When Hail Commeth...how to convert into Cash

By Brian Jump
http://www.nodents.com

Spring 2007, and PDR Hail Gypsies are gassin’ up the diesels.

Why? Cause hail has hit, and its out there in good plentitude.

Dallas, throughout other Texan suburbs, the southeast, Midwest, and a few honey holes in Europe (don’t email cause I wont tell you…the Europe hail is averaging $3100 a car for 5 hours work)..

Enough chatter and down to business: Im going to spill (to the general public even..not even our private Superior client section) about how to obtain and sell/secure Hail clients.

Dent Wizard is the king in this market segment, with a very nice hail operation based out of Denver. They have Tom Nations, as well as a slew of other management that are focused on tying up insurance powerhouses such as State Farm, Farmers, etc etc, as well as retaining ongoing relations with factory clients such as Nissan, GM et al.
Rental clients are also targets such as Budget, National etc, and provide a good deal of work for DW.

Selling against DW

The Wiz has some weaknesses, and if you are going to slay the beast, you must know them.

1. Subs. Short for subcontractors. DW markets as if they have paid, full time hail techs on their team. Years ago, prior to the beginning of the end of salaried and High % techs, there were a good number of dedicated DW techs, and many of them were very good.
   
   Today, its different. DW, and other PDR Hail brokers use the Paintless Dent Repair Tech gun-for-hires, and whomever has the clients, and pays the best, gets the gunslingers. But the clients of DW don’t know that most of the DW Techs are NOT their own. IF they did, they would have a different opinion about DW and service warranty and reliability etc.
   So that being said, publicize this info.
   
   
2. Pricing. Dent Wizard is HUGE, and they pay Tom and the other bunch a pretty penny. That’s managers, regionals, districts, writers et al. That means one thing- they cannot whore prices. They sell against other Hail Techs as being “gypsies” and hacks and how they drill and cause problems and wont be around when the car rusts etc. They run commercials about this in hail damaged cities and can create quite a negative stir around other techs. The funny thing is, that some of that is true. However, there are A LOT of reputable PDR hail techs outside of DW, since the very same techs are often pushing for other companies when not pushing for DW. Ironic, since they are challenging their own system in a sense. So, subcontracting labor, and pricing are two ways at securing work away from DW.
   
   
3. Locals. If you are one of the fortunate ones who are local to the storm damage location, your reputation will or should precede DW or any other company since you will be there when the chasers roll up tents and head out of dodge. So sell that accountability and relationship in your city , when you can. When you cant, go sidle up with another PDR local and use THEIR reputation to market through. Sure you might not get all the marbles, but some of the marbles are better than NONE of the marbles.
   
   Now that should be enough details to help slay the behemoth. Later I will discuss more details on how to solicit clients with hail damage…

Until then, Happy Pushing!

Brian Jump

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