#65 PDR Business In A New Town
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[00:00:00] 1, 2, 3, 4
was I've got Gene Vedi back at you with another episode of the All Access Podcast from Dent Repair Now and actually live today from Dent Repair. Now sitting at the front desk, uh, I am doing some spring cleaning. Uh, cleaning the shop up. I've got an advanced, uh, glue pool class for a couple body techs tomorrow.
Um, just got my mom home from rehab. She broke her hip on like February 10th. It is now April 12th. So on the 11th, we finally got to bring her home. So two months Mom was out, uh, with a broken hip. She's recovering, doing well. Uh, her first night at home, uh, she did good and we're doing a little [00:01:00] picnic dinner for Sunday dinner at my in-laws.
So as soon as I finish this show, I'm headed over to her house to pick her up and take her over there, uh, to see some family that, you know, hasn't, she hasn't got to hang out with, uh, in a couple of months. Other, some other than some visits. So it's very cool. But that being said, and or needless to say, it's been a little busy.
Busy with work, busy with life, busy with cleaning. Uh, I almost, almost pulled the ripcord and didn't do a show this week. Then I said, Nope, nope, gotta do it. I promised you guys and promised myself that we're gonna do a show every single week, all year long, no matter what. I really need to record a couple shows.
When I'm in the recording mode, can like string 'em out. So I give myself a little pad so when I get my ass kicked all week, uh, I don't have to scramble to, to squeeze a show in on Sunday, but here [00:02:00] I am. Here we are. It's Monday for you, so it's a start of a new week. Here's to a great week for you.
Struggled on topics this week. Um, really enjoyed doing the sales one last week. Got lots of messages and feedback about that, so I think that definitely struck some chords. I even had a few people reach out and say that they are interested in a soft skills sales training kind of class. So I'm putting a list together.
If that sounds like something you're interested in, send me a DM or an email or a text. Or smoke signals or a fax. Don't, don't fax me, don't have a fax machine. Um, but anyways, let me know and I will put you on the list for that class. Uh, we're definitely gonna be doing one of that. Uh, in fact, you know, that's part of the plan this year is to add more and more trainings to the schedule.
Uh, hard skills and soft skills. Speaking of which, in just about. [00:03:00] Three weeks. We were going to be at Anson PDR in Burleson, Texas for their 30th anniversary Open house the day before. I am doing a advanced GAL training, four PDR techs. I think I've got four seats left. I think that's right. I think I've got four seats left for it anyways, if you are interested, uh, I'll put the link in the show notes, but it is dent repair now.com/advanced hyen glue pull.
Singular. I think that's it. If I didn't screw it up, it's there. If I did screw it up. Look in the show notes or the YouTube description or wherever you're getting this, or again, DM, text, email, fax, whatever. And I'll send it over to you and you can get signed up, uh, 7 99 and or plus Christina and the crew at Anson are throwing in a [00:04:00] $100 gift card for all attendees to the class.
Uh, so really it makes it like 6 99. And you get some bonus tools. So super excited for that. Everything we've done at Anson has been great. Uh, I'm excited to pull this class off as well and, uh, see how all that goes. So it's gonna be fun and even if you can't make the class, you really need to come down for the open house.
They're always a great time and it's their 30th anniversary, like that is freaking awesome. Um, we gotta do it. You gotta get there. So today's topic. A little different. Made me think a little bit. Hopefully I can make you think a little bit, and I'm certain that there's advice in here for you and there's advice in here for me as I think through this topic and walk through it with you on, uh, what would I do?
So the topic for today's show, what would I do if I lost all of my contacts and all of my content and somebody dropped me into a new [00:05:00] city? How? Would I restart my business? What would I do different? How would I build things up? How would I attack it? Let's talk about it. So I've got my notes here. I wanna make sure we don't do anything, uh, and, and mix it up.
The first thing that I would do, like if, if I'm dropping on the ground, so this could be right, like you could think about this. If you're coming off the hail trail and you don't wanna chase anymore and you want to plant some roots, follow this plate. Play. If you are literally leaving a city and going to a new town and you're gonna open up, follow this.
But hopefully you still have some content. Or if you're brand new and just trying to get started, right? Take some advice from an old guy and uh, lemme see if I can't point you in the right direction. So what would I do? I would do a mix right? When I started originally I went. Wholly wholesale, [00:06:00] right? Just straight wholesale to the dealers that was trying to learn, um, wasn't confident enough.
Or for a matter of fact, I wasn't good enough to go to body shops and I certainly didn't think I was good enough to, uh, try to sell direct to public, direct to the customer, to retail. And it wasn't a real big thing back in the olden days. But if I, if you were to drop me with my skillset today in a new town.
First thing I need to do is start generating some business, just like I talked about last week, until you have dents in front of you to fix, you are not in the dent repair business. You are in the marketing of dent repair business or the sales of dent repair business. So I need to get work in front of me, low hanging fruit.
First place I'm gonna go if I'm super hungry is going to be independent, used car lots. Now, why am I gonna go there? One, um, a lot of times they scare their PDR [00:07:00] guys away, but if I'm in a new market and I'm trying to, right, remember I lost all my content and everything. I need to get some content, I need to get some repairs, and most importantly, I need to get some dollars.
Typically, those small mom and pop lots, the independents are going to be COD, right? So go fix the car, get paid. Go to the next one, right? So instant cash flow there. Next up, I'm gonna start canvassing all of the body shops. Now for me, that means a couple things. One, I've got my PDR skills, but two, hopefully I didn't get stripped of all my tools, and I'm really good at glue pulling and I can do large damage.
So my approach to the body shops is gonna be. Do you have somebody doing PDR? Yes or no? And depending on how that goes, and two, hey, I also happen to be, uh, an expert in the glue pulling space. I can help you with, pull the paints, I can help you with pulling [00:08:00] quarter panels with pulling rockers If you don't have a system like that, right, I can help you and work through that.
Another bonus with the, the body shops, typically, unless it's an MSO, they're COD. Right. So I can go in, I can sell myself, I can present myself, I can get content and I can get paid, right? So if you're noticing a little, um, repeating story here, you want to get paid, you've gotta have cash flow. I didn't say I dropped into a new town with a million bucks in the bank to start over.
This is like a fresh reset. How are we gonna do it? Boot go buy our bootstraps. So. Go in and hit those body shops hard. Uh, when I was with Kiko and teaching and talking and even presenting, uh, and presenting even at MTE and and PDR Expo, I know I've talked about guys, you can, you body shops will pay you to help [00:09:00] them rough in panels, right?
And I don't mean push for paint on roof or something like that. I mean, if you've got good glue pull tools and good glue pulling skills, you can get out there and get paid. For that. Right. Work it in the, the body shops around here that I do some of that stuff for are amazed all the time at what I can do and they're more than happy to pay me what I'm asking for to do it, uh, you know, and working inside of their estimates.
But there's a great way to get dollars flowing immediately, Lee. So mom and pop, independent, lots. Independent, smaller body shops going after it. See what we can do. The next fastest thing we can do is start to think about chasing a little bit of retail now, right? I've lost my presence. I don't have a Google listing.
I don't have a website, I don't like refresh, scratch from there. Lost all of my content. Need to build my content. I want to go to where the cars are. [00:10:00] So think car washes. Right. If you know the, the car wash that I have a membership to, I bet if I approached them and did sort of some sort of kickback with, you know, a month of washes for my customers that I paid for, that the customer paid for it right out of the repair, I bet they would let me set up in my truck.
'cause I don't have a shop anymore. Right. I bet they let me set up in my truck at the store, at the shop with a sign. You know, dent Repairs today. Dent Repairs now, huh? Dent Repair now. That's a good name for a business. Um, go to town and make those snap decisions. Now with that right in a new town, trying to build content, trying to build, uh, reputation and everything like that.
I may not come out swinging with today's modern price guide prices, right? I may pick and choose on what I'm gonna fix. And do more dollars or [00:11:00] more cars for less dollars to get that spread out there. As I start chasing those customers right at the car washes, maybe at the detail shops again, where the cars are, where the cars are looking good, where people are chasing, making their car look good.
I want to chase those customers down. When I do those repairs, I'm going to be in a nice way, in a, in a not desperate way. Begging for Google reviews as fast as possible, right? Oh, side note, get that Google Business listing set up and verified as quickly as possible. I think you go to business.google.com or if you're on your phone, it's in the map, in the Google Maps app.
Fill out your whole profile. Um, you would, I would, uh, be mobile, so I would do a service area and put in my zip codes or cities. Not a physical address, and they'll mail you a card. Typically within a few days. You get that card, you punch it [00:12:00] in, you're verified. You can then start getting reviews. I'm gonna ask nicely.
Hey Mr. Jones. Thanks so much for letting me fix your car. I'm glad you're so happy. Listen, can I send you a link? I'm gonna text you a link to my Google listing. Reviews mean the absolute world to us. I'm just getting started here. We just moved in from Pittsburgh and man, I've got nothing. If you can take a couple of seconds and leave me a review about this repair, it will mean the world to me.
Oh man. Like instead of begging, right? I am. Asking them to reciprocate, which gave them a great repair. I'm asking them to giving one in return. Also, another way to phrase it is as you start to get some reviews, you'll start to hear, Hey man, I found you. I read your reviews. I read your reviews. When you get those people, Hey, do you know how you found me with reviews and you read all of that and you [00:13:00] came here, or you called me because of those?
Can you take a couple minutes and leave me a review? It means the world to me and it'll help other people like you find me when they do my service. Right? So it's that psychological warfare that we talked about in sales last week, this week, right? As it pertains to reviews, thinking, building, growing.
So once we have to reiterate some independent lots, some independent body shops, then hopefully some car washes, maybe even a couple of car washes, maybe some detail shops. When I'm starting to get some traction now, it is absolutely time for me If I were doing this again to begin building my presence in that town because we're getting content, well, I guess we should say that.
You don't even need anything fancy. You've got your phone, every single repair you do, and listen, [00:14:00] right now I'm talking to me. Do you hear me? Look me right here. To me, every single repair you do, you should be making some piece of content about Yeah, I know Liv. Sorry, Vince Lockett. I'll get back on it. All right, back to the show.
Told you I would have advice for me as well. Anyways, you need to be making content on every single, uh, repair you do. Talk about it, talk about where you're at, talk about the town that you're in, wherever you're doing these repairs, and then begin posting them to YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, maybe, and go back to our social media episode, however many episodes ago, start putting.
Content on your website, right? And today it's easy enough, like you literally can go to GoDaddy, buy a domain for a dollar, and use their web builder and have a [00:15:00] website up in one night. Get that content going and go back to your Google listing. Alright? This is also for me, but for you. Go to your Google listing and start posting content, adding photos, writing little posts inside of your Google business listing to help build and grow that traction.
Right. Do you see how all of this is building together and growing and growing and growing from there? Right. As we're building out our direct to customer space, we're working with detail shops, body shops. Right. We're getting some traction. If I'm being real, depending on the weather where I'm at, not positive, I would go big shop again.
I mean, the shop's good. Really, it's great, but it's a lot of work. If I were to start over, and certainly at my age, if I were to start over, I think I may stay small, go [00:16:00] like one man, show, do as much as I can and invest in other things besides my business. But that's for another, a topic for another day, I would begin looking for really good wholesale accounts.
Right? So now we're talking franchise dealerships, right? So the big BMW store, the Lexus store, the Rover store, the, the Jaguar, the Volvo, right? The the Chevy, the Kia. Start building that. Wholesale business, building a good, solid wholesale business, and I really think that wholesale gets a bad rap. I, I was just talking, I talked to a lot of people.
I was talking to somebody the other day and they were sort of like, ah, man, I've never done wholesale. I don't think I could do it. I don't, I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. Never had, and maybe because I started on wholesale, I've, but, but I've never had that adversarial [00:17:00] look at. Our wholesale customers, I really look at them more like partners and people we're doing business with and we're friendly with and places we want to go versus, oh man, they want everything cheap.
They want this, they want that. Can dealers be difficult to work with, of course, but can you also build amazing relationships with great people that want to do business with you all the time that you can help do business with and help them sell more cars? A million percent that is for real. So I would begin chasing and finding those great stores with great managers that want their cars, right, that value what you do.
Um, and the way I would do that is first, but maybe you get lucky and I would just go start knocking on some doors. But if I start knocking on doors and, and I believe in today's day and age, it's probably difficult to find. A bunch of dealers or a, an area full of dealers with no [00:18:00] PDR techs, I feel like there's enough techs out there that they have to be, for the most part, being taken care of.
If that's the case, which most likely is the case, I want to, one, I'm not gonna talk bad about their guy unless the lot's completely tore up. And in that case, I just want to go out and find something I could fix, excuse me, and show them what I can do. Right on, on regular stuff. If they're super happy with their guy, hopefully he's not, uh, he or she is not some sort of stud and they're leaving stuff or letting stuff go, that could still be done with PDR, right?
So I, I say, or my approach is. Oh, great. You know what? I've heard a lot of great things about Jim. It seems like everywhere I go, Jim's the, the dent guy. Um, all I want is a shot. If, if Jim can't make it, call me. I'm not gonna try to steal his account. I'll just come in and take care [00:19:00] of you. If Jim says no, and you kind of think, man, that really, it really looks doable.
I really think it could, it could be done, but we're gonna send it to the Body Shop. Call me. Before the body shop, I want to be that little stop in between your PDR guy that you know and love and the body shop, right? And then side note, guys and girls, if you slide into that niche, you're no longer competing with the Dent Tech.
Right now you're only competing with the body shop. Right, so we can fix some good stuff. When we're competing at Body Shop dollars, even at same dollars, we're done so much faster that we're still a big win, right? There's still a ton of value for the dealer to get their card done faster, right? So show up and do that.
As I'm trying to build that wholesale out, I likely am going to be in the same [00:20:00] area, on the same street, whatever. The same day every week. Hopefully I'm getting a little bit of traction. I'm gonna stop in and see Bob, the sales manager at BMW every Wednesday afternoon. Hey Bob. Not pressuring you in, just stopping in, letting you know I'm in the area.
You got anything done? Did Jim leave you hanging on anything? Oh, Jim's on vacation, you know, give me a shot at that. Let me take care of you. It absolutely can work and is the long play right? So. The reason I think wholesale can be so good and really wholesale's still a, a large part of our company here.
You, you go in, you build that relationship and you sell one time and then you have that account forever. My daughter Elena, is gonna be 22 this year. Our oldest account we got, it was actually the first account I got. Uh. Speaking of my [00:21:00] daughter, she's texting me. Let me turn that onto silent 'cause I'm a rookie.
Um,
she's gonna be 22. We, it was my first account that I ever landed. We still have them. So for 22 years that dealership has been doing business with us every single week. Right. And we really sold him. Sold ourselves to him one time, and then for 22 years they've been doing business. When a retail customer calls or emails or texts or faxes, me, uh, man, we're selling new almost every single time now.
We've been doing retail for 10, 12 years. Seriously. We get a fair number of repeat customers, but still the majority of them are brand new customers that have never heard of PDR before, that we are educating and reeducating [00:22:00] every single time versus Right, like Mike, I don't think you listen to the show, Mike, but if you do, you know who you are and we've been servicing you for 22 years.
We sold Mike once. Now we have a relationship and we technically sell cars to him, sell repairs to them every week. More or less, but we sold it one time. In fact, when you really think about that, it almost makes me question retail. PDR. Like, I enjoy it. I really do. I, I enjoy the, the smash. I like. I saved an Audi the other day, um, nasty, sharp, dent, stretched.
The dude didn't wanna paint the car. He was so stoked when he came in, like you could just see the glow in his eyes. So rewarding. It was amazing. However, it was a lot of work. It was a lot of pressure, and I sold him on it. It was an insurance claim, so we had to deal with the insurance adjuster, so on and so forth, like[00:23:00]
why are we selling so hard to retail when we could just sell wholesale? Like it almost like goes back to the hail, like if hails good, if it hails in your area, or you have the opportunity to go do hail. Why would you do anything else? Because it just pays so damn good. Like it's fricking, it's just crazy.
Anyways, neither here nor there, I would begin to build out a nice collection of good, solid franchise dealers to really, truly lay the, the, the super solid foundation to, to run and build my business on. I really feel like the. Independent lots and the body shops and car washes, wholesale customers or retail customers, those almost are like site prep.
And then if we're gonna really [00:24:00] build that solid foundation for something that lasts a long time and we're not going big shop and retail only, or auto spa, like just staying in PDR. Work your way up. Build that great solid base. Of great wholesale franchise dealers. Build those relationships, build a reputation, get to know everybody at those dealerships and cement it down.
And then hopefully you can hold onto accounts for 22 years. Or my buddy Charlie that got me in the business, he brought it to Pittsburgh in 91. I know for a fact that he still has some accounts that he has had since 1991, so that's like. 35 years or something like that. Like same customers for 35 years that he sold 35 years ago, and he just shows up and does the work.
That is pretty amazing. And then last but not least, right, if we're doing just a, what would I start as we build all of this out, as soon as I've [00:25:00] got a little website and I've got some content and we've got some things going, I'm going to immediately then turn on. Google Google AdWords because my website's not gonna rank.
Right. It's brand new. We just started building it. I can take some dollars and buy my way to the top of the search listings. Right? I wouldn't, I would not advertise on Facebook or Instagram or TikTok or anything like that for, for retail work. If I'm gonna go after retail work, I'm going straight to Google Ads.
If I wanna get real advanced, also Bing ads because they carry a certain amount of traffic over Google or a certain amount of traffic that Google gets, I will build out a campaign, check out some YouTube videos, find somebody to manage it. Probably not be able to find anybody to manage it because you're gonna be too small.
Watch some YouTube classes. Watch some Udemy, like find a couple local service business expert Google people. Build out [00:26:00] some campaigns like they teach you. It's very simple. Start with like 3, 4, 500 bucks a month and start buying my way to the top of Google with a good landing page on the website, right?
We could talk about ad copy and sales copy and everything, uh, right down the road at another episode, but I would immediately begin as soon as I had a website and some content. Because again, I was wiped out starting from scratch. I would start running those Google ads three to 500 bucks a month just to get started to drive more of those retail cars.
And I think that those would be my steps. If you picked me up, please let me bring my tools. I love my freaking tools. Bring all my tools to a new city and drop me. But I don't have a website. I don't have content. I don't have anything. That is the exact playbook that I would do to start my PDR business over again today if I had nothing.[00:27:00]
So I hope you found that helpful, uh, that that went faster than I thought it was. I was shooting for half an hour and by the time I get done, Jabber drawn to you, we're gonna be at half an hour. Um, that was cool. What did you think? What would you do? Differently if you started over scratch in a new city with nothing than I would do.
What would your play be? I want to hear it. Uh, send me comment, comment on some things. Oh, speaking of commenting on things, if I've been chasing, we have been chasing 4,000 followers on Facebook. We were stuck in the high threes, which felt like, well, really, like, it's been pretty accelerated since the first of the year.
Um, but anyways, we finally cracked. That 4,000, uh, follower mark, we're getting ready to cross the 2000 follower mark on Instagram. If you're not following us at dent repair now on either of those platforms, please go do it. Help me push to the next [00:28:00] level. Uh, a really, a big goal for me this year is to get my Facebook to 10,000 followers.
Uh, I don't know what all that opens up, but I've got a, I've got a couple followers. That our 10,000 or more, and when they comment, it just says like, new break. I fix 10,000 plus followers. Commented on your reel. I want to be dent repair. Now, 10,000 plus followers commented on your reel. Just try to build traction, gain some speed and get going just in case.
I do have to move to a new city and I keep my Facebook, I want to have a head start. Ah, see what I did there Anyways. Guys, thanks for watching. Thanks for listening. Follow us on social at Dent Repair. Now, across the board, don't forget about that Anson Open House May 2nd in Burleson at Anson on May 1st, I'm doing the advanced glue pool training.
I one day I all in small group [00:29:00] hands-on. I wanna see you there. I've got four spots left. If you're on the fence, if you're thinking about it, sign up and make it happen. And I think that is it, guys. Thanks so much. As always, I appreciate you and I will see you next week. Bye.
