SUMMARY

In this episode of The Moving Mastery Podcast, Louis Massaro shares how to incentivize your moving crews to help you create raving fans out of your customers.

• “We often think that the hourly rate that we pay somebody in their regular pay structure is enough to keep them fired up to do a good job. The reality is, as a moving company, your biggest goal on every move, your number one goal, is to create raving fans. You want to create raving fans so that you get more repeat and referral customers. In order to do that, you’ve got to have everybody on board knowing that that is our number one objective, to create happy customers, raving fans.”
• “If you don’t have incentives, if you don’t have a way of keeping your crew focused on that goal and ways for them to earn extra for money, don’t be surprised if they leave and they go work somewhere else. In order to keep quality movers around, they need to see how they can help the company, but also help themselves. What’s in it for them.”
• “When I first got in the moving business, when I started my company, I was 19, and I had no idea what I was doing. I just paid the movers their rate. We thought that that was good. Right? We’re paying you to do the job, do the job. When I started to realize how important getting those repeat and referral customers were, and then later on getting the reviews, I was like, “I need to incentivize them to really go out there and do a good job.””
• “The number one thing is to make sure we’ve got happy customers. If we’ve got happy customers, then I want to incentivize the movers. If they go out there, and they do a great job, and that customer’s happy, I want to incentivize them.” That was the start of my mover bonus points program. It was a program that I created that essentially was like, “Look, if the customer’s happy, you get points. If the customer’s unhappy, we take away points.”
• 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!

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TRANSCRIPTION

Louis Massaro:
If you want to keep your great movers working for you, you want to keep the morale high, you’ve got to have a way to incentivize them. What I mean by that is we often think that the hourly rate that we pay somebody in their regular pay structure is enough to keep them fired up to do a good job. The reality is, as a moving company, your biggest goal on every move, your number one goal, is to create raving fans. You want to create raving fans so that you get more repeat and referral customers. In order to do that, you’ve got to have everybody on board knowing that that is our number one objective, to create happy customers, raving fans. If don’t have incentives, if you don’t have a way of keeping your crew focused on that goal and ways for them to earn extra for money, don’t be surprised if they leave and they go work somewhere else. In order to keep quality movers around, they need to see how they can help the company, but also help themselves. What’s in it for them.

If you’re joining us for the first time, my name’s Louis Massaro. I’m founder and CEO of Moving Mastery, where we help moving company owners set up proven systems and processes in their business so they can increase profits, reduce stress, and live a better quality of life. When I first got in the moving business, when I started my company, I was 19, and I had no idea what I was doing. I just paid the movers their rate. We thought that that was good. Right? We’re paying you to do the job, do the job. When I started to realize how important getting those repeat and referral customers were, and then later on getting the reviews, I was like, “I need to incentivize them to really go out there and do a good job.” When we first rolled out the idea of incentivizing them, we had this 12-question call that we did with every customer after the move to find out how everything did. I created this whole big complex structure for how to incentivize the moves. Right? Were they on time? Were they in uniform? Everything from what the customer had to say.

It was 12 different questions, and we based this whole reward program structure on that. It was super complicated to even teach to the movers, like, “Hey, here’s how you’re getting paid.” I explained it all and they’re like, “I don’t get it.” Right? It was complicated to keep track of administratively. One day I was just like, “What are we trying to accomplish here? What are we trying to accomplish with this program? I was like, “The number one thing is to make sure we’ve got happy customers. If we’ve got happy customers, then I want to incentivize the movers. If they go out there, and they do a great job, and that customer’s happy, I want to incentivize them.” That was the start of my mover bonus points program. It was a program that I created that essentially was like, “Look, if the customer’s happy, you get points. If the customer’s unhappy, we take away points.

At the end of the month, those points convert into dollars, and you get paid a bonus every single month. It became a huge hit in the company because it was like, “Guys go out there and make the customer happy.” Sometimes maybe there’s a scratch on a dresser, but the customer’s still happy. They understand. Right? Things happen. If they’re focused on what you want them to be focused on, which is making that customer happy, and they make that happen, you want to give them an incentive. Right? You might be saying, “Louis, well, why would I incentivize them to do their job? Why would I pay extra to do their job?” The reality is, people need reward and recognition. Right? It’s not just about the incentive every single month. This was a big deal. We had a little, in the morning when the MBPs, as we call it, the mover bonus points were ready, we had a little ceremony. We passed them out. Who was in first place? Who was in second place? They were so excited about it.

The talk was like, “Hey, what did you get for MBPs? What did you get for MBPs?” It created a culture where we were now focused on creating happy customers, raving fans. Now, they’re also getting extra money. I’m sure you’ve got movers that come to you, they want to raise. This an opportunity to give them a raise, but they get to earn it. Right? Instead of you just giving it to them, they get to earn it. You keep it super simple. Right? If you don’t have a way to incentivize your crews and incentivize your movers, start with something super simple.

Let me give you three steps that will really help you. The first thing you’ve got to do in order to do this is you’ve just got to establish your customer rating process. Meaning, how are you going to find out if the customer’s happy or not happy? Right? There’s a few points where you could do this. You could do this on the move itself. Right? If your dispatcher is clocking the crew out, and they’re speaking to the customer, they could find out how the move went. If your CRM, I know a lot of moving companies in the industry are using CRM, which is smart moving software, which will send out immediately a text message and an email with a whole rating process that it takes them through to find out how the movers did, or are you calling the customer after the job?

You’ve got to establish, “How are we going to determine if they were happy or if they weren’t happy? Okay? Once you’ve got that established, create a simple reward program. Right? If you want to learn my mover bonus points, definitely go join our moving CEO business program, movingceo.com. There’s more information down below this video, but create something simple. If you remember, I was saying, we created something really complex. I’ll talk to private clients, or I’ll talk to moving company owners, and I was like, “I’ve got this system, and we give them this many points for this, and this many points for that. We deduct this many points.” I’m like, “Okay, administratively, tell me the process to manage that every week and every month.” They’re like, “Oh, it’s a nightmare.” I’m like, “Exactly.” Keep it simple. For us, there was customer’s happy? You get points. Customer’s unhappy? We take away a certain amount of points.

At the end of the month, those points turn into dollars, they get a bonus check. Easy, simple. Right? Don’t over complicate it. The idea is that you just want to get it going. Third step is introduce it to your crew. Right? Have a meeting and say, “Hey, listen, “We’ve introduced this new program. We want to incentivizing you guys for happy customers and doing a great job. We know you work really hard, and we want to show some appreciation for it.” Right? That’s it. Set up a reward program. Set up some incentives. Show your guys that you care. Let them go out and be focused on what you’re focused on, which is creating happy customers. They’re going to be five-star reviews. Repeat the move with you again and referrals. They refer you to somebody else. Go implement that. Let me know how it works. Until I see you next time, go out there every single day, profit in your business, thrive in your life. I’ll see you next time.

SUMMARY

In this episode of The Moving Mastery Podcast, Louis Massaro shares what areas you must train your movers on besides simply how to “move”.

• “Your movers are the front line. Your movers are the face of your company. Your movers are the ones that are going to spend the most time with your customers so we’ve got to do more than just train them how to pad a chair or train them how to load a truck. They need to know how to deal with every situation that happens on the move. They need to know what you expect them to do with each and every move while they’re there with the customer. They need to be trained in customer service.”
• “If you don’t define exactly how you want your movers to behave on the job and the steps that you want them to take from the time that they get there until the time that they’re done and then train them on that, you’re going to have a lot of stress, you’re going to have a hard time growing your company, and you’re going to have movers that are also disgruntled because they don’t have clear direction on what to do.”
• “The basics of moving, training them on how to pad, how to load, how to protect floors, how to protect door jams, how to pack, how to inventory, all the stuff that goes along with moving, that’s great… But if you miss the components that I’m about to share with you in this video, you’re not going to have the customer satisfaction and create the raving fans that you want to really build your business, to get those reviews, that long-term sustainable success in moving.”
• “When you set up your training program, of course, train them how to pad, train them how to load, train them how to use the dolly. Absolutely. But the three things that will take your company to the next level are training them in customer etiquette, resolving conflict, and training them on your company policies and procedures and how you do things, what the process is for each thing that they do. Put these in place, apply these in your business. That’s how you get to the next level.”
• 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!

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Hiring Movers: Qualities and Skills to Look For

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TRANSCRIPTION

Louis Massaro:

Properly training your movers is one of the most important things you could do to grow a successful moving company, but you’ve got to do more than just train them how to actually move. Your movers are the front line. Your movers are the face of your company. Your movers are the ones that are going to spend the most time with your customers so we’ve got to do more than just train them how to pat a chair or train them how to load a truck. They need to know how to deal with every situation that happens on the move. They need to know what you expect them to do with each and every move while they’re there with the customer. They need to be trained in customer service.

If you don’t define exactly how you want your movers to behave on the job and the steps that you want them to take from the time that they get there until the time that they’re done and then train them on that, you’re going to have a lot of stress, you’re going to have a hard time growing your company, and you’re going to have movers that are also disgruntled because they don’t have clear direction on what to do. If you’re joining us for the first time, my name’s Louis Massaro. I’m Founder and CEO of Moving Mastery, where we help moving company owners set up proven systems and processes in their business to increase profits, reduce stress, and live a better quality of life.

When I started my moving company, what is it, 20 years ago now, I was a 19 year old kid, I had no idea what I was doing. I didn’t know how to move furniture, I didn’t work for a moving company before that, and to try to train my guys was intimidating. And finally, I was like, you know what? I just need to bite the bullet here and go to my best mover and say, “Listen, I need you to show me the ropes. I need you to show me what to do.” And he showed me everything, took me under his wing. Got to work for me, took me under his wing and said, “Let’s start. Here’s how pads are folded. Here’s how we load a truck and build tiers in the truck. Here’s how we pad a dresser and here’s how we pad a chair.” And I learned the basics of how to move. That component can be taught easily once one person in your company knows how to do that.

So whether that’s you or whether you’ve got a mover that is a great mover that can train that to other people that could be taught. But what can’t be taught by other movers or that doesn’t just happen naturally is the intention of how you want those movers to act, behave, and execute on that move. Once I define, “Look, here’s our company policies. Here’s the procedures. Here’s how we do things. Here’s how I want you to show up to the office. Here’s how I want you to show up on the job. If a problem happens, if there’s a damage, here’s what you do next,” once I defined all of that, that really helped me build my company, which I eventually took to a nationwide, eight figure business where we were doing 12,000 moves a year. And I tell you that because, you may say, “Louis, it’s important to train them to be a master mover. They’ve got to know how to do everything before they get out on that truck.”

And after doing 12,000 moves a year, what I can tell you is, if there’s a claim, if there’s a damage, that could be resolved. The problems that can’t be resolved are when you know the mover doesn’t interact well with the customer, the company completely drops the ball, movers get into it on a job in front of the customer, lack of professionalism. Those are the types of jobs where that problem isn’t easily resolved. So the thing that you want to focus on other than, of course, the basics, training them on how to pad, how to load, how to protect floors, how to protect door jams, how to pack, how to inventory, all the stuff that goes along with moving, that’s great, but if you miss the components that I’m about to share with you, you’re not going to have the customer satisfaction and create the raving fans that you want to really build your business, to get those reviews, that longterm sustainable success in moving. You’ve got to make sure that you’re doing these three things.

So the first one is, you’ve got to train your movers in customer etiquette. They need to understand first and foremost where that customer’s coming from. They need to understand that, that customer is uprooting their entire life and moving to a new place, which is stressful by itself, but now they’ve got strange people, movers, coming in. No offense, whoever it is, we’re all strangers. If they don’t know you, you’re a strange person coming in their house. They’ve got strange people coming in their house and touching everything, lifting everything, opening their drawers, going through everything. It’s very invasive. So they need to understand that, you need to train them on that, and train them on how to have customer etiquette while on the job. Give you an example. So let’s say the customer says to your foreman or one of your head guys or your driver and brings them over and says, “This table here, this is an antique. It was from my grandmother. Can you guys be really careful with it?”

What will normally happen is the movers will be like, “Oh yeah, yeah. No problem. Sure.” They might be nice about it. What needs to happen is they need to go above and beyond to show concern for what the customer’s concern is. Meaning, instead of just saying, “Okay, yeah sure, no problem,” the foreman or whoever it is needs to call over the other guys and say, “Hey guys, come over here for a second. Mrs. So-and-so pointed out to me that this piece right here, it’s a really special piece, so let’s all just make sure that we pay really good attention to this and we take extra good care of that.” That little thing, even if it’s unnecessary to just get the job done, will put that customer at ease, let that customer back off the movers, and not be hovering over them in everything they do. If you’ve ever had a customer that just is on your movers for everything they do, it’s because they don’t feel like they have a professional crew there and they feel like they need to be on top of them.

Customer etiquette, if the customer has an issue, the customer has a problem, how do you want them to speak to that customer? This is the type of stuff that needs to be trained. The moving, the carrying, how to use the dolly, train them on that as well, but that will come time of doing it over and over and over again on jobs. Repetition, repetition, repetition. They’ll get better and better at that. All right, so the first thing you want to make sure you train them on is customer etiquette. That also includes, how do they introduce themselves when they get to the job? When they show up, let me ask you how you would want your movers to show up. Would you want them to show up where the drivers here, he rings the doorbell, “Hey, we’re here. I need you to sign this paperwork,” and the other guys are nowhere to be found?

Or does the whole crew show up at the door, the driver’s got the paperwork or his tablet, the helpers got pads and shrink wrap and door jams and everything ready to go, and they introduce themselves to the customer, he introduces the helpers and the rest of the crew? Customer etiquette, make sure that, that’s part of your training program. The second thing you want to make sure is in there is resolving conflict. Resolving conflict, when stuff happens on the job, what do they do? What do they do? Too many times, companies just send guys out, “Hey, go out there,” and they have no clue and what to do when things happen and they wonder why a problem, a damage on the job, or something that the customer thought was going to be one way but was a different way, or maybe the neighbor comes and says, “Hey, you guys need to move your truck,” or whatever it is, who’s training them on how to deal with those situations?

So you want to make sure that part of your training has resolving conflict. “Here’s what happens when the customer’s upset. Here’s what I need you guys to do. Here’s what happens when there’s a damage. Here’s what happens if two movers get in an argument on the job.” Train them on resolving conflict. And the last piece, and really something that will solve most of the problems, are training them on the company policies and procedures, how you want things done. “Here’s our policy on attendance. Here’s our policy on uniform. Here’s our policy on truck inventory. Here’s our policy on your hours, on clocking in and clocking out. Here’s our policy on so on and so on and so on.” You’ve got to train them on what your policies are. I talk to companies all the time and they wonder why their movers just don’t listen and they don’t do things the way that they want them to do it. And I’m like, “Are you training them on these things? Are you repeating those every single day?”

You might have a mover meeting every day or in the morning and people look for fresh topics. Well, maybe you just need to say the same thing every single day until they get it. Repetition, repetition, repetition. So when you set up your training program, of course, train them how to pad, train them how to load, train them how to use the dolly. Absolutely. But the three things that will take your company to the next level are training them in customer etiquette, resolving conflict, and training them on your company policies and procedures and how you do things, what the process is for each thing that they do. Put these in place, apply these in your business. Let me know how it works. And until I see you next time, go out there every single day, profit in your business, thrive in your life. I’ll see you next time.

SUMMARY

In this episode of The Moving Mastery Podcast, Louis Massaro shares what qualities and skills to look for when hiring movers.

• “When you are looking for movers, you have qualities and skills. Their individual qualities as a person, as an employee, and then you have their skills of moving furniture and things like that. It’s important as we go out and start to do our recruiting efforts that we have a criteria for what we’re looking for, and when you have this criteria, it’s going to basically allow you to just run them through a filter to make the whole process easy. They match the criteria or they don’t match the criteria, they move on to the next step in the hiring process.”
• “It all depends on what you’re looking for at the moment, so before you ever go to place an [employment] ad, you want to establish what your criteria is for what you’re looking for now so that you could sift through everything quickly. Movers don’t need all the skills of lumping, packing, padding, crating, etc. to be a good candidate for your team, because you can always train them on what they don’t know how to do. You might be looking for just drivers right now. You might be looking for just helpers or even helpers that don’t even have much experience, that can just lump furniture.”
• “You don’t just hire them, throw him a shirt and say, “Either go swim or sink.” You want to be able to coach them on the things that they need improvement with. Let’s say you establish that a particular set of movers are causing a certain type of damage. You want to be able to retrain them and coach them on that. Let’s say you’re getting some feedback from customers on the way that they’re handling certain things. You want to be able to coach them on that, to help them improve. But if they’re just not willing to listen and they know it all, it’s going to be really tough, unless they’re perfect and don’t make mistakes, for you to work with that individual.”
• “There are four types of applicants that are going to be coming in. Whoever’s doing your hiring, show them the Mover Applicant Quadrant. Give them this and say, “Look, this is what’s going to come in the door and I want you to establish what type they are so that we can make a decision moving forward and we don’t have to overanalyze each and every person and we don’t end up giving the wrong people an opportunity that’s going to come back and bite us.” We want to understand what our criteria is and the four types of movers that are going to be applying before we make any decisions on hiring.”
• 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 Hire Movers for Your Moving Company

5 Keys To Hiring Movers for Your Moving Company

Moving Season Targets

Moving Season Kick-Off Party

Prepare Yourself for Moving Season

TRANSCRIPTION

Louis Massaro:
When you are looking for movers, you have qualities, right? Their individual qualities as a person, as an employee, and then you have their skills of moving furniture and things like that. So what are the qualities and the skills that we’re looking for because it’s important as we go out and start to do our recruiting efforts that we have a criteria, and when you have this criteria, it’s going to basically allow you to just run them through a filter to make the whole process easy, right? They match the criteria or they don’t match the criteria, they move on to the next step in the hiring process. Makes sense?
Let’s talk about the skills that movers have. Now, they don’t need all these skills, but it’s important that you identify the criteria and your criteria is different at different times. You might be looking for just drivers right now. You might be looking for just helpers and helpers that don’t even have much experience, that just can lump, right?
It depends on what you’re looking for at the moment so before you ever go to place an ad, which we’ll talk about, you want to establish what your criteria is for what you’re looking for now so that you could sift through everything quickly, all right? Lumping, just somebody that could just pick up stuff and move it and there’s nothing wrong with that because if you have a cooperative, helpful lumper with good qualities, which we’ll talk about in a minute, that listens, that’s coachable. You could put two of them with a well qualified driver, crew chief, and you’re good. Right?
Let’s just talk about, I’ll just run through all these different skills. Loading, right? Loading is something totally different. To be able to load a truck is a learned skill. It’s not something that someone just knows how to do naturally. To be able to come into a truck and identify the furniture that you have and come in and start to build out the base. If you have an attic, what to put in the attic. What you can’t stack on top of other things. What to do with the mirrors. What to do with the flat screen TVs, right? Do they put them in between mattresses? How are they strapping it? It’s a learned skill to load a truck, but you really only need one person on a job that’s skilled at loading a truck.
Packing. Packing dishes, packing china, packing stereo equipment, all kinds of packing. An additional skill.
Assembling, disassembly and reassembly, right? The ability to go in and disassemble a bed, reassemble a bed, take the mirror off the dresser, whatever it might be and inventorying, not really a word, but you get it. Inventorying, to be able to go in and do an inventory of the items. So whether it’s a long distance job or a storage job, you’re going to be doing an inventory of everything, right? So whether you’re doing it electronically or whether you’re doing it with a inventory sheet and the roll of stickers to where you’re stickering an item and writing down what it is, and then writing down the condition that it’s in. If it’s worn, if it’s scratched, all of that, that’s a skill and this is obviously stuff that you can teach, but you need to identify what your criteria is going into the hiring process.
Padding. Being able to pad a dresser. Being able to pad a chair. Estimating. If you’re doing any type of flat rate, if you’re doing any type of long distance move. If you’re doing anything that’s not, basically, like an hourly rate, then you need someone on that job that’s going to be able to go out there and estimate how long it’s going to take before they start the job. So let’s say you give somebody a, your inventory list, right? And it needs to be broken down by room for this exact purpose. You’ve done an inventory, whether it was an onsite estimate or whether it was over the phone, and your whole estimate is based off that inventory.
Well, you want someone that’s going to be able to go out there and, basically, walk around the house with your inventory, go to each room and say, “Yeah, this is about right. This is going to take us eight hours.” Otherwise you have no basis for revision. You want someone out there that’s your eyes and ears that could estimate the job.
Crating. Crating’s a whole nother skill. You could have your entire company with nobody that knows how to crate and outsource it every time, which is totally cool. But, it is another skill that if somebody comes to the table and they know how to crate, well, there’s an additional service that you could be charging extra for. So, if you don’t know what crating is, crating is basically taking very fragile items, let’s say a chandelier, and you basically build a whole box for the chandelier to where the chandelier is hanging at the top of the box and it’s boxed in, right? Or you’re crating glass. All done typically with wood. So it’s a very carpenter-type thing to do and we didn’t really have … occasionally we’d have somebody in a city that knew how to do it, or a long distance driver that was good. Otherwise we outsourced that to somebody else, but it is a skill.
Driving. Do they know how to drive the truck? Do they have a clean driving record? And communicating. Somebody, and it doesn’t always have to be the driver, has to be able to communicate with the customer, has to be able to go over the contract, go over the paperwork, collect payment, discuss where do they want things. Somebody needs to have good communication skills.
So these are the skills, and guys, let me know if I missed something, too, down below. If I missed any skills here. But these generally are the skills that we look for in a mover. Doesn’t mean that the people that you hire have to have these skills, we’ll get to that in a minute.
So now we want to look at qualities, right? As an individual, what qualities do they have? And these are really pretty simple, right? I mean, you don’t have too high of expectations, or at least I don’t, and maybe I’ve seen people that do have really, really high expectations, which could be making it much more challenging to find guys and keep them there consistently.
They need to be respectful, to you and the customer. Good hygiene, just good hygiene. You know, some people, I talked to somebody not too long ago says they need to be clean cut, no facial hair, and I can understand the logic there. However, facial hair is kind of like the new men’s, more than half the guys you see, it might even be more, have beards. So to say that your movers can’t have that, you’re just eliminated more possible, good recruits that you could have working for you.
Helpful. Simple. They just need to be helpful, again, to the company and to the customer. Cooperative, with the customer, with their other teammates on the truck, right? With dispatch. Cooperative.
They need to be a team player. They need to, there’s no way one guy could go out and do it all. He’s going to have to have at least one more person, if not two, three, four, five, six, whatever it might be. But typically between two and three per crew, they have to be a team player. They have to know how everyone on that crew is going to play their part to have a successful move for the customer and physically capable. I’m not even going to say strong, just physically capable to, they don’t have to put a dresser on their shoulder and walk down the street with it. Their, have another person to lift that with them. There are hump straps, right? They don’t need to be able to carry all the boxes. There’s dollies for that.
But they need to be physically capable to do their part of it. You don’t need big, jacked guys. You need physically capable, but that are mindful to not bang into walls. That are not dragging stuff on the floor. They’re just physically capable.
They’re reliable. They’re going to show up. I mean, that’s, it’s hard to know that in an interview, but that’s what you’re looking for and they’re coachable, right? The same way that you coach your sales team to improve, those of you and Moving Sales Academy like the process of enhancement training and, and taking them through that process of making them better. You do that with your movers, as well.
You don’t just hire them, throw him a shirt and say, “Either go swim or sink.” You want to be able to coach them on the things that they need improvement with and so, whether that’s … let’s say you establish that a particular set of movers or particular one mover is causing a certain type of damage. You want to be able to retrain them and coach them on that. Let’s say you’re getting some feedback from customers on the way that they’re handling certain things. You want to be able to coach them on that, to help them improve. But if they’re just not willing to listen and they know it all, you know, it’s going to be really tough, unless they’re perfect and don’t make mistakes, for you to work with that individual.
So now, these are the qualities that we’re looking for. We’ve got the skill set and we’ve got the qualities. All right? Let me know down below if there’s more qualities you’re looking for, I’d love to hear about it. Let’s get the discussion going.
But now, as we bring in applicants, this is the mover applicant quadrant. There’s four types of applicants that are going to be coming in and we’re going to talk about getting the applications and running through the whole process in a minute, but I’m just laying the groundwork here to simplify this, right? Because you know, sometimes we, and everybody’s guilty of it. We make things bigger and more complicated in our minds then they need to be and if we’re able to just take things and lay them out, and it’s just step, step, step. One foot in front of the other. If this, then that.
You guys hear me talk so much about process, process, process because when you have that, it takes all the mental trying to figure every little thing out every single day and you just, essentially, hit start on the process and run it step, step, step, step, step. We want to understand what our criteria is and the four types of movers that are going to be applying.
The first type is experienced. They’ve got the skills as a mover and they’ve got good qualities. You’re interviewing them. You determined that they have the skills. They know how to pack. They know how to load a truck. They know how to do it all and their qualities are great, right? They have a great personality. They’ve got good hygiene. They’re reliable. They’re respectful in the interview. That’s type one. We all know, everyone’s like, “Yeah, I want that.” That is, that’s the one you want.
Then you got type two. They are inexperienced, so they don’t have the skills of a mover. They’ve never loaded a truck. They’ve never packed a box. They’ve never padded anything, but they have good qualities as an individual. They’re reliable. They’re coachable. They’re eager to learn. That’s type two.
Then you’ve got type three. They’re experienced, but bad qualities and this is the trap that a lot of companies fall for because they put experience and skills over quality and personality and I say that as doing it myself for years. You get the resume in or application in and they’re like, “Oh, they worked here. They worked there. They worked here. They worked there.” All moving companies. You’re like, “Oh, jackpot.” Right? But just because they have experience at another moving company does not mean they’re a good fit for your business.
You probably have these guys right now, today, out on a job that you really would like to get rid of because they’re the know-it-all. I’ve worked for every major company. I’ve been doing this my whole life. But as an individual, as an employee, the qualities aren’t there.
Then you’ve got inexperienced, no skills. No skills. They don’t have the skills to be a mover, but they have good qualities. They are a good guy or a good person. Wow. This is great for the interview, but you’re like, “Hey, are you willing to learn?” We can train you because in the interview you want to basically, you don’t want to make somebody feel like they have to have the skills, because then they’re going to lie to you about having the skills and then when you put them to the test, they won’t, and then that kind of creates a uncomfortable situation. So you want to make them feel like it’s okay that they don’t have the skills because you’re willing to train them. But if they’re like, “Yeah, nah. This sounds like more work than I really want to put in.”
Okay, so now we’ve got our four types, all right? And you’ve probably guessed it already, but type one, you hire immediately. They come in. They’re an applicant. You do an interview. You establish they’re a type one, hire. Done.
Type two, hire and train. In other words, they’re not experienced with moving. So what? So what? You don’t need them to be a crew chief. You don’t need them to be the foreman. You need them to go out and we’ll talk about how to get them into the rotation, as well. But if they’re eager to learn, and they’re a great individual, they’re respectful. They’re coachable. They’re reliable. They have good hygiene. Hire them and train them.
Type three, they come in, add them to your mover database, okay? We’ll talk about that in a minute. But your mover database is basically a place where you’re going to keep all of the information of all the applicants that come in to where, when you’re in a pinch, when you’re in a situation where you need somebody and you might be willing to put up with the bad qualities, because you just need someone with experience for a busy weekend or for a certain job, that you could call on that person. But that’s not your first pick or second to come in for the company because we all know the bad qualities, that’s what causes more problems with customers than lack of skill. I’ve seen more problems caused by attitudes of movers, then even damage to the furniture.
Type four, keep looking. In other words, type four comes in, maybe you established it there. They’d be a great salesperson or something like that. Don’t force the situation. The idea is to keep the door, keep it revolving. Keep people coming in to where you don’t have to settle and you don’t try to have to force people into certain positions. But if they’re, have great qualities and you’re like, “Hey, I could use you in this other role.” Great. But otherwise, keep looking, all right?
So that’s your quadrant. Whoever’s doing your hiring, show them this. Give them this and say, “Look, this is what’s going to come in the door and I want you to establish what type they are so that we can make a decision moving forward and we don’t have to overanalyze each and every person and we don’t end up giving the wrong people an opportunity that’s going to come back and bite us.”