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Securing Sponsorships to Grow Our Racing Division & Commercial Detailing – Strategies & Advice?
My name is Shawn Sarbacker, and I’m the owner and driver at Aqualine Performance LLC, based in Nevada. We specialize in both commercial and residential detailing services and operate an expanding motorsports division that competes in professional Formula Continental events. What started as a one-man detailing business in 2023 has now grown into a multifaceted company built on precision, passion, and a strong foundation of values rooted in Colossians 3:23—doing everything with excellence and integrity. We’ve secured several local contracts for detailing and are steadily building a loyal client base. At the same time, our racing division has become a powerful marketing tool for our brand and we’re now actively pursuing paid sponsorship partners to take our exposure and performance to the next level. I’m reaching out to the Jobber community to ask: What are your strategies or advice for securing sponsorships? Especially those that are looking for visibility in motorsports or alignment with a premium brand in the automotive care space. Additionally, I’d love to hear any insights on how to use a growing platform like motorsports to attract new high-value commercial clients—fleet accounts, dealership groups, or corporate clients. I’m happy to share our approach with anyone interested and look forward to learning from your experiences too. Thanks in advance for any wisdom you’re willing to share! Warm regards, Shawn Sarbacker Aqualine Performance LLC Owner & Driver
The quote follow-up texts I’d copy if I were starting over
I’ve spent the last few weeks asking owner-operators how they keep quotes from going cold without sounding pushy. The same few habits kept coming up, so here they are as copy-paste texts. Swap in your own job and dates. Day 0, same day as the visit: “Hi [Name], your quote for [job] is in your inbox. The short version: [one line on what’s included]. Happy to walk through it on a 5-minute call if that’s easier.” Day 2: “Hi [Name], just making sure the quote came through OK. Any questions on scope or timing I can answer?” Day 7, give them something new: “Hi [Name], we have an opening the week of [date] in your area. If that timing works, I can hold it for you until [day].” Day 21, the easy out: “Hi [Name], should I keep your quote open or close it out for now? Either answer is totally fine.” Day 60, seasonal re-open: “Hi [Name], [season] spots are starting to fill. Want me to refresh the quote from [month]?” Rules that seem to matter more than the wording: Stop the sequence the moment they reply, even if it’s a no. One ask per message. Every message after day 2 gives a reason to reply (a date, a change, an easy out). When you lose one, note why (price, timing, went with someone else). After 20 quotes you’ll know which message to fix. What’s the one follow-up message that gets you the most repliesHiring Your First Dedicated Salesperson: When Did You Make the Leap?
We’re approaching $2M in annual revenue, and up until this point, our office team has handled sales alongside their other administrative responsibilities. As we continue scaling, I’m considering creating our first dedicated sales position and potentially promoting someone internally who’s already familiar with our company, services, and clients. I’m curious how other home service business owners approached this transition! At approximately what annual revenue did you hire your first dedicated salesperson? Did you promote from within or hire someone with an established sales background? And how did you structure their compensation and performance expectations? I’d especially love to hear from those who promoted internally. Did having someone who already understood your business outweigh bringing in someone with outside sales experience?Do you return phone calls?
Looking back at trends I've noticed emerging in this post-COVID era of business, one that stands out to me is how frequently I hear potential clients share I am the only contractor that answered the phone/returned their call. People are far too often transparent regarding what a hard time they are having getting in touch with someone, let alone procuring a proposal to complete the work. Being located in SE Michigan USA, I have to ask, is this just something that is a problem in my local market, or is this everywhere and something you've experienced as well? Also, how do you handle following up with calls that can't be answered as they come in? How long is too long to circle back??Should small businesses stop answering every phone call immediately?
This one is tricky because speed-to-lead matters. If a new prospect calls and you don’t answer, there’s a good chance they call the next company. But answering every call the second it comes in can train customers to expect instant access to you forever. That gets hard once you’re in the field, managing employees, driving, handling payroll, doing estimates, or trying to focus on higher-level work. I’ve had to think about this a lot because missed calls can cost money, but constant interruptions also cost money. There’s a difference between being responsive and being constantly available. A business can still have a strong response system without the owner personally answering every call in real time. That might mean: a call answering service a trained admin or CSR voicemail with a fast callback window text-back automation online booking or quote forms clear office hours different rules for new leads vs current customers The goal is to protect lead response without letting the phone run the entire day. For us, I still care a lot about speed. But I also don’t want every phone call to interrupt routes, training, customer issues, or focused work that moves the business forward. Do you answer every call immediately, or have you built a system around when and how calls get handled?3 numbers every owner should check in their old quotes
Most of us push hard the first week. Quote out, a call, a text, an email. We give it everything we've got. But what happens to the quotes after that first push stops? Most shops have a pile of estimates sitting untouched from 30 to 180 days ago. Here are 3 numbers worth pulling from your old quote data: Total dollars with no next step. Add up every estimate where the homeowner never gave a yes or a no. Seeing it as one number changes how you look at your pipeline. "Said no" vs "went quiet." Separate the firm no's from the ones that simply went quiet. You can't revive a firm no, but the quiet ones are still open. Which ones first. Not all old quotes are equal. Age, job type and ticket size tell you which ones are worth a follow-up first. On Jobber's own Masters of Home Service podcast, SendJim CEO Daniel Dixon shared how texting 270 old leads closed $100K in jobs. A lot of next month's work is already sitting in your quote list. How does your shop handle quotes after that first week?
Do 6–10 second video clips work for home service ads?
Question for anyone running Facebook or Instagram ads for a home service business: have very short clips (6–10 seconds) done better or worse than longer 30–60 second videos for you? Short clips are much cheaper to make now. Text-to-video and image-to-video models can produce a 4–10 second clip from a written prompt or a single photo. For example, Gemini Omni Flash 1.1 on Veo3 AI (an independent platform, not Google) makes 4, 6, 8 or 10 second clips in 16:9 or 9:16, but it does not generate audio, so music or a voiceover has to be added in editing. What I am trying to figure out: Does a short clip need a person on camera to build trust, or is a clean product/result shot enough? Do you add captions and a price or offer on screen, or keep it simple? Have you seen a difference in lead quality between short and long video ads? Real job footage is probably still the strongest proof of quality, so I would mainly use AI clips for seasonal promos or when there is nothing fresh to film. Interested to hear what has worked.
