Moving Business Network - Learn from Industry Veterans

Hourly pricing is one of the oldest and most common methods of pricing a move. It’s simple and clear cut to the business owner. I pay my 2 movers $10 per hour each and charge $85 per hour. That easily covers the cost and profits. However an alternative method that is gaining ground in the industry is exact price quoting (aka flat rate price). This method has been well received by both consumers and companies.

Why Exact price moving is gaining ground…

1. Customers know exactly how much they will pay when the work is complete, where as hourly is like a blank check.
2. You can make more money with an exact price then an hourly.
3. Exact price sets you apart in an hourly market
4. Jobs are completed faster and waste less of the customer’s time.
5. Demonstrates more sophistication to the customer

How do Exact price quotes work.

First you may want to have experience in the moving industry, start off hourly to gain experience or use a software like MovePoint that was built by movers predominantly for exact price calculations. The most simple exact price is to assign a price per pound to the job, and a price per mile and you cover all your areas of cost. Then estimate the price per pound on the job by using average weight of each item.

How this is more lucrative.

This system allows you to get paid the same per job but rewards hustling. Hustling increases the dollars per hour and decreases the man hours per job allowing more jobs to be handled with less staff. Where as with hourly jobs you are published for hustling by getting paid less. The hustling will also increase customer satisfaction At the end of the day the happier the customer is more your business will grow.

The Math: converting from Hourly Rate to an Exact price

1. Use multiple completed jobs with varying conditions as a basis. You will need the estimated weight/cuft of the inventory and the price of the moving labor.
2. if you are using CuFT multiple the number by 7 to get an approximate weight.
3. Divide the moving labor price by the estimated weight this will result in a price per LB.
4. Generate a price per LB across 20-50 jobs. Then average the numbers. This will give you the average price per lb.
5. Then add 10-20% to the price per lb
6. Use the average price per lb for your quotes. When you verify you will find it’s very close to the actual cost of most of your jobs or a little higher.

What does this new Exact price method do for you?

1. You can now take most quotes over the phone simply by knowing the average weights of an item. Saving you a lot of man hours of in-home surveys.
2. You can now push movers to work faster to accomplish more jobs, and double your capacity without losing money.
3. You have a competitive advantage to most other moving companies. As hourly prices have no limit in the mind as to how high they can go. Yours does.
4. You increase your customer satisfaction by being fast and not having to wait as long for the “We are finally in the house” feeling.
5. You will make a higher hourly rate on the majority of the jobs and book more jobs then if you were to charge the increased hourly rates.

There are many benefits to the methodology especially when coupled with technology. Entrenched Businesses are finding it hard to compete with younger businesses using this method.