How Moving Companies Boost Profits in 2023 - Part 1 - Increase Booking Percentage

I always aim for a 20% profit margin in my moving companies. And what that means is if you do a million dollars in revenue, you've got 200k that you're able to take home personally, right? If you do 10 million in revenue, you got 2 million that you're able to take home personally. And I know this sounds crazy to a lot of people when they first hear me say this, because industry average is 10%. But when we think about the average, the average is people that are crushing it and people that are losing money combined to come up with that average, right? I don't know about you, but I don't wanna be average, My clients don't wanna be average. And if you're listening to this, I'm pretty sure you don't wanna be average either. So how do you boost profits in a time in 2023 when there are less people moving? Right. You may have experienced a little slowdown this year, right? You may have had a big boom in 2020, 2021. And then all of a sudden things started to come to a halt, right? That's just business. There's, there's hills and there's valleys, right? It goes up and it goes down. So what do we do in the downtimes to prepare us for when things come back up, but also so that we can maintain and we could profit in a period where there might be less people moving, you might not have as many leads as you want to have or as many opportunities. Right? For me, when I was going through the recession in 2008, it hit me hard. I mean, I had five or six, six locations at that point, long distance division. We were rocking. And then all of a sudden things started to slow down. All of a sudden things felt like they were coming to a halt. And it really started to highlight all the inefficiencies in my company. Right? I thought we had things dialed in. I thought things were on point. You know, I started a business in 2000, and from 2000 to 2008 we rocking. I was making a ton of money, the businesses were growing. But what I realized when the recession came was I built my business in good times. Therefore I built it to thrive in good times and not in bad times. And so during this period I realized there's some things that I needed to do in order to get profits back up. Right? Same thing right now. Same thing today. This is what I'm advising my clients to do. And I want to break it down for you today because if you're struggling to get Moves. I get it. I know where you're coming from, Right. I know the feeling of wondering what it's like to, you know, am I going to make it right? What happens after moving season? Will things ever turn around? Is the industry over? Are people going to, you know, like, all these thoughts go on in your mind. And here's what I could share with you. The companies that I saw succeed in 2008 took action. The companies that I saw not succeed froze. Right? They didn't know what to do, and they got so in their head that they were thinking everything was outside of them that they couldn't control it. So I want to give you some things to put it back into your control so that you could start thriving right now, regardless of what's going on out there. All right? Because we've got clients that are doing that right now, gaining market share, kind of putting the blinders on and saying, listen, I don't care what's happening out there, doing this is what we're going to do to focus. Because as you're doing that the same way with me, you build the capabilities, right? I would have never been able to take my business to $20 million a year had I not gone through that period and learning and adapting and pivoting and finding new ways to grow that I didn't even look for before because it just felt much easier, right? So first thing I want to share with you today is focusing on sales, right? Every time we see someone, a company that we're working with, and they've got cash flow issues, they're not making enough money. The profit's not even at the average at 10%, let alone 20%. We look at it almost every time it goes back to sales, right? And so many people think that what they need to do is start cutting costs, cutting costs, cutting expenses. And let me share with you how focusing on sales, your booking percentage specifically, is going to help you make more money now, regardless of the amount of leads that you may have or that may have went down, right? So when we talk about booking percentage, booking percentage is, you know, if you get 100 leads and you book 22 of them, that's a 22% booking percentage, right? And I know you're probably wondering, Louis, what's the average in the industry? And it's really hard to put a number on that because everyone uses different marketing sources, and your marketing sources are going to determine your booking percentage for that source. So if you've got a whole mix of different marketing sources, and, you know, some are booking at 50% and some are booking at 10%, it's going to mix. So depending on how much money and resources you're putting towards the higher booking and the lower booking, it's going to be a mashup of numbers, right? So my suggestion is determine what your booking percentage is now, make that the baseline, and look to improve it. You know, we did a case study on a small moving company, midsize moving company, and a large moving company to see what would happen with a 5% jump in booking percentage, right? So let's say we're using the number, we're talking about 22%. So they go to 27%, right. The number works wherever you're at. So whatever your number is, you go 5% higher, right? So 22, you go to 27. And so we ran these numbers, and based on the same average move, right? Same average move, it wasn't like, hey, you're making more money per move. It was just, let's say Your average is $800amove or $1,800amove. Whatever it is, same moves, you're just booking more of them. Well, you've got the small moving company, that is a $375,000 company a year, right? By increasing the book by a 5% jump, they increased by $156,000. Okay? Small moving company, a mid sized moving company doing a million dollars a year increased $450,000 extra with a 5% jump, right? A large moving company doing $2.5 million with a 5% jump increased by a million dollars extra. Okay? That's about 40% across the board. Increase in revenue by just booking 5% more, bumping up 5%. Do you know what that does to the bottom line? Because here's the thing. There's no extra money being spent on marketing there, right? That's just saying, hey, here's the opportunities that are coming in front of us. Let's book more of those, right? So you might be saying, that's great, Louis. How do I do that? Well, you do that by really putting focus and emphasis on your sales. And what I can tell you is that most people overlook this part, right? And that was me. That was me for years. It was like, hey, jobs were just kind of falling in our lap, so to speak, right? I mean, we had a sales process. We had it dialed in, but we didn't have it dialed in like, you know, this is life or death. Like, we need to do this now like we did in the recession. And once we started to make Those shifts, everything changed. So what are some of the things you could do to increase your booking percentage? Well, first of all, when you get a new lead, let's say it comes in off your website or you're buying a new lead, get them on the phone asap. Our goal was to get them on the phone within five minutes of that lead coming in because the customer's focused on getting the prospect. Really? At that point, I call them customers because once it's a prospect, it's like they're a customer and they're in that zone. When they're thinking about getting a quote for an estimate, then if you're calling them back two hours later, they're on to something else. They're in a meeting, they're picking up their kids from school. And you don't have that same attention that you would have if you get them on the phone right away. So you got to get them on the phone right away. Then if you don't, if you're not able to, you've got to contact them in different modalities, right? You've got to call them, you've got to email them, you've got to send them a text, you've got to make sure you leave a voicemail, right? Most people, Lewis, I don't want to bother them. It's not bothering them, right. It's helping to reach them in a modality that works for them. I don't know about you, but when my phone rings, I don't answer it unless I know who it is, right? When I see a number, I don't answer it. I'll let it go to voicemail. But a text, I'll look at the text. Other people are the same way with emails or other people are the same way with a voicemail. They'll hear it, they'll see there's a voicemail. They got to hear who it is. So you want to make sure that you're reaching out to them in multiple modalities, right? And then you have a cadence of lead follow up, right? Getting them on the phone, right. Our goal with every one of those leads is get them on the phone, book the job, get them on the phone, book the job. So we've got to be able to get them on the phone first. So once you go through that and you get them on the phone now, you really got to do a good job of painting the picture for them. And we did that through having a sales script. Right. When I started off, just I was working out of a truck rental yard. And I literally would wrote down a script on a piece of paper and was like, okay, I want to make sure that I'm hitting all these points all the time and I don't miss anything. So I had that there ready to go and we refined that along the way. And sales script is not something where it sounds like you're reading from a sales script. Like it might sound that way for the first few days, right? Maybe the first week at the longest, while somebody's training. But after that, it gives you and your sales team an opportunity to have consistent messaging, right? You're saying the same thing to everybody. You're making sure that the things that you need to say on every call are being said, the things that you shouldn't be saying on every call aren't being said, right? You're creating that consistency and so you're kind of painting the picture. And what you're doing in that presentation is. So whether it's over the phone, whether it's an on site, whether it's a virtual survey is you're starting to plant the seeds of your value as a company. Okay? Because we also don't want to be booking based on us being the lowest price around. And so you're doing that now. You're not going to book every job on that first call, right? You're going to need to do some follow up. And this is where we see our clients or people that come in for the first time and we start working with them are missing a huge opportunity, right? Huge opportunity. And a lot of times it's that mindset or that stance of like, hey, I gave them a quote and if they want to book with me, they'll call me back. I don't want to be a pest. I don't, I don't want to hound them, right? And the reality is people appreciate diligence. People appreciate when you follow up with them, right? Everybody's busy these days. They've got things going on, right? If they don't have things going on, they're online, they're consumed, their attention span is short. So you've got to be able to reach out and help them solve the problem that they initially reached out to you for, which was to get a move, right? And so when you reach out, you always want to make sure that you have a reason for your call. Don't just, hey, I'm just following up here to see if you want to make do this move, right? Have a good reason for the call. And this way you're doing a follow up Right. And they'll appreciate it. And your booking percentage starts to skyrocket at that point. Right. And even then, you're going to have some people that maybe say your price is too high. Well, if your price is too high, or they need to get other quotes or they need to check with their spouse or they don't know the closing date or whatever it is, you also need some rebuttals to overcome those objections. Right? Those are objections. And when we think about the objections, I look at that and we used to say, okay, well, we just haven't done a good enough job of educating them on why our company is the best choice for them. And in this move, even if we're charging more than other people. So it's not that you need fantastic salespeople. Great salespeople sometimes are just born. But most of the time, great salespeople just know what to say and when to say it. Right? So by focusing on these elements, by focusing on every single lead, is an opportunity that we can't let slow slip through the cracks. Knowing the numbers that I shared with you of just a 5% booking increase, what that'll do to your numbers, you could, you know, do that with your own numbers and see what that would do. It's tremendous. Right? So if you, if you've got a few different sales reps and each one of those sales reps, you know, maybe someone's booking it and your number, maybe your numbers are 50% or 60%, whatever it might be. Well, I can almost be certain that there's a fluctuation. If you've got a handful of moving consultants or sales reps, there's going to be someone that's at least 5% higher than somebody else, sometimes 10, sometimes 15%. So if that one person can do it, how can you model what they're doing with everybody else? Right? So it's like, Louis, where do I start with the script? Well, what's the person that's crushing it? What are they saying? Or what did you say when you were on the phone? Right. That's what I did when I was, you know, transitioning and starting to hire sales reps. I didn't say nobody could do it better than me. I'm going to keep booking the jobs because I would have never been able to remove myself from that position. Right. To get to a place where I had 60 reps on the phones, booking jobs, all based on here, here, guys, here's what to say, because here's what works. So when they know what to say and they know when to say it, and they're not afraid to overcome an objection. Not coming from a place of aggressive sales, Right? That's not what this is about. It's about educating the customer, taking them by the hand, showing them that your company is the company to go with, right? So booking percentage, focus on that, right? Just by putting your, you know, you've heard the saying, what you, you can't measure, what you can't manage, what you don't measure, right? So if you're not looking at the booking percentage, this is going to be, you know, it's not even going to be on your radar. So if you start looking at the booking percentage, see where you're at and look to set a goal to increase that by 5%. All right? See what that does. Because without new leads, right? And also, you know, when we work with clients, we don't want to go and spend money on marketing just to pour it into a sales process where, you know, think about a bucket. And you're putting all the. The marketing into the bucket to basically collect money. But there's holes in the bottom, right? So sealing up those holes is basically going in and sealing up that sales process. So that's, number one, is the booking percentage. Work on getting that up. Hey, my friend, before you go, you've got to hurry and watch these next few videos over here. They will absolutely help you take your moving company to the next level. Go watch them now and I'll see you over there.