Moving Company Sales & Service Consistency

Hey guys, it's Louis Massaro, author of 10 Rules of a Profitable Moving Company and founder of Moving Mastery. Have you ever been in a situation where you receive a phone call from a customer, your guys are on the job, they've already started, maybe you're collecting payment or it's halfway through and they call in and the conversation starts something along the lines of, you know, I was told by your salesman that you guys would do this. Or on your website when I was checking you guys out, it says that you guys would do that and it's not happening on the move. This brings up a very important and crucial part to your business and something that with a minor shift and change, could really impact your customer experience and create more raving fans. And that's your marketing. Sales and service consistency. You, you see when you are marketing, when you're putting information on your website, when you're putting bullet points on all the services you provide on postcards or whatever it may be, brochures, yellow page ads, it doesn't matter when you're proclaiming everything you do in your marketing, which you should, you should talk about all your great accomplishments and everything, all the services you provide that should all be in your marketing. But when you do that, you're setting an expectation for the customer. Okay, so that's really good bait essentially to get them to call you. It's really good. You know, it kind of brings them in, it says, you know what, this is what I'm looking for. This company provides that. Let me pick up the phone and give them a call. Alright, so you went ahead and you've already planted the seeds of expectation with your marketing. Now they're going to call and they're going to speak to somebody in your company. They're either going to talk to a sales consultant over the phone, someone's going to go out and do a, an on site estimate and there's going to be more said to the customer. Now and your sales delivery and your sales pitch and what it is that you say to actually book the move. Okay? So now what you're doing is you're planting even more seeds of expectation and you're fertilizing the ones that you planted with the marketing. So now you need to fulfill that service on the service end. Okay? And I know this sounds like common sense, but let me break it down and show you where this disconnect could cause you a lot of problems and also how you can turn this into an opportunity to enhance your marketing and sales effort. Okay? Now the first thing you're going to want to do is, you're going to want to discover if there's any discrepancies. Okay? So you have your marketing, you have your sales, you have your service, all right? You need to discover what the differences are in the message that you're delivering to the customer and the service you're delivering to the customer. So the easiest way to do this is take out three sheets of paper, okay? At the top of the first sheet, you're gonna write marketing. On the top of the second sheet, you're gonna write sales. And on top of the third sheet, you're gonna write service. Now take a look at all your marketing. You don't have to do this right now. You. You can set aside some time and do it when you have a chance, but take a look at all of your marketing, your website, your brochures, what it says on your trucks, your business cards, yellow page ads, anything. And what is it that you're proclaiming, Right? What is it that you're putting out there to the public and saying, this is what our company's about? Are you saying we're licensed and insured? We're licensed piano movers, we're going to quilt, pattern wrap. All of your furniture guys are going to lay down floor protection when they come to your home. Is this stuff in your marketing? Whatever you have, how long you've been in business, new, clean, sanitized trucks, whatever is in your marketing, write it down on that sheet. Everything. Then you're going to want to go to your sales sheet, and you're going to want to write down everything that's being said to your customers by either yourself or. Or your sales team, by either listening to them speak to a customer or reviewing your sales script. If you have a sales script, and you're going to want to see what's being said, okay. Not what should be getting said. We'll talk about that after. What's really getting said. Now, you may have put some procedures and some processes in place at one point, and you want certain things to be getting said, but maybe they're not. So you want to be. You know, we want to look at what's actually happening now, today, and. And not what should be happening. We'll get to that in a minute. But go through your sales and make a list of everything that's being said. Right? So if they're saying, our men are going to come out to your home, they're going to disassemble and reassemble all of your beds. If they're saying that you can leave all of the clothes in the drawers of the dresser or if they're saying no, you cannot, okay? It's up to you which way you want to do it. But you know how they're saying it again, sets an expectation for the customer on the day of the move. Now you're going to go to your service sheet and you're going to write down everything that's happening on your moves, right? Are your movers showing up and introducing themselves? Do they have a clean truck? Every time they show up, is it swept out, pads folded, ready to go? Are all of your men in uniform? Do you have a policy about smoke breaks and not taking smoke breaks or lunch breaks and not taking lunch breaks on the job? Are they going to lay floor protection and cover the door jambs and the railings? You know, things like that. Like what are you actually doing on every move? You know, write all that down. Alright, so now step two is you're going to want to compare these, okay? Again, don't worry if there's inconsistencies because that's part of this. And I can almost guarantee there's going to be some inconsistencies, which is good. All right? Because we want to discover that. So now we're going to compare all of these. So the easiest way to do it again, if you have a better way of figuring it out, by all means, you know, you just, you want to compare it. So if you have the three sheets of paper, circle each item that does not appear on all three on your marketing, on your sales and on your service, okay? Just circle it. If it doesn't appear on all three, alright? So now you know where the inconsistencies are, okay? And this can hurt you on a service end. And it's also you're missing out on sales opportunities as well, which we'll get to in a minute. So now you see that there's some possible inconsistencies, okay, in your marketing, your sales and your service. So now what you're going to want to do is make adjustments, okay? So the easiest thing to do, right, if you're saying something in your marketing but it's not actually happening on the move, is to stop saying it in your marketing, take it out, take it off your website, take it off your postcards. You know, if you're saying something in sales that's not actually happening on the move, you could stop saying that. You know, that's the easiest way to do it. Okay? But if you look at it as an opportunity to Say, you know what, we're already selling these, you know, these services. We're already saying we're going to do this or we're going to do that. Let's go ahead and make that policy on the move end. Let's train our movers and make sure that they know it needs to be done on every move. Okay? Whatever it may be, whatever comes up on the list, I'm sure it's going to be very different for everybody. All right, so another opportunity here, you know, that's on. What are you saying? What's your message in marketing? What's your message in sales? Alright, are you doing that in service? But a lot of times what you'll find is that on your service end you're actually doing a lot more that you're not really talking about up front, right? So let's say you are laying down floor protection. Let's say you are always covering the door jambs and padding rails on the stairway. But it's not in your marketing or your sales reps aren't talking about it. You're missing a major opportunity for extra, you know, brownie points, if you will, extra selling points for the customer to be able to book more moves. Right? Because it's not only about causing less issues based on the inconsistency, it's about, you know, what are we, are we really doing more on the service end for the customer that we could talk about on the front end, which would allow us to bring in more business? If so, that's another adjustment. You take the service and you start, you start putting it on your website, you start putting it in your sales pitch, you know, it's a great opportunity to add some extra selling points. Alright? So listen, if you show up on a job and you go above and beyond for the customer and there's stuff that was not in your marketing and is not in your sales and when you show up, you just blow them away. Of course they're going to be happy you exceeded their expectations, okay? But if you just meet their expectations, they're going to be happy. So, you know, if you aren't afraid to set the expectations high for yourself because you know you're going to be able to perform on the service end, do that because you're going to be able to book more jobs, okay? So if you feel confident in your service, make sure everything is loaded up on the sales end. You have everything listed in your marketing. You have your sales guys, you know, equipped, ready to go. They know what to say, they know all the Extra things that your guys are doing on the job. And this process alone, you'll discover a lot about your company. You know, you may need to, you know, secret shop your office. You know, you may need to, you know, call and have a friend call on speakerphone and, you know, listen to how your office is actually, you know, given the quote and what they're saying. You know, you might have to have an estimator, you know, go out and do a friend's home as an estimate. You might have to do a few spot checks on moves, right? Show up unexpected, see if your guys really are in uniform, right? See if everything is padded the way that you want it to be padded. Because there's one thing to have a good intention, right? I'm sure you all have good intentions and you want to service the customer the right way and it's a good thing to, you know, at one point you may be told your movers, this is how it needs to be done, but is it actually happening? All right, the sales, I'm sorry, the marketing, the sales and the service consistency is huge. And it's just something that, you know, going through this little exercise, you're going to discover so much about your company and you're going to find some great opportunities there. All right? You don't want to be in a position where a disconnect in communication causes issues, right? Because your ultimate goal is not to just, you know, move this customer once. Your ultimate goal is to move them every time they move, to have them tell everyone they know that's going to be moving that they should be moving with you. So you want to bring as many in and then you want to service them with consistency. Alright? I hope this was helpful. If you're not already signed up for my blog, head over to LouisMassaro.com I'll send out great stuff every week just like this video straight to your inbox. Until then, I'll see you next week. Go out and profit in business, thrive in life, have a great one.