Kevin Thompson started his removals business, The Removal Team, 10 years ago with one van and a broad smile.
Since then he has built the company up into a substantial organisation in which he enjoys a comfortable lifestyle working, as he puts it, “on his business not in it”.
In a quest to impart his knowledge, improve the image of the industry and help companies drag themselves away from selling on price, he is now rebranding himself as ‘The Removal Guru’. Could he help you?
If you are in the moving industry in the North-West of the UK, you will probably have seen Kevin’s bright lime green vans running around sporting the name of The Removal Team. There is now a fleet of them operating out of the company’s smart offices and 45,000 sqft storage facility in St. Helens. Quite early in his career Kevin decided that working on the vans, spending days away from home and answering the mobile phone while carrying a sofa downstairs was not for him. He’d rather concentrate on building the business rather that working in it. It seems to have worked.
“Right from the start I wanted to do things properly. We got our operators license after about 18 months and bought our first 7.5 tonne van. That was in 2001 and we have never looked back since.” Kevin said that the company now employs 25 people.
But over those years Kevin has become disillusioned with the image of the industry. “It’s always been seen as a working man’s game, not a professional trade. Many owners work every day on the vans so don’t have time to work on developing their business. They are not tuned into sales and marketing techniques. There doesn’t seem to be anyone out there to advise them on how to do things better.” So that’s what Kevin is doing.
He said that he has spent five years researching sales and marketing techniques and seeing how they can be applied to the moving industry. “I spent hours reading marketing books and understanding the techniques; now I think it would be great to share them with the rest of the industry.”
Kevin explained that it was all about educating customers to understand the difference between price and value. “Movers also need to understand how they can segment their own markets to pick out more customers who are not price led. There will always be people who are only interested in cheap prices but we should try not to attract this type of work. We don’t want to waste their time or ours.”
As The Removal Guru, Kevin will work with companies, over a 6 or 12-month programme to help them with good ideas to help set them apart from their competition. “I do an initial health check and ask the potential customer to complete a questionnaire to make sure I can help them,” he said. Kevin explained that the programme does require some commitment from the business owner and if they clearly cannot give the time there’s little he can do.
But assuming the owner is prepared to make some effort Kevin sets about helping them on a wide range of subjects that will help them run a more successful business and make more money including: finance, staffing incentives, sales, cash flow, advertising, marketing processes, the use of social networking, etc. “The intention is to make everything in the business work better,” he said. He will also help to systemise the business to achieve more uniform quality and help devise methods of creating a sustained income by getting customers to buy regularly. “Successful businesses sell when they are closed,” he said.
The Removal Guru is paid on a monthly retainer based on one of four packages – bronze, silver, gold and platinum – depending on the investment. Kevin said that the service is equally applicable to companies working in any segment of the industry. “Whatever business segment they are in, or whether the company is big or small, the techniques are the same. I want to raise their self worth so they don’t get into a price war.”
The Removal Guru can be contacted at
info@theremovalguru.co.uk.