Optimizing Your Moving Company's Systems

If we look at what we want to do, all of our big plans, whatever that might be, if you're like, louis, I just want to, you know, get this thing set up so it's making X amount of dollars, and then I can move forward and do something else. Or you're like, I want to open 50 locations. Whatever it is, we've got to remember, right, that we have to tame our entrepreneur mind that always wants to move on to what's new and what's next. You get something set up, you get it going. You're like, okay, this is good. Or, you know, and I know we're going to improve it. I know we're going to make it better. But I want to start working on this new thing. I want to open this other office. I want to get into this other line of business. And the reality is you've got money laying on the floor in your current company without doing anything extra, just from it falling into the gaps in the systems and in the processes that you've got set up. So that's what we're going to talk about today. We're going to talk about making improvements to your systems. So today I want to talk about optimizing systems, right? We've talked about, you know, building systems and processes in your business, creating standard operating procedures. And I know it's a challenge. I know it's a struggle. I know it's something that it takes an incredible amount of focus and discipline to get done. And so today, I want to break it down and simplify it a little bit and take a look at some of the processes that you've got going currently that need to be constantly optimized. You know, I. Whether I'm talking to a private client or somebody in the group here or whatever it might be, you know, you guys want to grow, you guys want to expand, you guys want to, you know, do more. And that's. That's. You should, right? But we've got to take care of the business that we have now, first and foremost, right? So it's like, if we look at what we want to do, all of our big plans, whatever that might be. If you're like, louis, I just want to, you know, get this thing set up so it's making X amount of dollars, and then I can move forward and do something else. Or you're like, I want to open 50 locations. Whatever it is, we've got to remember, right, that we have to tame our entrepreneur mind that always wants to move on to what's new and what's next. You get something set up, you get it going. You're like, okay, this is good. And I know we're gonna improve it. I know we're gonna make it better. But I wanna start working on this new thing. I wanna open this other office. I wanna get into this other line of business. And the reality is, but you've got money laying on the floor in your current company without doing anything extra just from it falling into the gaps in the systems and the processes that you've got set up, right? So it's not about doing more. It's about optimizing what you have feeling really good about that. A sense of control, profitability, right? Servicing the customers the way that your intentions are. Because I know you guys have great intentions of doing an amazing job for every customer. And that's why it hurts so bad when you get that bad review, when you get that complaint, right? Because it's testing your integrity. You know, customers calling you out like, you're this, you're that. You guys did this, you guys did that. And you're like, that's not me. That's not who I am. Right? That's not your intention. That's not what you set out to do. However, somewhere along the line, from the time the customer picked up the phone to call you to the time that last piece of furniture was off the truck, there was a breakdown in communication, right? Your expectations on what you want were not thoroughly enough, thoroughly enough. You get what I'm trying to say? They weren't expressed to everybody involved along the way, right? As the baton got passed from sales to operations to customer service to the movers, there's a breakdown there in the communication. And that's where the complaints happen, and that's where the problems happen. And we just need to understand that and recognize that and use that as an opportunity and a tool to make improvements. So that's what we're going to talk about today. We're going to talk about making improvements to your systems. Let's eliminate the stuff that's not working for you and let's add in the stuff that will work for you. And that's optimization, right? That's making the real difference in your business without some new and next thing that the entrepreneurial mind wants to go after that, we've got to kind of tame. You know, it's like, I look at it like a little kid that's like, I want ice cream, I want ice cream, I want ice cream. And I'm like, no, no, no, look, you got to Eat your vegetables first, and then we'll go get you ice cream. Like, that's how I treat that voice that's telling me, let's go do the new thing, let's go do the next thing. Right? Because that's fun and it's exciting. Sometimes working on the same stuff that we have isn't the excitement that we're after. However, we'll never, ever have the true freedom. We want to express ourselves in business and do the things that we want to do in life. If we don't set up the core foundation of the business. So let's talk about your business. Talk about systems and processes, right? Basically, how you do the thing that you do step by step. What is it? This is your competitive advantage. This is what's going to allow your company to not only, you know, thrive, not only be sellable, you know, give you the freedom. If you want to franchise, whatever you want to do for growth, great. But it's also going to deliver the results that you promise your customers consistently. Okay? And avoid the problems which lead to the stress, which lead to the overwhelm, which lead to, man, I don't even know, why grow? Why grow more than the three trucks? It's just going to be more problems. If I've got this many problems with three trucks, why do I want six? Why do I want 10? Right. We want to eliminate that and give you the expansive mindset again. I want you guys really not thinking expansion this year in the sense of I'm gonna open offices, unless that's what's in line for you, which is totally okay. But I want you to really start thinking bigger as to what's possible with your business. Right. And not shrink from it. We all had to shrink in 2020, right? It was like, hey, you're locked down. Hey, you're in quarantine. Hey, stay home. We all just kind of shrunk. Our community shrunk. Everything shrunk. Now's the time to really just start expanding and doing what we can and not waiting for the world to open up for us to do that. So back to your systems. You've got three different types of systems that are crucial to your business. Okay? So the first one is your front end systems. Okay? Your front end systems. So your front end systems, this is basically booking moves and servicing moves, right? Your front end systems, this is the stuff that your customers actually see. You know, we do so much every day in our business and we need to kind of look at. Okay, you know, how do we separate this stuff? You Know, where do we start, Louis? Where do we start with creating processes. We heard you talked about creating process. Like, where do we start? Well, we've got to start with the front end systems, the thing that you actually do. Because the one thing that every single person on this call has in common is the front end systems. Booking the jobs, confirming the jobs, dispatching the jobs, and actually moving people, right? That's what your customer cares about. They don't care about everything else that goes on behind the scenes, right? They don't care about your management issues, they don't care about your hiring issues. They don't care about any of that. Right? They just want to know about the front end system. So if we look at the front end systems and we say, okay, let me draw this out here for you. If we look at the front end systems and we're like, okay, what's the first step? So the first step is booking, right? We got to book the job. Okay, so we got booking. And then from booking, you know, you're basically going to go from booking. Let me just draw this out for, you know. Okay, so can you guys see that? All right. Okay, so here's how it goes, right? You got to book the job, confirm the job, dispatch the job, move. That's basically your whole front end system. Now, of course, if you do other services, storage or junk removal or cleaning and all that, we'll just assume that that would be just another line here, right? So we're talking about systems optimization. Okay? So the first thing we want to look at here is we want to look at the communication flow between all of these, meaning customer calls in. They're telling you about their move, they're telling you about their dog, they're telling you about their grandmother's china cabinet. They're telling you about what the expectations are, their elevator, what times they could move. You know, all of that, okay? You know, the salesperson is then. The salesperson is then, you know, gathering information, entering it into your CRM, okay? Making sure that you have a central place for all your notes. Like you guys, if you, if you guys aren't on a CRM, you need to be on a CRM. This isn't a pitch. I know you guys know that I'm co founder of Smart Moving Software. Get on any CRM, right? It's, it's. You got to operate from a place of a central database so that the communication flow can go from here to here without the ball getting dropped, right? We need, we need information, we need notes, we need inventory, whatever it is you're doing to book that job, then we need to be confirming those jobs, right? If you're not doing a confirmation call a day or two before the moves, you're missing a major opportunity. We'll talk a little bit more about that, but we need to confirm the job. We need to figure out, okay, here's what I see in the CRM that was discussed. I need to confirm all of that to make sure that the salesperson said everything they were supposed to say. So the confirmation call that's gonna. If this right here, if this booking of the job, if they just really butcher it and they just don't do a good job or they're new or whatever the case might be, they. The confirmation call could clean all that up. You don't want to show up on the day of the move with not a clear understanding of what's going on, right? Then dispatch. Dispatch has to make sure you've got the movers there on time. You've got the trucks ready to go, you've got the equipment, you're sending those crews out to the right job. And then the move itself, like, how do you perform the move, right? What are the actual steps when your movers get out of the truck, how is it that you want them to go greet the customer, introduce themselves to the customer? What are the first things you want them to do along the move? And so you've got to think about this, like, because you might say, louis, I've got three crews. And they're all excellent, right? They're all excellent. And I don't need to tell them what to do. They know what to do. My question to you is, do you want to stay with three crews or do you want to grow? I'm guessing you want to grow if you're here. So you've got to create that consistency and you've got to tell people exactly what you want from them, right? Communication. Communication. And when it comes to your team, you've got to over communicate, right? Same thing with your customers. You got to make sure they totally understand it. If you're showing up to a job and every single time the customer's like, I didn't know there was travel time, I didn't know there was travel time or whatever it might be, where do you think the problem is? It's in the communication flow, right? So what we want to do is we want to take a look. This is your front end, okay? So what goes into each one of these? So let's just say booking, right? So you Got booking. You basically got, let's see, you got estimating, right? You've got, you've got your script to make sure people are saying the right thing. You've got your, you know, let's just call it. You got your phone system that your team needs to understand and know how to use. You got your CRM that they need to know how to manage and manage the leads that are in there, right? You've got, you know, follow up that they need to do. So say they've got rebuttals, which are when someone says, I'm not ready to set up my move right now, it's what you say to them to overcome that and get them to understand why it's a good idea to book with your company right now. Right? So I'm making a list here. What I want you to do is take all of this, each one of these categories, and I want you to write all the things that go into it currently right in your business. And then this becomes what you need to now go and look through. So what you'll do is you'll go in and you're gonna start here, right? Actually, you know what I would do is I would start with the move, right? Because that's at the end of the day, even if your sales and your confirmation, your dispatch is a little ugly and it's not quite where it needs to be. Your customers experience the majority of their experience, you know, the hours that you're with them in person falls under the move. Use that as a starting point to create your process for the move so that your movers are doing things consistently. And what we want to do is this isn't just about going and creating it. You're like, louis, I've already created these processes. Good, right? That's really what this is all about. If you haven't created them, create them. If you've already created them, this is the time to go through all of them and see how they're working. Right? Okay, how are we doing on our estimates? You know, let's take a look at the estimate versus the actual, and let's see what the variance percentage is there, right between what we're estimating customers the job will be and what the actual job will be going through. Taking a look at all of these aspects, same thing on their confirmation, same thing on their dispatch, same thing on their move, right? And that this right here is your phase one optimization plan. These four different areas going through and looking for what we can improve. And do not wait until you're Ready to write. You know, a lot of you get caught up with systems and processes, like Louis, what tool do we use? Who do we write them? I need to bring in a company to do this. And don't get caught up on that. Go in like this as soon as you can and start looking at each one of these areas. Create some block time on your schedule, right? For when you're gonna do systems optimization and you're just gonna basically go through. Take a journey in your customer's footsteps, right? You could do it two ways. You could sit and see what's happening in your office, watch, listen to calls, right? Or you could secret shop your own company, right? I've done that before where I've called, hey, let me borrow your phone to a friend. Call, right? I'd have to have them do it because they would recognize my voice. Set up a move, but listen to it. Have them come to my friend's house, show up, go through the whole thing to look for areas to improve, areas to optimize. You know, we think that it's going to take this big, miraculous change of events to increase customer satisfaction and raving fans and increase profits, but I would imagine between 5 to 10%. 5 to 10%. Easy to. Your bottom line is sitting right in here. We're not even talking about more marketing. We're not even talking about anything on the back end. We're talking about increasing profits. 5. And I said what? I say 10, 5 to 20%. Okay? Is sitting in here. It's hard to see, but if you guys know your business, go, Go see what could be improved, right? You got to constantly be improving. And we can't get discouraged by, hey, we told our movers that they need to do this and they're just not doing it. Repetition, repetition, repetition, right? Whoever is not doing what they're supposed to do, keep telling them, over, communicate, over, communicate, over, communicate, right? If they're still not getting it, ask them, what is it about? Like, I might. What? Do you not understand what I'm saying? Like what? Tell me what. What the issue is. Like, are you. Do you not have the tools? Are you not paying attention? Maybe I hear something different when it comes out of my mouth than you hear. Let's talk about this. So when you're starting to talk to your employees, I want you to, you know, kind of adopt this idea of clarifying, right? Don't just say something to somebody, clarify what it is and have them verify that they understand what it is before you leave them with that, all right? Clarify, verify Clarify, verify. Really, really important. Okay, so now you've got. That's like your first order of business, right? This is what you want to tackle, right? I would spend the Next, you know, 30 days focused on this. Go through it, go through it, go through it. Optimize. Look for areas to, you know, let's. Let's just go through a scenario real quick so you could realize how damaging something can be to your business. Because I don't think, you know, everybody puts it together to what it could be. But, like, let's say job gets booked, it's booked incorrectly. The communication flow with the customers, it's not there. You either send the wrong crew, the wrong size truck, you don't show up on the right day, whatever it is, something goes wrong. Well, what happens? You know, we look at it like, oh, it's a job, you know, it's a. That. That sucks. But what about the bad review? How damaging is that? Right? How damaging is that bad word of mouth? When you've got those bad reviews and they end up online, you're losing a tremendous, tremendous amount of business. You know, you could put a price tag easily put a price tag on each one of those bad reviews of easily $10,000 easily. I used to let my customer service department solve issues with a review and spend up to thousand, up to a thousand dollars without even coming to me to get it resolved because I know how damaging they could be. So, you know, we can't look at the, you know, the fall out of this like, okay, sure, Louis, we know you make the company better. We get it. We get it. Right? It sounds so simple, right? And I totally. My job is to help you make more money, have less stress, and get the freedom right and service your customers really good. I'm not trying to impress you with groundbreaking ideas and, you know, stuff that just sounds really like. I know you guys know this. It's not. It's. It's. I realize that, but my question is not do you know it? My question is, are you applying it? Are you doing it? Do you have a process to regularly, throughout the year, not just this month, go through your systems and look on ways to improve them? Look on ways to improve them. Look on ways to improve them. So that is your front end. You've got your front end taken care of now. You've got your back end, okay? Your back end. Systems, hiring, training, cultivating, repeat and referral customers, marketing, hr, accounting, managing customer service. Everything that it takes to run the front end. Right? It's like, this is the stuff that you need to have a real business, right? Cause you could have, you know, you could do this, you could kind of have like a Yelp page or, you know, you could be a labor service and just book some stuff from your cell phone, do a good job and that could be okay. But if you want to grow, you want to scale, you want to have a business that creates, you know, a real lifestyle for yourself, you need the back end systems that support all of that, right? That support the growth, that support the consistency, that support the customer satisfaction. And in order to, you know, feed this, what do we need to feed the front end? Right. We need marketing to feed booking. Right? We need marketing to feed this. We need salespeople for this as well. So we need to hire and train salespeople. We obviously need a dispatch team here as well to hire and train. We need movers to hire and train. You know, being able to hire and train and fire quickly salespeople and movers, that's going to be a huge competitive advantage for you moving forward, right. The quicker that you could get somebody new on the phones and get them trained, the better you're going to be. The less opportunities will slip through the cracks, the quicker you could get more movers, drivers, helpers on the trucks and train. You're not going to end up with all these jobs that you now can't service. So this is all your back end systems. But what I want you to do is I want you to focus on your front end systems first and then you start looking at your back end systems. So what are some of the things the back end systems like your hiring? Right. Again, movers and salespeople are the hires that would be the most frequent. So the hires are the most frequent, require the most detailed level of hiring and training procedures. We need to make sure the marketing is on point. Right? And we run our marketing through the knowing our numbers, knowing our roi, how each individual source is working, so that we could just test, we could track, we could tweak and make sure that that's all in line, right? Accounting, we've gotta know our numbers, right? We need someone to just do payroll and kinda run the books and all of that. So we've gotta take care of our backend systems. Okay? So we've got the front end, that's the customer facing, that's what the customer sees, right? But now you're a real business, like, hey, you know, remember, the customer does not care. They don't care about your back end. They do not care whatsoever if you're like, hey, we're a big company. We've got this department and that department. They don't care. Send me to movers, you promised me. Move my stuff without damaging it. Do it for the price you said and I'm happy, right? Whatever you gotta do to build your business and handle it on the back end, that's on you, right? So we've got to remember this. And I say this because sometimes it feels like you're on such a mission to grow the business and run some of the back end stuff that when a problem comes up with a customer, it's easy to feel annoyed by the fact that something's happening on the front end because you're so busy trying to handle the back end. But if there is no front end, there's no back end, right? So we got to handle the back end. And then while we are optimizing each and every one of these, the front end, the back end, we also want to make sure that we've got control systems. Control systems. So this is going to be your management, this is going to be your accounting and your numbers. How do you control all of it? You know, this right here, it's like a lot of people will get the front end systems. Good. All right. And there's, I see you guys, so many of you just do a fantastic job with this, you know, you really do. But you want to grow and you want to expand and you, and you want to make more money and you want to move more people and serve more people. And you know, then, then it's like, okay, the back end. But along the way we've got to make sure that each system that we put in place, we decide how we're going to control that system, who's going to manage it and what are the numbers, what are the KPIs that we're going to be able to use to determine if it's going good or it's not. Which is another reason, you know, you need to have a CRM. So you've got some of this stuff just getting done for you automatically. We've got to have our control systems. So if we look at it like this and we just say, okay, all we really need is our front end. Okay, our back end, and then a way to control all of them. It's really pretty simple. This is something I'm doing right now currently, personally in this business and another business, right. Is going through and optimizing everything, looking at it, right? What's part of this? Part of this is you might have to do, you know, as you're going through all of this, you've got this, how do I want it to work from the, from a machine standpoint, right? Think of the systems as the machine. Then you've got the people to run the machine. You don't want the people running the business. You want the systems to run the business. You want the people to run the systems. But you might need to readjust roles in your business, right? And I've been readjusting roles here for like a few months and like putting somebody in a role, let's say switching a couple people and then seeing that, okay, that's not the movement, switch them back. Right? That's okay. You know, so many people are afraid to, you know, your employees, you know, like this week I did and I just recently switched roles. And this week I'm like, you know what? We're switching them. We're going to switch those two roles back. We're bringing somebody else in for this. And early on in my career, if you know of being in business, I would have looked and said, you know what? I'm worried that my team's gonna think I'm indecisive, that they're gonna think I'm not a strong leader and maybe not make that move. And I know that's true for a lot of people. Cause I talk to people and I'm like, switch it back. Your job as the leader is to lead. And sometimes you don't see everything and you don't have all the information and you don't know how something's gonna work until you try it. And when you try it, if it's not working, you can't be afraid to make a course correction right away. So you might not have, you might have the wrong people in roles. You might need to move some people around. There might be people in sales that need to be in dispatch or some movers. Don't be afraid to move people around. Especially like in the back end systems of how you're doing things. It's like, look, this is how I want the system of my business to work. And then how do we place people into those specific roles to make that happen? Focus on this. And I would make it an ongoing thing that you do. Go spend a couple weeks in operations, you know, go, go jump in. You know, never misunderstand when I say you want to work on the business and not in the business. That's only after you've set it up to be able to do that. You can't work on the business and not in the business if you don't have the systems running it. So in order to get the systems go back into the business, right, Like I'm rolling my sleeves up right now. I'm going back into the business to set up areas and set up systems and processes and tools and configure them myself and then handing them back off to somebody the way that it needs to be done with a written process. Here's how you do it right? And now you have the ability to hire and train quickly because you know exactly what's going to need to be done. So don't be afraid to jump back in. That's going to be what it's going to take. 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.