Why Contracted Service Associates may be Right for You

The topic of “training your competition” comes up all the time when detailers talk about employees. Why? Because there is always the risk of investing your time and money in hiring and training detailers who may eventually leave you and start their own businesses.

There is one detailer in the industry who intentionally trains his staff to eventually go into business for themselves. This may sound crazy, but if you keep an open mind, you may not find this to be such a bad idea.

This detailer says giving his staff the tools to succeed on their own was the best decision he ever made, allowing him to grow his business well beyond expectations in a short period of time.

Employee Frustration

For years, he did what most industry detailers do: hire, train and employ detail technicians to detail the vehicles for his customers. Like you, he never liked the idea that someday his personnel would tire of detailing cars and either start looking for something else to do or launch their own detail business. Not knowing if he had a motivated team to do quality work made it difficult to market and sell his detail services.

Then, one day, his frustration ended. Three detailers didn’t bother to show up for work, so he and his wife put on their detail uniforms and went to work in the bays. They were frustrated and literally at the end of their rope.

For the next two weeks, they brainstormed to find a way to end this cycle of hiring and training detailers only to see them leave within months of being hired.

Think Outside the Bay

They came up with the idea to form teams of “service associates” who would work with them but not for them. Getting help from their lawyer and accountant, they offered their better employees the opportunity to own and operate their own detailing business.

In exchange for giving the detail shop owner the exclusive right to contract his detail services to them, the service associates were given a number of accounts to handle. They work in his shop like a beautician rents a station in a salon. Or, if they go mobile, they put his name and logo on the rig.

Finally, these contracted detailers are paid a good commission so they can cover their expenses, such as vehicles (if mobile), equipment, insurance, detailing supplies, chemicals and miscellaneous expenses.

The program allows everyone to focus on their abilities and enables the owner to market the company’s detail services and increase the number of customers. As a result, this particular detail operation has experienced double-digit growth each year since implementing the program.

Control Your Business

One of the important features of this contractor program is greater control of business costs. The owner never has to worry about hourly employees “dogging it” or “padding” their hours.

Even employees who work on commission only give you partial control. You still have to look after the cost of equipment, chemicals, insurance, gas, etc. Remember these contracted service associates are responsible for all of these expenses.

Like any business move, you have to establish a solid plan. You need to have all your “ducks in a row” before trying a program like this. Here are a few points to consider before trying this approach:

Protect Yourself

It is very important that you get these service associates to sign a “non-compete” contract. The key is to make sure it only prevents service teams from approaching your clients which makes the contract enforceable in court.

The laws in every state or province can vary, but if nothing else, a contract will make them think twice about approaching your customers for their own business gain, although there is never any guarantee that they won’t.

You can answer the important question of whether or not associates are employees or independent company owners by making it clear that they must do most work on their own. The setup will encourage service