Should You Focus on Sales or Marketing?
Podcast episode (transcript) in which Louis Massaro advises moving companies to track marketing ROI and prioritize building a solid sales process. He argues that many lead sources exist and no universal “best” marketing channel exists — profitability depends on local numbers — and presents the idea of a "moving sales machine" (six-stage sales process) to convert leads more effectively.
Hey, my friends, it's Louis Massaro. And welcome to another episode of the Moving Mastery Podcast.
Everybody wants to talk about marketing. What's the best source of marketing? And the answer is, whatever's profitable for you, right? There's so many sources of marketing out there that you have to be able to, number one, track what's profitable and what's not profitable. You must be doing a marketing ROI report, okay? Because when you do that, when you know your numbers, when you know how much a certain lead source is bringing in versus how much you're paying and you know the percentage that you're paying on that, it allows you to make changes. It allows you to make shifts, right? Nowadays, it's really the best time in history for moving companies, new moving companies to get into the business and start competing with the big guys right away, or for existing moving companies to be able to really trim some of the fat and start booking more moves with spending less money. Years ago, you spent money on yellow pages and some direct mail and maybe some TV commercials and radio ads. And.
That was kind of like the bulk of it, right before the Internet came along. And you put all your money there and it brought in a bunch of business, and it was great. But now there's so many options which can be looked at as a bad thing. A lot of people do. A lot of people, you know, there's too many options. I tried these lead sources. I tried that. It doesn't work, right? Or it could be looked at as an opportunity. If you know your numbers and you know what's profitable and what's working and what's not working, you can tweak it, right? You can make adjustments. You could start using a new source, and if it doesn't work, you could cut it off right away. You could try something different. You could reallocate the money and put it elsewhere. All right? You couldn't do that years ago. So when someone says, what's the best marketing? Some lead sources work really great in certain cities. AdWords, Google AdWords. You can dominate in some markets. With Google AdWords and other markets, it's so competitive that you're not going to be able to be profitable. So you have to know your numbers. That's number one. That's going to allow you to really see what marketing sources are out there. If you want to list them. Marketing sources. And you haven't already downloaded my eBook, 10 Rules of a Profitable Moving Company. I'll put a link, download that. I list a whole bunch of lead sources and marketing sources and where you could actually be marketing in there, but it doesn't really matter if you don't know how well it's working for you, alright? And the next big point is you really need to start focusing on sales and not marketing. Everyone wants to know what's the hot marketing, what's the hot marketing? What's the hot marketing? And then we talk about the sales process. What's your sales process? What happens when the lead comes into your office? What happens when the phone call comes into your office? Right? Walk me through that. And there's no process, right? There's no process for follow up. There's no process to make sure that you're capturing all those leads, that every time someone calls people in your office are actually getting that data and that information into your system so that you can track it, right? So you know, listen, track your marketing, know your numbers and focus on sales, right? Everyone wants to focus on the marketing. Everybody's question is on the marketing. But you know what, we all have access to the same marketing. There's no secret magic bullet out there that's like, you know, some little ninja trick, alright? The marketing's the marketing. We all have access to the same marketing, all right? It's what you do with that marketing, it's how you track it to see if it's profitable or not profitable. So that you can make adjustments and cut it off as needed, right? Something's profitable, you can add more money to that and the money that you add to that comes from the source that you cut off. So you make adjustments like that, that's what's gonna allow you to be profitable. And then when you take that and you now put that into a rock solid sales process, now you have what I call a moving sales machine, alright? You can have the best marketing in the world and you feed it into an okay sal, right? And it's not gonna produce that well, right? And if you haven't witnessed that, if you don't know what that's like, then you don't really know. Until you know, until you've seen a moving sales machine in operation, until you've seen a real, you know, rock solid sales process, it's hard to understand how much more business you can book with that. Okay? So focus on the sales. Because otherwise when you focus on the marketing, you're pretty much going, it's saying, you know what, I'm going to go to the gas station and I'm going to fill my car up with high octane, right? I'm going to fill up My, you know, whatever it is, right? Let's just say for the sake of this conversation, it's an old beat up car. Not that you have an old beat up car, but let's just say it's an old beat up car, right? High octane, you say, I'm going to put the great gas in there and it's going to run like a Ferrari. I got news for you, it's not going to run like a Ferrari, right? It's going to run like the same old beat up car that it is. And that's what it's like to, to go get the best marketing and put it into an okay sales process, right? You wanna build the Ferrari to put the good marketing into, to watch it take off. That's what you want. All right, so listen, I know you want direct answers for what marketing is the best. And I'm just being honest with you. You have to take a look at what's profitable for you in your market, all right? And you have to focus on sales. Sales is. I have moving sales academy. I created an online course. It's a six week course. I'm not selling it to you right now. I'm just telling you that I created that because I know moving companies need that. Why, why not a marketing course? Cause we all have access to the same marketing. The same stuff's out there, the same lead sources, the same direct mail, same Google AdWords. Right? It's all the same stuff. It's what happens after. And I know I keep saying this, but I just, I can't get this point across. Enough, enough, all right? It's all about your sales process. It's not about being salesy, it's about the process. When the lead comes in, what happens? What's that whole life cycle of that lead? Right? When that call comes in, what's the life cycle of that call? When I talk about life cycle, how does it enter into your system? How do you keep track of it? What's the follow up process like before you get them on the phone? What's the follow up process like after you give them a quote? Right. How do you prevent them from canceling? Do you have scripts set up? Right. There's so much that goes into it, but if you don't have, you know, a solid sales process, you're just kind of, you know, you're putting good marketing into a crappy car, to be quite honest with you. All right, focus on the sales. If you want to know what marketing is good, get your marketing ROI report. That's also listed in 10 rules of a profitable moving Company. If you haven't downloaded that, it's free, go get it. I'll put the link below. All right, you need your marketing ROI report. You need to know how much each source is making you, right? It's not a matter of this lead Source brings in 20,000amonth. Okay, what's it costing you to bring in 20,000amonth? Is it costing you 10,000 or is it costing you 1,000? There's a big difference there. All right, so try everything, try every marketing source, try every lead source and see what's profitable. Start it on a small scale, see if it works. If it works, spend more money with it. If it doesn't work, cut it off or make adjustments. And when it comes to moving leads, you have to understand that moving leads are not going to convert at a high rate, period. I talk to a lot of people, I say, are you buying moving leads? They're like, yeah, I tried moving leads and they don't really work. They don't really convert well. But were they profitable for you? I don't know. That's the key when looking at moving leads. They're not going to convert at a high rate. They're not going to convert. And when I say convert, I mean if you talk to 100 people from moving lead and 10 of them book, that's your conversion. You have a 10% conversion.
So they're not going to convert as well as someone that went to your website. They're not going to convert as well as someone that calls in and says, hey, I saw your truck driving down the street. But are they profitable? And they can be very, very profitable. If you understand how to treat them, treat them differently. Just understand you may have to call a lot more of them to make just as many sales as the people that are coming from your website. So if you need more business and you're willing to put in the time to make the calls and you have the follow up process and you've set up email automation and different things that you can do to help facilitate the sales process. Try moving leads too. Alright. Again, I'd love to tell you use this source, this source and this source, but the truth is it's about what's profitable for you. I know I'm repeating myself, I know I'm saying it over and over, but I've said the same stuff in other videos and I just want to make sure that everybody gets this. Listen, I don't care if you're just starting out, I don't care if you have a.
10 location van line operation. It's the same for everybody. Alright? So I hear small guys will say, well I'm just starting out, you know, big guys will be like, I've been doing this forever, I know how to do it. Listen, if you don't know your numbers, if you don't know how profitable you are with your marketing, then you don't really know what you're doing. Sorry to tell you that.
And I'm not saying it from a place of I'm not looking down on you for it. I was there. I know what it's like to not know what my numbers are. I know what it's like to spend a ton of money on marketing and not know if it's bringing in the return. I've been there, but I've also been on the other side. When I know my numbers, when I know what's profitable and what's not profitable, when I can make those tweaks and I can make those adjustments and watch my profits go up. And that's a great place to be. So if I'm in your face a little bit, if I'm kind of coming at you a little bit, it's because I want you to be at that place, right? So listen, focus on return on your investment, okay? For your marketing, tweak what's working and what's not working, make adjustments and then focus on your sales process. From start to finish, focus on your sales process.
And if you're ready to take your moving company to the next level, make sure you check out my brand new on demand training on how to consistently book more high paying moves all year long. It's called the six stages of a moving company sales machine and you can access it right now for free@lewismassaro.com.
Six.
Stages in this training you'll learn the steps you need to take to increase your sales with a smooth running consistent process. This is the same process I use in my moving companies to book 12,000 moves a year. And now I'm training you on how to implement it in your moving company for free. It's available now@lewismassaro.com Six stages.
Sam.