Bubbles Hand Car Wash, Houston, TX

Full-service chain

Using DRB Systems Computer Reports To Focus Sales Goals Increases Dollars Per Vehicle By $2, Despite Soft Economy

Challenge: To increase dollars per vehicle by upgrading "good" extra service customers to "better" options.

Solution: Use your computer reports to help sales associates identify opportunities to step customers up to the next service package.

In a soft economy, when most car washes were happy just to "hold their own," Bubbles Hand Car Wash enjoyed a $2 per vehicle increase in sales. The busy 5-site Houston chain didn't have to run a costly promotion or advertising campaign to accomplish this feat. Its jump in volume was the result of a new and cost-free sales strategy that used DRB Systems computer reports to re-focus sales goals.

Bubbles owner Bill Lawrence calls this system "Claytonomics" after the wash's general manager Clayton Clark, who was instrumental in developing the strategy. Unlike traditional motivational sales strategies, Claytonomics encourages sales associates to meet, not beat, established goals for a specific extra service or deluxe package. In fact, when sales associates start to sell a package or service to too many customers, management will encourage them to re-focus their efforts.

"Like most carwashes, we used to follow a more-is-better approach to selling extra services," said Lawrence. "If our goal was to sell a service to 10% of our customers, and we were selling it to 20%, we thought we were doing great. But then it occurred to us that maybe some of those customers who were buying the extra service could be moved up to a better extra service or maybe a deluxe package, if we encouraged them. This is what Claytonomics is all about -- evaluating our performance, so we could focus on selling the right options to the right customers."

Using their computer sales reports, Lawrence and Clark have established benchmarks for five critical categories. These categories include stepping up customers who buy Bubbles' "Ultimate" package ($29.95) to the top of the line, "Express Hand Wax" package ($45.95), and converting customers who buy the "Tire Dressing" package to the better "Exterior Dressing" package.

The performance of every "Service and Sales Associate" (SSA) at Bubbles in each of these categories is tracked by the chain's computer system. This information is available to the SSA and to management. "We sit down with our SSAs every week and review how they're doing," said Clark. "If an SSA is weak in one of the categories, we'll go over things and encourage him or her to concentrate more in that specific area. It's amazing how just focusing attention this way makes a difference."

When conducting a Claytonomics Review with SSAs, Clark will look just as carefully at those who overshoot a sales benchmark as he does at those who fall below a goal. "It's our view that the sales person who sells too many mid-level packages is taking away from your dollars per vehicle figure by missing opportunities to step-up customers to the best package," he said.

Clark drives home his point by recalling the events of a busy Saturday early in the history of Claytonomics, "The SSAs at one of our sites were surpassing the benchmark that we'd established for our $29.95 Ultimate package by about 50%. In the old days, we would have been pleased with this, but under Claytonomics, we considered this figure to mean that our SSAs weren't doing a good enough job selling our $45.95 Express Hand Wax option. I rushed over to the site, and told the SSAs to re-focus."

Sure enough, in the next hour the site sold 21 Express Hand Wax options, compared to none the hour before. By selling these customers the Express Hand Wax option instead of the Ultimate package, the SSAs generated $336 in extra revenues.

Bottom line: By using computer reports to create sales goals that reflect the needs of its particular market, Bubbles has enhanced its level of personalized service while increasing its dollars per vehicle.