MoveitPro Blog

5 Ways to Stay Ahead of the Competition in Moving Business

Written by Sara Trichell | Oct 26, 2022 6:00:28 PM

 

Hi, my name is Sara and I am the Vice President at MoveitPro Software. Today I wanted to talk a little bit about staying ahead of your competitors. The moving industry is a very competitive place, and as you probably already know, if you're in the moving industry, you are constantly trying to stay ahead of the others.

I'm gonna talk to you about five different things today, that we here at moving company software think can help you stay ahead of the game. So you always need to be at the top of their mind. When your prospects are getting quotes from other competitors, they are overwhelmed, they're multitasking. Moving is super stressful.

You need to make it as easy as possible to remember your company. Today I'm gonna talk about five ways.

First!: Automated SMS

Everyone has a phone in their hand these days, and you need to be taking advantage of that setup. Automated SMS. I'm telling you guys, as soon as a lead comes in, they need to be getting a text message immediately.

You need to be responding to these text messages. So they're gonna be sending you text message questions. You need to make sure that there's someone there to respond to those. Nobody wants to talk on the phone anymore.

That's just the world we live in these days. It's that TikTok genre, generation, So you need to be making sure that your company is ahead of the times and making sure you are texting your customers because that is the only way you're gonna get them.

You need to be texting them when you're on yours. because everyone wants to know where the moving truck, where's the moving truck. I'm sure you already know. They're calling you on the day of the move asking where are you. If you're texting them when you're on your way? Completely negates them having to do that, right?

So you need to be texting them when you're on your right. Another one just thanks texting them and thanking them for taking their time out of their day to talk to you.

Maybe you talk to someone they didn't book, but you send them a follow-up text and you say, Hey, thank you for taking the time out of your day today to listen to what I had to say and allowing me to give you that quote for moving.

I hope you know the rest of your day goes well. It goes a really long way just to give that follow-up text message. Some of those can be automated if you like, or you can send those out manually depending on the size of your business. So those are some ways that SMS can be helpful for your business.

Second: Sales Funnel Emails
We have sales funnel emails. Some of you might already be kind of, um, aware of what these are. Basically what these are is they should start sending out as soon as the prospect enters your sales cycle. So this can be a very variety of various emails, uh, for your company. These don't have to be necessarily sales-focused.

But they can almost kind of fly under the radar just to keep their attention on your company. Just being helpful goes a long way whenever someone is in the stressful situation of having to move their entire life. Right. So I mean, there are things like, you know, you can send them emails on where to find free and cheap boxes.

You know, a lot of your customers, or your prospects, don't necessarily have a ton of money. They're spending a lot of money trying to find movers, trying to, you know, get their internet set up, you know, whatever the case may be.

Giving them a little bit of, Hey, you know, here's a, here's a place we, we sell boxes, but here's also a place where you can find, you know, maybe, maybe used gently used boxes and things like that.

Just shows that you do care and you're not trying to. To put them, any sort of situation. So another one is a helpful packing checklist. Make this printable. So a lot of people, it might be their very first time moving or maybe they've moved before, but they were terrible at it and they need a little help.

Maybe what to pack first. You know, uh, you don't wanna pack your sheets first, you still gotta sleep somewhere, right? So just giving them a little bit of a helpful checklist, um, kind of goes a long way. Make sure that your company logo is at the top of that printable checklist. So they're always looking at it when they're using it.

Uh, maybe hints on how to pack a box. A lot of normal people don't know what a dish pack box is. They don't know they need a special box for their dishware because the boxes, normal boxes will fall through, right? Um, maybe even how to get their new services, like their internet and their water turned on.

If you know where they're moving from already, you can send them something like that. Um, those are just some examples obvious. There are many, many other helpful tips that you probably know better than your prospects and customers do that you can send to them. This is just to keep you on the very tip top of their mind.

I'm telling you, this is going to go a long way because when it comes down to it, they've looked at so many moving companies, they have to kind of hone in on the couple that they remember speaking with. So if you're constantly in their email inbox helping them, they're gonna.

Third: Get Reviews
These days you have got to be ahead of the game here. Everyone is doing research and you wanna be in charge of what they are going to read about your company. You can ask every single good conversation for review.

You get off the phone with a customer and send them a text message saying, Hey, you know, I had a really good conversation with you today.

Is there any way that you can write a review about me on Google or Facebook, or whatever it is that your company or your area, um, sees as the best kind of review place? Um, you can have every employee do the same thing, whoever is speaking with your customers, having customer interactions, have them ask everyone they have a good interaction with for a review.

It will go a long way. You should give employees. For good customer reviews, Give your employees incentives to get those reviews, and that will happen, and your reviews will go up. You need to be sending your review links to customers who thought you did a great job.

So as soon as that move is over if they thought that you did a great job, they need to be getting emailed immediately with some review links so that it's fresh on their mind, they're excited, they wanna give you a review, you wait a day.

They're busy, they're unpacking, and they're too busy to give you a review at that point, right? So reviews are going to go a very long way when it comes to staying ahead of your competition.

Forth: Urgent Leads
Now the fourth thing that I wanna talk about is going to be urgent leads. So these are leads that came in five minutes ago right now, whatever the case is, maybe they came in earlier in the morning.

You just got to the office. You need to be calling these immediately. Immediately. You need to be texting them immediately. You need to be emailing them immediately.

You never know which one a person is going to respond to in a. In a better light. So some people like calls, right? The older generations are gonna want, are gonna wanna be called, the younger generations are gonna wanna be texted.

Maybe it's someone who is setting up a move for their company and they would rather it be over email. You need to be covering all your bases immediately because they're reaching out maybe on a lead platform, maybe specifically to your company. But odds are they've reached out to more than one company, right?

You wanna be ahead of the game and you wanna be the first one that makes that contact. Now, if they don't. Call again, right? There's nothing, nothing's gonna hurt with leaving the voicemail and then trying one more time. Maybe they listen to your voicemail and they go, Oh, you know what? I do wanna talk to them, but let me call them back later.

They see your phone number again, and they might answer that second call. Try again. If there's still no answer. Call first thing tomorrow.

They might be busy today, but it's still on their mind. They still have to get this taken care of. You still need to help them. So that's about urgent leads. Um, just make sure you're calling them immediately.

They reached out to you. You need to be there to help them.

Fifth: Answering the Phone
The last thing I wanna talk about, number five, is always answering the phone. So this isn't someone filling out something online necessarily. This is someone calling you, so you need to make sure no lead goes unanswered. Your sales team must answer.

You would need to have a sales team that's gonna be able to handle the number of calls that are coming into your business. No customer wants to leave a voicemail for business. If they do, make sure you listen to them. Listen to the voicemail and call back immediately with the information that they asked for.

I can't tell you how many times I personally have left a voicemail for business and they call me and they didn't listen to my voicemail. It's infuriating, right? So make sure your sales team is listening to the voicemails, calling back, and already having the information that they need. They're already stressed out.

They need that information. You call, you say, You know, I told, I thought I, I listened to your voicemail. You said you have a two-bedroom. I have. This a loose quote here. If you, if you like to have a better quote, I can maybe come out or I can take some more information over the phone. Do you have some time for me today?

Right. If you can't call back, maybe your sales team can't quite handle the call quantity quite yet. Send an apologetic SMS and let them know you're gonna be returning their call as soon as possible. Now, this goes back kind of to what I'd be, what I was talking about earlier, to the automated s.

You can have these things automated. Um, you can have SMS automated after a phone call. You can have emails automated after a phone call. So whether or not you did reach that person, you can still be having these follow-up, uh, pieces of information be sent to these customers, uh, in the back end. Right. So there were the five things that we at MoveitPro  thought, um, might help you, you and your moving company kind of stay ahead of the game.

Um, if you ever have any questions, you feel free to reach out to MoveitPro, even if you're not a customer, we'd love to help you out. Just so you know all the things that I did talk about today, we can automate here at MoveitPro. Obviously not your sales team, you still need your sales team, but we do have a call center here at MoveitPro.

So if you'd like to outsource your sales team, we also have that as well. So again, if you have any questions, feel free to click the link. And you can set up, set up a demo if you're not already a customer. If you're already a customer, go ahead and uh, go into our chat and we can answer any questions that you have about any of these things cuz we do offer all of them.

Thanks and have a good day.