How To Build Your Future Bank Account Right Now

I got up especially early this morning to write this weeks message because I’m on what just might be the final vacation with my entire family (at least for a while), so the only time I can write this is while everyone else is still sleeping. Ronny will be graduating in a couple months and heading off to college, and Samantha will be right behind him next year and I’m sure their idea of having a good time on Spring Break doesn’t include mom and dad. We’re gonna have to pack a lot of memories in the next 6 days!

You may not realize it, but there are two ‘bank accounts’ that you need to be paying attention to filling every day. Most everyone focuses only on their ‘current bank’ account. This is the account that gets filled with the sales that you are making every day. But every bit as important is your ‘future bank’ account. Think of this account as a giant bag of seeds that you are planting every day that will sprout into little money trees in the future. Lemme ‘splain…

You run an ad on Facebook for a free oil change. Sixty prospects click on your ad and then enter their email addresses in order to get their free oil change certificate (This was all explained on the series of videos on Facebook advertising that I produced a couple months back.)

Let’s say eight of those prospects come in to redeem their coupon and purchase an average of $80 in additional services. You can deposit $640 into your ‘current bank’ account, and you can now also make a sizable deposit into your ‘future bank’ account from the 52 remaining prospects that haven’t come in to your shop yet.

How much money is put into that ‘future bank’ account? For most shops, nothing, because they’re off chasing after the next ‘current bank’ customer. But for you, because you’ll be following up with a few emails to the remaining 52 prospects and inviting them to come to your shop to redeem their certificates (remember, they gave you their email addresses in order to get the certificate), the skies the limit.

Let’s assume that your follow up emails bring in twenty more of those prospects, each spending the same $80. That’s another $1600. And if you want to project out into the future even further and figure out what this could be worth to you over their entire lifetime of doing business with you, the number is closer to $630,000.00 (If you’ve been to one of my seminars or have any one of my marketing systems, you know that the lifetime value of each your customers if you treat them right and do the proper follow up as I have laid out in the system is about $22,500).

When times get tough or sales start to slip, it’s all too easy to fall into the trap of only paying attention to the current bank because you need money and you need it now. That’s what’s so dangerous about the economy right now. The temporary cash crunch has shop owners forgetting to invest in their futures. It’s all about how much you can extract from your customers wallets right now – not about creating a ‘wow’ experience for your clients, being a trusted adviser, and developing a long-lasting relationship with him.

Equally, if not more dangerous, is a failure to focus on the education that you’ll need in order to help you get more customers, keep them coming back, be a better salesperson, and run a better shop. The shops that have already invested in their education and are properly applying these strategies in their shops every day are doing well these days. Many of the shops that haven’t, are struggling right now.

I’ve been here for the past 52 weeks helping you for free each week with this weekly message, but if you want to move faster than at a snail’s pace and are willing to invest more time and money in your future bank, give my office a call at 1-800-797-0537 and we’ll be glad to put you on the fast-track.

Best, Ron Ipach     CinRon Marketing Group

“People Haven’t Stopped Buying In This Recession. Auto Repair Shop Owners Have Just Stopped Selling!”

I believe I first heard the above quote from Dan Kennedy and I can’t think of a truer statement. This past Saturday afternoon, my wife and I went to the big Home & Garden show in Cincinnati to see if we could find lots of ideas for our huge bathroom remodel project that I finally agreed to do. Or I should say, Cindy wanted to get lots of design ideas. All I wanted was to find a contractor to do all the work for me. 😉

The first thing that struck me was how small the show had gotten. Normally two entire floors of the convention center were packed with landscapers, roofing contractors, remodelers, home entertainment companies, garden supply companies, decorators, etc; now they easily fit onto less than one. This is stupid crazy! If you have a product or service to offer, why wouldn’t you want to stand in front of hundreds or thousands of people who are interested in what you have to offer???

“But, but… in this economy, no one wants to spend any money on that stuff!” WRONG! The buyers were out in force. Every single vendor that I polled told me that they already collected dozens of qualified names from folks interested in getting quotes from them.

People are still buying. Are you still selling? (I wonder how many of the 13 vendors that I gave my contact info to will actually follow up with me?)

After the show, we decided we’d head down to one of Cincinnati’s landmark restaurants for some world-class ribs. Sheesh, what recession?? Six cars waiting in line for valet parking. A two-hour wait for a table in a restaurant that can probably serve a thousand guests per night. A place where a dinner for two will easily cost $100. We called six other nice restaurants around town and got the same 90-120 minute wait times. Are you kidding me?! “C’mon, NOBODY is spending any money! Why can’t I get a table at decent restaurant??”

While it is very true that folks are watching how they spend their money much more closely, but that doesn’t mean they’ve stopped spending it on what THEY WANT to spend money on. You just need to make sure that they want to spend their money on what you have to offer. (By the way; it should be obvious that if it is 100% true that your customers don’t have any money to spend on anything other than food, clothing and shelter, you’re going to have to get busy marketing to find new customers, right?)

The door has been left wide open for you and anyone else willing to set aside today’s ‘conventional thinking’ and cutting back on their marketing and selling. When everyone else seems to have stopped trying to be successful, it’s easy to step forward and take advantage of that.

Is it tougher today than it was in the past. YES. Can you succeed by relying on just the same old stuff you did in the past to market and sell your services? NO! It’s time to get real serious and pay attention to the new ways of doing business in this ‘New Economy’. Stay tuned. I’ve got lots of great stuff coming your way.

As always, I am here to help. Let me know what you need from me to help you succeed. Please enter your comments and questions below.

BTW, Did you watch my video and get started on my killer cheap new way to attract new customers that I sent to you a couple weeks ago? If not, CLICK HERE to watch it right now before I delete the video.

Best, Ron Ipach, CinRon Marketing Group

It’s a Very Good Time To Own A Good Auto Repair Business, But It’s A Very Bad Time To Own A Bad Auto Repair Business!

Sorry, but this week’s message is going to leave more than a few of you very uncomfortable, annoyed, and maybe a bit pissed off at me. If you’d rather not ruin your day by listening to me uncover several undeniable truths, go ahead and delete this message, unread. On the other hand, if your biz has been skidding on a rough patch lately and you’d like to know how to fix it; read, believe, and act on what I have to say here.

We just came through the single best stretch of economic boom in our history. Low unemployment. Job security. Overnight millionaires were created left and right. Times were good. Repair shop owners were doing well – even if they were sloppy with their marketing, sales, and systems. Their clients were making money, had job security, the future looked bright – so it really wasn’t too difficult to sell them services. Your only competition was the new car dealers that were attempting to sell your clients brand new cars. It was a good time to even be in a bad auto repair business.

But now the roof has caved in. High unemployment. Zero job security. Investment accounts wiped out. People in fear of losing their homes. The good news? People are now forced to keep their cars longer so they aren’t buying new cars – they MUST repair and maintain their current vehicles. More good news – you have less competition because thousands of shops have closed their doors all over the country.

The shops that are still doing well are succeeding because they didn’t need to rely on the economy to do well in the past. They built their businesses on a very strong foundation by building a database of great clients through highly targeted marketing, and then having properly trained sales staff, and put the systems in place to operate a solid business. If you’re in the top 20% of shops that are still doing well, woohoo! Congratulations! You’ve listened, took action, and are reaping the abundant rewards!!!

If your business is slipping right now, it’s because the good economy had propped you up and allowed you to get by with a lot of sloppy (or non-existent!) marketing, training, and/or systems. Now, the thread that had been keeping you in business (the good economy) is now being yanked on and your business is unraveling. For example, your lack of targeted marketing has now left you with a database of low-quality clients that now don’t have any money. Your lack of investment in relationship-building strategies in the past has left you with a small, shrinking list of non-loyal clients. Your poorly trained service advisor that did okay selling to folks when they had money, now struggles to sell even the most needed services.

Now, I realize that I’m generalizing here and if you’re struggling, it could be any one of several dozen reasons. The most important thing is that you take a good hard honest look at your business and get started fixing the problems – fast!!  Your only other option is to get pissed off at me for blaming you for your own problems, do nothing to change your situation, and hope and pray things get better on their own.

How can I help you? If you’re already doing well, what else can I do to help make your business better? If you’re struggling, what would you like to get from me that will help turn things around? Please let me know by writing your comments below.

Best, Ron Ipach

Advice Needed For A Fellow Business Owner …and me too!

I received an email last week from a client that needed some advice. I thought I’d throw it out to all of you to get your thoughts before responding. Here is his problem…

“Ron, I have a particular group of current and former customers of my auto repair shop that I want to get your advice on how to handle the following situations:

– They expect me to give away my services for free. They want me to diagnose their problem and tell them what to do so they can go and try and do the work themselves. Then they get really upset at me for not giving away free advice and complain that I’m always trying to sell them something (Isn’t that supposed to be how I make my money?).

– They never took my advice and maintained their cars when they had the money, but now that their car is falling apart and they don’t have the money, they feel I owe it to them to give them a great price because they are a long-time oil change customer.

– Since I started using your marketing ideas, which I’ll admit are sometimes out of my comfort zone, sales are way up, but I hear a few grumblings from clients that don’t like them. Should I stop doing them?

– With so many businesses struggling now, I want my customers to know that I’m doing well because we do great work and unlike my competitors, I’ll be around for a long time. Some of my customers really resent it and tell me they don’t care about my success and don’t think it’s right that I let them know that I’m successful.

I don’t want to seem like a jerk and blow these guys off, but what can I do? I’d really like to help them, but I’m pretty darned busy dealing with loyal customers that value my services and pay me to perform them. Your advice?”

Soooo…. This got me thinking. As long as I’m asking for your advice for my client, why not ask your advice on how to handle a particular group of my own former clients:

– They expect me to give away my latest strategies, ads, and letters for free and then tell them what to do so they can do it themselves. Then they get really upset at me for not giving it all away for free and then complain that I’m always trying to sell them something (Isn’t that supposed to be how I make my money?).

– They never took my advice and marketed their businesses when the economy was good and they had the money, but now that their businesses are falling apart and they don’t have the money, they feel I should give up my time and help them because they bought my marketing system 5 years ago.

– I’ll admit that the strategies I use to market my business are sometimes out of my comfort zone, but sales are way up, but I hear a few grumblings from clients that don’t like them. Should I stop doing them?

– With so many businesses struggling right now, I want everyone to know that unlike my competitors, I’m not falling victim to the economy because my marketing strategies continue to work extremely well for my clients. Some of these guys really resent it and tell me they don’t care about our success and don’t think it’s right that I let them know that any of us are still successful.

I don’t want to seem like a jerk and blow these guys off, but what can I do? I’d really like to help them, but I’m pretty darned busy dealing with loyal customers that value my services and pay me to perform them. Your advice?

Please give me your thoughts below.

Best,
Ron Ipach