Category Archives: Performance & Productivity

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Schedule Your Priorities For Success

Spend Time Working On What Matters For Your Business

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It’s a new year and the air is filled with endless opportunities. Do you have big goals and dreams that you want to accomplish this year? When you look back at last year, did you accomplish all that you wanted to? We all have goals that we’re trying to accomplish while at the same time struggling to manage the distractions of everyday business and life. If you’re going to take your business to the next level, you need to get clear on your priorities and make sure they’re on your calendar.

5 Steps to Schedule Your Priorities For Success

 

  1. Establish your priorities – Before you can get to the next level and achieve your goals, you need to get crystal clear on what your priorities are. What are the things that you need to be working on that will make the biggest impact?
  2. Determine the tasks – Once you are clear on your priorities, you need to break them down into tasks. If your priority is to increase sales by 30%, what are the steps you need to take to do that?
  3. Put each task on your calendar – It’s not enough to just know what steps you need to take, you need to make sure they get done. The best way I know how to do that is to get them on the calendar. Create blocks of time where you will work on the most important things that will move the needle forward in your business.
  4. Schedule a set time for email – Email is a distraction that needs to be managed. Unless you’re in customer service or sale, you should only check your email twice per day. Once in the morning and once in the late afternoon or evening. If you’re going to accomplish your goals you have to guard your time to focus on priorities. Your inbox is a nice organizing system for other people’s priorities.
  5. Schedule meetings, appointments, and commitments – Your calendar should be a reflection of what you are actually doing each day. Not a to-do list but a guide of where to be and when. get all of your meetings, appointments, and commitments on the calendar. This way you know what time you will and will not be available to work on other priorities.

You can’t manage time, you can only manage yourself within the time that you have. Being busy won’t get you to the next level. Working on the right things with the time you have and cutting everything out of your day will. Guard your time like it’s the most precious resource you have and get your priorities on the calendar.

Watch the video above for the full episode.

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Like this episode? Please share it! My blog and videos are ad-free ONLY because you share my work!

How can I help? What challenges are you facing in your business? What areas could you use some tips in?

Leave me a comment below and I will be more than happy to get back to you or post a video on the topic.

Follow Louis on Instagram for daily tips and motivation to grow your moving company.

 

Full Transcript
[The following is the full transcript of this episode.]

Hey, my friend, it’s Louis Massaro, CEO of Moving Mastery and founder of Moving Sales Academy. When I’m working with my one-on-one coaching clients, the first thing we do is we establish where they are now. What level their company’s at, what’s going on, what kind of revenue they’re doing, what their infrastructure looks like? And then we talk about where they wanna take their company. What level do they wanna get to, how big do they wanna grow, how much money do they wanna make? And then we break down a step by step plan to get them there.

Well, after we break down the step by step plan, we need to make sure that those steps are implemented. I wanna see those steps on the calendar, I wanna see them actually put them on the calendar and block out time to start working on what really matters to move their business forward. ‘Cause listen, we all know that it’s way too easy to just show up at work, show up at your office and be totally inundated with other people’s problems, other people’s priorities. And even though it’s your company, you have to stay focused on what’s really important and what’s really gonna take you to that level that you wanna get to. And if you’re gonna do that, you have to be intentional about it and you have to be disciplined about it. And it has to be on your calendar, because if it’s not on your calendar, no matter how much motivation you have, no matter how much hard work you have, no matter how much hustle you put in, you’re either not gonna get there or you’re not gonna get there as quick as you could if you’re intentional about scheduling the stuff that matters on your calendar to really move your business forward.

I wanna talk about the importance of putting your priorities on your calendar and getting ’em handled. First thing you wanna do is establish your priorities. What three things are gonna really make a huge impact? What three things that if you got them done, would just put you so much further and so much closer to your goal that it would just make a tremendous impact on your business? You have to know what your priorities are because it’s, again, it’s too easy to show up and also and this person calls in and wants to talk about this or this person emails you and wants to talk about that. You have to stay focused. As the leader of your company, you have to know what your priorities are and know what you’re working towards every single day.

Then, once you know the priorities, you have to determine the tasks. If your priority is that you wanna grow a company to $10 million, you have to break that down. How are you gonna get there? You can’t just go, “I’m gonna work hard every day until one day I come up for air and I’m at $10 million.” You need to have a plan for getting there. Once you establish your priorities then you break it down into tasks. What are the steps that it’s gonna take? Who needs to do the steps? Are they you? Or are you’re gonna delegate certain steps? Once you have the steps, you need to put ’em on your calendar. This is so important. I know a lot of people… This was me for a lot of years. I didn’t learn this for years. I had several offices open by the time I learned this strategy and I can tell you, it was a game changer for me.

It’s one thing to have a list. When I first started, I’d literally get a legal pad out and just make a list of all the stuff I needed to do to accomplish my goals. I’d list it all down on several sheets of paper and just start crossing it off, crossing it off as it got done. And it was effective for the most part and if you’re doing that now, I’m sure it’s effective for the most part. But if you wanna reach the level of success that you’re trying to get to quicker, and you wanna get there for sure, you need to make sure that the things that need to get done are blocked out on your calendar to get accomplished.

Let me just tell you what I mean by this. For example, Monday morning when you come into the office, you have your calendar and you know I’m working on this specifically. If one of the things you know you need to do is work on your marketing campaign, you’re gonna block off an hour, hypothetically, okay. It all relates on how much time each task needs. But the point is, your calendar, your electronic calendar on your computer is literally gonna have blocks of all the tasks. Instead of just having them on a sheet of paper, you’re gonna have them in specific time blocks to where you know what you need to do. From 8:00 to 9:00, you’re working on this. From 9:00 to 12:00, you’re working on this. And every week you’re gonna wanna plan that out to make sure that it’s on the calendar. Because if it’s not on the calendar, you’re not gonna get as much done and you’re not gonna get as much done quickly and you’re gonna end up falling victim to dealing with other people’s priorities. You’re gonna end up falling victim to answering and responding to emails that are other people’s priorities and not your priorities. You need to take charge, be disciplined and intentional about what you do with your day.

What makes the difference between the people that really succeed at high levels and the people that are constantly falling short of where they wanna grow to. Because listen, we all have different goals, we all have different dreams, there’s no right or wrong answer. Your goal may be, “I just wanna make enough money to take care of my family and live comfortably.” And if that’s your goal, cool. If your goal is, “Hey, I want a $100 million company,” and that’s what you feel you wanna shoot for, cool. The idea is that whatever it is, you need to be intentional about getting there. You can’t just show up to work, work hard, and think that it’s gonna happen. Having specific things on the calendar is a game changer. Then what you wanna do is once you basically schedule out the priorities, all the things, all the tasks that you need to do to reach that level of achievement that you wanna get to, or accomplish a certain project or a certain goal are on the calendar, schedule a set time for emails, okay?

There’s no reason that you should be responding to emails all day, every day. This is a trap that’s holding so many people back. And as a business owner this should not be you. Unless you are at a level where you’re dealing with sales, or you’re dealing with customer service where you need to respond to people immediately, there’s no reason that you should be checking your email more than three times a day. Two times a day, ideally. Once in the morning, once in the evening. For me, I do a spot check in the morning to make sure there’s nothing important. Then I go to work and I handle my priorities. I work on the things that are gonna move my business forward. And then at the end of the day, I have a block of time on my calendar set to process emails. Not check them, process them, go through them, respond. If I need to set up a certain task and put it on my calendar for some time in the future, I’ll do that. If I need to set a meeting with somebody and put it on my calendar, I’ll do that. But I process my emails and I’m done with them.

You know why? Your emails are not your priorities. Unless you’re waiting for a response from somebody on a specific item that’s part of your priorities that’s gonna help you move forward, it’s other people’s priorities. It’s what’s important to them. And if you’re gonna lead and you’re gonna be a leader and grow your company, you need to stay… Again, discipline on your priorities and not worry about what everybody else has going on. Don’t worry about if you don’t answer them back right away. You don’t need to put an autoresponder and say, “I’m gonna email you back tomorrow or the end of the day.” Just have your set time of working on emails. Make sure your staff knows that you only respond to emails at this certain time. And make sure they know how to get a hold of you otherwise. If they have an issue, they need to text you. If they have an issue, they need to call you. If they have an issue, they need to come to your office. Let them know you’re not checking emails all day. Only if you’re dealing with customer service, only if you’re dealing with sales should you be on your email all day. This is a time killer and it’s keeping people away from achieving their dreams.

Then schedule meetings, appointments, and other commitments on your calendar. Your calendar should be what you do from the minute you wake up to the minute you go to sleep should be on your calendar. You go to the gym? When do you go to the gym? Put that on the calendar. You have a haircut on Thursday? Put that on the calendar. You have a meeting with your sales team Monday morning? Put it on the calendar. You have to know what you’re working with time-wise. We all have the same 24 hours in the day. You have to know what you’re working with and if you know, “Hey, Monday morning, I have a sales meeting with my staff, I need an hour at the end of the day for processing my emails, I’ve a meeting with whoever at noon.” Okay, you know what other times you have to work with so that you can schedule in your priorities. Fill up the calendar, fill up the time with stuff that’s really gonna move you forward.

And you know what? If something comes up and you need to move, you could literally drag and drop stuff and move it on your electronic calendar on your computer. Like Monday comes and something really comes up, don’t be nervous to schedule things. Because a lot of times what’ll happen is people will be nervous to schedule things on their calendar, ’cause they’ll say, “Well, what if something comes up? What if an emergency comes up?” If an emergency comes up you move whatever you had there to a different time spot. You don’t just cancel it, you find another time slot for it. This is so important. If you really want… Listen, you may be very, very successful. I was very successful before I ever learned this. Once I learned this, I became more successful and less stressful. That’s the key. This is gonna help you be in control of your day, which helps you to be in control of your life, which will help you to be in control of your business. If you have any questions, as always, leave ’em down below. Until I see you next week start putting stuff on your calendar. Go out there, profit in business, thrive in life. I’ll see you later.

 

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Profit and Loss Statement for Moving Companies

The Numbers Don't Lie - Review Your P&L Monthly

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One of the most important things you can do as a business owner is review your Profit and Loss Statement every month. This will give you clarity into what is really going on inside your company. The numbers don’t lie, they’ll tell you the truth about areas that need work and the areas that are doing great.

Review Your Profit and Loss Statement Monthly

  1. Record all income and expenses – You need to make sure that all of your income and expenses are being recorded in an accounting software like Quickbooks Online.
  2. Review a detailed P&L – Before you can dive into your numbers and start analyzing what’s going on, you need to make sure that all your numbers are correct. Make sure that each transaction is entered into the correct category within your accounting software.
  3. Review summary P&L with the percentage of income – Now that you verified and made corrections to ensure your numbers are right, it’s time to review them. Print off a summary P&L statement and add the filter for the percentage of income (% of income). This will give you a better perspective into what is going on than just looking at the total numbers.
  4. Mark it up and write all over it – When you are reviewing the statement, write all over it. Circle, highlight, make notes and write out questions you may have or things you need to look into.
  5. Identify areas of concern and opportunities – Now you want to look for any areas that could be causing your profits to be lower than they should be. You’ll also want to identify opportunities where you can take something that is working good and enhance it.

This routine of reviewing my P&L every month is one of the most important things that I did for my companies. This is what really gave me the clarity and confidence I needed to get to the next level. Once you know your numbers, things become very clear. Get in this habit and gain more control over your company’s future.

Watch the video above for the full episode.

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Like this episode? Please share it! My blog and videos are ad-free ONLY because you share my work!

How can I help? What challenges are you facing in your business? What areas could you use some tips in?

Leave me a comment below and I will be more than happy to get back to you or post a video on the topic.

Follow Louis on Instagram for daily tips and motivation to grow your moving company.

 

Full Transcript
[The following is the full transcript of this episode.]

Hey, my friend, it’s Louis Massaro, CEO of Moving Mastery and founder of Moving Sales Academy. Do you ever feel like you’re just not on top of your business? Like there’s certain areas that you just can’t see? You know there might be an issue, or there might be a problem, or might be some additional opportunities, but you just… You don’t feel that you can see it all in front of you. I wanna share with you a process that, for me, really was one of the defining moments, and what helped me take my business to the next level, and just have that total clarity of what was going on, and be able to make the decisions that I needed to make to grow my business, to make adjustments, and to make improvements. And that was reviewing my profit and loss statement every single month.

If this isn’t something that you do now, you need to watch this, because this is very, very important. And I know a lot of people shy away from it. I’ll talk to them about it, and follow up with them in a few months, and they haven’t started this process yet. And a lot of times, it’s being scared of what you’re gonna see. When you start to unravel your numbers and start to take a look at what’s factual, what’s actually there, how your company’s really doing, some people, they want to know, but they don’t wanna know. You need to know this information. It’s the only way that you’re gonna grow your business. It’s the only way that you’re gonna scale your business. It’s the only way you’re gonna keep yourself from hitting an iceberg and crashing your ship. You need to make sure that you’re on top of these numbers every single month. I talked about this broadly in the video on knowing your numbers, which is number one… It’s the number one rule in the “10 Rules of a Profitable Moving Company,” but I talked about it broadly. I wanna specifically talk to you about how to go about reviewing your P&L, your profit and loss statement, every single month.

First of all, I would recommend, if you don’t have an accounting software, that you sign up for QuickBooks Online. It’s super easy to use. It’s only, I think, depending on the package you get, maybe $15 to $30 a month, depending on what level. But it’ll allow you to integrate your bank account, your credit cards, everything in there, and it’ll just be very seamless. If you have a bookkeeper, it’ll be very easy for them to use, and if you don’t, you’ll be able to figure it out as well. The first thing you wanna do is make sure that all your income and expenses are recorded. What that means, is making sure that everything is recorded into QuickBooks. Now, if you use a different accounting software, that’s fine. It just matters that you use an accounting software. Don’t try to do all this with pen and paper. And I don’t care what level you’re at, I don’t care if you just started out, you need to spend this money, and get QuickBooks, or some other accounting software for 15 bucks a month, super cheap.

Record all of your income, all of your expenses. And you wanna make sure that it’s all categorized exactly. Your income, you wanna have local moving income, you wanna have long distance moving income, you wanna have storage income. You really wanna break it down. You could even go further and break it down as packing income as well. Then for your expenses, you wanna have operational expenses, you wanna have labor expenses, you wanna have everything broken down and really drilled down, so you know what’s what. You need to get it inputted into your accounting software, that’s the first step. Now, once it’s being done… Ideally, you would have a bookkeeper and this would be happening on a regular basis. The bank accounts would be integrated with QuickBooks. Your credit cards would be integrated with QuickBooks, everything would go in there. When you make a deposit, it’d be put in QuickBooks. When you ran credit cards, that would be integrated and that information would go into QuickBooks. And you would have a bookkeeper that’s going in, and basically categorizing all of that, to put it in the right spot.

The thing that you’re gonna wanna do first and foremost, once that’s being done, is review a detailed P&L, a detailed profit and loss statement. Every single accounting software should allow you to print out either a summary or a detailed P&L. You could either print it out or you can do it in Excel. I’m a big fan of doing things in Excel, but when it came to this, I would always print this out, hold it in my hand, get out a pen. And what you wanna do with the detailed P&L, is you wanna make sure that everything that was classified, everything that… All the expenses were put in the right category.

For example, if you… Your fuel expense, you wanna make sure that that’s listed under fuel for your trucks. Maybe you pay your own personal fuel for your car out of the company, you wanna make sure that’s in a different category. You wanna make sure that whoever is categorizing this information, your bookkeeper, they could very easily make some mistakes as to exactly where things should be categorized. You go through this, you make the adjustments, write ’em out, either go back into QuickBooks, and make the adjustments yourself, or hand this back to your bookkeeper. I would hand it back to the bookkeeper, and they would make the adjustments, make the corrections, and then I would be able to review a summary P&L, and I would add the percentage of income filter to it. What this is, is now you won’t have… On the detailed P&L, you have every single transaction for the month. It’s gonna show every single deposit, whether it be cash, whether it be credit cards, every single check that was paid out, every single credit card statement, but on your summary, it’s just gonna show income. Local moves, how much income? Long distance moves, how much income? Storage, how much? Total of all income.

Then it’s gonna list all of your expenses. What you wanna do is print out the summary and add on percentage of income. The percentage of income, what that’s going to do, is tell you each one of your expenses, what percentage of your total income was spent on that. For example, if you had your marketing, and under marketing, it said that you spent, let’s just say $10,000. Your total income, let’s say, was $100,000. Next to marketing, where it says you spent $10,000, it would say 10% of income. That’s a real good indicator and a number that I like to look at, to be able to tell how you’re doing. That percentage jumps out off the page and really will speak to you, a lot of times, more than just the numbers themselves.

It’s a great identifier to be able to tell how you’re doing, and if you’re keeping things in a certain range. For example, your labor percentage. Your labor percentage should pretty much be the same all the time. It fluctuate very little, but it should be the same. I could tell you, by reviewing my P&Ls, in one of my offices, I found that my labor percentage was high. Well, when I started to look into that, I found that the dispatcher had a little deal going on with the movers, was paying ’em extra hours and getting a little kickback after they cashed their check. I found out about this, why? Because I was reviewing my P&L. I’ve also found out about claim situations. This is how you find out what’s going on in your company, because when things aren’t right, you could see it in the numbers and numbers don’t lie, very important.

Again, I would print that out, mark it up, write all over it. Circle things, highlight things, write all over it, whatever you see that’s not right or you have a question on. “Why did we spend so much buying moving equipment this month?” Circle it, write your question next to it, and then you could go research it later. This is so important. Take the time to review the numbers, to go through them. It may be intimidating at first, if you’ve never done it, but I can tell you, once you get in this process, you’re gonna have total control over your company. You’re gonna know exactly what’s going on, and if there’s problems, they’re gonna be sticking out to you, and you’re gonna be able to resolve ’em.

And the last thing you do is identify areas of concern, and areas of opportunity. Every single month, you can go through it and say, “Well, what, why?” The area of a concern, “Why did we spend so much money in moving equipment?” You need to look into that. Maybe you’re losing moving equipment, and you don’t know about it, especially if you’re not hands-on every single day with your business, and you’re remote, and you have people running things. Your P&Ls, what’s gonna really help you determine what’s going on, and then there’s opportunities. You could also see that you’re doing really well in a certain area and maybe you could ramp up your efforts there. Maybe you see that you’re only spending 3% of your total income on marketing. Well, you have a lot more room that you can go, you have a lot more money that you could spend in marketing. That’s an area of opportunity.

By going through this every single month, I’m telling you, it’ll change your life, it’ll change your business. You’ll be on top of things and this is how you need to run your business. Once I started doing this, once I started understanding this, this is where I found out everything that was going wrong. This is where I found out all the adjustments I needed to make. This is where I was able to open additional locations, scale those locations, know when we needed to pull back on certain expenses, know when we could really push forward with certain things. If you’re not doing this now… And listen, I know people at multiple locations, I know people that are van line agents that don’t do this. I’m not talking to someone who is just starting a moving company, this goes for everybody. And you could be very, very, very successful, you could be making a lot of money and still not do this. You may be watching this, say, “I’m good. I’m making a lot of money.” But you know what? You could be making more money, if you do this. ‘Cause it’s not always what’s coming in, it’s also what’s going out. And if you don’t visually see what’s coming in, and what’s going out every month, there’s a lot that could be happening that you don’t know about.

Please, I challenge you, start reviewing your P&L every single month. Regardless, if you’re just starting your business today, do this every month. If you’ve been in business 20 years and you’re doing $5-10 million a year, do this every single month. You’ll thank me for it. I’m telling you, this is some of the best advice I could give you. This is one of the things that really helped propel me to that next level in my business. If you have any questions, as always, leave ’em down below. Until I see you next week, go out there every single day, profit in your business, thrive in your life. I’ll see you later.

 

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Mover Recruiting Process [Download]

Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) For Hiring Movers

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Movers are the most important part of your business. Without great movers performing the moves, all your sales and marketing efforts will be irrelevant. You also don’t want the lack of good movers to be the reason you can’t scale your business. It’s important to have a mover recruiting process as a standard operating procedure. When you need to hire movers to handle your increased workload, you can’t waste time. You need a step by step process to get it done quickly and efficiently. 

In all areas of your moving company, it’s important that you have “SOP’s”, standard operating procedures. These are a set of processes for how your company handles each function step by step. In the video above, I’m sharing with you my SOP for Recruiting and Hiring Movers.

The idea of having these procedures written out in advance is so that when the time comes to hire, no one needs to think about what to do. It’s already been thought out ahead of time. Do you ever have employees that “don’t do what they’re supposed to do”? What if they had step by step written instructions on what to do, with no room for misinterpretation? That’s what having Standard Operating Procedures will do for your company.

In my previous post 5 Keys To Hiring Movers For Your Moving Company, I talked about the importance of having a mover recruiting process. In this week’s episode, I explain exactly what I mean when I talk about a mover recruiting process.

You can download a copy of my Standard Operating Procedure for Recruiting and Hiring Movers for FREE here.

This is an example of how detailed SOP’s should be. When creating your SOP’s don’t worry so much about the design, focus on writing out the step by step process for how to perform each function in your company. Don’t feel like you need to create them all at once either, start with one at a time and build on that.

What areas of your business would benefit the most from your staff knowing EXACTLY what to do? Dispatching crews in the morning, scheduling on-site estimates, reconciling your cash receivables?

If you want to scale your business and have it run smoothly, having set processes is crucial. Feel free to use my SOP for Recruiting and Hiring Movers as a template. You can DOWNLOAD a Free copy HERE.

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Watch the video above for the full episode.

Like this episode? Please share it! My blog and videos are ad-free ONLY because you share my work!

How can I help? What challenges are you facing in your business? What areas could you use some tips in?

Leave me a comment below and I will be more than happy to get back to you or post a video on the topic.

Follow Louis on Instagram for daily tips and motivation to grow your moving company.

 

Full Transcript
[The following is the full transcript of this episode.]

Hey my friend, it’s Louis Massaro, CEO of Moving Mastery, and founder of Moving Sales Academy. Recently, I did a video about the five keys to hiring movers for your moving company. And one of those keys was to create a mover recruiting process. And since then, I’ve been getting a ton of questions on, “What does a mover recruiting process look like?” So what I’m gonna do with you today, is I’m gonna share with you my standard operating procedure, my SOP, for recruiting and hiring movers. This is the same standard operating procedures we used in our company when we needed to hire somebody. I’m gonna share this with you today. We’re gonna go ahead, and we’re gonna go through this, and I’m gonna give you the steps that you need to take for part of your mover recruiting process.

Essentially, this is how all of our standard operating procedures would look. You have your logo at the top, the identifier, your document number, which we would keep a log of all the standard operating procedures that we had, processes for everything that we did. This one is policies and procedures for mover recruiting and hiring, and really, as you go through it, it kinda tells you who’s involved, who needs to approve it. There’s a lot of stuff here. I’m gonna share this with you guys. I’m actually gonna put a link that you can download, and I’m gonna give you a free copy of this as well, so you could go ahead, and hire some good movers.

And basically, once you get through the introduction of it, I’ll let you know what equipment and software you’re gonna need. And then you get to the procedure, and really, it’s as simple as this. You start off by placing an ad for employment. This will break it down for you exactly what you need to do. The goal of this step is to place an online ad, in order to receive phone calls and emails of potential candidates for the mover position. It breaks it down. Under that, this is set up to where you have an office admin plus dispatcher involved in the role. So the office admin… But this could be anybody. If you’re a one-man show, this would all be you. If you have a bigger office, you could break this down to where everybody plays their part. So the office admin would place an ad on Craigslist using the employment ad movers doc. We have an ad, the document for specifically hiring movers, we place that.

So basically, you take a Word document and every time you place an ad, you just copy it from the Word document onto Craigslist. We’re gonna do that no later than 9:00 AM, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday when you’re trying to hire. The thing with Craigslist, is that when you place an ad, the ad starts to go down throughout the day, so you wanna place an ad at least once a day during your hiring period. We would do it Monday through Thursday, and this way, we had time to basically field all those emails, and all those calls. You wanna make sure, in the ad, you have your company name, phone number, a link to your company website, and you wanna have an employment application on your website for movers. You don’t necessarily need to have it visible to the public, but it’ll be a link that you’ll be able to put in your ads. They’ll be able to fill out an online application. And this way, you get it in a nice, clean, easy-to-read format. You wanna make sure the pay range is in there.

Next, you wanna process all the employment ads. The goal of this step is to find well-qualified candidates to interview. By the way, I’m reading this line by line here: “The office admin will check the inbox for emails associated with incoming applications at 9:00 AM, 12:00 PM, 3:00 PM, Monday through Friday.” When I talk about processes, when I talk about having a standard way of doing things, this is what I’m talking about, not place an ad and just deal with it as it comes in. You have set times that you go look at those emails. You have set times that you check those voicemails, to see if anybody called in. This way, you’re being proactive and not reactive. This is how all your processes should be set up.

I’m gonna skip some of these steps. I’m gonna give you guys a copy of this, but I’m not gonna walk you through every single step. But essentially, you get down to, the office admin will ask candidates on a phone interview for their email address, email ’em the link to the application, have the candidate fill out the application online. Then there’s an “if this, do this” and “if that, do that,” so if the application looks like a well-qualified candidate, the office admin will call, and perform a phone interview with the candidate using the phone interview script document. And if the application would not qualify for a hire based on the mover qualification sheet, the office admin will send the candidate the following email, which, basically, we have a pre-written out email, which is a mover application denial letter.

Then you schedule the interviews, then you bring ’em in, then you decide, your dispatch manager or your operations manager, who’s gonna actually do the interview. Once you hire them, once you screen them, once you do the background check, then you set up their folders. Then you get the folders and the paperwork scanned, and you have copies of all that. All of that is in here. This is what your processes should look like. It doesn’t have to be a full on, huge document like this. This is how we did it. Even if it’s a one-page, bullet points, step-by-step-by-step how things are done. That’s how you start getting organized. That’s how you’re on top of things and you’re not just flying by the seat of your pants. Anybody could grab this. Anybody could take this within my company and start doing it. If we needed to replace a dispatcher or the office admin, we could say, “Here’s one of your procedures that you’re responsible for,” hand it to them, they read it, everything’s spelled out, they know exactly what they need to do.

So when I talk about having a mover recruiting process, this is part of it. This is placing an ad online, and then everything you need to do after that, to get them onboarded into your company, get the paperwork set up, and get them ready for training. It’s all in here, but there’s other parts to this too: Community outreach, going to colleges, going to job fairs, reaching out to churches, to see if they have anybody that needs jobs. Every part of your business should have procedures set up. I’m gonna let you go ahead and download this for free. This is a mover recruiting process, start using this.

The most important thing is, when you decide that it’s time to hire, decide, make it a priority, and go through these steps. Because movers are the most important part of your business. If you don’t have good movers, everything you do for sales, everything you do for marketing is irrelevant. Listen, if you have any questions, as always, leave ’em in the comments. That’s how I did this today. I had a lot of questions, people asking me about the mover recruiting process, so I decided to shoot a video, and I’m gonna go ahead and share this with you as well. So until I see you next week, go out there every single day, and profit in your business, and thrive in your life. I’ll see you later.

 

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How Successful Moving Companies Handle The “Off-Season”

5 Questions To Ask Yourself As You Come Out Of Summer

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Moving Season is coming to an end. How do you plan on dealing with it? Chances are things are going to slow down a little bit. Are you going to complain about it and count the days until summer? Or are you going to take action and make it count? I’m going to share with you how successful moving companies handle the “off-season”.

Every year as summer was coming to an end, I would sit down and look for ways to make the most of the off-season. To me, this was a time to be proactive and implement things that would move my company forward. All successful moving companies should take advantage of this time as well.

5 Questions To Ask Yourself Heading Into The Off-Season:

  1. What’s on my to-do list that I haven’t got around to? – During the summertime in the moving business, it’s usually all hands on deck. It can be so busy that the only thing you have time to do is handle the day to day operations of covering moves. Now is the time to look at all the things that have been getting put off and see what needs to be handled.
  2. What ideas do I have to generate more business? – I would imagine your mind is always working on new ways to generate more business. You probably have some ideas written down or floating around in your head. Now is the time to pull them out, prioritize them and pick some that you can implement.
  3. Where can I reduce expenses and cut costs? – It’s easy to roll out of moving season with fat pockets and not be thinking about your expenses. That’s why it’s a good habit to look at your expenses every year as things start to slow down.
  4. What areas of my business need to be tightened up? – You know the answer to this. The area in your business that you know is not on-point but you just have been too busy to come up with or implement a solution. The off-season is the perfect time to implement new processes and get things tightened up.
  5. What can I do to improve my physical health? – If things slow down for you, use that time to get yourself in better shape. Do you need to start eating healthier? Working out? Even if you start off small by changing a few foods you eat and going for walks. When you eat good and exercise your mind is sharper, you have more energy and you feel better. Don’t you think that could help you accomplish more in your business?

Take action now

Pick two or three projects that you are going to work on this off-season. Pick projects that once you complete them will make a MAJOR impact on your business. Do you need to hire and train better movers? Get your accounting and reporting on-point? Or set up a strong sales process?

Figure out what that is and then get it on the calendar. Start chipping away at them. This is how successful moving companies handle the “off-season”.

Now is the time, don’t wait!

Watch the video above for the full episode.

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How can I help? What challenges are you facing in your business? What areas could you use some tips in?

Leave me a comment below and I will be more than happy to get back to you or post a video on the topic.

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Video Estimating Apps for Moving Companies

Start Giving "Visual" Estimates From Your Office With These 2 Apps

Giving an accurate estimate is a huge part of a successful move, you know that. Without an accurate estimate, you are likely to have problems on the move. Although you can get an accurate estimate over the phone, on-site estimates have always been the best way to get to most accurate estimate. Nowadays, movers have another option. Video estimates! In the episode, I share cool new video estimating apps for moving companies to give accurate estimates without leaving your office.

Two companies have created apps that allow you to give an estimate without getting in your car and driving to the customer’s house. These apps will allow you to transition from a call with your customer to a video conference call using the customer’s cell phone. The customer will then walk through their home and show you everything they are moving so that you can take an accurate inventory.

Video Estimating Apps for Moving Companies

  1. iMover – Starting with a free plan!
  2. SurveyBot – Starting at $20 per estimate.

Both of these apps are designed to do pretty much the same thing. Their features are slightly different. I would suggest you check out both and see which one appeals to you.

You can always use FaceTime or Skype to do video estimates as well, but they lack the features and professionalism that these two apps provide. These video estimating apps for moving companies offer a cool service that will help you differentiate your company from the competition.

Watch the video above for the full episode.

Free Video Training “6 Stages of Building a Moving Sales Machine”

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How can I help? What challenges are you facing in your business? What areas could you use some tips in?

Leave me a comment below and I will be more than happy to get back to you or post a video on the topic.

Follow Louis on Instagram for daily tips and motivation to grow your moving company.

Full Transcript

[The following is the full transcript of this episode.]

Hey, my friend, it’s Louis Massaro, CEO of Moving Mastery and founder of Moving Sales Academy. Today, I wanna talk about estimating moves and the different ways that we could go about doing that. Typically, traditionally, there was either you went and did an on-site estimate, where you went out to their home and visually saw everything that they have, or you did an estimate over the phone and try to gather an inventory and put it into your system, so you can get an accurate weight and give them an estimate. Well, nowadays, you could do video conferencing and video estimates. There’s software out there like iMover and SurveyBot that are basically apps that the customer would download on their phone and be able to take a recording of everything that they have in their home. So they would go room by room and take a recording, and from that recording, you can then give them an accurate estimate based on what you’re seeing instead of based on what they’re telling you. So now, you don’t have to go out to the house, spend the time and the fuel, and pay the extra commission to the sales person. And you also don’t have to risk giving a phone estimate and not getting the accurate inventory.

So with these apps, you could actually do it live with your moving consultant on the phone, so your moving consultant could actually be, it could be like a FaceTime call. But what will happen is as they’re doing this, your consultant, your sales rep is seeing what’s in the customer’s home and they’re able to talk to them at the same time while this is going on. It’s pretty amazing. I’ve recently downloaded a few of them and it’s really a great technology and to be able to provide that to a customer, to be able to say, “You know what? How about I just send you a link right now while we’re on the phone.” And if they’re calling from their cellphone, you could essentially turn that cellphone call into a video call just by sending them a link and having them click on it. It’s pretty cool stuff.

And customers don’t really want you in their house. They wanna get an accurate estimate and they believe the way to do that is for you to come out there and give them a quote. But if you’re able to do it and see everything that they have without going out there, it saves them from having strangers walk through their house and it saves you from having to go out to homes. Now, it doesn’t replace on-site estimates completely, although it could. There’s still a need for on-sites but there’s a lot of times where you don’t need to go do an on-site but a phone estimate’s not gonna cut it. By doing a video survey, you have the information right there. And what happens is, once you do that, and I keep doing this, I think it’s the coolest thing. So when you take that video survey and it records, you get to keep that information in the cloud. So if there’s ever any question, if there’s ever any issues, if there’s customer service problems at the end of the move, you have the recording of what the… Remember, this is not you with the phone, this is the customer showing you everything that they have.

So I just wanna make sure you guys knew about this technology. I know it’s been out there for a little while now. Check out iMover, check out SurveyBot, they’re two great options. I think iMover might have a free, premium, freemium, whatever it’s called package. I think SurveyBot’s a little bit more expensive, but check them both out and see which one works for you. At the end of the day, you really could use FaceTime, you really could use Skype. But if you wanna give a professional image, if you really wanna give that customer a unique experience, try one of these apps. Try them out, see if you like them, and you’re just gonna be able to do things a little bit different. It’s 2017, the technology out there is crazy and it’s just gonna keep getting better. And I just wanna applaud these two companies for coming up with these ideas, and I hope to see some more great stuff out there like that. If you have any great technology, if you have any useful software apps, tools, anything like that, that moving companies would benefit from, let me know, I’d love to hear about it. Until next week, go out and profit in your business, thrive in your life, I’ll see you later.

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

4 Moving Company Reports to Increase Profits

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Are you reviewing your numbers on a regular basis? Do you have a set of reports that you are using to run your business? In this episode, I’m sharing a valuable set of moving company reports that you should be looking at weekly and monthly to run your moving company. Rule #1 of 10 Rules of a Profitable Moving Company is Know Your Numbers.

In my new eBook, 10 Rules of a Profitable Moving Company. I write about ten rules that if followed consistently will lead your business to make more money. Once I implemented rule #1 in my business, it allowed me to scale and grow to a level that I would have never achieved without knowing my numbers.

The 4 moving company reports that you want to review every month are:

1 .Profit and Loss Statement – Most people use this just to turn over to the accountant at tax time. If set up correctly and reviewed monthly, you can use your P&L as the GPS to navigate your business. The P&L will show you all of your revenue, expenses, and profit. If you are not currently reviewing you P&L monthly, you should start. It will give you tremendous clarity and insight into how your business is performing.

2. Marketing ROI – Modern day marketing is complex. There are many different sources of marketing you could invest in. How do you know what is working and what is not? How do you know which sources are profitable and which ones you are losing money? Your Marketing ROI (return on investment) report will tell you how each source of marketing is performing. It will give you your booking percentage, the cost of acquisition, percentage of revenue spent and average revenue per source.

3. Completed Moves Report – This moving company report will tell you how many moves were completed, total revenue, packing revenue, average move, and estimate vs. actual totals. You may have a good feel for what is going on in your business, but getting in the habit of reviewing this weekly and monthly will make you aware of things you might not see on a daily basis.

4. Sales Rep Performance – Review this weekly and monthly. This is where you will be able to get an overall understanding of how your sales team is performing. You want to see how each moving sales consultant is doing on an individual basis. This report will tell you things like how many leads they received, how many quotes they gave, booked jobs, on-sites, and cancellations. Having this information leads to great coaching opportunities to help them improve. Mostbet Portugal

These four moving company reports are the bare minimum of you want to be reviewing every month. There are many other reports that will give you great insights into how your business is performing. Start with these four. The key is consistency. Schedule time every month to review these reports. Make it a priority. Treat it as if your business depends on it because it does.

 

Watch the video above for the full episode.

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How can I help? What challenges are you facing in your business? What areas could you use some tips in?

Leave me a comment below and I will be more than happy to get back to you or post a video on the topic.

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Follow Louis on Instagram for tons of great quotes.

 

Full Transcript

[The following is the full transcript of this episode.]

Hey my friend, this is Louis Massaro, author of 10 Rules Of A Profitable Moving Company and founder of Moving Mastery. Today is a big, big episode. We’re gonna be talking about the 10 rules of a profitable moving company. I just recently wrote an e-book, The 10 Rules Of A Profitable Moving Company. It’s free, it’s on my website. Make sure you download it. But today, I wanna go over rule number one of the 10 Rules of a Profitable Moving Company. And that’s, ‘Know your numbers.’ In the 10 rules, there’s no real particular order of importance, but know your numbers is definitely the number one rule to becoming a profitable or a more profitable moving company.

And let’s talk about the numbers for a minute, and which numbers I’m referring to. The first set of numbers or reports, because the numbers go into a report and that’s how you essentially know them, and that’s how you know your numbers by viewing the reports. So the first set of reports that you wanna see that is by far… You have to be doing this on a monthly basis, is your profit and loss statement. And I know some of you may be watching and you may say, “Yeah, I know. I look at my profit and loss, I look at it quarterly, or I check it out once a year.” Or, like a lot of people out there, it’s only being used to turn over to the CPA to do the taxes every year. And I’m only telling you this information because that’s what really helped propel me to the next level.

When I first started, I didn’t know what I was doing. I didn’t know anything about numbers or books. I was a 19-year-old kid. I didn’t even know how to write a check. I would go buy moving supplies at the moving supply store and bring cash that I had from the job and just pay ’em. My CPA finally said, “What are you doing? Why are you doing that?” I was like, “Why make two trips? Why take the money out of the bank and then have to write the guy a check? It seems like double work to me.” Obviously, I learned that that’s not the right way to do it, and I got my books in order, eventually I hired book keepers, and got all that under wraps. But it’s not something that you’re just… When you go open a business that anyone just teaches you. But you have to do the profit and loss. Let me tell you why it’s so important. And you wanna do it monthly. And for those of you who don’t know what a profit and loss statement is, it’s basically all the revenue that you made in that period, let’s just say for the month. All the revenue that came in, and then all of your expenses. So you take the revenue minus the expenses, and then that’s your profit.

But you could drill down a little bit further and start getting into percentages. This helped me one time a lot, actually. But one time it helped me where I was looking at my P&L on a monthly basis, like I always do, and I do it in two stages. I first take a look to make sure everything’s in the proper category. For the last 15 years I had book keepers doing the work, but it’s my company, and I wanna make sure that everything is correct and they put every single charge, and every single source of revenue in the right spot. So I go through and I check the detailed profit and loss, and I just make sure everything is in the proper category. Then once it is, I print off the summary and I go through the summary. You’re gonna be able to tell so much about what’s going on in your business.

There was a time where I’m sitting and I’m looking at the P&L, and I’m like, “Why is my fuel percentage so much higher this month than it’s been over the previous months?” And the fuel price was actually down, fuel prices went down. As I started to drill down into it to see why that was, first I thought maybe there was a mistake in the P&L, and turns out that I had a group of movers that were running their own little business at my expense at the fuel station. They were fueling up cars for people, trucks, ’cause it was only diesel, so they were fueling up other people’s trucks and getting half the money in cash. Now I caught this right away, and many of you may say, “Yeah, but I would know that that’s going on.” You know what? I didn’t see it with my own eyes. I was there. I felt like I had a good feel for what was going on in my business, but I didn’t see it. My dispatcher didn’t see it. Nobody brought it to my attention. I found it in the numbers. Because when something is wrong with the numbers, it stands out immediately. The numbers don’t lie, they’re black and white. It’s very simple. They are what they are. If the information is entered incorrectly, then they’re gonna be right.

So imagine if I didn’t look at that for a year, or ever, I would’ve never known that was going on or it woulda took a lot longer for me to find out. So those are the types of things where every month you find something. Every month you see an expense that shouldn’t be the way that it is, and you’re able to do something about it. It’s just an amazing regular practice to get into with your business. And if you don’t have an accounting software, go online, use QuickBooks online. It’s like, I think, $15 bucks a month. It’s very easy to use, very simple. Don’t let your profit and loss statement be something that’s just for the bookkeeper or just for the CPA. And this goes for everybody. I know people with multiple locations, I know people that are van line agents, I know people with very successful businesses and they’re still running their business based upon the amount of money that’s in the bank account. You can get by like that but if you wanna take it to the next level, if you want to drill down to become more profitable, review your profit and loss every single month. Set aside a little time, put it on your calendar and start doing it. Believe me, you’re gonna start finding areas where you can improve and increase profit.

The second report that you’re gonna wanna look at again on a monthly basis is a marketing ROI. Essentially, this is like a profit and loss strictly for your marketing. So you’re gonna have all of your marketing, all the different sources, all the leads that came in for all those different sources line item. What the booking percentage was for each one, what your cost of acquisition was for each one. So in other words, how much did it cost to get each one of those moves and then what the cost percentage was. With this report, this… When I finally had my call centre going and I grew it to over 50 sales reps on the phone, this is what really help me scale. Because when you don’t know what marketing is performing and what’s not, you’re scared and nervous to try different sources because what if it doesn’t work? How do you gauge that? How do you judge whether your marketing source is working or not working?

A lot of times we count on our sales people like, “Oh, this source is… ” “These leads aren’t really that good,” or “Wow, these are great, the phones are ringing off the hook.” But in reality, it’s not about whether the phones ring off the hook or whether you have to call 100 leads in order to get three jobs, it’s a matter of how profitable they are. So you need a marketing ROI report to be able to tell you how profitable your marketing sources are. It’s so important, especially, in this day and age, there’s so many different ways to market. It’s not like 10 years ago where you had a Yellow Page ad, some direct mail and a few other things going on. There’s a lot of different lead sources and you may only be getting a few from this one and a few from that one. You want to be able to know every single month how they’re performing, because then from there you can make adjustments.

The third report that you’re gonna wanna look at every month is your Completed Moves Report. You’re also gonna wanna look at this one weekly. Weekly and monthly, your Completed Moves Report. So basically the Completed Moves Report is essentially the moves that you did, the moves that you completed. But what was the average move? What was the estimated price versus the actual price? How much packing was sold on each move? When you’re looking at these numbers on a monthly basis, you see things that you can then implement into your business. If you start looking and say, wow, how can we increase sales? How can we increase and bring in more revenue? Well, we could sell more packing. Okay, well if every month you look at your Completed Moves Report and you see that you’re selling, I don’t know on average $50 per move in packing.

You say, you know what, let’s… How can we get that to $100 a move in packing? And you come up with a plan and you figure it out and you need to gauge that every month, you need to look at it and see if you’re making progress. Or what happens if your average local move is normally $860? And all of a sudden one month it’s like $620. There might be another problem, there might be something going on that you need to look at or you might be advertising or marketing with a source that’s bringing in very small moves or you may have lost a source of big moves. Having this information, I could try my best to tell you what it’s gonna do for you as a business owner, but only until you have it in front of you will you be able to know how impactful it’s gonna be for your business and what you can do and changes you can make for your business. Very, very, very important.

And the last report that you’re… And again these are bare minimum. These are not all the reports that you wanna see but if you’re not doing these, start with these. There’s many more advanced reports that you can get into. You may be doing more now, but to me these are four of the most important reports that you need to be looking at. And this one, again, is another weekly and monthly which is your Sales Rep Performance. You wanna know how every sales person, rep, whatever you call them, moving consultant, how they’re doing weekly, how they’re doing monthly. You can’t just assume that they’re doing good or not doing good, you have to look at this because they could fall off. They could be going through something personally where it’s affecting their mind and they’re not producing the numbers that they’re normally producing. And if you’re able to see that and you’re able to track that trend quickly, you can do something about it. You can pull ’em to the side, talk to them, train them more, maybe they need more training, maybe they need some motivation, maybe they need a higher bonus. Whatever it may be, you need to track that weekly and monthly.

I had somebody recently ask me, “What do I do? My sales reps aren’t motivated. Last year, these were their numbers.” Well, first thing you need to do is stop looking at their numbers in yearly… You need to look at them weekly, you need to look them monthly, and you need to help them to develop better sales skills to be able to sell more. So these are the four reports you need to be looking at. And I’m stressing this ’cause I know if you start doing this, you’re gonna be able to make your business more profitable. Not because of what I’m… I’m just giving you what to look at. I don’t know exactly what you’re gonna see when you get it, but I know when you get it, if you’re running a business and you’re a business owner, you’re smart enough to know, that by this information, I know what my next step is. I know by what I saw in Completed Moves, that I need to take action and I need to do something to raise our average move. Maybe I need to raise our price to get that up higher.

My profit and loss statement. Maybe your books are a mess right now. Don’t get discouraged. If you haven’t been looking at them ever, or you only look at them once a year or occasionally glance at them or just something you use for the CPA, understand it’s gonna take you a little bit of time to clean them up and get them in order, but it’s gonna be the best investment of time you ever made, trust me. Your marketing ROI, don’t guess anymore what’s working, what’s not working. Don’t be fooled because you have a marketing source that makes the phones ring off the hook and it’s exciting and there’s adrenaline, but in reality, it might not be profitable. You don’t want moves at any cost, you want moves at a certain cost, to where they’re profitable.

And what else is there? Your salesman’s performance. This is huge. If you’re coaching, and you’re doing enhancement training with your sales team, and you’re looking at where they’re struggling, and you’re helping them overcome that so that they could sell more for you and your company, you need to be looking at that weekly, monthly. Once you’ve set up the templates for these, and once you’re able to figure out where you’re gonna pull the data and where you’re gonna get the information from, it’s easy. Then you schedule some time once a month. Yes, you. Don’t have somebody else review these reports, this is your business, and your profits. This is rule number one of 10 Rules of a Profitable Moving Company. It’s about becoming more profitable. And when you’re more profitable, the owner of the business receives the benefit. So take the time, schedule it on your calendar, whether it’s a couple different days where you have two hours a day, or whether you take one full day a month and you just go through all the numbers. Trust me, it’s gonna be one of the best things you ever did. Until then, I hope this was helpful. Go out, profit in business, thrive in life. I’ll see you next time.