Today we talk about the steps necessary to create trust with your PDR prospects and customers
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PODCAST TRANSCRIPT
John Dan: Ah, forget about it! Welcome to the PDR College Podcast! We’re gonna see Jimmy “Superfly” Snuka [inaudible] [00:00:05] or mediocrity and get in a figure [inaudible] holes!
Keith Cosentino: Man! You feel that energy, Shane?
Shane Jacks: That was awesome. There was a lot of energy there, yes, just like at Greenville Memorial Auditorium several years ago in my childhood, I’d go and watch wrestling down there.
Keith Cosentino: Watch wrestling.
Shane Jacks: And that, that gentleman right there, he is not country, he is not from area. He did a fairly decent job, a lot better than you do, Keith.
Keith Cosentino: Just tell you what, we gotta give credit to Mr. John Dan, one of our listeners –
Shane Jacks: Thank you John, that was awesome.
Keith Cosentino: He was gonna write some intros for us, and we loved that one so we decided to use it. And we decided to – we decided to make it into a new part of the show.
If you wanna write your own intro to the show and we like it and use it, we will send you a Blackplague T-Shirt. So submit them via the SpeakPipe application on our website, and we’ll have fun with that if you guys have some cool ideas.
Shane Jacks: Anytime “Superfly” Jimmy Snuka is mentioned, it’s a great day. For a great conversation.
Keith Cosentino: I gotta be honest, my guy was the ultimate warrior.
Shane Jacks: You know what, I never got into wrestling. And that is the correct term, “wrastling”.
Keith Cosentino: Right.
Shane Jacks: Yes. Wrestling is where they have these helmets on and then you get on a mat, and one guy mounts the other guy.
Keith Cosentino: Helmets. I have respect for wrestling so I know that is called headgear.
Shane Jacks: They’re old football helmets from back in the ’30s.
Keith Cosentino: Okay.
All right, this is the PDR College Podcast as our wrestling announcement friend has just let you know. And in case this is the first time you’ve ever listened to the show, we talk about everything paintless dent removal. We talk tools and we like to techniques for repairing dents, we like to really spend a lot of time talking about the business side of the business.
Because you can fix a dent as well as anybody and you can have the best tools in the world, but if you can’t in front of the customers and make some deals you are broke, my man. So that’s what we try to fix. We try to bring you guys up to the front of the line to get the big bread.
Shane Jacks: Yep. And I’m – I say this all the time, Keith, I’m learning along with everyone else, including you. We don’t know everything, we just know more most than most of you.
That was a joke.
Keith Cosentino: But the first part is true. We are learning along with everybody else. All this stuff, you know, we’ve gotta go over it and over it to make sure we put out a decent show. And that helps us remember in our work because we’re still running PDR companies every day just like you guys. So we’re not – even though we do reside in the palatial recording studios of East and West Coast, we are still in touch with the common man.
Shane Jacks: If this is considered palatial, I would hate to see ghetto.
Keith Cosentino: I wasted a lot money redoing my entire studio. I had all the walls done in velvet, and I had them ripped down and done again in alligator because I got excited about it on that Gucci show.
I don’t know if the acoustics are right.
Shane Jacks: With the alligator?
Keith Cosentino: Yeah.
Shane Jacks: Well, these little knobs, the sound bounces off those knobs on the skin.
Keith Cosentino: That could be true.
Shane Jacks: The alligator skin, bad for acoustics and airplane wings.
Keith Cosentino: And shoes, apparently.
Shane Jacks: Yeah, it’s good for shoes if you’ve got the money.
Keith Cosentino: So, Shane, you’ve got a story that you wanna share that happened to you last week that kind of inspired today’s topic. Tell us what went down over there.
Shane Jacks: Yeah, it was a couple of weeks, two weeks ago, I believe, Keith.
And this lady calls me in, it was like a week after she called me before she actually brought it up here. Things kept happening in her life. And the more I get into her life the more – she’s one of those people that’s always got something wrong.
But anyway, she finally brings the car to me and she – it’s a newer model Honda Civic and it’s a ’13-’14 model, silver. And she brings it to the shop, she tells me the story. Her mom, I believe, was backing out of her driveway and just barely clips her door, put a few really light scratches that’ll buff out, and there’s one spot that needs touch-up but probably about an 18-inch crease in the door.
And so I go through the progression of asking, you know, who’s gonna pay for it. I knew she probably wasn’t gonna make her mom pay for it, but she told me the story to begin with. So I kind of, you know I asked if the insurance was gonna get involved. I really don’t insurance involved, I gotta guy that can touch that spot up.
So I do my usual – and you’re gonna love this, Keith – salesmanship –
Keith Cosentino: Don’t, don’t – not spiel.
Shane Jacks: That was, that was just for you.
So I give her my pitch –
Keith Cosentino: Ahh! Not a pitch either. For those of you who don’t know why that upsets me so much, ask yourself this question, “When was the last time you said, man, I just can’t wait to hear this spiel.”
Shane Jacks: A sales pitch.
Keith Cosentino: Yeah, I’m really looking forward to hearing the pitch. You don’t wanna hear a pitch or a spiel, nobody wants to. So when you start referring to your own information as a spiel or a pitch, you’re gonna start presenting as such. Please delete that from your vocabulary. Proceed, Shane.
Shane Jacks: That was just for you, Keith.
Keith Cosentino: Thank you.
Shane Jacks: So anyway, I gave her a price and she immediately felt that cold water, as I like to say. And her eyes started blinking and she said, “Wow, I didn’t know it was gonna be that much”. So I explained to her why the cost is what it is, and that her repair is going to be flawless when I’m done, save for the touch-up spot that she needed to have done later on. I gave her a price of 600 bucks. And she proceeded to tell me, “You know, I’m gonna get it done but it’s probably gonna be after tax season; I’ve gotta get some money back before I can get it done”. And I kind of immediately at that point wrote it off, you know.
Normally, when you hear stuff like that it’s, they don’t wanna tell you they just don’t wanna get it done by you. You know they’re coming up with an excuse as to why you’re not the guy for them. And that’s okay.
Keith Cosentino: Call my wife’s husband and just kind of see what they think.
Shane Jacks: Exactly, exactly. Yeah, just, and I was nice and so, well, if we can help you just give a call and I gave her a card with the price written on it.
So she calls me a week later, which was surprising when she called me the next week. And she said, “Hey, remember that door on the Civic, is there any way we can get that done?” And I said, well, sure we can get you scheduled in. So I scheduled her in and she – I’m sorry I need to go back just a bit, I apologize. When I’m standing there and after I’ve told her $600, she told me she said, “Well, I’ve got this, my husband has this friend that says he can get a new door for $50, and then I can have it painted.”
So I went in – well, at first I was completely shocked by a $50 door, and I told her, I said, ma’am if you’ve got a guy that can get you doors for $50, I’m getting out of the dent business and I’m buying every door this man has. And I’m getting into the door-selling business because those things are crazy high. And so I started going through, if he’s getting a door shell for $50 it’s an insanely good deal. I said, but then you’ve got to transfer all of your parts over, you gotta get it painted. You know, and she’s nodding, “Oh, yeah, I guess that’s right”.
So you could tell in her mind she was going through, “Yeah, but if I get that for $50 my dad” – this is what I’m thinking she’s thinking when I’m watching her face – “my dad could put all the parts on, then Joe-Bob can paint it.” After that I kind of went in through, and this is silver paint, you’re gonna have to paint basically the entire side of this car to make this match. And so I could tell that going through her mind, she was doing numbers in her head.
But anyway, she calls me back and she said, “Is there any way we can get that done?” I said, sure we can schedule you in, and I scheduled her in and she told me that, she said, “I was wrong about that $50 door,” and I kind of chuckled, I kind of chuckled, I said, oh really. And she said, “Yeah, it’s $250,” I said, that is still a really good deal. I said, if it’s just the shell and it’s aftermarket it may not be a great deal, but doors are really high at a junk yard. You know, I said, he’s probably getting one that is in worse shape than the one you’ve got right now, honestly.
Keith Cosentino: He’s getting one and somebody’s missing one.
Shane Jacks: Yeah.
Keith Cosentino: What color do you want?
Shane Jacks: She says, “I came out and I had no door, and then he sold me a door that looked just like mine!”
Keith Cosentino: Cheap, too.
Shane Jacks: Real cheap [inaudible] [00:10:04].
I said, yeah, we can schedule you in. She continues to tell me, which kind of surprised me, she says, “Well, I talked to another dent guy,” and I said, oh, really. She said, “Yeah, and you know he told me $350,” and immediately I’m thinking, oh, crap, now I gotta try to haggle with her, justify, or just tell her $600 is my price, you know which was going to be my answer.
But she continued on, Keith. She says, “He told me $350, but, and he was on the phone, he answered the phone when I was talking to him right in the middle of where I was talking him, and he was just wishy-washy, he was out and back; he was like, well, you know what, it’ll take a day but it may go over into the next day, and there’s a possibility that the clips on the door panel are –” And he goes through all of the negatives that could possibly happen with this repair and with his side of the repair, also, okay.
So she said, “He was just really unprofessional.” She said, “I really liked the way you came across and how professional you were, and how you knew you could repair this 100 percent in one day, and I’d have my car back that afternoon.” And she said, “So I got into an argument with my dad.” It wasn’t a big argument but she said, “He said I should get it done by the guy for $350 even if it was gonna take another day, and even if you know we had to buy clips for the door panel –” dada-da-dada. And she said, “But I told him I’m just not doing that, I’m gonna go with guy that I felt more comfortable with, the guy that was a professional,” and she said, “And that’s you, so when can we do this thing?”
And I was like, well, heck yeah. And that, that really hit or drove home the topics that we bring up and the points we bring up on here, Keith; mostly you, that you’ve driven into my head over the last few years. The spiel you give –.
So it really, it really drove home all this stuff we talk about. And it’s not just us talking about this, other sales gurus and there’re hundreds of books on tapes that are not industry-specific that deal with these same issues. But man, it’s amazing.
Originally, when you told me all this stuff, Keith, I was thinking, yeah, it’s gonna make a difference, right. That’s what I’m thinking, it’s going to make a difference. And it’s kind of turned into its making the difference. Does that make sense?
Keith Cosentino: It sure does, yeah. I mean it doesn’t matter what new light you’ve got or what new tools you’ve got, no tools you have can almost double the price of a repair.
Shane Jacks: Right.
Keith Cosentino: This guy was in, this guy offered $350 and she decided to spend $600, almost double.
Shane Jacks: Yeah, 40-something percent. So she’s willing to pay, no-no-no not 40-something percent more, about 60-something percent more than what he was asking, you know. And it was simply because I didn’t answer my phone – I mean, let’s go through a progression of three or four things I didn’t do or did do while was I was talking to her.
I didn’t answer the phone. I looked directly into her eyes, that sounds a little weird.
Keith Cosentino: It sure does.
Shane Jacks: I looked directly into her eyes, I spoke to her like a human, and I told her –
Keith Cosentino: You took her hand gently.
Shane Jacks: I took her hand – I rubbed her shoulders.
Keith Cosentino: Did you touch her elbow?
Shane Jacks: I did not touch her elbow. I still, that is hard for me to do. I’m trying, Keith, I swear to you I am. I’ve done it on a few, a handful of people. I’m not, I don’t like touching people.
Keith Cosentino: I will have to teach that technique at our next seminar.
Shane Jacks: Yeah. The one time I did it, or I mean not the, I’ve done it a handful, three, four maybe five times and I have gotten no negative response. And I’ve actually noticed, if I’ve done it, like I said I don’t know exactly how many times, if I’ve done it three times two of the times it was really, I could tell there was a little bit of a difference in, this sounds gay-ish, the connection there. You know what I mean?
Keith Cosentino: I know. That’s what it’s for.
Shane Jacks: Yeah. So –
Keith Cosentino: And when you do it they hardly feel you’re groping them in the rear end – because they focus on the elbow.
Shane Jacks: It’s how pick-pockets do it.
So, number one, those two things that I’ve already talked about. And then the professionalism, and knowing the complete note of confidence that I told her, you’re gonna drop this car off at whatever time in the morning you wanna drop it off. As long as you get it here by 10:00 a.m., I’m gonna have your car done by 4:00 and you’re gonna drive home in it. And it’s gonna be perfect; all you’re gonna have is that one little spot that you’re gonna have to have your buddy that does touch-up work touch it up.
And those three things sold that job for 60-some-odd percent more than the quote the guy down the road gave. And it has nothing to do with actual PDR skills besides the fact that I have utter confidence in mine, and that was one of the things that drove it home for her. But it was more sales skills and relational skills. That’s all it was.
Keith Cosentino: That’s it. And this happens all the time at Shane’s shop and with my company. And this is just one story we decided to highlight. But you know, I will tell you that for as many times as this happens the opposite happens. You blow somebody out with a higher price. But that’s okay, you just make room for a better-priced job to come and fill your time.
Would you say that’s true?
Shane Jacks: Yes, exactly. I had, can I share one more really quick story?
So yesterday, I had this gentleman pull up in a Subaru, Outback I believe it was. And he says, “I’ve just got this dent,” he says, “you see this?” On the plastic molding on the door there was a chip that had been touched up. He said, “That’s been there.” Directly above it was where a dent used to be and still is, and let me explain that.
He said, “This just happened.” I got down and I said, actually, sir, this happened before you bought the car, you bought it used, correct? “Well, yeah,” and he’s kind of confused you know that I knew that. And the reason I knew that is because it was horrible PDR work, I mean absolutely terrible. And I didn’t want to insinuate that he had had the work done himself and it was terrible, okay. And he may have, he may have been lying to me. But I put in his lap, that I was like, oh, you bought it this way and whoever did this work before you bought it, so it wasn’t fault, right. I was taking the blame off of him.
I said, whoever done this work, man, they just didn’t do a good job; see all the cracked paint there. And he goes, “Man, I thought this just happened the other day,” and I said, no, and “Well, can you fix it?” I can make it completely flat, sir, I promise you, but I can do nothing about the cracks in your paint right there. And so he’s going out and back and he asked me a price, and I was really nice. When I say it was terrible PDR work, that cracked the paint in eight to 10 different places, they got it flat-ish but it needs 20 minutes worth of work to get it flat by somebody that knows what they’re doing, it’s easy if you know what you’re doing.
Keith Cosentino: If you don’t mind cracking paint it gets them real flat real fast.
Shane Jacks: So I gave him a price and he kind of stuttered, and he’s not gonna get it fixed. But well, I’m not gonna say that, I didn’t think the $600 door was gonna back out.
So he says, “Well, can I get you to look at one more?” We walk around the car and it’s on the A-post of his Subaru and it’s fairly deep, “Can you fix that?” And I said, well, sir, not normally. I mean normally I could give it a go, but there are times when – and I’m trying not to say Subaru paint is crap, you know what I mean – but I told him, I laid out some – and some people will criticize me for this – I laid out some. I said, the clear on these things is fairly thin and it’s hard, and that’s what I use on the Chrysler paint, too, where it cracks. I don’t say their paint is crap, I just say, I have to be more careful or this is gonna happen or I’m gonna have to put heat, da-da.
Like on the Chryslers, I say the primer is extremely thick which is good, it’s a lot of protection for your vehicle, you know. And with the Subaru it’s really hard to do. I’m like, the paint on these is a little more – and I didn’t use the word brittle because that’s a negative term – I told him, I said, on this car that paint is just probably going to pull off, but it doesn’t affect your car at all, your car will be fine, the paint will be fine for years and years to come, these are great cars, da-da-da-da-da.
I come back in and one of the guys working for me, he says, “He asked me what it was and I told him,” talking about the A-pillar, and he goes, “Well, you should’ve just told him the damn paint is shit on those things.” And I said, well, no because then he won’t bring that rear door back for sure. If I put in his mind that his car is junk, he’s not gonna forget; “My paint ain’t worth a crap anyway, why am I gonna get that door fixed?”
Keith Cosentino: I don’t know about all that, but –
Shane Jacks: So I thought that’s what I did, I didn’t devalue his vehicle in his mind.
Keith Cosentino: No, Subarus are tricky. I always tell people, you know like when they’re talking about how thin the metal is, I say Subarus are great, I really like them, they’re really strong in the structure, but in the sheet metal they are very light which makes them feel efficient and quick but it doesn’t help you for your dents. That’s my way of saying, your skin is garbage. Don’t even breathe on this thing. I don’t know how they rally-race them. Subarus are weird customers anyway.
Shane Jacks: Yes, they –
Keith Cosentino: I mean, like the people are active, generally, and they bang them up with all kinds of crap, but they don’t wanna spend a ton of money on them.
Shane Jacks: Yeah.
Keith Cosentino: Right, you know it’s not a luxury car.
Shane Jacks: Yeah. So those are my two stories about, you know, about salesmanship, professionalism, and building trust in people. And, man, it works, it really works, this stuff is awesome.
Keith Cosentino: You have to remember that you’ve gotta take a few minutes with that customer and spend some, you’ve gotta invest a little time in each of them. You can’t pull this stuff off really fast. Each one is a relationship, and each one you’ve gotta build that relationship in a little microcosm. In a little tiny bit of time you’ve gotta meet them, establish who you are, ask them questions about who they are and what they need, and take it from there. But you can’t get on the phone and say we charge 200 bucks to fix a dent; that’s not building confidence with anybody, you’re not building a relationship, they don’t know who you are.
And I’m not here to tell you that I spend 10 minutes with every person that calls me, but I start out the same and then whatever they tell me is gonna dictate which direction I go.
I had a gal on the phone the other day, she was really sweet, and said, “I just bought this car, it’s got some dents, a couple by the rear wheel and some on the door,” okay, great, what type of vehicle is it? “It’s a ’91 240 SX,” and I’m like, hey, awesome. You know what might be easier is if you just snap some photos and send them over to me.
Which if you don’t know, that is the kiss of death for any good job, is to just give somebody a task; hey, go get a device and get in front of your car and take photos and send them to me, and then you know and wait for a response. That’s the opposite of what you wanna do if you want the job.
If he says it’s a 2014 whatever, if you ask for photos you are an idiot. You’re giving –
Shane Jacks: Well –
Keith Cosentino: No. Unless it’s hit by a boat.
Shane Jacks: Hold on. If they are pushing you for price okay because this happens to me quite a bit. I mean, it’s a price, those may not be your – but I’ve closed several of them. Price, price, price, price, price and, sir, I can’t give you a price over the phone. “Well, do have a round about?” Sir, I can tell you that our prices start at “X” for this size dent, what size is your dent? “Well, it’s this size,” and I don’t trust that because none of them, it’s the size of my hand and I don’t trust that, it’s never that size. So they’re wanting a roundabout price and they keep pushing for it.
Instead of me going, look, bud, I can’t do it, bring it to me, let me see it. I do, I mean did, there is a progression key, it’s not immediately send me a picture, but there’s a progression. Like, hey, man, it might be a little bit easier to send me a picture and then we can go from there. And they’re happy at that point because they want a roundabout price so freaking bad that they’ll do anything for it.
Keith Cosentino: I don’t need a photo for a roundabout price. I can talk about that. I want –
Shane Jacks: That’s scares me –
Keith Cosentino: I wanna commit them to, in your case, coming in and putting some skin in the game. Or in my case, making an appointment, give me your name, your address and we’ll pick a time and I’ll be there in person to give you a real estimate.
Shane Jacks: Huh? Okay, I got you. I’m giving them a task of driving down here.
Keith Cosentino: Yeah, but that’s – when they come down to fulfill that task you know they’re ready to do something. Just going out there and taking a photo doesn’t do anything, it just gives them a number to shop around. And now they’ve got a photo on deck they can send to everybody.
Shane Jacks: Now you said it just gives them a number to shop around, you already stated that you can get a number without a picture.
Keith Cosentino: Yeah, a ballpark number.
Shane Jacks: What’s the difference?
Keith Cosentino: Well, you’re giving a hard number off a photo.
Shane Jacks: No, no, no, no, I did not say hard number, I said ballpark.
Keith Cosentino: And I’m not saying I don’t ask for photos, but if it’s a job I really want, my number one task, my goal when I’m on that phone, is to get the appointment not the photo.
Shane Jacks: I completely agree; however, I will take them, I have no problem taking them.
Keith Cosentino: Having them, having them take photos you mean?
Shane Jacks: Yeah. You’re kind of going back and forth. Yes, you’re giving them a task, it’s a task they want to do by the time I talk to them. They want to do it because they want a roundabout, just like you’re giving them a round-about over the phone, they have no problem with it. They have to push me hard, you know, well, “Come on man, give me,” it’s almost like, look, man, just tell me what I gotta do to get a roundabout price. That’s kind of the attitude, that’s not what they’re saying, but because of the progression of questions they just keep asking, “What’s your minimum price, what’s your maximum price?” And those two numbers are widely different; $100 to $8,000 you know.
After you go through that progression there is no difference in giving them that task that they want to do and giving them a roundabout number over the phone without even having any idea what you’re looking at.
Keith Cosentino: Okay, there is a difference and here’s what it is. When you’re on the phone with them and you give them a roundabout price verbally, after you’ve asked you know five or six questions you have an idea about what you’re talking about. You can listen and hear what they say or what they don’t say, and you can change your direction with the sales call there, and you can immediately ask for the appointment.
When you say send me the photos and they send you the photos, if you call them back you’re not too far from square one, if they sent you the photos. But if you send them away to send photos, there’s a couple of things that can happen. One, they can end up in the lap of a better sales person who doesn’t give them a task to go away and start a new phone call, and they close them on the phone like you should have in the first place. Or you get busy and you get into the trap of getting a text photo and texting back your ballpark number, and now you’re in a text communication not a phone conversation, and it’s wildly different.
If you send back the text message you are now dealing with the lowest common denominator and it’s super-easy for everyone to make a run at your prices. Because anybody can text a question across to somebody else, but it takes stone to ask in person or on the phone. And most people are less likely to ask for a discount in person than they are in a text.
So, one, if you text back it’s over for your maximum profitability; I’m not saying you won’t get the job, you could lowball yourself into getting that job, or you just have the right customer and everything goes great, that was the price they expected and everything I say seems wrong but it’s not wrong. Odds are it’s right, but nothing’s right 100 percent of the time when you’re dealing with this stuff.
But if you’re on the phone, you give them a roundabout price, you listen to what they say. If you hear them wince and feel the cold water you mention, listen, I’m just basing this number on an image I’ve built in my mind. Why don’t we pick a time that works for both of us, we’ll have a look at it together, and we can talk about a real estimate based on your car, “That sounds great, let’s do it” this day. Now you have an appointment to be there. And you might be at the same price, but once you’re there they’ve got skin in the game, you have a way better chance of landing that job.
Because we all know that there is no actual budget for PDR. It’s not like they’re saying, hey, I wanna spend $125 but I’m not going to $130 or $150, that’s crazy. Saying that is crazy, there is no budget. They’ll spend whatever they feel comfortable. So when you’re in person, that’s your job is to make them feel comfortable and build their trust, and then you can land that job at whatever price they thought might’ve been crazy. But now you’re in person and you can show them you’re the real deal, you know what you’re talking about how well this thing is gonna come out, how professional you look, and lock it up.
And that’s kind of the basis of this whole show today, is that connection that you had in person with that lady in the Civic.
Shane Jacks: I don’t disagree.
Keith Cosentino: I know that. You can’t disagree with –
Shane Jacks: Well – well your first premise was you’re giving them a task, that’s what I was arguing with. The task is inconsequential. It’s to getting them in person that is the, that’s what you’re arguing and I’m not arguing that.
But if somebody is pushing me for a price, maybe I’m wrong, I have a hard time listening to somebody go “Hey, it’s the size of a basketball” or I’m sorry, “The size of my hand” and they don’t know what happened to it. And I don’t want to build, maybe I’m wrong by saying, okay, if it’s the size of your hand – in my mind, Keith, the size of your hand, holy crap, that can vary from in my mind $300 to $800, or more.
Keith Cosentino: Yeah, that’s, and that’s what I say. I say, listen, a dent the size of your hand can be a lot of different things. On the low side it can probably be somewhere around $300, on the high side it could be $750 or $900. And I’d say, I know that’s a really big range, why don’t we talk about a time when we can get together in person and I can have a look at it.
And if I’m slow, which I haven’t been for the last you know eight years, I’m going to that appointment for an estimate, I’m gonna try to close it for a repair. If I’m busy, I might fall back to the photos after listening to what they’ve said and they say, “Ooh, man, I don’t know”. I’ll say fine, why don’t you send some photos. At that point I’m over it, I don’t want the job anymore that bad.
But if you don’t have anything to do, you go, go-go-go and get there in person, meet them, talk to them, make some friends then talk about that dent and how it’s gonna turn out. Talk about your experience, you still have to sell yourself. But if you’re busy and you have 10 dents, 10 appointments lined up in front of you, you just physically don’t have time to go and do it, an estimate that may not pan out.
Because when you do that strategy they’re not all gonna pan out, but you’re get better at your sales, and you’re gonna get better in person, and you’re gonna land more than you think because this is an impulse kind of buy. People are adding it in their shopping cart two seconds before they checkout. They’re not thinking about it too much, and if you wait a week or two they’re done thinking about it, they’re on to something else unless the car’s really, really smashed up. Who can’t live with a door ding or two, everybody can.
So you’ve got to get in person and then you can make that deal.
Shane Jacks: Maybe that’s just my way of not having the time to go out and see it in person, it’s the same thing, honestly, you know.
I’m not gonna say I’m gonna quit asking for photos. When they push me, I go ahead and do it.
Keith Cosentino: Listen, I do it all the time. Like that 240 SX; she goes straight to the photo line. And if it’s a job I have any questions about we’re straight to photos. But if you want to try to increase your closes, go for a week with no photos.
You and I, Shane, were both in this business for a long time before you had the ability to text a picture to anyone for any cost, any price. You couldn’t, it didn’t exist. I had a Nextel, you had a pager, you weren’t texting photos to anybody.
Shane Jacks: I never had a pager, actually.
Keith Cosentino: Yes, you did.
Shane Jacks: No, I didn’t, I really didn’t.
Keith Cosentino: All right, I had one that looked like snakeskin. No joke.
Shane Jacks: I never had a pager.
Keith Cosentino: So my point is though, we were both in this business for a long time, and a lot of you guys listening were in this business for a long time doing well without the ability to send photos, email or text. Now it’s easy. And it makes some parts of our job really easy, but it’s a crutch. It’s a crutch for bad salesmanship and bad phone work. And I’ll stick by that forever.
Because I can ask 20 questions, just like the game Twenty Questions, and I’ll know what’s going on with that dent. Twenty questions is a lot for people to sit all the way through, but if they will I’ll just keep asking and eliminating questions until I know almost exactly what that thing looks like. Most people get frustrated after question seven, they don’t wanna go to 20. But I tell them, listen, if we spend just a moment or two talking about your dent, I can probably get a real good idea about what’s going on with it and give you an idea about what it should cost to repair.
And all that’s doing for me is prequalifying them to me. Letting me know they are in the same ballpark as me, and when I drive out there they are expecting what I’m gonna bring. You know, if you have nothing to do try to get in-person first and do that whole conversation in person. That’s the king, and that’s why the shop can be king when people come in and you can take them from step one all the way through to completion, right there in person. That’s ideal. Now the only thing that I –
Shane Jacks: We don’t disagree here, honestly.
Keith Cosentino: No, no, I know.
Shane Jacks: I’m just, I go through a progression and it just, maybe there are just more people out here. It’s crazy how you can ask a thousand – I mean, I don’t, how big is it? A quarter.
Keith Cosentino: Oh, well, if you’re really asking an open-ended question of how big is it, yes, I’ll give them the –
Shane Jacks: Okay, all right. I’m doing this for the sake of time, Keith. Is it the size of a dime, is it the size of an orange, is it the size of a basketball? “Oh, I don’t know, bigger than a dime smaller than an orange,” okay, he says “A half dollar?” I get it. You know –
Keith Cosentino: But in that scenario that’s perfect information. Okay, I know it’s bigger than a dime and it’s smaller than an orange, perfect, I can work with that. Then I find out where it is on the panel.
Shane Jacks: How – what happened to it, “I don’t know.” Is it deep, does it have any paint, “it don’t look like, maybe, I”. There’s a progression I go through and these people, these are the ones that I go, you know what would be easier just send me a picture.
Keith Cosentino: Yeah, we’re the same. It’s the same strategy. You’re gonna try your best on the phone, and the you pull the ripcord when you’re running out of options.
Shane Jacks: Yeah.
Keith Cosentino: They say, “Bub, beh, buh – “, send me a photo Jim-Bob, or have your cousin Jim-Bob send it to me.
Shane Jacks: All right, let’s move on from that. We’ve argued enough.
Keith Cosentino: We’re not arguing.
Shane Jacks: Discussed, discussed. I use the word argument way too loosely, way too loosely.
Keith Cosentino: We’ve enlightened several people.
Shane Jacks: Several million. Until I gave out how many people are downloading a month.
Keith Cosentino: I know, several million.
There are several million dent guys and they are in your town trying to take your work. What are you gonna do about it?
Shane Jacks: Ask for text pictures.
[No sound 00:35:48 – 00:36:44]Keith Cosentino: So the question is then, if you’re gonna be in person, how do I build trust? And how do I build trust in my company at all, in general? What do I do to be in this scenario, the guy that Shane was to this lady? How do I build that trust?
So I’ve written a couple of notes here. You know, sometimes you ask yourself a question, you gotta come up with the answer and you enlighten yourself as to what you really know. You know, you just kind of go to work every day, you don’t realize all the steps you actually go through. But there’s a lot of stuff you need to be doing to build trust.
So let’s start with the first way somebody’s gonna find you, generally, is online. If you don’t have a nice website and the website isn’t relevant, you’re way behind already, way behind. Because, you may disagree with me, but I believe the first place everyone is going for information in this day and age is online. The phone is right in your pocket, the computer’s always on, you hop on there and you type whatever you’re looking for, Enter. Right?
Shane Jacks: Yep.
Keith Cosentino: It’s gotta be true for everybody, if it’s not true for everybody it’s true for 90 percent of people.
So if you don’t have a nice website that’s coming up for that search, you’re already way behind. So if that’s not handled, handle that. If you don’t have a website our guy, Nathan at Design With Energy, is the man for you. He’s built a bunch of PDR sites. Get that handled.
After that’s done, you need to have some customer reviews somewhere. If you wanna host them on your own site that’s fine; if you wanna use a third party site like Yelp or Google, or whatever, Facebook, all that stuff is fine. Just have them somewhere that somebody can see. If you don’t have them, actively pursue getting them, ask your customers, hey, you know what would be really great, if you’re really happy is to do this.
And not all of them will do it, a very small percentage will. But if 10 percent of them do it and you’re doing five repairs a day, it doesn’t take long to get to 20 or 30 reviews. Which seems, by the way, to be like the tipping point; once you get above 20 or 30 people start to recognize that you’re the real deal. Three or four or five doesn’t do it. We’ve got just shy of a hundred, and we work on a land sliding, in our area there’s nobody even close to that.
Between your reviews and your homepage it helps if you are mentioned in some other peoples’ Facebook posts, or on some other forms, or other local businesses have referenced you on their site for people they trust or review or things like that. So out of the local businesses that you do work with, body shops or things like that, check their website and see if they have a you know people we recommend section and ask them if you can be on it. It helps people when they’re looking for you to see, oh, this guy’s everywhere, lots of people use him, I trust this guy on the web.
Then, Shane, you’ve got a pretty good reputation in your town. We’ve talked about it a lot. What are some of –?
Shane Jacks: It depends on what we’re talking about. Dent repair, yes.
Keith Cosentino: Be – [inaudible] [00:40:12] joke. Oh, man.
So your reputation in person, which we both know you’re making jokes, but we both know it’s good, I’ve seen it firsthand visiting out there, talking to people.
What are some things you do to maintain or to build your personal reputation in PDR?
Shane Jacks: There’s, god, there’re, how many are there? There are tons of them.
Keith Cosentino: In internet, but what would you say are the most important things?
Shane Jacks: One is like you said, the other local businesses if they trust you, body shops, right?
Keith Cosentino: Oh, yeah, that’s a big one.
Shane Jacks: That’s a big one. And I can tell you, over the last month, Keith, I’ve had – and this is kind of odd, but it does happen and it’s happened I think three times, it’s been about a month maybe two months, my perception of time sometimes – we’re so freaking busy you know a month, or six months turns into you thought was it was two weeks ago, and I’m speaking for yourself and myself, Keith, with all that we do.
So I believe it’s been about three times in the last two months. The Infinity dealership nearby that I do all the service work for, there’s some good stories from that place where they’ve tried to use another guy. I’d had to fix some horrific repair, a horrific repair that their old guy did. And when I asked them why they called him, “Because you’re just so busy and you can’t get up here for a few hours sometimes!”
And I’m like, well – at that point I had the upper hand so I could be a little bit of a smart aleck because I just saved them from a $600 or $800 painting of a G35 that literally had about 15,000-18,000 miles on it. And I was like, well, did we learn a lesson that we’re going to wait on Shane? I was kind of talking to, and he knew it was a joke so it wasn’t like me being a prick or anything, I mean I kind of was.
So anyway it’s happened three times, just the Infinity dealership, Keith, where I’ve a customer call me, and I’ve tried to get them in here, and they didn’t come in the beginning, okay. And apparently, what they’re thinking is, one of them was it seemed like they were price-shopping, the other two I really don’t remember. But all three of them called me back, and they say, “Hey, I talked to the Infinity dealership, they said you are the man, and I’m gonna bring my car up there.” And all three of them have come up and I’ve closed all three of them off of that.
I couldn’t get them up here to look at all, which is odd, to look at any three of these cars. One of them was an older car, the other two were newer, until the Infinity dealership had pimped me also. And they did it, and surprisingly, some of my service drives will send people straight to me on occasion. I think a lot of times, when I say, oh, yeah, I know who you’re talking about, you’re talking about the guy up the road, Shane at Dent Pro, yeah, that guy. And they won’t even run it through their service department. They’ll just say, you need to go up there and talk to that guy, he’s a stud, you know, whatever.
So building it through service departments is big, too, Keith. That’s proven huge for me, especially if it’s high end. They inherently trust their dealer and their service advisors, they just do.
Keith Cosentino: Yeah. They’re hard eggs to crack, too. Those service guys are spun out half the time. They are not easy. I mean, I’ve got accounts that I’ve been servicing forever, and their service drive still stink.
Shane Jacks: Yeah. If you think about it, they’re constantly trying to sell anyway. I mean, some of that stuff they’re selling, holy crap, you know. I don’t know how some of them sleep at night, honestly. Because they’re trying to sell stuff that doesn’t a car doesn’t absolutely need, or, you know. And so there’s just another thing for them to sell with us, honestly.
Keith Cosentino: Right, they need you when you’re saving their bacon, but then a lot of them can’t make that leap to selling the PDR. It’s frustrating because you know they’re selling a bunch of garbage, this is actually a service that would do well. But, anyway I have not –
Shane Jacks: So another –
Keith Cosentino: – been able to crack that egg.
Shane Jacks: Another one is the shop. It has become – and not everybody has to do this not everybody needs to do this. You don’t it, Keith, you probably never will. I mean you kind of talked about it, but your business model is not set-up around it but –
Keith Cosentino: And rent is just so high here.
Shane Jacks: Yeah, yeah. But I mean, people trust a fixed location. I’m not saying they don’t trust you. You see this is where people take me the wrong way, and I know you’re not, Keith.
Keith Cosentino: Right.
Shane Jacks: But people trust a fixed location. Keith may have to work, Keith’s a better salesman than I am; Keith, you’re a better salesman than I. You have to work harder, I believe, simply because I have this brick and mortar, you know what I mean? It’s just simply true.
People trust this location and I sell that you know. Look, I’m gonna be here, where’s the other guys gonna be, basically. And it’s not a guarantee that I’m gonna be here, but I mean they know I have a vested interest –
Keith Cosentino: Yeah, it’s a building –
Shane Jacks: – I’m not gonna shutdown tomorrow, so they know that. So there’s a lot of comfort and ease there, that way if their paint comes flying off in a week they would know where to come.
Keith Cosentino: When those micro fractures finally show up?
Shane Jacks: When those micro fractures show up, and they brought the Subaru back and said it just happened.
Keith Cosentino: Yeah.
Shane Jacks: But that’s a few of the ways that I build the reputation in my area, Keith.
Keith Cosentino: The micro fractures, if you don’t know what we’re joking on, is in reference to some auto body guys that say crap like that to their customers about PDR. They say, oh, yeah, it looks good at first and then those micro cracks will show up and the paint starts flaking off.
Shane Jacks: You do know Toyota released an official statement about that. Not endorsing PDR because of micro fractures a few years back.
Keith Cosentino: No way.
Shane Jacks: Yes, I read it. And – yeah, um-hum. Sure did.
Keith Cosentino: Wow. I gotta read that.
Shane Jacks: Yeah, it was –
Keith Cosentino: That’s crazy. Because –
Shane Jacks: – two, three, four years ago.
Keith Cosentino: We know factory PDR techs for Toyota.
Shane Jacks: Exactly.
Keith Cosentino: Wow! That’s really strange.
Shane Jacks: I think it was the Toyota Body Shop Association of America, maybe.
Keith Cosentino: Yeah, no kidding. Man, you gotta dig that – can you dig that up and we’ll put it on a link?
Shane Jacks: I will, yes, I’ll do –
Keith Cosentino: Link it on the PDRCollege.com.
Shane Jacks: I will find it. I think I read it in a body shop business magazine, as a matter of fact.
Keith Cosentino: That is bananas. Absolutely bananas. That really surprises me, I hope you’re wrong.
Shane Jacks: I hope I was dreaming it, but I know I see, I know I saw it at some point. If I’m wrong, then I will admit it. It’s very hard for me.
Keith Cosentino: Check the top of the article and see if it says “This Section is an Advertisement”.
Shane Jacks: For Abra or whatever.
So what else, what else we got, Keith?
Keith Cosentino: In being in person, all right, is the biggest part about how I build trust with my customers, is the things I do in person, the things I present and the things I do.
So my little list of things here, and this list could be three miles long if we really drill down deeper and deeper into each thing.
But the first thing I wanna make sure I’m doing is that I’m clean-cut. When people are, they’re taking a little bit of leap of faith when they’re asking a stranger to come to their home or their workplace, especially their home. And when you shop up, if you like to dress a little more edgier or you’re an edgy dude, cool, be your edgy guy when you’re off work. But when you’re at work you are playing a role and the role is trustworthy service technician. And to do that you need to have a work shirt and clean pants or shorts, and clean shoes, and you’re representing yourself well as somebody who is not edgy.
So that means, in my world do what you want, but in my world that means having a clean-cut haircut and your face is shaved. You know, a lot of guys are wearing beards now, knock yourself out, I know they’re in style, but none of my technicians have beards, how about that.
Shane Jacks: One of mine does. Quite a large one.
Keith Cosentino: He didn’t have it when you hired him.
Shane Jacks: No, no did not.
Keith Cosentino: He was presentable when you hired him.
Shane Jacks: Now he’s Sasquatch.
Keith Cosentino: Yeah, now he’s the shop’s Silverback.
Shane Jacks: He still closes well, though. I don’t know how.
Keith Cosentino: Yeah, yeah. Just take my keys, please don’t hurt me.
Shane Jacks: Exactly!
Keith Cosentino: So when, and when you’re in person you’re dealing with someone you’ve gotta have an honest communication. And what that means is you need to be confident about your abilities and what you can do, but you also need to be honest about what you cannot do.
People appreciate that more than you think. Like when Shane was telling this guy I cannot fix these cracks in the paint, that’s honest communication. If he was gonna say something more jivey like, you know what, just knock it out, drop it off, we’ll knock it out, it’s gonna look like a million bucks. That sounds great, but it’s not honest communication. You’re not telling the complete truth, you’re omitting facts. And when people are surprised at the end, that’s really bad. You want them to be surprised at how great it is, not surprised that they didn’t ask the right questions or something like that, and they’re upset. And that starts with honesty in person.
When you’re dealing with these people, you’ve got to be personable. You’ve gotta be somebody who is fun to talk to. And I know that’s not easy for everybody. On certain days it’s really hard for me and for Shane. We’re just normal guys just like you, and everybody has an off day once in a while. But just like your favorite radio host, they don’t get to have an off day on that radio show, and you don’t get to have an off day when you’re dealing with somebody in person. As much as you may be upset about something, just can it for the five minutes you’re gonna be talking to somebody.
And your day is going amazing, this person is awesome, and you’re excited to talk about their dents and you’re excited to talk to them about something that has nothing to do with dents. This is a big part of it, building trust in person. Letting them know that you have something in common with them, or that you can relate to something they do and you are a person just like they do. Maybe you eat at the same restaurant or you have a kid the same age. That may seem like meaningless dribble to someone, but I’m here to tell you that it’s more important than almost anything you’re doing in person, is building a personal connection with that prospect, with that customer.
Letting them know you’re not just here to pressure them and try to close them, you’re here to talk to them, help them, and get to know them a little bit and know what’s important to them. It’s a big one. Shane does it a lot in his Southern style, I do it in my more polished composed California style.
Shane Jacks: It’s really cool. You know, I’m coming out there at some point in time, Keith, to work on some projects for PDR College and to hang around. And I’m 99 percent sure I told you this, Keith, I will keep my mouth shut while you’re selling. There is no way the way I do it would work around here, unless I’m gonna work on the 0.001 percent of the population contingent out there that is from here.
Keith Cosentino: We’ve got a lot of hillbillies out here, believe it or not. I don’t do a lot of PDR for them, but we’ve got hillbillies.
Shane Jacks: See, so you’ve got to be a better closer because you don’t have a shop, I’ve gotta be a better closer because literally every freaking body here is a hillbilly!
Keith Cosentino: If I was gonna move there, I would have a porta power as my first tool.
Shane Jacks: Exactly right, man. Uhh.
Keith Cosentino: So let’s talk about something else in person. A professional invoicing system. Handwriting things on paper or on the back of cards, not ideal. Professional system.
And I know Shane just mentioned earlier he gave a card with a price on the back, Shane needs a professional invoicing system, too.
Shane Jacks: Actually, I just, no, the invoicing is fine, it’s the estimate. I just started using one, Keith, I have PDR Estimate, okay. And I’m sending emails to people.
Keith Cosentino: For your estimating system?
Shane Jacks: Um-hum, um-hum. And I’m gonna try another one out also, but that one is – I’m really liking it so far.
Keith Cosentino: So do not give wishy-washy prices and agreements when you start the work. If you want to be trustworthy in person, you’re gonna talk about the cost of that repair and that’s gonna stay the cost all the way through. You don’t set the cost when you’re done with it.
A lot of guys do this because they don’t know how to close, they don’t know how to price it, or they just – they do know how to start working so that’s what they do. And then, hey, big surprise at the end, it’s $400! “Oh, my gosh, I was thinking it was XYZ!” Handle that stuff up front, otherwise you are a crook. You’re not trustworthy.
And when you do that you’ve got to have confidence, complete confidence. People love to deal with confident people, not cocky, not condescending, just confident; I know what I can do, I know what I cannot, but I know what I can do and this is what I can do. I’ve done it a lot, and I’m gonna do it on this car, and this is how it’s gonna turn out, this is what you’re gonna see.
And oftentimes, that means telling them what flaws are gonna be left, if any, before they ever get to it. And most of the time they don’t see the stuff you’re talking about anyways. But if you tell them it’s there, even tell them how they’re gonna be able to see it and how they won’t, that’s confidence-inspiring because here’s someone who knows what they’re talking about and they’re showing me their garbage, instead of telling me how great it’s gonna be. They’re gonna tell me what they can do and what they can’t do.
One of the things that’s important to me is congruity in your image, including your vehicle. If your truck or car is dirty and dented, you are not in the business of fixing cars. If you’ve got a dent in your car that you can fix and you haven’t fixed it, you suck.
Shane Jacks: You officially suck as a human being.
Keith Cosentino: Take one hour and fix your own truck before you go to work today. It’s ridiculous. If you’re gonna show up to a retail job with dents in your truck, there are 10 people this month that aren’t gonna trust you because of that alone. And you think it doesn’t matter but it does. It doesn’t matter to you because you know it’s five minutes worth of work, but it matters to them. Fix your truck.
And lastly, in person, which kind of encompasses everything we’ve just talked about, explain the entire process.
Tell them what you’re going to do, tell them how you’re gonna do it. And let them know that you’re not winging this job, you’ve been through this a hundred times, you know what needs to be done and you know how to do it.
And if there’s something you don’t know, you gotta be honest about that too. I mean, sometimes you don’t know but you know you’ll figure it out. You don’t have to say that. You don’t know how every piece of trim comes off, but you know how trim comes off and you’ll get in there and figure it out. So you don’t need to say, hey, I really don’t know how this comes off, I’m gonna start peeling corners until I either hear something snap or I hear it pop out, then I know I’m on the right track or the wrong track. You don’t need to talk about everything.
But explain that you know what has to be done and do it.
Shane Jacks: My wife’s got a doctor appointment that day, I don’t really know if I can be there the whole day.
Keith Cosentino: I’m booking this job pretty late in the day so I’m hoping I can do 300-400 bucks in the last hour and still get home in time to catch a Game of Thrones, or whatever show people watch now. I don’t even watch shows. I think that’s a web show, you don’t even have to tune in, right? That’s one you can watch –
Shane Jacks: No, actually, I know a guy that is absolutely hooked on that show. I think it’s HBO.
Keith Cosentino: Is it? I don’t know.
Shane Jacks: I’m pretty sure it’s HBO, yeah.
Keith Cosentino: I’ll tell you the shows I watch, and they’re on DVR.
Shark Tank; my buddy got me turned on to this show called The Profit, a pretty cool show; and How It’s Made.
Shane Jacks: How It’s Made?
Keith Cosentino: How It’s Made left me down for the last year or two, I haven’t seen a new one. But those are my shows.
Shane Jacks: I’m not crazy about How It’s Made.
Keith Cosentino: That’s because you already know everything.
Shane Jacks: True that. So I like Brain Games, it’s pretty cool.
Keith Cosentino: I watched one and I did think it was super-cool, but it didn’t make my list.
Shane Jacks: It tells you how your brain works. And I’ve been watching, on Netflix I watch one to wind down before bed. I know that’s the wrong thing to do to wind down, but I do. Not every night, just whenever I possibly can.
Keith Cosentino: This is off topic, but I thought this is interesting.
I was listening to this podcast the other day, it had nothing to do with business. This guy named Brian Cox was on the Joe Rogan Podcast. And this guy is like a British astrophysicist or cosmologist or something like that, I don’t even know the proper term, but he’s talking about space and time and things like that.
And he talked about this concept of infinite numbers, and he was talking about probabilities and things like that. And he said, “If you had an infinite number of monkeys and you gave them typewriters, they would type out the complete works of Shakespeare perfectly, eventually.” You know, wait a second, it doesn’t make any sense. Like perfectly; punctuation, spacing, even at having the Acts written in the proper order perfectly.
Shane Jacks: He’s probably right if there was an infinite number. Uhh.
Keith Cosentino: That’s what’s he’s saying.
Shane Jacks: That’s mind “bottling”.
Keith Cosentino: If there’s an infinite number of anything, anything that can happen will happen, everything because that’s infinite.
Shane Jacks: That’s deep and awesome.
Keith Cosentino: Isn’t that cool?
Shane Jacks: Yeah.
Keith Cosentino: Infinite. Like not, you know, a ba-hundred-trillion to the 10th power or whatever – infinite!
Shane Jacks: That makes my brain hurt.
Keith Cosentino: It does. And he has like three hours of stuff like that, that was just amazing. So if you like that kind of stuff go check out that podcast.
It’s not my favorite podcast because Joe Rogan has a filthy mouth and it invades my mind. But sometimes when he has fighters on I like to listen because that’s my thing, I like MMA and grappling, and when he has guys like that on it’s really interesting. And if the host or if the guest is not that fowl-mouthed, Joe Rogan keeps it to a minimum and that’s how that episode is. Brian Cox –
Shane Jacks: Yeah, he gets a little, yeah, he gets a little, yeah. That’s the one, I listen to him at times when he’s got an interesting guest on. But a lot of times, yeah, it’s just –
Keith Cosentino: It’s interesting, too. But I don’t agree with half of his views.
Shane Jacks: No, no.
Keith Cosentino: He’s a big drug addict, and doesn’t believe in God and stuff like that.
I like Brian Cox, and Joe Rogan makes me laugh, how about that? Those things are true.
Shane Jacks: All right, back on topic.
Keith Cosentino: So that’s my list, man. Those are the things I do to build trust. And if you do half of these things you’re gonna be in better shape than your competitors. You can start building trust and gaining momentum in your market. It’s all about trust. Professionalism.
Shane Jacks: For sure. Good stuff.
Listen, you guys got to hear us discuss an issue where we disagreed but both of us were right.
Keith Cosentino: That’s completely true.
Shane Jacks: What was that you said a couple of weeks ago about that? You said, it’s amazing how both of us know everything but it’s different stuff.
Keith Cosentino: That’s what I said.
Shane Jacks: I said I didn’t know that, and Keith says it’s amazing, both you and I know everything but we know different stuff.
Keith Cosentino: Infinite, it’s infinite, our knowledge.
So I hope you guys can do something with that, put it into action, at least some of it today and let us know.
You suckers have been pretty quiet on your feedback, so let us know you’re out there. Leave a comment either on Facebook, or on our website underneath the podcast episodes there’s a section where you can comment, or leave a voice mail if you wanna win that Blackplague shirt write the next into.
Shane Jacks: Yeah.
Keith Cosentino: Are you trying to stay on the cutting edge of paintless dent removal when it comes to your tools?
Well, if so, you need to make sure you have two things in your arsenal.
One, is a Shane Jacks’ jack hammer, Blending Hammer. Find it at BlendingHammerPDR.com. If you wanna learn blending we’ve got an awesome tutorial to go along with the hammer right there on the site. You’re gonna love it, you’re gonna learn something, and you’re gonna get better and make money.
In addition to the hammer, if you are doing any glue-pulling, you need to have the Blackplaque Crease Tabs, it’s a six-piece crease pulling set. The two largest are absolute monsters; they are gonna pull out collision damage like nothing else you’ve got available. And the smaller sizes are gonna be for the normal everyday kind of door edges and minor, minor collision dents, and a dog leg in a 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. Checkout the sites, guys. Bring yourselves into the 21st Century.
Do not forget about ReCon Pro, the software that we use to run our PDR companies. This stuff is phenomenal. You’re entering all the information on your device which is an iPhone; you’re scanning the VIN with the camera of it. Everything’s populated in there for you. You buzz that little rascal off via magic off to a server somewhere, it’s all living on a server. You can dunk the phone in a bucket of water as soon as you’re done, you don’t lose any data. Everything’s paperless; your invoice is delivered electronically; you can send duplicates at a moment’s notice.
Guys, get off paper; quit screwing around – AutoMobileTechnologies.com, ReCon Pro. Get your business into the 21st Century.
Shane Jacks: I’m excited about this next thing, Keith.
Keith Cosentino: Let’s hear about it.
Shane Jacks: The Tool Review.
Keith Cosentino: What are you reviewing for us?
Shane Jacks: I am reviewing a new PDR adhesive. Tab Weld is the name. And literally one or two of you are gonna understand what I mean when I say Tab Weld. Keith, you know what it is, you developed it.
Keith Cosentino: I did. Well, I guided the guys who know what they’re doing. You know, just like they talk about with websites, I don’t know anything about building a website but I know what I want it to do. So I tell Nathan, hey, make it do this, and he does his wizardry and he makes it do it.
And I don’t know anything about adhesives, well, I know more than I used to know. But I said, hey, I wanna glue that does this Mr. Scientist Dude. And once I got in touch with the right people, which was not easy, and once we went through some bunk formulations, we have ended up at what I believe to be the best glue you can get.
Shane Jacks: His name wasn’t Bill Nye was it?
Keith Cosentino: No, it wasn’t.
Shane Jacks: Okay, so Keith sends me this glue. That’s the awesome thing about doing this podcast with him. I get all his new stuff.
And he sends his glue, and I’m going to be 100 percent forthcoming here. I just got it the day before yesterday and I just used it for the first time yesterday. The first time I must’ve had grease on my tab and, Keith, I didn’t get your okay to tell the story, but I’m gonna do it anyway.
Keith Cosentino: Okay.
Shane Jacks: The first tab, I had a tiny tab on there and I must’ve had grease on it, it did not stick at all, and I went, oh, crap, Keith has made something crappy here. I’m gonna have to pimp this and I’m not gonna be truthful, that’s what I’m thinking. And so I was like, it can’t be, he said this stuff was awesome.
So I grabbed another tab and, oh, man. I got this horrible bad Colorado damage, hail-damaged car in my shop right now and it’s kind of a project, long story. But anyway, I’ve got this car in my shop and I found a dent on the trunk that was 0.56 mm deep; I got my depth gauge, by the way, which is also awesome. So I measured this dent and it’s 0.56 mm deep, it is larger than half-dollar size, has a decent bottom to it. And I take your – Keith, I apologize for not knowing, what’s the second smallest tab, which one is that?
Keith Cosentino: BP12.
Shane Jacks: Twelve, the 12 mm. And I put it in the center of that sucker and filmed it. This was literally the third pull I had with this glue, and I said, well, I’m filming it now, if it hooks up it hooks up, if it don’t we do Take 2. But Take 1, I pulled and I did it on purpose, I made it snap and I did it pretty quick and pretty hard and with the BP12, that 0.56 mm deep dent is probably 0.46 mm the other way now. This stuff hung on like a [inaudible] [01:06:53]. I mean, it is really good stuff.
It came off easy, it didn’t become brittle. And it was warm here yesterday, I don’t think it’s gonna become brittle. But – no, actually it was in the mid-50s yesterday, so not terribly warm and raining and this stuff hung really, really well, Keith.
Great job sir!
Keith Cosentino: Thank you. So those are the three areas that I wanted consistency in. I want it to hook up quickly, I don’t wanna sit around waiting for glue to dry because I’ve got things to do. I want it to pull hard. And you have to use a solvent for it, it’s not a solvent-free glue at all, it’s a traditional application of glue and you remove it in a traditional fashion. But I also wanted it to clean up really quickly; I don’t wanna be chasing a million little chunks.
And it’s not like perfect that it’s gonna come off the panel perfectly every time. Because, listen, you design it to stick to a panel, okay. Something that comes off really easy, that’s because it didn’t stick on really well, that’s not a hard leap to make in your mind. If you want something to stick on, then it’s going to stay stuck on. You can’t get something that comes off easy but also sticks really well.
So it comes off great, better than everything else I use. But it’s still hot glue, there might be a little tiny baby chunk here or there and you hit with more alcohol and it falls off. But you’ve gotta use alcohol. I use alcohol. You might to use some other crazy concoction and ruin your fingers and the paint and the tabs, but I use 91 percent isopropyl alcohol or rubbing alcohol. It’s what I think is the best so far.
But the Tab Weld glue is really, really exciting. It’s kind of an industrial gray color. And I told the guys, listen, the color is not that important to me, what I want are these attributes, make these happen. Whatever color it needs to be that’s what it can be, with the exception of clear because then it looks like everything else and you can’t tell what it is.
So it’s a gray color, it’s a color that I don’t feel stupid getting out in front of a customer. Like I’m gonna glue this hot pink stuff onto your car, and like, oh, that looks really professional. Oh, no, don’t worry about that, I got purple as well, and blue. Because when I see purple I automatically think adhesion!
So it’s a nice industrial color that I like. But it’s called Tab Weld. It’s not gonna be available right away, but as soon as it is ready I will let you guys know and get it out to you.
What is ready right now is a new glue gun on our website. It’s a European glue gun. All the glue guns we’ve been using are these Chinese things, and sometimes you get a great one, last forever; sometimes you get a piece of junk, doesn’t even work out of the box. And sometimes they’re cheap, sometimes they’re moderately priced, they’re never expensive, and we’ve all been using them forever.
But stuff from Europe, the guys take a little more pride in their stuff, I believe, and this gun is out of the U.K. It’s called the TEC 305 and it has a base so the thing will stand up, a plastic base where you can attach it to something if you want, has a little hole in it. It has an illuminated power switch, you can turn it on and off so you know when it’s plugged in and when it’s not, when you’re plugged into something with power. You know, oftentimes, as a mobile guy you’re plugged into different receptacles here or there and you don’t know if they’re hot. All my extension cords have lights in them because of that. If you don’t have that, your gun’s got a light in it.
It’s 120 volts, not 12 volts, you gotta plug into a wall. It’s got a full length trigger, and one of the unique features is that it has a little adjustment in the back of the gun that’ll change the stroke of the trigger so it’ll change how much glue comes out per pull. So if you’re doing a lot of tiny tabs and you want just a small amount of glue, you can crank that thing in or out and change it.
So we’ve got that on our site now. They are 33 bucks, so it’s still, it’s not breaking the bank, but it’s a really high-level glue gun. For as often as we use a glue gun at work, I mean 33 bucks doesn’t even exist, not even on my radar for money to spend you know, less than a half-a-tank of gas for a tool I’m gonna use every day in and out. And if it doesn’t work I can’t do that job if I’m gonna glue pull.
So that’s what I’m using now, exclusively. I’ve yet to give one to Shane because we just got them in. So, Shane, I’ll be sending yours out this week so you can tell me if you like it or not. I’m sure you’ll love it.
But to launch it on our site I have decided that if you spend $200 on BlackplaguePDR.com I will give you that gun for free. You have to enter the Code Euro, Euro, like a Euro glue gun. Enter the Code Euro and with that gun in your basket over $200, you gotta be over $200, I guess you’re over $233 with the gun in there, and then the gun is free.
That’s only for this week. So you guys who listen when the show comes out you get the offer, if you’re hearing this a week later you’re out, sorry. Learn to listen, listen to learn. But I’m excited about that. I don’t have that many of them either, so we might blow them out in the first week and have to wait for some more, but that’s what we’re doing.
Shane Jacks: Can’t wait to get that thing, too.
Keith Cosentino: If you’re a lucky guy you might get a sample of Tab Weld in the mail. I’ve got a handful of sticks here and there, but not too many. But rest assured, as soon as I’ve got it ready for everybody you’ll be able to get it.
Shane Jacks: How long are you thinking, Keith?
Keith Cosentino: Four to six weeks.
Shane Jacks: Ay-yay-yay!
Keith Cosentino: I know, it seems like a long time. It’s like right smack –
Shane Jacks: I don’t care about everybody else, I just want more myself.
Keith Cosentino: Right in the middle of hail season it’s gonna be ready to go.
Shane Jacks: Yeah.
Keith Cosentino: Maybe a hair before, but I’m pushing on them to get it to me and get it done. But this stuff takes forever.
Also, our new knock down is making progress, it’s slower than – all this stuff is slow, man, it’s really hard to get a product out, done, clean, and ready to sell, it’s really tough.
So I appreciate you guys being patient with me as I roll stuff out and I tease it a little earlier than I really should. But it’s like it’s ready, but you can’t get enough of them and get them in a place where you can sell them yet. So that’s frustrating. But a new knock down is coming. We’re waiting on the new tips from Jeremy Langton of that new plastic that he uses that doesn’t mushroom out and doesn’t mar; that’s gonna ship with our tap down. So when we get those and get the tap downs back, everything’s ready to go there.
And I’ve had a couple of questions about the Inner Circle, “Keith, what happened to your Inner Circle, what’s going on? You talked about it, talked about it, and now we don’t see it, you’re not talking about it.”
It’s still happening. We’ve got so much going on behind the scenes and, frankly, we are kind of tapped out for time to work on more projects, and I’m speaking for Shane and I, both. But we have been chipping away at it. We just want it to be complete when we bring it out there and have everybody in the same place.
So bear with us and be patient. Because when we finally bring it around, it’s gonna be great and it’s gonna be awesome place for everybody to learn from each other and kind of be in a little exclusive club, which I’m excited about. Knowing that other guys are vetted and they’re the real deal and we’re gonna help each other grow even more than we’ve grown now. I’m excited about that as much as anybody because there’s a lot of awesome knowledge hanging around in your minds, and I can’t wait to have you share it with me and everybody else in the group. So do not forget about it, we’re bringing it, I promise. Just be patient for it.
All right, fellas. I appreciate you spending the time with us today. Hop over to Blackplague and get your free glue gun if you spend a couple bucks, and cross your fingers you get a sample of Tab Weld. I don’t have time –
Shane Jacks: Cross your fingers it gets done. It’d better.
[End of Audio]Duration: 76 minutes
