Now that you’ve decided to start your detailing business, it’s time to develop the services you’re going to offer to your potential customers.
The type of services you offer will depend on the type of business you want to operate. If you want a high volume shop with basic services, then you’ll probably pick services you can get cars in and out with.
Or if you want to simply do this on the weekend and want to perform 2-step paint corrections, then you’ll take a lot less cars, be a bit more selective, and focus on buffing and polishing.
There’s no right or wrong answer on what you’re going to offer. If all you want to offer is something like paint correction or headlight restoration, that’s absolutely fine.
Just keep in mind how the customer will perceive that. If they need their headlights restored and also need a deep interior cleaning, but you only offer headlight restoration, they’ll have two visit two detailers.
The customer may not want to do that, so they’ll just go with the detailer that can offer both services. It’s simply easier for them to go to a detailer that can handle all their needs.
But with that in mind, of making sure you offer a diverse set of services to meet the customer’s needs, you can also go down a rabbit hole you don’t want to travel.
In this article, I’m going to cover some of the mistakes I see detailers make when they’re developing their service menu, as well as the 9 services I recommend you focus on.
[bonus]BONUS: If you just want to know the services, you can [link]click here to download the guide[/link] to the 9 services you can offer. You’re given the time it takes to complete, the difficulty level, the price you can charge, and what each service includes. [/bonus]
The more services you offer, the more products and tools you think you’ll need
As I mentioned above, you’re probably aiming to be a one-stop shop for every detailing need. It’s a smart move. You want to satisfy the customer and keep all the services in house.
You don’t want to have to outsource some services and lose out on revenue.
The tricky part is to not go overboard with your services and what you offer. Most of your customers will choose a few popular services, only a small percentage will actually pick other not-as-popular services.
I remember when I first started, I looked at what other detailers were offering and came up with my own detailing menu. It was pretty exhaustive:
- Basic wash
- 2-bucket wash method
- Wash and wax with sealant
- Wash and wax with spray wax
- Basic interior cleaning
- Deep interior cleaning (leather only)
- Deep interior cleaning with protection
- Wheel polishing
- Metal polishing
- Wheel coating
- Headlight restoration with sealant
- Headlight restoration with coating
- Trim restoring
- Trim enhancement
And the list will go on…
It made me feel cool to offer so many services. Especially when I was creating my website. It made me think I was going to get a lot more business by stating I offer so many services.
A drawback to this thinking is it looks like you offer a lot of services, so you think you’ll actually need a lot more tools and products to fulfill these services.
Regardless if you’re mobile or shop-based, you’ll start to carry and hold a lot more products and tools just in case the customer wants something you weren’t expecting.
So you start to pack, taking on more room in your van or shop, and taking more time to setup and break down your equipment for the detail.
We can fix this problem in the next section. Keep reading…
You add a lot of confusion to yourself and your customer
The more services and packages you offer, the more information you have to remember. You have more pricing structures, more individuals details you have to remember between the services/packages, and you’ll have to clearly communicate that with the customer in the most effective way possible.
And what if the package you offer doesn’t fit the customer’s needs? Maybe you offer a headlight restoration with a wash, but the customer actually wants a headlight restoration and a basic interior cleaning.
Are you not going to service that customer because they don’t fit your package? Of course not, you’ll be happy to meet their needs.
When you offer a lot of packages/services, it’s a lot of back and forth communication with the prospect trying to figure out what exactly you can offer.
Instead, in my opinion, it’s better to just offer a few services and talk with the customer to identify their needs.
For instance, maybe you offer these five core services:
- Wash
- Wash and wax
- Interior deep cleaning
- Headlight restoration
- Paint correction
You can branch off from these services based on what the prospect is needing. If they have overspray on their paint, then you can offer a variation of the wash and wax.
Prospect: “There’s construction around my job and I got a lot of speckles of paint all around my car. Can you remove that?”
Detailer: “Yes, your paint would need to be thoroughly washed and clayed to remove the paint overspray. It’s almost like a wash and wax except without the wax. We can remove the overspray, would you also be interested in waxing your car?”
That’s an oversimplification, but you get the point.
It’s about talking to the prospect and figuring out exactly what they need and coming up with a service/package for them based on their needs.
You’re essentially still creating packages, except they’re not predetermined packages. If a prospect needs an engine cleaning, wash and wax, and deep interior cleaning, than that becomes the package.
You can simply combine the individual’s services they need into a package. You don’t need to discount your work or anything. Add up each individual service and give it to them as a package.
Apply the 80/20 rule to your offerings (9 services you can offer)
What is the 80/20 rule? Simply put, that, for many events, roughly 80% of the effects come from 20% of the causes.
As mentioned earlier in the post, you can probably come up with dozens of services to offer to make sure you can take care of most detailing needs. But in reality, 80% of your customers will only choose 20% of your services.
So having all that extra information you have to remember and what your prospects and customers potentially have to sort through, becomes somewhat unnecessary. You can simplify it from the very get going by hashing out most of your services/packages.
Here are the 9 core services you can offer in your business:
- Car wash
- Wash and wax
- Paint correction
- Headlight restoration
- Paint coating
- Basic interior cleaning
- Deep interior cleaning
- Paint chip repair
- Debadging emblems
Remember, within each of those services, you can branch off to offer a variant of that service to meet the customer’s needs.
If a customer is looking for paint correction services, you don’t need to list that you offer an all-in-one correction, a 1-step correction with wax/sealant, and a 2-step correction with a sealant/coating.
You can just talk it out with the customer and guide them in the right direction to what’s going to best fit them.
[bonus]BONUS: If you just want to know the services, you can [link]click here to download the guide[/link] to the 9 services you can offer. You’re given the time it takes to complete, the difficulty level, the price you can charge, and what each service includes. [/bonus]
Don’t rely on your website to sale your services for you
Does your website contain all the information about the services you offer? If you do, that’s great- potential customers sometimes want all the information they can get before making a decision on whether or not they should call you.
However, a lot of times, potential customers don’t read your website’s information because it’s either way too much text to read, or they try to read it, but it’s too confusing.
You as the detailer and business owner want the prospect to read every last word on your website. If they want any information, your website has it all laid out.
And you leave it to the website to do most of the selling… That is wrong.
For instance, 55% of all pageviews get less than 15 seconds of attention (source). Or how about in 2008, a study concluded that visitors will only read about 20% of the text on the average page (source).
So if you get upset or mad when a prospect calls you wanting more information about your services, even when you have it all listed on your website, you’ve got to be able to sell your services.
Don’t get me wrong, there are customers who read all the text on a website and they’ll be well-informed with your services and how you do business. But more often than not, people are busy, they have other problems to deal with, reading your website is low on their priority list.
So they’d rather give you a call, talk to you for 10 minutes, see if you can solve their problem, and be on their way.
Focus on the benefits, not the features
On a side note, I think it’s very important to mention you need to focus on communicating the benefits of what you’re offering rather than the features.
This is very important.
If a prospect is in need of a headlight restoration, but is on the fence of pulling the trigger, over communicate the benefits.
Focusing on the features:
“Yes, we’ll wet-sand your headlight with various grit sanding paper to remove all the haze and ugliness. Usually we’ll use 1000 and 2000 grit. We’ll then follow that up with buffing and polishing to refine those scratches to bring back a like-new condition on your headlights. It will be a night and day difference”
Focusing on the benefits:
“Yes, we do restore your headlights to a like-new condition through a 5-step sanding, buffing and polishing process. The great thing is restoring your headlights to a like-new condition is at least 6x less costly than buying a new seat of headlights. On top of that, even if you were to buy a set of new headlights, it will only be time till they’re also back in the same condition as your current headlights.”
You want to focus on what the customer is going to receive from this type of detail. What they are going to be happy about. Don’t start talking in industry jargon that only detailers understand. You’ll confuse them.
They don’t care that you’re using a professional level steamer to clean the interior that cost $1,000. What they want to know is if their interior is going to look new again or if that nasty milk smell will go away after you’re done.
You’re hired for the results you can deliver.