They continue their 10 cold calls a day plan everyday and maybe they luck into 1 account a week.

Let me give you the top secret formula to getting accounts in the windshield repair biz .... We aren't in the biz to solicit accounts, we are in the biz to GET accounts. Our job is not complete until we GET the account. Even if we hit 20 doors that day if we get no work we are in the hole an entire days wages. If we need $150 a day to live we now need $300 the next day because after our preset number of 10 cold calls was hit we gave a sigh of relief and went home. There is a smart way of doing this and that is to hit an area not an industry. Many people get an industry in mind that they want to hit and they look up all the companies in that industry that are in the phone book and go to those. The problem with that is one might be 30 miles away from the next one and all their time is spent travelling to go see them. Theway I get at least an account everyday I am out is I hit an area ... I find a business area and don't leave it until I am doing repairs. It works everytime (almost). Coitster does the same thing, you don't see Coitster out spending money on ads and mailers and sitting back waiting for people to call him .. both David and I go out and solicit the heck out of an area and then move on .. I would venture to say that David is skunked about as often as I am and that is not very often. What we do is not magic it is easy for anybody to do the secret trick is not sitting by the phone but getting in front of someone UNTIL YOU DO CHIPS!

All that being said I do have a trick/tip I have just started using. The data isn't all in yet but I did try out my idea of hiring a guy to hold a sign while I stay at my tent. I have a tent at a local gas station on a busy street corner and I wanted to try my handheld sign out there but that means I couldn't be in talking to people at their cars ... so I asked one of the gas station guys if they had a friend who would come for minimum wage cash and hold my sign for a few days.. he did and his friend did come. Yesterday was his first day holding and I got 16 cars that day(in Oregon that is unbelievably good, my best day ever at a tent was 14 before that) out of those 16 I asked 4 of them how they saw that we did chips, they said they saw a guy holding a sign. I paid him maybe $40 for the day and I KNOW I got at least $200 out of it .. and those were just the folks I asked , who knows if some of the others were from him. Today, the second day, I knwo of 2 that came form him but I wasn't asking today. I got 13 cars in today. Both days I rolled in around 11am and left about 5pm. I will never change my opinion that face to face is the ONLY way to run this business ... cards and refferals and word of mouth are fine if you don't need money, but for those of us who need to actually get paid face to face is not an option, it is a requirement.

COITSTER back me up on this .... can I get an AMEN!?

[Jeremiahswindshieldrepair]

I take that back, my record for a Jiffy Lube location was 14 in a day ..my record for a tent spot was 20 and that entire week I averaged 15 a day ... ti was a good week hehe. My record for a day of fleets was just shy of $1000 in a day and that was doing alot of employee vehicles and a few big monthly accounts all on one day.

[Coitster]

Hey Brian,
I sure will back you up on this one. The only way people are going to make it in this business is to go out and find the work. I know its all really nice to go out and buy a manual from someone who has read a good book and wants to teach you all the ways you can get business the passive way like Brian talked about. You know mailers and stuff like that but the problem is we only get a limited amount of money for doing a chip job. I don't want to give away like 70% of my money to advertising.

The best way to go about making this business work is getting off your butt and finding it. Fleets, retail its all easy to get. Of course like Brian I also have bad days...... :::on't everyone Fall over in disbelife at once::... I am glad they don't happen that often but its because I go out and actualy work. I don't work a lot of hours but the hours I do work I make them count.

I love the following phrase and I think about it all the time, and this is truely the way I think about my business. Here is the story.

A reporter was once interviewing the great Wayne Gretskie (hockey player extrodinare) and asked him the secret of his success. How did he become the greatest hockey player in the history of the sport? Wayne got a little smile on his face and responded in a soft voice. "Its really very simple you see... I know that I am going to miss 100% of the shots I never take, so I take everyone that I can."

That story is so true, not just in sports but also in our business. Don't be afraid to ask for business, and if I may be so blunt. If you arn't willing to go do that... you may want to seriously find something else to do.
David
Coitster

[cure4glass]

Brings to mind this quote I read somewhere the other day:
"If you don't go after what you want, you'll never have it. If you don't ask, the answer is always no. If you don't step forward, you're always in the same place."

[DaveC]

All good advice and quite positive/motivational.

Rather than rehashing, I'll throw out another suggestion....

Don't overlook an opportunity to barter your windshield repair services for other goods and services that you can use. Many small business owners are in the same boat as we are, that is, they are seeking more business and more profit but do not have unlimited resources to waste on massive advertising and promotional campaigns.

Two examples/personal experiences:

1. When I lived in Alabama, I owned three horses (yup, three big bellies to fill up and care for. The local feed and farm supply store was family owned/operated and in addition to each family member owning a few vehicles, the business had 5 fertilizer spreader trucks, two pickups used for local deliveries and 5 semis that they used for a short hauling business. I would simply repair any of their windshields, advise as to the total for my repairs and received a store credit for that amount. As well, they would always "talk me up" to their customers. Not a bad deal, an hours worth of work (or so a month), a couple dollars worth of resin and my "Three Stooges" would eat for a month without my having to open my wallet.

2. Moved to Memphis and found a mom/pop owned pizza joint with rather good (and expensive) pizza that I would frequent about once a week. Went to pick up dinner one nite and the owner noticed my graphics, asked me to look at his chip and advise as to cost of repair. I simply told him that my cash rate for his chip was 50 bucks and that I would gladly trade my services for 50 bucks worth of store credit (he also had some really cold draught beer and the deal was done!

Next day he called and asked if I would repair windshields for his delivery drivers in exchange for credit as he thought that it would be a really nice gesture to offer his employees free repairs since they were placing their vehicles in harm's way to deliver his products. My response, "send 'em to me!"

A few (IMO) words of wisdom to consider/remember when bartering:

1. Don't trade for services/goods that wouldn't normally use/need/want.

2. "Apples to Apples!" Your trading partner does not need to know your cost per repair just as you do not need to know their cost per widget. Trade your retail price for services rendered for the equivalent in their retail price.

3. Be courteous to your partner's employees. Just 'cause you can walk into the establishment and "sign" for your widgets without having to pay, does not mean that you can act like you own the place. As well, tip when/as appropriate. Even though I never had to pay (cash) for my pizzas, I always had a 5 dollar bill ready for the driver when he/she delivered my dinner.

[Bois]

This post is directed mainly toward new windshield repair in rural areas.

I am new to windshield repair (in business for just over 3 months) so I don't have a lot of experience to offer. I originally planned my market area around 3 cities - 2 with pop. of ~23,000 (county seats) and 1 with a pop. of 8,000 plus a university with a student enrollment of another ~8,000. I soon learned that; 1) I got no business from students even after having run ads in the student newspaper for 6 weeks (admin would not allow me to walk parking lots), and 2) established competition in the 2 larger cities had car dealers and fleets tied up. I resorted to cold calling (Coitstering) and was able to make a few bucks within the towns but not what I really wanted.

So, I expanded my cold calling to smaller towns (pop 1-2K) and business picked up. I learned that there was a need for windshield repair in these areas. These are areas with farmers, ranchers and people who work in larger towns, and where subdivisions are built on gravel roads. So last weekend I decided to set up a tent (with owners permisssion) at an intersection (traffic light) on a heavily traveled state highway. I was so busy I almost couldn't keep up. More business than in the previous 2 weeks. Location, location, location.

My point is, you have to find a market where there's a need not just a lot of people. People stopping at my tent told me that I should do good (and I did) and that it was a good location. I'll be there next weekend, too.

Oh! Don't pass up small town beauty salons. The atmosphere is friendly and I've gotten good business from them. I've also been asked if I need a good woman .

Don't overlook areas where there's a fishing lake. Lots of people hauling boats at high speeds on gravel roads and distance to get there.

Dale...