Louis Massaro advises moving-company managers to hold monthly mover meetings with crews. Empathize with their difficult conditions, discuss bonus points and upcoming changes, acknowledge what's working, and ask for feedback on specific problems to prevent conflicts during busy seasons.
Hold a mover meeting. So many of you might be doing this. You know, maybe you do it monthly, maybe you do a weekly, maybe you do it yearly. Maybe you've never done it once before. Okay. For me, honestly, we did them as needed. We did it when we needed to roll out a new initiative. We needed it to, you know, if there was issues, if there was problems. Right. I've spoke to several people this week that are having some problems with their movers. They need to have a mover meeting. The tone of your mover meeting needs to be to where you get them to understand and feel that you're all in this together. Okay? The movers feel that you in the office and all your people in the office don't do anything. They feel that your job is not hard. The estimators give these estimates that aren't accurate and the customers are pissed off and we have to deal with them. The office makes a mistake and sends us to the wrong place. We have to deal with that. So you want to get them to understand where you're coming from, but that starts with you showing that you understand where they're coming from. So when you have this meeting, you definitely want to talk about your initiatives for the upcoming season. You want to talk about the things that have been going well. Hopefully you've started to implement mover bonus points. Okay, you're going to talk about that as well, but you want to show a sincere understanding of where they're coming from. Right. You want to be able to talk about scenarios that, you know, they go through. Because, listen, it's a hard job. It's. I mean, it's one of the hardest jobs that you could have to go out there, move furniture in the heat, in the cold, in all types of conditions, going into, you know, sometimes some pretty gross houses, right? Having to move pieces that, you know, they're responsible for, but yet the pieces, like, the minute they pick it up, they could tell it's going to fall apart. It's a tough job. So you have to empathize with that. And you have to start by showing them that you understand and you appreciate them. So, you know, bring up some scenarios. Guys, listen, I know it's tough out there, right? I know there's times where our estimates might not be exact and, you know, the customer might get in your face and might be really, you know, giving you, like, giving you trouble, and you have to deal with that. Listen, I know, but what I need you to understand is that we really are all in this together. We're not doing these things, you know, the things that happen. It's not against you personally, right? As a company, we're all doing the best we can. You're going out there, you're providing great service that allows our salespeople to go ahead and count on the reviews that we're getting to help sell the move. Right, but we need the salespeople to sell the move so that you can perform the move. We need dispatch to coordinate everything. So I know that you are dealing with customers face to face, and I know that could be tough. We're dealing with multiple customers each day, right? So it's not about getting them to feel bad for you, like you have such a tough job in the office, but it's a matter of getting them to understand, like, hey, listen, we're all in this together. We appreciate what you're doing and we want to know what we could do to help make things easier on you. That's the tone of the conversation. And they're going to speak up and some of their concerns may be legitimate concerns and some may not be. But you have to show that you're listening and that you kind of are taking it into account. And, you know, if there's something that's clearly, you know, clearly like bs, you could call them out on it right then and there, but otherwise take things into consideration, right? Maybe there are a few things, small little adjustments that you can make in the office that will make things easier on them. But the key is hold the meeting because now's the time you're really going to need them. You're really going to be putting extra workload on them and you don't want to have to battle. Right? This, this. I was talking to several people this week that there was like battles going on with movers. They had issues because two movers were fighting, right? That was causing problems with everyone else. They had issues with new senior movers not wanting to deal with the rookie guy they had issues with. This is different. People movers weren't listening to the dispatcher and doing anything that they asked. You know, sometimes it's just communication and open up, opening up that line of communication. But here's what you need to remember. If this isn't something that you do regularly, they're not expecting it. So if their response isn't exactly what you want it to be, right? If they're not like, oh, yeah, that's great. We're all team us. Team us. Like, if they're not into it immediately, that's okay, right? Understand they're going to be a little leery of, like, why. Why are they having this meeting? What's going on here? Start doing them this season. Try to do it once a month, right? Recognize them for what they're doing well, but let them just have that feeling that you're all in it together, okay?
