Almost 40 million people in America move each year. Some are chasing down new jobs, others are running away from bad weather, and a few are just looking for a change of scenery.
Whatever people’s reasons are for moving, if they’re going to need help hauling their valuables, that’s good news for your moving business.
Given the frequency in which people move each year, you’d think that running a moving business would be a slam dunk operation. As we’re sure you know though, getting clients and staying afloat as professional movers can be quite a bit more complicated than appearances might suggest.
To help you get more out of your business, our team of productivity analysts has put together this ultimate list of simple things that you can do to skyrocket your profits!
1. Know Your Goals and Prioritize Accordingly
No matter what kind of business you’re running, it’s important that you know what it is you want on both a micro level and a macro level.
This is where creating excellent goals becomes helpful. Particularly, S.M.A.R.T. goals.
Smart goals are goals that are specific, measurable, attainable, relevant and time oriented.
For example, generating $100,000 in income with your moving practice in 2019 would be a good S.M.A.R.T. goal.
Take a moment to write down 1-year, 3-year, and 5-year S.M.A.R.T. goals for your business. Then, create a list of actions under each of your goals that you can do to achieve them.
Those actions should be your priorities throughout the year.
Any time you find yourself getting distracted by actions that don’t move you towards your goals, reference the goals and actions that you wrote down to get yourself back on track.
2. Regularly Analyze Waste
A moving business is just as susceptible to wasteful spending as any other business. Maybe your trucks are being used by employees to run errands, maybe you’re paying a friend to build your website that doesn’t know what (s)he’s doing, maybe you’re buying breakfast for everyone each morning.
Whatever it is that you’re doing that’s not moving the needle for your company needs to stop.
Remember, you’re running a business. Your number one priority should be to make investments and do things that increase your business’ value. Anything that occurs outside of that scope is robbing you of your potential.
Sit down each month and look at where your money is going. If you notice anything that can get trimmed, trim away!
3. Pinpoint Tasks That can be Automated or Outsourced
Time is money when you’re running a small business. All of those hours that you spend manually tracking your income or responding to emails is costing you.
Take time back where you can by investing in automation and outsourcing.
For example, you could hire a virtual assistant for $8.00 per hour to respond to emails and you could invest in Quickbooks to automatically track your income and expenses.
4. Define Your “Perfect Prospect” and Chase Them Down
A lot of movers get caught in the trap of trying to work for everybody that needs help moving. The problem with this strategy is that not all clients are created equal.
Chances are, you probably have a client or a type of job that represents the best return on investment for you. For example, maybe your corporate clients are easier to work with and pay more for your services.
If you have a perfect prospective client, you should be aiming all of your marketing efforts and spending your time on them.
5. Systematize Your Operations so You can Scale
When you go to mom and pop shop mechanics, you can often haggle pricing and ask for special favors. Try that at a Jiffy Lube and they’ll tell you that their prices and services are set.
If you want to grow, it’s important that you adopt the Jiffy Lube mindset.
You should have every aspect of your business systematized including how much you charge, how many hours a standard moving operation affords clients, what overages cost, etc.
The more standardized your processes are, the easier it’s going to be to market and scale your services.
6. Hold Your Employees Accountable
A moving business generally employs part-time and seasonal employees. Many of these employees are prone to showing up late, coping attitude, and doing other things that don’t reflect well on your brand.
Part-time or not, in order to build a brand that customers trust, you need to make sure that every person on your team embodies the same values that you do.
Poor behavior is contagious. If you turn a blind eye to it with one employee, your other employees will adopt the same habits.
7. Build a Corporate Culture
One of the biggest faults we see with moving businesses today is that they don’t build brands around their service. They’re typically comprised of a guy who owns a moving truck and hires a revolving door of part-timers to help from day to day.
You should take your moving business more seriously than that.
Create a website. Make your employees wear a uniform. Make sure that your employees know what makes your company different from others in the area.
If you respect your company and define its culture, you’ll find that your team and your customers will adopt that respect.
8. Streamline Fuel Spending
One of the biggest expenses a moving business encounters is gas expenses. Make the process of fueling cheaper and easier by picking up WatchCard fuel credit cards or adopting a similar corporate fueling program.
With the right fuel program at your back, you’ll be able to keep costs down, save time, and reduce the risk of credit card fraud being propagated by rogue employees.
9. Ditch Tacky Marketing
If you’re marketing your moving services by putting up flyers on telephone poles, stop. Marketing like that is going to attract low-spending, unreliable customers.
You should be marketing your moving business like other major businesses market. Look into taking out Facebook Ads and Google Pay Per Click ads. Build a blog and attract free organic traffic, take out ads in travel magazines.
The way a business markets itself says a lot about its aspirations. Make sure that your marketing efforts say that you aspire to be the best mover in your service area.
10. Look For Cross Promotion Opportunities
One of the best ways to market that a lot of moving companies don’t leverage is building cross-promotion relationships with other businesses.
An example of doing this would be contacting apartments in your area and asking their managers if they’d recommend your moving services to new tenants. In return, you could advertise the apartment complex on your website.
Simple, free, promotional exchanges like that can fuel your client pipeline in a big way.
11. Consider Leasing Your Truck If You Experience an Off Season
People hate moving when it’s freezing outside. That fact means a massive slow down in business for moving companies that operate out of harsh locations.
In these cases, it often makes more sense to lease your trucks than to buy them. With a leased moving truck, your vehicle expenses are fixed and you don’t have to pour money into maintenance during the offseason.
12. Make Sure You’re Adequately Insured
This should be a no-brainer but is worth mentioning… If you don’t have a solid insurance policy safeguarding your company from angry customers and injured employees, get covered now.
A single lawsuit could bring your moving company to its knees. With good insurance, you’ll be able to withstand adversity and can sleep a lot easier at night.
13. Always Follow Up With Clients and Ask For Referrals
When you’ve helped your client move into their new place, your relationship with them shouldn’t end!
Follow up with your client and ask them how you did. Give them a coupon for future moving services. Ask them to refer you to their friends and family members.
Asking for referrals after a move could net your moving business thousands of dollars worth of additional revenue every year.
Don’t ever underestimate the “long-tail” value of one of your previous clients.
Wrapping Up Effective Tips for Managing Your Moving Business Better
Managing a moving business is a lot harder than it may look to non-industry professionals. Fortunately, there are a variety of triggers that you can pull to boost your success.
We hope that our tips above have given you insight into how you can better your moving operations.
If you’d like more information on how to run a business successfully, consider checking out more of our newest content on My Press Plus today!