You Need to Perform at a Very High Level

Successful detailers must master both business and detailing skills. Combining the two is where true detailing success can be found, but your detailing skills must be at a very high level. All the business skills in the world are not going to save you.

Detailing at a high level means more than one would think. Performing at a high level means that you act in a professional fashion and be responsible and dedicated to performing detailing correctly. You must be dedicated to the integrity of detailing, far more than your competitors. When you detail with integrity, you not only bring yourself up, you lift up the entire detailing industry!



• Those who perform and succeed at the highest levels within detailing know, understand, and do a great job of evaluating a vehicle’s needs. This level of detailer understands how to look at paint and know what can be achieved with his or her skills.
• Successful detailers design a profitable menu based on their local market’s expectations and pricing ceilings.
• High-level detailing professionals understand the science regarding paint correction and paint perfection.
• Success detailers track man-hour performance, know their numbers and know when to say when.
• Those operating at the highest level do so with a detailer’s creed whereas we cause no harm. The vehicles we work on at this level can be time capsules of automotive history. These are rare or exotic vehicles that the average detailer has no business working on.
• Successful detailers sell upfront and explain the outcome results versus the customer’s budget. Remember the old saying, “You get what you pay for.”
• Those who desire the highest levels of success understand both we and dry sanding. These steps take the advanced skills that are needed and should not be taken lightly. Sanding is an artistic part of detailing. The sanding itself is not difficult, but sanding while not depleting healthy clear coat is where the real skills are needed, as are the skills to remove the sanding marks you create during the process.
• Some of the most challenging aspects of detailing at this level are steps that many skip over, or fail to realize how important these steps are. They include the ability to deal with interior stains and odors, and to do so without causing damage. Interior challenges take a great deal of skill to achieve a high-level outcome.
• Successful detailers are as committed to the business of detailing as they are the art of detailing.