How TWO MEN AND A TRUCK®'s National Account Team Sets Franchisees Up with Strategic Partnerships

In the age of near-instant delivery thanks to services like Amazon Prime, moving companies must increasingly streamline and optimize their offerings in order to compete. This means providing consumers and franchisees with support from a devoted national accounts team that looks at the entire franchise system to coordinate large-scale, logistics-dense and/or long-distance moves is crucial.

Enter industry-leading moving franchise TWO MEN AND A TRUCK®.

Starting from humble beginnings in 1985, TWO MEN AND A TRUCK® has grown to be the largest franchised moving company in the U.S., with 350 locations across 44 states. As a result of its nationwide success, TWO MEN AND A TRUCK® also employs a national accounts team that supports franchisees by leveraging partnerships with local businesses within the corporate relocation, senior living, last mile delivery and student housing industries.

National Accounts Manager Kurt Richardson said the national accounts team secures business for the entire TWO MEN AND A TRUCK® system by identifying strategic partnerships and moving opportunities and connecting those with the local franchises.

“These partnerships allow us to offer our franchisees the opportunity to grow their local B2B efforts with the direct support of our national accounts team at Home Office,” Richardson explained. “In 2018, our franchise [location] with the largest national account revenue exceeded $179,000, and this came from opportunities coordinated by our corporate national accounts team. In total, the national accounts team generated revenue for over 200 different TWO MEN AND A TRUCK® franchises.”

Richardson gave an example of how national accounts might come into play.

“Say the TWO MEN AND A TRUCK® Chicago location worked with Omni Hotel on a move. The national accounts team could take the info on that project and try to work up to Omni corporate,” Richardson shared. “We could reach out and say, ‘Look at what TWO MEN AND A TRUCK® was able to do for you in Chicago, let us do something for you in St. Louis.’”

In this way, the national accounts team can funnel business to particular TWO MEN AND A TRUCK® locations with the knowledge that this strategy benefits both the client and the franchisee of the location tapped for service.

E-commerce has also created an ongoing need for national accounts opportunities.

“Say you like Acme Furniture. For years, that was in Quebec. But now, because of shipping demand, Acme places 50 couches in [strategic cities] around the U.S,” Richardson said. “TWO MEN AND A TRUCK® could pick up an order and take it to the customer in the states,” which cuts down on hassle for the customer by minimizing delivery time and generates business for franchisees.

Richardson continued: “The national accounts team’s role is to ask, ‘Who are the big players? Where are their footprints and where is our franchise footprint?’ The national accounts team makes a lot of calls to generate interest and awareness, and what we’re selling is that point of contact, our invoicing services, etc.”

Whatever the moving need, TWO MEN AND A TRUCK®’s use of national accounts means “the end user receives a ‘local feel’ while the national accounts partner deals with a single group instead of having to know who to reach out to 300-plus individual franchises across the country,” according to Richardson.

This approach directly benefits TWO MEN AND A TRUCK® franchisees by coordinating business opportunities that might not have otherwise come through the door.

“Everything is different in each market, so sometimes, it’s tough for us locally to get national accounts on larger, corporate-type structures because they see you as ‘TWO MEN AND A TRUCK® Boston’ or ‘TWO MEN AND A TRUCK® Sioux Falls,’ and they might look at us as a mom-and-pop company, said Brian Stern, a TWO MEN AND A TRUCK® franchisee with the brand’s Boston location. “But with the national accounts team, they can get in the door and explain, ‘Hey, we’re not just residential moving; we can also do large corporate moves and we have the power and resources, coast to coast, to make that happen.’”

Stern spoke to a particular business opportunity in 2016 that he attributes to the national accounts team, one that came in the form of a national soccer tournament.

“Copa América was a few years back ... the reason it stands out is that it’s one where we wouldn’t have had the opportunity [to partner] if we only had the stereotype of being a residential, small-scale mover. [National accounts] opened that door. A national soccer tournament is in many different cities at different times, but we have such a large footprint that we have franchisees in each of those cities. We have the resources [Copa] needs and the availability to take care of them.”

Seeing TWO MEN AND A TRUCK®’s national footprint led Copa América to partner with the brand during that last tournament cycle.

“And, thanks to that negotiation that Kurt [Richardson] and the national accounts team did, we landed that project and we still do work with them today,” Stern said.

To ensure that such partnerships go smoothly, the national accounts team takes care to provide a detailed, step-by-step move execution report to local TWO MEN AND A TRUCK® franchisees after coordinating a move on their behalf, and provides “a substantial amount of operational training material available to the system through the home office intranet site,” Richardson said.

TWO MEN AND A TRUCK®’s national accounts team is currently in talks with several large realty firms and has established agreements with numerous large apartment communities.

Outside of real estate and property rental, TWO MEN AND A TRUCK®’s national accounts team can boast partnerships across industries.

“In the corporate or employee relocation space, we handle everything from large, nationwide brands like Waffle House and The Tile Shop to smaller, more boutique accounts like Flack Global and Roberts Sinto,” said Richardson. “In the office relocation space, we have national accounts with TD Ameritrade, Seasons Hospice and Bethesda Lutheran Communities, among many others.”

The innovative work of the national accounts team opens the door to multiple additional revenue streams for TWO MEN AND A TRUCK® franchisees, adding incredible value to the brand’s franchise opportunity now and well into the future. For more information on franchising with TWO MEN AND A TRUCK®, visit https://franchise.twomenandatruck.com/.