Category Archives: Performance & Productivity

Posted on

How To Turn Moving Leads Into Dollars

[fb_button]

  ► Get This Episode On iTunes

SUMMARY

In this video, Louis Massaro shares his process for successfully managing moving leads.

  • “3-Point Lead Management” Look at your lead management process. Make sure it’s on point before you give up a potentially lucrative lead source just because there’s a lot of inefficiencies going on within the sales department.
  • “Lead Capture” Make sure your web forms are set up to get all the customer’s information, make sure that on phone calls your team is getting that information before they even move forward.
  • “Lead Distribution” It’s all about getting the right lead into the right hands of the right person that’s going to be able to get that job closed.
  • “Lead Follow-up” Making sure that your sales team is actually calling leads as many times as you want them to call them.
  • “Maximize Your Leads” Implement this process and turn your leads into dollars.
  • Watch the video to get full training.

HOT NEWS & DEALS!

  1. Join the Moving CEO Challenge: Official Louis Massaro Community Facebook Group! A place for moving company owners to connect, share ideas, and inspire one another. Click here to join!
  2. Latest Instagram!
    Check out @LouisMassaro for new announcements, valuable tips, and enlightening videos to take your moving company to the NEXT LEVEL!

RELATED POSTS

Prioritize Moving Leads to Book More Moves

Buy Moving Leads and Book More Moves

How To Convert Bad Moving Leads

Manage Your Moving Company’s Marketing

Why Moving Companies Are Failing In Marketing

Transcription

Hey, my friend, it’s Louis Massaro, CEO, Moving Mastery, where we help moving company owners set up proven systems and processes to increase profits, reduce stress, and live a better quality of life. You know, one of the things I hear from clients all the time is the frustration when it comes to spending money on marketing, right? Buying leads from either a lead provider or maybe some Google AdWords or even direct mail, you know, any type of marketing that they’re doing for their moving company, the actual management of those leads. Meaning once their sales team gets those leads, they feel uncertain about what’s happening with them. Are they calling them quickly? Are they calling them enough? What’s the contact method that they’re using, and they’re not quite sure, like how many leads should each person have, right? How many follow-ups should they be doing? What should we do when the phone rings and someone calls in? Baterii pentru stivuitoare https://batteriesromania.com/ .

It’s a deep level of frustration for a lot of people because they spend a lot of money on marketing. They know that their movers are out there doing a great job for their customers and they’re just kind of confused as to what they should be doing with all of these leads. Because as we know from just statistics of, you know, me running my call center and clients of mine, if you’re working the leads, they turn into money, right? But if they’re coming in and you’re maybe making a call or two and some get followed up with and some don’t, and your sales team doesn’t really have any accountability, you’re going to struggle to turn the leads into dollars.

When I say leads, it’s really any type of an opportunity that you have, right? So that could be a phone call coming in from a referral. It could be an actual lead from a moving company lead provider. It could be from your website, it could be from a pay-per-click campaign, it could be direct mail, it could be from anywhere. That’s a lead, right? So what I tell people is in order to get this under control, you need to set up lead management. In particular, you need to set up what I call three-point lead management.

You know, when I first started in the moving business, there was really nothing but YellowPages. We had YellowPages, I was out pounding the pavement, going to some apartment complexes, and then I got into some direct mail. But there was no leads, there was nothing coming into my CRM where I had their name, their phone number, their email address. It was just all phone calls. Back then they called, we tried to book it, we didn’t book it, we kind of moved on, right? Nowadays we have really such a golden opportunity with the amount of data that we have coming in from these different leads and all the information and all the technology and all this stuff that we could do to follow up with them to book more. So even though it’s more complex than the simplicity of just the phone rings from YellowPages and you book moves, there’s more opportunity now than ever.

But how do you do that? How do you set up three-point lead management? Well, the first step, the first thing you need to do … it’s broken up into three different phases, and it’s important not to just look at lead management as one thing, but to break it up into these three components.

The first component is called lead capture. What is lead capture? Lead capture is basically making sure that you get all of the information that you need from every single opportunity. Whether it’s coming in off a web form from your website or a phone call, you need to make sure that you’re capturing their name, their phone number, their email address, the date they’re looking to move, where they’re looking to move from, and where they’re looking to move to. Every single time. Where I see a lot of companies fail with this is on incoming phone calls. Someone will call in, “Hey, I’m looking for an estimate.” “Okay, great. I could help you.” And they just start going into the estimate. You must start capturing that information.

Let me tell you why that’s so important. You know, with the modern technology that we have these days, you have things like email automation, where you could be automatically emailing customers, not only on the front end but on the back end, to re-engage them years, years, and years later, to be able to get them back as a customer. You’ve got text messages, you’ve got the ability to send out mail pieces to them as well. But if you don’t have their information, especially their phone number, to be able to follow back up with them if you don’t book it on the first job, on the first call, you’re done. You’re done.

What happens is, even if … you know, I see this struggle with moving company owners all the time. Like I tell my team, they have to get the info, but they don’t really tell them how to go about getting the info. It has to be done in a very strategic way and it has to … there’s certain things that you have to say in order to be able to capture that information from a customer.

When a customer calls in and they want a quote, “Oh, no problem, what’s your name by the way?” You know? “Oh, John, hi John, my name’s Louis. Nice to meet you. Listen, just in case we get disconnected today, what’s the best phone number to call you back at? Okay.” If you have caller ID, you could just pull it off the caller ID and then you tell them, “At the end of this call, I’m going to go ahead and send you out an email with all the information we discussed along with an accurate estimate for your move. What’s the best email address to send that to?” Done. You’ve got their name, email, phone number, and then you’re going to of course get where they’re moving from and where they’re moving to because that’s part of the estimate, but make sure you always give them a reason why you’re asking for their email address. People are fed up with spam. They don’t want to give out their email address unless there’s a reason for it. So if you’re letting them know they’re going to get all the information you discussed plus an accurate estimate at the end, they’ll give you the correct email address, right? Now you have that information to be used later on for things like email automation, for things like after the move, making sure that you can get reviews as well.

It’s so important that you capture that data. Even certain ad campaigns and things that you could do with Facebook, that’s a whole nother topic, right? If you have that data, you could target certain people directly. So the first thing is lead capture. Make sure your web forms are set up to get that information, make sure that your phone calls, your team is getting that before they even move forward.

Second part of the three-point lead management system is called lead distribution. When a new call comes in, when a new lead comes directly into your CRM, to where, you know, you get it from a lead provider, comes from your website. That should go directly into your CRM, your customer relation management system. Those of you who don’t know, I’m co-founder in SmartMoving CRM. You could check that out, but any CRM should be able to do this, to where it imports directly from your website into your software, directly from lead providers into your software.

But now, once you have that information, remember there’s two types of leads. You’ve got the lead that’s a web lead where they’re just submitting information, and then you’ve got the phone call. You typically won’t have someone coming and knocking on the door of your moving company asking for a quote, unless you’ve got great exposure and visibility somewhere and, you know, occasionally you get a walk-in, but typically it’s a web lead or it’s a phone call.

Once you get those, it’s important that you establish a system of how you’re going to distribute those leads amongst your team. So here’s some things you want to consider. Not all leads are equal. You’ve got your hot leads, you’ve got your not-so-hot leads, and then you kind of got your eh leads. So who do you want to get the hot leads? You know, there’s nothing wrong with allowing your top people to get the good leads and allowing your new people that are still in training, or are still in their first couple of weeks, to get some of the leads that don’t perform as well. Then you might have certain people that handle local moves and other people to handle long distance moves. Lead distribution also means how quick you are getting those leads into someone’s hands so that they can call them. Lead distribution’s all about getting the right lead into the right hands of the right person that’s going to be able to get that job closed.

Then you have to decide how many leads each moving consultant in your company should have each and every day. It’s important to know so that you know how many they could work, you know what’s too much and what’s too little. There is such a thing as having too many leads. I know it’s hard to believe that. A lot of people say, “Louis, you can never have too many leads,” but you can because if you have a full-on sales process, like we teach at Moving Sales Academy, if you have everything in place and you have too many leads, you could be choking on those leads. Those leads could be congesting the whole system. You want to make sure that you have the right amount of leads per rep so that it flows evenly, so you have to decide on that.

You also want to make sure that you’re deciding, you know, what the accountability is for your team, right? You need a certain amount of dials. If you have leads, you need a certain amount of dials, so you want to be able to track that in your phone system. How many outbound calls are they making a day? They might sit in the seat for eight hours, but what are they really doing? The only way you can know if your sales team is actually working is how many phone calls they’re making or how many hours of talk time they have on the phone. How many dials they’re making to new leads and followup of people that they’ve already spoken to, and how much talk time. Talk time is important, because if they’re not actually talking to people and they’re just making dials and not getting anyone on the phone, they’re not going to be able to book any jobs. So you want to have a minimum amount of dials and a minimum amount of talk time that they have to hit one or two of those. So that’s lead distribution, making sure you get the right lead in the right hands of the right person who’s going to be able to book that job.

The third part of the three-point lead management system is lead follow up. What is lead follow up? Lead follow up is how many times are you going to call that lead? You want to try to get them on the phone as soon as possible, as a new web lead comes in, let’s say it’s not a phone call, let’s say it’s a web lead off your website. You want to get them on the phone as soon as possible.

You want to also determine how many times you’re going to actually reach out to them before you say, you know what, we haven’t been able to get ahold of them, let’s move on. Because I’m sure you’ve gotten leads before that you were never able to get ahold of the people, right? You’ve called, you’ve emailed, you’ve text, but they never call you back. Well, there comes a point where you have to move on and so you have to decide, all right … And this is part of your system. This is part of your structure. If you don’t have the structure in place, the process in place, and you’ve got everybody just doing what they want to do, then your company is basically a accumulation of just this person, what they think is best and what that person thinks best, and typically not even what they think is best, but just in the mood that they’re in that day. This person’s having a bad day, they don’t feel like making calls, your leads aren’t being called. If you determine, hey, you need to call the leads this many times on the first day, this many times on the second day, then it’s done, and you could track in your CRM if they’ve actually made those calls or not.

That’s lead follow up. Making sure that they’re actually calling them as many times as you want them to call them. Remember, if you have systems in place where everybody does things the same way, that’s how you could scale. That’s how your company becomes much easier to manage. That’s how you close the holes in the bucket where the money’s fallen through, because as leads come in, think about a bucket, right? Leads are coming in, phone calls are coming in, they’re coming into the bucket, and you’ve got a bunch of holes at the bottom, which pretty much is, you know, when I see it in companies it’s in lead capture, lead distribution, and lead follow up.

When there’s holes there, the money’s following through and you’re not keeping it, so you want to plug those holes with the lead capture. You want to plug those holes with determining your lead distribution policy. You want to plug those holes with setting up the lead follow up to where everyone is doing it the same way. That’s how you maximize your marketing spend. That’s how you stop getting so frustrating and saying that lead provider doesn’t work … which could be true, right? It could be true. However, before you ever, ever, ever say this lead provider is not working, you first need to look at your sales process. You first need to look at your lead management process. Make sure that’s on point before you give up a potentially really, really lucrative lead source just because there’s a lot of inefficiencies going on within the sales department.

Three-point lead management, that’s how you maximize your leads. That’s how you turn leads into dollars. I hope that was helpful, my friend. If so, do me a favor. Make sure you share this with somebody out on social media or a friend who might find this valuable. If you could hit the like button, I’d really appreciate it. Until I see you next time, go out there every single day, profit in your business, thrive in your life. Thanks so much. I’ll see you later.

Posted on

How To Provide Accurate Moving Estimates

[fb_button]

  ► Get This Episode On iTunes

SUMMARY

In this video, Louis Massaro shares his formula for giving accurate moving estimates.

  • “Gather the Customer’s Inventory” Go room-by-room with your customer and guide them through the process asking them specific questions about the contents of each room.

  • “Determine the Boxes” To determine the number of boxes you need for the move take the weight of the customer’s items and divide it by 100.

  • “Add Any Additional Charges” Assess the additional fees and things you charge extra for like bulky items, pianos, safes, hot tubs, extra stops, long carries, packing, fuel, etc.

  • “Calculate and Present the Price” Determine how long the move will take, how many trucks and movers you need, any variances that need to be considered, and book the move!

  • “Review the Actual vs Estimate Report” Look at your track record to help optimize and fine-tune your estimate process over time.
  • Watch the video to get full training.

HOT NEWS & DEALS!

  1. Join the Moving CEO Challenge: Official Louis Massaro Community Facebook Group! A place for moving company owners to connect, share ideas, and inspire one another. Click here to join!
  2. Latest Instagram!
    Check out @LouisMassaro for new announcements, valuable tips, and enlightening videos to take your moving company to the NEXT LEVEL!

RELATED POSTS

Best Sales & Marketing Advice for Moving Companies

Why Your Sales Team Is Not Following Up

Misconceptions About Sales By Moving Companies

Moving Company Sales & Service Consistency

Build a Moving Company Sales Script

TRANSCRIPT

Hey, my friend, it’s Louis Massaro, CEO of Moving Mastery, where we help moving company owners set up proven systems and processes to increase profits, reduce stress, and live a better quality of life. I hear from clients of all sizes and experience in the business, the trouble they have when it comes to estimating moves. So whether they’re starting off, or whether they’ve got multiple locations, part of this business, the moving business, is giving estimates of how long the move’s going to take or how much it’s going to cost, or the wait or from long distance to time from pickup to delivery and all of that. And as we hire more people and train more people, sometimes it becomes a big, big area of frustration, concern. Some bad estimates could really cause some major customer service issues, which could result in loss of revenue, which could result in poor reputation. So there’s a lot of frustration that goes into estimating moves, and if they’re not done correctly.

So how you resolve this is, you just have to have a system that’s based on a formula to estimate moves. And when I first started, it was… I had no idea how to estimate moves. Every single person that called, I was like, “Three men and a truck. Three men and a truck.” We were just doing hourly rate. Right? So I’d tell them three men and a truck no matter if it was a studio apartment or a 12,000 square foot home.

And as you know, that could create some issues and create some problems. So I learned pretty quick that I couldn’t just offer everybody three men and a truck, regardless of the size. And it really took me several years, almost seven years, until I started doing long-distance and also opened up in markets that required actual estimates and not just giving hourly rates, that I actually had to really learn how to give estimates so that my team could give accurate estimates to my customers.

And here’s what I could tell you: It’s one of those things that… You know, it’s super frustrating when you know how to give an estimate, but maybe somebody on your team doesn’t follow all the correct steps. Or, like me when I first started, first several years, almost seven years in business, I didn’t know how to give an actual estimate.

So whether you’re doing it over the phone, whether you’re doing it in person as an onsite estimate; either way, there’s a formula that you need to follow in order to get accurate estimates. So let’s talk about how you go about doing that.

The first thing that you need to do in order to get an accurate moving estimate for your customers is you need to gather the customer’s inventory. What does that mean? You need to… And this can be done over the phone, and this could be done through an onsite. At our height, we were booking 12,000 moves a year. Most of them were done over the phone, and we were going through the same process.

So as you… You know, you need to get the customer’s inventory, and you need to enter it into your CRM. You need to make sure… I mean, if you want to be old school about it, you could have a cube sheet and you can just kind of write down all the cubes and go through that whole process. But in this modern day of the moving business, you need to have a CRM. By the way, I’m co-founder in SmartMoving Software. Check that out if you don’t have something. But otherwise, any CRM that allows you to enter your customer’s inventory should do. You want to enter that it. You want to go room by room with your customer. What does that mean?

So you want to make it easy on them. Because especially… Let’s talk about doing this over the phone. Because that’s more complex than it is doing it onsite. An onsite, it’s typically the same thing, just a little bit easier to do since you’re there and you can actually see the stuff. So let’s say you’re talking to the customer. First thing you wanna do is let them know where to start.

So at this point in your sales script, as you’re talking to them, you’ll let them know, “Let’s go ahead and get an inventory of everything that you’ll be moving. We usually like to start in the master bedroom. Does that work for you?” Lead them where you want them to start, otherwise, they have no idea what to do.

Remember, if you’ve seen my other videos, you know a customer wants a professional to take them by the hand and lead them where they need to go. And that’s what you wanna do here. So you start them off in a particular room. Also, when you’re entering it into your CRM you want to make sure that you’re putting it in per room, and that your CRM allows you to then have that printed out per room. And what does that mean?

So there’s two ways to do it. When you’re looking at an inventory, you could either have an inventory that’s in alphabetical order. Armoire, boxes, credenza. Like that: A, B, C. Or, you have one that’s separated by room. So you’ve got master bedroom, second room, living room, family room, garage. Separated out by room. It’s so important that when you’re gathering the inventory, that you separate it out by room. And let me tell you why.

Number one, you’re going to need to send this to your customer if you’re going to actually give them an estimate based off the inventory. And you might say, “Hey, look, I’m just doing hourly rates. I don’t want to give an estimate,” cool. If you’re allowed to do that in your market and you don’t need to and your business is good and you don’t have any upset customers, keep doing what you’re doing. But, if you want to give your customers an accurate estimate, you need to get the inventory. And in order to make it a two-way street, they have to agree upon the estimate that you’re giving them.

So what you’re going to do after you get their inventory, is you’re going to send it to them for them to review. And by the way, when we talk about inventory, if you’re just possibly getting into this business, it’s going through the home and saying, “Okay, tell me what’s in the master bedroom.” And they’ll be like, “Well, there’s a bed.” “Well, what size is the bed?” Okay. “Is there a headboard? is there a footboard?” You’ve got to be able to dig a little bit. “How about under the bed? Is there anything under the bed?” They’re talking about everything else in the room. “There’s a dresser, there’s two nightstands, there’s a TV, and that’s about it.” “Oh, okay. Well, is there a closet in there?” “Oh, yeah. There’s a closet.” “Okay, what’s in the closet? What about a rug? Is there a rug? How about on the nightstands, are there lamps on the nightstands? Do you have any pictures on the wall?” You have to dig.

A lot of people will start and say, “I got an inventory,” but they’re not digging. You have to make sure you get everything. Because remember, there’s a big difference between doing it over the phone and doing it in person, and you can successfully do it over the phone if you dig and if you have your team trained to know the questions to ask to make sure that everything is on there. And you also want to make sure that anything that’s not being moved is on that list, also. They might say, “Well, there’s a sofa in here, too, but we’re giving that away,” mark that down at the time that’s not going.

So now, let’s get back to reviewing the inventory with the customer. We’re still on step one, which is gather the customer’s inventory. So once you get it all entered into your CRM, you’re going to want to email them out the inventory so that they could agree upon it. Say, “Listen, we need you to take a look at this and make sure this is everything that you’re moving, because your price is based on this inventory. So if there’s more items that aren’t on here, your price could go up on the day of the move.” So you want them to review that.

Now, let’s come back to why that needs to be by room and not alphabetical order. If you send the customer an inventory list and it’s in alphabetical order, and they look at it and they’re like, “Three armoires,” and they need to go through the house and check them off and make sure that’s accurate… Well, one might be in the living room. Another one might be upstairs. Another might be in the garage. It’s not possible to actually go through and verify a list that’s in alphabetical order. So if your CRM has those two options, switch it so that it’s by room. If you’re in Smart Moving, you’re good. You don’t need to worry about it. But make sure it’s by room so that they can verify it.

So another reason why you need it by room is when the movers go out, if you’re giving… And this might be for a flat rate move. This might be for a binding or non-binding long-distance move. This might be for an hourly not to exceed move. Depending on how you give the estimate is not really important right now when we’re gathering inventory. You’re trying to figure out how long this is going to take so that you can build the pricing.

But when your movers go out there, let’s say it is a flat rate or let’s say it is a binding move, they also need to now take that inventory list and verify everything that’s on it. And if it’s in alphabetical order, imagine them trying to go and look for three armoires in the house that they have no idea where they are. No. Master bedroom, living room, kitchen. They go in the master bedroom, and they’ve got a list of everything that’s in there. They check all that stuff off. They make sure it’s accurate, and they can move on.

So I want to stress this, just because it’s so important for the whole cycle of being able to give an estimate, make sure it’s accurate, and go from there.

So when you’re entering an inventory into your CRM, basically what it’s doing is it’s calculating cubes and weights. And a lot of people can do their estimates based off cube, and some will do it based off weight. Even if you are charging by the hour for a local move, those two numbers are what’s going to determine how many hours you need to send. For me, we did it by weight. We would take the cube, whatever the cube was, multiply that by seven, which would give you the weight. Software CRMs, they’ll do this automatically for you. But this kind of goes back, if you’ve been in this business long enough, to a cube sheet, which is pretty much a legal-size sheet that had mostly every item that would be in somebody’s home, and it would list the cubes, how many cubic feet the item was. And then you would take that, and you would calculate it by six, six and a half, seven. For me, I like to go by seven. So you want to make sure that you gather everything that the customer has. It’s there, you want to make sure that they look at it, that they agree on it, and that you’re on the same page.

Second step in giving an accurate estimate is you need to determine the boxes that they’re going to have. And this is something that’s really challenging. It’s hard to get this perfect, because typically, when you go out to the home, or do it over the phone, either way, the customer’s going to be getting rid of stuff. Those closets that are packed, that garage that is packed, they’re going to throw a lot of stuff out. Moving naturally creates some spring cleaning, right? You start going through, “We don’t need this. We don’t need that.” So the best way to determine how many boxes you’re going to need for the move, whether you’re going to be doing the packing or they’re gonna be doing the packing, you still have to take the boxes into account. Because as part of the inventory, you have all the furniture. But now you’ve got a bunch of little loose items. All these little figurines and the plates. You’re not going to go put 20 plates on the inventory. That’s part of determining the boxes.

So a really, really simple, simple formula for determining the boxes is to take the weight and divide that by 100. And that’ll give you a rough idea of how many boxes. And how do you get the weight? You get the weight when you gather the inventory, step one. So take the weight, let’s say its 6,000. Divide that by 100, so you’ll have 60 boxes. And that’s give or take. But that’s really a solid formula for being able to figure it out, and you could break it down even further, of what percentage will be … 1.5 book boxes. What will be 3.0s? What will be 4.5s? What are going to be dish packs and wardrobes? You could break it down even further, but for simplicity sake and time sake today, take the total weight, divide it by 100. That’ll give you your box count.

Next thing you wanna do is you want to establish your additional charges and accessorial fees. So these are things like anything that you’re going to charge extra for. Bulky items, pianos, safes, hot tubs, extra stops, long carries, packing, fuel, additional valuation, storage; all your additional services, all your additional charges. And they’re called, traditionally, accessorial fees. Then you’ll add that on. So what we’re doing right now is we’re building out an estimate. We’re starting by gathering their inventory, then we’re figuring out the boxes, then we’re going to add on all the additional charges, and whatever it is you charge for that.

And depending on if you’re doing local or long-distance, if you’re doing long-distance, all these charges need to be part of your tariff. A lot of states, for local moves, you also have to have a tariff where you basically say, “This is what we charge for these items.” So you just want to make sure that whatever you’re doing as you’re estimating, that it is in compliance with your local county, city, state governing regulation entity, whoever that is, and with the federal motor carrier and DOT, if you’re doing long distance.

So fourth thing you want to do is calculate the price. Now, you have all the information you need. Now, you have all the data. Remember, we need a formula. So this is the formula. We’re gathering information, we’re determining the boxes, we’re adding any additional charges, and part of those additional charges, it’s asking the customer for other … what they have. How far is it from where the truck’s going to be able to be parked to the entrance? Are there stairs? Are there elevators? Things like that. You have to … It’s more of a discovery call. You have to ask questions to find out all this information. Now, of course, if you do an onsite estimate, you’ll be able to find out by seeing it yourself. But you can do more over the phone, and this could be done over the phone very easily. You just need to make sure your team is trained to do all this. Share this video with them. Let them watch this, okay?

So calculating the price. So for local moves, you take the weight and you’re going to want to determine… If it’s 6,000 pounds, to use the same example, how long is it going to take? How many movers are you going to send out there to do it? How many trucks do you need? And how long is it going to take? And then, you want to add variances for, if there are stairs, if there are elevators, anything like that, if there is a long carry. In my Moving Sales Academy program, we give you the entire chart on how to price this out. But take a look at, historically, what you have, how long it’s taken you to do certain moves.

And the easiest way to start doing this is to do the estimate, even if you maybe don’t want to give it to the customer right away. Maybe you don’t want to do a flat rate price, or maybe you don’t want to give a binding price right away. But at least track it all so that you can determine for yourself how fast your team moves. How fast are your movers moving? A lot of cities… There’s definitely cities that are different, right? A move in suburban Phoenix area is going to be much different than New York City.
So you wanna determine how long it’s going to take, based on certain weights, for certain movers, to get the job done, and build yourself out a little pricing chart. This way, you’ll be able to take that number, the weight, look at the chart, see what it is. In moving CRMs like SmartMoving, once the weight’s in there, it could calculate that for you based off your numbers.

Then, the fifth and final thing that you wanna do is you want to… Because now you’re done. So now it’s like you’ve gathered the customer’s inventory, you’ve determined the boxes, you’ve added the additional charges, you’ve calculated the price, you’ve presented it to them, and hopefully you’ve booked the move. Because the number one purpose of every call is to book the move. Remember that.

So now, after the fact, you want to make sure … This is very, very important … that you start running an estimate versus actual report. In order to tweak this process, in order to avoid the frustrations of a customer being upset because the estimate wasn’t… It turned out to be longer than it should have been, or it cost more than they were told. You’ve got to be able to look at your track record. So what is an estimate versus actual report? That’s basically numbers showing this is what the estimate was. And then if the price goes up, whether you charge them or not, kind of depends on your contract, kind of depends on your business process, if you’re going to honor the original price or not, you still know what it should have been. So you have an estimate versus actual. How far off are you? This is how you can identify and start adjusting so that you can get it to where those numbers start to really match up.

So you wanna do this on a company-wide level, and you also want to do this on an individual moving consultant level. Because you’ll find, especially as you grow, that you’ll have… This person over here, they’re super diligent. They get the customer on the phone and they’re like, “Okay, what about the lamps? What’s under the bed? Is there an attic? What about a shed out back? Is there a garage? What about the closets? What about pictures on the wall? Rugs?” They dig. And then you may have other reps who are just like, “Okay, there’s a bed. Okay. Couple nightstands? Okay. What else? That’s it? Okay, let’s move to the next room.” And what you’ll find is the estimate versus the actual is going to be way off.

So for training purposes and constantly improving your business and being able to identify exactly where the problems are coming from, you run this report and you can clearly see who’s not giving the accurate estimates. And you know where there’s additional training needed.

So I hope this was helpful, my friend. If so, do me a favor: Share this with somebody out there on social media or in one of the groups or a friend who might find this valuable. And make sure you like this for me, I’d really appreciate it. Until I see you next time, go out there every single day, profit in your business, thrive in your life. I’ll see you later.

Posted on

How Much Should Moving Companies Profit?

  ? Get This Episode On iTunes

SUMMARY

In this video, Louis Massaro shares how much money a moving company should profit.

  • “Know your numbers.” Review your Profit & Loss statements, review your cash flow reports, review your Marketing ROI and know that the money your spending is actually profitable for each individual source.

  • “How much money do you want to make?” Take some time and figure out what it’s going to cost for you to live the life you want to live.

  • “Build your business with a specific number in mind.” Determine the outcome you want and make sure the business is able to provide that amount of money.

  • “Don’t assume that more business equals more money.” Don’t think that you have to reach outside of the amount of business you have now in order to make more money.

  • “Don’t just focus on the money, focus on your lifestyle as well.” You have to profit in business AND thrive in life.
  • Watch the video to get full training.

HOT NEWS & DEALS!

  1. Join the Moving CEO Challenge: Official Louis Massaro Community Facebook Group! A place for moving company owners to connect, share ideas, and inspire one another. Click here to join!
  2. Latest Instagram!
    Check out @LouisMassaro for new announcements, valuable tips, and enlightening videos to take your moving company to the NEXT LEVEL!

RELATED POSTS

Your Moving Company’s Profit and Loss Statement

Increase Profits: Tighten Up Your Moving Operations

Exit Strategies For Moving Company Owners

How Your Identity Is Preventing Your Success

Should You Diversify Your Moving Business?

TRANSCRIPTION

Hey, my friend, it’s Louis Massaro, CEO of Moving Mastery, where we help moving company owners set up proven systems and processes so they can increase profits, reduce stress, and live a better quality of life.

You know, I get the question a lot on how much money should moving companies make? How much money should moving company owners be able to take home? And it’s one of those things that typically comes with some frustration, right? (www.chronicpainpartners.com) Maybe you’re putting in a ton of work. You’re working really hard. You’ve maybe even got a ton of gross revenue. Your gross revenue is really high. But at the end of the day, where’s the profit? Where’s the money that you’re able to take home? And it creates a lot of frustration.

We know that there’s a lot of liability in the moving business. There’s a lot of responsibility. You’re responsible for your movers. You’re responsible for your customers. You’re responsible for your equipment. You’re responsible for, and accountable for, and liable for those trucks that you put out on the road every single day for the safety of everyone else that’s out there. That’s a lot. That’s a lot of pressure to put on somebody and you want to be able to have the rewards, you want to be able to make the money that you deserve if you’re running a solid business. But how much is that?

I’ll get the question about, you know, “Louis, what are, what’s the average percentage of net profit for a moving company?” And here’s what I can tell you. You know, the first thing you need to know is that you should not be looking at average ever. Okay? Average is made up of people doing very low numbers and people doing very high numbers. All right? So you don’t want to strive to be average. You want to strive to be extraordinary. And the number that I would say you want to shoot for as a net profit in your moving company, after all your expenses, is 20%. Now there’s companies that are doing more than 20% and if you’re there great, however, if you’re on industry average, which I think is like nine or 10%, which isn’t good, you want to start getting it up higher. Okay. And you want to know for the work that you put in how much you’re going to be able to make. You want to know that this endeavor, this business, these hours that you’re putting in is worth your time. It’s worth your effort. Right?

So, for me, when I started in the moving business. And I was a 19-year-old kid and I was really just looking for a way at the time to make 10,000 bucks a month, like that was my goal. I’m like, “How can I make 10,000 bucks a month as a 19-year-old kid?” Then I got into the business and I’m like, “Okay, I see people are making the money, making money. I could do that.” I had a mentor say to me, he said, “Louis, make yourself $400,000 a year.” Okay, yourself. That’s what we’re talking about right now. We’re not talking about how much gross revenue your business should have because that’s kind of irrelevant, right? It is a certain number and a point that you should look at, but then the gross number is only set so that you can then have your expenses and then have your net profit at the end.

So I had a mentor say to me, he said, “Louis, make yourself $400,000 a year. Save 200. Spend 200. You’ll live a good lifestyle.” So I said, “Okay.” So that was my goal, right? I didn’t know any better. And within my second year in business, I went to like $300,000, net on my tax return, personal income. Okay. I think it was my third or fourth year in business, went to $800,000 personal net income and then after that it went to seven figures and up. But the thing is, you’ve got to be able to know what’s possible. And I’m not saying this in any type of way to, you know, claim that you are going to be able to make that money because I don’t know you. I don’t know your work ethic. I don’t know your focus. I don’t know your situation, right? So I’m just telling you what you know was reality for me in this business and what the possibilities are to be able to make money in the moving business. And it’s important that you establish what that is for you. All right?

So here’s the deal. If you want to get to a point where you’re making the amount of money you want to make in the moving business, here’s what you got to do. The first thing you need to do is you need to know your numbers, okay? We can’t just kind of shoot in the dark, and go and hustle, and get a bunch of moves, and try this and try that, and not really know how it’s all working out, right? You need to review your profit and loss statements. You need to be able to review your cash flow reports. You need to take a look at your marketing ROI to know that the money you’re spending on marketing is actually profitable for each individual source. You have to know your numbers. If you are going to be revenue income minded to where you’re focused on how much income you’re going to be able to make, right?

And you might say, “Louis, but it’s not all about that.” Well, it kind of is. Because you got into business to make money, right? Otherwise, if it was just something you enjoy doing, then volunteer and do it for free, right? Be one of those services that says, “You know what, we’ll move people for free, not for profit.” And if that’s you, cool. More power to you, all right? But most people are in this business because they saw the opportunity to make money and they want to be able to do that. But if you don’t know your numbers, it’s going to be very, very hard to get to where you want to go. Because when you have a benchmark, right? When you have a starting point of what your numbers are, you can start to make adjustments. How do we raise the gross revenue? How do we reduce the expenses to increase the profit?

Second thing you want to do, figure out how much money you want to make personally. Like how much money is it going to take to live the life you want to live? All the expenses that you have. All the expenses you want to have, all the investments, the savings, the charity. The emergency fund. What is it going to take to live the life that you want to live? That number could be different for everybody. It’s definitely different for everybody. You know, somebody might say, “Louis, I just want to make six figures. I want to get to $100,000 and I’m good.” Other people might say, “Listen, if I’m not making a half a million dollars a year, I don’t even know how I’m going to eat.”

So it’s different for everybody. Take some time, figure out what it’s going to cost to live the life that you want to live. Literally, get out a sheet of paper. What’s the mortgage going to be on your house that you want? What are the car payments, schools for your kids, insurance, investments, savings, anything else, charity, what is all that going to cost you?

And then the third thing you need to do is build your business with that number in mind. Instead of just saying, “Let me run this business and see what happens.” You’ve got to determine the outcome. And the outcome is income, right? So you want to make sure that you’re in a business that’s going to be able to provide the money that you want. And if you’re in the moving business, I’m here to tell you that chances are unless you’ve got very, very, very, very high aspirations, you can make the money in this business. You could personally make seven figures a year in this business and it’s just, you have to know that that’s where you want to go. And then build the business around that.

But it’s very important to understand truly what you want. So when we talk about figure out how much money you want, think about what you want from your heart. Because we could all set these big goals like, yeah, I want to make $10 million a year. Do you need $10 million a year? To live the life you want to live. It’s amazing. I take clients through this process all the time where it’s like, let’s figure out what it’s going to cost for you to get everything you want. And usually, the number is significantly less than they think it is. They get everything they want. They’ve got their savings, they could retire at the age they want to retire at. It’s usually significantly less than just a number they pick out of a hat.

And why is that important? Well, it’s important because you’re going to build your business around that goal. And if your goal is way too high and you start trying to make moves in your business that are unnecessary, you’re just bringing on more work, more responsibility, and for what? You’re just adding complexity. What you want to do is you don’t want to create this monster that just consumes your whole life. So figure out how much you want to make. Figure out what it’s going to take to live the life you want to live. Then you build the business around that.

Number four. Don’t assume that more business equals more money. I see this happen all the time and I feel fortunate when I’m able to get in with somebody, when somebody becomes a client, when they’re thinking about maybe opening another location or they’re thinking about expanding, and I’m able to see where they’re at currently and stop them from doing that. I’m all for expansion. I’m all for growth. You want to open 50 locations around the US? You want to do $100 million a year? Great.

However, just because you open another office does not mean you’re going to make more money. A lot of times you’re going to make less money and you’re going to introduce more complexity into your life and into your business. So don’t just assume that you have to go do all these different things to make money, right? I personally made $800,000 a year off one office. That was before I even opened up my six locations. So don’t think that you have to go reaching outside of what you have right now to make that money. I tell people all the time, don’t go dig a bunch of shallow holes. Find the one hole that has the oil and the gold under it and dig a deep hole there.

And typically a lot of people do local moving. By the way, I made all that money doing nothing but local moves. I didn’t even start doing long distance moves until I was in business for seven years. So I’m saying this as like a cautionary word of advice, that to go out and just do more does not equal more money. All right? If you want to scale, if you want to grow, set up your model business first. Set up one business that runs, it’s efficient, your profit margins are at 20% and above, and your cash flow is strong. You’re making money. Then you’ve got a model, then you could take that and then you can expand on that. So don’t assume that more business equals more money.

The next thing you want to focus on is you want to make sure that you are not just focused on the money, but you focus on your lifestyle as well. I mean, look, if you’re so focused on the money that you let your relationship suffer, your health suffer, your personal mental health suffer, you’re not going to live a good life. I don’t care how much money you have. I learned this the hard way. When I first started my business, it was money, money, money, money, right? But I was a young kid, single, no family. Could go out and that was all I did. However, once I made all the money that I, more than I ever thought that I would, I realized that that didn’t bring me the happiness that I thought it would. It wasn’t until I got to a point where I’m like, “You know what? I need to incorporate my whole lifestyle into this. I need to figure out how I can profit in my business and thrive in my life.”

So don’t make the mistake of just chasing down money. Build your business to get the income goal that you want, but build it in a way that requires as little effort as possible. And when I say that as little effort as possible could mean 50 hours a week, right? Could mean 40 hours a week. The point is, don’t give it everything you’ve got working 24/7, seven days a week, to get it going and sacrifice all that. Because what will happen is your mental capacity will start to diminish and the business will suffer from it as well. And at the end of the day, that’s not really the goal.

Now you might be in a position like, “Louis, I don’t care. I’ll do what I need to do. I need to get money now.” Cool, right? Like do what you need to do to get momentum, but as soon as you get momentum, you have to introduce the lifestyle. The same way that you’re going to do the exercise on how much money do you need to specifically live the life you want to live? You also need to say, what do I want to do in my life? What experiences do I want? How many days a week do I want to work? When I’m working what am I actually going to be doing during those days? Am I going to be dispatching trucks or am I going to be reviewing some reports, having a few meetings, checking in on my investments? You’ve got to be able to define all that for yourself and don’t make it all about money. Make it about lifestyle.

So number one, if you want to start getting to that level in your business where you’re making good money, number one is know your numbers. All right?

Number two, figure out actually how much money you personally want to make. You personally. Remember, your business is there as a means to financial freedom for you and your family.

Number three, build your business based on that number.

Number four, don’t assume that more business equals more money. Build a tight, tight foundation that’s profitable and then you could grow and build upon that.

And number five, don’t just focus on the money, but focus on the lifestyle as well. That’s why you’ll hear me say all the time, profit in your business, thrive in your life.

My friend, I hope that was helpful. If so, do me a favor. Share this video with somebody out there on social media or a friend that you think might find what we talked about today valuable. And if you could hit the light button for me too, I’d really appreciate it. Thank you so much for tuning in. I’ll see you next time and remember, go out there every single day, profit in your business and thrive in your life. I’ll see you later.

Posted on

Your Moving Company’s Online Reputation

[fb_button]

  ► Get This Episode On iTunes

SUMMARY

In this video, Louis Massaro explains how to effectively improve your moving company’s online reputation.

  • “Treat the first page of Google like a garden.” Whatever shows up on that first page, you’ve got to cultivate it like a garden.

  • “Identify what areas need some fertilizer.” You want to identify the areas that need some work, either weeds that need to be pulled, or things that need to be fertilized or things that are already flourishing that you need to make sure continue to flourish.

  • “Nurture each of your Google listings individually.” Understand how each individual one operates and then work to make them each look good.

  • “Make sure you’re monitoring the progress of every listing, every month.” Keep a checklist. Keep an accounting of what you’re working on and what the improvements are.

  • “Get more 5-star reviews.” Your online reputation today in this modern day of moving is crucial.

  • Watch the video to get full training.

HOT NEWS & DEALS!

  1. Join the Moving CEO Challenge: Official Louis Massaro Community Facebook Group! A place for moving company owners to connect, share ideas, and inspire one another. Click here to join!
  2. Latest Instagram!
    Check out @LouisMassaro for new announcements, valuable tips, and enlightening videos to take your moving company to the NEXT LEVEL!

RELATED POSTS

How To Deal With Negative Online Reviews

BBB Accreditation For Moving Companies?

Positive Reviews, “Cheap Customers” & Charging Movers For Damage?

Diversify Your Moving Company’s Marketing

Top Moving Lead Providers for Moving Companies

TRANSCRIPTION

Hey, my friend, it’s Louis Massaro, CEO of Moving Mastery, where we help moving company owners set up proven systems and processes to increase profits, reduce stress, and live a better quality of life. If you own a moving company these days, you know how important it is to have a solid online reputation. We know that our customers are going to go, they’re going to Google the name of the company and they’re going to check you out.

What do you do about it when you’ve got this amazing… You put in all this work, you put in all this effort, you get to train your movers, you’re doing a good job, you set up your whole business, and now maybe you get a bad review. Maybe you get a great review, but sites like Yelp don’t list it, or maybe you get no reviews at all. It’s really impacting your business. I know that could be frustrating, I hear it from clients all the time.

When you set out to run a successful business, you’re just thinking about I want to do a good job, and as long as I do a good job, that should be enough. In today’s modern-day of living in a fishbowl to where everybody could see everything, you’ve got to have a solid online reputation, because let’s face it, when a customer goes to move with you, they’re going to Google the name of your company. If they don’t like what they see, they’ll choose somebody elsewhere that’s a better presentation.

The reason this gets so frustrating is because there are some really, really good companies that I know do a great job, but they pay very little attention to their online reputation and they’re suffering for it. They’re losing business for it. They’re not getting all of the jobs that they could. Here is what you need to do.

In order to make sure that your online reputation allows you to book more customers, because remember, when you spend money on marketing, you need to convert them into a customer. When you get repeat and referral business, you need to convert them into a customer, and you want to make sure that your online reputation is solid. How do you do that? The one thing that you can do to make sure that your online reputation starts to become impeccable, is to treat the first page of Google like a garden.

What do I mean by that? If you type in the name of your moving company, and you see what shows up on that first page, that’s what customers are seeing. Typically, what will happen when we do this is we’ll start to see some good stuff, we’ll start to see some bad stuff. Maybe the first listing will be the name of your own personal website, then maybe Yelp, BBB may have a listing, some moving lead providers. The list goes on of different stuff that shows up on that first page. Whatever shows up on that first page, you’ve got to cultivate it like a garden.

What does that mean? The stuff that needs some work, you’ve got to put some fertilizer on it. The weeds, you’ve got to get rid of the weeds. The stuff that’s already flourishing, you got to make sure that it continues to flourish. When was it? About two years ago now, I taught this to our Moving Mastery members. We talked about cultivating the first page of Google as if it’s a garden. The results that they’ve seen are incredible because they put in the work and they put in the time.

In order to really make sure that your online reputation is on point, I just need you to think about the very simple thing that you need to do, and that’s cultivate the first page of Google like it’s a garden. How do you go about doing that? The first thing you need to do is you need to just type in the name of your company into Google. This isn’t a matter of typing in movers in your city, this is the name of your company specifically, type it in. See what shows up on that first page.

What you want to do next is you want to identify what areas need some fertilizer. Let’s say the first listing is your page, your website, and the second listing is Yelp. How many stars does Yelp show? If you do a search, you’ll have Yelp and you’ll have other review sites that will actually show the stars right there on the page, and you want to make sure that what is front-facing to the customer when they Google it is looking good. You want to identify the areas that need some work, either weeds that need to be pulled, or things that need to be fertilized or things that are already flourishing that you need to make sure continue to flourish.

The next thing you want to do is you want to nurture each of these listings that Google has on there. You want to nurture each of them individually. What does that mean? Yelp, for example, you may have good reviews, bad reviews, whatever it is, but the way that you handle Yelp is going to be much different than the way that you handle, let’s say the BBB for example, or Google maps, Google business listing to where they’re showing stars as well.

You want to understand how each individual one operates and then work to make it look good. People don’t really go past the first page of Google typically, so you want to make sure that first page looks solid. I hear from a lot of companies, and it’s unfortunate when they say it, they’ll say things like, “The BBB is old school. It doesn’t matter anymore.” Well, if it shows up on the first page when someone Googles the name of your company, it does matter. I see companies that are 5-stars across the board with everything. You click on their BBB link and they have an F. You look at the reason why, they didn’t respond to a few complaints.

Something as simple as going in and actually just responding to those complaints doesn’t mean you have to pay them out, it doesn’t mean you have to acknowledge that it’s true, but just to respond to them, will keep your score up. Don’t think that the BBB is old school and it doesn’t matter, if it’s showing up on that first page of Google for your company, it matters. Anything that shows up on that first page matters. That’s what customers are seeing.

You want to make sure that you take a look at each one and handle them all individually. You want this to be a beautiful picture, that first page of Google with your name at the top. When somebody scrolls, anything that has stars, it’s got four to five stars in it. Anything that has some kind of information about your company, it says something good, this is all stuff that could be nurtured and improved if you put your attention on it.

Like I said, I taught this two years ago to are Moving Mastery members, and they’ve all seen the results. It’s not something that happens overnight, you need to continually work on it. But if you’re in this business for the long run and you don’t want to continue to spend money on marketing to have a customer Google you and then go, “Yeah, no, they only have 1-star on Yelp.” You could explain it all day long, and you could talk about, “Yeah, but there are some good reviews, and Google and Yelp hides them, right? We’ve got all these good reviews, but they don’t show them, they only show the bad reviews.”

We could complain about that all day long, but it’s just the reality that we live in. You have to play the game the way that the game is set up, and we can’t dictate what’s on that first page. Actually, we can dictate what’s on that first page, but what’s there today you can’t go remove this, remove that. With some cleanup, with some nurturing, with some SEO work, you can start to dictate what’s on that first page, but it’s something that you have to nurture.

The fourth thing you want to do is you want to make sure you’re monitoring the progress every month. Again, this isn’t something that you’re going to go and take care of a few things and it’s going to instantly resolve the issue. It’s something that you need to monitor and work on monthly. What can we do? BBB shows a score we shouldn’t have, call them. They are somebody that you could speak to. Call them, speak to them, ask them, “What can we do to improve our score? What can we do to approve our grade?” Go down the list. Check them all. Keep a checklist. Keep an accounting of what you’re working on and what the improvements are.

When you start to put your attention on something, that’s when it improves. When you neglect an area of your business, it’s just going to naturally decay. Same thing with the garden, you can’t just plant the garden and then leave it there. You’ve got to nurture it. It’s the same thing with the first page of Google which is your online reputation. That’s what your online reputation is, is that first page of Google and whatever shows up there.

The fifth thing you want to do is get more 5-star reviews. I know you might say, “Louis, we try, you know, Yelp takes them down, customers don’t want to give them”, whatever the case may be, and the reality is you can. If you put in a diligent effort to go out there and get more 5-star reviews and you have a program for doing it… In my Moving Sales Academy program, we teach the Safety Net Review Fetcher.

That same system we also put in my software SmartMoving, so that after the move, automatically customer gets an email, customer gets a text message, they click on it, they rate you based on the rating that they give you. It either takes them to here, rate us on one of these sites, or… For example, if it’s 4 or 5-stars, it’ll then prompt them to go to any site of your choice whether it’s Google, Yelp, whatever it might be, Facebook, and give you the review. Let’s say it’s 3-stars and under, it’ll have them fill out what’s wrong so that it’ll actually come directly to your customer service so you’re not sending somebody to put a review that is not going to put a good review.

You’ve got to make that diligent effort. Your online reputation today in this modern day of moving is crucial. It’s so important that you cultivate that and it has to be front of mind in what you do with your business. If you’re just starting out and you don’t have much there, you want to start saying, “What can we get to show up on that first page of Google so that we could help decide what’s there?”

If you’ve been in business a long time, there’s a bunch of listings that are probably showing up for a lot of different things, make sure they’re all accurate, make sure they’re all updated. If you’ve got social media platforms that maybe you’re not active on, that’s okay, but make sure the information is updated. Make sure the information is relevant to where they’re not clicking on some Facebook page that maybe you had a nephew or a friend set up for you at some point that has the wrong address, and has no pictures, and looks like a ghost town like you’re out of business. It’s very simple.

Type the name of your company into Google, identify the areas that need some help, that need some fertilizer. Nurture each one of those listings individually, monitor the progress monthly, and then go out there and get more 5-star reviews using SmartMoving or some other type of platform that will make this whole process easier. If you don’t ask for the review, you won’t get the review. It’s a numbers game. We know that sites like Yelp are not going to post all of them. That’s okay, get more of them and they will show up.

I hope this was helpful. Like always, go out there every single day, profit in your business, thrive in your life. If you found this helpful today, please share this with a friend that might find it valuable in their business. Hit the like button for me, I’d really appreciate it. I’ll see you later.

Posted on

Setting Up Your Moving Company’s Referral Program

[fb_button]

  ► Get This Episode On iTunes

SUMMARY

In this video, Louis Massaro explains how to set up an effective referral program in your moving company.

  • “What are you willing to pay to a referral partner?” When setting up a referral program in your moving company you need to know in advance how much you plan to pay your referral partners.

  • “How will you able to make the payouts to referral partners?” You don’t want your referral program to be a hassle in your moving company, so it needs to have a system for payouts.

  • “What system are you going to use to track everything?” Your referral partners won’t continue to send you moves if they feel like they might not get paid for it.

  • “Who is going to be in charge of your referral program?” Whether it’s you or another employee, you have to pick one person who’s responsible and accountable for the referral program in your moving company.

  • “Where will you go to recruit your referral partners?” Anybody can send you moves. Find people who are in front of other people who might be moving and invite them to become referral partners.

  • Watch the video to get full training.

HOT NEWS & DEALS!

  1. Join the Moving CEO Challenge: Official Louis Massaro Community Facebook Group! A place for moving company owners to connect, share ideas, and inspire one another. Click here to join!
  2. Latest Instagram!
    Check out @LouisMassaro for new announcements, valuable tips, and enlightening videos to take your moving company to the NEXT LEVEL!

RELATED POSTS

BEST SALES AND MARKETING ADVICE FOR MOVING COMPANIES

SETTING MONTHLY SALES GOALS

MISCONCEPTIONS ABOUT SALES BY MOVING COMPANIES

BUILD A MOVING COMPANY SALES SCRIPT

WHY YOUR SALES TEAM IS NOT FOLLOWING UP

FULL TRANSCRIPT

Hey, my friend, it’s Louis Massaro, CEO of Moving Mastery, where we help moving company owners set up proven systems and processes to increase profits, reduce stress, and live a better quality of life. I have clients come to me a lot and they say, “Louis, I want to set up a referral program in my business. I want to be able to have realtors and mortgage brokers and apartment complexes, home builders, storage units”, the list goes on of people that refer moves to their moving company. You and I both know the best type of move you can get is a referral from somebody else. Typically they’re not shopping around as much. They’re willing to pay higher prices.

When I speak to my clients, they’re typically pretty frustrated with one of two things. Either they don’t know where to start with setting up the referral program, or most cases, they started to get referral partners, like realtors and such, and the whole thing kind of fell apart after a little while. They didn’t nurture a relationship and it gets really frustrating. You and I both know you could spend a lot of money on marketing and if you don’t balance that out with repeat and referral customers, your marketing costs could get really high. It’s one of those overwhelming, frustrating things to know that there’s these people out there that can refer moves to you and you want to get them doing that on a regular basis, but how do you go about doing it? How do you get them to, number one, take your call, number two, be willing to refer moves to you, and then number three, continuously do it on a regular basis?

It reminds me of when I first started my business. I was 19 years old. I started out of a truck rental yard. That was what I did. I had the phones forwarded to my cellphone. I worked out of the truck rental yard. After I dispatched the crews, I would go apartment complex to apartment complex to apartment complex and what I call pounding the pavement, and round up business. It was great for a while. I would have them referring me moves and I didn’t really have a formalized referral program or structured referral program, but I would give this one some money, give this one some doughnuts, give this one some flowers, whatever the case may be to keep them happy. The moves kept coming in from them, but as soon as things started to pick up and I didn’t really have the time anymore to start going out and nurturing those relationships, the whole thing fell apart.
What I tell clients is this. If you want to have customers referring you… I’m sorry, referral partners referring you customers, again, realtors, mortgage brokers, home builders, storage units, assisted living, the list goes on of who could actually be referring you business, in order to do that and have it succeed on a regular basis you have to develop a structured referral program. That’s where most people fail is they don’t have the referral program structured and in place first, and that’s really what causes the issues.

Here’s the deal. If you want to go about doing that, if you want to set up a structured referral program, I’m going to give you some steps to do that. First thing you need to do is establish, what are you willing to pay? You want to make sure that you know that in advance of what you’re willing to pay. What we did, I had a program called Moving Points Referral Program where we signed people up and we knew the structure of the program, but the first thing I established was, what am I willing to pay? For us, we paid $20 a move, plus we gave them points on the back end that they could redeem later on for prizes and things like that. It was complex but you don’t have to get that complex with it. You can keep it really simple. You want to give them $20 a move, you want to give them 5% a move, 10% a move. Whatever it might be, first thing you need to do is establish what you’re willing to pay.

Second thing you want to do is figure out how you’re going to make the payouts. Remember, you want this to be a system. You don’t want this to be a hassle. You don’t want this to be something that you have to put in effort to keep up with. You want to basically cultivate your referral program, make sure it’s structured so that it just runs, so how you make the payouts is very important. Do you want to show up at their office personally and bring them either a gift, cash, a check, a gift card, whatever it might be? Do you want to send it out to them in the mail?

Early on for me, what I did was I went there and brought them something. As my business got established, we changed that and we would start sending them gift cards from… there’s different services out there you could get and a great one is giftcards.com. This way you don’t have to actually go to CVS or Walgreens and get the gift card, which is what we started doing at first. Remember, the idea is to keep it simple and as minimal steps as possible to keep it going. Just order some gift cards online or mail out a check or whatever the case may be.

The third thing you want to do is you want to figure out how you’re going to track everything. This is very, very important. When a customer calls in and they say, “Hey, I heard about you from my realtor”, and you get that realtor’s name you have to be able to track that so that you make the payouts. Remember, your referral partners aren’t going to keep sending you moves if you’re not showing them that they’re going to be getting paid. How do you do that? Easiest way to do it, how we did it for years was we tracked it in a spreadsheet. We just assigned every referral partner a number, we had that same number match in our CRM, and then we transferred it to the spreadsheet.

Nowadays what I recommend is that you do it within your moving CRM. I’m actually Co-founder of SmartMoving Software, which is a CRM for moving companies to help them run their entire business, and there’s an entire program within that that helps you track all of your referral partners so that you could easily make the payouts. Whatever you do, whether you do it on a spreadsheet, in your CRM, in SmartMoving, either way, you’ve got to figure out how you’re going to track everything.

Fourth thing you want to do, put somebody in charge of your referral program. Whether that’s you, whether it’s an employee, whoever it might be you have to pick one person who is responsible and accountable for this program to keep it going or it will fall apart. Those of you who’ve tried it before who maybe have had some people refer you moves and then it kind of died out, you know. You know the frustrations of getting it started, putting in that effort, going and pounding the pavement, starting to reach out to people on social media. and then you see the whole thing collapse and they’re no longer sending you moves. Put somebody in charge of it. Name an ambassador of your referral program who will make sure that everything is getting entered, make sure that everybody is getting paid out. Make sure that you are nurturing all of your referral partners.

Not only do you need to make sure you’re paying them out, but you need to keep them in the loop. You need to make sure you’ve got emails going out to your referral partners so you stay front of mind with them. Just because someone signs up for your referral program doesn’t mean that they remember it all the time, so you want to stay in front of them. This person you put in charge, this ambassador, they’re going to make sure that your Facebook Ads that you’re running to your referral partners are on point, that your emails that are going out to them automatically are on point, that the people that are sending you a lot of moves, that you’re showing them extra love. They might say to you, “Hey, I need you to call. I need the owner. I need you to call this person and thank them for all the moves.”

You need someone that’s in charge of that because as a business owner you’ve got so much to deal with, and that’s what typically happens with these programs. They fall apart because the owner wants to hold onto the whole thing. Or, they hand it off to somebody without the structure and expect for it to just run. Once you have that all setup, once you have your program structured, remember, it has to be structured or it will fall apart. I know I’ve talked to a lot of people who have tried it. It wasn’t structured, it fell apart, so I’m sure you could feel the pain. Next thing you want to do is go and recruit your referral partners. Who can send you moves? The answer to that is anybody. Anybody could send you moves.

When I say that, the people that are in front of people that are moving on a regular basis are realtors, mortgage brokers, apartment complexes, home builders, storage complexes, assisted living, that type of thing. However, once you have a structured referral program where it’s easy for somebody to join and easy for them to get paid, you could have anybody in the program. You could have your barber in the program. I had a waitress at a restaurant that we went to on a regular basis who was constantly sending us moves. I don’t know if she went up to the table and was like, “Today’s specials are Chicken Parmesan and, by the way, are you moving?” I don’t know how she did it, however, she knew when she sent us moves she got paid out and so the moves came in.

Now, once you have this referral program built, and remember, do not do this in the reverse order. Do not go out and get referral partners and then try to figure out how you’re going to pay them, who’s going to keep track of it, what system you’re going to use, who’s going to be in charge. You go get the referral partners last, but once you have it built, now, very easily in a lot of your marketing, you could say, “Join our referral program”, when you hand a business card to somebody anywhere and everywhere you go throughout your regular day. When you go for lunch, give a business card to the waitress, anyone. On there it says, “Join our referral program. Earn extra cash.”

You just want to make sure that you establish the actual program. That’s it, that’s all you got to do. It’s really that simple, it’s just that most people do it in the reverse order. Establish what you’re willing to pay. How are you going to make the payouts? What system are you going to use to track everything? Who is going to be in charge? Then, go and recruit your referral partners.

I hope that was helpful, my friend. If so, do me a favor. Use the share button and share this with a friend who might find what we talked about today valuable, and if you could hit the like button, too, I’d really appreciate it. Until I see you next time, go out there every single day, profit in your business, thrive in your life. I’ll see you later.

Posted on

How Your Identity Is Preventing Your Success

  ? Get This Episode On iTunes

SUMMARY

In this video, Louis Massaro explains the importance of your identity when it comes to reaching the next level of success in your moving company.

  • “Your identity and the beliefs you have about yourself in certain areas are holding you back from reaching that next level of success in your business.
  • “My identity when it came to working was that, “I’m a hustler, I’m going to put in the work that no one else is willing to do.” And that’s essentially the results that I got. I identified myself as hustler, so what did I do? (https://louisvilleroofing.com/) I hustled. Day in, and day out. Because that’s what I believed I needed to do to be successful.”
  • “But, I also had a mindset that I was going to be a millionaire mover. That I already was a millionaire mover. That I was going to make millions of dollars in this business before I had any money.”
  • “I’m a big believer that we’re not stuck in any type of mindset or beliefs that we’ve had, maybe since we could barley walk, and we just grew up with these beliefs. We grew up in an environment with these beliefs. And those beliefs to this point now have shaped your identity. But that doesn’t mean you can’t shift those beliefs.”
  • “You are where you are today because of the beliefs you have, and because of the identity you have for yourself.”
  • Watch the video to get full training.

HOT NEWS & DEALS!

  1. Join the Moving CEO Challenge: Official Louis Massaro Community Facebook Group! A place for moving company owners to connect, share ideas, and inspire one another. Click here to join!
  2. Latest Instagram!
    Check out @LouisMassaro for new announcements, valuable tips, and enlightening videos to take your moving company to the NEXT LEVEL!

RELATED POSTS

Think Like A Millionaire Mover

Why I Became a Moving Business Mentor

How To Deal With Stress Of The Moving Business

Manage Yourself Before You Manage Your Business

3 Keys to Freedom in the Moving Business

Posted on

Are You Spot Checking Moves?

  ? Get This Episode On iTunes

SUMMARY

In this video, Louis Massaro explains why you should be going out to the job site and spot-checking moves in your moving company.

  • “Spot checking moves is crucial to ensure the quality of your operations.”
  • “Sometimes we forget that the frontline of our business is our movers. They’re the ones that go out there, they do the move. That’s the service that we’re selling, that’s the service that we’re providing. (Alprazolm) ”
  • “Make yourself a checklist for the things you want to make sure get done consistently on every move.”
  • “Use spot checks as an opportunity to show the customer that, as a company, you’re there for them.”
  • “Make sure you acknowledge good work. It doesn’t have to be a big courageous act, just acknowledge the things that you asked them to do that they’re doing. It shows that you’re paying attention and it shows that you care.” Gf Porn Collection https://www.watchmygf.xxx/ watch online.

HOT NEWS & DEALS!

  1. Join the Moving CEO Challenge: Official Louis Massaro Community Facebook Group! A place for moving company owners to connect, share ideas, and inspire one another. Click here to join!
  2. Latest Instagram!
    Check out @LouisMassaro for new announcements, valuable tips, and enlightening videos to take your moving company to the NEXT LEVEL!

RELATED POSTS

Increase Profits: Tighten Up Your Moving Operations

Start Working ON Your Moving Company – Not IN It

Mover Recruiting Process [Download]

How Successful Moving Companies Handle The “Off-Season”

7 Pillars of Moving Company Marketing Success

Posted on

3 Keys to Freedom in the Moving Business

[fb_button]

  ► Get This Episode On iTunes

Summary

In this video, Louis Massaro teaches the 3 Keys to Freedom to help you breakthrough whatever is preventing you from reaching higher levels of success in your Moving Business and in life.

Watch Louis discuss the steps it takes to attain TRUE FREEDOM.

  • “True freedom is about being able to do what you want, when you want, with who you want, in whatever style you want to do it in.”
  • “Organize and execute around your priorities.”
  • “Be 100% committed to making it happen.”
  • “There are a TON of people in the moving business TODAY, making a LOT of money. If they can do it, why can’t you do it?”
  • Watch the video to get the full training.

HOT NEWS & DEALS!

  1. Join the Moving CEO Challenge: Official Louis Massaro Community Facebook Group! A place for moving company owners to connect, share ideas, and inspire one another. Click here to join!
  2. Latest Instagram!
    Check out @LouisMassaro for new announcements, valuable tips, and enlightening videos to take your moving company to the NEXT LEVEL!

RELATED POSTS

Manage Yourself Before You Manage Your Business

Think Like A Millionaire Mover

Take Your Moving Company To The Next Level

Exit Strategies For Moving Company Owners

Respect the Struggle of the Moving Business

Posted on

Manage Yourself Before You Manage Your Business

[fb_button]

  ► Get This Episode On iTunes

Summary

In this video taken at the Moving Sales Academy 3-day seminar, Louis Massaro teaches how you must Manage Yourself Before You Manage Your Business.

Managing yourself takes discipline, but it’s an investment that pays.

  • “The only reason you’ll want to learn how to do something is because you see the result it might get you.”
  • “Every skill is a learned skill.”
  • “Your inbox is a nice, neat, organized place for other people’s agendas.”
  • “Plan your day.”
  • Watch the video to get the full training.

HOT NEWS & DEALS!

  1. Join the Moving CEO Challenge: Official Louis Massaro Community Facebook Group! A place for moving company owners to connect, share ideas, and inspire one another. Click here to join!
  2. Latest Instagram!
    Check out @LouisMassaro for new announcements, valuable tips, and enlightening videos to take your moving company to the NEXT LEVEL!

RELATED POSTS

Schedule Your Priorities For Success

Think Like A Millionaire Mover

Respect the Struggle of the Moving Business

How To Deal With Stress Of The Moving Business

Moving Company Owner’s Best Investment

Posted on

Your Moving Company’s Profit and Loss Statement

[fb_button]

  ► Get This Episode On iTunes

 

SUMMARY

In this video taken from the Moving Sales Academy LIVE seminar, Louis Massaro teaches about Your Moving Company’s Profit and Loss Statement.

 
 

If you want to succeed in the Moving Business you must review your Profit and Loss Statement once a month.

  • “When you have a sense of control over your business and know where everything’s supposed to be, you’re in a better position to deal with unexpected situations.”
  • “You can look at the P&L Statement and identify what’s wrong, identify areas you can improve, identify things that are going great, all from this one page.”
  • “Part of the stress, part of the anxiety, part of the feeling of overwhelm with your business is not feeling like you know everything that’s happening in your business, am I right? This is how you know everything.”
  • “Reviewing the Profit and Loss Statement is one of the most important things you could be doing for your business every single month.”
  • Watch the video to get the full training.

HOT NEWS & DEALS!

  1. Join the Moving CEO Challenge: Official Louis Massaro Community Facebook Group! A place for moving company owners to connect, share ideas, and inspire one another. Click here to join!
  2. Latest Instagram!
    Check out @LouisMassaro for new announcements, valuable tips, and enlightening videos to take your moving company to the NEXT LEVEL!

RELATED POSTS

Profit and Loss Statement for Moving Companies

Rule # 1 of a Profitable Moving Company: Know Your Numbers

Top 5 Moving Company Marketing Principles

Run a Tight Local Moving Operation

How to Deal with Damage Claims from Moves