#82 Some Thoughts On Sharing Pricing

August 10, 2026

Cold Open — A Brutal Week and the Toughest Dent Yet Gene opens with a rundown of a genuinely rough week at the shop — Mack was out on vacation, hard cars kept coming in, and dealers kept dropping off extras. Good problems, he says, but problems nonetheless. The highlight (and lowlight) of the week: what Gene calls the deepest, sharpest dent he's ever fixed — a brand-new Ford Explorer with a two-to-two-and-a-half-inch gash at the bottom body line of the door. He started filming it, the repair started going sideways, and he stopped recording and just powered through over a couple of evenings of work-till-frustration, walk away, come back. He's planning a green-screen breakdown video of the before/during/after footage he did manage to capture. He floats a theory that this might be a "summer of hard dents" tied to a softer economy — pointing back to 2008, when Dent Repair Now stayed busy and grew through the recession by picking up more of what he calls "recession dents." PDR Universe Podcast Shoutout Note for Gene: the transcript is inconsistent on the co-host's name — rendered as both "John" and "Jean" in different spots, and the second host as both "Zeeshan" and "Zsan." Please confirm correct spellings before this goes out. Gene gives a shoutout to the PDR Universe podcast, hosted by John (or Jean) and Zeeshan, available on Apple, Spotify, and YouTube via bestpdrtraining.com. He's recording an episode on their show right after this one. Gene mentions he enjoys the non-US perspective the show brings, including past conversations about how hail repair differs between Europe and the co-host's home country of Slovenia. Gene mentions first meeting the co-host at the original GPR PDR competition, and having him on for play-by-play coverage with Danny during that event. This Week's Marketing Minute Setup Based on listener feedback from last week, Gene is bringing back old PDR Marketing Minute episodes rather than retiring the segment. Today's replay is Episode 2, which Gene hadn't listened to in about ten years going into this recording — he and the audience hear it together. Listener Question: Should You Put Pricing on Your Website? Note for Gene: the listener who prompted this topic isn't named on air (referred to only as "Mr. Listener"). No name has been added to any of the content below — flag if you'd like him credited. A listener messaged Gene this week asking his thoughts on posting a price guide directly on a PDR website. Gene admits his thinking has shifted over the years — he used to resist customer texting entirely and now finds it's often the easiest way to interact with a business himself. The listener's approach: a straightforward price guide on his site — starting price per inch, plus factors. Gene contrasts a few different models he's seen in the industry, including the Mobile Tech RX pricing matrix, Dent Repair Now's own custom-built matrix, and a pricing calculator Gene believes lives on dentreaper.com. Note for Gene: you say "I think, I think John Vianden" built the dentreaper.com pricing calculator — please confirm that attribution before publishing. Why a Raw Price Guide Falls Short Gene's first objection: retail customers don't speak PDR. Terms like body line, aluminum, HSS, laminated window, sound deadener, and obstructed damage mean nothing to most people — they might call a body line a "crease" and have no framework for sizing damage the way a technician does. Posting a bare price guide assumes a shared vocabulary that doesn't exist. He also references a pricing calculator he recalls from years back that started at $199 rather than a lower number, on the theory that if a customer wasn't willing to accept at least that entry point, the shop didn't want the call in the first place. Gene connects this to the reality of bad leads eating up front-desk time — Shannon or Gene fielding long, meandering calls that end up going nowhere. His conclusion: the right answer is somewhere between full transparency and full opacity, using price information to filter without oversimplifying. Don't Let Pricing Turn PDR Into a Commodity Gene's second concern with just posting a price list: it risks commoditizing a service that isn't one. He draws a distinction between true commodities — goods like gas or food that move on supply and demand — and PDR, which he frames as a high-skill, high-value trade. It's not cheap because it's costly to deliver real value, not because it should be priced like a shelf item. Checking What the AI Search Engines Say PDR Costs Gene walks through what a customer would currently find by asking Google, Claude, and ChatGPT what PDR costs — revisiting the days when a plain search would return unrealistically low numbers. Google (Gemini) Single-panel fixes: roughly $75–$500 per dent Multi-panel hail damage: roughly $1,200–$4,000+ Small dent (quarter-sized parking lot ding): $75–$200 Medium dent: $200–$500 Large dent or crease: $400–$1,000 Hail damage: $1,200–$4,000+ Notes a 25–50% premium for aluminum panels due to the metal being stiffer and harder Compares favorably to body shops, which it lists at roughly $600–$2,000 for a single panel repair ChatGPT Single small dent: $75–$150 Medium dent: $150–$350 Large dent or multiple dents: $350–$800 Hail damage: $500–$4,500+ Cites factors like size, depth, location, panel type, number of dents, and shop labor rates Gene had also checked Claude in advance of recording and shares those figures too: small door ding (dime to nickel-sized) around $125–$250, medium dent $250–$500, large dent $500–$1,500, plus separate ranges for creases, body-line dents, and hail damage. He notes he told each AI to answer as if it didn't know him personally, though he can't say the results weren't influenced by his prior activity. His takeaway: the AI-generated answers have gotten noticeably better and more specific over time, but they still miss real-world variables — he points to a $5,000 deer-hit insurance job the shop has coming in that week as an example of complexity no generic pricing answer captures. Marcus Sheridan's "They Ask, You Answer" Gene brings in a concept from Marcus Sheridan's book They Ask, You Answer, which argues that businesses build trust and credibility — and drive sales — by directly and thoroughly answering the questions their customers are actually asking, rather than dodging them. Gene relates this to a story from the book about Sheridan's fiberglass pool company, where prospective buyers wanted a ballpark cost early in the conversation and the business had historically avoided giving one. Gene frames this as a version of SEO for the AI era — informally, "AI SEO" — where the same content that helps a human trust you also helps AI models learn to answer pricing questions about PDR more accurately. Gene's Conclusion: Educate, Don't Just Publish a Number Gene lands on an educational approach rather than either extreme. Rather than posting a bare price guide, he wants to build content — videos in particular — that walks a customer through how pricing actually gets determined: starting price, per-inch factors, and complicating conditions like an inaccessible repair area behind a brace, using the same explanation a tech would give in person while inspecting a car. His challenge to listeners: don't just rely on AI and search engines getting smarter about PDR pricing — be the source that teaches both customers and the AIs training on the web. He closes the segment by asking the audience to share their own thoughts on posting pricing publicly. PDR Marketing Minute Throwback — Episode 2: Website 101 This week's replayed Marketing Minute covers the fundamentals of a PDR business website: Get a .com domain if at all possible — customers get confused by .net, .org, or newer extensions If your exact company name isn't available, consider a descriptive alternative (Gene's own dentrepairnow.com came out of this approach and later became his official DBA and company name) Use quality, fast-loading hosting — slow sites lose impatient visitors to competitors Build a mobile-responsive site rather than a separate mobile subdomain — Gene lost search ranking after a Google algorithm update penalized his old mobile-only setup Put your phone number and a clear call to action (Gene uses "Schedule a Repair") prominently at the top of the page Feature strong before-and-after photos shot from a consistent angle, ideally with a tripod, so there's no question it's the same vehicle Include a contact form for leads who'd rather not call or text Build a reviews page that pulls in reviews from Yelp, Facebook, Google, and PDR Nation while keeping visitors on your own site Write original content — never copy from another site, which search engines penalize Listening back, Gene notes the advice held up well overall, aside from the now-outdated mobile-subdomain approach. Tool of the Week: Glexo Blending Hammer Gene's pick this week is his well-worn 4 oz Glexo Blending Hammer from Anson PDR — a tool he calls possibly the perfect blending hammer. He highlights the handle design (a rear grip zone for control and a second bulge for a shorter grip), and the ability to flip to the side of the head for hard, sharp metal-to-metal contact on sharp-tip or VIP work. He and his technician Louie are both repeat buyers — Louie is reportedly on his fifth one, a running joke about how easily he loses tools. The Glexo Blending Hammer is available in 4 oz, 6 oz, and 8 oz versions, with a 15-inch handle across all sizes, from Anson PDR. Wrap-Up: PDR Expo 2026 Gene closes with a reminder that PDR Expo is coming up September 25–26 at The Rio in Las Vegas. He's part of a roundtable discussion on Friday and is doing a hands-on cold glue talk on Saturday, which he's especially excited about. Blog Post Should You Put Your Pricing on Your PDR Website? Man, it's been a week. Mack was out on vacation, the cars coming in were hard, and dealers kept dropping off extras on top of it. Good problems to have, but problems nonetheless. In the middle of all that I fixed the deepest, sharpest dent I think I've ever done — a brand-new Explorer with a nasty two-to-two-and-a-half-inch gash right at the bottom body line of the door. I actually started recording it and had to stop when it started going sideways on me. Took a couple of evenings of work-till-frustration, walk away, come back and do it again, but I got it. I've got some before, during, and after footage, so I'm probably going to do a green-screen breakdown of that one soon. Kind of makes me wonder if this is the summer of hard dents. Or maybe it's a little recession-ish out there — not trying to get political, just an observation. I remember back in the '08 crash, when the whole car market fell apart, we actually stayed busy and kept growing. We just ended up fixing a lot more "recession dents." Maybe that's what's going on again. Before I get into the main topic, I want to give a shoutout to the PDR Universe podcast — I'm actually hopping on their show right after I finish recording this one. They're bringing good info and good perspective every week, including a non-US point of view that I think is genuinely valuable. We've talked before about how different hail repair looks in Europe versus back home. Go check them out on Apple, Spotify, or YouTube. The Question That Started This Episode A listener messaged me this week about pricing — specifically, putting your price guide right on your website. And I've got thoughts. I'll admit my thinking on stuff like this has shifted over time. I used to be dead set against texting customers, and now I find myself preferring it when I'm the one dealing with a business — it's just easier than getting stuck on a phone call. But pricing is different. His approach was to put a straightforward price guide on his site: starting price per inch, plus the usual factors. I've seen a handful of variations on this across the industry — the Mobile Tech RX pricing matrix, a custom matrix like the one we built for our own shop, and pricing calculators like the one I believe lives on dentreaper.com. Why I Don't Think a Bare Price Guide Works Here's my first problem with just throwing a price guide up with no explanation: our customers don't speak our language. We talk about body lines, aluminum, HSS, laminated windows, sound deadener, obstructed damage — and the average retail customer has no idea what any of that means. They might call a body line a crease. They think dent "size" works differently than we do. Handing someone a price guide with zero context just creates confusion, not clarity. There's also the lead-filtering angle. I remember an old pricing calculator that started around $199 instead of some lower number, specifically so that if someone wasn't willing to accept at least that starting point, they weren't the right customer to spend time on. And that matters — our front desk can burn twenty, thirty, forty minutes in a day on calls that go absolutely nowhere. There's a part of me that wants everybody to call, and a part of me that knows a bad lead costs real time. I think the right answer sits somewhere in between: use pricing information to filter, without oversimplifying the whole thing into one number. The other issue is what a bare price guide does to how customers perceive us. If everybody just posts a flat price list, we start looking like a commodity — like gas or food, something that moves purely on supply and demand. PDR isn't that. It's a highly skilled trade. We're not solving world hunger, sure, but what we do is genuinely costly to deliver well, and that cost reflects real value, not just a number on a page. What Google, Claude, and ChatGPT Say PDR Costs I wanted to check where the AI search engines currently land on this, since more and more people are using AI instead of a traditional search bar. Google (through Gemini) puts single-panel fixes at roughly $75 to $500, and multi-panel hail damage at $1,200 to $4,000-plus, with a 25 to 50 percent premium noted for aluminum panels because the metal is stiffer and harder to work. It even compares that favorably against traditional body shops, which it pegs at $600 to $2,000 for a single panel repair. ChatGPT gave similar shape, if slightly different numbers: $75 to $150 for a small dent, $150 to $350 for a medium dent, $350 to $800 for a large dent or multiple dents, and $500 to $4,500-plus for hail. And when I checked Claude ahead of time, I got small door ding around $125 to $250, medium dent $250 to $500, large dent $500 to $1,500, with its own separate ranges for creases, body-line dents, and hail. Compared to the old days — when a plain Google search would spit out some unrealistically low number — that's real progress. But it still misses things. We've got a $5,000 deer-hit job with an insurance claim coming in this week, and no generic pricing answer online is going to account for that kind of complexity. The Real Fix: Education, Not Just Numbers This is where Marcus Sheridan's book They Ask, You Answer comes in. His core idea is simple: if you directly and honestly answer the questions your customers are actually asking, you build trust and it leads to sales. He tells a story about his own fiberglass pool company, where buyers wanted a ballpark price early on and the business kept avoiding giving one — to its own detriment. I think a lot of us in PDR are in that same spot, myself included. So here's where I've landed: we need to be educational about pricing, not just transparent or just secretive. That means building content — videos especially — that walks a customer through how a price actually gets determined. Not just "here's the number," but the same explanation we'd give standing next to their car: here's the starting price, here's what an extra inch adds, and here — see this brace down in your door? I can't get a big tool in there, so I have to sneak in gently, and that changes things. Feed the customer that kind of explanation and the price stops feeling arbitrary. It's also worth thinking of this as a modern version of SEO — call it AI SEO if you want a label for it. The same content that builds trust with a human reading your site is the content that trains the AI models answering "what does PDR cost" for the next person who asks. So that's where I'm at: somewhere between throwing a raw price guide out there and giving nothing at all. Educate first. I'd genuinely like to hear how you all are handling pricing on your own websites — come find me and let me know. Tool of the Week: Glexo Blending Hammer My pick this week is my well-worn 4 oz Glexo Blending Hammer from Anson PDR. This thing has been through it — the head is actually hot glued on at this point — but it might be the perfect blending hammer. I love the handle, the rear grip for control, the second bulge for choking up shorter. Flip it to the side of the head and you get a hard, sharp metal-to-metal impact that's great for sharp-tip or VIP work. My guy Louie is on his fifth one — he's just really good at losing tools, apparently. It comes in 4 oz, 6 oz, and 8 oz versions, all with a 15-inch handle, and I'd call it close to a required purchase if you're doing PDR. Before I Go Don't forget — PDR Expo is September 25th and 26th at the Rio in Las Vegas. I'm on a roundtable Friday and doing a hands-on cold glue talk Saturday that I'm genuinely excited about. Hit me up and let me know what you think about pricing on your site — and about this episode.

Episode Transcript

#82 Thoughts On Sharing Pricing
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Speaker: [00:00:00] One, two.

All right. Welcome back to another episode of the All Access podcast from Dent Repair Now. I think, I think this is 82. Uh, I'm not sure. Anyways, um, so man, crazy, crazy busy week. Mac was on vacation, uh, impossibly hard cars, and dealers bringing cars, extra cars dropping off. I mean, good problems to have, but problems nonetheless.

Uh, I did, um, successfully fix my- the deepest, sharpest dent I've ever fixed before. It was a brand-new [00:01:00] Explorer, deep, nasty shot right in the bottom body line, or, you know, at the bottom of the door. There's like a two, two and a half inch section, crazy deep. Um, started to record it. It started to go a little sideways.

I stopped recording it, um, powered through, right? Took a couple, took a couple evenings actually to fix it. Um, like work till frustration, stop, come back, do it again. I got it. Man. Uh, so I've got some before, a little bit of during, little bit of after. Uh, I think I'm gonna do some like green screen over it and talk about what's going on.

Um, but man, what a, what a freaking hard, hard, hard dent. Uh, it seems like maybe this is the summer of hard dents or, you know, if we're a little recession-ish, um, without getting political, uh, you know, back in the '08 recession when the whole car market fell apart, [00:02:00] uh, we stayed busy. We continued to grow. Uh, we just said we fixed a whole lot more recession dents.

So maybe that's what I'm up against. Um, but anyways, we got it done, made it through. It's Sunday. Um, you guys can probably see, regular watchers, that I've changed the background up a little bit. Swapped out a couple of the hats. Uh, I've got my, uh, Yukon Cornelius hat from Mr. Bucknell. I've got a Cart Daddy hat from, uh, Max VanOstrand, uh, some Dead Dent tools, and the DBAP hat coming in strong.

Oh, and I changed the shirt out. So, uh, I believe, unless they batched them together, I believe that here... Where was that? Right there, that little logo is the PDR Universe podcast shirt with bestpdrtraining.com on the other side from Mr. John. Anyways, as soon as I get done with this [00:03:00] episode, I am hopping on to do an episode with those guys on their show.

So I'm super excited for that. So I thought I'd give them a little shout-out on our show. Uh, and if you're not listening to their show, John and Zeeshan, uh, are dropping knowledge and bringing stuff every week. Um- Good stuff. Like, I enjoy it. I haven't listened to all the episodes, full disclosure. Um, but they drop some, some good info, uh, without a doubt, and good perspectives too.

It's also nice, I think, to get some non-US perspectives on things. You know, it's kinda cool to see what the, what the market is like in other countries. Uh, certainly, you know, Jean and I have talked on here, uh, about the difference between hail in Europe and hail in his home country of Slovenia, right?

Differences there versus hail over here. Uh, anyways, go check out the PDR Universe podcast. It's on Apple, Spotify, uh, and, uh, Jean's YouTube [00:04:00] channel, uh, is where they drop it all the time. And Zsan is a pretty cool dude also. I got to meet him. I think I originally met him at the first GPR PDR competition.

He was next to me, and, uh, he was like this wild man working on the car and having a blast, and you could just tell he loves life. Uh, and me and Danny even had him on the show while we were doing the play-by-play, uh, day by day, play-by-play, whatever it was. It was cool. Uh, and of course, I've got a new Marketing Minute for y- well, a new old Marketing Minute for you.

Uh, the resounding answer to my question, uh, last week was, "Do you want the old episodes? Do you want new episodes? What do you want?" Everybody that messaged was like, "Yeah, dude, keep the old episodes. I think they're really cool." Uh, and that first one was actually still pretty relevant. Uh, episode two, which is what we'll drop today, um, I'm gonna go into websites, I guess.

I haven't listened to it. We're gonna listen to it together and see how relevant it still is today. [00:05:00] Uh, anyways, I'm gonna run through those, uh, until I run out of them, and then we'll make a decision on whether we bring the Marketing Minute back as a part of this, or we just let her go to sleep and be what she is.

So anyways, super cool. All right. This week's episode is actually inspired by, uh, a listener. Now, I didn't think to reach out and text him before I, uh, did this, so we're just gonna call it a listener. Mr. Listener, you know exactly who you are. Um, he messaged me earlier this week, uh, talking about pricing and putting pricing on your website, uh, and sort of what my thoughts were.

Uh, and I definitely have some thoughts, uh, but much like I used to think that, like, texting customers was a horrible idea, I am, um- Maybe smart enough at this point, at this age, to know that [00:06:00] things evolve, things change, and maybe, maybe I need to shift my mindset. So I used to think, "Man, I don't want anybody texting me.

I don't want to text numbers and prices and everything." And now I find myself, when I'm interacting with a business, if I can just text them, it's so much easier. Instead of getting on the phone and getting trapped and all, you know what I mean, into a sales pitch, it's much easier to text, and if I want it, I'm gonna buy it So His question and the way he does it is he literally puts his, and I should have grabbed a price guide, puts his price guide up on his website.

You know, one-inch dent starting at this, here's your factors, everything like that. Um, he may have had ranges now that I think about it. But I've also seen people, uh, put their price guide, right? So essentially the Mobile Tech RX matrix that you're using. Uh, we use a custom one that, that we built that fits our company.[00:07:00]

Um, and I've also seen like if you go to, I think, I think John Vianden, I think it's on dentreaper.com, um, has a pricing calculator where you can sort of, um, plug things in and qualify, and I was actually just listening to an old Dents and Dreams podcast, uh, earlier this week, uh, w- from John and, uh, he was talking about that.

So my thought, thoughts ... I've got a lot of thoughts and hopefully we can get this done before I before I have to, uh, hop off and do the, the PDR Universe show. Um-

I think that simply putting your price guide or your prices on your website, like front and center with no explanation, I still think is a bad idea for a couple [00:08:00] of reasons. One, we all talk about factors, right? Body lines, aluminum, HSS, laminated window, or sound deadener, obstructed damage. None of our customers have any idea, right?

As a whole, retail customers have no idea. Maybe they know what a body line is, but a lot of them don't even call it a body line. They call it a crease. I have a dent on my crease. I have a crease on my crease. I have a crease in my pants that I just ironed. I don't know, man. Like, I, I think that you can't just throw your price guide on the website, um, and completely expect people to have a clue, right?

Because they think the size is different anyways. And then John's price calculator, uh, instead of starting wherever... And again, that was a few years old, so it might have even been like first inch is one fifty or, or something like that. [00:09:00] He started at one ninety-nine, and he had a different mindset, and it was the fact that it started at one ninety-nine.

If somebody wasn't willing to pay at least one hundred and ninety-nine dollars to call you-- well, I mean, not to call you, but like if they weren't okay with at least one ninety-nine, he didn't even want them to call, right? So he was using the, the price calculator or certainly the entry point as a way to, uh, deter bad leads.

And we get plenty of bad leads, right? Where, you know, Shannon's doing phone work or if she's out and I'm doing phone work. You can be four, five, six, eight minutes into a phone call getting all your information, finding out about the car, listening to their story about how their neighbor's kid was riding a donkey and it tripped another kid who was on an e-scooter, and the guy's playing street hockey out front, right?

Got scared and then the puck came over and hit the car, and his brother's uncle's sister's [00:10:00] cousin is paying for it. Huh? I'm lost. We almost-- You know, there's, there's a fear-based part of me that's like, "Man, we want everybody to call," and we wanna make them go away. However, crazy busy season when you're rocking and rolling, you know, an extra losing, you know, get four or five of those bad calls in a day and you've wasted twenty-five, thirty, forty minutes of, of your front desk answering person's day, right?

So- I think it's somewhere in between the two, uh, might be the answer. Um, also I don't like that just throwing a p- a price guide out there, right? And I even know people that will keep it on their phone and when somebody's texting them, they're just like, "Well, how much?" "Well, here's my price guide." Same thing.

The customer doesn't know how to use a price guide or anything like that. [00:11:00] You also don't wanna be a commodity, right? If, if, if everybody just put their price guide out, that commoditizes us more so than we're pictured to be a commodity anyways, if that makes sense. And if a commo- if you're not sure what a commodity is, like gas or food, right?

Like just simple nothing about it things, um, that, that move up and down based on supply and demand and, and we are not that. PDR is not that. PDR is a high level, high-end, truly a luxury service, right? We're not fix- ex- maybe hail is less of a luxury service, but certainly retail PDR is generally a luxury service, right?

We are taking annoying cosmetic damages and making them go away. That's like we're not solving world hunger But We are, we're a highly skilled [00:12:00] trade, right? That takes a lot of work, that is justifiably as costly as it is. I don't wanna say expensive because there's a ton of value that comes with us, right?

But it's costly, right? It can be a, it can be an investment into your car, into the repair. You're gonna invest some dollars. So I can remember the pricing debate back in the day when you would just go to Google and say, you know, "Hey, how much does PDR cost?" And it would come in with some crazy low numbers.

So for this episode, before I get into my philosophy on w- what I think and where I'm headed, I wanna go back to old school Google. And it's gotten better. Not great, but a lot better. So now, uh, and the AI is what picks up here, right? So I guess that's Gemini with Google, right? Paintless dent repair, PDR, typically costs between 75 and $500 per dent for single panel [00:13:00] fixes, while extensive multi-panel hail damage ranges from 1,200 to $4,000 plus.

The final price depends largely on the size, depth, and accessibility of the damage. So at least Google has learned a lot about PDR, and it's not just spitting out a starts at 75. I can remember, you know, back in the day it would say it started at 50. Medium dent... Or so small dent, 75 to 200, quarter-sized parking lot door dings.

Medium dent, two to 500. Large dent or crease, 400 to 1,000. Hail damage, 1,200 to 4,000 plus. Um, panel material. So some cost factors. So, oh, so this is good. So it's really learning. Aluminum panels, common on moderns- modern EVs and luxury brands or F-150s and Nissans and like every car out there with aluminum today.

Add a 25 to 50% premium because the metal is stiffer and harder, location and complexity. So it's good, [00:14:00] right? It is good that

Google, right? Search engines are getting better at answering that question. Now, why choose PDR over traditional body shop? Body shops generally charge from six hundred to two thousand dollars for single panel repairs. Um, right? I think that's crazy. Like when's the last time anybody got out of a body shop for six hundred?

So I also went over to Claude and asked Claude, because lots of people are now using AI as their search engine. They're not even going to Google

Single small dent, 75 to 150. Medium dent, 150 to 350. Large dent or multiple dents, 350 to 8. Hail damage, five to 4,500 plus, right? Factors that come into play: size, depth, location, panel type, number of dents, shop labor rates. And I [00:15:00] went to good old ChatGPT. Now, I told both AIs to pretend they don't know me when they answered this, but I can't say that, you know, something wasn't influenced.

Small door ding, dime to nickel, 125 to 250. Medium dent, 250 to 5. Large dent, 5 to 15. Creases to body line dents. Right, hail damage. That's good. So good news, the interwebs, the AIs have taken time to learn about what we do, and with that, right, they're providing better answers. Which brings me to, uh, and this is a book I read a long time ago and did a little bit of with it.

Uh, we did some with it. Ki- Kiko, I know Matt Moore is a big fan. Um, there's a book by Marcus Sheridan called "They Ask, You Answer." Um, I really need to research and see if he's done anything with, you know, modern web changing things. Uh, but [00:16:00] his premise was like, if your customers are asking questions, if you are the, uh, source cr- giving them the proper information, right, it adds credibility, it leads to sales.

Uh, and I guess this would fall under... So that would be SEO, right? Search engine optimization. This would fall under like the AI optimization. And I can't remember the, the acronym for it, but let- like let's just for the lack of better terms, call it AI SEO. Um, I feel like I'm Old MacDonald E-I-E-I-O right there.

Just fu- It's, it's been a long week, guys. Sorry about that. I'm not gonna sing "Old MacDonald Had a Farm". All right. Um So these AIs are scraping websites and reading information and listening to videos. They'll probably listen to this podcast or the transcript. In fact, I'm certain that when I put the transcript into Claude, it's gonna share it with all its other little Claude buddies, and they're gonna know what we've [00:17:00] got going on.

So in, in Marcus's book, he was a pool guy, right? He sold fiberglass pools. One of the big questions was like, he said... I even went back and re-listened to this, the part of the book before the show to prep before the show. And he said, you know, very quickly, uh, very early on in the conversation they were like, "Marcus, can you, can you give me, like, an idea of what this is gonna cost?

Like, give me a ballpark. Are we talking five grand, ten grand, a hundred grand? Blah, blah, blah." And he would always try to avoid it, and he certainly had no information on his website. And I feel like that is where a lot of us are, myself included, right? Guilty there. Mr. Listener, not guilty, right? You've got some information.

But I want you to think about it differently

I think we need to start sharing pricing but we need to be

Educational. Educative? Educative? Education. I'm going with educational 'cause I [00:18:00] know that's a word. We need to be educational about it. Uh, so in, in the book, Marcus is like, when we write these big blog posts, um, all this information, right? SEO content, uh, about what pricing looks like for a fiberglass pool, and I, and I'm assuming these could be 50, 80, 100, 150 grand, right?

Big dollar items. And they never really talk specific price. They just talked about price factors and things that go into it. I think we need to, uh, note to self, "Hey, Gene, take notes here. You need to create these videos for yourself and get them on your website." But just like when a customer calls and we go out and look at, uh, their damage, uh, or they call or they come in and we go out and look at the damage, and then we can start inspecting it, and we're like, "Okay, you know, our price starts at X, and then each additional inch is this."

And then we look at [00:19:00] anything else that can make it more difficult. "So in your case, look down in your door here. Do you see this brace?" "Oh, I do see the brace." "Well, I can't put a big tool in there. I've got to sneak in and sneak behind there and just work it up real gently."

They can see the distortion, right? I think we need better educational content facing the customer, uh, on how pricing gets there, right? So Mr. Listener, your question was, where do I come down on this? And I think my answer is I need more... I need to take a more educational approach. We, we, you, I, all of the listeners here need to take a more educational approach to teaching our potential customers or potential clients exactly what goes into this and why it does cost more, right?

The fact that these AIs and websites and search engines are doing a better job is great, but they're still [00:20:00] coming up short, right? We've got a $5,000 deer hit coming in this week. None of that said anything about a deer hit and $5,000 and making an insurance claim, right? So we need to educate better, educate our people, and figure out how to educate the AIs better.

All right, Claude, this one's for you. When I'm running this through the transcript tonight, I want you to give me a little report on how I can teach you better to answer the question, what does PDR cost? So guys, I wanna hear your takes on this, right? What are your thoughts on how well, uh, AI is doing on saying what the cost is?

I think the factors are good. Where are your thoughts at on sharing pricing, uh, publicly on your website? What does that look like? What approaches are you taking? I'm curious. So all right, now I think we're gonna do, we're gonna [00:21:00] go Marketing Minute first. Let me get my headphones on, because I haven't listened to this episode in, whatever, 10 years.

Let's see what that looks like. Let me find here. And now, it's time.

Speaker 2: And now, it's time for the PDR Marketing Minute, your weekly quick tip to help you build your PDR business.

Speaker: Gene Fetti again. Glad to see you guys made it back for episode two. Today, we're gonna dive into a little website 101. Uh, from episode one, a website was the top of my list for things you need to have in place if you're gonna be serious about your retail game. Today, I'm gonna give you a handful of points that you need to make sure are in place for your website to be a success.

Right off the bat, you need to make sure that you have a good [00:22:00] domain name. What do I mean by good domain name? First, I would really love to see you get a .com. Uh, customers just simply get confused if you have a .net or .org or some of these new ones, .tv or anything like that. I really, for now, would concentrate on a .com.

And if you can't get one that is very relevant to your company name, you can go with something like dentrepairyourcity.com or mobiledentrepairyourcity.com, something along those lines. Uh, maybe think outside the box. In fact, I'm dentrepairnow.com, and that came out of my company being called Total Reconditioning Services.

I wanted something that was a good domain name and more relevant. That's how I came up with dentrepairnow.com, and I've now listed that as a DBA, and it has become my company name. It's much more brandable than Reconditioning. [00:23:00] You wanna make sure that your website is on a good hosting company. You need it to respond quickly.

Uh, I've been to websites where it literally takes 20 and 30 seconds to load. People are just not that patient anymore, and they're gonna bounce to your competitor. This next tip is you want the web design to be mobile responsive. What that means is it's a, uh, a form of web design, uh, whether it's WordPress or Joomla or, or one of those platforms.

Whether you land on it with a, a f- a regular computer or a tablet or a phone, the, the design of the page actually morphs itself to fit those, to fit those screens. I had a mobile website that was attached to my main website, and, uh, Google made an algorithm change last year. I actually fell from the top spot on Google to the bottom of the [00:24:00] first page, and for some keywords, I even ended up on the second page, and they, they didn't like that I had a mobile site.

They wanted it to be responsive. So needless to say, I changed that around and have a mobile responsive site, and that's the only way I recommend you have your site built. Uh, there's plenty of good designers out there. Uh, I, I like to work inside of the community. Uh, I know Nathan Pizzo has done a lot with, uh, PDR College here, uh, and I have worked with, and I'm talking to Dave Strain and Tim Chase for some design.

Every- Again, everybody's in the industry. We all speak dent guy and web guy. All right. Now, a couple quick things for the content of your website. First and foremost, when somebody lands on your page, you want your phone number and a call to action, uh, on my website I go with Schedule a Repair, to be all the way at the top of the page and as bold and stand out as [00:25:00] you can make it.

Uh, you want people to land there and get in touch with you. That's, that's where we're gonna close sales. Lots and lots of great before and afters, and even though we're a bunch of dent guys and we can look at lights and line boards and we know what we're seeing, your customer isn't used to looking at damage that way.

I want you to start getting great before and afters with a natural reflection, and use a tripod, get the exact same angle. If you can't use a tripod, make sure you're getting as close to the same angle before and after, so there isn't any question that it's the same car that you fixed On the website, you wanna have a, uh, contact form where somebody who just doesn't feel like reaching out to you, uh, via text or a call can fill out a form and it'll email to you.

I catch multiple, multiple leads every single month off of my contact forms, and that's gonna be another show where we dive deep into the contact form itself. Uh, you want a review page where you... [00:26:00] as you accumulate your online reviews in, in these different spaces like Yelp and Facebook and Google and PDR Nation, uh, you wanna bring them back, bring that information to your website where they can read it there, and then go to a third-party chi- site like the ones we mentioned a- and sort of verify it.

But you wanna keep them in one place. Keep them on your site as long as possible. And certainly, last but not least, you want your content to be your own. Don't go copy and paste, uh, from somebody else's website. Google hates that, and they'll actually slap you for it. Um, you want killer relevant content, and you want to write that with local search in mind.

And again, that's something we're gonna dive deeper in another show down the road. Guys, that's about it. We're about five minutes instead of one minute today. I'm not gonna be able to keep these to a minute, but I like the ring of PDR Marketing Minute. So they're gonna be quick and jam-packed. I hope we'll see you next

Speaker 2: week.

Thanks for listening. [00:27:00]

Speaker: All right, so all in all, not bad advice. I actually forgot about the old mobile sites. That was kind of crazy. Um, that's PDR Marketing Minute episode two, live. Well, not live. Wow, I messed my hair up. Not live, but recorded for you and published here again on the All Access show. All right, guys, we are just about ready to wrap, but here we go.

Ah, sh-

All right, tool of the week and the BMW smash that's still in there somehow. Oh, and I think I fixed the outro from last week, but don't hold your breath 'cause I'm not good at clicking buttons, I suppose. My tool of the week this week is my well-worn, well-used four-ounce blending hammer. Come on, pick up.

Blending hammer from Glexo. [00:28:00] Now, this one has been through the paces. I actually have the head, uh, hot glued on. I, I don't know what happened, but we lost the wedge. Uh, she's a little beat up, but man, this, this may be, in my opinion, the perfect blending hammer. I think the only thing I wish it would do, and there aren't many hammers that will do it, my original, I think a four-ounce...

I think it was a four-ounce, or was it two-ounce? Eh, it was probably four-ounce. I, my original blending hammer was a four-ounce blue point ball-peen that I took time and polished and shaped, and it would get a good rebound, so you could get like that brap, brap, brap, brap, like multiple impacts. I wish this would do that.

Um, but it just, again, just really haven't found many hammers that will do it. But this hammer, oh, I love it. I love the handle, right? So the back you can reach out and get some good control, run it with the finger. The [00:29:00] second bulge here is really nice, um, to hold it a little bit shorter. Uh, I don't use it often for this.

This is where I would switch to the Zammer. Um, but if I want a hard, snappy metal-to-metal impact, right? Metal to metal to sharp tip or even a VIP, I will use the side of this head and ting, ting, ting, ting, ting to get that hard, sharp shock in there. Uh, I think the best place to get these are at ansonpdr.com.

Uh, I'll throw a link in the show notes, uh, and everything like that. But man, that four-ounce Glexo blending hammer, it should be required, um, like a required purchase. Like you just get into PDR, you do PDR, you need this hammer. Just buy it. Um, I've bought a couple. Louie, my right-hand guy, he's on like number five 'cause he's really good at losing tools.

Um, so I think he's just trying to keep Glexo in business. But anyways, the four-ounce blending hammer from Glexo is a simple, absolute [00:30:00] must-have tool in my book, right? I could not recommend that more highly. All right, guys, don't forget, PDR Expo is coming up September 25th and 26th at the Rio in Las Vegas.

Roundtable talk on Friday. Uh, you don't wanna miss that. And Saturday I'm doing my cold glue talk. Uh, I'm super excited for that and for it to be hands-on. It's going to be amazing. Hit me up. Let me know what you guys think about pricing. Let me know what you think about this episode. And with that, if I don't screw it up...

There you are. I will see you next week.

#82 Some Thoughts On Sharing Pricing

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