I went to a two day detailing seminar over the past weekend that was presented by Nick Vacco, the president of
Detail King , a pro detailing chemical supply company.
In my previous post on here, I said that I would let you guys know how it went and anything cool I learned.
Day one of the seminar was all business and marketing. The second day was strictly hands on detailing.
I'll discuss the business/marketing stuff in another post since this is all going to get pretty long.
So here is what I learned the second day. Here is the complete walk through of pro detailing of a client's Chrysler 300M. I’ll break it down into steps. Included in blue are little tricks I learned that some of you may find of interest. Here goes.
~~Engine~~
We covered the "Fuse Relay Center" with a plastic bag. We then
sprayed all electrical connectors with WD40, which repels water. We then sprayed down the engine lightly with water from the hot pressure sprayer.
Next we applied engine degreaser and scrubbed with a soft bristled brush. During rinse off, we were very generous with the water, getting all the soap off. They said to
not get the hood liner wet if possible because they will fall apart easily. We then closed the hood to let it dry and moved on.
~~Interior~~
First we air purged (compressed air) the interior which blew out dust and dirt from all the cracks and tight locations in the interior.
Next we vacuumed the interior completely starting from the top working down to the carpet.
For door panels we sprayed
Pink Stuff Cleaner on the vinyl and scrubbed with a wet soft bristled brush. Then we wiped down the cleaner with a MF and air purged any remaining water/chemical.
For the headliner we again used the
Pink Stuff Cleaner . We simply applied it to the MF and whipped down the headliner. Works pretty well.
Since the dash doesn't get as dirty as the door panels, we just applied the
Pink Stuff to a MF and whipped it down.
For the leather seats we used
Lexol Leather Cleaner and a wet soft bristled brush. It really foams up good and cleans the leather. We then whipped off the cleaner with an MF and air purged in the cracks of the seats.
For the carpets and floor mats with used extractor soap and carpet shampoo and a PC with the scrub brush attached. We then whipped away as much of the foam as possible with an MF and them put the hot water extractor to the fabric. The extractor (by
Mytee) is absolutely freaking amazing!!
The carpet and floor mats were spotless!
We then dressed the vinyl and plastic pieces with some of their
Pearl Gloss dressing. Then we dressed the vinyl seats with
Lexol Leather Conditioner.
We then vacuumed the interior once more, cleaner the windows with cleaner and a MF and was done with the interior.
~~Exterior~~
We first sprayed down the vehicle with the hot pressure washer. We washed the exterior with their car wash soap and wash mitts. Dried with MF towels. We clayed part of the hood just the try it out, but didn't clay the entire car.
We cleaned the wheels and wheel wells with cleaner and spoke brushes. Worked pretty nicely.
We did the interior while everything on the outside dried.
The demonstrator PUT A SCRATCH on the hood of the 300M so they could show us how to remove large scratches. We wet sanded with 2000 grit sand paper and then used compound and polish with the high speed buffer.
Before using either the high speed buffer of the random orbit polishers, we
masked off any rubber (around windows, sunroofs, etc.) and trim pieces because otherwise you could burn them when using a machine around them to polish/compound etc.
We then glazed the entire car with the high speed buffer. It was pretty fun getting to use the buffer without worrying about burning through the paint of my own car.
After we glazed, we applied their
Cherry Wax with their orbital polishers (one was a dual head, the other a PC). About a half hour later with buffed the wax off with MFs.
We then dressed the enging with non-silicon dressing and applied by spraying on and the whipping off excess with MFs.
That should pretty much cover the detail process. If you have any questions or if I've seemed to have skipped over something please ask everyone.
EDIT: New addition (31 Mar 2004)
~~Marketing~~ Part 1
Here are all the main points and ideas from my notes from the seminar. Here we go.
Determine a market niche. For example, "SUV Expert", insurance work, etc.
Know your competition. Call them on the phone; get a service menu from them. If they don't have one, that will tell you something in itself. Know their strengths and weaknesses and always know what they are doing.
Always set time a to promote you business, this is vital.
Having a service menu is a must.
Never give a price over the phone. People will always tell you on the phone that their vehicle is cleaner than it really is.
Price structure - at first, slightly less than you competition. If mobile, you could possibly charge slightly more since you are providing an extra service of coming to them rather than them coming to you.
Join your local chamber of commerce. Your business can benefit from it greatly. Even send out periodically a "chamber's special" for other members of the chamber or commerce.
Establish with you customer that you use quality products (not just auto store products).
Be organized. Quicken works well and is highly recommended for any detailing business. It does invoices, databases, labels, etc. In the database keep special notes on the customer such as that they don't want any scent in their vehicle.
Do good work!! With out you are done for. 70% of customers generally come from referrals and repeat customers.
85% of the public doesn't know what detailing entails. 10-15% know a little and are familiar with the basics. 10% have had their cars detailed before and are very educated (clay, extractors, polish, etc.) Since most people would fall in the 85% range, you need to educate them about what pro detailing entails.
Doing work for dealers can get you going, but they usually only pay wholesale, not retail. Dealers usually aren't very loyal either. Most dealers don't have
good detailers at their dealership.
Educate the service manage in how to sell the product [detail] to the customer. If you can get hooked up at an expensive dealership such a Lexus, this could work well. For example, the dealer charges the Lexus owner $229 for a detail, then the dealer pays you like $125. Whatever you do, don't leave your propaganda in their car though! Don't steal their customers!
Body shops need interior detail services. After a car is in a body shop, the interior can get looking pretty bad. They don't do interiors. That is where you come in.
Advertise in Auto-Trader.
To be continued... This has been about 1/3 of my notes.
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