Treating fabrication as a category in its own right, could help you achieve margins of 60 percent.
If you don’t show what is possible in fabrication first, then the customer will max out his budget on the products, “but if you flip it and show the fabrication install and then the products second, it’s a much easier sell to add the fabrication,” said Bryan Schmitt of Mobile Solutions, which offers training and tooling for installers.
“Everyone else sells speakers, amps in a good, better, best fashion but no one has their fabrication work segmented into good, better, best,” said Schmitt who suggests hanging examples of fabricated trim panels on slat wall rather than simply showing pictures of installs on Facebook.
“You can’t sell fabrication unless you have it on the wall,” Schmitt says. “The push back [from dealers] is we don’t have the upscale customers to do that. But you used to have show cars and demo cars. Now you have nothing to show customers.” He added, “Customers are okay with spending more money on something if they can see that you are providing a better service or product.”
Another sales tool is to properly break down the quote, explaining, for example, that it takes technicians 10 hours and here’s what you are getting…” he said, claiming that retailers can achieve 50 to 60 percent margins on fabrication.
By learning how to sell fabrication a retailer differentiates himself from the competition, which allows him to raise labor rates, he says.
Source: CEoutlook
