The market place is pretty big, in this day and age there are options and plenty of companies to choose from so its important to give your potential customers a reason to choose you. Most people focus on price with the idea that if they are the cheaper option they will get more customers, now to a certain degree there is some truth to this but you have to be thinking about the kind of customers you want to attract and your long term goals.

If your ideal customer base is those that just want 'a cheap job' you will lose them to the next company that starts up and decides to undercut you. It is difficult particularly in the beginning to establish yourself as an expert, but in my opinion its the way to go.

When you work for cheap your work can become cheap you will start to resent your customers for not paying you enough but its you that sets the guidelines for price. When I started off I decided to be 'mid range' not the cheapest but not the most expensive either, and I still negotiate with price and often price the customer rather than the job.

If you want to attract the ideal customer you need to start acting like the company that customer would want to use. Have a think about when you shop around yourself, what are you looking for in products and services, price? quality? customer service? reviews?

I've been operating since 2006 and can confidently say that I do not have any unhappy customers, now there has been times where I couldn't fully remove a dent and there has been times where I've broken a door glass or a plastic trim, in fact just the other day I broke an electric window switch! But its the way you handle the situation that matters, when i broke the window switch before I told the customer I rang the dealer and priced up a new one, found out how long it would take to order and checked my diary to see when I could come back to fix it so by the time I explained the problem I already had the solution. I also did not charge the customer for the repair I had carried out until I had replaced the switch.

Word of mouth is still one of the best ways of marketing, most people will take a referral from a reliable friend over an unknown company online and some of this is still word of mouth in person so people chatting about their repair experience with yourself or one of their colleagues has some damage and your customer says 'hey, try these guys'. But with the online market place today word of mouth is also digital!

I have built me reputation with my own business by offering a great customer experience but I have intentionally set out to get reviews to let my customers help market my business, I have over 100 5* reviews on google, and reviews on Facebook, Yell.com, Free index, Another thing that has help my business grow is video, I have a video on my website so people can put a face to a name, I have YouTube videos and videos on google showcasing the repairs we do. This allows the customer to 'get a feel' of a company and the more times they see you the more familiar you become and its much easy to sell to someone that already trust you.

My advice to you is to offer the best service you can to your customers, now lets be clear I'm not suggesting you bend and buckle to please them and i do not believe the customer is always right either. But you can operate with integrity, honesty and morals.

Start to build your reputation and ask for reviews, if you are looking to build your business and go after retail work there are two main benefits of online reviews, Google is the biggest search engine out there and when you have a google page with google reviews your website and services will rank higher in a google search than your competition that has less reviews (at least with organic searches, not necessarily with paid ad campaigns)

The second advantage is helping your customer with their decision if they have three companies to choose from, 1 has 7 5* reviews the 2nd has mixed reviews like 3* average and the third has 100 5* reviews the customer is most likely going to choose the one that the majority of 'the public' have recommended!

Do you have a website?

How does it currently rank?

Where do you have reviews?

What sites should you be looking to get reviews on?

Building your reputation

Training

Build Your Business

Resources

Repair Example

Knowledge Checker: Step 5 – Wing panels, Medium Dents & Choosing The Right Business Model