As consolidation continues to pick up speed in the collision repair industry, independent shop operators can still take full control of their marketing before they spend a dime.
Steve Trapp, who has decades of experience working with performance groups in the industry, appeared on The Collision Vision podcast, driven by Autobody News and hosted by Cole Strandberg, to break down the fundamentals of smart, scalable and affordable shop marketing.
Trapp, who was introduced to the collision repair industry at his family’s body shop in Wisconsin, has worked for several industry suppliers over the course of his career. In 1989, he helped AkzoNobel start the collision repair industry’s first performance group. Currently, he works for PPG as a strategic account manager.
Start with Customers Already Showing Interest
Trapp said improving a shop’s closing rate starts with answering the phone when potential customers call and following up on assignments, like quickly writing AI estimates on photos they were asked to send.
“If you're only closing 60%, that means 40% is an opportunity to close more,” Trapp said.
“There's no additional money to get more people to walk through the door. You’ve just got to do a more effective job in having a sales culture,” he added.
Post pandemic, a lot of shops have become “DRP lazy,” Trapp said.
“That means that they lost focus on what was important, which is the customer and the experience, and it became about what's your claim number,” he said. “We've got to get everybody to rethink that sales approach, and then be customer focused as they as they go about their duties.”
During the pandemic, customer-pays only made up about 5% of repair orders, Trapp said. Now, it’s 32%.
“The claims volumes the insurance companies are seeing are off only 3%, as those people now have high deductibles and don't want to turn those claims in,” Trapp said.
“I think a lot of the shops that were DRP-centric are saying, ‘Hey, where's all the work?’ Because they're used to getting it assigned to them.
“It's still calling,” Trapp said. “Are you welcoming it to the shop, or are you saying, ‘I'm a DRP shop and I don't have an interest in that customer-pay work.’”
Building a Sales Culture Without Sacrificing Customer Service
“A good salesman is a good advisor,” Trapp said. “They're basically offering advice to the customers based on what's best for them, not necessarily for the shop.”
Customers appreciate it when they can tell a shop is looking out for their interest.
“The easiest way to look at it is just like anything in marketing — you want people to opt in,” Trapp said.
For instance, Trapp said, if the shop estimator notices a door ding not related to the initial repair, ask the customer if they would like an estimate on fixing it too. Explain it would be cheaper to do it at the same time.
When a car is in the shop for a collision repair, that’s also a chance to upsell the customer on a detail package.
“You’ve got to read the customer, understand their needs, understand they are a professional or busy person,” Trapp said. “They don't have time to do some of these things and they would like to have a nice car.”
Shop owners should offer incentives to employees to upsell those services, Trapp said, like a commission.
Maintaining a level schedule of work is also key to keeping employees happy, he said.
“If you're delivering 14 [vehicles] on a Friday and you're telling me to do a nice, fancy detail on top of it, it ain't going to work, and the team's going to scream at you and say, ‘What are you doing?’” Trapp said. “But if you have a level schedule, and a level in and out flow, then it's just a little extra work on those four or five cars that are leaving that day. That's very doable.”
It's the same idea with a door ding, Trapp said. If that extra repair is sold before the vehicle undergoes the initial repair, the technicians will be “all over it. But if you call the customer, say, ‘Hey, we're just about to pull in the paint booth and I noticed you got a scratch in the door.’ It's like, the body guys already did the bodywork.
“The idea is it's all about pre-selling at the time of the initial inspection, or certainly the time of drop off,” he added.
When returning the vehicle to the customer, “give them something specific so they'll remember that” when they need a collision repair shop again, or they get a chance to refer a shop to a friend or family member, Trapp said.
He recommended “truly reselling some benefit you provided them,” whether it was giving them a ride after drop-off, fixing an unrelated scratch for free or doing a really good job detailing the vehicle, to help the shop stand out in the customer’s mind.
“Tooting your own horn is basically you showing the customer what they benefited from, so they realize, ‘Wow, this person just pointed out something really cool or killer that they did for me,’” Trapp said.
Check in with the customer a day or so after delivery, and again 30 or 90 days later to ask how they feel about the repair. A year later, remind them they have a lifetime warranty, Trapp said.
“If you're going to spend the time to do a really nice job with the customer experience and the delivery process, don't miss the opportunity to mine the gold that is your customer database,” he said.
Online and Physical Presence
Most customers research shops online. Think of your shop’s website as its “online lobby,” Trapp said. “It's the first impression even before they walk into the shop.”
A good collision repair shop website includes information about the business and its owners, easy-to-find street address and hours of operation, good before and after photos of repairs, and functions allowing online scheduling and damage photo uploads.
“Anything we can do to make it easier for them to interact with us,” Trapp said. “The whole key here is you want to have them perceive that they fully understand the type of shop you are, what you stand for, and the fact that you're convenient and willing to give them whatever information they need.”
The website is also a good place to begin educating customers on the importance of certifications, such as those from I-CAR and various OEMs, and which ones the shop has.
“Doesn't have to be paragraphs of information, but just something that says ‘I am certified with Toyota. That means that we can offer you this,’” Trapp said. “Make it about them, not about what you did or your certifications.”
Trapp recommended updating a shop’s lobby if it hasn’t been remodeled in decades so it feels modern to customers. He also said the initial business messaging should be limited to the shop’s, not that of rental car or towing companies.
“You should be selling your business and keeping the message very simple, saying, ‘These are our certifications. These are my techs and their certifications. These are our community involvement, our accomplishments, the awards that we've won,’” Trapp said.
Working with Insurance Companies, Dealerships
Trapp said his name is on the patent for the insurance scorecard, created in the mid 1990s, to allow insurance companies to define the indices that matter most to them — not just the cheapest price, but quality, Net Promoter Score, on-time delivery, etc. — and then rank collision repair shops based on assigned point values.
“It's important to understand what each carrier values,” Trapp said. “And that's important for [shop owners] to look at.
“I find that a lot of shop owners don't go and look at these things monthly, even quarterly. Some guys don't look at them hardly at all,” he said. “And that's kind of silly because someone has laid out the rules and said it's not about the race to the bottom by having the cheapest price. It is not. That's the beauty of what the scorecard was supposed to do…You just need to understand what they value and try and work to achieve the best score.”
Dealerships that do not have their own collision repair center are looking for local partners that can deliver quality, on-time repairs at a reasonable price.
“Listen to the dealership to what they value, and then put your proposals together, focusing on the features that you offer that really help them best meet those needs,” Trapp advised. “Again, it doesn't always have to be the biggest discount. It has to do with who listens to my needs and provides the best service with a fair price.”
Trapp said insurance agents need continuing education credits to keep their licenses. He recommended a shop look into hosting state-certified classes for those agents.
“You bring them in, put a tool in their hand and have them try and take out a dent,” he said. “Put a welder in their hand and show somebody how hard it is to weld. The idea is they need to understand what it is that goes on with this. Because if it's if it's just about price, they don't understand that quality really does matter.”
It also demonstrates to the agent that the shop has the expertise to be a shop of choice for customers.
“You want to put that in [the agents’] head that they go, ‘Wow, there is a difference. And that's why I'm referring this customer,’” Trapp said.
Spending Advertising Dollars Wisely
“The old adage is, ‘The best time in advertising is when you don't need to,’” Trapp said.
He gave the example of continuing to spend on marketing during the pandemic, so that when claims counts started to drop, the shop had built fundamental relationships.
A shop should “go big with it,” Trapp said of marketing.
“Become the dominant player in the medium you've chosen,” he said, whether it’s the radio, billboards, local sports team sponsorships, or anything else.
“I think you're going to see in the next few years that the amount we were spending on advertising was woefully under emphasized during COVID, and we're going to have to invest probably another 1% to 2% of sales more than we had previously,” Trapp said.
Customer Reviews
Trapp said he is not a fan of the post-repair survey to gauge customer experiences. He recommended having the service advisor hand the customer a business card at drop-off with their cell phone number highlighted, with instructions to call it any time throughout the claims process if there is something they are not satisfied with.
“Tell us what we could be doing better to make you feel good,” Trapp said.
He also recommended doing anything necessary to make the customer feel like the shop was their advocate throughout the process. “They will be your advocate in return, in a positive review you can put on your website as a testimonial, or certainly when they're around [their] office just talking about it,” he said.
“The key here, frankly, is to be working towards that referral the entire time, so it's not just an afterthought at the end saying, ‘Oh, and by the way, I need to ask this question of you,’” Trapp said. “It's too late. The experience needs to be shaped the entire way versus waiting for at the end.”
Abby Andrews