Up selling and developing new profit centers are growing needs for collision centers. Many shops are not making ends meet from only collision repairs. Successful collision centers have created profit centers by adding other products to their menu of services and marketing them to their customer base.
Most up sells can be identified by just walking around a customer's vehicle looking for neglected cosmetic items that can be easily repaired, or by identifying accessory items to dress up vehicles. Adding an up sell or accessory can help remove the negative impact of the collision experience. Pricing these repairs competitively will create a profit center for your shop that you can easily market.
Services that most collision center owners and managers would normally pass up as troublesome are becoming standard fare. Tires are often seen as a nuisance; the tire damaged in the accident is sent to a tire store to be replaced as a necessity and not seen as a profit center. With a little investment and implementation of a selling process, tires can be a major profit center for a collision center. Up selling the customer one or maybe three more tires at the time of a collision repair can add dollars to the bottom line.
Headlamp restoration is another service that can be added to most repairs. In the past year, technology has refined this once cumbersome process eliminating some of the special sealers previously required. A simplified buffing procedure has been created that can be performed with items normally found in a paint or detail shop. Several companies offer complete packages, including small buffing tools and abrasives that make this a practical inexpensive service to add to your list of up sells.
As you work to create new profit centers, the price of a repair might have to be reduced to influence the customer to have the repair performed. This might sound like a contradiction but small repairs such as bumper scrapes can be performed by a low-wage apprentice in a quick lane or fast track operation, which reduces your cost of sale. The lower cost of sale will allow you to maintain acceptable gross profit margins while providing an up sell your customers will see as a bargain. A reduction in cycle time is an additional bonus to this type of repair. When including these half-day repairs to your cycle time calculations, you will see the number drop as a result.
Helping your customers improve the appearance of their vehicle with accessories and cosmetic modifications is a profit center that is growing in the collision industry. While this is more prevalent in dealership collision centers where they have ready access to dress up accessories through their parts departments, there are still opportunities for independent collision centers. Dress up accessory items such as running boards, side steps, mud flaps and vent visors are big in the SUV and pickup market while cosmetic items such as custom grilles, headlamps, tail lamps and spoilers are popular with the import market.
Many of these items can be used as upgrades when repairing collision damage. Exchanging OEM headlamps for high density headlamps; trading an OEM grille for a custom tube version, or swapping LED tail lamps for factory tail lamps to add personalization to your customer's vehicle is an up sell some customers will find hard to resist. These accessories can be priced with a moderate mark up because a majority of the labor will be included in the collision repair.
Marketing your profit centers and up sells is simple. Create inexpensive flyers to advertise available accessories and up sell services. When the flyers are given to customers during the estimate process, they can help close the sale. When presented during the after repair delivery procedure, they will plant the seed for a future sale. You also can market your up sells through coupons; follow up letters or newsletters to your current customer base to give your former collision customers a reason to revisit your shop. Staying in touch with your customer base will maintain your relationship with them by keeping your shop at the front of their mind. By providing them a useful service, you will continue to develop the trust they appreciated during the collision repair that introduced you.
