Improving moving company sales is tough. To do it, you need to understand what goes through a potential customer’s mind before they purchase your services. Some will have read horror stories about being hit with hidden fees, making them wary to commit to a service they know they need. Others may have done so much research that they have several moving companies they’re considering and they don’t know which one to choose.
Whatever the case may be, you need to know how to sell moving services. Specifically, you need to know how to sell in a way that increases a potential customer’s trust in your business while setting yourself apart from the other movers competing for clients in your service location.
That’s where this article will help you. With the sales tips shared here, you’ll have everything you need to improve your sales process so you get more customers.
Tip No. 1 – Use Your Sales Reps Wisely
You likely already use a sales rep for moving company sales efforts. The rep is a customer’s first point of physical contact with your business. They’re also responsible for answering client questions and securing the sale. These duties are all par for the course for a rep. However, only focusing on those duties means your reps are missing out on a great chance to ensure the sales they make actually stick.
For example, let’s say a rep speaks to a customer and convinces them to purchase your services. The rep leaves and the customer has time to wait between the rep’s visit and the date of their move. During that time, your sales rep doesn’t make any contact with the customer. That’s a problem because it means the customer has ample opportunity to change their mind without any interaction from you.
How do you fix that problem?
Have your sales reps schedule a second visit, free of charge, with the customer between the initial visit and the moving date. This second visit gives your rep the chance to answer any additional questions the customer has thought of, thus making them feel more confident in your service. Plus, the rep can use this visit to set the cost of your service in stone, meaning the customer doesn’t have to worry about hidden fees when your movers arrive.
Making moving company sales doesn’t mean much if customers change their minds before you provide your service. With extra visits from sales reps, you keep more customers on board by getting ahead of any doubts they may have.
Tip No. 2 – Develop a Sales Script
Scripts are a vital part of the moving company sales process. They provide structure to the conversations your sales reps have with customers, allowing them to keep communication on point and focused on sales. Having a moving company sales script also ensures consistency in every conversation. The script prevents reps from making promises your company can’t keep or offering customers things that you don’t want to provide to them.
That consistency leads to more sales because it allows you to create a defined process. You don’t have to worry about reps doing unexpected things because every single one is following the same script. Better yet, having a script means you can track the effectiveness of your sales efforts. If you’re not getting the results you expect, you can often tweak the script to see what works and what doesn’t.
The question is, what should go into a moving company sales script?
Good sales scripts contain several key components, including:
- An introduction that tells the customer who your company is and what it does.
- Rapport building statements, such as asking the customer how their day is, to start the conversation off on the right foot.
- Questions that get the customer talking about their needs. Ideally, these questions should be open-ended and focus on the problems that people typically have when moving home.
- Value statements that emphasize your company’s credibility, such as references to professional accreditations or work you’ve done before.
- A selection of stock answers to common customer objections.
- A final question that directly asks the customer if they’d like a quote.
- One final statement telling the customer you appreciate them taking the time to speak with you.
Including all of those elements into your moving company sales script should allow you to handle all of the issues your potential customer may have.
One last point – don’t force your sales reps to stick to the script perfectly every time. Sometimes, a customer may raise an issue or present themselves in such a way that the script doesn’t work. Trying to stick to it in these situations leads to it becoming obvious that your reps are working from a script. Give your reps leeway to tweak and alter how they use the script while still emphasizing the importance of hitting the script’s key points.
Tip No. 3 – Sell the Benefits Rather Than the Service
Your first instinct when selling your moving services is likely to talk about all of the service’s features. For example, you may mention that your trucks are larger than your competitors’. Or, you might talk about the number of people you commit to each job. These features are important. But they’re not the key selling points for your customers.
Instead, customers want your moving company sales materials to talk about how these features benefit them.
Let’s take the larger moving trucks as an example.
As a standalone feature, that doesn’t mean much to a customer. It’s only when you explain the benefits of having larger trucks that the customer sees why it’s important. In this case, larger trucks allow your movers to take more items per trip, which cuts down on the time spent on journeys between the customer’s current property and the one they’re moving to. Less time spent driving means less time spent on the move. This benefits the customer because it makes the moving process easier and likely means they pay less than they would with a company that has smaller trucks.
The same goes for committing more people to each job. If you send four people to a job rather than two, that means items get moved into your trucks twice as fast. Again, the customer benefits from a faster move that saves them time and money.
The features of your service show customers what you offer. But the benefits demonstrate why what you offer matters to them, which is vital when trying to secure more moving company sales.
Tip No. 4 – Offer Clear Lines of Communication
Communication breakdowns lead to the loss of moving company sales. They leave customers feeling like you don’t understand them or that you aren’t listening to what they’re saying. Establishing clear lines of communication ensures this doesn’t happen.
There are several ways to do this.
Informing prospects about the best ways to contact you if they need help is the most important. Rather than leaving a prospect to figure it out on their own, give them an email address or phone number. Build on this by setting your communication standards with the client. Tell them how quickly they can expect a response to their inquiry, which ensures they don’t get frustrated with waiting for an answer.
It also helps to have different lines of communication for each stage of the moving company sales process. For example, you could create dedicated phone numbers and email addresses for initial inquiries, purchases, and customer aftercare. Route these lines of communication directly to the person or team responsible for them and your customers benefit from getting quick answers.
Tip No. 5 – Be the First to Make Contact
According to removal specialists moveBuddha’s co-founder, Ryan Carrigan, customers will usually send inquiries to three or four companies when searching for a mover. His company collected data that suggests that the company that makes first contact with the customer has a 47% higher chance of securing that customer’s business than the ones who come after.
The message is simple:
Get in first and you stand a higher chance of making more moving company sales.
Again, setting up a dedicated line of communication for initial inquiries helps here. For example, a dedicated email address allows you to easily track who is a first-time customer versus those you’re already speaking to and those who’ve used your services in the past.
You can build on this by plugging that email address into an autoresponder in your customer relationship management system. Set up a quick welcome email that thanks the customer for their inquiry and tells them approximately how long it will take for you to create a personalized response. Set the autoresponder to send the welcome email as soon as a new inquiry comes in and you get ahead of the competition with your first response, even if that response doesn’t necessarily answer the customer’s question. The key here is that you follow up the initial email with a more direct answer as quickly as possible.
Tip No. 6 – Show Appreciation to Your Customers
Your moving company sales strategy worked and you have a customer. They commit to a date, you turn up and do the job, and everybody leaves the situation happy.
That’s the end of the transaction, right?
Not necessarily. That satisfied customer can be a source of new moving company sales if you handle the aftercare portion correctly. In addition to making yourself available for any inquiries the customer has, send them a thank-you message a day or two after their successful move. This could take the form of an email or a hand-written note. You could even push the boat out and send the customer a welcome package containing household essentials, which they’ll need when they’ve just moved to a new home.
All of these actions show the customer that you appreciate them choosing your moving company. That appreciation strengthens the relationship you have with the customer. As such, it creates a foundation for you to ask the customer for a review, testimonial, or a referral to one of their friends.
Word of mouth is an important tool in moving company sales. By showing appreciation to your satisfied customers, you increase the chances that they’ll point other people in your company’s direction.
Tip No. 7 – Work With a Lead Provider
Sales and marketing are linked in every type of company.
Your marketing team is responsible for attracting customers to the business and informing them about what you do. The sales team builds on those initial conversations to bring the customer closer to making a purchase.
The more you can invest in your marketing, the more moving company sales opportunities your team will have.
But therein lies the problem.
Many moving company owners don’t have the resources needed to build full marketing teams. Instead, they try to do the marketing themselves, leaving it as an afterthought when compared to sales and the provision of their services. When marketing isn’t a core focus, fewer leads come into your business. And fewer leads mean that you make fewer moving company sales.
Lead providers solve the marketing problem.
A good lead provider handles the toughest marketing tasks, such as advertising for new customers and validating leads to ensure they’re good enough for your company’s sales department. Lead providers can also give you a consistent flow of leads, which your sales team can convert into clients. By working with a lead provider, you outsource your marketing to a trusted third party, leaving your team with more time to focus on making sales.
Strengthen Your Moving Company Sales Process
A strong sales process ensures that your moving company takes full advantage of the leads it generates. Having a moving company sales script ensures consistency across this process. Using your sales rep for moving company follow-up appointments allows you to directly confront the customer uncertainty that leads to cancellations. And focusing on benefits while communicating clearly ensures your customers feel secure in choosing your company as their movers.
But a stronger sales process is only effective if you’re receiving plenty of leads.
That’s where Buy Moving Leads can help. Our award-winning service provides your moving company with a constant flow of fresh and verified leads. We operate throughout the United States and can provide leads for residential, commercial, and international moving companies. With us, you save money on marketing while creating more opportunities to make moving company sales.
Would you like to learn more?
Head to the Buy Moving Leads website and you can start getting leads today so you can make more sales in the future.