Kleen Car Auto Detailing Blogs

- by Kevin Farrell

I speak with many people all over the country, usually about the same stuff. When people attend my classes from all over the country, and even from different countries, I hear the same thing and the same concerns. Many detailers are worried about competition. This is normal in any business. You always want to know where the competition is and what they are doing.

I used to do the same thing. I worried about anybody else that could be doing business in my area and how they could possibly take business away from me and hurt me. It’s normal. But it took me a very long time to realize “WHO” I had to look out for. I wasted time looking out for the guys that were under-cutting prices and performing cheap details. I worried about the guy who was established and seemed to have a strong client base. I worried about the guy who “claimed” that he was the best in town and the “best” price. I also worried about the new guy and how good he could be and what his prices were.

I worried about this for a long time…..until I became very good at what I did. After that, I didn’t care anymore. When I finally knew I was good and that I could handle any job on any car, I only wanted quality customers myself. I didn’t want the horrible mini vans where you spend way too much time, for far too little money anymore. I guess you could say I “graduated”. I let the lower level competition fight themselves for the crappy, pigsty cars. Many times a customer is looking for the best price and nothing else. This is a situation where you can’t win most of the time. If you give the best price, you get the job. But along with that you get a cheap customer who will battle you for every little thing and they are bringing in cars that are in poor condition. I got sick of that. When I realized that I was better than most of the competition, I stopped competing with the lower level guys. I went after wealthier people with nice cars and gained their trust that I would do the car correctly. For that, they willingly paid more money.

This revelation so to speak, made me concentrate on the real competition. The few detailers that are on the top level get the high end cars and high end customers. I found out who they were, where they were, and what they were doing. I wanted to know if they really knew what they were doing or if they could just fake it real good. I sometimes pretended to be a customer and asked specific detail questions and wanted to know what they would do to my car. I found out that there are not too many high end guys in my area, and that many detailers are actually afraid of wealthy people and high end cars for fear of making mistakes. So the majority of guys fight for the mid level customers, and mid level cars, where the competition is fierce and price will make a huge difference in getting a job or not.

I like to do analogies. I look at things in areas that have noting to do with detailing but are relevant in my life. This is where having a column like this is fun. I get to talk about one of my favorite topics…..ME! And how things affect…..ME!

I am an avid cyclist. I have been riding a road bike for many years and I am in good enough shape to be pretty competitive at it. This is an individual thing where there is no team to help you and either you are in better shape than the next guy, more powerful, a better rider, or you are not. When I see a guy on the road, I want to pass him. It doesn’t matter how far ahead of me he is. My motto is….If I can see you, I can pass you. It keeps a ride interesting when you are on a bike for almost 3 hours and doing over 40 miles at a time. So if I see a rider, I want to pass him. Most times I do, and I am very unhappy if I can’t. I can get up a mountain faster than most guys and I like to climb big hills and mountains and test myself against other riders, regardless of age or the type of bike they have. I have ridden some of the same routes that Lance Armstrong rides when he is in New York City, and he says many of these routes are pretty challenging. So I love the competition and I like to win

On a weekend morning, there are dozens of bike riders along a route that borders New York City that I love to ride. It’s very challenging and I know I will see lots of very good riders. When I size up the “competition” (which is basically every rider out there) I look to pass each one and hope I am a better rider. Again, I need to play this game with myself. It keeps me interested. If I see a guy ahead of me I look to pass him. Some guys are hundreds of yards ahead of me and just little specs in my vision when I go to chase them down. But one by one, I get to them and pass them. Now I know I am a little bit better than that guy I just passed, especially if he was far ahead. So I now look at this guy no longer as competition. I have passed him, and I can tell if I am stronger as I pass. This would be the same for me looking at a detailer who has little skill, knowledge and is very unprofessional. He is no competition in my eyes. I know a customer will eventually see through a guy like this and seek out a more professional and skilled detailer. If they don’t want that type of detailer, I generally don’t want that customer.

Getting back to biking……When I come across a strong rider that I have trouble passing or I just can’t get by, that rider makes me better. He makes me work that much harder to go faster and pass him or we both just end up going faster and riding harder. This would be a guy I would highly respect and I know he is in great shape and has great riding skills. All the other people that I had already passed, no longer enter my mind as competition. However, the people I cannot pass or have trouble with, I view as the real competition. This is the way I look at detail competition as well. If you know you are better than 90% of the guys already, then don’t focus on that 90% but look at the 10% that are just as good as you or better and find out what makes them so good.

Back to detailing….but only for a minute…..

I had a couple of people from Germany attend my class recently. They run a large chain of car washes all over Germany and they are hugely successful. We were chatting during a break and talking about different things and how they do business and one of the other students asked them about competition. He asked him about when they come into an area and open a new car wash, if they were worried about any other washes already in the area as competition. He slyly smiled and replied that once his company does the research and decides that this area is where they want to do business, the other guys better be worried about them, not the other way around. He said that they do things right and know how to get the best customers. In some cases they will put an already established business out if they are not careful. I loved this answer in the fact that he is supremely confident in his business model and the way his car washes do business, that nobody poses a huge threat to him once he is in a particular area. It may seem cocky and arrogant, but in many cases this is true in all aspects of “competition”.

Stop worrying about the low end guys who don’t follow the laws and the guys who are undercutting everybody and the guys who are unprofessional. Sure these guys can be a thorn in everybody’s side, but they generally are not around for the long haul and don’t end up with the high end customers who make your reputation better and your profits higher. Worry about guys who do the job right. Maybe I should not say worry either. Good competition will hopefully make you better and make customers understand that there are true professional detailers out there. Understand and locate the great detailers in your area and don’t undercut them, to get work. There is no need to. It’s not always about price.

Good competition makes everybody better. It makes for more caring and attentive business people. It makes for better job performance. Its helps us make better products when we know that there are other great products out there. If you worry about the low end competition and competing with them, you bring yourself down to that level in many cases. Look for the “real” competition and see if you can be as good or better than them. The great bike riders I have seen in my area over the years has made better bike rider. I realize I won’t be winning the Tour De France anytime soon……but I can still dream of that yellow jersey…..and cool little lion they give you for winning!

to learn more about our detail training services, as well as our products and equipment, please visit us at www.kleencarauto.com

I have a bunch of friends who are landscapers. I also have a relative who is a former landscaper, and who was the president for many years of the New Jersey landscapers association. Although I have zero skills as a landscaper, the plights and struggles of that profession are very similar to ours. Do you ever count the amount of landscaping trucks that are out there today? No matter where you live, there are dozens within neighborhoods, all seemingly doing the same thing….cutting grass and such

 Tons of competition

Everybody that owns a house needs their grass cut. Of course many people do it themselves, like me, but I don’t claim to be a landscaper. But do you ever talk to a person who washes their own car and sometimes waxes it, claim that they know a lot about detailing? That’s the first common thing between these 2 industries. I cut my grass and do some weed whacking and sometimes trim my bushes, but I cannot identify a single type of flower (or weed for that matter) that is growing on my property. My take is that as long as it’s green during the spring, summer and fall, I am cool with my lawn. But somebody like me may sometimes claim they could be a landscaper? Sound familiar? My relative, who was in the business for over 35 years, used to laugh at me because I just didn’t care too much about the grass. Sometimes he would see my lawn and offer to spruce it up, the same way I would offer to spruce up his car when it did not look so good.

 In any event, there are tons of landscapers out there. The amount of competition that these guys have is enormous. There are far more landscapers than detailers, but what I have seen they all seem to make money and they all seem to have plenty of work even though there is a tremendous amount of competition. We have the same opportunities even though there is competition and varying levels of skill and professionalism

 The same obstacles

They also seem to have many of the same obstacles that we have. They employ some borderline people, some of them who are not even legal! They also have customers who are lust looking for a cheap price regardless of the challenges of the property. They also have customers who never seem to pay their bills and are always chasing money. They struggle with the competition that cuts prices and does everything very cheaply just to get the work. They deal with people who don’t know the difference between a blade of grass and a flower, but claim that they can take care of it themselves….if they weren’t so busy. Some of these people who are the ones cutting their own grass but see a landscaper cutting the neighbors grass, will ask for free advice on how to make the grass greener or get rid of weeds. Does some of this sound familiar??

 Landscapers work only about 9 ½ months of the year here in NJ. Work is seasonal in some parts of the country with grass being cut during spring, summer, and early fall, while leaf removal takes place in late fall. Many mobile detailers and many shops see work fall off during the winter. I see some landscapers who have the absolute best equipment with fancy dump trucks and fancy trailers, and nice equipment. There are also plenty of these guys with poor equipment and working out of the back of a station wagon or old SUV as well. So just like detailing there are landscapers who occupy the top of the pyramid and many in the middle, and still many toward the bottom.

 I used to hear my relative complain about the un-professionalism of many of these landscapers while he was the president of the association. While this association had a large membership, there were still a large majority of guys who did not join or did not even know about the association. We see the same thing. Guys want free advice and refuse to pay money for a membership in a professional organization that will ultimately help them.

 Some of these guys operated without knowing the labor laws, or laws about the chemical they were spraying, or even how to correctly do the job. As you know we face the same obstacles. There are many detailers who operate on a shoe string budget, yet call themselves professionals although they barely have a clue. There are many detailers who are cheap and don’t have the best equipment and refuse to buy it because “it’s a rip-off” or “they don’t need it” We deal with customers who want the best job at a low price. My landscape friends deal with those same customers. We deal with bad weather and don’t have much work when it rains or snows, while the landscapers deal with the exact same thing

 Its funny how both professions struggle with the same things. However, what I see with landscapers is that they have much more invested in their business. Some trucks are $50-60,000. A ride on mower is $8000. A good trailer is at least $5,000. A leaf blower is $600. Many trucks have 2 or 3 mowers, 2 or 3 leaf blowers, 2 or 3 weed whackers, a bunch of shovels, rakes, etc. to get the jobs done. The money I see some of these guys spend is enormous. They have a lot at stake not to be professional and do the job right. I rarely see landscapers who do not do a good job.

 Many started out small, doing lawns after school and during the summer. Many progressed into a full time job and gradually hired employees and added more trucks and equipment. They don’t worry all that much about the completion either. I will see 3 different companies on my block and I live on a short dead end street and many people do their lawn themselves here. So the competition they face is huge and the expense is huge along with complying with the law and being very visible on the streets.

 But you know what?? They all seem to make money and stay in business. Sure, some people want a break and some people cut back, but all these landscapers seem to do something correctly. We can learn from these guys. Be professional. Join an organization that will help you understand the business a little better and have strong leaders who will help and assist the entire industry. Don’t worry about the other guys and what they are doing, but worry more about what you can do better and help serve your customers.

 If we think we have it bad and want to complain about how much you spend and how much money you are not making, I suggest you speak to a landscaper that you know. He can still make money despite another landscaper cutting the neighbors lawn right next door, and 5 other guys in a 2 block radius. Ask him about his association and if he belongs to it, and I bet he does, and I bet it helps him. He probably does not complain about what it cost to join, and I think he will tell you that it aids him. Maybe we can learn from them just a little bit

 to learn more about our detail training, products and equipment, please visit us at www.kleencarauto.com