Best Of: Mover Reward Program, Employee Bonuses, and Best Lead Sources

Hey my friends, it's Luis Massaro and welcome to a Best of edition of the Moving Mastery Podcast.

In this best of episode you'll get a behind the scenes look at some of the live trainings that I do for moving companies to these might be clips from my Moving Sales Academy, live three day seminars or live online training that I do. Or they might be some of my Moving Mastery Monthly trainings and highlights from those that I do every single month for our members. I know you're really going to like these because it's more of a Deep Dive tactical training and a look at some of the work that I do as a trainer and success coach. I focus so much on helping you take your moving business to the next level by implementing new processes and strategies to help things run smoother while increasing profits. That's what these special episodes are all about. These are my best of trainings right here and exclusively on the Moving Mastery Podcast. In these live trainings, a lot of times I'll have a presentation on the screen or a flip chart where I'll be drawing stuff out. You won't be able to see that, but you'll still get an idea what I'm talking about. So make sure you break out your notebook and a pen for these episodes and take some really good notes because there's some really valuable training on what you need to implement to grow your business. And if you want to get more Deep dive training like this and be able to interact with me in this type of training, make sure you join our Moving Mastery Monthly training program. This is the program where I go live with our students every single month and I train on a new topic or I teach a new marketing strategy. This is our monthly subscription program where I do live Q and A and actual live coaching with our members every single month. It's called Moving Mastery Monthly and you can Access it at luismassaro.com monthly that's louismasaro.com monthly L O U I S M A S s a r o.com monthly to get more Deep Dive training similar to this. And I could tell you if you like this, you're going to love that training program, but I'll let you see for yourself. So let's go ahead and jump in to a Moving Mastery Podcast Best of Training.

Foreign.

Hey, hey, hey. What's up guys? Welcome to Moving Mastery Monthly December. I'm so excited to have you guys here. I love this time of year. It's an amazing time to reflect on everything that's gone right and everything that's gone wrong in our business. I just want to say what's up? I see everybody's logged in. Let's see, we got Lauren. What's up, Lauren? Come on. Got questions already. If you guys have questions, make sure you put them in the chat roll below. I know we have a lot of new people that are joining us this month. Welcome. Put them in the chat roll below. If it's a question, start it off with some question marks because I'm going to go through from here and I'm going to be able to answer them.

You guys want to go mute? All right, so who else? Eric. What's up, Eric? Trey. What's up, Trey?

Tony, how you doing? Paul. What's up, guys? Thanks so much for being here. Gabriel. What's up, Gabriel?

Kirsten, how you doing? All right. So happy to see you guys. This is going to be an amazing live cast today.

Awesome. Make sure you guys log in, ask questions. If you don't know how it works, if it's your first time being here, we're going to go through. I'm going to teach on some topics for about 45 minutes. At the end, I'm going to be answering all your questions. I'm going to go through them and I'm going to be giving away prizes for asking questions. If you're watching this in the replay, you're not going to be able to win any prizes. But if you're here live, you're going to be able to win some prizes. Ask your questions. I'll do my best to get to all of them. I have you right here. Moving 1, 2, 3, 4. Let me know your name. Moving 1, 2, 3,. I want to know who's here. I want to get to know you guys personally. All right, so.

All right, let me put this down for a minute. Alright, so this month I want to go over mover reward program. Okay? A way to incentivize your movers to do a good job. So I'm going to share with you how I did it and what I want you to do is, you know, take that and create your own form, use it exactly how I'm going to show it to you or create your own way of doing it. Alright? We're also going to talk about holiday bonuses, paying out your staff, your movers, what you should pay them and how I used to do it. And then I'm going to share with you the top marketing sources for 2017 and what you should be doing for 2018. All right? So again if you're not logged in, log in, sign into the chat role, ask your questions. I'll be answering them at the end. I'll have you right here on my phone. But let's get started. All right.

So first off, what is it that you want your movers to do, right? What do you want to reward them for? Because as much as we feel like that is their job and they should do their job and do it well, if you incentivize them, they're going to pay closer attention to it, right? So what are some of the things you want them to do? You want them to show up to work on time, in uniform, ready to go, right? With a good attitude. You want them to show up to the job on time, introduce themselves to the customer, be in uniform, have a nice, clean, neat truck. You want them to be excellent customer service. You want them to go help your customers with whatever they need. You want them to not cause damage. You want them to stay in communication with the office so that you know what's going on and you're able to clock out the job. But really, it's pretty simple. All you really want them to do is make your customer happy, right? I mean, all those things, it all just leads to a happy customer. Because if you have a happy customer, that's referrals, that's repeat business, that's five star reviews, right? So I've been getting a lot of questions about how do I reward my movers? How do we set up a mover rewards program to incentivize them to do a good job? So, you know, you want to take a look at all the things you want them to do. And I've played around with so many different ways of doing this in the past to where, you know, we literally broke down each and everything. They showed up to work on time. They didn't cause any damage. The customer's happy. They gave us a review. They gave us a review, and it actually stuck online. And what I basically came up with, after years of toying with different ways to simplify this process and make it easy, was what I called mover bonus points.

So this is a very simple system that we used. Okay. And it works like this. I mean, basically, what is it you want? You want a happy customer, right?

So we would start calling after the move, calling and emailing to find out how we did. Okay. We didn't base it on reviews. We didn't base it on anything other than the customer's happiness. How do you know if the customer's happy? Would they recommend you to friends and family, would they use you again? Right. On a scale from 1 to 5, how would they rate you? Now these are basic questions that you could find out if they're happy with the overall move and if the customer was happy with the overall move. Every mover on the job. So a happy customer is a happy customer.

Mover gets one point.

Okay? Per hour worked.

So let's say a job was, let's say we had an eight hour job.

So that's going to equal eight points.

Okay? We're going to get to what the points mean in a minute.

But that's it. You call your customers after the move, you find out, you do a customer service survey, you find out how everything was and at the end of it, instead of making it so complicated. Now if you want to make this very detailed and reward them and you know, for each individual thing that they do, they arrived on time, they get a point, right? They didn't cause any damage, they get another point. However you want to set it up, that's fine. But I find that it's. Just make it simple on yourself, don't make it complex. Because the idea with this is not to just put it in place and start it and maybe it fades away, it's to keep it going, ongoing. So I like to make things as easy as possible. And really if they're happy, that's all that matters, right? Even if there was a little scratch, but they understand and they'd still recommend you to friends and family and they'd still give you a five star review, but they're happy, that's all that matters, right? So.

What happens.

If the customer's unhappy, right?

For whatever reason.

You'Re talking about rewarding your movers, okay, so if the customer is unhappy for any reason other than.

Something that had some specific reason that had to do with the office, but they were happy with everything the movers did, but they had a problem with something that happened in the office.

Your movers need to be rewarded if they're happy. Now if they're not happy and it was caused by the movers causing damage.

Being late, having a bad attitude, smoking on the job, using the customer's bathroom and bombing it out, whatever it was that they're unhappy about.

They'Re unhappy, right? So this is an unhappy customer.

Alright, so now what you need to do, because you're rewarding them for the happy customers, but now.

Deduct 20 points. Okay? So if they did two jobs in a day, let's just say.

They did an eight hour job. And then let's say they went and did a three hour job. And the eight hour job.

Was happy, they got eight points. But then the other job, they weren't happy. You deduct 20 points. Okay? Now again, take this. If you want to take it exactly like this. This is exactly how I did it. Great. If you want to make your own variation of it, great. But this is the system that I found works best for incentivizing the movers. Now, what are the points? I got to stop putting this cap on. What are the points actually mean? Right? So one point.

For us.

Equaled $1. Okay, now for you, you could do the math. Maybe one point equals a quarter. Maybe one point equals 50 cents. Maybe it's $2. For us it was $1. Okay? So.

Let's say you did. They had 200 hours in a month, okay. Which is, you know, very reasonable.

200 hours. So they. And everybody was happy, right? They would get 200 points.

Which equals.

$200.

Now, if you had two jobs that there was an unhappy customer.

This would get deducted by $40. So now 160. You know, there's a big struggle and a lot of people want to know, how could I charge my movers, right? There was damage. I want to charge them. I had to give the customer money back. I had to charge them. Well, you're not necessarily charging them and taking money out of their paycheck. Okay? What you're doing is once a month, you're gonna give them their mover bonus points. I call them MBPs, right? All the movers would be talking about their MBPs.

So now they're working and they know, hey, I've worked 200 hours this month. I have an extra 200 bucks coming to me. And then all of a sudden, customer's unhappy, they lose 20. Another customer's unhappy, they lose another 20. Okay? So again, you're not taking money out of their paycheck, which in most states you cannot do. And by the way, check with your labor attorneys and your local labor law before you do this. But you're essentially not taking money away from them. You're just taking away points, right? And the points convert to dollars, which you pay them a bonus on. Okay? So this is the simplest way to start rewarding them. And what you want to do is you want to have a meeting with your guys, okay? And you want to. You know what we did when we introduced this, we basically had a meeting and said, listen, we're having some issues with customer service. We're having Some issues with damage. You know, what are we going to do? Are we going to fire everybody? No, we're going to take action. All right? We took three people in our office and named them the claim busters, right? And they were responsible in the office for making sure that, you know, everybody was trained, that we were on top of any customer service issues. But then we told the movers, listen, you're all getting a dollar an hour raise as of today. They're all like, yeah, yeah, yeah, but you're gonna have to earn it. How many of your movers are like, hey, let me get an extra dollar an hour. Let me get an extra dollar an hour. Everybody wants an extra dollar an hour. Well, this is a way for them to get an extra dollar an hour, but they have to earn it. It's not, hey, you've been here for five years or you've been here, you know, you work a ton of hours, you do a great job. I don't care what you did in the past. I'm going to give you the extra dollar, but you're going to need to earn it. You're going to need to make all these customers happy. And if that customer is happy on that job, you're going to get a point which basically equals a dollar. Okay? So.

One point, I know there's a lot on the board here, equals $1. But if they mess up, you got to take away a lot of points. Okay? So you have to deduct 20 points.

For unhappy customers. Now you want to go 40. You know, don't be extreme. But because, listen, if they're habitually causing problems, if they're an issue, if they're constantly causing damage, if they're constantly an issue for your dispatcher, you just need to get rid of them. If you're not able to turn them around, if you're not able to talk to them, you just need to get rid of them. So this is assuming, you know, you have a good to decent workforce, all right? You basically are giving everybody a dollar an hour raise, and it's theirs to have or it's theirs to lose. Our movers love this. Okay? So do the math. See what this would add up for you. But the idea is this, if you want to look at this and say, you know, hey, this is a big expense for us, right?

Why would I, you know, take on this extra expense? You need to look at what you're spending in claims.

Right? And customer service.

Refunds to make customers happy.

And the idea is that you're better off spending the money to keep your movers happy than spending the money to give customers for damaged furniture, for customer service complaints. Okay, so that's the mover bonus points. I would implement this or a variation of this, or if you have something that you have work and put it in the chat row, I'd love to hear about it. But you need to reward them. You know, we talked about this when we went over to movers profit circle, right? Rewarding your movers is gonna. It's just gonna change the whole morale. I mean, this was. I didn't do this till. Oh man, maybe I was in business like 12, 13 years before we put this in place. And it made such a huge difference. All you. The buzzword was mbps. Mbps. You want to use this exact terminology? Take it, use it. But all the movers would talk about is our MVPs. How many points do I have? How many points do I have? Right? And they were so concerned about losing 20 points, which equals $20, right. That they think a little bit more when they're on the job. They take a little extra precaution. They know, hey, I'm on a five hour job. I could either earn an extra dollar per hour or I could end up losing 20 bucks if this customer is not happy. So I'm kind of foreseeing some of the questions that I might have, and one of them I think might be, do we do this on an individual basis or the whole crew? Anybody that's on that job, the customer's happy, they get a point. They need to work together for this one common goal. This is the goal.

This is the goal.

All right, so I'm going to take a look at some questions because I want to answer this before we get to the end.

Let's see what we got here. You guys are active today. I love it.

All right, so Lauren says on a three man crew, if the client is unhappy, do you drill down to find out if it was everyone or a single mover? Do the men that didn't bomb the bathroom still get the bonus? Or do you treat it as a team? You know, like I just said, I would treat it as a team. But in isolated incidents like this where it's, you know, one mover did something specifically and the customer can say, hey, all these guys were great. I was happy with everything. But this one incident, this one action that this one mover took caused the problem. That's a judgment call. But it's a judgment call, like to keep your other guys happy. I would. In that. In that Specific circumstance with him bombing the bathroom, I would actually pay everybody else out. Okay.

Oh, yeah. A lot of people ask that question. If you can't reach the Lauren again, if you can't reach the clients to find out how the move went.

Nobody gets any points. You know, it's. It's really. You know, this is going to be a collaboration of effort. You know, you can't put this in place if you don't have the people in place in the office to start reaching out to the customers. But that's something you want to know because once you know that they're happy, then you could bring them down to review fetching. Right. Then you could start getting them to leave you reviews as well. So, yeah, I would not.

No points.

Given and no points taken away for that.

Okay. All right, I'm gonna move on from this. All right, let's talk about holiday bonuses. All right. You know, it's the 16th. Some of you may have already made your decision on what you do for the holidays, but I'm gonna let you know what I did for the holidays. Every Thanksgiving, which already passed, but I'm just gonna include it in this. We would initially, we would give our movers, like in our colder offices, we would give everybody a turkey, right. Because we could leave them outside and they'd stay cold. Then as the years passed, we just started giving everybody $20 gift cards, right. To go buy Thanksgiving dinner for Christmas. And for the holidays, you basically are going to have.

Your.

Know, your admin, staff.

Sales.

And movers.

So for admin.

If they're somebody that's been with me for over a year, right. They're. They're part of the team, I would usually give them one week.

Of their salary.

So if they made $600 a week, I would give them $600 in good times. Now you need to. What you need to do is make yourself a spreadsheet or a list, whichever works for you. I always did it in a spreadsheet. And I would put everybody that I was given a bonus to, how much I was going to give them, total it up at the bottom. And if the company could afford it, great. And if the company could not afford it at that time, because remember, December is a slow month. If the company could not afford it at that time, maybe this person made $600 a week and I wanted to give them $600. Maybe I need to reduce it to $300. I always wanted to be generous, but there were years where, you know, it just wasn't feasible. When you look at that total number, you say, I can't swing this total number. All right? So I would go back through. That's why I like to build a spreadsheet and, you know, make some reductions as needed. All right, so admin, one week. If they've been with you less than a year.

I would say anywhere from.

50 to 150.

Bucks as a bonus. Okay. Depending on how long they've been there, depending on the position. I did a lot of this, you know, on gut as well. Right. These were kind of my guidelines. But what I would do is essentially put everybody in the list and say, you know, what do I feel I want to give this person as a token of my appreciation? And I always wanted to make sure it was enough to where they felt appreciated. Okay? So that's what I would do for the admin staff. You know, sales, you could give anywhere from, you know, if you did.

You know, again, if they're new, let's say you gave them 50 bucks, right? If they're a rock star and you want to give them, you know, an extra $500, you could do that as well. But with sales, what I like to do, and we talked about this in the past, is I would do more of a December to remember as well on top of this, It's a little late for it now to start, but essentially, they would earn raffle tickets for all the sales that they had during the month. And then at the end of the month, we would do a drawing. Okay. And they could win prizes. TVs, brand new, iPhones, iPads, things like that. So they would have that on top of that as well. And movers.

We would do anywhere from $20.

To $300, with an occasional exception of somebody that's. And I'm talking about local movers. You know, if somebody was.

This is someone who's, like, brand new, right? Like, they just. They're a helper. They don't even work full time.

You know, they've only been with you, you know, very short amount of time. You know, this is, you know, your standard mover that works a full. Full schedule. We give them 300 bucks. Anything in between, right. 50, 100. Again, you need to look at it as a whole, right? So when you start looking at it and you go, okay, I have John.

Sally.

Jim. And you're like, all right, John, 300. Sally, 600, Jim, 600. Right? And then you start looking at all your salespeople, and then you start looking at all your movers, and then you look at the total.

Are you comfortable with this? Right? This is, this is the biggest part of the whole thing because a lot of times what we'll do is we'll start giving out bonuses to people without looking at what it's really doing as a whole to the company. All right? So this is how I would handle holiday bonuses, all right? Now, I've had people in the past that were, ran my companies, you know, they were, you know, essentially they ran a location, they were in charge of a location.

They were maybe a call center director, right? Or a sales director, where I've given checks for 5, 10, $15,000 at Christmas time, okay? So I understand that that's not the norm. But if you have somebody who's like your right hand man and you really want to take care of them at Christmas time, right hand man, woman, whatever, you know, you could come away from this for sure and really bonus them out, all right? It's your time to be generous. All right? If you have it, do it. If you feel they deserve it, do it. But typically, rule of thumb is that you would give somebody one week's salary.

As a bonus, all right? That's kind of what typical full time, 40 hour a week employees expect. But, you know, it's up to you. Make sure you can swing it. Okay? And remember, if you're, you want to check with your CPA too, all right? Because bonuses aside, even though December is a slow month, even though you have January and February that are going to be slow months, this is the end of your tax year in December. Okay? So I'm kind of stepping aside from this for a minute and just letting you know if you have a huge profit come December, well, essentially you're going to pay taxes on all that. All right? So if you have certain expenses that can be paid out in December, you know, if you're looking to buy, I don't know, a big purchase, or you're looking to, you know, get a truck, or you're looking to bonus people and you want to reduce your tax exposure for this year, make sure you do it in December, okay? Again, talk to your cpa, see where you stand. It's very complicated. I'm not a cpa. I'm not giving tax advice. But I could tell you that every December that was part of what I did. When I reviewed November's P and L, it was looked and said, all right, how much profit are we looking at for the year? Because we're going to have to pay tax on that. What am I going to need to buy in the next Month or two months that I could buy now to reduce that exposure. All right, so that's holiday bonuses. Let me see if. You know what? I'm going to change it up today. I'm going to kind of go through some questions as we go. All right? Not. Not save them all till the end. So I want to see if you guys have any questions on that.

Cody, what's up, Cody?

The movers get paid the reward daily, weekly or monthly? We would do it monthly. Okay.

Number one, it's, you know, it's less administrative work. If you're doing it daily, it's. It's too much. You need time to get a hold of the customer to make sure that you actually were able to get them on the phone. And also when you hand them a few hundred bucks every month, that's a nice bonus. Good question. You know what? Let's get Cody. You know what? I didn't even give away. Who did I miss here?

Lorne. What are we going to get, Lorne? Let's get Lauren. Lauren kind of has everything. Let's get one. Let's get Lauren two VIP tickets to the next moving sales academy, which, by the way, guys, is looking like it's going to be this spring. I'll keep you posted on that. Let's get Lauren two VIP tickets. We'd love to have them back that Miss anybody else?

Okay.

Cody, let's get Cody. Let's get Cody. You know what, Cody? We had these water bottles made. This is what I use. And on them they say, profit in business, thrive in life. There's not nothing else on there. It's just a reminder as you're working through the day that when you're at work, it's time to make money. When you're home, it's time to enjoy yourself and thrive in life. We're going to go ahead. Ray's going to get your information on the side chat, and we're going to send this out to you. These are awesome. I love them.

See Ted. What's up, Ted? I think Ted's new and welcome. A lot of companies pay employees for reviews. What are your thoughts on that? You know.

I don't think it's a bad idea, but I would definitely incorporate it with your other platform of is the customer happy or not happy? Right. I feel it's the company's responsibility to get the review and to gather the review and get the customer to give the review.

But if the customer is happy, you should be able to reach out and still give the review. So, yes, a Lot of companies will give extra for a review. And you know what? It's a good idea because that review is very, very valuable. In other words, if you get a positive review, it's worth a lot of money to you. If you get a negative review, it costs you a lot of money. So you definitely do that. All right, let's see. Lauren. Another question from Lauren. On top of the cash, did you do Christmas dinner social every year? I did a holiday party. Sometimes we would do it out at a restaurant. Sometimes we would have it catered into our office at that time. We would also give away prizes. We would give out the bonuses. Always did a holiday party. And you could keep it really simple if you haven't already put something in place, you still have this upcoming week. You know, even if you took an afternoon and catered in lunch for the office and, you know, gave out some bonuses and recognized people for a job well done. Yeah, always did something like that. Great question. I'm going to come back to these questions. What's up, Chris? What's up, Marion? Stanley, how you doing? All right. By the way, if for some reason I miss anybody and I don't give you a gift for after asking a question, let us know in the chat roll. I'll make sure we send you something.

Let's talk about the lead sources that have been crushing it this year.

All right, so.

I actually did a post this week on. On Facebook about diversifying your marketing, and there was a ton of comments on there. I don't think it was any of you guys. But, you know, people are like, yelp's a scam. Angelist is a scam.

You know, basically anyone that charges you for marketing, people are saying they're a scam. And I don't believe that at all. I believe that if you're going to make your company get to that next level, if you're going to grow and you're going to thrive, you cannot just count on organic business. You cannot just count on repeat and referral customers if you want to grow. Right? Because if you spend money on marketing and you're doing such a good job that you get the repeat and referral customers, you're just going to get more repeat and referral customers. Okay? So those of you who are new and you don't know my thought process on marketing, test it, track it, tweak it, make sure you know your numbers. Okay? Try everything and make adjustments based on the profitability. All right, So I want to give you 10 sources that have been working great for My clients for movers that I talk to this year, these to me are the top 10 marketing sources. All right? So.

Number one.

And by the way, this isn't number one as in the best. These are in no particular order. So I'm just listing them all here. Okay?

Equate media. So this is a lead source, okay? And I know a lot of people are new to getting into lead sources. And you know what I can say? So when I say lead source, you know, customer goes on, they submit their information, and then they'll basically give the lead to, I think, five movers, okay? So with a lead source, a third party lead provider, your conversion rate is never going to be as high or nearly close to as high as a lead you get from a website, from your website, as a lead you get from a referral. All right? These are going to be very low converting, but if you run them through the sales process, they could be very profitable. And they are very profitable. So, you know, I was talking to somebody yesterday who just has an amazing business on Yelp, five star reviews, killing it, crushing it for a long time. It just began a ton of business from Yelp and started buying some leads and was like, these things just, you have to call them and they're just not. They don't convert. And I had to say, listen, you're a little spoiled with the Yelp leads, okay? The same way that I was spoiled for years with Yellow Pages. You know, when I started, I put a big yellow page ad in and my phone just rang. I didn't have to call leads, I didn't have to. All the stuff that we have to do today is much more challenging than what we had to do years ago. But the same thing I told him is you have to stay on top of it. You have to be able to change quickly and adjust and adapt to the times. Otherwise you're going to get crushed. I got crushed with the Yellow Pages. All of a sudden, they stopped working. All my eggs were in one basket and I had to scramble to figure out what other types of marketing I need to be doing. Same thing happened to a lot of people earlier this year with Yelp, okay? They changed a few things in the back end, whatever you want to call it, okay? Algorithm change. They're trying to get more money out of you. Whatever it is, accept it for what it is, because they're in business to make money, like the Yellow Pages were in business to make money, like all the lead providers are in business to make money. It's your responsibility to try Everything. And then stay on top of your marketing ROI to see what's working and what's not so you can make adjustments and stay ahead of the curve. All right? So don't be afraid to try leads. Another lead provider.

A newer one Quote Runner.

They might not be able to get you a lot of leads since they're newer, but they're quality leads.

Next one.

Moving.Com. another great lead provider, been around a long time. Again, these are going to convert at a low rate. So if you've tried these in the past and maybe you feel that they didn't work and maybe now you have some more tools, maybe you're enrolled in Moving Sales Academy and you have that whole process to go through, these can be very profitable for you. All right. Another new one.

Is called Move Matcher.

And what moonmatcher will do is they'll actually send you a phone call. So the customer will call you or email you. So instead of them giving you the lead like the rest of these, and you have to reach out, the customer will reach out to you. So you're going to pay a higher dollar amount for these leads. But these are hotter leads. Okay, this is very good. This is a new one. Definitely try these out. All these 10, you should be jumping in and testing, tracking, tweaking, all of them. Okay, five.

Thumbtack. Now, a lot of.

You know, a lot of people will feel that there's a lot of low cost movers on thumbtack, which is true. You know, thumbtack's a good place for someone who's just starting out to get some leads, to get some small jobs. But if you work these leads properly, it's also a place for larger companies to get more leads as well. Okay. Because remember, if you're trying to grow and you're in one market.

The customers are going where they go, right? So if a customer goes online and they Google something, wherever the customer ends up, right. If they're the first ones to get this lead, that's how you have to get that move is through them for the most part. Or if they go to thumbtack, you need to get it through thumbtack. So don't be afraid to try these. Number six.

Yelp. Even though they made the change this year, if you have preferably a five star rating, you need to spend some money with Yelp and advertise with them. Okay. Maybe you're on there now and you get some moves. But if you have a five star rating or even a four to four and a half depending on what the rest of your competition in your area looks like. Okay? If you have a three star rating, do not give them any money, okay? You're just gonna pay to boost your.

Ad and people are gonna click on it, but they're not gonna want to go with you because Yelp's all review based. But if you have five stars, start putting some money here, okay? Right away you're going to see some results coming into January and February, but you're really going to start seeing some results as we come into March, April, May and so on. All right.

Facebook ads, you're not going to be able to drive a lot of traffic from Facebook ads, but you're going to be. They're very cheap. Okay? They're very cheap and they're very effective. If you set up your ad copy correctly, if you set up the landing page that they come to correctly, if you do your retargeting, which we've talked about in the past correctly, this could be a great way for you to get business. All right. We also talked about doing the retargeting in a past monthly live cast to where you're running ads to customers that were already on your site. Okay. With testimonial videos to basically increase your booking percentage. Right? So don't overlook Facebook ads.

Ppc, Google and Bing. Okay? Whoever's running your PPC may say, hey, you know, Google's where it's at, right? Everyone wants to say, oh, Google's where it's at. And I agree. But what about the people that go to Bing or use Bing as their search engine? They're not going to go to Bing. If there's somebody that uses Bing, they're not going to go do a search on Bing and then go do another search on Google. Okay? So you'll get a much lower amount of leads here, but you can get very profitable leads here. Okay? So pay per click. If you guys don't have pay per click set up, send us an email to supportuis. I'll send you who we use our recommendation for pay per click. But remember, with pay per click you want. And we talked about this again in last, not last month, but a few months ago. We talked about pay per click and how to convert more. But you want to focus on your cost.

Per.

Lead. Alright? It's not about your cost per click. It doesn't matter. It's about your cost per lead. Once they click on your page, are you sending them to a landing page, which you need to be. And a landing page. We talked about this again in the past is basically a stripped down version of your site that has no links to go anywhere with. Direct call to action for calling you your web form, the information they need to basically make that decision. But if you're sending them to your website, I know it's counterintuitive, but you're basically sending them to your website and their attention span is not long enough to stay there and convert that lead. Alright? So just remember this, if you're running a pay per click ad, you need to run it to a landing page, all right? Not to your website.

Number nine.

Direct mail. So postcards.

This is huge. Still huge. Okay? You want to be sending postcards to houses that go on the market, then you also want to be sending another postcard to them using first class mail when that house becomes pending. Okay? So in other words, when it goes up on the market, you send the postcard, okay? Preferably a six by nine large, beautiful postcard.

When the house then goes into a pending status, meaning it's going to be sold, right, they're going to need to move in the next 30 days, you send them another postcard, but this time you use first class postage so that it gets there quicker. And you'll use a smaller card about this size. Because if you do first class postage on a big card, it's going to be too expensive. All right? This way you get in the door. Direct mail is huge. All right, don't overlook direct mail. And last.

Is SEO search engine optimization. Now this, it's important that you look at this.

As an investment.

Okay? So with SEO.

If you are not doing any SEO today, search engine optimization to your website, basically, for those of you who don't know what that is, getting your website to rank higher within the organic search listings on Google and even on Bing, but mostly on Google.

If you're not doing this today and you start doing this like let's say you sign up with an SEO company and you start, you're not going to see results for a while, all right? It'll probably take, you know, a good six months till you start seeing results. So whatever you're spending a month on that SEO, you're not going to get direct return. All of this, you're going to start seeing direct return immediately. The postcards will take a little bit longer than everything else, but you'll still see a direct return on your investment. With SEO.

It'S such a crucial piece and everyone needs to be doing it when they could afford it. Let me give you an example.

You know, if you on a Personal level, right? If you are making enough money to just pay your bills.

Pay your rent, pay for food, you know, your basic needs, you're not going to, you know, open up an investment account. Invest for the future if you could barely get by, right? So if you're in business and you don't have extra marketing dollars and you're barely paying the bills or you're just starting out, you shouldn't be putting money in SEO. You should be putting money into something that can get you moves right away. Okay? But as soon as you have some money to invest, an SEO, good SEO company is going to charge you anywhere from, you know, 1,000 to 5,000amonth, okay? Depending on the size of your market, depending on your locations, depending on the competition in your particular area, and the keywords that you're going after. But this is something that if you're in a position where you have some extra money, invest in SEO. All right? Remember, marketing is all about your roi.

Okay? Your return on investment, what you spend versus what you get back. If you spend $100 and you make $1,000, okay, you're spending 10% on your marketing. That's what you need to be focused on is running your ROI report, and then it's testing.

Tracking.

And tweaking.

There's nothing scary about all this marketing stuff if you know your numbers. If you're testing out different stuff, tracking it to see if it works, making tweaks and adjustments. Okay, Go back and watch. A month or two months ago, I really broke this down. All right, but you want to try these out. If you have some other ones, some other great ones, I'd love to hear them. But I would be jumping into these going into 2018 if you're not in there. All right, so let me get some questions going. If you guys have questions, this is it. We're getting to the last. Let's see, 10 minutes here.

Put your questions in the chat roll. I'm going to try to get to as many of them as possible. You guys are active today. I love it. All right, I'm just going for. I'm looking for questions. Question marks. Question marks, Stanley. Hey, Louis. Did you see better results with the points program? If the same movers were on the same crew, or did it matter? Stanley, if you have movers that work together all the time and they work well as a team and you can keep them together, that's always great. You know, it's not always practical. You know, there's a lot of times where you need to mix it Up. But if you could try to keep the same crews together, especially if they work well together, that's great. And typically, yes, those crews are the ones that are making your customers happy. You know, it just happens. They, you know, there's a flow to things. There's a, they understand how to work well together. There's a, it's a team effort when they go out on a job. So, yeah, I did see better results. I would try to keep crews together if possible. Great question, Stanley. Stanley, we're going to go ahead and send you out the profit in business thriving life water bottle. Let's get that for Stanley. You're going to love it. Ted, how do you feel about the bbb? Too old school, Ted? No, not too old school. The bbb, which everybody overlooks, all right, is crucial. Number one, they show up on your. If you do a Google search. We talked about this a few months ago about your first page of Google, right? So in other words, when you put the name of your company in the first page of Google, BBB has real estate on that first page, right? So meaning when people go look you up, BBB is going to be there for them to see. Now, if you have an A rating, an A plus rating, I would definitely advertise with the bbb. That's a great idea.

Guys. If you're not. I talk to a lot of movers and everyone's like, my Yelp is this, My Google reviews are this or my Facebook reviews are that. And I said, well, what's your bbb?

I don't know.

Are you a member? If you can become a member. If you have an A rating. If you have an A plus rating, put that everywhere. All right? Even when you're going out and you're.

You know, pounding the pavement, you're going to see realtors and you're going to see mortgage brokers, and you're talking to them about referring business to you. That's a great accolade to have. It's something that should be on your website. So cultivate your BBB listings. I see a lot of companies that have a, you know, a rating they shouldn't have because they got one complaint and never responded to it. They'll give you an F like that just for no response. Pay attention to your bbb. Ted, great question.

What are we going to get Ted? Let's get Ted.

Let's get Ted. Ted, let's get you. Let's take care of your, your tickets. Let's invite you out to Moving Sales Academy. We'll give you two tickets. We'll pay for your registration fee. You don't have to pay anything. Hope to see at the next event. Let's get Ted two tickets. Great question. Text Movers, do you have an SEO and pay per click company you recommend? I want to grow my business. How much my gross sales should I allocate to marketing Text Movers? I believe it's Eric.

Send an email to supportuis massaro.com we'll make the contact for you for SEO and for pay per click. As far as how much of your gross sales you should allocate to marketing, 10% or less. So you can never nail it right on the dot, right? Because you don't know what your monthly total is going to be. But if you're doing your roi, okay.

And you're able, you know, let's say you, you are spending.

$1,000 to make 10,000, you're at 10%, right? But if you're spending 500 to make 10,000, you'Re at 5%. So if you're at 5%, you have more money to spend, right? You have at least another $500 to spend. So typically I always like to stay between 8 and 12, right? If it's at 12, I'm like, hey, I need to bring it back down. If it drops below 8, I'm like, hey, I got more money to spend. Let me spend some more money. Now obviously if you're generating a ton of business and your marketing dollars are very low and you're like spending 2%, you're gonna be more profitable. But if you spend a little bit more money, if you want more moves, I'd say you can go up to 10%.

Great. Great question. Let's, you know what, let's get, let's get Eric Text Movers. Let's get him moving. Sales Academy. If he's not already in it. Six week online course, it's 2,000 bucks.

We're gonna go ahead and give it to you. Great question. Thanks for participating.

That was Text Movers. I believe his name is Eric. Guys, it would be awesome if you logged in with your name. I'd love to get to know you on a personal level.

Lorne. If I get a lead that I can't service that is moving to San Francisco to Iowa, can I sell that lead to lead companies? You know, yes and no. We at one point had such a large volume of leads that we were generating that we were able to wholesale leads to lead providers that they then turned around and sold to movers of stuff that we weren't able to service. But I don't know that you could do it as like a one off thing. Like, here's one lead. Let me sell it. I don't think you'll be able to do that, Lauren. You already got some stuff. Lauren's got everything.

Kirsten, with Yelp, if you start with a lot of five star leads and then you get a bad review, I heard that somewhat hold you hostage with a bad review. Let me just make sure I'm reading this right. With Yelp, if you start with a lot of five star leads and then get some five star reviews, I'm assuming they get a bad review. They'll hold you hostage with a bad review.

You know, listen, it's. We could all complain about Yelp.

And believe me, I've had my complaints as well, but I've learned to just not complain about the things that I can't do anything about. And it just so happens that Yelp, when you search for movers, is on that first page of Google, right? So it's like you have to deal with them and all their stuff that they have going on.

All I could say is work to resolve the complaints first privately with the customer and then publicly. If they're not responding, do everything you can to get that bad review removed. If you have to give the customer money back, you give them money back. Okay? People will say to me, that's against Yelp's policy. You know what? Yelp's not the law, in my opinion. Yelp's not the law. They have a policy. But you know what? This is your business. Do what you need to do with that customer and ask them to remove that review. Great question. Kirsten, let's get. What are we going to give her?

Let's get Kirsten two VIP tickets.

To Moving Sales Academy Live. All right. You come join us. VIP. I do a private session with the VIPs. We cater lunch. It's amazing. You're going to love it.

All right, let's see. Cody, do you think these third party lead sources will be effective in Canada? Cody, if they have leads in Canada, try them. That's all I could tell you. But if they're generating leads, I would imagine that they could be effective. Yeah, I don't know if they all will provide leads in Canada. I know we have some other Canadians on here that if you guys want to chime in, but try them out. You know, I think Cody already got something right. We sent Cody something. Trey. What's up? Trey? If you were ever to start A moving company all over again. What would be the number one marketing source of your choice?

You know, listen, when I started, the first thing that I did was yellow pages. And then from there I went out every day and pounded the pavement, talked to realtors, talked to storage units, talked to mortgage brokers and apartment complexes. Apartment complexes were like easy, low hanging fruit. But without the yellow pages. If I had to do one thing today to start all over, I would start with a direct mail campaign that's finely tuned. Alright? If I had to pick one thing, that's what I would do. All right, let's go ahead and.

Let'S send Trey to water bottle, right. I know he's down in Florida. I want to keep him hydrated down there. Thanks, Trey. Thanks for the question.

Josh. What's up, Jonas.

Do you have other ways for movers to earn additional points, coming to work on time, keeping the truck clean, etc.

You can if you want.

You know, I try to make it as simple as possible, right? So yes, you could. You could reward them or deduct them for each individual action and make it more of a complex system.

But again, there's administrative function that, you know, there's some administrative capacity there. Right. There's a lot of tracking that goes on. So if you have the ability to track it, if you have somebody there that's going to be on top of it, great. But you don't want to start it, make it too complex that you stop it. All right? Because you want to keep your word with your movers. They're going to be excited about this, they're going to be fired up, they're going to do a better job and start rising to the occasion and if all of a sudden you're like, oh, we weren't able to track it this month or this fell apart, they're going to lose faith in you and, you know.

That'S not good. Josh. I know Johnish has everything. What could we give them? Jonnish actually won all expenses paid trip to November's moving sales academy, which was hotel, flight, everything, vip. Let's give John a shot. A water bottle. Let's send him a water bottle.

All right, let's see. Do we have any more here?

Remember, guys, if you put a question in, start it with question marks, it's going to be much easier for me to find it. Just put a few question marks, then put your question and I'll be able to get to it.

Moving. 1, 2, 3, 4. Stephen, thank you for giving me your name. What's up? Steven? Welcome, Louis. Just starting out, should I lease or buy a truck? Also, where should I store the truck if I don't have an office yet? Thanks.

So you have some options for trucks, right, Depending on your budget? I always bought new trucks, personally financed them, even when I was just starting out, after I rented two trucks. When I started, I rented two trucks and I kept them at the storage rental place and dispatched from the storage rental place, Penske, every morning.

So what I would do is, first of all, I would go to my site, LewisMassaro.com I would go in the search and I would type in moving trucks. All right, I did an article there and a video on the different options for moving trucks. So you have a couple options. You could buy like a used U haul, which is going to be your cheapest, cheapest version. You can get a used truck, right? An off lease Penske with a new moving body on it, right? You could buy a brand new truck or you could lease a brand new truck. And you could lease a brand new truck through Ryder Penske. Okay. There's a few other places. They'll get a brand new truck for you, assume you have good credit. They'll get a brand new truck for you, lease it to you, and it's full maintenance. If the truck breaks down, they'll give you a rental truck, they'll repair it. And as far as where you can keep it, I would the best place you could find, depending on where you live, if you could find somewhere with highway exposure off the highway that you know, you could park the truck and go speak to whoever owns that property and say, hey, how much to park my truck there? Right? To where it's right off the highway, that, that would be ideal. But otherwise you find a yard, right? A storage, maybe a storage facility, and you just pay them to park the trucks there, right? If it's only one truck, you know, a couple hundred bucks a month, you should be good to go. Stephen, great question. You know what? Steven's just starting out. Let's get Stephen the foundation training from Moving Sales Academy. So in Moving Sales Academy, which is a six week online course, I have a foundation training which goes over.

Estimating moves, setting up your phone system, how to perform a quality move, resolving complaints. There's a bunch of stuff in there. You're gonna love it. We're gonna go ahead and get that for you, Steven. Thanks for the question.

Paul. What's up, Paul? Do you consider load boards a lead source? I don't consider that a lead source. So when you say load Boards. I'm assuming you're talking about.

From a broker for an interstate shipment. You know, maybe you have a shipment from wherever. Believe you're in Colorado to Florida and you need something going back, you would go on a loads board, find the load that you can go back. No, I wouldn't consider that a lead source. And typically they don't pay as well as a typical job. Paul, let's get Paul a water bottle as well.

Trey.

Let'S see. Let me just refresh here. Did I miss anybody? I'm sure I did. Let me. Let me get a little refresh going.

Stanley, what was your information source for direct mail? Where did you get the MLS info? We got our MLS info from a realtor right off the mls. Okay, so if you're not able to do that, there are companies out there that do direct mail. But remember, you want to send when the house goes up for sale and you want to sell and you want to send another card when it goes under contract, meaning they're going to sell soon. Right. Because when you first send the card, they might not move or be thinking about a mover for months. Because if the house didn't sell yet, it's not really something they're thinking about. But when it actually goes under contract, you want to get there again. And a lot of the direct mail companies don't offer that second part. So if you don't have access to the MLS, try going to redfin.com r E-F-I-N.com and in most markets you could actually pull the MLS list for free directly off Redfin. Did we get Stanley? We got him something, right? Thanks, Stanley. Thanks for participating. You guys are awesome. These are some great questions here. Let me just skim through. I want to make sure to miss anybody. Marion, do you recommend you ship for interstate trips if you have some truck space? I never dealt with it, to be honest with you. We kept it to strict household good moves. You know, if we needed a backhaul, I would more likely go to like a household goods loads board than I would the U ship. Great question. Let's get. What can we get Marion? Marion's got everything too, man. I need some more gifts. You guys have so much stuff going on already. I'm going to send you a water bottle. I know you like to hit the gym. We'll get you the water bottle.

Let's see. Throw them in. Now, guys, if you have some questions, throw them in right now because we're about to end. I know we're a little bit over. I want to respect everybody's time here.

I can answer one more question if somebody wants to put one in. Talget, I see some question marks. Do you have a question? I see question marks but there's no question. So if you guys have them, I'm going to do a couple more refreshes here. Is there anything coming in? Last one I see is Talg it. All right, guys, it looks like that's everybody. Thank you so much for being here. I hope I got if I missed you guys, send me an email. Send an email to supportuismassaro.com if I missed your question. If you're ever watching the replay, okay? Because in your members area, if you're ever watching the replay, there's a comment area down below. Go ahead and leave a comment there and I'll get back to you in a day or two. This is the best time to ask questions because I'm able to do it live. Everybody out there, go out and have an amazing holiday. All right, we have the New Year's strategy session. If you haven't seen that yet, I'll be sending out emails. New Year's Day, I'm going to be going live for two hours and we're going to have a strategy session on how to make 2018 your best year yet. All right? So happy Hanukkah, Merry Christmas, happy Kwanzaa, Happy New Year's. Anything you celebrate. I hope you guys have an amazing holiday season. I'll see you on January 1st. Talk to you soon. Go out. Profit in business, thrive in life. I'll see you guys later.

All right, my friend, what'd you think of that episode? Did you learn something new? Did it spark some ideas that you can implement in your business right away? Did it get the wheels turning? Did you love it? If so, do me a favor, share this episode somewhere out there on social media where you know there's some people that will get value from it. Make sure you hashtag the Moving Mastery Podcast so that we'll be able to look you up and find you on Instagram. Sometimes we just randomly pick a few people and send them gifts like free training T shirts, hats, swag, tickets to our three day seminars. So so make sure you let us know you're listening and share what you thought about this episode out there on social media. I also want to invite you to join us in our Moving Mastery monthly program. And you can do that by going to LewisMisaro.com monthly. That's LewisMessaro.com monthly. That's the program where I go live every single month and do an in depth tactical training like the one you just heard. But I do it live for our members every single month and it's where I do live Q and A and coaching and giveaways. We give all of our students of this program tickets to my live 3 day moving sales Academy seminar. We also give them extra training on leadership and productivity. Go check it out. It's LewisMassaro.com monthly. Thank you so much for being a part of this community of so many people dedicated to improving the quality of their lives, improving, improving their business. I really appreciate you being here. You can take your life to the next level. You can take your business to the next level. Sometimes you just need a little bit more training, a little bit more inspiration, a little bit more consistency. And I hope that by listening to this podcast I'm able to provide that spark that you need to make it happen. I look forward to being here with you on the next episode of the Moving Mastery Podcast Test.