Charge More Money for Your Moving Services

Hey, my friend. It's Louis Massaro, author of 10 Rules of a Profitable Moving Company and founder of Moving Mastery. Today we're going to talk About Rule number 8 of the 10 Rules of Profitable Moving Company, which is sell value and service, not price. Okay? So this is something that, you know, as an industry we all need to really look at. You know, it's enough is enough of these companies that are just charging way too. There's no way they're making any money charging as low as they're charging for the moves. And yet we all think that we need to compete with them and that we need to lower our prices to compete with these companies. Well, you have to understand that it's very easy for people to get in the business and it's a competitive business. And if you've been in the business long enough, you know that companies open up, companies shut down, right? They don't make it. The problem is they're not, you know, it's not the only problem. But part of the problem is they're not charging enough for their moves, right? They're trying to, you know, get the low hanging fruit with low prices. And you know, I'm challenging you to not compete with them, right? So we're gonna go over a few things that are gonna help you sell value and service and not price. And the first one is don't compete with low cost movers. You know, it's just something that you have to realize that yes, they're gonna get some of the moves that you know, are just looking for the low, low price. And you may not book as many moves, your volume may not be as high. You know, if you're not competing with the low price movers, but you want to be profitable, right? We're Talking about the 10 rules of a profitable moving company. We're not Talking about the 10 rules of getting the most jobs. Getting the most jobs doesn't, you know, equate into being the most profitable. You want to be the most profitable business you can be for you, right? So you have to stop worrying about these low price movers and you have to stop competing with them, alright? And the second thing you're going to need to do is raise your price. You know, I mean, I challenge you, raise it by 5%. You know, you'll be surprised that you'll still be able to book a good amount of business. You know, one of the best decisions I ever made was to raise our prices in all of our local markets to the high end of the market. I mean, we were always kind of like in the middle. There was always the low price movers that were lower than us. There was always the companies that were charging a ton of money, hourly rates, right, for local moves. And we were always kind of in the middle. And finally I did the calculations, right, and you should do them too. You know, sit and take a pen and paper, an Excel spreadsheet, however, you kind of figure out your numbers and look at it and say, you know, what if we lost 20% or 30% of our business by raising our price to this, what would that do? And what I found was I actually made more money with fewer moves, right? So, you know, listen, it's a scary thought to think about less moves. But if you really look at it and you say, you know, what, what do I need to be profitable, right? What do I need to be able to, you know, have every move be worth it, you know, not just get the move. It's not a matter of just getting the move and competing to get the move. It's a matter of, you know, for it to be worth it. And, you know, you might do less moves, but you know what, less moves is less trucks, less equipment, more of your A team movers going on the job, you know, so look at that. Look what it would be if you raised your prices. And you know, for me, it became more profitable, right? We didn't do, you know, it wasn't a drastic cut in business, but there was definitely less volume, but we were making more money, there was more profit, right? What's it all about, right? Why do more work and make less when you could do less work and make more? And I know everybody thinks about it and I know, I know this is a big struggle, right? That's why it's one of the rules. Because it's so. It's tough. It's like, what do I do? You know, you lose a job, you're on the phone and you call somebody back and follow up on a quote and they're like, no, we went with this company because they had this price of whatever, some ridiculous low price, and you feel tempted that your price is too high, you're going to lose business. But you know what? By having a higher price, you actually gain business. You actually get higher quality moves that don't want to go with the low price companies, right? You'll get better moves because you're a higher price, right? There's a reason people pay more for a Mercedes than they do for a Ford. You know, no offense, if you drive a Ford, I'M just saying it's. You know, there's a reason people pay more for first class than they do for Coach. You know, it's. You have to make that. You know, you have to. Basically, that leads us into the next one. You have to sell your service, right? So if you're gonna raise your price, don't just sell your, you know, don't just raise it and keep things the same. You have to sell. You have to basically, you know, explain to your customers why you're more money, why your service is better, why it's not comparing apples to apples by comparing our company to that company, right? Here's what you're gonna get with us. Here's what we provide for that extra money. So if you provide a great service, you deserve to be paid for that service. And there are people out there that will pay you, and there are people out there that look for the, you know, not just more expensive, but if they see the value in something that's more expensive, they're going to pay for it. I'm not saying go raise your price to a ridiculous amount. You need to do this at a rate that you feel comfortable. Take your rate now. Increase it by 5%. Okay? Whatever your rate is, get the calculator out. Put Your rate times 1.05. That's your new rate. It's not that much higher. Try that. Get comfortable there, then raise it 10%. You have to test it out for yourself. And when we talk about selling your service, you need to make sure that when you do raise the price that you're not coming off timid about it, that you're not. Your salespeople aren't going to sit, oh, we can't sell now because our price is too much. No, they need to understand that you're valuable. Your company deserves to be paid more. So you're raising the price, and they could still book the same amount of moves. I'm telling you, I've gone through it. I've been, been there. You know, it's so worth it. All right, if you're struggling to be profitable or you want to be more profitable, charge more money. You know, when you charge more money, you could also pay your staff more. You could pay more, your movers more, your helpers more. You don't necessarily have to, depending on where you pay them now, but maybe you struggle to get that good quality of help that you really want. But you're like, I can only spend this for my helpers, and I can only spend this for my movers. I Need to keep my labor percentage at this, right? Whatever that number is for you. Well, if you raise your hourly rate, your labor percentage could stay the same, but you could actually be paying more in labor. Again, you don't have to, but if you're struggling to get good help and it's because you can't afford to pay them or raise your price, you know, your operation starts to change. You know, early on I did a lot of volume, right? We weren't the low price movers, but we were right in there and always, you know, making sure we were competing with price. And you know, as we started to charge more and change things around, we had bigger moves, better moves. And you know what, the people that are looking for the bargains, it just so happens they turn into the problem moves. Not all the time, but when you start dealing with people that are willing to pay more money if you do a good job, they don't really have a problem because they were happy to pay the money. Right? And that brings us to the last part, which is provide five star service, right? You have to provide the service that you're selling. Again, you're going to sell hard. You're going to, you know, you need to have, first of all, if you don't have a sales script, you need to have a sales script. You know, you need to make sure that you're touching on all key points that are going to essentially lead that customer into doing business with your company. And if you have a strong sales script, raising your price by 5 or 10% isn't going to affect much. Alright? You want to build a moving sales machine. I call it the move. That's what I called mine. It was a moving sales machine. You know, it just was set up with systems, processes. Everyone was saying this because I knew that what I had them saying was able to sell moves, right? You want to be able to sell, you want to be able to tell them why you are more money than the next guy, right? But then you want to make sure that you go out and provide that five star service. If you want five star prices, you need to provide five star service. And five star service doesn't mean you literally have to show up in a tuxedo with white gloves on. It means you have to do some of the things we talked about in the other 10 rules. You know, if you haven't watched the other videos on the 10 rules of a profitable moving company or you haven't downloaded the free ebook that I'm giving away on the website, do that. You know, there's things that you can do without spending more money to provide a five star service. So sell value. Sell service. Don't compete on price, all right? And make more money. You work hard. I know that if you're watching this, if you're in the moving business, it's a hard business, all right? I know it's hard work. You need to make money, all right? And you can't make money if you're chasing around low price movers. And you know what? It might look like some of these guys are getting all the business but they probably don't know their numbers, all right? They probably are cutting some corners somewhere, alright? They're doing something that eventually it's gonna catch up and it's not gonna last. If you want a business that's gonna last, you have to do profitable moves. I mean it's pretty simple when you look at it. You just have to avoid the temptation and the pressure to feel like you need to compete with the low price movers. Alright? Sell value. Sell. Sell Service, not price. Profit in business, thrive in life. I'll see you next time. Hey my friend, it's Louis. I hope you enjoyed this episode. Do me two favors. Number one, subscribe to this channel so that you continue to get updates every time I release new training for you. And number two, if you'd like to get ahead a little bit faster and become more profitable in your business, what I'd like to do is give you a copy of my 10 rules of a profitable moving company. These are the same 10 rules that I applied in my business that helped me grow it into a multi million dollar nationwide company. Okay? So all you need to do is click on the link on this page or head over to LewisMassaro.com 10rules. So that's Louis. L O U I S Massaro M A S s a r o.com tenrules just put in your name and email address and I'll email you out a copy. Okay? Until then, every single day, go out and profit in business and thrive in life. I'll see you later.