“That made a big difference,” Crabtree says of the early days. “Within a month or so, business doubled. Before Greg, we did a lot of standing around and then when Greg came, we worked all day, started staying late and worked some weekends.”
Hagan says the downtown shop used to simply wait for customers to show up, relying mostly on the dealership for business. That wasn’t OK with him, and he set out immediately to change the shop’s strategy. Here’s how he did it:
Appearance. Hagan’s first task was to clean up the cluttered, uninviting shop, which had been neglected for years. His goal was to wow customers from the moment they stepped through the door. Straightening up work benches, sweeping the floor and other basic cleaning went a long way toward making that happen.
“It’s not about what we see, it’s what the customer sees coming to your shop for the first time,” he says. “Why would they want to leave their second biggest investment with me if I can’t pick up cigarette butts?”
Marketing. Hagan launched an aggressive advertising campaign that included radio spots, email blasts and calls to insurance companies. The business’s DRP relationships grew from one to six because of that effort.
Hagan also packaged a letter introducing the body shop with a brochure about accident advice, and gave it to the dealership to distribute to car buyers.
“That’s the advantage a dealership has over a stand-alone [shop],” Hagan says. “We have built-in customers.”
And though the dealership is important to his success, he recently dropped its Ford connotation from the shop’s name and logo. The idea?
To emphasize that he repairs everything. Roughly half of his business is Ford, the rest is a mix of domestic and foreign makes.
“I want to take advantage of the dealership,” Hagan says. “But I want to establish the brand.”
Hagan has his own personal marketing tactic, too. He places business cards on damaged vehicles or those he knows have been the subject of recalls. He is always hunting for customers.
Customer care. Hagan says that merely touting quality work is not a good strategy these days because just about every shop does good work. His focus has been on meeting customer needs beyond the repairs they come in for.
He hired a couple of new employees who knew more about sales than body work and set them loose offering different customer services, from onsite estimates to discounted rental car arrangements. And these days, every car the shop services receives a full wash and vacuum at no additional charge. The shop will even make small fixes, such as paint touch-ups, for free.
“I want the car to go back to the customer cleaner than when they brought it in,” Hagan says. “It doesn’t take much longer.”
The shop also spends the extra time on vehicles because it works with the dealership to acquire them as trade-ins when a customer decides to buy a new car. Hagan says he asks employees to think of the vehicles as the company’s property, because they will be someday.
