Incentivize Your Movers and Create Raving Fans


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.”
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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.