A shop owner in Dunkirk, NY asks how to land maintenance contracts with big fleets and municipalities. Chris Collins says certifications don't matter; what sells is uptime, fast turnaround, and making the fleet manager's job easier. Build relationships with dispatchers over lunch, offer trial work to prove yourself, and hire salespeople on commission.
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Welcome to your Friday drive by where I answer your questions. Those pressing questions that if you just had the answer, you could live a stress free successful life. That's what we are here to do for you. If you have a question that you need answered, the number is 8333, ask at SDR. That's 8333 SDR. We would love to hear from you. And if we do play your call on the big show, we will send you some swag. It's pretty fun swag. We've been working on our swag lately. So it's going to be new. It's exclusive to the drive bys. We don't sell it. Sometimes we give it away. If you come to the office you might leave with some swag. But that's really the only shit surefire way to get it is to have your call played on here. Okay, let's go to the call.
I run a independent heavy duty shop in Dunkirk, New York and I'm at the point.
Establish some maintenance contracts. I've got good techs. I have something special to offer with being really the only shop in the area that cares much for things like certifications, things like.
Exact repair times, etc. And that being said, I think I could probably win over some bigger trucking companies, municipalities, etc. The question that I have is what would be the best approach for that? Whether you know, cold calling or mail outs or you know, simply showing up. Would it be best to hire outside sales? Just wanted some opinions on how to go about getting some maintenance contracts and winning over some long term bigger customers.
Great question. So I'll do this in two parts. One is the first part of this. When we're thinking like, oh, we have certified technicians and book time and all that, that kind of falls into the category of that's assumed and it's not really a selling point, right? So like I always find it funny when people are like, oh Kris, I work so hard or whatever. It's like working hard and showing up on time are the, you know, it's assumed. It's like paying your bills. That's a part of it. It's hey, when you show up, are you, are you contributing to the business? Are you creating revenue? Are you solving problems? If we have to talk about you showing up or being on time, you know, you're probably not a fit. I think it's the same thing when we talk about certification and all that. Like it's important to us and it's a good way to do Business and you know, it's in a lot of ways better than probably your competition.
But it's not really a selling point because that's assumed. So companies out there, the, the things that they want is they want uptime, they want a quick turnaround, and so that really is, is your selling point. And then they, they want you to make it easy, right? So if you're managing a fleet of trucks, you want, you want it to be easy, you want there to be communication and you want somebody to follow your process, not you to have to follow theirs. So just keep that in mind. Is what, what you're selling at the end of the day isn't certification. What you're selling is you're selling the outcome of the fleet being up and being able to turn things really, really quick to, to provide that. Now when it comes to the selling of it, there isn't one way.
To be successful at that. I think it's a bunch of different things. And as corny as it is, it's having swag, coffee mugs, mouse pads, all of that. It's you going out and taking people to lunch and listening. So not telling them, hey, this is what we have. But starting off the relationship, asking them about their business and what their goals are. Too many times we go into those situations just trying to impress on them who we are and what we do. And really.
For them to make a change is, is harder than that. What, what we want to do is we want to ask a lot of questions and we want to understand their business and then tailor our solution to their needs, not to what we want to do or what we think is important. So going out and meeting with, with dispatchers and, and fleet managers and company owners and asking a lot of questions is going to teach you a lot and you're going to make a lot of friends. I would think of those meetings as you're not going to sell them on the, or don't try to sell them on the first time, like making it, make it an ongoing relationship and get them to just send you a couple trucks, you know, in the beginning so you can show em.
What you're capable of. And then hiring salespeople is very effective also. So in every market there's a salesperson that often is connected to the selling of the vehicles too. And so those salespeople are out there, they're well paid, but if you're paying them a commission, they have those relationships and they can just direct traffic your way in a sense. So my answer to that is understand what you're selling and what your leverage is in the marketplace, then you got to do everything. Marketing, swag, catchy tagline, salespeople, you going out and shaking hands and kissing babies and look at it as a, as a long term play. But I think you understand this.
The potential is unlimited with the way that you're thinking and just the fact that you're asking these questions. It's unlimited because if you focus on turn and uptime, that's for some reason so hard for people to get their head around that you can dominate your market fairly easy just by making that a priority, diagnosing right away.
And communicating right. You don't have to always fix the truck right away, but them knowing it's going to be down or they can put a driver in it is, is the magic in, in a sense. So thanks so much for the question. That's great and thanks everybody else. Remember the numbers 8333 ask STR. We'd love to hear from you and get your questions and we'll see you next time. We'll on service Drive Revolution. Thanks for watching this week's Drive By. I hope we gave you something to think about over the weekend. We're uploading new stuff every day, so make sure you subscribe and click the bell icon so you don't miss out. If you have a question you'd like us to answer on the show, call 8333 Ask SDR and we'll answer your question on the show. That's 8333 Ask SDR for special deals on our books and training. Head, head over to offers.chriscollinsinc.com now that's offers.chriscollinsInc.com I'm Chris Collins and I'll see you in the next video.
