Pretty big problem I'm having

Brian_Brice

Brian_Brice

New member
i took a friend under my wing to show him much of the business, my understanding has constantly grown with trial an error and troubleshooting. I am very confident with pretyt much everything i work on now days so when i get a call to wash/wax someones swirled up 06 acura i try to sell a detail OF COURSE.



If the customer doesnt know or want to pay for something they dont know i show them, ordinarily ill tape up half the trunk or something very visible to show side by side differences. ive done this on many vehicles, some have called back to do the whole thing some havent.



my problem is my partner who is not a detailer and has his own truck was pretty much suppose to be doing wash/waxes due to the fact he obviously doesnt want to spend more than three hours on a car. he still doesnt know how to polish but carrys all the tools to do so with him.



i was at a business park yesterday and saw a car i did a demo on, my partner fessed up and admitted he did a two step for the lady, he used p21s paint cleaner and topped with nattys reg i think.



i told him in only interested in doing work i can put my stamp on and that we should probably go our seperate ways, the biggest problem is I believe he has been countering my every attempts to sell full details, he was with me once while explaining the process to one lady and the only words he says for the entire five minutes is "oh he just likes to do full details" like its not neccecery or something. very counter productive and i obviously made a mistake taking him on, it's my name so i am going to take him off my lisence and insurance.



How am i suppose to get my potential clients back that are apperently under the impression that abrassiveness is not needed, seen how he doesnt understand how to fix paint. what the heck am i spose to do in a town that has few prospects and hes been dissmissing my services as not needed???
 
oh i think he charged the lady 85 dolalrs for his two step, if he wouldve just called me to sell the job and future work i wouldve given him the future waxes, im just curious how many others he's tarnished my name with. i wouldve actually detailed her exterior for 160, don't you think thats money smarter spent.
 
Your text is tough to decipher.



But I will tell you this: Anytime your helpers or workers jump in in the middle of your sales pitch and say anything, give them a serious smack-down. This is your show, not theirs. If you wanted them to interject during your slaes pitch, you would introduce them and ask them to do so. Potential clients see this and think you have zero control of your business.
 
Brian,



It is not an easy task when you take on a business partner. It usually turns out much like you have explained where you have your thoughts about the mission and direction of the business and they have their view of things.



At this point, you just need to get back to basics and try to re-establish your well earned reputation. Go out there and do whatever it takes to win back the confidence of your good customers.
 
It's just very dissapointing to see someone i invested so much time into prove to be so worthless. he felt nervous when i was explaining"selling" the job, he proved he would rather settle for mediocrity right there which is why i told him not to say another word around me and a potential client. it's frustrating, i guess i need to seperate myself from his work and put out a newsletter in a local paper explaining what a detail is.
 
My advice is go out on your own. You don't have to separate in a negative way but I would split. My ex business partner and I are still really good friends. But together, as business partners we did not make good business. Basically he was the website guy and I did everything else. I sold the products, shipped them, and did all of the customer service and question answering. It is so much better not having to worry about someone else.
 
Or you could do what I do, I have a "partner" we have an LLP together. I also have my own corp. We share office space and a few clients. I have salespeople, he has salespeople. He contracts my corp to do projects, I contract his corp to do projects and some things go through or LLP. Will it last? Who knows, its the first time I did something like this, but its working for now.



Bet keep in mind - a partner is only needed for brains or money. No "let me do a guy a favor" partnerships ever work out.
 
well jsat, the key words were "but its working for now" i dont think it's ever really worked for us. i've been on his work site many times doing demo's just to create energy and hype it up. like most of you i've buried my heart and soul into my work, not the marketing part but the actual work involved. and many of my efforts to inform the community of our work has been tarnished and nullified by him whether he knows that or not. looking back on it there were obvious signs i shouldve seen. i took my wife out of town for valentines day before we partnered up and he was working for me, i let him take the truck to do strictly wash/wax jobs, also let him keep 60% of what he made, i think i was paid 40 dollars for the week, he didnt like working to make me money but didnt have a problem making pepsi money.



jsatek, you hit it again, he is definitely not the guy for the job, he told me yesterday he was considering taking on a new job becuase you can't get rich doing this around here. i told him rich isnt my grand goal, but i showed him my last ten reciepts, 295 dollars being the lowest of the ten, in the same area, which leads me to believe its not the area the salespersons in its the saleperson in the area.
 
jsatek said:
Bet keep in mind - a partner is only needed for brains or money. No "let me do a guy a favor" partnerships ever work out.
Click to expand...





he doesn't have any money that i know of, and i saw him spraying bleche white to remove road tar:confused: , another cause for concern i have.
 
would it be a bad approach to leave my card on that particular acura i spoke of and write something like, "still havent polished those scratches out" on it? or just talk to her?
 
well i use to think the uphill climb was just making the unaware aware of what we do, i just didn't realize how counter productive he was being this whole time. I've got a few offers on the table for a shop, I like the advertising a commercial property offers, all the details of the arrangment have yet to be sorted out but i think this would be a good way to seperate myself from the pack. Is it arrogent or wrong if i was to put "only professional detailer in *** county/area" on cards and lighted sign?



Oh and thanks for all the feedback, I knew what i needed to do for the most part but it helps hearing someone else say it.
 
Doesn't sound like this guy has the passion to continue in this line of work. He will eventually tire of it and go do something else. The quality of your work will speak louder than his inappropriate comments.



Partnerships are difficult. Both my brother-in-laws have had bad experiences with partners in their businesses. One of them had a computer software company that catered to banks. He had a partner that decided to cut him out of the loop and started selling the software on his own. My b-i-l had built in a time bomb into the software that would shut down the software if a password was not entered when it was installed. A few weeks later, the ex-partner came crawling back and offered to buy out my b-i-l's half of the business.
 
Not a good tag line. Thats a sinking ship.



I look at everthing that happens to me in business that I dont like and say, "It's my fault".

I then look to see what I didnt do or ask that made this event happen the way it did. You can always go back after and say, "If I only said this or I only did that".



A smart person learns from this and changes the way he does things by these experiences. Now you know to keep tigher leashes on people until you feel a real trust. I know you may have trusted this gent, but now I read that you are looking back and finiding little clues as to his true intentions. That is the right thing to do. If the guy couldnt clean cars the way you wanted, its your fault to let him go out and represent your business. If you saw the equipment in his truck you should have been firm and said, "Dont let me find you using that on my customers cars. If I do, it will be your last."



Now dont let it happen again.
 
you can put something like "quality professional detailing" or "quality mobile auto detailer"



you can't use "only..." because who is to say you are a professional, and who is to say you are the only one...what if there is someone out there you are unaware of doing better work than you?????
 
it's a very frustrating situation to begin with. to set yourself apart from a wash/wax shop let alone a guy that was handing out cards that look like yours. thats where the seperation becomes tough, i'm over it, just another obsticle.
 
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