SALES & MARKETING – ANTHONY LICATA – Page 3
Another peak season has come and gone and as usual, it feels as if we barely made it by the skin of our teeth! As we lick our wounds and recover from another very successful peak season, we can reflect on the challenges and accomplishments that we faced and achieved. The beginning of the peak season started out with dreadful news that our quoting system that we live by, Qlab was being discontinued and a new system called Move Scout Pro was being rolled out. The thought of not only teaching and learning a new quoting system, but doing so in prime peak season where most of our money is made; made the upcoming season look like a complete disaster waiting to happen. With the patients and cooperation of SIRVA, we were able to delay our Move Scout start date while Bill Vallos and I learned the system and worked out kinks and bugs until it was ready for our team to use. HUGE shout out and thank you to Bill Vallos for working with me in identifying all the issues with the new system and holding SIRVAs IT team accountable in fixing them. I am extremely proud of both Sales and Coordination in grinning down and tackling the training and learning the system with no complaints or issues. After about two days of the new system being activated, both teams were off to the races and using MoveScout while still dealing with a peak season workload. Despite having its small bumps in the road, the transition was smoother than I could have ever imagined. Although peak season is coming to a close, CONSUMER SALES TEAM NEEDS TO PUT THE PEDAL TO THE METAL. In the past several years, Reebie has always come in first place and won the “TOP DAWG” trophy proudly sitting in our front lobby for top consumer booker at Allied. For the first time that I can remember, WE ARE BEHIND THE COMPETITION. We are currently losing to Bayshore by 35 shipments!! This gap is tough but VERY POSSIBLE to catch up. We have implemented several strategies to close this gap so now it is up to us to make this happen. In order to overcome this feat, I will need ALL HANDS ON DECK. During peak season, when leads are plentiful and capacity is booking up; it is much easier to walk away from a lead or customer that we may forsee to be troublesome because there are so many more opportunities available. Now that leads are very scarce, I am encouraging the staff to book just about EVERYTHING. That means that some of these jobs may be difficult or inconvenient, but that’s what needs to be done if we want to remain at the top and continue our reputation of being the BEST CONSUMER BOOKER AT ALLIED. To make things even more interesting, my father and I could not help but to engage in a little bit of smack talk between us and Matt Larmore (the owner) at Bayshore. He seems to be under the impression that our staff may be getting “aged” and “defeated by the post-COVID moving rush” thus the reason for falling behind. I would love nothing more than to not only beat him, but remind him that we caught up from a 35 shipment gap. If there’s a team that can do it, I have the right guys assembled as we have done so, so many times in the past. Last thing I want is to hand our TOP DAWG trophy over to Bayshore as I think it looks great sitting in OUR LOBBY. That being said LETS GET AFTER IT!!!
