What MovesOnline.com  will do is ENGAGE YOUR CUSTOMERS once they are there. It will hold them on your site as they complete their inventory and keep them from surfing through all your competitor's cookie cutter websites which offer the same old, same old content, with no meaningful interaction with your company.

Most importantly, customers who LOVE your website already respect your company, even before you talk to them.  Connect with them now using MovesOnline.com.

Do customers THANK YOU for the convenience of your website? They will, if you offer them a web service that sets you apart from the herd.

Yes, PEOPLE WILL THANK YOU for offering them the convenience of a practical and easy to use web inventory.

Wouldn't it be nice to have your customers say this about your site?

MovesOnline.com is a consumer award winning web service that can be part of your website simply by directing your "get a quote " link to a MovesOnline inventory page that is colored and logo'ed to match your website.Things are heating up for your salespeople right now. You can help them quote more leads and sell more moves by making your site consumer friendly.

Mayflower Canada is now offering their internet customers the convenience of creating their own furniture inventory online. “With more and more dual income families, consumers are quickly moving towards self service in all their purchases” said Anne Martin, President of Mayflower Canada. “For the relocating consumer, online inventories are a great time saver in the busy days before a household move. Rather than meeting multiple salespeople in their home, they are able to complete an online inventory in about 15 minutes. This furniture list instantly appears on a moving consultants screen and is then followed up with a telephone quote or an in-house estimate if required”.

Consumers really appreciate this service-some literally say they “love it!”  In fact, MovesOnline recently received the 2011 Government of Alberta’s “Consumer Champion” award. The app is also available on some BBB sites, where the customer can send the inventory to 3 competing movers for bids

Don Kachur, President of MovesOnline says that the app saves moving companies significant sales costs.  In practice, about one third of all website visitors complete the online inventory. “My company, Highland Moving, saved over $5000 just in fuel costs alone, not to mention the time saving of salespeople driving to the customer’s home. A complete inventory is a perfect qualifier for our salespeople. They can decide if an in-house visit is necessary or if the move can be closed on the phone.”

“We have found that most moves, especially locals, can be sold without a sales visit” said Kachur. “Closing ratios are about equal to phone-in leads except when we decide that an in-home estimate is required to confirm the quote or close the deal. In these cases, our sales people are closing 63 % of the moves, about double the usual rate. Yes-our sales people love this new sales tool “

MovesOnline.com is available to moving companies in the USA and the UK as a white label product. In other words, the app is logo’ed and colored to match the mover’s website. All that is necessary to set up the service is to redirect the “get a quote” button on your site to point to your MovesOnline pages. “It’s magical” says Kachur. “Finding 20 completed surveys on your screen on Monday morning is awesome. If you have any doubt about how the web will affect the moving business, using this app will radically change your thinking.”

See what all the fuss is about  Try MovesOnline here   http://www.movesonline.com/Landing.aspx

Manmeet Bhullar, Minister of Service Alberta, presents the 2011 Consumer Champion Award to Don Kachur, President of Highland Moving and Storage Ltd.

Manmeet Bhullar, Minister of Service Alberta, presents the 2011 Consumer Champion Award to Don Kachur, President of Highland Moving and Storage Ltd.
Highland Moving was recognized by the Government of Alberta as the 2011 “Consumer Champion” for the development of CLICKandMOVE.com, a consumer oriented web application that customers can use to solicit comparable moving quotes. The CLICKandMOVE website allows relocating customers to take a virtual room by room tour of their home and simply click on “icons” of furniture that need to be moved. This inventory is then submitted online to multiple moving companies to get accurate and comparable moving quotes. Until now, the consumer could either get estimates on the phone, which are notoriously inaccurate, or face the inconvenience of meeting with multiple salespeople to survey the contents of their home.  Not only is CLICKandMOVE a significant time saver in the busy days before a move, but it also ensures that all movers are bidding on the same household inventory, eliminating the prime source of “bait and switch” moving scams.

Highland Moving has provided reliable, honest and friendly moving service to the citizens of Alberta for over 70 years.

Interestingly, over one half of our leads came from the internet. Twenty percent came from referrals (11%) and repeat customers (9%) while only 13% of our leads were prompted by the yellow pages. How times have changed!

  A recent white paper by Randy Smith discusses the use of “lead gens” or “aggregators” by the self- storage industry. This is a must read for HHG operators and associations because it has direct relevance to the full service moving industry.  I agree with most of this white paper except for Randy’s suggested solution, i.e. that as an industry, we try to convince our members to stop dealing with these middlemen. The problem here is that we can’t stop consumers from using lead aggregators. So it is difficult to convince individual operators to ignore this source of revenue. Rather than trying to convince the industry to boycott aggregators we should as an industry, be our own lead aggregator - AMSA take note. That puts us in control of our marketing and helps customers choose movers they can trust. The full report is here:

http://www.anotherclosetselfstorage.com/self_storage_dancing_with_the_devil_final.pdf

  OK Linda, I am over the line with my comments about the PR campaign. It has been effective and was a necessary reaction to what was going on in the industry at the time. I think it was  good policy that is now being nudged out by new technologies available to our customers... and our competitors. Customers now carrying iPads around their home to do an inventory, and  google street view is there for our staff to "see" houses at origin and destination. Things are very different today then they were when that policy was implemented.

  My family has been in the  moving business for 70 years and as a mover, I believe that an in-house estimate is preferable. But I also believe that it is a mistake to ignore our new connected customers. All of our customers are different and we must cater to every constituency lest we loose control of yet another big chunk of our industry business.

  My objective with this blog is to convince the AMSA to take control of COD prospecting on the internet and help our members compete in this new marketing world.  In my recents travels around the USA, the constant refrain was that our members find it impossible to get to page one of google listings. Not only do we all compete against each other- and every one of us is trying to get to top position.- but we also compete against rogues and brokers who  skim profit from our members, and who lower the perception of the entire industry.  If the AMSA helps members band together to secure a top position on search engines, we do have the ability to push brokers off their google pedestals The AMSA could help their members "be found" in the Internet jungle. What we cannot achieve individually, we can achieve as a group-or at least as an industry. We could provide good quality leads to a few (not 6 or 7) of our members.

 And we can offer our customers the tools that they can use to save time and make shopping for a mover easy. So, why don't WE become the biggest online aggregator of moving leads?. AMSA has the presence and respect to "pull" visits on the web, provided we use proper Search Engine Optimization,  dedicate some assets to social media and PR and if we can offer the web tools that the new connected consumer wants.  The AMSA has the power to become the "go to" place for relocating consumers. On AMSA.org, customers could find movers to do in-house estimates OR, they could use their iPad to fill out ONE online inventory and then solicit bids from 3 (?) of our members. The customer could then use review sites, company websites and social media recommendations to decide which companies they would like to see in their home. Naturally we would recommend that the customer see at least one consultant to verify their moving requirements.

   Our members can also benefit by avoiding the crooked customer. No one tells the press about the people who try to underestimate their moving requirements to get a better price and then cry murder when we have to justifiably increase their  price because they have way more to move than they told us about. Now we have written proof of what the customer TOLD US that they wanted to move and we can be justified in charging extra.

   Sales people will  become more efficient not to mention greener by saving fuel. They will be more effective because instead of doing 3 estimates for every 1 move book, they may be doing only 1 or 2 visits per booking. A customer inventory is a fantastic  qualifier for our sales departments. And qualified moving leads few and far between from current lead generators.

  Maybe we should be training our salespeople how to use the web to increase their sales efficiency and teach them how to sell in a new environment. My sales experience with online inventories is that it is a new skill set that needs to be learned, from new qualifying techniques to new scripts for selling on the phone or in the house. We should teach it, not condemn it.

  Perhaps one day we will invite customers to submit their moving reviews to the AMSA website. This is allot more appealing to me than customers submitting reviews to a Moving Scam type site where no one necessarily verifies the reviews for credibility. AMSA could ensure that exceptionally critical reviews are honest customer comments. (I still remember that poor small mover who came to our convention and stood up in the plenary session and  told how his little one man business was crushed by a false review  on Moving Scam). Someone needs to defend our members against malicious or bogus reviews. Someone will become the Travelocity for the moving industry. That might as well be us.

  Finally Linda, thank you for joining the conversation. I apologize for my snotty remarks about the AMSA-but  I did get you involved and I appreciate your input.

Disruptive change in the future of the moving sales process  

New Marketing Channel for Moving Companies

Until recently, almost all of a mover’s leads came in on the telephone, usually via the Yellow Pages. A few years ago, a second communication link to the customer arrived in the form of the internet. Consumers could now contact movers through the mover’s web page as well as by phone.
Now things are about to change again. The recent introduction of smart mobile web devices adds a third source of business for moving companies. Smart phone “apps” are now being used by an increasing number of industries to connect customers directly to a business, bypassing both the phone and the company website.

This new channel to movers will first be available to customers in the form of ClickandMove.com.  Relocating consumers will download the app from iTunes and use it to input their moving requirements, including a complete household inventory.  They can then select two or three movers from the Click and Move service provider list on the app to contact and bid on their move. Movers may follow up by phone or with an in-house estimate if they wish.

Since our vision is to create a place where consumers can go to quickly and easily get competitive quotes from reliable movers, I would like the customer to be able to select from a list of participating AMSA and BBB members in their area. Smartphone apps are a completely new and separate marketing channel, and customers will use them to contact moving companies , just as they use the yellow pages and websites  to contact movers now.. Experts suggest that “Apps” will be as significant as the yellow pages and the web as a source of business for virtually all industries. (See attached graphic and video)

Our preliminary business plan is to allow the customer to download the app and submit his information to one AMSA member at no charge. The customer will be charged a small fee to submit each additional request. Movers will not be charged for leads for an initial trial period of 3months. We are attempting to get paid, to some degree, by the customers, who are the people that are raving about the convenience of the app.  

Since this is a new concept, we will need to experiment with our pricing model as we go. We will attempt to balance the fees between customer and mover, however any fee to movers will be comparatively nominal and any mover can opt out anytime they wish.

Participating AMSA and BBB members will see free leads complete with accurate inventories, arriving in their inboxes in time for spring selling.

P.S. If you have any doubts about the inevitability of the app attack on moving companies, read these comments by our customers. Listening to them is usually pretty good marketing advice. Our launch is set for mid March.

Mobile “apps” will rival yellow pages and websites as the primary source of business leads in the very near future.

This short video from the Financial Times discusses the general use of smart phone apps for business.

http://video.ft.com/v/789275709001/Future-of-cloud-Internet-App

We finally created a working email system for the MovesOnline web application. With this system we can now more easily inform customers of upcoming changes, improvements, or issues with the system.

The email system is a simple web based page that uses an opensource JavaScript plugin called "tiny_mce". Tiny_mce gives the person sending out the message the ability to format the message similar to how someone would do it in a word editor. The result is a nicely formatted message, ability to add graphics to the message, and the ability to add attachments as well.

With the simple click of a button, all our customers can be kept up to date with anything we are doing with MovesOnline.

Thank-you

The MovesOnline Development Team