Use these tips to sell more repairs and spend less on marketing

Looking to grow your collision center sales? Before you spend another penny on marketing, there's a different solution you should consider. Technology exists today that can help you increase your estimate capture rate and grow your sales without putting any strain on your staff at the front end.

Let’s say your shop writes one hundred estimates a week. If you have a balanced portfolio (you have work coming in from a mix of DRPs, customer pay, agent referrals, dealer referrals, fleet business, etc.), your capture ratio is likely between 50-60%. That means that every week you are bringing about 50 jobs into the body shop.

If your focus is on marketing and attracting more customers, a successful campaign could result in even more estimates to write, potentially bogging down your staff on the front end of the process. More work for your front end staff means less time to follow up on estimates, and your capture ratio may even go DOWN. The end result may be a few more repairs in the shop each week, but your estimators and front end staff will be overworked and burned out.

What if, instead of writing more estimates, you increased your capture ratio to sell more repairs from the estimates you are already writing? Increasing your capture ratio by just 5%, 10%, or 20% will have a profound impact on your bottom line without burning out your front end. Of course, this is easy to say but harder to do. Technology can help.

Here’s the data. We know that the average customer considers 3-4 body shops before selecting one to do their repair. We also know that the number one excuse customers give for not booking a repair when they get their estimate in person is: “I need to talk to my wife/husband.” That lets us know that 72% of the time there are two decision makers. If you’re only selling to one of them, when they go home and hand the paper estimate over to their partner all they are going to see is the price. So, the question becomes how can we influence the second buyer, the one that doesn’t come to the shop in person the first time, in order to increase our repair capture rate?

Instead of handing a piece of paper to the customer that we can’t track, we want to send the estimate to the customer by email or text. With software like BodyShop Booster, you can set yourself apart from the competition and make yourself the obvious repair choice by:

1. Providing a convenient, seamless experience. 
2. Building customer connection through follow up and personalized videos.
3. Using influencer videos and thorough explanations of your estimates to establish expertise and gain your customers' trust. 

Use software like BodyShop Booster and the science of human behavior, and soon you will be selling more estimates and capturing more repairs without spending any extra marketing dollars.

Keep crushing it!

- Ryan