When You Move Me Vancouver General Manager, Prabh Heer, landed a global retailer as a moving client, he expected to provide them with many exceptional moving experiences. What he didn’t expect was to be asked to help them with a national retail expansion. This is Prabh’s story.
O2E: Can you tell us about your role with You Move Me?
PH: I originally started in May of 2015 as a Business Development Salesperson, worked my way up to Sales Manager, and then was given the opportunity to run the business in December of 2017 as the General Manager.
When I was working in business development, I was primarily doing cold calling of businesses asking if they needed moving services, trying to acquire new accounts, and also doing a ton of networking to try and build the brand locally. In addition to this, I was doing on-site estimates.
When I became the Sales Manager I was running our Sales division by doing the bulk of the estimates and also having others support me when my schedule was full. I was also responsible for building our Sales & Marketing budgets and allocating funds to the appropriate verticals.
Now, as the General Manager I run the full scope of the business, both operations and sales. I have a team of 3 managers that work for me and another full-time office person. Most of my time is spent coaching my managers on how to become better leaders, but I also focus on building a great corporate culture by getting to know all of my staff and ensuring they feel like they are on a team.
O2E: What range of services do You Move Me provide?
PH: This is actually a great question because it seems like every time I meet someone and they ask me what services we provide, I say we’re capable of doing just about anything. We really focus on hiring team members that want to learn and expand their skill sets beyond just moving. With that said, we do residential moving, commercial office moving, packing services, furniture installations, and retail store set ups.
O2E: How is You Move Me different from other moving companies?
PH: I think anyone can move a piece of furniture or a box, but executing it well with a true sense of professionalism is what sets us apart. Our team at You Move Me is like a brotherhood of movers. We all respect each other so much and enjoy working alongside one another, it really shows in front of our clients. Our number one goal is to make sure customers’ furniture is delivered safely. Therefore, when we are executing the move, we really focus on delivering that great experience and having fun while doing it.
There is nothing more gratifying than handing our customers their housewarming gift we provide at the end of their move and hearing them say thank you. We make what is normally a stressful experience, fun. After all, we move you, not just your boxes.
O2E: Tell us how you helped a well-known retail store with global expansion.
PH: I was recently approached by a contact from a manufacturing company in Japan with global retail stores about my level of interest in building retail store displays. Originally, I thought the project was a bit more than what we could handle, but when I took a deeper look at my team I felt like we would be able to execute the project with perfection. A few months later, we were given one store as a trial and since the client was so happy, they gave us an additional two stores to build.
Once that two store extension was completed, they asked my team to fly across the country and help them build stores in Toronto, Ontario. It feels so surreal that we have evolved from a local moving company that originally specialized in condo moving to a moving company that helps build retail stores across Canada.
We went in with minimal instruction, learned, and developed new skills along the way. After we completed each store, we would have a post-store meeting and discuss how we could improve and streamline operations to be more efficient to make our clients even happier. I am happy to announce we still continue to do this after each store and we are constantly improving.
O2E: What was the size of the retail stores that your team worked on for this project?
PH: We completed three stores that were about 18,000 square feet with the largest one being close to 40,000 square feet.
O2E: How long did it take to complete this project?
PH: We were given two days to complete each store, regardless of the size. We knew a store this size would be a huge challenge and since our team was based in Vancouver, we teamed up with You Move Me Toronto.
[Source: U.S. Census Bureau]
