Ep75: Business Development Systems We Run At Big Lick Moving

All right, welcome back here to the moving game. We're going to talk about its biz dev. Okay, so business development, a couple of things that I think we do really well at BigLick that you could probably plug and play, fit it into what you do. We are not, how do I say this, we are not super forward in going to the after hours networking events, going to the lunch and going to the happy hours, going to, you know, in-person events. We're really, we really not done much of any of that. You know, I could count on one hand since we opened over the last two years, how many events that we've went to. And I think when I think about biz dev, I think about in the business, what is duplicatable and replicable? And there are times when you can really just decide that I'm going to, I'm going to push on the gas pedal. We're going to go to all these events and we're going to get our sales team to go to these things. And we're going to go do this and do that. But then what feels like happens is there's a jolt of activity to then subsequently slide backwards. And I wanted to do things in the business that were systematic. I wanted to do things that felt like we turned it on and it stayed on. It was a, you know, giving us a stream of business, not every now and then, you know, a fire hose, but then nothing. So we'll start with our SMS outreach. Okay, so we have a virtual team member, his name's Fabian, he's awesome. He lives in Bolivia and what he does for us is he, he does a warming up process. And we don't expect him to create a whole relationship. We don't expect him to sell the jobs. We don't expect him to procure tons of estimates. All we really want him to do is outreach, warm up the person, and then pass it off. And so pretty simple system. Okay, so think of this as system number one. This is for your realtors or agents. Okay. So we've got tier two data with USA home listings every single day, every new listing and pending. Fabian, our VA is texting those realtors a, just a basic template. And so if it's a newly listed property, it's basically says this, it says, Hey, Bob, my name is Winston. I own big like moving in Rone Oak saw you listed one for walnut Grove Drive and wanted to say congrats curious dot dot dot. Do you have a five star rated go to moving company yet that you refer? Okay, so that's the, that's the text. All right. One concept about this is when Fabian does outreach. He does it as if it were me the owner. So every message that goes out, it's saying, Hey, it's Winston. So if you're the owner, but you're not doing running this playbook, you still plug your name in it. You'd be surprised. I will go to stuff every now and then. And or people will call in and they'll be like, Yeah, like I was talking with Winston. It's like, I don't actually know them. But you know, our business still services it, you know, beautifully. And, you know, we trust all the other facets of our business to execute, right? So it works. But the, so that's number one is that we, we message as the face of the company. You got to keep that personal brand working for you. Okay. But you as the owner do not always have to be the one pulling the lever. You can build a system and a team to help you with this. Okay. Now part two about this message is that we call out the property. Okay. We're telling them congrats. But the whole point of the message is it's a filter. And the reason it's a filter is because we ask a question. When you ask a question, you're more likely to get a response. If I just said, hey congrats on listing one for walnut grove, I'm going to get, you know, I'm going to get a lot of no responses. I'm also going to get responses though that are just like, hey, thanks. Right. It doesn't really get me anywhere. Then I have to message again and maybe ask something. Right. If I just come out of the gate and I, I use the first message as a filter, then anybody that responds, I get somewhere with them. Okay. The curious dot dot dot, do you have a five star go to moving company yet you refer question mark? Right. It's not do you have a moving company you refer? It's no, no, no. It's do you have a five star go to moving company you refer? Right. There's difference. Right. And so it's a filter. Okay. So that's the newly listed. A very similar message that's on the pending or under contract pretty much set up the same way is just saying saw you just went pending on one for walnut grove drive. One to say congrats blah blah blah. Right. And then the same thing happens. Curious. Do you have a five star go to moving company yet that you refer? Okay. Now over time you do this enough days and weeks and months over time you'll have messaged the same realtor, you know you messaged them at the listing and now there's the pending. And we've got variations on the templates who kind of dice it up a little bit give it a little variability. Okay. That way it doesn't look like a robot that way it doesn't look like spam. You don't want that right? Okay. That's going to hurt you. All right. With realtors. Right. Want to make it feel natural or make it feel organic. Okay. Right. And then as maybe they don't respond and then their next property they list right we're going to do a similar message. But again we're just going to tweak. Okay. You have to teach your team member your virtual team member how to run that playbook. Okay. So every single day this is going to happen Monday through Friday. Okay. And then on Mondays we're doing it for the stuff that came in through the weekend. So we're really messaging every single every listing and pending. We're messaging every realtor. Okay. For that. Now reminder here we're in Ronoq we're in a I really think a small market. Maybe you could say we're slightly bigger than a small market but not by much. We're able to do that. You know if you were in a metro market the volume may be a little difficult to hit them all. I think you can still do it. I think maybe you just your person like the virtual team member you have to do it like this is all they do maybe. Whereas my guy Fabian he does a few things for me. So this is just one of the playbooks that he runs. Okay. So we're going to do that outreach. And when we get those responses. Okay. A lot of times when they do respond it's going to be you know. Oh like no I don't have somebody yet like hey can you send me some info. Oh that's almost what everybody does. They always say can you send me some info. Right. They always are like can you send me an email can you send me info blah blah like can you send me this. So you got to have something. Right. So what's really cool is we use snowball. Okay. And we've got these great flyers that have like headshot and all of our branding and a QR to sign up for the VIP referral program. Okay. So when they're like hey do you have some info we then introduce the VIP program. That's literally the first move in the chess match there with the agent is like we're like hey here's a here's a here's some really cool information. We text them it has some info on it but it also introduces them into the VIP program. Okay. The VIP referral program. And that's step one. Then our next goal is to schedule a drop in and so. You know we'll basically offer is as we keep that conversation going we're going to offer. Hey would it be okay if one of one of our moving consultants dropped by and dropped you some cards and fly and flyers for your clients right. And so if they're they are agreeable to that then we have a system where we basically Fabian just hits an action drop down that says you drop in. That's just like a visit right to their place of business. We then have an automation where that's that a web hooks a slack message into our slack for the sales team and it comes in like a lead. And so it'll show the realtor name their phone number that address and it'll say the action it'll say drop in and we treat those like leads. So when they come in the sales reps know they got to grab those and then they'll route those when they have on sites for the week. plug them before or after to do those drop-ins. Okay. And sometimes the thing that'll come out of this is like a realtor's like immediately has a referral or they're moving or they need a moving like a small job done. So sometimes you immediately get like quote opportunity. So we also have an action for the VA to just be like quote and that does the same kind of thing where it sends in a slack notification to the sales team. And again, it's just like a lead that they can grab. Okay. So think of that, that VA doing a warming up process, they're basically just, they're incubating it, right? They're doing all the hard stuff. So then are moving sales consultants, then just step in. Okay. Just step in and do face to face with drop-ins and then they keep that relationship going. Okay. So that's probably our biggest thing from a biz dev standpoint and it's something that's systematic. Another little add on to that is a really great process. It's, I just call it a reverse review process. So you take every review that you get and you go backwards in it. So okay, customer left review, we go to that job, take it in smart moving, we look at the origin address, we open up Zillow and we see if the house was sold or listed. It was and we go and we look at who the listing agent was and then we text them. We text them a quick little blurb, say, hey Susan, it's Winston on the owner with big like moving, exclamation point, your client blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, booked to move with our team and left this amazing five star review. Just wanted to share and let you know we took great care of them and then you plug a screenshot of the five star review. So that's your reverse review process. So again, this is the same VAT member running this playbook. This one doesn't really take too long, pretty simple. You could probably get this done and this is 10 to 15 minutes a day. But super powerful because you're taking social proof and feeding it back to the referral partner and saying, hey, look, we did an amazing job. Let me know when you have another, right? So that one is like you have to just have that on all the time. If you are not doing that every week, you're missing some opportunities there. That are kind of just layups. Think about it. You already did all the hard stuff. You already service the client they had. You did a phenomenal job. Customers stoked out of their brain. They left a glowing five star review, big old paragraph with a picture. All you got to do is just send it back to the agent. It's so simple. So that's another one of those systematic biz dev processes that you got to have in your business. It doesn't move in company. Just make sure it's happening and that it's consistent. Now, you know, the other thing with what we do and using snowball, snowball, once you plug in an affiliate into their, their system has got this automated, nurturing that's backed by a human agent. And we're really not having to have our fingers all in it, but it's asking for referrals and just keeping it top of mind. And so our goal is just how can we get as many affiliates signed up on the VIP referral program? Play in simple. And so if that's important, then we just keep a KPI of that. Every month we track how many affiliates do we have on VIP? How many affiliates do we have on VIP? That's all I care about. I don't need to go to five o'clock happy hour. I don't need to go to the luncheon. I know they work. I know they work, but my time is so stinking valuable that I just, it's not my place. So it's like, well, until we have a dedicated role, that is a business development manager, which most companies really don't have the budget for that yet. We might have the budget for that when we're finishing this year about three million sales. But most newer moving companies don't really have that budget. So then the owner's like, oh man, I've got to go do this, right? But it's like before you go spend all that time, like just get a couple automated systems up and running, get a couple good polished processes, and it'll turn, it'll get some business going for you. It'll get referral business. So this is what I do for BizDev. We expect our moving consultants to do business development. Do I expect them to get their leads solely from BizDev? Absolutely freaking not. I expect 95 to 98% of all their leads to be my leads, the company leads. But if they're already driving 20 minutes down the road, and they're going to go to an onsite, because we're hybrid, we are sales, we'll do virtuals and we do onsites. They're already leaving the office and driving somewhere. Why not just route it? So that way you can make at least one drop in every time you go out. Right? OK, I'm running this appointment. I do a quick search. Is there a self storage? Is there an apartment? Or is there a realtor office? Those three. You try to get fancy and do more than that. You know, more power to you. But there's plenty of volume just in those three. Realters, apartment complexes, and storage facilities. And you can add senior living in there too. Those are your core four. The core four. OK. And just make them lethal, equip them with the right tools. Make sure that their vehicle is always stocked. Inspect that. Follow up on that when you pop in in your office. Hey, what do you have in your car? What do you got lined up this week? Set that expectation and then incentivize them. So if you pay a sales rep, a straight commission model, like we do, let's say I'm paying them 7% on total invoice for book jobs. That's for a company lead. We also pay them a self-gain lead. We pay that 4% more. So we pay that out at 11%. I'm totally cool paying 4% extra to them. And I get a job that I would not have got before. That extra 4% can be a nice extra out on. If you're only given 1% or 2%, it's kind of thin. And just don't be greedy. Just don't be greedy. Be fine given a couple points away. Because you're probably spending 6, 7, 8, 9, 10% on marketing anyways. Why wouldn't you spend 4? Like when you look at the cat, you're like, oh, I'm at 10 or 11 or 12% on the cat. Sure. Sure. Why not? So we're not worried about giving them some more money. What you have to do, though, is you got to show them that it works. So when you bring a new sales rep on and you set those expectations and standards, you got to kind of go demo it for them. You got to go show them, hey, let me take you out and show you how easy this is. Hey, hop in my car. Let me show you how simple this is to go pick up a new affiliate and make them your best friend and take them some cookies every three or four months. And they're going to just flood you with business for the year. Let me show you how to do that. Take 30 minutes. Let me show you. And you just make it feel so stupid, stupidly easy, right? And that's how you can really help them get going into that. Because if you just tell them to do it and never really like get a little involved, they're not going to do that extra biz dev outside of their estimating and sales. They're probably not. You just got to show a good system in process. Do a little bit of boots on the ground training with them and show them how simple it is and they have a good, good incentive. So anyways, I hope that helps. I'm trying to keep this not going too long, but that's a little bit of biz dev. What I'm doing here at Big Lake. Hope that helps. Take it. Run with it. Plug it in on what you've got and you know, hope it makes you big bucks. All right. We'll see you on the next one.