4 Ways for Moving Company Owners to have a Real Weekend

When was the last time you had a weekend? I mean, a real weekend?

For moving company owners it’s become far too normal to work long hours, work weekends, and do whatever it takes to keep your business going.

Here are some cold, hard stats:

• 19% of small business owners work 60+ hours per week.
• 49% work 50+ hours per week
• 82% work >40 hours a week*.

It doesn’t have to be that way.

You didn’t start your own business so you can work long hours and never take a weekend, did you?

Here are 4 Ways Moving Company Owners can have a (real) Weekend:

1. Make it easy for customers to book moves & request quotes online.

Did you know that 57% of customers would prefer to book their move online instead of picking up a phone?

If your customers can book moves and get quotes directly from your website, you’ll be able serve more customers in less time.

(**Oncue Pro Tip: With Oncue’s Web Booking Form customers can book studio and 1 BR moves right from your website.)

Spend less time on the phone with customers and more time focusing on your business. Or, better yet…

2. Stop answering your own phones.

It’s no secret that we think answering your own phones is killing your moving business. But here’s why it’s killing your weekend:

• The average moving customer call is 12 minutes and 45 seconds. Multiply that by a few calls a day, and there goes your Saturday.

• 35-50% of sales go to the vendor or company that responds to a customer first. If you’re answering your own phones, you’re missing calls. And if you’re missing calls, you’re missing sales. And if you’re missing sales, you’re working extra time to make up for those lost sales.

If you want a real weekend, you’ll need a trusted, knowledgeable partner to answer your phones reliably and consistently. (We think Oncue Booking can help.)

More specifically, you’ll need to…

3. Hire sales help for the weekends.

Your customers have jobs too. Which, unfortunately, means most of your customers are inquiring about their moves on weekends.

This creates a small problem… someone needs to be there to sell and book their moves on Saturday and Sunday. This is why you need sales coverage on weekends.

Hiring your own in-house sales team to work weekends would free you up to take a break on Saturday and Sunday. But… there are a few problems:

• Most sales people don’t want to work weekends
• It’s hard to find salespeople who understand the industry
• Hiring sales-people is expensive (You’ll spend $48k a year per salesperson on salary alone.)

Our recommendation? Hire a highly-specialized team of salespeople who are knowledgeable about the moving industry and are open 7 days a week, but who you’re not paying like an in-house salesperson.

(**Oncue Pro Tip: Not to toot our own horn, but we think Oncue Booking can help you here too.)

And finally…

4. Streamline your business with moving company software.

Building estimates takes time.

Managing crew takes time.

Organizing your calendar and juggling your fleet takes time.

Calculating payroll takes time.

Lead response takes time.

If you’re doing all of these tasks manually and with inefficient systems, you’ll never get your weekend back.

Which is why you’ll need highly-specialized moving company software to streamline your business and make these otherwise manual tasks simple.

There are a number of okay solutions out there (SmartMoving, SuperMove, and MoveItPro to name a few), but only Oncue pairs powerful moving company software with a team of booking experts who can handle calls, work leads, and book jobs for you.

Conclusion:

At Oncue, we believe moving company owners deserve to have free time.

You deserve to clock out, to take a break, and to have a real weekend… and that’s why we built Oncue Software & Booking. Oncue Software streamlines your business operations, while Oncue Booking gives movers 28 working days back a year on average.

Ready to take your weekend back? Book a demo with Oncue today.