The Dollars Are In Dispatch For Your Moving Company

Moving season is here. What's up guys? Listen, I know it's been a while since I've been live, but it's may, it's moving season and we've got some important stuff to talk about. All right, the dollars are in dispatch, right? That's what we're talking about today. Before I get started, by the way, if you want to learn, if you. If, by the way, if you own a moving company, if you're managing a moving company, go to movingmastery.com and get my brand new free training called the 7 Key Areas that your dispatcher needs to tighten up in order to increase profits. I put it up there for a limited time. It's free. You can get it now just go to movingmastery.com it's at least an hour long training of how to increase profits by tightening up your dispatch. Make sure you go get that@movingmastery.com but I want to talk to you today about how the dollars are in dispatch. All right? We all know you need the sales coming in. You know, I'm a big believer that you've got to have that consistent sales, you know, booking moves. But once you book those moves and it gets transferred over to dispatch, what happens then, right? That's really where the money's made. You've got to get it coming in. But in order to do that, I'm going to share with you here seven of the key areas that your dispatcher needs to tighten up in order to increase profits. And if you want to learn this in depth, just go to movingmastery.com, sign up. My brand new free training is there. Go check it out. All right, so let's talk about dispatch because you know, a lot of people have a different idea of what dispatch is. And let me tell you how I look at dispatch. Dispatch in a moving company is a couple of things, right? Three things actually. It's, you know, it's an event, right? It's something that happens in the morning, meaning you dispatch the crews that whole morning there for me used to be from like 6:30 to 7:00 clock maybe to 7:30 to latest was that time in the morning where you got all the crews out, right? So that's an event. It's also a position, right? The dispatcher is a certain position within the company and essentially they're in control of really seven areas, seven key areas that I'm gonna share with you today of the business, right? It's really the, you know, the key position within operations, right? I know a Lot of companies have different levels of dispatchers, right. You know, a lot of companies might have multiple dispatchers, but for someone who's, let's say, you know, between just starting out and let's just say a couple million dollars a year, your dispatcher is going to be that person that's really in charge of taking action, everything that sales gives them and getting it serviced. Right. Making sure that it gets serviced and it gets handled the way you want things done. Right. And the third is it's also a position within the company. Not only is a position, it's a. What did I say? Position. I forget what I said. Anybody who's here, what did I say? It's a position, it's an event and it's a role. Right. It's something that needs to happen. I'm a little rusty on these lives. It's been a little while, I gotta get back into it here. What's up, cats? Good to see you. Live from London as always. Alright, so I wanna tell you a story, cause just to give you, put it in context here of how important dispatch really is, there was a time back in, oh man, I can't remember the year, but we were probably doing, I would say we definitely passed the $10 million mark at this point. Had a call center set up and my dispatch operation in this local office in Florida needed some work, right. So essentially things weren't going the way that I wanted them to go. We were approaching moving season, it was just about this time and I needed to fire the dispatcher, right? So what did I do? I fired a dispatcher and I personally went in and dispatched. Now mind you, I had six offices of a call center to run. I mean, I was running a big operation, but I knew how important it was to get the right person in there and get the right person trained. And sometimes you just don't have the luxury of no matter how big you get, sometimes you gotta go back to get, you know, rolling up your sleeves and making things happen. And dispatch is the place to do that, right. If you're having any trouble, if you're struggling to get control over your business, you're having issues with your movers, you're having issues with your customers. Dispatch is the place that you can go and sit and take over that role, take over that position, or at least oversee that position that will help you resolve all of those issues. All right? So, you know, again, it's not, I don't care how big you are, if dispatch is not under control, go step in that position. And take care of that stuff because it's crucial. Crucial. I'm going to share with you the seven areas here that you need to be on top of in order to increase profits in your moving company. All right? By the way, if you want the full training on the seven key areas of how to increase profits by tightening up dispatch for your moving company, I put it up. It's available now for free for a limited time. Just go to movingmastery.com it's there for you. It's over an hour long. Go there, check that out. It's moving season. You need to get this stuff tightened up. Let me get into these different areas so we could talk about this now. So there's certain things that your dispatcher or your operations manager or whatever you want to call them. The person that's in charge of taking everything that gets booked, all the moves that get booked and getting them serviced. Right? Because at the end of the day we know you need sales, right? But you're a moving company so facilitating the move is really what your customers are hiring you for. And that's what needs to happen flawlessly. But there's a lot of money that goes through the dispatcher's hands that could either be made or lost. And it's all about how tight that operation is, right? I mean, when I hear and I see people that are doing, you know, millions of dollars in business and aren't profiting at high levels, it bothers me. And it's because, you know, well, there's a lot of reasons. I don't want to put everybody in one bucket. But I can tell you right now there are, there's money to be made in dispatch, alright? And there's certain key areas that need to be managed in order to tighten it up and increase those profits. So the first one is the crews, right? The dispatcher is responsible. Oh, here we go again. Hold on, let's see if I could change this right now. Hold on guys, I'm gonna fix this. I'm gonna see if I can switch this here so it's not backwards. Boom. Is that right? Left hand. All right. All right, let me know if that's right. By the way, anybody just joining us that wants a full in depth, just go to movingmastery.com I got the free training there for you. If one of you could just put that down below movingmastery.com that would be greatly appreciated. But the crews, all right, your dispatcher is in charge of managing the crews, making sure that you've got enough crews there Making sure that they're trained. Making sure that they are reprimanded and disciplined when it need be. Making sure that you are giving them bonuses and rewards and compensating them for doing a good job. Making sure that if there are injuries that owners know about it. Right? Crew management all falls under dispatch. This all is the responsibility of the person dispatching for your company. All right? So they need to manage the crews. That's number one. Second thing is they need to be managing the inventory. Okay? Your inventory is a place where you could possibly be losing a ton of money. What do I mean by inventory? All your pads, all your dollies, all your straps, all your boxes, your tools, anything that goes on the back of that truck, your shrink wrap, whatever it might be, your broom, anything. That's all part of your inventory, all right? How many times have you, you know, if you're watching this right now, let me know. But how many times have you got a call from a customer that says, hey, we've got one of your dollies here, or hey, we've got one of your pads here, right? You're like, okay, great, yeah, I'm glad they called us, but how many times are they not calling you? Alright, so you need your dispatcher to be on top of, of inventory, all right? One quick, easy way to do this is do a morning inventory of each and every truck and have the drivers do it themselves. Again, if you want this full training, go to movingmastery.com it's all there. I'd be live for at least an hour and a half doing it all for you if I did it right now. But I put it up there for you. Next thing they need to be responsible for and they need to manage are your trucks. Okay? This is a big asset, right? You put a lot of money into your trucks and you need to make sure that they are being managed properly. Not only are they back in the yard locked up with all the equipment in them, you know, possibly in winter states, you've got the, you know, plugging in engine block heaters, you've got to send them in for preventative maintenance for PMs, right? Making sure that your trucks are taken care of, that's all the dispatcher's responsibility, right? For me, a dispatcher is not just someone who hands out the paperwork in the morning and the keys to the trucks and says, see you later. There's a lot more to it than that. And they're responsible for the trucks, all right? So make sure they're on top of that next Thing they need to manage and be responsible for are the moves, right? They are responsible. They are the quarterback that needs to make sure that all the moves get serviced on time, that you send out the right equipment, that you send out the right crews, and that the customer's ultimately happy with the service. And it's not always easy for the dispatcher, right? Like, they might have, you know, few extra jobs booked, and they really have trucks for. Or maybe when a job was getting booked, it was, you know, it was mistaken as far as how big it was. And now they were really supposed to send the truck to that second job, but the first job's taking much longer. You guys know the drill, right? I don't have to tell you that, but they're responsible for the moves and making sure that the moves go flawlessly, as flawless as possible. All right, what else? We're talking about your dispatcher and what they are responsible for and the seven areas that they can tighten up and need to tighten up in order to increase profits for your company. Make sure you go to movingmastery.com to get the full training. It's free. It's up there for you. Go check that out. The next thing that they need to be on top of is your money, okay? Making sure that you get paid everything that you are supposed to get paid for that move. And this includes clocking crews in and out from the office, all right? Making sure that, you know, you're not just sending crews out and going, hey, guys, here's go do the job and go ahead and calculate what the charges are and collect whatever you think the charges are going to be. No, this needs to be handled by dispatch. The movers need to be calling in to dispatch. Here's my start time. Here's my finish time. If it's a local move, right? Here's my extras. Here's the packing. Add this up for me. Tell me what to collect, right? It's not the movers telling the dispatcher what they collected. It's the dispatcher telling the movers how much they need to collect to make sure they get all the money and making sure that they receive all of this money. Get it to the bookkeeper, get it to the owner, make sure that the credit card transactions go through. They need to be in charge of getting your money. All right, what else? Dispatchers are also responsible for the contracts, right? Too many people take the contracts, the bill of lading the paperwork, right? Whatever you call it, take this stuff lightly. It's not until you have to go to court. It's not until you have to fight a claim that you go into that stack of, you know, your file drawer full of contracts or if you have, you know, a CRM like Smart Moving. By the way, anybody that is looking for CRM for their company, I'm now partners with Smart Moving. So go check that out. SmartMoving.com, do a demo. You're gonna love it. But contracts are crucial, right? We take it for granted, and we just. We don't really look to see. Did the customer sign everywhere they're supposed to sign? Right. Did they fill out everywhere they're supposed to fill out? It's gonna bite you in the butt. If you ever have to go to court over a contract, if you ever have to fight a claim over a contract, the contracts are useless unless every area that's supposed to be signed is signed. So your dispatcher needs to make sure that they are filled out correctly, going out, and that the movers are getting things signed the way that they need them to get. You need them to be signed. Then the customers, okay, they need to manage the customers. They should be the first point of contact for any customer that is in the process of moving. All right? I've talked about it in the past how, you know, dispatch and sales needs to be separated. And, you know, I think some people took it out of context to think that you need a dedicated. A dedicated customer service person. And that's not the case. Right? I mean, if the majority of your moves go really well and you're, you know, again, you're from just starting to, let's say, a couple million dollars a year, your dispatcher should be handling all the customer service issues that are happening on the day of the move. Unless you do have a dedicated customer service person, this should not be handled by sales. This should be handled by dispatch. And that's really the seven areas that they're responsible for. In order to make sure that your company's running smooth, your company's running tight, and really, most importantly, that it's profitable. All right? So if you want to get the full training on the seven key areas that your dispatcher needs to tighten up right now to increase profits in your moving company, just go to movingmastery.com it's free. It's there for you. There's nothing to buy. There's nothing to sign up for. Go check it out. I'm only putting it up there for a limited time. And cats, man, thanks for always participating. I see you there. I appreciate the comments. I appreciate the love you show me online. Thanks a lot. And listen, guys, it's moving season. Get dispatched, tightened up. Go make that money, book the moves, keep your trucks full, and go out there every single day. Profit in your business, thrive in your life. I'll see you later.