Let's Talk Shop: Wrapping up a Sale

A ¾ wrap still provides a large advertisement while saving the customer a little money by not doing a full wrap.

For those new to wrapping vehicles, there are a few considerations regarding how to sell vehicle wraps. Advertising, pricing and how you sell the wrap are three key areas to review.

ADVERTISING

Letting people know what services you offer, where you’re located and why they should come to you is the goal with any form of advertising. If you’re adding vehicle wraps to existing services, or you’re new to the industry, it’s worthwhile to showcase this service in each ad.

One of the most important ways you can advertise vehicle wraps is by wrapping your company vehicle and getting it out on the street. A well-designed and installed wrap with your company name and contact information is a rolling billboard that in and of itself advertises what you do.

Our company is a full-service shop, and we advertise ourselves as such, but we highlight the vehicle wraps and lettering segment of our company in all of our advertising. By highlighting the areas we specialize in, we portray our company as having expertise in certain areas without coming across as a “jack of all trades, master of none.”

This boat wrap was simple to do, provided the customer great advertising for his business and was fairly inexpensive because of the small square footage.

Our main company website is basically an online brochure. It highlights our services, showcases our work in our portfolios and tells the customer how to contact us. We’ve also created a separate website that we include in our marketing for customers specifically looking for vehicle wraps and

lettering. They can go to this website to see photos of vehicles that we’ve lettered and wrapped.

Another simple, effective and free way to advertise is through referrals from other industry professionals. We have a working relationship with another local sign company that doesn’t do vehicle wraps. Our company no longer does electrical signs, so any time we get a call for electrical signs we refer them to the other sign company. In return, they send vehicle wrap inquires to us. Talk with other sign companies, screen printers, graphic designers, printers or other related industries about setting up a referral system.

When starting out, smaller objects with curves and contours are challenging enough to practice wrapping on while easier to handle than an entire vehicle wrap.

PRICING

Knowing how to price vehicle wraps to be competitive, yet profitable is one of the most important steps when getting into wraps. There are a number of ways to approach the task of creating a pricing guide for your company. Figuring out a system ahead of time will allow you to quote vehicle wraps quickly and accurately each time.

Market pricing for vehicle wraps (what your competition is charging) largely dictates what prices you can successfully employ. The key is to run your operation in such a way that you are efficiently designing, producing and installing wraps so that your overhead doesn’t get in the way of your pricing.

When you first get into a new industry, it doesn’t hurt to do a little detective work and find out what the competition is charging. Visit their company in person or make some phone calls (be aware of caller ID) and simply ask questions. This is the easiest way to find out the price range that you’ll need to be in.

Another simple tactic is to ask potential customers. When someone calls requesting a quote, ask them if they already have some quotes and if they would be open to sharing that information. You can let the person know that you may not be able to beat that price, but you would like to know if you are able to even compete.

Making sure your overhead, material costs and labor are all covered and that you also make a profit requires preplanning. Using market pricing as well as considering our overhead costs has helped us create a pricing guide that we’re confident in.

For vehicle wraps, we figure our material pricing on a per square foot, sliding scale. The more square feet of material involved in the wrap, the cheaper the price per square foot. We charge one price range for the printed graphics on the body of the vehicle and a separate, slightly more expensive, price range for the perforated window graphics.

Box van wraps are easier to wrap than vans or cars and are great jobs for honing your wrapping techniques.

The design setup is charged separately. Some customers come in with the graphics pre-designed by corporate or by a graphic designer. While this saves us a lot of time, there is usually still some design charge. Very seldom will the outside firm be able to provide a file that you can print and accurately fit to the customer’s vehicle. The artwork will still need to be double checked for sizing and placement accuracy prior to printing. Make sure your time is compensated. We usually call this a “print setup” rather than a design fee because we’re essentially making sure their design is ready for printing.

The final charge for wraps is the installation charge. Box vans, flat trailers and vehicles with flat sides such as Scions require less time to install than a Sprinter van, corrugated trailer or a vehicle with compound curves. Some partial wraps can be installed by one person, while most full wraps will require at least two people to get the job done as efficiently as possible.

At this point we’ve done enough wraps to accurately estimate the amount of time it will take to install most jobs. When you’re first starting out, it will take you a lot longer than you can get away with charging the customer. Again, do a little detective work to see how long other shops estimate they would take on a similar job and price accordingly. Until you’re able to get up to that speed, your labor costs will eat into your profits.

You can use pricing software to help automate the pricing of signs and wraps, but I always recommend that you are able to figure your pricing long hand, too. Our company has created a spreadsheet that allows us to drop in vehicle square footage, material type and other variables. We’re able to change line items for discounts, mark-ups and other factors to arrive at a price quickly and accurately.

The great thing about creating this spreadsheet ourselves is that we know exactly what goes into the pricing and we can see what areas we can adjust to close the deal, while still making money.

OpenOffice is free open source software that is similar to Microsoft Office. We use the ‘Calc’ software, which is similar to Microsoft Excel, to create our wraps pricing spreadsheet.

The installation charge for vehicles with concave areas and other obstacles will need to be higher than flat surface vehicles.

CLOSING THE DEAL

Now that your advertising has brought in the potential customer and you’re able to price out the wrap, it’s time to close the deal. The customer’s level of confidence in your company is a large deciding factor in whether they choose to work with you or not.

Part of pricing a wrap also is educating the customer on why that price is a good investment for them. You can find a number of studies online by big outdoor advertising companies that compare price per impression on different forms of advertising including vehicle graphics.

Breaking this data down into a per month investment price simplifies the information for your customer. For example, an average vehicle wrap can cost $2,500 and is guaranteed for three years.

If that price is broken down it would be an investment of $833 per year or less than $70 per month. These are numbers your customer can digest.

Now compare that pricing to the cost of billboard advertising, which is fixed in one location or yellow pages advertising where the customer’s ad is sitting amongst their competition. Both billboards and yellow pages also can run hundreds or thousands of dollars per month.

While a vehicle wrap requires an up front payment, it will last for at least three years, creating thousands of impressions in a mobile form of advertising. By comparing this to other forms of advertising, the per-month investment looks minimal.

Consider posting this information on a sign hung in your lobby. Your potential customer will be sure to read this over and consider the information while you’re busy measuring their vehicle and taking photos.

Also be prepared to work with the customer. While a vehicle wrap is a great advertising investment, it still requires that the customer spend money. A smart customer has a realistic budget in mind and sticks to that budget. Get the customer to tell you what their budget is for the wrap project and then do your best to show them what they can get for the price.

A full wrap may be outside what a customer is willing to spend. Instead of losing the entire deal, show the customer how a partial wrap can still be effective. Additional graphics could be added to the vehicle as their funds allow.

Sample photos of other vehicles your company has wrapped help instill your customer with confidence as well. Wrapping your lobby walls, a door off a vehicle, a filing cabinet, or anything else that your customer can inspect also reinforces your capabilities.

Vehicle wraps are a large segment of the sign industry that continue to grow in popularity. By gaining experience through wrap seminars and by wrapping your own vehicles, you can confidently step into this part of the sign industry.

Through effective advertising, accurate pricing and confident marketing, you can gain more vehicle wrap clients. These clients will lead to more business and more profit.

Sign & Digital Graphics

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