Your 4th Quarter Plan

As a moving company owner, how you approach the off season will determine the success of your company in the long run. Period, especially the fourth quarter. October through December is really stabilizing and scaling season, depending on where you are with your business, right? You're coming out of moving season. A lot of times things are, you know, super chaotic. It feels like the wheels are falling off the bus and the systems start to unravel. Even if you had them put together or, you know, you really identify where the weak spots are in your business in the summertime, right? And so in the winter, what most moving company owners do is they feel, you know, they panic because they feel like things are slowing down when in reality that slowdown is needed if you utilize it correctly, right? So instead of saying, ah, slowed down, let me just, you know, flop and take a break. Definitely go take a vacation. Definitely enjoy yourself. Definitely switch up the pace of how you work in the off season. But you're gonna really wanna switch from working in your business to working on your business. So let's talk about some ways that you could do that. You know, for me, I used to come out of moving season and just, you know, like, not really do much. And it wasn't until a couple years in the business when I realized like, this slower period is amazing opportunity for me to dial in my processes, my systems, my team and really build a business. Right. You know, in order to build a business. What, what does that mean? What does building a business mean? It means, you know, building out your team and automating your processes. That's it, right. In order to execute on the things that your business revolves around, which is booking moves, servicing moves, booking moves, servicing moves, right? It's simple. But there are a lot of moving pieces, no pun intended, that go into that, right? So we've got to utilize this time, right? We've got to go into the holiday season with our business dialed in and a plan. So when we hit January 1st, we're hitting the ground running. What most companies do is they wait, right? They kind of coast into, you know, let's call it Thanksgiving. And then January 1st, they've got a boost of motivation because, you know, for most companies that aren't dialed in with their marketing and sales, January, February, you know, are dead, right? So it's like this, this, you know, kind of mortality motivation, like, oh, my business is going to die. Like, let me, let me get to work. But the time to get to work is now, right? We're here, you know, it's mid September, I'm Talking to you about this. And October 1st is the fourth quarter. So what is your plan for the fourth quarter? Right. By Thanksgiving, you should be dialed in, right? This is that time. It's exactly why we do Moving Mastery Summit, by the way, in October. If you haven't already gotten your tickets, there's a link somewhere down below. Get signed up, right? You need a plan for the fourth quarter and the first quarter so that you could crush it even next moving season. This is how you build, right? You can't just hang on for dear life in the summer and then, you know, stress about not having enough work in the winter. So let me give you four things that you could be doing in order to really dial in and think about what you've got to focus on in the fourth quarter, right? Transitioning out of moving season, right? There's certain transitional, seasonal transition points that happen in the moving industry, and coming out of moving season is one of them. So the first thing you've got to do is you got to make sure you've got your marketing plan ready, all right? You've got to know, all right, what new lead providers, what new marketing sources, you know, what additional branding, whatever it might be for marketing that you're going to do, have that ready to go, even if you don't need it today, right? So even if you're still busy, you've got a lot of work going on, you've got a lot of leads, a lot of calls. Maybe you can't service all of them. Maybe you feel like, hey, we don't have enough crews as things slow down, you're gonna need it. So have it ready to go. Like push button ready, right? So if you spoke to whoever for marketing sources, get the contract ready to sign, have it in your inbox, have it printed out, whatever it is, and have it ready to go, right? The second thing you're gonna want to do is you're gonna want to dial in your sales process, right? Sales process is everything. People ask me all the time, Louis, how did you go from working out of a truck rental yard to building a $20 million nationwide business? And the answer was sales. Not being salesy, not being pushy, but setting up a process that could consistently and predictably book moves to where I didn't have any hesitation to pour in marketing, because once I poured in the marketing, all we did was test that marketing, see if it worked, tracked it, right? Like identified the roi, the return on investment for that marketing, and then made tweaks and adjustments to that marketing. Instead of saying what most people say, oh, those leads don't work. Oh, that, we tried that. That doesn't work. The problem is almost always in the sales process, not with the marketing sources, okay? Same sources that you might feel don't work. There are companies crushing it with those, right? So just think about that, think about the difference. So the sales process, you've got to get that dialed in. What does that mean? Your lead management, how you're managing the leads, the flow of leads, the flow of phone calls, sets the tone for everything, right? You've got to move that customer through the sales cycle and that needs to happen consistently. This is called automating your business, right? And then you build the team. You know, you don't need rock star salespeople, you don't need hardcore closers. You don't need somebody that you know is a born salesman. What you need is a process. And with the process, your sales team, your moving consultants, your move managers, whatever you might call them, they know what to say and when to say it. That's what makes a great salesperson in the moving business. Because the reality is you're not trying to sell somebody something they don't need. They already need to move. They already called you or submitted a request for an estimate, right? So they're either going to move with you or they're going to move with somebody else. You want them to move with you, right? If you're going to spend the time managing that lead, trying to get them on the phone, getting them on the phone, giving them a quote, you've got to make sure that quote is strong. You've got to make sure that your team knows what to say and when to say it. They know exactly what to say when that customer says, your price is so much more than everybody else's. Right? It's a scary thing for people to hear if they don't know what to say. And what happens is they panic, they drop their price, and then it's a race to the bottom, right? Then they wonder why, oh, we're doing all this work, we're booking all these jobs, but we're broke. There's no profit, right? The cash flow isn't there. There's certain move cost analysis that go into a proper sales process to understand where you need to be price wise, where and when you could afford a discount, and then what to say so that you don't have to just drop the price. You sell your service, not your price. That's all based on just knowing what to say, right? Not being pushy and Then the follow up process. Most people drop the ball on this and they're leaving so much money on the table, they give somebody a quote on the phone, in person, doesn't matter if they want to book with me, they'll call me back, right? There's an elegant follow up process that I'm going to be laying out in depth at Moving Mastery Summit to show you how to follow up with somebody where they feel appreciative that you followed up with them because you're helping them to check off some things that are on their to do list that are this long when they've got a move going on and it shows diligence, it's not you being a pest, it's not you being salesy. It's a sales process. And then of course, there's sales techniques that are within that of what to say to close a deal, right? Gotta get this stuff dialed in. In the fourth quarter, the next thing you want to be doing is reviewing your P and L, but in a different way. Most people, what they do, what most people tell you to do, especially like with a looming recession, is they'll say, you gotta cut. You gotta, you gotta, you got to cut expenses. You got to cut expenses. And that bad advice comes from people that just don't understand what it takes to run a business and what it takes to succeed. Your business needs fuel. So in order to fuel your business, you've got to look at that P and L, the profit and loss statement, or if you don't have that dialed in, this is the time of year to get that dialed in, right? If you've got to pull a bank statement, whatever it is, you look at your expenses and you say, is this an investment or an expense? Right? And what does that mean? That means, well, look, you know the extra coffee machine in the office that makes the special lattes and shit? Like that's. It's cool. But if you're paying for it monthly, that's an expense, okay? Now your marketing, that's an investment, right? It's part of doing business. You can't get rid of the marketing and think that your business is going to continue to grow, right? Your trucks, you need those. Now, whether you need all of them, that's a different story. We'll talk about that more at Moving Mastery Summit as well. But you need that. The same thing with coming to this event, to be quite honest with you, you might say, oh, Louis, I got to get a ticket, I got to fly out there, I got to get a hotel. I don't know. Look, there's a saying that I love and it's don't let your small business make you small minded, right? And I'm sure you've heard you've got to spend money to make money. And how you choose to spend it is critical. Me, I pay for speed. If there's somebody that knows what I need to know for me to break through something that I've been struggling with, what is it? I'll cut the check right away and do it right. So for you to think about, you know, the cost of a ticket and to come spend three days and look at that as an expense, I promise you it'll be the best investment you've ever made in your business. And I say that from multiple testimonials of people that have come to the event that just continuously say that it's the best thing I've done for my business. The best thing I've done for my business. So I want to invite you to think about things on a higher level and look at all your expenses and say, is this going to help me do what I need to do? And know that right now is the time to really put the throttle down and move forward. It's not the time to retract. It's not the time to play things safe. You've got to really step up right now to be able to not only compete, but to take market share in this new reality that we're coming into. This slow season recession, housing markets slowing down. Now's the time to dial in the stuff that you know you've needed to dial in. All right, number four, coming out of this, out of moving season, you've got to identify your post season objectives. What does that mean? Basically, what are the things that you're going to do? The big needle movers, I like to pick three a quarter, right? Might not sound like a lot, but if they're the right three, they really move the needle in your business. And you know, I've done it in the past as well. I see people struggle with it where they're doing so much. But Louis, I don't understand. I'm doing so much. I'm doing so much, but I'm not moving things forward. It's because they didn't stop, take a minute and say, all right, what are the big things that need to happen? Right. You know, maybe we need to hire an operations manager, right? Maybe we need to dial in our sales process. Maybe we need to document our systems and processes and SOPs so that people stop Dropping the ball and, and do things with consistency. Right. What are your post season Q4 objectives? Right. October, November, December, critical, critical time in the moving business. That's why we do this event in October to kind of give you that kickstart, to give you that plan. If you want the plan, if you want it to be crystal clear what your objectives are. Because I get it. I know what it's like to sit there and be like, I've got marketing and sales and the movers, we still need more movers. We can't hire them fast enough. And you know, the people in my office, I kind of need to either retrain them or get rid of them. I know what it's like to feel that sense of overwhelm and I know what it's like to help people break through that as well. And I know what it takes to do it, especially in the moving industry. Especially in moving. I'm going to lay this out for you in three days. I'm bringing on some of the top moving company owners to help me share with you what's working with them today so you can model what they do. Right. I'm going to give you the, essentially the roadmap and the blueprint to take this business of yours, this moving company, to whatever level you want. And that's different for everybody. Some people want to open 50 offices, right. They want to have a hundred million dollar company. Great, let's go. I'll see you at the event. I'm going to show you how. Right. Some people are like, Louis, I just want to make X amount per year for me personally and I want to like enjoy my life. I don't want to, you know, kill myself working. I want to be able to travel. I want to be able to do these things. Great. I'm going to show you how to do that at Moving Mastery Summit. Right. We're like, time's closing. By the way. If you click on the button and it says we're sold out, I apologize. I hope you enjoyed this video. I hope you got some value from this video. But we're almost sold out. There's going to be over, you know, 400 plus people are going to be there in attendance, three days, 1% of your year to be fully immersed and focused without distraction, without your team, without the family, without the, you know, and what's more important than that right now? You know, I believe your number one goal going into some type of recession is to focus on building a financial wall around yourself and your company that nothing can get through and if your moving company is your means and your vehicle to financial freedom, come learn the way to do it. Let me show you. Even if you're like Louis, I know everything there is to know about moving. I promise you you'll have that light bulb moment. I promise you you're going to have that aha. I promise you you're going to overhear something where you're like oh, and it's going to click an instant and you're going to know what your next step is. You're going to know what to do in the fourth quarter. You're going to know how to get ahead and stay ahead. I hope I see you there. Moving Mastery Summit. I look forward to meeting you. My name is Louis Massaro, founder and CEO of Moving Mastery. I hope you enjoyed this video as much as I enjoyed making it for you. Click on the link down below. Get signed up. I'll see you there. Sa.