As you probably have heard GM, Ford, & Chrysler have extended their Employee Discount financing program. If you own and operate your own auto reconditioning business there are many opportunities awaiting!

First, these new car dealers are selling more cars than ever before. GM had the biggest gain in new car sales last month in their history. Many of their larger dealers are seeing more used car trades than ever before. I spoke to a GM mega center in Pennsylvania that sold 1000 new units last month and took in 900 used cars on trade. These trades will either be sold to wholesalers, sent to the auction or the dealers will keep them and retail the nicer units. Now what this means to you the auto detail business owner is that there could be more of an opportunity for increased revenue. You may of already seen an increase in your business, or you maybe you haven't yet. These dealers are taking in so many trades right now they are getting backed up with inventory. Each of these trades needs evaluated to determine how it will be resold. The nicer units will be checked-out in the shop and then these units will be cleaned and detailed and sent to the auction or kept to re sell. Because of the large amounts of trades the dealers are receiving and the time it takes to check them out mechanically, and receive the titles you may not see these details for 3 weeks or more. Now could be the Calm Before The Storm! So you need to prepare yourself accordingly. Even if the dealers have their own in-house detailing shop they will have overflow. If you have the time and want this revenue you should prepare a game plan to go after this potential used car reconditioning business.

Secondly, there is an additional opportunity with the new car that was sold. If you are not offering a Protection Package you should be! A protection package would consist of Paint Protection (polymer paint sealant), Fabric Protection, & Leather & Vinyl treatment. The new car dealer's profit margin and the salesman's commission is very skinny with this employee pricing sale. The dealer and the salesperson needs to make more profit on each unit. You may want to offer the dealership a protection package. The average price to the dealer for a protection package for a new vehicle ranges from $75-$125. The car is new so it will not take you as long to complete as a used car would. Typically to apply a protection package to a medium size vehicle should take no longer than 1.5 hours. If it were me I would advise the dealer to have you protect every new vehicle they have in inventory and have them place an addendum next to the MSRP window sticker. Many dealers will mark this up to $295-$395 or more. Most dealers will discount it and some may even give it away to close the deal so it can help them a few different ways. Lets say you protect 10 new vehicles per week that is $4,000 of new revenue per month and the work is easy! I have a customer who buys our products and just introduced this to a dealer that was not providing a protection package and they went for it! They committed about 25 vehicles per week, that is about $2500 per week in revenue that this detailer did not have. Hello!!!! Look at this opportunity here.

You can also promote this protection package to the retail customer who purchased the vehicle and maybe was not offered this at the dealership. This means you may have to do some additional advertising promoting this to the public. If you have a web site (and you should) update your site with this package. Your pricing should be lower than what the dealer is asking. The dealer customer can finance that package within their monthly payment so a $395 price tag from the dealer would only increase the payment by about $7 or $8 per month. Your retail cost to the customer may be $195 for the whole package.

Finally, you can advertise a Sell Car Package to your existing customers and to the potential consumer. The Sell Car package would prepare their vehicle to trade. If you take a look at the Black Book which many used car managers use as a guide when they apraise trade-ins you will see that a Clean car can bring upwards of $1200 or more. You need to promote that fact to the potential customer. Your used car reconditioning package which would include exterior, interior, trunk and engine detail may cost the customer $150-$250 but they could net an additional $1000 on their trade. You should also consider offering paint chip repair and carpet dying, too.