Blog: Moving Industry Sales: 7 Most Common Mistakes

Posted on October 10, 2023
by drivemain

There are a lot of common moving industry sales mistakes. You already know sales are going to be a fundamental part of running your business, they are after all the source of revenue, and you need to work to create great sales strategies. One of the best ways to improve your sales is to know the most common and detrimental mistakes you can make with your moving company sales strategy. 

1. Not having a solid plan

Sales need planning and preparedness. For example, it’s not just enough to have someone handling sales of your services, what you need is to have a great sales team trained to handle your specific target. 

Sales strategy doesn’t just apply to the immediate team, your production, management, delivery, and even truck drivers need to be invested in the planning. That’s because moving company services are a whole, and customers review from the first call to the truck driving away, so it all needs to be coherent and sound. 

Your sales plan should be a full overview of the business from approaching clients to how you treat those clients.  

Start building a sales plan in just 7 easy steps

  1. Get data on the market, figure out trends and where your company stands 
  2. Set objectives and determine how you will measure success 
  3. Define roles and processes 
  4. Build sales forecasts 
  5. Identify weaknesses, strengths, and gaps in the market 
  6. Brainstorm ideas with teams 
  7. Create actionable plans 

2. Not doing the proper research

Data collection and research are the first steps in creating a sales plan, avoiding mistakes, and maintaining a successful moving company sales strategy. 

What research does for you is provide insight into the market. You will be able to know what the customers want, where they are, what they need, and who your competitors are. 

It can help you decide the location of your business, where to advertise, and even more detailed things like how many trucks you need or the type of moves that will bring the most sales. 

Make sure to add a permanent research task to your sales team, so you can continue to make improvements and seize opportunities that open up in your market. 

3. Over-promising and under-delivering

Overpromising is considered one of the biggest entrepreneurial mistakes you can make, especially when just starting your moving company business. 

What you are doing is basically false advertising. Create expectations you can’t meet and this becomes a killer of customers’ trust and hurts sales. This will hurt your bottom line in impactful ways, 9 out of 10 customers will not buy from companies that are not transparent. 

Under-delivering is the natural consequence of overpromising, it disappoints customers and leaves a bad trail behind your moving company services. Also, remember that in this age of social media and reviews, this negative experience will not stay between you and your client.  

Since reviews are one of the most significant factors in users’ decisions you need to do your best to provide the service you promise and create a realistic picture of your company. 

4. Not handling objections well

An objection is when a prospective client presents doubts or questions about parts of the service, and handling it well is a sign you have a great sales team. 

Objections are a normal occurrence in any sales pipeline and mishandling them can cost you a high number of clients. The best way to tackle objections is to be prepared and respond calmly. 

Here are some tips for handling objections in your moving company sales pipeline:

  1. Take note of common objections and create a script for responses, experiment, and implement the most successful tactics 
  2. Lead with understanding and empathy, remember you’ve been on the other side as well 
  3. Validate the client’s concerts, repeat back what you hear, and ask questions to get to the heart of the issue
  4. Use your social proof to make your case. This means positive reviews, engagement on social media, and use cases 
  5. Anticipate and train your sales team for objection response

5. Failing to qualify your leads

Leads are what eventually turn into sales so being able to properly qualify your leads is going to make sure you focus resources on the right targets. So, qualifying a lead is basically knowing which clients are most likely to actually buy from you. 

Being able to determine if a lead is good for your moving company can be the key to unlocking sales success. It will help guide your sales team and marketing efforts to the right targets. 

How to qualify a lead for moving company business?

  1. Create an ideal customer profile 
  2. Start tracking your customer journey and metrics 
  3. Conduct research and data analysis, you will need to evaluate where clients buy, what clients buy, and how. This will show you what leads are buying and where they come from 
  4. You can use lead qualification methods like BANT, MEDDIC, CHAMP, and GPCTBA/C&I.
  5. Establish the grading system and create sales actions to engage qualified leads 

6. Being too pushy

This mistake is another reason you need to have a trained sales team on your side, there is a really delicate balance between working for the sale and being too pushy. Go over to the pushy side and you could be risking your business in the long term. 

You already know how important consumer experience and the journey is, and being too persistent can quickly leave a negative tone on your lead interactions. 

A few tips to stop coming off as pushy in moving company sales

  1. Use different methods of contact like calling but also emails and social media 
  2. Learn to take no as an answer 
  3. Train your sales team to handle leads
  4. Have a sales pitch, speak at a proper speed, and clearly 
  5. Don’t call or email unless you have a real update/reason 
  6. Ask questions and engage 

7. Not being honest

One of the biggest values customers expect from their moving company is honesty, remember you are dealing with clients who are going through a change. The truth is one of your best selling points. 

Why is honesty so important for moving company sales?

Giving exactly the service you promised builds consistency and trust with customers. This will take you from just any company to the moving company to trust. 

 

A moving service that does what they say, at the prices they budget and in the time agreed, is a real competitor in the market. This reliability can be a real sales driver for your business making you the top choice in your industry. 

Conclusion

Knowing what not to do is a great guide to building a better sales strategy and can save you from the growing pains of owning a moving company.  

At the end of the day, you want to be treating clients the way you want to be treated. Take inspiration from sales and customer services examples you admire and build your company’s own values to follow the most successful cases.

Need help with that? Look no further. Let’s talk?