Many shop owners biggest fear in purchasing a dyno is the impact it may have on other parts of their business. If implemented correctly, a chassis dyno will enhance and stimulate other areas of the business, and can pay for itself in about 24 months. A SuperFlow dyno is a tool that can separate your company from others and in doing so generate income in a variety of ways. These include saving money, increasing shop credibility, eliminating come-backs, increasing part sales, attracting new customers, retaining existing customers and increasing individual purchase amounts with the ability to immediately quantify the improvements being made.
We’ve taken our 40+ plus years of experience building accurate and repeatable dynamometers and combined it with great ideas shared with us by customers to generate a guide that will help you find opportunity to generate income with your SuperFlow chassis dyno.
As a new dyno owner your first objective will be to generate awareness. Open houses are a great way to generate tons of awareness, let existing and new customers experience the dyno and learn what it can do for them, generate leads for parts sales and tuning sessions, and most importantly generate initial income with the dyno.
Many performance shops specialize in selling dyno sessions which typically consist of a block of time on the dyno and their expertise in tuning customer vehicles. Common packages are ½ day and full day sessions based on the goals of your individual customer. We’ve seen customers use more economical packages like three basic power runs to generate interest and hopefully sell a full blown tuning session at a later time.
Remember, dyno sessions are the basic building block of many of the following ideas and should be used to build customer loyalty, sell parts or parts packages, increase awareness for other dyno related events and build credibility for your business. Take time to explain to each customer all the capabilities of your SuperFlow dyno like its unmatched data acquisition capabilities, loaded tuning tests, drive cycle tests, true mechanical roll speed synchronization (AWD) and how you use those features to optimize their vehicle.
Horsepower shootouts are another great tool for quick income and exposure. With the advent of social media your event will be freely broadcast to a target rich segment of potential customers by the people who attend your event. Additionally, since these events are usually on weekends or outside of the normal 8-5 work day (so large numbers can attend) you have increased chances of attracting people who would not normally be able to visit your shop during the work week and expose them to your services.
Don’t forget to think about and invite the local car clubs in your area; each major manufacturer is likely to be represented as well as vintage clubs. These groups are prime to attend a horsepower shootout to see who’s got bragging rights.
Does your shop offer routine maintenance services like oil changes and tune ups? If so, bundle a promotion with that service and a discount dyno session. The package deal will attract people who normally wouldn’t have interest in dyno services.
Once you get a baseline for the customer your sales team can start a dialog about the tuning and parts options you have to increase the performance of their vehicle.
Does your shop offer routine maintenance services like oil changes and tune ups? If so, bundle a promotion with that service and a discount dyno session. The package deal will attract people who normally wouldn’t have interest in dyno services. Once you get a baseline for the customer your sales team can start a dialog about the tuning and parts options you have to increase the performance of their vehicle.
What do car guys do on Saturday mornings? They hang out at the local shop and tell stories with other car guys. Make that monthly meeting happen at your shop. Advertise a monthly ‘Cars and Coffee’ event where customers and prospects can hang out with like-minded people. Use discounted dyno pulls as way to get people to attend and make a few dollars on days that you would normally be closed.
Used car dealerships, especially those that sell work and diesel trucks can be a great source of recurring revenue and a long term business relationship. Their customers will appreciate the dyno print out as verification of the performance of the vehicle they are about to purchase. These are typically simply acceleration tests that can be performed quickly so keep the prices reasonable and you will have a great source of long term business.
If you’re considering a dyno today you have probably already rented time on someone else’s dyno and recognize the willingness that others might have to pay for dyno time. With your own you can offer that same service. The benefit, renting your dyno sells large chunks of your monthly time, often on a recurring and contractual basis every month for a year. Many shop owners report having contracts with other shops for certain days or weeks each month. This benefits both shops, yours by having guaranteed and recurring revenue and theirs by having guaranteed time available for their customer vehicles. Don’t be afraid to call your competition and offer the dyno for rent, they will be glad to have a go to place with a pre-negotiated price and the industry leading capabilities of a SuperFlow dyno.
Yes, we said savings.
Does your insurance company charge you increased premiums because your technicians have to road test customer vehicles? SuperFlow’s road load mode allows you to run any vehicle with the same load it would see going down the road so you can accurately simulate and diagnose customer reported problems from the safety of the shop.
Do your techs spend considerable time on comebacks because they couldn’t repeat or properly diagnose a problem while road testing or not even testing at all? By loading the vehicle in a controlled environment your techs will be able to test and diagnose things like cooling system heat load, drivability problems, transmission problems, drive line vibrations, engine misfires and trouble codes.
Are you currently renting time on someone else’s dyno? Don’t forget with your own SuperFlow dyno that expense goes away on day one.
These ideas are a starting place, use them to start generating income and add your own ideas as you gain experience. No one knows your business better than you do so trust yourself to make the right ones with regard to generating income with your new SuperFlow chassis dynamometer.
Now that you have an ideas of some ways the dyno will make money, let’s apply it to your business:
Like we said earlier a well utilized SuperFlow dyno can pay for itself in about 24 months. SuperFlow dynamometers are consistently listed as the most profitable pieces of equipment in modern performance shops. There is no other tool than a SuperFlow dyno that you can build a complete performance business around.
Now that you have some ideas on how a chassis dyno can make you money, it’s time to contact SuperFlow to determine which model of SuperFlow chassis dyno is the right one for your shop. Our sales engineers are trained to ask questions to fully understand your application and quote you a system customized to your needs. SuperFlow offers several models of two wheel drive and mechanically synchronized all wheel drive dynos to meet any need and budget.