Tom Franklin (98)
Tom Franklin has been a sales and marketing consultant for forty years, specializing in automotive and auto body. He has written numerous books and provides marketing solutions and services for many businesses. He can be reached at (323) 871-6862 or at
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By Tom Franklin
Last year, as summer approached, I wrote an article about holding an event in the summer to bring in new business. I was pleased recently to learn of an event put on by a shop in my area. "POWER BABES," a professional womens' networking group in the vicinity of the shop, meets regularly to explore and discuss issues of interest and importance to the members. The location of the meeting is different each time, and often held at a place of business of interest to the members. The marketing lady at the host shop learned of this group of about forty women and invited them to hold their next meeting at the shop.
It’s been said that a picture is worth a thousand words. Yet, with today’s digital cameras in cell phones, even, pictures are worth less than a dime a dozen. Yesterday’s promotional pieces, flyers, brochures and even website pages, all may have nice photos, but people are less impressed with them these days. To really make an impact on a potential source of referral business, you need to get them to come to the shop and see the real thing. One live contact is easily worth more than a thousand pictures.
To view a PDF of this article please click HERE.
With spring arriving, this could be a good time to spruce up the shop and push for some live visits by referral coordinators you’ve been chasing. Over the winter some aspects of your shop may have fallen into disrepair or worse. Getting an entire shop showcase-ready is generally not an easy task. Spare parts storage and the paint mixing room may have become major eyesores. Walk through the shop and imagine you have an insurance executive or dealership owner walking along with you. Try looking at your place from his or her eyes and take some notes. These could be the improvements that make the difference in how your shop is valued as a place to refer customers.
A few standard interior-decorating measures can make a major difference in how your shop is perceived. If you often have spare parts or some other eyesore in your office or waiting area, a useful device to hide that kind of thing is the room divider. These are generally just a couple of free-standing 2’x 6’ or 3’x 6’ panels hinged together, but depending on how they’re painted or covered with fabric or used to display promotional posters, they can be a significant visual asset in an otherwise drab room. If the office or waiting area is uncomfortably small, a mirrored wall gives an illusion of larger space and also reflects light to brighten a dimly lit room.
Although a body shop is in the automotive painting business, it’s surprising how many shops fail to adequately paint their buildings, driveways and equipment. Just painting the spray booth doors makes them look newer and better maintained at a glance. The same is true of the paint storage room. Older equipment like ancient frame machines and welding equipment can be spruced up quickly with a coat of the metallic paint you use on vehicles every day. Dealership shops are more likely to have identifying signs over bays indicating body work, frame work, welding, etc.
Dealership driveways also usually have painted lines to direct customers to various parts of the facility. But an independent shop can add a perspective of professionalism by adding a few signs around to designate how various bays are used and perhaps some painted lines on driveways. These simple cosmetic measures will make a major difference to visitors accustomed to well organized and generally very clean offices.
While these improvements might be made to impress an insurance executive or dealership owner, other changes might be added for more specific visitors. Some shops have begun to take advantage of the “baby boom generation” achieving the status of “seniors,” and looking for ways to alleviate physical problems that can come with aging. Special handicap access elements around the shop can assist an older person taking a shop tour and the shop could profit from offering and installing handicap-assistance devices like power running boards. Driving schools have begun to multiply as public schools drop driver training classes. Some shops invite student drivers in to look at heavy hits to alert them to what can result from hazardous driving. A shop showcase might add a display to that effect. Also a shop that caters a bit to mothers and parents should consider adding some child-entertainment items that could be emphasized when showing a mother or parent around the shop. This kind of convenience can make a major difference when a prospect is comparing competitor shops in your area.
While all of these improvements would significantly help sell your shop to prospective referral source visitors, the impact on shop personnel shouldn’t be overlooked. Sprucing up a work bay and perhaps making some improvement in the appearance of standard worker clothing tells a technician his or her work is valued and especially appreciated at this time. This same technician is likely to also present a better P.R. image when people are coming through on a tour. Efficiency studies have shown that personnel in general perform better in well organized, attractive spaces. You may have started out to simply make improvements to impress anyone coming through on a shop tour, but you could also be pleasantly surprised to find that your improvements have reduced cycle time and made a major difference in your financial bottom line.
This has been a year of extreme weather. Recently, fierce winds blew down hundreds of trees in one area I’m familiar with. Many of those trees damaged vehicles parked on the street or in driveways and those damaged vehicles wound up in a local collision center to be repaired. Those local shop owners obviously were pleased to get the business, but only one that I know of took the time to get some photos and get the story to a local newspaper to get the name of their shop in print. Perhaps if they had acted a bit faster, they could also have gotten their shop featured along with some of the TV news coverage of the wind damage, but any coverage is better than none. To take full advantage of a situation like this requires a real nose for news. Most shop owners are too busy taking care of business to constantly ask, “Is something happening that might get us free publicity and our name and picture in the news?”
To view a PDF of this article please click HERE.
The amazing thing is every shop owner, manager or estimator is presented with potential news stories most every day. Many vehicle owners who bring a crashed vehicle in for repair have a story to tell. And many of those stories are bizarre and often funny. If the customer is willing to have the story told— and better yet if he or she has some photos—there could be some great material to pass along to the evening news or the morning paper.
I recently received an advertising booklet in the mail. Most of the ads in the booklet were for local cleaners and various personal and home services. There was also one ad for a collision repair shop, but the shop was located many miles from my mail service where I received the booklet.
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The shop owner had obviously been pressured into buying an ad that was being delivered far out of his effective neighborhood. And even worse than that, it was buried in a booklet that is mostly read by housewives looking for household deals at local businesses. The shop’s ad didn’t even have a coupon that might have gotten at least a couple of people to notice it. The odds of the shop getting a single job out of this ad were probably as remote as the chance of winning the Publisher’s Sweepstakes.
Unfortunately, even if this ad had appeared in a newspaper or other widely read publication, it was still unlikely to get many people reading it. There were several reasons for this. First of all, most of the print was too tiny for mature readers to read without a magnifying glass. In a space three and a half inches wide by one-inch deep, fifty-two words were crammed closely together. The shop owner had probably provided the advertiser with a list of services he wanted included in the ad. Ad sales people just want to sell the ad. They’re practically never professional ad design people, so they’ll cram anything into the ad the buyer says he wants.
There could have been more space for showing the shop’s many services if half the ad hadn’t consisted of a huge photo of a late model new car.
I recently noticed a shop that had several excellent repeat business sources lose one of them—a major dealership —to a competitor. When I inquired about how this could happen, I learned that the shop’s owner and manager were busy focusing their full attention on saving one of their insurance DRPs. During this time, they somewhat neglected that major dealership source. This gave the competitor an opening to jump in and grab that business. I’m sure that in retrospect, this shop owner realized he should have assigned someone—or hired someone —to maintain giving that dealership all of the attention they were accustomed to receiving.
To view a PDF of this article please click HERE.
Is it possible to have too many irons in the fire? Is a shop better off just concentrating on a limited number of sources so each can be given abundant attention?
Let me illustrate with a metaphor. One of the exciting technologies of “the space age” is the development of lasers (L-ight A-mplified by S-timulated E-mission of R-adiation). A beam of light is concentrated to such a fine point it can cut through metal. Think about for the intensity of concentrated attention needed to hold onto a major referral source.
On the opposite end of the light concentration spectrum is the flashlight. It casts a broad beam that encompasses a wide area ahead of the light, but the intensity of the light is fairly weak. It’s just strong enough for the human eye to get a general view of the area ahead. Marketing concentration can fall across a similar spectrum: intense concentration vs. a wide, less effective, general approach.
Recently I was in a shop where business was kind of slow. And yet a couple of estimators were sitting back “shooting the bull.”
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Although some shops employ a marketing person, the fact is the estimators are still the real sales personnel in a body shop. In the past, all most estimators had to do was write an estimate when a car comes in and then sell the customer on leaving the keys and the car to be repaired. In these difficult times, few shops can afford that kind of limited job description for their primary selling people.
From what I’ve been able to see, a major failing in ineffective estimator salespeople is inertia and reluctance to reach out for new business. More progressive shops are moving away from the old model where the estimator simply sat around and waited for a vehicle to come in to estimate.
Estimators are selected for their ability to communicate to a specific marketing target. One shop always has one estimator who can speak Spanish and another who can speak an Asian dialect that’s common in the area. Also one estimator is dedicated to write estimates at a local dealership, and each estimator is assigned to specialize in one of the shop’s DRP relationships. But is this enough to bring in new business?
These days going to the movie theater can be very expensive. Theater owners have come to realize that former patrons now get their films online from services like Netflix. To compensate for the loss of these customers, they have begun to add luxury amenities like select seating and personalized service in the auditorium. And of course the price of a ticket has skyrocketed, in my area to around $14.00 for a ticket.
To view a PDF of this article please click HERE.
Sadly, in this economy, lower-income car owners have also migrated to cheaper paint and body providers. Shops like “One Day Paint and Body” are getting much of the business that quality shops used to get to keep their technicians busy and keep paint purchase volume up.
It may be time for shop owners to take a hint from theater owners and more thoroughly focus on higher income prospective customers. Many shops already do aim their marketing at higher end European vehicles like BMWs and Mercedes, but the range of vehicle choices has also increased greatly. The Korean automakers have begun to claim a larger share of the market. Like theater owners, a shop owner has to ask, “What special amenities will get all better quality car-buyers to choose my shop over any other?”
Many shops have already focused on pampering their customers. They go beyond proving a rental car to taking the rental car to the customer and having a lock box for keys so the customer can drop off the rental car at the shop after hours. A shop may also choose to cover the difference in cost for a luxury rental vehicle. A luxury lounge with big TV, WIFI, computer games for kids and up-scale refreshments are already commonplace. Many shops offer a car wash and interior clean. For higher end customers, shops may even include exterior and interior detail. But who pays for all of these amenities when insurance companies are working to reduce what they will pay for?
It’s no secret that large numbers of recent immigrants now live in many areas in the United States. Most gather themselves into close-knit communities where their native language predominates. Fortunately, for quality collision shop owners, few of these immigrant communities have a quality body shop in their own ethnic area. If there is a shop, chances are it’s rather primitive and not up to insurance claim quality. This opens the door for an astute shop owner nearby who will put someone on the payroll who speaks their language and can help market the shop to that community.
To view a PDF of this article please click HERE.
I’m familiar with a shop that opened in a community that had large numbers of Chinese families in the surrounding area. The shop owner hired an attractive Chinese lady who spoke fluent Mandarin and Cantonese for the front desk and he also hired a Chinese-speaking estimator and parts manager. For several years this combination served him well. His Chinese personnel changed a few times, but he always kept some at his shop and enjoyed a significant number of jobs from the Chinese community.
With an economic downturn, when one Chinese employee left, he didn’t replace her immediately. Gradually, as the economy continued to decline, he lost all of his Chinese employees. He intended to replace one or two but it didn’t happen and little by little his Chinese community business fell away. Employees are a shop’s biggest expense. It’s understandable that adding any new employee is costly, but I’m certain that a careful analysis of the situation would reveal that the benefits of reaching the Chinese community would have more than paid for a Chinese speaking employee for this shop owner.
If you’ve ever received a long sales letter, you may have wondered why it was four or more pages long—and who would expect you to read it all? In the days before the Internet, e-mail and Twitter, snail-mail marketing often included these long sales letters. At that time, statistics proved that recipients who read these long letters were often the ones who bought the product. My wife’s ex-husband was an ad copywriter who made a nice living from writing long ad copy, but no more. Today we’ve entered the era of the short message. Twitter is a prime example. Ad copy must be 140 characters or less. Most advertisers no longer believe people will read long copy. The assumption is most people have a very short attention span and a message must be fast, brief and dramatic to capture viewer interest and attention.
To view a PDF of this article please click HERE.
Institutional advertising might lead a shop owner to think all an ad has to do is have an attention grabbing image displaying the company name and product. Nothing could be farther from the truth. National corporate products have large advertising budgets and often simply try to keep the product name in front of the public eye. A gigantic billboard may have a huge photo of an attractive person drinking that company’s beverage and the company name might be so small you could miss it if you didn’t look closely. The thinking behind this is that repetitive viewings will encourage sales of the product. Unless you have very deep pockets, don’t even think about advertising like this. But one aspect of this kind of ad is very accurate: Repetitive viewing can result in a prospect trying or buying the product. The question is: what is the best media to use to convey that brief, repetitive message?
In my neighborhood, several shops are saying they’re having a “summer slump.” Maybe it’s the economy. Maybe people have gone on vacation ignoring needed repairs. With gas prices sky high people are driving less and having less accidents. Whatever the case, it can come down to less business for the moment. What can a shop owner do to survive this down time?
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Perhaps one bright spot is all of this is the fact that with less jobs to do, you may have more time to improve marketing and sales and maybe squeeze more profits out of the jobs you do get. This could be an ideal time to take a closer look at previous estimates (and estimators) to see if revenue and profits were slipping through the cracks. Today we have computer software to go through an estimate to find missed opportunities for revenue, but not every shop uses it, or takes the time to use it even if it’s available. Periodically a wise manager will review a few estimates to see how his or her estimators are doing. A summer slump can be a perfect time to get this done.
Focusing Marketing Efforts on a Narrow Demographic Yields More Results
Written by Tom FranklinMany years ago I went through a training program offered by a company called Expansion Consultants, Inc. One of my instructors offered the hypothesis that “any unwanted situation can be resolved with sufficient communication.” He used the expression “universal solvent” to describe how communication can dissolve problems.
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I’ve often tested this idea, especially in marketing. At one point I came up with the idea that “any failure to thrive is a combination of not reaching out widely enough, frequently enough or cleverly enough.”
Then one day I spoke to a body shop owner who disproved at least one part of my idea. He had reached out as widely as anyone could in his area. He sent out a piece of promotional literature to 10,000 homes in his area. But he said he had not gotten even one job from that mailing.
Today marketing professionals are focusing on a narrow demographic rather than a wide one. By tracking customer purchases, website searches, and publications read, advertisers target very specific types of prospects.
A collision repair center following this approach would avoid a vast general mailing to all prior customers, and instead focus on specific types like senior citizens, young drivers, parents with children who drive, women who drive specific makes of vehicles, and more.
