If you want to grow a successful auto transport broker business, you need to start thinking like a business owner. There’s no room for doubts about anything. Be it your qualifications in the auto transport industry or your abilities to effectively and efficiently run a business. Just don’t do it.
You have to move beyond the “I’m not sure that I’m experienced enough to get paid” mentality. Instead, you need to ask yourself:
Do I really want to be a business owner?
More importantly, ask yourself:
Am I willing to do whatever it takes to be successful as an auto transport broker?
If your answer is no, that’s fine. You can always go work for another auto transport broker. Some people are better off working for someone else than they are being their own boss.
However, if you said hell yeah to both of those questions, if you can feel deep in your heart that you want this, despite your insecurities about your chances of success and the amount of competition in the industry, then you need to believe me when I tell you:
No matter how experienced or inexperienced you are as an auto transport broker, you’ll never make it if you don’t think like a business owner!
I have been an entrepreneur since I was 20 years old.
I’ve started and ran my own auto transport company, a photography business and a pillow business prior to starting my own auto transport brokerage.
Most of my closest friends are business owners. I live and breathe in the world of location independence through entrepreneurship. I’m completely surrounded by it every day and if there is one thing I have learned?
If you’re able to combine confidence in your “people” skills with basic business practices and integrity, you’ll quickly grow a successful business, more so a successful auto transport broker business.
One of the core fundamentals in business, that leads to success is how you price your auto transport service fee and your moves.
Let’s compare your auto transport broker business with a photography business. High end photographers charge clients 3-4 times what other shoot and burn photographers are charging. Because of this they could pay their studio fee by doing one session a week. Imagine that.
These studios did not work under pressure and they had time to give their best service to their clients. Their business branding promised this!
The same holds true for auto transport brokers!
You can set a low auto transport service fee, get lots of price-shopping clients to book you, work your butt off and possibly burn out by the time your 2 to 3 months in- if you’re lucky.
Or you can decide to charge a fee that will make sure that you don’t work under pressure and support the amount of time you spend per move.
That way you´ll feel happy when you work and have more time with your family. The higher your price, the more time you have to spoil your clients, do your finest customer services and brand your business.
Let’s be honest here; price-shopping car shopping clients often don’t value all the time and effort you put into getting their car moved, but maybe you already know that?
Been there, done that – never again 🙂
How much work do you actually do for each client, start to finish?
Think about the following:
Email and phone correspondence: Time spent telling your clients how you work, what to expect and how they should prepare for shipping and delivery.
- Preparation: finding and vetting carriers.
- Payment handling
- Dealing with clients waiting for their car to be shipped but haven’t shipped yet.
- Marketing
- Customer service follow-up
How many hours do you think all this will take you?
Be realistic…it does take a lot of time to do your best in each of these areas.
If you want enough time to do good and set yourself apart from the competition, then you must set your price to allow for this.
The old saying,’ time is money’ is very true.
When you work, you spend time away from your family – so make sure you get paid well. Make it worth it!
So HOW do you come up with your auto transport service fee? Watch this weeks episode of ReloGeek TV: