Rule #1 of a Profitable Moving Company: Know Your Numbers

Hey, my friend. It's Luis Massaro, author of 10 Rules of a Profitable Moving Company and founder of Moving Mastery. Today is a big, big episode, alright? We're going to be Talking about the 10 rules of a profitable moving company. I just recently wrote an eBook, the 10 Rules of a Profitable Moving Company. It's free, it's on my website. Make sure you download it. But today I want to go over rule number one of the the 10 rules of a profitable moving company. And that's know your numbers, okay? In the 10 rules, there's no real particular order of importance, but know your numbers is definitely the number one rule to becoming a profitable or more profitable moving company. And let's talk about the numbers for a minute and which numbers I'm referring to, okay? The first set of numbers or reports, right? Because the numbers go into a report and that's how you essentially know them. And that's how you know your numbers is by viewing the reports. Alright? So the first set of reports that you want to see, that is by far, you have to be doing this on a monthly basis is your profit and loss statement, okay? And I know some of you may be watching and you may say, yeah, I know, I, you know, I check, you know, I look at my profit and loss, I look at it quarterly or I check it out once a year or like a lot of people out there, it's only being used to turn over to the CPA to do the taxes every year. And you know, I'm only telling you this information because that's what really helped propel me to the next level. All right? When I first started, I didn't know what I was doing. I didn't know anything about numbers or books. I mean, you know, I was a 19 year old kid, I didn't even know how to write a check. You know, I would go buy moving supplies at the moving supply store and bring cash that I had from the job and just pay them. You know, my CPA finally said like, what are you doing? Why are you doing that? I was like, well, why make two trips? Why take the money to the bank and then have to write the guy a check? It seems like double work to me. Obviously I learned that that's not the right way to do it. And I, you know, got my books in order, eventually hired bookkeepers and got all that under wraps. But you know, it's not something that you're just, you know, when you go open a business that anyone just teaches you, but you have to do the profit and loss Let me tell you why it's so important, all right? And you want to do it monthly. And for those of you who don't know what a profit and loss statement is, it's basically all the money, all the revenue that you made in that period, right? Let's just say for the month, all the revenue that came in and then all of your expenses. So you take the revenue minus the expenses and then that's your profit. Right? But you could drill down a little bit further and start getting into percentages. This helped me one time a lot, actually, but one time it helped me where I was looking at my P and L on a monthly basis like I always do. And I do it in two stages. I first take a look to make sure everything's in the proper category. You know, for the last, I don't know, 15 years, I had bookkeepers doing the work. But, you know, it's my company, right? And I want to make sure that everything is correct and they put every single charge and every single, you know, source of revenue in the right spot. So I go through and I check the detailed profit and loss, right? And I just make sure everything's in the proper category. Then once it is, I print off the summary and I go through the summary, alright? You're going to be able to tell so much about what's going on in your business. You know, there was a time where I'm sitting and I'm looking at the P and L and I'm like, why is my fuel percentage so much higher this month than it's been over the previous months? And the fuel price was actually down. Fuel prices went down as I started to drill, drill down into it to see why that was. You know, first I thought maybe there was a mistake in the P and L. And turns out that I had a group of movers that were running their own little business at my expense. At the fuel station, they were fueling up cars for people trucks because it was only diesel. So they were fueling up other people's trucks and getting half the money in cash. Now, I caught this right away and many of you may say, yeah, but I would know that that's going on. You know what? I didn't see it with my own eyes. I was there. I felt like I had a good feel for what was going on in my business, but I didn't see it. My dispatcher didn't see it. Nobody brought it to my attention. I found it in the numbers because when something's wrong with the numbers, it stands out. Immediately. The numbers don't lie. They're black and white. It's very simple. They are what they are. If the information is entered incorrectly, then they're going to be, right? So imagine if I didn't look at that for a year or ever, right? I would have never known that was going on or it would have took a lot longer for me to find out. So, you know, those are the types of things where every month you find something, every month you see an expense that shouldn't be the way that it is and you're able to do something about it. It's just an amazing regular practice to get into with your business. And if you don't have an accounting software, go online, use QuickBooks online. It's like I think 15 bucks a month, right? It's very easy to use. Very simple. Don't let your profit and loss statement be something that's just for the bookkeeper or just for the cpa. All right? And this goes for everybody. I know people with multiple locations. I know people that are van line agents. I know, I know people with very successful businesses and they're still running their business based upon the amount of money that's in the bank account. All right? You can get by like that. But if you want to take it to the next level, if you want to drill down and become more profitable, review your profit and loss every single month, set aside a little time, put it on your calendar and start doing it, all right? Believe me, you're going to start finding areas where you can improve and increase profit. The second report that you're going to want to look at again on a monthly basis is a marketing roi. Okay? Essentially this is like a profit and loss strictly for your marketing, all right? So you're going to have all of your marketing, all the different sources, all the leads that came in for all those different sources, line item, what the booking percentage was for each one, what your cost of acquisition was for each one. So in other words, you know, how much did it cost to get each one of those moves and then what the cost percentage was, right? With this report. You know, this. When I finally had my call center going and you know, I grew it to over 50 sales reps on the phone. This is what really helped me scale, alright? Because when you don't know what marketing is performing and what's not, you're scared and nervous to try different sources, right? Because what if it doesn't work? You know? And how do you gauge that? How do you judge whether your marketing source is working? Or not working. You know, a lot of times we count on our salespeople, like, oh, this source is. You know, these leads aren't really that good, or, wow, these are great. The phones are ringing off the hook. But in reality, it's not about whether the phones ring off the hook or whether you have to call 100 leads in order to get three jobs. It's a matter of how profitable they are. Right. So you need a marketing ROI report to be able to tell you how profitable your marketing sources are. So important, you know, especially in this day and age. I mean, there's so many different ways to market. It's not like, you know, 10 years ago where, you know, you had a yellow page ad, some direct mail, and a few other things going on. There's a lot of different lead sources, and you may only be getting a few from this one and a few from that one. You want to be able to know every single month how they're performing. All right? Because then from there you can make adjustments. The third report that you're going to want to look at every month is your completed moves report. Okay. You're also gonna wanna look at this one weekly. All right. Weekly and monthly, your completed moves report. So basically, the completed moves report is essentially the moves that you did, the moves that you completed. Right. But what was the average move? Right. What was the estimated price versus the actual price? Right. How much packing was sold on each move? When you're looking at these numbers on a monthly basis, you see things that you can then, you know, implement into your business. Right. You know, if you start looking and saying, wow, how can we increase sales? How can we increase and bring in more revenue? And you're like, well, we could sell more packing. Okay, well, if every month you look at your completed moves report and you see that you're selling, I don't know, on average, $50 per move in packing. Right. You say, you know what? Let's, let's. How can we get that to $100amove in packing? And you come up with a plan and you figure it out and you need to gauge that every month you need to look at it and see if you're making progress. Right. Or what happens if, you know, your average local move is normally $860 and all of a sudden one month it's like $620. There might be another problem. There might be something going on that you need to look at. Or you might be advertising or marketing with a source that's bringing in very small moves or you may have lost a source of big moves. Right. Having this information, I could try my best to tell you what it's going to do for you as a business owner, but only until you have it in front of you will you be able to know how impactful it's going to be for your business and what you can do and changes you can make for your business. Right? Very, very, very important. And the last report that you're. And again, these are bare minimum, right? These are not all the reports that you want to see, but if you're not doing these, start with these, alright? There's many more advanced reports that you can get into. You may be doing more now, but to me, these are four of the reports that you need to be looking at. And this one again is another weekly and monthly, which is your sales rep performance. Alright? You want to know how every salesperson rep, whatever you call the moving consultant, how they're doing weekly, how they're doing monthly, right. You can't just assume that they're doing good or not doing good. You have to look at this because they could fall off, they could be going through something personally where it's affecting their mind and they're not producing the numbers that they're normally producing. Right? And if you're able to see that and you're able to track that trend quickly, you can do something about it, right? You can pull them to the side, talk to them, train them more. Maybe they need more training, maybe they need some motivation, maybe they need a higher bonus, right? Whatever it may be, you need to track that weekly and monthly. All right? I had somebody recently asked me, you know, what do I do? My sales reps aren't motivated. Last year, these were their numbers. Well, first thing you need to do is stop looking at their numbers in yearly. You know, you need to look at them weekly, you need to look at them monthly, and you need to help them to develop better sales skills to be able to sell more. Right? So these are the four reports you need to be looking at, okay? And I'm stressing this because I know if you start doing this, you're gonna be able to make your business more profitable. Not because of what I'm just giving you what to look at, right? I don't know exactly what you're gonna see when you get it, but. But I know when you get it. If you're running a business and you're a business owner, you're smart enough to know that by this information, I know what my next step is. Okay? I know by what I saw on completed moves that I need to take action and I need to do something to raise our average move. Maybe I need to raise our price to get that up higher. Right? My profit and loss statement. Maybe your books are a mess right now. Don't get discouraged. Right? If you haven't been looking at them ever, or you only look at them once a year or occasionally glance at them, or it's just something you use for the cpa, understand it's going to take you a little bit of time to clean them up and get them in order, but it's going to be the best investment of time you ever made. Trust me, your marketing roi. Don't guess anymore what's working, what's not working, all right? So don't be fooled because you have a marketing source that makes the phones ring off the hook and it's exciting and there's adrenaline, but in reality, it might not be profitable. Right? You don't want moves at any cost. You want moves at a certain cost to where they're profitable. Right. And what else is there? Your salesman's performance. Right. This is huge. Right. If you're coaching and you're doing enhancement training with your sales team to where you. You're looking at where they're struggling and you're helping them overcome that so that they could sell more for you and your company, you need to be looking at that weekly, monthly. Once you set up the templates for these and once you're able to figure out where you're going to pull the data and where you're going to get the information from, it's easy. Then you schedule some time once a month. Yes, you Right. Don't have somebody else review these reports. This is your business and your profits. This is rule number one of ten rules of a profitable moving company about becoming more profitable. When you're more profitable, the owner of the business receives the benefit. Okay? So take the time. Schedule it on your calendar. Whether it's, you know, a couple different days where you have two hours a day, or whether you take one full day a month and you just go through all the numbers. Trust me, it's going to be one of the best things you ever did. Until then, I hope this was helpful. Go out. 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 louismassaro.com tenrules so that's Louis L O U I S Massaro M A S s a r o.com 10rules. 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.