gold cards

[bullseyemaster]

I have been trying something new when i had my biz cards made up i had them make 500 gold card and 500 reg cards. i had a part that says rep# on the back of the gold card and what i do is every time i do a wsr i hand one to my cust and ask the if they want to make a little money? most say yes so i use their initals and write it in the rep line on the back of the card i give out 5-10 depending if they really act like their interested in passing out cards or not. i tell them if some1 uses their card and rep# that they passed out they get 20.00 cash i write the persons name and rep# in a book and i send them a 20.00 for every cust they steer to me so far its working good i got 5 gold card back last week so far so good. its really nice to have our custs look for work for you. free marketing kinda

[Frank EU]

So, you are giving away $20 per repair?
Wow. You should look at the below figures.....:

If you are getting $40 for your (not insured) work, your $20 is 50%
If you are getting %50 for your work, your $20 is 40%
If you are getting $60 for your work, your $20 is 33%

Are you Santa?
To me, the program doesn't look good at all. In fact: it makes no sence.
I would rather be doing ABSOLUTELY NOTHING than to be working at too low rates.
JMHO

[screenman]

I have had my business cards printed on gold plastic for over 20 years and I still see some of the original one's in customers folders, gold has value even the colour gold gives of a look of importance and is very unlikely to ever get thrown out with the rubbish.

As for giving away money, no way, my customers refer me because I make friends with them and sell them a good product in terms of quality of repair and service, these new friends like to refer me to their old friends and the circle grows. If you are giving those large amounts of cash away make sure you account for it as an expense, if you are able to, other wise you will be paying tax on it as well.

[candyman]

I have found $5 for a referral works very well. I also log it on my expense sheet as a referral. Unless that individual earns more than $600 in referral fee's, I don't need to do a 1099 on that person. I would not survive on the prices I charge to pay $20, not even for HLR. A special card such as the gold card makes sense other wise. I do offer a Bonus of $25 for 5 referals. Looking at ad dollars, its a better investment to pay a customer for the referals. I am planning some low cost radio spots for my HLR, just to let people know I am here, and that cloudy headlights can be restored. Almost every owner of a high dollar vehicle that I restored has stated they were told by a dealer the lights had to be replaced. Iam talking about Lexus, Infiniti, BMW, Mercedes etc... Word of mouth is working well, and when I ask how they found me, I send that person $5. I just orderd some telephone shaped, multicolor letter openers with my business information on them. It worked well, with magnetic calenders for my wife's business. Have a nice day!

NWRA Certified
DeltaKits Trained & Certified

[just chippen away]

I started out giving referrals out years ago on W/S repairs, I would send them a check even without letting them know there was a referral fee and I had all the checks returned. They all said they do not refer me for the money, It is for the work I perform.
When I started doing H/L's, I was doing 25. referrals and only one guy was taking the money, He did need it, I offered him a sales job but then found out he has a special needs girl that 24 / 7 attention and could not do it.

90% of the people will refer you because you do a good job. 10% will only do it for the money, you could do the worst job ever, but they are in it for the money...

Referrals are tax deductible, but not worth taking it off the top end when you look at it at the end of the year on how much you spent.
Total spent of referrals /divide/ by how much your average charge is = How many jobs did you give away.

That could be another injector, Insurance policy, or what ever you need or want for your business.

[bullseyemaster]

how is it that im losing money by handing out a 20 for every gold card referl that gets returned. when i have people looking for chips for me. i dont see how its any difference than paying the yellow to put your # phone book or using ad words on google. i do a wsr for an ins customer hand them 5 gold cards ask them to hand them out to people they see with stone chips i dont pay them for their chip only referls. i get all of them back i pay 20 per gold card on ins work and im losing money how do you figure. i just did 5 more chips than i would have + i just added more word of mouth advertising. heres my figure 55.00 for the chip repair 20 for the referl 2.50 to the 3rd party biller still leaves me with around 28.00 witch is still not bad its not like im doing 20 gold cards a week its maybe 5 tops. how many chips do you think safelite has to do in order to pay off the eric chimerical 2 million 5 million who knows but word of mouth pay the best. how many demo chip repairs have you done to land that giant fleet account. no one cant tell me they never gave away a chip repair. in this economy you do what it takes. i undersand the figures that were put up i also did the figures without the extra referls and it wasn't as good

[screenman]

So if I am correct you are happy to do a repair for $28, if so I would suggest you are totally undervaluing yourself. The time spent in my opinion on earning such a small amount would be better spent on pursuing sales that you do not have to pay commission on. Mind you not everybody enjoys the selling part of business so I suppose some people are happy to pay others to do it for them, just seems way to much for me.

[theglasstech]

I have to agree with screenman here. I think that's a great gig you have going on there but $20 does sound awful steep of a referal to pay out. I love advertising and don't mind apying for it if the return is going to be there. But if I knew that my advertising would equal out to that kind of percentage I would never do it. I don't mean to sound senecal here but you also have to factor in resin, wear and tears on kit, drill bits, wear and tear on the vehicle you use, gas and other things you have in that repair. I figure by the time you factor all that in you in up making about as much as the guy you paid to get you the referal. I only say this because when you look at it that way, then you can see that it's to much. There isn't a company that I know of out there who pays their salesman as much as they make on a job when they are doing the work. Your sales guy just made as much as you did without doing anything but telling someone about you. While you had to do all the work and have all the expense. Just my two cents worth though.

[screenman]

From a distant memory I seem to remember that my overheads used to run at about 30% of my invoiced income when all I did was mobile WSR. Then of course there was tax etc. to come out of the remaining 70%. I would be very interested to know other peoples figures, I would guess a lot will not have a clue.

[bullseyemaster]

ok first off its a ploy to get more traffic its not like i give every1 20 its on about 5-10% of what i do. i do on avg. 25-30 repairs a week my avg is $55.00 a repair at 30 repairs a week is $1650.00 out of thoes 30 repairs i handed out 20 biz cards i get 7 back so i add 7 more repairs so now i add 28X7 196.00 so 1650 + 196 =1846 cost me 140 to make an extra 196.00 140.00 is like doing 3 demo repairs a week trying to get fleet accounts. i don't have anymore ware and tare on my equipment than i would trying to get fleet accounts. ill concede 20 may be to much but i live in a hard market during hard times 1846X52 weeks is 95,992 yearly income isint bad a 20 here and their dosent hurt that bad either