Get Greedy

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Transcript:

Keith Cosentino: You know you’ve got a lot of options when you decide what to do with your invoicing and your data capture for your dent removal or other reconditioning business. But the choice I’ve made for my company is Recon Pro by Auto Mobile Technologies. This stuff has proven invaluable. I had a mountain of paper invoice books stacked up in a room in case I wanted to look something up. It was archaic, ridiculous. Now all of my technicians are on iPhones. They scan the VIN of the car, they enter a few pieces of information, including capturing the email for your customers. It’s 2015. You need to be building a mailing list for your customers so you can keep them updated, if you want to run specials, if you want to reach out to and touch them, you need an email.

This prompts you to capture their email so you can send them the receipt which comes via email, no paper in the truck to get lost. You guys, this is the way to do it. There’s a lot of options you can take. There’s lots of competitors. But is the one I’ve chosen. Check them out online, automobiletechnologies.com. The product is called Recon Pro. It’s not one guy who also a PDR tech building software. It’s a team of nerds dedicated to making your life better, and that’s what you want. Check them out. Tell them we sent you over there. Recon Pro.

I’m Keith Cosentino. He’s Shane Jacks, and this is the PDR College Podcast, where we are going to slingshot you to the front of the line in your PDR career. We’re going to take our experience, cram it down into a can, and slam it into your mind. We want you to be successful yesterday. So hang around with us, pick up all the tips and tricks that we’ve learned in our 20 some-odd years of PDR, and put them to work tomorrow so you can make tons and tons of cash. Shane. Why the heck do we need so much cash, man?

Shane Jacks: Because, Keith, money is a lot like women in that the things that you will do for a woman, you won’t do for anything else. We’ll do the same thing for money. We’ll do dang near anything to get it. And that’s why we’re here, is to help everybody try to do that anything, make that anything that you will do easier.

Keith Cosentino: Man, I’ve always had that it thing where I don’t have to do anything for women. They just come flocking to me.

Shane Jacks: Mm-hm.

Keith Cosentino: I got it like that. They used to call me a player. But when I say they, I’m referring to the stuffed animals I still had in my room when I was 27. I don’t think anybody outside of that room would ever refer to me as a player. Unless you saw my wife, you would think, he definitely has game.

Shane Jacks: He’s got game.

Keith Cosentino: Because there’s no way that woman would marry that due.

Shane Jacks: Or cash.

Keith Cosentino: He looks like Mr. Potato Head. But an out-of-shape version.

Shane Jacks: An out-of-shape version of Mr. Potato Head.

Keith Cosentino: I used to be in a lot better shape when I was less busy.

Shane Jacks: When you said less busy, I swear you were going lesbian there. Lez-biz.

Keith Cosentino: No. Actually I’d have the perfect body if I was going to be a lesbian, and then I don’t have to change anything. Nothing about what I look like right now.

Shane Jacks: I think your equipment is a little different. I haven’t seen it personally, however –

Keith Cosentino: Let’s hope. But I got the whole body type. True that. True that. Minimal muscle tone.

Shane Jacks: I won’t say it.

Keith Cosentino: That fun house look that they’re all going for.

Shane Jacks: That look. I was walking through a mall one day, and this 6 foot, 13 inch woman was walking through the mall also with a tank top on, with no brassiere underneath, and it said Butch with Femme Moments.

Keith Cosentino: That’s what it said?

Shane Jacks: Yes it did, really. It really scared me.

Keith Cosentino: Part-time lumber jack. All right, how did we get on this subject?
Shane Jacks: I have no idea. We all [inaudible] [00:04:22] morph into women, whether they be straight, lesbian or whatever.

Keith Cosentino: We’re having a good time here. So you know what? Man, we’ve had a good time with this show lately. I apologize I haven’t been around for a couple weeks, but when you do so many shows in a row, you’re bound to have some stuff come up at the last minute here and there. I’m glad that I’ve got you on the other end of the country to carry the torch for me. So thanks for running the show while I was gone.

Shane Jacks: ‘Twas my pleasure.

Keith Cosentino: I wanted to be around for that show with Raymond because that software sounded really cool. I wanted to talk to him about it, but I’m glad you covered just about everything.

Shane Jacks: I think we did. I think we got several people I know that are trying it now, at least on the free trial that he has. So if you haven’t yet, we’ll just rehash that real quick. PDR Estimate is the name of the software. So look that up. It’s for the iPad, iPhone, any IOS device. And –

Keith Cosentino: Was it initially just for the pad?

Shane Jacks: I’m not certain. Honestly, I have no idea.

Keith Cosentino: I thought I tried to open it on my phone like a year ago or something.

Shane Jacks: You know, I may be wrong there. I could be wrong. It may just be for the iPad.

Keith Cosentino: You know what? I may be thinking of a competing software. I don’t know. There’s a lot of guys out there building stuff, and frankly, I haven’t tried to test them all because I got something that works. But that doesn’t mean there’s not something great out there.

Shane Jacks: Right. Yup.

Keith Cosentino: So thank you guys for talking about the show. A special shout out to all the new guys who have found us. I’ve gotten a couple of calls and emails from guys who are new in the business and stumbled across the podcast and just gave us a shout out to say thanks for doing it. Thank you guys for reaching out to us. It means a lot to Shane and I when we’re doing these late night and early morning shows, and everybody around us is still asleep. It’s nice to hear from a guy who says, “Hey, we like what you’re doing.” So thank you, fellas.

Shane Jacks: Yes, thank you very much.

Keith Cosentino: You know, I would be a straight murderer if I had this information in my first or second year of PDR.

Shane Jacks: Yeah, for sure. Man, it’s changing people. It’s changing things. I really feel it is, Keith. Well, I know it is. Not feel, know.

Keith Cosentino: It is because it’s such a strange industry. You know, you get into it, and then you’re just thrown out into the middle of the ocean and try to figure it out by yourself. And sometimes you come up with magic, and sometimes – you and I were lucky enough to get in front of enough other people, ourselves included. I was lucky enough to meet you and vice versa, that we could kind of put our information together and form some cool chemistry and brew up something even better than what we had by ourselves. But not everybody gets in front of the right people or finds a networking group or whatever.

They’re just kind of out floating around in the middle of the ocean by themselves and trying to come up with routines and pricing and everything else.

Shane Jacks: For sure, yeah. I was very lucky in finding you, for sure. My income has gone up considerably.

Keith Cosentino: Yeah, mine has too, you know. I’ve learned a lot from you, skill-wise and with your processes. You always give me all the credit for being the sales guy, but the truth of the matter is, our skills only overlap just a little bit. We’ve both got – or they overlap more than just a little bit. We’ve got a lot of this – both have lots of talent in repairs and in sales, but you always give me the credit, like you can’t sell anything. But you’ve got your own tips and tricks that you’re shy about.

Shane Jacks: Yeah. They mainly work here in the South.

Keith Cosentino: So the topic of today’s show is cool. We’re calling it Get Greedy.

Shane Jacks: Not hard for you and I.
Keith Cosentino: Not hard at all. But you know what? It is hard at some points in the sales process because you want to be Mr. Nice Guy, and you want to give “deals” and things like that. But I mean at the end of the day, your income comes from the numbers that you put on a paper. You’re making the bills. And unless you’re going to get a little bit greedy and start changing those numbers, your income’s going to stay with what you input on that paper.

Shane Jacks: Mm-hm.

Keith Cosentino: And that’s a fact that a lot of guys lose track of. They put all the power in their income in the market or with the manager or the customer. Everybody else but themselves. Oh man, everybody in my market – they’ll do – there’s nobody that’ll pay this in my market. And there’s guys that’ll do dents for 40 bucks in my market. Let me tell you something. Everybody that thinks that my market is so fantastic, I have a guy in town who’s been doing dents four or five years longer than me. He’s a respected technician. He’s not a hack. He’s a good guy. He’s a stand-up guy.

He shows up. He works hard every day. I lost a retail customer to him because he did a dent for $40. That’s 4-0.0, 40 bucks. There are $40 guys in every market. I don’t care about it. Not every customer is going to want his service, and frankly, he doesn’t want their business. You’ve got to call this guy 40 times just to get him to answer the phone because he’s a wholesale guy. He doesn’t know anything about the retail market. And I’ve already tried to educate him. So do I complain about it? I don’t give a flip. I really don’t. And Shane doesn’t either.

Shane Jacks: Nope.

Keith Cosentino: There’s guys in his market doing the same thing.

Shane Jacks: Twenty. I’ve heard as low as 20 bucks. And the lady showed me, because I gave her an estimate on a car, at a dealership, the service [inaudible] [00:10:03] said, “Well, I had this one” – she pointed it out on the fender – “I had this one done for 20” – I think it was 20. I may be off by a few dollars. “I had this one done for $20 a few years back by a different guy,” the guy before more. And I looked at it and I went, “Yeah, I can tell.” And she looked at it and she went, “Yeah, you can still see it.” I said, “Yeah, pretty bad.”

Keith Cosentino: You know what? You’ve got to tell that story about that dude that came to the shop with a dent in his hood.
Shane Jacks: Oh my gosh. This is good stuff. You want me to go ahead and do that now?

Keith Cosentino: I love it. I want to hear it again.

Shane Jacks: Okay. So let me clear my throat here. This is a little bit long. So I’m outside of the shop, putting – we’ve got a lot of hail damage here right now, so I’m putting a washer nozzle that I lovingly broke while I was working on the hood, in a car, and I’m outside just doing it real quick, and this gentleman pulls up right behind this Odyssey van that I’m putting this nozzle on, pulls it right – I mean just noses right up against the back of it – sticks his head out the window of a ’90-something Taurus station wagon, and goes, “Hey, bud.” Well actually, he was from Utah, so he doesn’t – everybody around here talks country, whether you’re from New York or from here.

So anyway, he says, “Hey, bud” – I’m being sarcastic. He says, “Hey, bud, you work for Dent Pro?” And I look back at him and immediately looking at him and the car, I’m like, I don’t have time for this. I went, “Yeah.” And he says, “When you get a minute, won’t you come back here?” Too lazy to even get out of the fricking car, right? So I’m like, “Yes, sir, I’ll be back there in a minute.” And immediately, even looking back there, my eyes go to this – apart from the oxidized paint, the two wheels that have hubcaps on them and the two that don’t, the roof rack that’s oxidized, the very large – looks like he could chase hail – individual sitting in the left front seat that is yelling out the –

Keith Cosentino: Easy. Easy now.

Shane Jacks: You’re the one that started it.

Keith Cosentino: What color is this rig?

Shane Jacks: The light blue that they had. So apart from all of that, my eyes first fixed on this dent in the hood, right behind the left headlight. So I’m like, that’s what he wants fixed. So I walked back there, and he says, “Hey, man. You see that little dent on the hood?” And again, this is not the best salesmanship – this is not my customer, so I didn’t care at this point, Keith. So he says –

Keith Cosentino: I’m telling you, you’ve got to get mean sometimes.

Shane Jacks: – “Did you see that little dent on the hood?” and I went, “That’s not a little dent.” And he goes, “Yeah, the little dent right there on the hood behind the headlight.” And I said, “Are you talking about the one” – and I do my hands the size of the dent, and this thing is literally like 18 inches in diameter. And he says, “Yeah, that little dent right there.” I said, “Yeah, sir, that’s not a little dent.” He said, “Well let me tell you what.” He said, “Will you grab a suction cup and suck that thing out for me real quick? And I’ll give you $5.” And I just stared at him. I literally stared at him for a second.

That awkward silence that we talk about, this was really awkward.

Keith Cosentino: That’s not the way you usually do it.

Shane Jacks: No, I know. That’s why – you didn’t let me finish. This is not the way you use the awkward silence. I was using it to make him feel stupid. And so I just stared at him. And he just looks up at me, and I can’t remember whether he said, “Well, are you going to do it?” or if he didn’t say anything. I believe he didn’t say anything. And I went, “No. I won’t.” And then he goes, “Oh, well what would you charge me to fix that?” And I said, “Look, man. If this was a nice car,” and it’s not, I said, “I would charge somebody 5, 6, 7, 800 bucks for that, depending on the car access and everything.”

I said, “I’m going to be really nice and tell you I would just rough that thing out for $300.” He goes, “Oh my gosh. Let’s just be clear here. That little thing on the hood up there behind” – I said, “Yes, it’s not a little dent.” I said, “It doesn’t work that way. They don’t just pop out.” And he said, “Huh, I didn’t think it would be that expensive.” I said, “Dude, look at the building behind you. Do you think I would have a business doing dents for $5?” And he goes, “I don’t know.” I didn’t know what to say at that point. He goes, “Well” – he said something about doing it again.

And I went, “Yeah, for $300, I will rough it out and make it look better. I have to push it from the back side.” And he goes, “Hmm, well do you know anybody around here that will do it for” – he didn’t say $5, he said, “For cheap?” And I went, again, “If there was somebody like that, that will do it for $5, do you think I’d have a business?” He goes, “Well, I don’t know.” It completely floored me the way this guy was acting. And I’m sure I floored him the way I was acting.

Keith Cosentino: [Inaudible] [00:15:27].
Shane Jacks: But the guy, man, he was wearing a – he had – I believe the sweat – I believe he was wearing a sweatshirt with the sleeves cut off, that was burgundy. And he had on his left arm a sweatshirt sleeve, just cut off. It was a gray one, a heather gray, typical sweatshirt material color, with the elastic arm band at the bottom that holds it on your wrist, you know, it’s cut off, and it’s cut off up at the upper arm, and it’s just dangling on his left arm. And I’m staring at this thing. This guy, I swear he could have been in Men in Black. I know he could have.

Keith Cosentino: Just to get this straight, he’s wearing a sleeve only?

Shane Jacks: Only a sleeve on his arm.

Keith Cosentino: No – in case it got cold on that side of the car.

Shane Jacks: I don’t know if that thing tells time, and that’s why he had it on his – I don’t know. But it was just a sleeve on his left arm. Ugh. A true rocket scientist.

Keith Cosentino: That is awesome. $5.

Shane Jacks: $5.

Keith Cosentino: And I had a gal on the phone the other day that said, “Oh, my friend got a dent popped out for 20 or $25. I had the conversation with this lady over the phone. “No, there’s no suction cups. There’s no magic. They don’t just pop out.” And I tell them the same thing sometimes if I’m feeling a little smart alec. “Do you think I could run a company driving out to your house and charging you $20 to do something? How many people do I have to see just to pay my mortgage?”

Shane Jacks: Lots and lots, especially with your mortgage. You see, they don’t know what your house – they don’t know about Case de Cosentino.

Keith Cosentino: No, they don’t. Well they probably know about it as that one house, the one with the unicorns out front.

Shane Jacks: They just don’t know it’s yours.

Keith Cosentino: How does the whole house levitate in the air like that?

Shane Jacks: How does it sit on top of a lake and not touch the lake? I don’t get that.
Keith Cosentino: It’s built on a cloud.

Shane Jacks: With unicorns out front.

Keith Cosentino: You know why I did it that way? It’s earthquake proof out there in California. So get greedy. When you have these jokers – I mean that’s a funny story, but you’ve got to get greedy with your time. When you get these signs right off the bat, you know, the guy’s wearing a sleeve only, and he doesn’t get out of the car, probably because he can’t – you’ve got to get greedy and give him about 30 seconds, if that, and get on to somebody who is your customer.

Shane Jacks: Man, I gave him a lot more than that. It was for my sake.

Keith Cosentino: You are just allergic to stupid, is the problem.

Shane Jacks: Very allergic to it.

Keith Cosentino: You can’t help but send in some white blood cells. So we’ve got a list of things that we do to get greedy, but before we get to them, I’m going to share my story on how I came to the point where I wanted to share this topic with you and with everybody else.

Shane Jacks: This one’s not so funny.

Keith Cosentino: No, but it is poignant.

Shane Jacks: Yes.

Keith Cosentino: So out here in sunny Cali, we don’t get a lot of hail, almost any. But we do get a lot of people coming to California when they figure out how terrible the rest of the country is. And they get hailed on in other places where the elements try to kill them and flood them, and then they come to California to finally live peacefully. And a lot of military guys will bring their hail damage here. So I’ve got a buddy who works about an hour south of her, another PDR guy. We don’t have any business affiliation. We’re just buddies. And he’s as busy as I am because he puts the PDR college skills into reality, and now he’s off the charts busy.

He was busy before, and now he’s busy with stupid pricing, and everybody’s happy. But he, at one of his good body shops, had this big hail car come in. Not big hail, nasty hail, just tons of dents, Grade B dents, but lots of them. So he said, “Man, I’m too busy to do this thing, but I don’t want to lose it.” He’s like, “I’ll call Keith and see if he wants to split the car with me.” So I’m super busy too, so it doesn’t really make a lot of sense to go do that, because we’re going to split it now. So both of us don’t really need this car, so over the phone together, we kind of come up with an estimate, and we got super greedy and pushed it about as far as we figured we could push it.

It was an Odyssey, so it had a lot of real estate on the roof, and lots of different little panels between the rails and the top of the doors and stuff like that. So I think we got it to about just shy of 4 grand. And it wasn’t tons of dents, as far as hail goes. You know, like some of those Odyssey roofs can have 1,000 dents or 700 dents. This thing probably had, I don’t know, 300 or something like that. It wasn’t – 200, something like that. It wasn’t a big deal. So we’re going to get the body shop to take this thing completely apart. We were going to fly in and pound it out. Together it would probably take us half the day, if that.

So we’re figuring just shy of 4 grand. So everything’s improved, and the estimator said he had to take his nitroglycerine after he got the estimate because he wasn’t ready for it, but at the same time, he had – and you guys know this character because he exists in every market – you had the body tech who asks too many questions. You know who I’m talking about, Shane?

Shane Jacks: Which body shop? Because literally every one of them has one.

Keith Cosentino: Right. And if you started digging through his tools, you’ll find a set of PDR tools or you’ll find a mini lifter or both or whatever. You know? They’re always hanging around, asking what you’re doing. You know, they hate their job and they see you fly in, make a bunch of money and fly out, and they want a piece of the action. And that’s this guy. This guy started out with, “Oh, man. That’s a 22-hour roof. I don’t want to do it. Blah, blah, blah, blah.” Right? So we draw up the estimate. It gets approved. We schedule it for – it was like a Friday – we’re coming in on a Tuesday to do it, give them a day to tear it all apart.

And my buddy gets a call later, “Hey, scratch that. We’re going to go conventional on the roof and the rails. Just do the hood and a couple other things.” And it turns out the body guy saw that estimate and said, “Shoot, I can do it for less than that.” So they went and –

Shane Jacks: The entire car.
Keith Cosentino: – spread out all – yeah, the entire car except the hood and one other panel. So we lost the job to this greedy body guy because he wanted the work. And listen, I don’t fault him for that. I know why the buildings are built. They’re built to paint cars. They’re not built to sub out to PDR guys. So I get that. We all know that’s a terrible repair for that car. It’s going to be a piece of rolling garbage after that. And you current body guys can hate on me all you want. You get light hail on your car, no way you want that thing spread with mud and repainted. You want it fixed PDR, so save the hate mail. It’s the truth.

Shane Jacks: Mm-hm.

Keith Cosentino: Like one of my buddies online set up – this is a little side story, but he set up this trade show booth, and just meeting people in town and showing them what PDR is, and he had a couple customers come by who had been hailed on like a year prior, and he had fixed one of – the husband’s or the wife’s car – and the other one went conventional. And then they came back to see him and said, “Your car still looks perfect, but the one that got painted is rusted and cracking on the paint, everything.” So he’s like, “Score one for PDR again. Here it is, time tested conventional repair sucks compared to a PDR.”

So we lost the car to the body guy. My buddy went and did the hood by himself and whatever panels were left, and I didn’t go. Which was fine because I didn’t need to go. But nobody likes to lose a job like that because it would have been fun, going to work with a buddy out of town, go to a different Outback Steakhouse for once.

Shane Jacks: This one’s laid out a little different.

Keith Cosentino: They brought my blooming onion on a plate with a blue ring and [inaudible] [00:23:55] got yellow rings. So what did we learn? Well we should have gotten into the job with just the roof or whatever, and supplemented all the other stuff. Because once you’re on the job, you’re on the job. Nobody’s kicking you off in the middle. But trying to push the entire estimate to the brink before we started, we made a big spectacle of it, and it got pulled out from under us. You’ve got to get on the job and get started. And guess what? That’s the same game that the body shops play. Drop it off. Here’s the estimate.

And then once they rip it apart, they write the real estimate, right?
Shane Jacks: Mm-hm. That’s right.

Keith Cosentino: That’s the same game. Why? They’re getting greedy. When you come and bring the car for an estimate, if they’re a good shop, they want the keys. Leave it now. Why? They need to make the sale. The minute you drive out of that place, the chance of you coming back are reduced by 100. You’ve got to get the job now. So if I were to do that hail scenario over again, I’d have my buddy start on it, even if it’s just push one dent on the roof and then write a supplement for everything else, and then come down and finish it with him. Hindsight is always 20/20 and you can see perfectly after you make mistakes, but we should have gotten anchored into that job, dug in and then gotten the money we needed.

And quite honestly, I think just about everybody could write a better estimate once you’ve opened up the car and put a tool on one dent, than before you actually start on it. There’s always something you didn’t see, bracing you didn’t see. There’s something. It may not be big. It may be very small, but there’s always something you wish you could change.

Let’s talk a little bit about hot glue, specific for paintless dent removal. What kind are you using? You know, you can get a decent pull from any type of glue. I mean any. You can go get some stuff from the craft store. You can get stuff from Wal-Mart. In fact, I used Wal-Mart glue for a long time. Before I really got into the manufacturing side of PDR, Wal-Mart glue was my glue. You know what I thought? All these colored glues are fancy ways to trick me out of money. How much better can they work? Well to some degree, I was right. Some of those colors suck, and they’re there just to take your money.

However, once I opened my eyes and got some of the samples of glues that were the real deal, glues that really did work better, I thought, holy smokes, here I am again, doubting the technical progress of our trade. Just because something looks different, doesn’t mean it’s not better. It doesn’t mean it’s a scam. So I started using colored glues. I found two that worked amazingly, green glue and the pink glue that we stock – and we stock both of them – on blackplatepdr.com. But I wanted a glue that worked even better than that. Now can a glue work too good? Yes. Super Glue and Liquid Nails work too good.

They will take the paint off the car. That’s not what we’re after. It’s a fine line of maximum adhesion, but not going over the top and ripping the paint off the car, putting us further back than we started in the first place. We want to leave the paint on the car. So we need something that doesn’t have maximum adhesion for a hot milled glue. There’s a lot of glues out there that are made for construction and manufacturing that would make this glue look like it doesn’t work, our glues that we use. But we have a specific purpose, and we need to find the maximum adhesion we can get out of those conditions.

And that’s what we’ve done with our new line of glue, Tabweld. Tabweld is the new standard for PDR. You don’t think it can get better because what you’re using works now. But if you want to function at the highest level, you’ve got to squeeze the last two, three, five, ten percent of performance out that everyone else is leaving. It’s just like racing cars. Everything has to be dialed if you want to go faster than the other guy. And if you want to do a better repair with less pulls or do a repair that someone else said couldn’t be done, you’ve got to have the best tools.

And glue is so stinking cheap for how much you use. I did a $600 repair the other day. I was on it for four hours, and I used two sticks of Tabweld the whole time, and I glue pulled the whole time. It’s not a lot of money to put in, and there’s almost no other expenses in our business. Stop being short-sighted. Buy the glue that’s going to make your life easier and more profitable. Don’t forget, that’s what I’m all about in this business, making more money. And if you’re using the right tools, you’re going to make more of it. I can promise you that.

You’ve got the right lights, you’ve got the right tools, you’ve got the right tabs and the right glues, and you know how to use it all, magic happens. So that’s what I’m trying to tell you about. There’s a glue that works better than what you’re using now, and it’s called Tabweld. It’s still in an early release stage. We’ve got samples out right now. If you buy anything on blackplatepdr.com, you’re going to get a sample. You can go on there and just pick the sample if you want. You’ve got to pay for shipping if you do that. But very shortly here, in a matter of weeks, Tabweld is going to be released full steam ahead, and you can have as much of it as you’d like.

Check out the website, tabweld.com. You can pop yourself on to our mailing list there so you can be notified the minute we are releasing it. But we’ve got some exciting stuff coming out with that. You are going to be impressed. I promise you. And if you don’t like it, I’ll buy it back because I use it every single day. I can’t have enough of it. So buy it, enjoy it, make more money. Tabweld.com.

Shane Jacks: Can I add to that real quick, to this story?

Keith Cosentino: Please.

Shane Jacks: I just had a car this past week that took a few days to get the supplement approved on. It was a Cadillac something, the car, CTS, I believe. And let me run you through the estimate really quick. The hood, which is aluminum, you said tearing it down and understanding what you’re up against, you know, we get 25 percent extra for aluminum panels. That’s an aluminum panel hood. We also can get 25 percent extra for a double panel. A lot of those aluminum hoods are three-quarters double paneled, right?

Keith Cosentino: Right.

Shane Jacks: This car luckily wasn’t. But I thought it was before I tore it down. When you look at those things normally, they are terrible access. So I got 25 percent aluminum. I got 25 percent double. He calls me. He goes, “Dude, how” – he actually approved it over the phone, believe it or not. He said, “Dude, how am I supposed to give you 50 percent more?” he said. “You’re getting 25 percent for the aluminum. How are you getting 25 percent for glue pull?” I said, “Ah, it’s not 25 percent for glue pull. I’m charging you 25 percent more because this hood has a lot of double paneling in it. It is very difficult.

If it’s in the open, that’s the standard pricing. That’s what the “matrix” that we stay so tied to, goes by.” I said, “These are – 90 percent of them are under the brace.” And he said, “So it’s a more difficult repair?” and I said, “Yeah.” He said, “Well I can justify that.” Boom, got that. The roof on these things, typically – and hail guys are going to understand this – the older ones had this – that real thick cardboard that’s glued to the roof, Keith, right?

Keith Cosentino: Oh yeah.

Shane Jacks: I got 25 percent on the roof too. Luckily this year model didn’t have any [inaudible] [00:31:26]. But if you tear it apart on the older models, you’ll see that you can get more money for that. They may want to give you [inaudible] that cardboard piece, but man, if you’ve ever tried to take one of those things down, gosh, you’d get $1,000 for taking that stupid thing down and replacing it. It’s a pain in the butt.

Keith Cosentino: Just push through it?

Shane Jacks: Yeah, it was hard to push through, man, and see your tip and be accurate.

Keith Cosentino: So what do you do?

Shane Jacks: You struggle through it. That’s what I do. I just struggle – a lot of guys take it off, but I will kind of monkey it up under there and push through it with a sharp tip. But it’s not easy. A lot of times, you’ll hit the glue, where it’s glued to the roof, and that deadens your tip. You know?

Keith Cosentino: Yeah.

Shane Jacks: So I got 25 percent on that. I got 25 percent on the roof, on a car because it had –

Keith Cosentino: Let me ask you a question real quick. Say, just for the sake of round numbers, that hood starts at 400, and you’re going to go 25 percent aluminum, 25 percent double panel.

Shane Jacks: What do you mean starts at 400?

Keith Cosentino: Just say the base was 400 bucks that you’re dealing with.

Shane Jacks: Yeah. It was 300, is what it was.

Keith Cosentino: I’m just saying, for the sake of round numbers.

Shane Jacks: Okay.

Keith Cosentino: So you say it’s 400. Do you add 25 percent, which is 100 bucks, and then you add 25 percent of that, which is 125?

Shane Jacks: No, I do 200. I do 100 and 100, is what I did.

Keith Cosentino: Okay. So it’s basically you add the percentages and apply those to the base amount.

Shane Jacks: Yeah, I bet you could talk them into the other. But it also had oversize on it. It had a few oversize. The bottom line is this. The hood had 17 dents on it. And I got almost $700 out of it.

Keith Cosentino: Bingo.

Shane Jacks: The roof had 33, 34 dents, a few oversize. I got well over a grand out of that. The trunk I also got double panel on it because I thought it – I said, “The trunk is like 90 percent double panel.” He’s like, “Ah, man. Nobody else talks about da-da-da.” I said, “Because they’re not educating you on the difficulty of these panels. They’re just giving in to it being basically an open panel. You give me an open roof; I’ll give you your matrix pricing.” I said, “But it’s just not happening on this car.” He agrees to it. The estimate on this car was well over $3,800, and you can see that with the amount of dents that I’ve already told you were on there, it wasn’t a very hard hail car.

The trunk had 18 dents on it, I believe, and a couple of oversize. So a few on the rails, of course, you get 25 percent on those. And this car ended up being a very, very quick hail car for a little over $3,800, and I was in and out quick. You know why? Because I got greedy. You gotta do it. You gotta do it, even though –

Keith Cosentino: I probably should have let you write the estimate on that Odyssey. That way, we’d get an even higher estimate.

Shane Jacks: If that thing had 200 dents on the roof, that’s going to be – I’m going to put – because I called a body shop about – no, it was a CRV roof that I called about, with no sun roof, and that thing – I can’t remember what the replacement cost on it – it was well over 2 grand replacement cost on that roof.

Keith Cosentino: I think we were – and the dents were crazy light. They were like little flickers, and I think we were 18 or something on the roof, 1750.

Shane Jacks: Okay, cool.

Keith Cosentino: We were up.

Shane Jacks: Yeah.

Keith Cosentino: It didn’t have anything on the tops of the doors. It just had – they have rail sections in the back of the quarters. That’s all it had.
Shane Jacks: Yeah. It’s hard to dent the top of those doors.

Keith Cosentino: Yeah, I guess so.

Shane Jacks: Yeah, it is really hard.

Keith Cosentino: I think I could have found something.

Shane Jacks: You could have created something.

Keith Cosentino: No, I’ll never create –

Shane Jacks: That was a joke. That was a joke.

Keith Cosentino: You know, you see all those guys that post pictures of people who make their own hail. I still don’t understand that hustle unless they think they’re going to get paid out and live with the dents, and then they get them fixed instead. You know, kind of whack their own cars with hammers.

Shane Jacks: Yeah. I think some of them think they’re going to get a paint job.

Keith Cosentino: Yeah, that’s probably true if it’s got scratches and stuff like that.

Shane Jacks: Mm-hm. Ooh, my car’s going to get painted. It just doesn’t happen.

Keith Cosentino: Nope. All right. So we’re getting greedy. So let’s go with this list of things that we do all the time to make sure we end up with the monies at the end of the day. Shane, what’s the first one you’ve got there?

Shane Jacks: You’ve got No. 1, Keith. I believe you have the first one.

Keith Cosentino: We’re talking about walking the lot.

Shane Jacks: I’m sorry, yes, walking the lot. When you walk the lot, do the easy cars first. And I do this quite a bit.

Keith Cosentino: What’s the purpose.

Shane Jacks: Every time – what’s the purpose?

Keith Cosentino: Yeah. Why are you getting greedy? How do you get greedy?

Shane Jacks: Okay, there are several reasons for me doing the easy cars first. That’s where you make the most money, right? You don’t want that – for me it is. The big, big stuff, if I can talk them into it, yes. But I don’t want to spend my time on that stuff. It’s rough on your body. You can make good money on it. We’re going to talk about that here in a few minutes also, Keith, getting the big money, even on wholesale lots, for the big damage. But I don’t want a dime-sized door ding in a left front door and a dime-sized door ding in a left rear door that I’m going to charge a wholesale lot 70 bucks for, and it’s going to take me three minutes.

I don’t want that car to get sold, for one. No. 2, I don’t want them to walk out and –

Keith Cosentino: Change their mind.

Shane Jacks: – change their mind. Yeah. So I’m going to do the easy cars first every single time, and then save the hard ones for later. And you know what? Sometimes they get sold and the customer doesn’t care, and you – depending on which way you look at it, you have scored. It depends on how busy you are. If you’re busy like you and I, that is a score on a wholesale lot.

Keith Cosentino: Yeah, you don’t want – I mean if you’re slow, you want that big stuff. And if you’re not, man, it’s hard – you know you can – Shane and I are pretty good at getting top dollar for that stuff, but top dollar for that stuff is not top dollar for gravy dents.

Shane Jacks: No.

Keith Cosentino: Gravy dents are a much better deal. In fact, in my little commercial that I cut the other day for the Tabweld, I talked about doing a wholesale gig for 600 bucks that I was on for four hours. That’s terrible money for a big dent. But that’s what it was. I mean –

Shane Jacks: How much was it? I’m sorry –

Keith Cosentino: 150 bucks an hour.

Shane Jacks: Yeah, okay.

Keith Cosentino: And I glue pulled this old TL quarter panel – you know those like ’08 TLs that always get smashed up on that [inaudible] [00:38:09] quarter, and this was just one of those, a crease from the front to the back, like around the wheel, and I glue pulled the whole thing. I pushed some of it, but mostly glue pulled. Man, I was on it forever. And is that good money? It’s okay money, but you’re not knocking it out of the park. It’s not where I want to be. You can do a lot better doing three or four nickel dents scattered around a car.

So I do the same thing. When I walk the lot, if I’ve got a manager that’s edgy, and he’s a yes, no, no, yes guy, and you get ten cars, and seven of them are super gravy, those are the first cars I do every single time, just for the same reasons you say. If the car gets sold out from under me, I lose it forever. If they come out and say, “I don’t think these are that bad, let’s skip this one,” I lose it.

And if none of that happens, when I get to that beat down car, that’s all smashed up, that I’m going to give this guy the same kind of wholesale deal – like it’s not beat down enough to upcharge him, but it’s beat down enough that I don’t want to do it, at least I’ll have a few hundred bucks under my belt, and I won’t feel as bad spending an hour and a half on this car, versus if you did it first. You’re going to be pissed.

Shane Jacks: There’s a mental aspect to that also, Keith. Whenever I’m doing hail, I have a method. I do this panel first, this panel next, this panel next, and it is all to get into my head that I am gaining ground on this thing. And if I start glue pulling the rail on a car, you’re an hour into it or whatever, and if it’s a heavy hit rail, you’re a couple of hours into it, and you’re like, holy crap, I’ve made no money in it, you know what the rest of the day is like? It sucks.

Keith Cosentino: I know.

Shane Jacks: It’s horrible. I think it’s a mental thing also. You get all the easy ones under your belt, and then you can kind of, phew, all right, I’ve made my money – or I’ve made some money – now I’m in the groove, I’ve made money, I’m happy. Now I’ve got this last terrible car that I have to do – not terrible, but beat-up car that I have to do, I’m okay with it. There’s a mental aspect to it.

Keith Cosentino: Yup. It’s like I unfurl my Pegasus wings, and they’re lifted by magical dollar bills and they float me over to the rest of the repair.

Shane Jacks: Wow. Metaphors.

Keith Cosentino: But I feel the same way. You’ve got to get the monies. Get the monies first, and then that other stuff comes a lot easier because you know you’ve been compensated. I always start the hoods on a hail car because they’re the easiest for me.

Shane Jacks: I start the roof. The roof or hood, but it’s typically the roof that I’ll start on.

Keith Cosentino: I’m not as experienced –

Shane Jacks: [Inaudible] [00:40:56] roof.

Keith Cosentino: – yeah, as you are with hail. I don’t have all the big, huge breakdown rods and everything. So sometimes a roof can be more of a struggle for me. But a hood, I can sit down around and I can spin 360 degrees around it. Nothing’s in my way. I can usually fly through a hood, and then I get that money under my belt, and I think, okay, now I’m ahead of the game. Let’s see what you’ve got, car. Give me the rails.

Shane Jacks: Yeah. Sitting down doing hoods, that also ensures that you keep that potato head –

Keith Cosentino: I start seated, and then I always end up standing.

Shane Jacks: Yeah.

Keith Cosentino: But I can never find – if I was a fulltime hail guy, I know I would crack the code and find the magic height that it’s perfect to stand without crouching or getting up on your goes. But I never seem to replicate it. So I always end up seated at a good seating position, and then I stand with my back hunched. I have not cracked the code yet.

Shane Jacks: A few years back, people would say sitting or standing, which one’s better? And I would swear standing. That was my MO. I’ve changed now. It’s seated for the most part. And then once you’ve really got to shove into the braces or whatever, you’ve got to –

Keith Cosentino: Stand up.

Shane Jacks: – you know, stand up and shove into it. But typically, 95 percent I’m seated on the hood.

Keith Cosentino: So if we’re going to get greedy, when you have a retail customer and you’ve got an anchor dent, and then a couple other ones that they’re kind of teetering on, what do you do with that scenario?

Shane Jacks: You want to do the ones that they’re teetering on, whether that be wholesale or retail. If you go out – and I’m going to use the retail example – because wholesale a lot of times, they get so busy they’re not going to come back anyway. But if it’s a retail deal and they’re teetering on Dent No. 3, and they’re pretty solid on Dent No. 2, and of course they’re solid on Dent No. 1 – that’s why they came to you or called you out in the first place, right? So they’re solid on that one. They’re lukewarm on No. 2, and the only reason they’re doing No. 3 is because you gave them a deal on it.

Do that No. 3 first before they walk out the door into the garage and say, “Yeah, you know, I got to thinking, my cable bill’s due.” You know, whatever. So you do that anchor – not anchor – you do the dent that they’re teetering on first and get it out of the way because they’re still going to do the anchor dent, the first – the main dent. That’s a given if they’ve agreed to it. So that’s what you’re going to do. That’s what I do. I’m sure that’s what you do. You don’t want them to run out and bail on you and tell you, “I don’t want Dent No. 3 done.”

Keith Cosentino: Yeah, if you get that vibe that they’re on the fence or maybe they’re saying, “I’m going to call my wife. Oh you know what? Just go ahead and do it.” There’s a good chance they’re coming back out and saying, “You know, did you do that one yet? Let’s just leave it.” So get greedy and get that thing done first because it’s probably a little dent – that’s why they’re on the fence about it. Get it done first so if they come out, it’s a done deal already. It’s already in the books.

Shane Jacks: Yup.

Keith Cosentino: Get greedy.

Shane Jacks: Good strategy.

Keith Cosentino: A lot of you guys are like, oh man; this is kind of a shady kind of greedy strategies. That’s right. These are strategies to get greedy. You’ve got to get greedy if you’re going to get some monies.

Shane Jacks: It’s not shady. They’ve already told you –

Keith Cosentino: No, I didn’t agree on the shady.

Shane Jacks: I know, I know. I know. No, I’m not saying that. You said guys will think that, and I’m talking to them. That’s not shady. They’ve already told you yes. So it would be like – no, I can’t use that example. That was horrible. Okay, next topic.

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All right, so the next way that you get greedy is you’ve got to bill somebody for something. Now a lot of you guys – and it’s been myself included at times – you think you’re doing a great service to the world and to your accounts by doing stuff for free. A free dent for the office manager, free dent for the service advisor. Or you go to a retail customer and you fix a dent, and you go, “You know, I’ll buff these scratches out for free too.” And that’s great.

I don’t mind doing a free thing here and there either, and in certain scenarios, it’s very powerful and it helps you sell, especially if you killed it on the one dent, and you’re done in five minutes, it doesn’t hurt to spend another five to get a buffer out and buff a scratch that he was asking you about. I just did that yesterday, as a matter of fact. But you’ve got to bill somebody for something because that is how your mortgage is paid. You’ve got to invoice. So think about the next time you do something for free or next to free, and bill somebody for it.

At these big dealer groups, if you’re a wholesale guy and you do a lot of that stuff, you get the idea that you’re supposed to be working for free or next to nothing for everybody who isn’t a customer in the service drive or a lot car. You know, they damage it in service or it’s one of the sales guys or a manager or whatever, You get the impression, if you let the industry get to you, that you should be doing all that stuff for free. That is not what a hustler does. A hustler bills people for the services.

That’s why you rolled out of the rack in the morning. That’s why you got in the truck, and that’s why you showed up at that place, is to do something for somebody. I had one – a sold car – they sold the car, a lady came home and was telling them she bought the car with a dent in it. Crazy, tiny little dent. Smaller than a dime. A several minute repair. But I’m not doing it for free. I’m here to solve problems, and that’s not free. I didn’t rip his head off, but I billed somebody for something, when I could have easily done that for free, just like walking to get a soda and back.

It doesn’t take a lot of time. But you’ve got to make some invoices or you’re not going to get paid. And those little things add up. So think about the small things you’re doing, and think about the fact that they have value. They have lots of value, and you’ve got to realize that value with a bill and get paid. Get greedy.

Shane Jacks: The next topic we’re going to talk about touches on this just a bit. But say you follow what Keith was just saying and you have to bill somebody for something, and you decide that, hey, okay, I’m going to bill Mr. Service Manager for his wife’s car. But I’m just going to do it for half of what I would normally charge a retail customer. Go half, add $10, add $5. Stuff like that adds up.

Keith Cosentino: Yes. It doesn’t make a difference to anybody else like you think it does, but if you just push – let me ask you this, Shane. Your best estimate last week, the one that you feel like you got more than fairly compensated on, what was it?

Shane Jacks: Oh, last week – I haven’t done the car yet. It’s scheduled – I believe that was the Yukon that I told you about, Keith. I think that was last week. A couple of big dents in the door and below the molding, 8 to 10 inches in diameter, hit something and went on the dog leg. And I quoted a little over 800 bucks for that damage, honestly quoting him to go away.

Keith Cosentino: Right, and you ended up getting it.

Shane Jacks: And I ended up getting it, yeah. So that was my best estimate, where I got – besides hail – if you want to talk about that, if you want to talk about the clear best estimate, and insurance adjusters, although they’re not our customer, our end customer, they are a customer in a sense because we are dealing with them and we are talking with them and we are convincing them. And that’s where a lot of hail guys go wrong, is they’re immediately defensive with these guys and throw up defense mechanisms and start yelling and attitude right away.

So I mean if you want to talk about that, the very best estimates would have been the hail estimates, where I dealt directly with an adjuster instead of with a body shop. These are retail cars coming to me instead of through a body shop. And I would guess it would be the Cadillac that I was just talking about.

Keith Cosentino: All right. So between the Yukon and the Cadillac, do you think you would have lost either of those jobs if you added $20 or $50 to them?

Shane Jacks: No. No.

Keith Cosentino: No way?

Shane Jacks: No.

Keith Cosentino: And those are the highest estimates of the week?

Shane Jacks: Right.

Keith Cosentino: So why didn’t we add that 20 or 50? Well part of it is the hindsight 20/20 thing. But if you keep that in your mind and realize that after the dust settles on this thing, 20, 50 more dollars is not changing anything about this job, except the fact that I’m going to make 20 or 50 more. Add 20 bucks to everything you do this week. Just add it. If you’d normally be at 150, go to 170. If you’re thinking the price is 215 for this, 235. It isn’t going to change anybody’s world.

Shane Jacks: No.

Keith Cosentino: I promise.

Shane Jacks: Not at all.

Keith Cosentino: And to counter my own point, I had the first job that I can remember in my career that I couldn’t close over a difference of 20 bucks. We were 20 bucks apart, and I’d already come –

Shane Jacks: When was this?

Keith Cosentino: This was just last week.

Shane Jacks: Really?

Keith Cosentino: Or a week and a half ago. Yeah, I had this gal. I just happened to be driving from one place to the other, and I was done with my retail stuff, and I was going to see one of my dealers, the only dealer that I still do personally. And this gal called and I got to talking to her about what her car was. It was a little Mini. And where it was, it was like two blocks from the dealer. So I said, “You know, I’m in the car right now and I’m headed your direction.” She knew I wasn’t making it up because I told her where the auto mall was, and it was right around the corner. And I said, “Why don’t I just swing by and have a look at your car?”

So there wasn’t a lot of pressure on her because I was just driving over. It wasn’t like we set an appointment. But she was selling this old Mini, and had one, two, three dings in it. Nickel, nickel, soft half dollar. Two on the – the nickels were on the left quarter, the soft half dollar on the right quarter. So I told her normally we’d be well over 250 bucks or whatever, and she goes, “Oh, I’m selling the car, and I still have to do this, this and this. It’s just not that big of a deal. But I do want to sell it.”

And I said, “Okay, I’ll tell you what. I can do all three of them for 190 bucks.” I figure I’m on this car 35 minutes. So she goes, “Mm, can you do it for 150?” And I said, “Well, I tell you what. We’re 40 bucks apart. I’ll meet you in the middle. I’ll do it for 170.” And she goes, “Okay, I’m going to have to shop around then.” So I try to close her on the quality and what she’s going to get and how much time she’s going to spend making phone calls and dealing with other jokers. But she didn’t have a lot invested in our appointment.

She just made a call, and five minutes later, I was there. So it wasn’t like she had to work and clear her schedule and all that. So she said, “Yeah” –

Shane Jacks: And she didn’t feel obligated because you weren’t scheduled to come out there. Mm-hm.

Keith Cosentino: And she said, “I’m going to shop around.” And at that point, you know, I had the cars waiting for me, so I didn’t try any harder to closer her. On principle I wasn’t going to give up that 20 bucks. I’d already come down, and I didn’t really want to do the ones on the left quarter panel because Minis are kind of weird. Sometimes you think a Mini dent’s going to be five minutes, and you get some kind of weird bracket. I know the cars, but I don’t know them perfectly. And the one on the driver’s quarter was all the way up high, all the way at the front.

And I was like, oh man, I think I can drill in the jamb and get that thing, but I’m not positive. I might hit a roadblock, and then I’m taking the wheel off and all that kind of stuff. And it was too sharp to glue pull. So I just let it go. We were 20 bucks apart, and I couldn’t close it. And I thought, man, I can’t remember the last time I couldn’t close somebody, especially when we were that close. And not just drop my pants and get it, but close them into my deal. And I could not close her. Well, three days later, she called back and scheduled. So technically we got her.

But I lost money because we had to make another trip out to do that car. So my hindsight 20/20 deal on that job, that transaction was to tell her, “If we do it today, I can do it for 170.” That way, if I had to come back out, I could get another 20 bucks.

Shane Jacks: Not waste your time. Yeah.

Keith Cosentino: Yeah. So there’s the counterpoint. That’s what you’re saying is no, it does matter, 20 bucks. But that’s the one job out of thousands when it doesn’t matter. I promise you it doesn’t matter. And it didn’t matter on that one. I got it. I just didn’t get it right away.

Shane Jacks: If it does matter, the people that it is going to matter to, they’re really not your customer anyway. The $20 for the most – 99 percent of the time, is – the $20 is – it’s triv – well, in your case, no. It wasn’t trivial. It was – because you were only $20 off. I’m thinking – if you’re thinking that $20 is going to make a difference in your initial estimate, and it’s going to cause you to lose the customer, you didn’t need that customer in the first place. Does that make sense?

Keith Cosentino: No. Yup, it doesn’t matter initially, 150, 170.

Shane Jacks: Right, right.

Keith Cosentino: And the bigger that number gets, the less that 20 means. But if you can add 20 bucks to every single job you do this month, that’s a pretty good raise at the end of the month.

Shane Jacks: For sure.

Keith Cosentino: It does matter to you. It doesn’t matter to them. So add 20. I mean if you can do it, add 50. But I think everybody can wrap their head around 20, and especially 10 or 15. If you think 20’s out of this world, add 10. Just tell yourself to add 10 to everything. Write your estimate and right before you show it to them, add 10 bucks to it and see what happens. Nothing happens except you make more money. Get greedy.

Shane Jacks: Yup. And if you do have to adjust down, you were going to have to adjust down in the first place most likely, so you’re making 10 more bucks on the negotiation in the end, most likely.

Keith Cosentino: Get greedy. What else should you do, Shane? Shane doesn’t do anything else. But I can tell you what I do.

Shane Jacks: On the wholesale – I’m sorry, I lost my train of thought there for a minute. On wholesale gigs, on wholesale big dents – wholesale gigs – I’m going to put a disclaimer in here. I didn’t have a whole lot of sleep last night, so I’m complaining a little bit there. That’s why I’m losing my mind a bit. I actually fell asleep on you, Keith. Sorry about that. On a wholesale big dents, push the envelope on the pricing. And even push it to conventional if you can. I am guilty of not doing this quite enough. Because conventional in a wholesale gig, a lot of times is the paint and body guy down the road that does stuff wholesale for them.

Keith Cosentino: For super cheap, yeah.

Shane Jacks: You know what I’m saying? So –

Keith Cosentino: So we’re talking about dealer route work, right? Not hail.

Shane Jacks: Right, right. This is on a wholesale level, when you’ve got the –

Keith Cosentino: Collision dents.

Shane Jacks: Yeah. Big dents, big dents. You know, fenders caved in. I’ve posted some videos of some of this stuff that I do for the car lots that I do around here – well, I don’t do many lots – but on these lots. One of the reasons that I have those lots for a higher price per, even on the smaller door ding stuff than everybody else around here, is because I can do the big stuff and do it well. And on these nicer cars that they have, they don’t want them painted, but they will have them painted if it’s needed. Man, you come in and if you’re pushing the threshold – you hear it all the time – “Well, guys will paint that in my area for X.”

And some of that stuff blows my mind, that they have paint guys that’ll do it for that. 180 bucks for a caved-in door, 200 bucks. I’m in South Carolina, and they don’t even do that. But pushing the threshold on those things, these crushed doors and fenders that I’m doing, if they’ll do that door for – the Sienna door comes to mind, the burgundy Sienna door that I posted a video of – that thing, the body guys down the road probably would have done that door for around the same price that I did the door for, honestly.

But there was a convenience factor there. I was done with it in a day. It would have spent its time at that shop up there that they send their damage to. So I kind of sell it on that. Push the conventional. Push it to the limit, close to conventional price when you’re doing this big damage for the lots. Again, you’re putting your mind in a place, if you say, “Well, Bob up the street will paint it for $300,” you’re automatically – in your mind, you’re setting yourself up for failure because you don’t believe you can get that price. That’s what a lot of these guys are doing.

They’re automatically believing that they can’t do it. On a side note, this just popped into my mind – this is not PDR related, Keith, but this happened last night. Mindset is a huge thing in life. My son had a friend over last night, not an athletic kid at all. A gamer, a techie, and that’s his thing. So we were eating and I said, “Hey, you guys want to play basketball when we get back to the house tonight?” And he goes – and the kid is short too – I mean he’s like a foot and a half tall – not literally, but – and he says, “I’m not really good with sports.”

I said, “Well, that’s cool. That’s fine.” I said, “But if you want to play when we get home” – he said, “I’m not really good with sports and I have no idea what the rules are.” So I immediately changed it up on him, and I told him, I said, “Dude, we have no rules. Do whatever you want to do.” And he kind of grinned. He goes, “Well, I may try it.” So we get in there and he says, “I doubt I’m going to make a” – we get back to the house, he says, “I doubt I’m going to make a shot.” And I stopped, and I said, “Let me tell you something. 90 percent of life is believing you can do it, you can make this basket.” I said – and I was being funny –

Keith Cosentino: How old are these boys?

Shane Jacks: 11. And I mean when I said he’s not athletic, he plays no sports, this kid doesn’t. Most of my son’s friends do because my son’s in sports. But this kid just doesn’t. And I just stopped and I said, “Dude, believe you can do it, and you’re going to do a lot – I’m not going to tell you you’re going to make that shot, but you’re going to do a lot better.” He drained the first three shots.

Keith Cosentino: Nice.

Shane Jacks: Boom. And that was during the game. It was the three of them – my wife, himself and the friend against me, and it was 3 on 1. And when he was taking practice shots, he didn’t make them. And I stopped him and I said, “Just do this. I promise you can do it.” We played three games. He didn’t want to stop at all because all of a sudden, he believed, “You know what? I can do this.” And I know that’s kind of a sidetrack story, but when you get it in your mind that you can’t do something, if someone’s not there to coach you through it, you’re not going to do it. That quote, there are two people, those that believe they can and those that believe they can’t, and they’re both right.

Keith Cosentino: Yup. You know, we often get off on tangents on the show, but I enjoy it because it’s real life. When you’re raising up these kids, man, you’ve got to tell them the truth, but you’ve also got to help them with the mindset. I mean you, almost more than anybody I know, are beholden to the truth. And I know you would never look your boy in the eye and tell him, “You’re going to win this tournament.” But you’ve got to look him in the eye and say, “You have every chance to win this tournament. You’ve got as much chance to win as anybody else does.”

You would never tell him something that’s not truthful, but you would tell him to have that mindset, that the W is within grasp if you try hard enough and you practice hard enough and you want it. And the same thing with all this business stuff. If you think you can get these numbers, you can. You’re not going to get them on every job. Nobody does. But if you think you can’t, then you can’t. And if you think it’s possible, then at least it’s possible. But if you run out thinking there’s no way I can ask 20 more bucks, I’m at the limit on everything, there’s no way I’m getting conventional on wholesale, you’re going to make all that stuff come true.

Shane Jacks: Mm-hm. And you helped me a lot with that, Keith. Because again, I am beholden to the truth, and I am a – I thought about this last night. I was like, I think one of the reasons Keith and I are so good together is because I am – and don’t take this the wrong way – it’s like I am really concrete, and Keith thinks in the abstract a lot more than I do, and I think in the concrete. And the two mesh well together. You teach me, I teach you. I’m not saying you don’t think in the concrete, so don’t anybody take that that way. But I’m very methodical in my thoughts, and I don’t think in the abstract quite enough.

But I did last night, and I do with my kids. It’s just in the business side of things, a few years back, I wasn’t doing that, Keith, not at all. So again, I thought in the concrete, this is what guys get for this damage. That is the concrete. I can’t get any more because I don’t think in the abstract, in the way that I can convince others away from the concrete. Because I didn’t want to get away from the concrete, basically.

Keith Cosentino: Right. I’m going to tell you a funny kid story. My wife helps in the kindergarten where my little daughter goes, so she goes in a couple times a week or once a week and helps them work on their little projects. And she came back and told me the story – and it’s hilarious, but it’s sad. It’s funny and it’s sad, and it pertains to mindset. So, these kids are 4 and 5 – or no, you’ve got to be 5 to get into preschool – or is it 4? High 4s or 5.

Shane Jacks: There are 4s too, yeah. Mm-hm.

Keith Cosentino: I can’t recall where the cutoff is. Yeah, you’ve got to be 4 to start. So these kids are 4 and 5, and my wife’s talking to this girl, and she’s a little Indian girl, like Middle Eastern Indian. So she has a really strong accent, even though she was born here. Their parents still speak their mother tongue at home, so she’s got the accent. So she tells the story with the accent, which makes it even funnier. But this little girl gets these terrible nosebleeds, and it happened all the time, and everybody in class knows that she’s going to get these nosebleeds. And she got one while my wife was there

As little kids will often do, she will come up and tell you the whole story, whether you want to hear it or not, they’re just going to tell you the story. So she’s talking to my wife, and she says, “Yes, I suffer from allergies and nosebleeds and also I suffer from occasional back pain.” She’s an infomercial. Yes, and she’s just a little kid, right? And her parents – I mean it’s hilarious to hear that from a little child but it’s also a little bit sad because her parents have instilled in her the idea that she suffers from occasional back pain. So who is she in her mind?

She’s a broken little person in her mind already before she’s even out of kindergarten, that she suffers from ailments –

Shane Jacks: Very true.

Keith Cosentino: – instead of your back hurts this week, but we’re going to get over it. We’re going to get better. Instead she’s going through life starting out feeling like she suffers from chronic back pain. So she’s creating this whole identify for herself, thanks to her parents. And I don’t know her parents, and I don’t know the situation, and maybe it’s a lot worse than I think it is, but just take the story for face value, and it’s the same thing that a lot of you guys are doing to yourself. You think you suffer from occasional back pain. You think you suffer from a bad market.

Whatever you think the case it, that’s what it is.

Shane Jacks: That’s your reality. You’re creating it.

Keith Cosentino: And you’re creating it for your kids and your wife too. So think about that. If you’re the leader of your home and you think all the world is doom and gloom and you’re stuck in your hole, if you want your kids to have that same outlook on life, then go ahead and keep preaching all that garbage. But if you want them to strive for something a little bit better than what you’ve got, and if you’re a good father, then that’s what you want, you want your kids to do even better than you’ve done, no matter how well you have done, you’ve got to get them in a better place than you are in.

And if you think you’re stuck and you can’t do anything and the world is out to get you, then they think that plus 25 percent. So raise up those kids right, man. Let them know that they set the reality for themselves with the air of truthfulness. So that’s my preaching about parenting for the afternoon.

Shane Jacks: We should start a parenting podcast also.

Keith Cosentino: Let’s do it now before we can prove that our kids have grown up to be anything. I’m a first time parent, and so is he.

Are you trying to stay on the cutting edge of paintless dent removal when it comes to your tools? If so, you need to make sure you have two things in your arsenal. One is a Shane Jacks’ jackhammer blending hammer. Find it at blendinghammerpdr.com. If you want to learn blending, we’ve got an awesome tutorial to go along with the hammer, right there on the site. You’re going to love it. You’re going to learn something, and you’re going to get better and make money. In addition to the hammer, if you are doing any glue pulling, you need to have the Black Plague crease tabs. It’s a six-piece crease-pulling set. The two largest are absolute monsters, and they are going to pull out collision damage like nothing else you’ve got available.

And the smaller sizes are going to be for the normal everyday kind of door edges and minor, minor collision dents and a dog leg in the bottom of a door. I’m telling you guys, it is going to change the way you do your repairs when you have the cutting-edge tools, and these are two of them. Blackplaguepdr.com, blendinghammerpdr.com. Check out the sites, guys. Bring yourselves into the 21st century.

So for the next Get Greedy topic, this is a big one for me. When you are on the phone, and you’re talking to a prospect or you’re in person, but mainly you’re going to be on the phone, you have got to ask for the close. Ask for the appointment if it’s a job you think you want or there’s something there. If it’s a crappy job, just let ’em go. Let them fly unless you’re very slow and you’re sitting on the couch, then try for the close on those too. And try to get there and see if you can make something out of nothing. But if you’re busy or relatively busy and the phone’s going to ring again in half an hour when you hang up with this guy, let those crappy jobs go.

But if you smell some gold in there, you’ve got to try to close them. Don’t let them off the phone with, “Okay, well now I know what’s going on. Well, what day would be better to fix that car for you next week? Monday or Wednesday?” “I don’t know if I’m really looking” – you’ve got to push for the close again and again and again. You say, “I understand. That’s fantastic.” Try to close again. And they say, “Well, I’m thinking about this.” “Oh, that makes a lot of sense.” Try to close again. Try to close them. You have to.

Otherwise, you don’t make the monies. If you’re not at a job, you’re not getting paid. So Step 1 is to get there and get that appointment. Ask for the close. Get greedy. Sound greedy, but do it with a smile.

Shane Jacks: I’m working on this a lot, asking for the – when people pull up – I have a lot of people pulling up and asking for estimates, and I’m bad about saying, “What day next week would you like to do it?” Or, “Let’s go look at the schedule and see when we can get you in.” I let it go sometimes. A lot of it is a product of being stupid busy. But it doesn’t make –

Keith Cosentino: Yeah.

Shane Jacks: – it doesn’t make it right. It doesn’t make it effective.

Keith Cosentino: No. You know what? We like to tell stories, but when I was first getting into this business, when I was really gung ho about it and I was greedy, healthy greedy, not taking advantage of people, but I was excited. I wanted to fix 1,000 cars. And we had a shop, and it was in the middle of a rectangular strip mall. So, not an L-shape or anything, but a little rectangle, and it was in the middle. So you had to drive the cars all the way around the back to get them into the shop. Store front up front, shop in the back. And everybody was supposed to come to the front and sit in the waiting room.

So we would trade off and work Saturdays. And on my Saturday day, you didn’t really want to be there on Saturday, but if you were going to be there, you’d try to make it worth your while. So you’re the only guy. There’s no receptionist or anything. You are the only guy. You work the front and you work the back. So when a customer would come, I knew enough to know that you’ve got to close them now. You don’t make an appointment for them for next week because you’re not there next week. Someone else is.

So you want the job, you’ve got to get them here now. So they’d say, “Well, about how long of a wait is there?” “Oh, it shouldn’t be long. Probably less than an hour.” “Okay, great.” And, “Just pull it around back.” There was a couple of times where I had nine people up front waiting for their cars, and I’m the only dude back there working on them. And I’m working on them and getting them done as quickly as I can get them, but I can’t bring them back up out of order. You know, Guy No. 1 had a smashed fender, and Guys No. 2, 3 and 4 had nickel dents, those dents are all done, but I can’t bring them back up while Guy No. 1’s still waiting.
So I had this triage thing going on where I’m playing whack-a-mole with the phone ringing and customers coming up in front. But I’m getting greedy. I’m closing all these guys, when in reality, if the only score was how long do your customers wait, I should have let a lot of those guys go if I was going to win that game. But if the score was dollars at the end of the day, I was going to win for sure. But I had to get greedy. You’ve got to close them and get them now, and that’s what you’re talking about.

They come into the shop, and instead of saying, “I’ve got three cars I’m working on and three waiting. You’re going to be here forever,” you say, “We’ll get you out of here quick as a rabbit. Let’s just go ahead and sit you down here, and next time you see this car, it’s going to be perfect.”

Shane Jacks: Keith’s got nine people waiting in the waiting room and pull up, “Mr. Johnson, your Mercedes is ready.” Well, that’s awesome because it came in as a Kia. Sorry, that was Mr. Jackson.

Keith Cosentino: On the same day that this day was happening, I remember it because it was so bananas, this lady came in, and finally, I had so many people, she said, “So how long is it going to be?” And I said, “I’m probably going to be an hour or two at least.” And she said, “The sign says dents done while you wait.” And I said, “Nobody’s saying you can’t wait. It’s just going to be a couple hours.” She was so mad she left. She didn’t want to wait long. So the next item I’ve got for getting greedy pertains to your calls. And oftentimes we’re going to miss some calls. We’re going to get some voicemails, right?

It happens to you, I know, because I’m one of them half the time. But it happens to me a lot too. You’re right in the middle of talking to a customer or you’re on the other line, and you miss some calls. You get a few voicemails stack up. It happens to you?

Shane Jacks: Yes. Quite a bit.

Keith Cosentino: So you listen to the voicemails and take the details down in your log book because you have a log book where you keep track of all your customer contacts, right? Yes, you do.

Shane Jacks: Sure.

Keith Cosentino: Good. So you go in there and you’ve got one, two, three guys. The first guy is a Cadillac de Ville. They haven’t made those for a while, and they’re not particularly expensive. The next guy has a weird accent and you can hardly understand him. And the third guy is a return customer who you know fixes everything. Well, Cadillac guy called you the longest ago. He needs to be called back first because he’s been waiting longest. And the guy with an accent, you don’t know how long you’re going to be on that call and maybe still not get to the root of what he’s talking about because you can’t understand the message barely.

If you’re calling them back in order, you call them in the same order they called. But if you are trying to be a hustler and you’re trying to get greedy, who do you call back first, Shane?

Shane Jacks: Door No. 3.

Keith Cosentino: Repeat customer.

Shane Jacks: Yes.

Keith Cosentino: Because he’s almost a sure thing. You’ve got to prioritize your time, and you’ve got to call the people who are going to produce. And this isn’t always right. This is betting horses. But you’ve got a better chance of landing somebody who you know than a couple of dudes with old cars or weird guys.

Shane Jacks: Yeah. You’re not saying you’re not calling them back at all, just prioritizing.

Keith Cosentino: Exactly. Prioritize and get – because somebody’s going to take some space in your book. Assume you’re going to make appointments with all three of them. They’re all going to take space in your book. Well, the odds of you making money are better with your repeat customer than anybody else, so you make sure you get him in the book first, so he takes up time that you’re going to make money. And then if you’re going to make appointments with the other two that could go south, at least you’ve already booked the one that was going to make money.

So prioritize your calls back, and call back the gravy stuff first or the stuff that sounds good. I’ve got a 2014 Lexus. I got a 2004 Chevy. Let’s call the Lexus guy first and get him down, and then we’ll deal with the Chevy dude. Get greedy on the return calls.

Shane Jacks: What’s up next, Keith?

Keith Cosentino: This is the last one I’ve got. When you are talking about a dent over the phone with a customer, or over email, if you’re thinking it’s somebody you don’t really want – you’re going to start talking money over an email – and you give a range. Shane, I know you do this because I do this as well. We’re going to be somewhere between 400 and $650 to repair that, and they say, “Okay, well I’ll bring it down.” For you, they bring it down. For me, I drive out. When you get there, you often want to be Mr. Nice Guy and say, “You know what? I’m going to be right in the middle of that range, 600 or 550 or something like that.” Right?

Shane Jacks: Yeah. Because that’s what you’ve kind of anchored them over the phone.

Keith Cosentino: Right. And also I do that because that’s what I would like if it happened to me. A guy gives me a range, and when he shows up, he comes right in the middle. Hey, that’s pretty cool. You know? But guess what? Get greedy. You gave them a range, and he said, “That sounds good. Come to my place.” Or, “That sounds good. I’ll bring it down.” Come in right at the top. You already gave him the range that he agreed to. He’s already knowing this could be from this to this. Come right in at the top of that range. Why not?

Shane Jacks: You’ve already convinced him that it could be there.

Keith Cosentino: Right. You don’t have to be Superman. You don’t have to save everybody and be Mr. Hero. You’ve got to get greedy and make some money. Come in at the top. And if he squirms, then you go back to your middle thing if you can’t close him. But come in at the top of that range. I had one the other day where I gave her the range, and I’m using the pricing guide now that has measurements on it. And I said, “I’m estimating that that dent is around 3 or 4 inches, based on the photo.” And I said, “We’ll have to measure it when I get there.” Well, I’m fibbing a little bit because I know that dent’s not 3 or 4 inches. I can tell that because I know the size of that fender, and it’s all the way from the front to the back.

But it’s a thin crease at the front, and it’s real thick – it was a right front fender on an Accord, right, so it’s thin all the way from the headlight, and then it’s smashed the body line all the way through the back. The thin line is a five-minute repair, and then you get to the real dent, right? So I’m basing the 3 or 4 inches on the big thick dent. But when I get there, I set up the light, and then I call her out, and I’ve got the light set up perfectly so you can see the entire crease, and I lay the pricing guide, which has the ruler built into the side of it, against the repair, and I said, “So we were basing our numbers on the idea that this dent was about 3 or 4 inches.

Well we can see here – and before I even finished the sentence, she goes, “Oh, that’s 8 inches.” Double the size. So we went through the pricing guide, and she’s like, “Oh yeah, that’s $575.” She’s like, “Well I knew it was going to be expensive. At least it’s going to be gone.” And that was it. We were like 150 bucks higher than the high number I gave her on the phone. And she was cool. I was ready to come back down to my high number, and she just pulled it right out of my hands and said, “Let’s get it done.”

Shane Jacks: You didn’t have to. That’s awesome.

Keith Cosentino: I didn’t have to. And it was a testament to me to using the pricing guide because it helps to create the impression that the prices are coming from somewhere else instead of your BH. So people appreciate that, and they don’t think there’s as much room to negotiate with you because you haven’t just created it. Here’s my example for this. When you buy a car, you’re going straight to the dealership and you negotiate the pricing on a car, they negotiate the pricing of the vehicle right there with you, and then once you settle on the deal, Step No. 2 is to go start over again in the finance department, right, where they’re trying to sell you all the snake oil and the magic stuff.

Shane Jacks: I hate that place.

Keith Cosentino: I can’t stand it. But they make as much money back there as they do up at the front.

Shane Jacks: Not off of me they don’t.

Keith Cosentino: Yeah, you don’t know what they’re selling your loan on the back end for.

Shane Jacks: Who takes loans out?

Keith Cosentino: Well, you know, guys [inaudible] [01:20:13] cash money buyers. So they close you first. That’s the anchor dent. That’s the thing you called about. And then they upsell you in the finance department. That’s the other dings. But if they try to hit you with everything right up front, the entire price. If they said, “Okay, there’s the price of the car. Now let’s talk about all this extra stuff you’re going to buy,” they’d lose you. They lock you up on the deal first, and then they try to upsell you. And it works. They all do it the same way across the country for a reason, because it works.

And if you learn from that model and you do the same thing, you make a deal on the first part of the scenario, whether it’s most of the dent or the one dent, and then you negotiate for the rest of them after the fact. But you anchor them and close them, like we did on the phone with that Accord, you close her at that range. And then once you get there, then you upsell for the rest. It’s the same scenario. I don’t say, “Well, it could be anywhere from $300 to $1, 000,” on the phone, which is the truth, if I’m being honest. I say, “It should be here to here.”

We get there and we say, “Okay, that’s that part, and here’s the rest.” If I’m copying these car dealers, which is a successful business model that’s been proven for 50 years, then we’re going to be successful just like they are in that same scenario. Anchor first, adders or upsells after, and you’re going to make more dough. So you’ve got to get greedy, and sometimes you’re going to feel like you’re a greedy dude, if you implement these strategies. But that’s because you need to get greedy and make the money. You’ve got to bill somebody for something. If you want to be a hustler, hustlers bill somebody for something at the end of the day.

Be one of those, and don’t be the free dude.

Shane Jacks: Good stuff.

Keith Cosentino: All right, Shane. Put this stuff to work. Until next time.

Shane Jacks: Get better.

Keith Cosentino: Get greedy.

Shane Jacks: Get better greedy.

Male Speaker: Ooh, groovy, baby.

[End of Audio]

Duration: 83 Minutes