How to sell big ticket items (like hail repair)

Selling big ticket items

One of the biggest benefits of the dent business for me was buying my own home. My wife and I looked for years and found the house we wanted. 

A fixer-upper on two and a half acres. Didn’t realize what a big yard it was till mowing time. I started to push mow it, never finished. Instead, drove to Wal Mart and bought a Murray riding mower. Big 46″ cut. It was a good machine as long as you never mowed anything thicker than a human hair. 

When the boys got old enough to mow, I trained them and turned ‘em loose. So began a never ending saga of replacing bent or chewed up blades. We had a lot of trees, therefore we had a lot of branches on the ground. I asked the boys to stop and pick them up, which they did when they thought I was looking. 

I guess this is more a story about how we’re led up the financial food chain, because the Murray was around $1000 and next thing I know I’m looking at mowers in the $9000 range. I know. You can get a  good used car for that. 

It is worth looking at your own behaviors as to why you buy. 

Emotionally I wanted a big ‘ole mower with zero turn and log chewing capabilities. To justify, I wanted the boys to mow as quickly as humanly possible. I wanted peace and harmony restored. I wanted to junk the Murray. I wanted to provide a dependable machine for my family to use if I was away on a hailstorm.

So now I’m in the big machine market and I see an ad in the Bargain Post. A guy in a town an hour from here has a company that sells them. He happens to have a used one. Would I like him to bring it by for a demonstration? 

Stay with me for this is really about how to sell high priced items. 

First he asked me what I was looking for. “I wanna mower man enough to run over branches”. 

That’s lesson one, he asked me to tell him how to sell me. From here on out, everything he said was like he had read my mind.

When he arrived with the mower in tow on a trailer, first thing he showed was the blades as thick as your forearm. Then he told me it was designed like a brush hog. I knew those could mow over logs. I wrote a check. 

I like this guy because I can write him another check every year. He comes and picks up the mower and services it each fall. Come spring, my boys can mow without me having to adjust, tinker or do anything for that matter.

This year my mower man was complaining about business. Said it was slow.

Here’s what he does to sell mowers. He runs the ad in the bargain post each week. He does the State Fair in Tulsa and NW Arkansas. Buys a booth at the home and garden show and any other show where he can get business. His follow up and his demos are good. 

So, why’s he slow?

Most people aren’t so ready to write a check for big purchases. In my own case, no way could I see spending big bucks on a mower until I had gone through the pain of owning a cheap one. Now I would never go back.

Two things he can do to fix his business now. Do more follow up and educate his customers better.

What he doesn’t know, is out of the thousands who see his ads, talk to him at a trade show, or see his sign on the highway, only a very few will want to buy a mower of that capacity. Even fewer have the bucks for it.

If he captured names and addresses he would fare far better. Keep a customer list. Some that don’t buy this year would next year. But they forget. Gotta keep sending them stuff. Create a newsletter. Call it the Mother Mulch News or such. Have a reason for sending it. Make customers celebrities by featuring one each time.

How do you get names at trade shows? Free drawing is good, qualifying them is better. Anyone and every one signs up for free drawing. Instead he could tie the drawing to his on site mower demo. Make the give away something only a person with a large yard would want. This is called qualifying the leads. 

Here’s what the sales process looks like in a picture.

Like a funnel, the leads come into the top. Any one who sees any ad and responds gets thrown in. Each line in the funnel represents things you do in follow up. Call it your sales sequence. Helping your prospect make a good decision. 

Eventually, the buyers shake out at the bottom. Meantime the undecided and old leads stay in there till they buy or die. You just keep sending them stuff and calling each year.

Ohh, yeah. You want me to telemarket. Call it what you want. It works. 

When he calls he’ll have a reason. “I just got a refurbished mower in I thought would work well for your yard, are you still in the market?”

Even if you don’t want to call, you can reach out to them with post cards, emails and such. 

Then when he has slow times, he has a list he can use for a special sale. Call it the “no one wants to buy a mower in December sale”. Call it whatever you want, all you need is a reason and a little gumption.

Got to ask for those names

When you answer a question on the phone or give a free estimate, that is valuable information. In exchange for sharing your knowledge, wisdom, good looks and charm you are well within your rights to ask for a little information back. Especially in a high dollar transaction business. Always ask for address and phone number before you write the estimate. Only once have I ever been turned down. 

Consider. There really is no way you can adequately educate someone in the course of one phone call or even an on site demo. At the least you’d want to send them a note and tell them what you just told them. 

Or send them to a website with photos and testimonials from your customers.

In paintless, I’ve noticed a trend with callers. They don’t know any better, so they group me in with all the other companies. Basically they boil it down to price and who can do it now. Some of these you’ll never get and frankly they don’t belong in your funnel. But some would be glad to know there is a difference. Not everybody is Tim-Trained, right?

It seems customers think it is a machine and therefore to them a commodity. So we take the time to teach otherwise.

What if it was a machine? What if we were a commodity like pizza or beer?

Then you would just say what no one else is saying. Years ago a marketing consultant toured the Schlitz Beer plant and noticed they were washing the recycled bottles twice. When he asked about it, the company rep said, “Oh, every body does that”. 

But the marketer  knew that nobody was saying so. So it became their unique selling proposition. “We only use twice washed bottles” or something. 

I coined a phrase which you can and should steal. I don’t call it dent repair, I call it my exclusive “Micro-Kinetic Shrinking Process”. Fancy name for small pushes take out big dent. 

Still it sounds official and makes my company unique, stand out. 

Do Dent Repair, Get More Dent Repair

I’ve had two people tell me about getting business they weren’t looking for. 

AJ Tolentino works at a shopping mall for now. On his breaks he goes outside and practices dents on his own car. People ask what he’s doing and then ask him to fix a dent for them. 

Two lessons here: First, he’s just learning so he’s not really looking for work, it’s finding him. He’s unattached to getting any business, so it comes easy. Second, motion beats motivation every time.  Every one must take the first step today of moving toward what you want. AJ wants to be a dent pro. He wants to be the best, and he projects it. It makes him attractive to dent business.

Frank Intrieri told me he now sees dents all the time. Really, his focus is shifted towards it. Yours is too. It’s what happens around you that becomes interesting. Like Frank reading the “Advanced Manual” sitting next to a lady who just happens to have a dent and would he fix it for her? 

Someone once said, “You become what you think about most of the time.” As you become laser focused on dents, remember, you are really a marketer of dents.

Why do some dents still scare me?

You would think after all this time, nothing would shake me. This month’s dent was so deep and challenging, I could not look at it until I was pushing on it. I had to really detach from this one. Push the limits but leave a safety net. I thought this one might break paint and it did. Customer prepped in advance, clear protectant applied and all is well. You’d need a magnifying glass to see it. 

Also don’t let the big steel block called a dolly scare you. I mostly used it to push with. I am going to go further with this marriage of old school collision and PDR. Stay tuned…

Till next time,

Tim Olson