Trying to differentiate your shop based on repair quality is a losing argument. Consumers are increasingly less interested in shopping than in “awarding” their business to a company they admire and trust. And insurer shop referrals will begin to hold less sway with more and more consumers.

Those were among the messages that Dick Cross, CEO of CARSTAR, shared with attendees at the 2009 International Bodyshop Industry Symposium (IBIS) held this summer in Berlin, Germany.

“ If some collision repair alternatives arise that are understood, admired and trusted by consumers, that's going to beat the blue blazes out of anybody else's recommendation, even an insurance call center,” Cross said. “Word tracks will become irrelevant. Recommendations from other people, even insurers, will become irrelevant.”

Cross began his presentation to the 250 shops, insurers and vendors from more than a dozen countries at IBIS by saying he no longer believes in the fundamental marketing concept of “differentiation,” the idea that “in order to have any chance of winning in the marketplace, your specific product or service needs to be different from, distinguished from, your rival's.”

His reasoning? Time-strapped consumers see more and more goods and services as roughly equal.

“Most consumers believe that their vehicles will be repaired to their satisfaction at any of a number of body shops, and they consider the alternatives basically substitutable,” Cross said.

Cross said this trend is particularly evident among those in their mid-40s or younger. This increasingly larger segment of the population is also far more swayed in their purchasing choices by the experiences or recommendations (freely shared via Facebook or Twitter) of friends or those they know than they are by advertising, brochures, radio jingles or even referrals from those with whom they don't have a personal relationship – such as an insurance company call center.

“More buyers will come to ignore and even be offended by attempts to influence their decisions that don't come from somebody already close to them,” Cross said. “I think this is particularly true in an industry like ours where in the United States, someone needs us about once every seven years.”

Winning customers will instead be based on making them want to “award their business to you” because they understand, trust and admire your business, Cross said. They must experience (and hear from others who have experienced) that your company is genuinely and amazingly nicer than they've ever expected in a collision repair experience. They want to see that your decisions and values are ones they respect and share.

“They don't want to ‘buy something' from you,” Cross said. “They want to ‘award their business' to people they like, whose values they respect, who treat them as they would like to be treated, who surprise them with their thoughtfulness and who inspire them with their character.”

Developing that admiration for your company may involve your communication with them in the form of advertising, websites and marketing materials, Cross said. But more important are first, your culture, the sense that everyone within your organization “gets” and shares your values and commitment to the customer, and the willingness to sometimes even sacrifice short-term profits to do what's right. Also more important than your marketing communication is the positive experience they have when they touch your company.

Get the culture and customer experience right, Cross said, and you won't have to worry about the communication and “spending time and money trying to yell at people to convince them that your product is better, because they won't believe it anyway.”

If insurer direct repair referrals continue to be successful, Cross said, “I think that will have as much to do with those shops becoming the preferred shop in their community anyway than it does with the insurance recommendation.”