"Winter is coming." - House Stark
Ned Stark knew winter was coming long before the ravens arrived with official word. He watched the signs: leaves changing colour, animals moving south, the first frost appearing on castle walls. While King's Landing threw lavish feasts and ignored the warnings, Winterfell quietly stockpiled grain, gathered firewood, and reinforced its defences.
Your busy season works the same way.
Right now, the signs are everywhere. Property listings are up 12% - the highest we've seen in a decade. Transactions have climbed 15% year-on-year, smashing through pre-pandemic levels. The North West is seeing 9.7% growth in demand, Wales is up 9.3%, and even Outer London is stirring with 7% growth.
The question is simple: are you House Stark, or are you everyone else?
The King's Landing Approach (Spoiler: It Doesn't End Well)
"You know nothing, Jon Snow." - Ygritte
Most of your competitors are still living like it's eternal summer. They're reactive, not proactive. Paused all marketing for the summer, and they are now hitting the panic button. When the phone rings, they scramble. When a big job comes in, they panic about capacity. When leads dry up, they wonder what happened.
These are the removal companies' equivalent of the notorious Cersei Lannister - convinced their current success means they're untouchable, ignoring every warning sign until it's too late.
Here's what they're missing: those record-high property listings don't just represent future business. They represent a certain future business. Detached houses are driving the surge, which means bigger moves, more logistics, and higher values. Your average job size is about to get significantly meatier.
But here's the catch (there's always a catch): we're also seeing record levels of price reductions. Sellers are adjusting expectations. Some deals will stall. Others will collapse entirely.
The Stark Strategy: Preparation Over Panic
"The man who passes the sentence should swing the sword." - Ned Stark
House Stark didn't just stockpile randomly. They planned. They gathered intelligence. They knew exactly what was coming and when.
Smart removal companies are doing the same thing right now:
- Intelligence Gathering: They're not waiting for customers to ring them. They're using services like MoverAlerts to identify people in the "Under Offer" and "Exchanging" phases - the sweet spot where customers are mentally committed but haven't yet arranged their move.
- Resource Planning: They know detached houses mean bigger jobs, so they're thinking about staffing, vehicle availability, and storage capacity now, not when they're already overwhelmed.
- Risk Management: With price reductions hitting record levels, they're building deeper pipelines. If some deals fall through, they've got others ready to fill the gaps.
- Geographic Focus: The data shows where the action is. North West up 9.7%, Wales up 9.3%. They're targeting their marketing accordingly, not just hoping for the best.
The Long Winter Ahead
"Chaos isn't a pit. Chaos is a ladder." - Petyr Baelish
When winter finally arrived in Westeros, it separated the prepared from the unprepared pretty brutally. The houses that had stockpiled food survived. Those that hadn't... well, let's just say they had other problems.
Your winter - the busy moving season - is bearing down fast. The early indicators are all flashing green, but so are the warning lights about deal complexity and potential cancellations.
The removal companies that survive and thrive will be the ones who:
- See the big picture: Understanding that 12% more listings means 12% more potential business, but also 12% more competition for the same pool of resources
- Act on intelligence: Using real-time data to target customers at exactly the right moment in their moving journey
- Plan for variables: Building enough pipeline depth that cancelled deals don't sink their schedules
- Position strategically: Focusing marketing spend on the regions and property types showing the strongest growth
Your Castle Walls or Theirs?
"A lion doesn't concern himself with the opinions of sheep." - Tywin Lannister.
The beauty of this market upturn is that it's not a zero-sum game - there's genuinely more business to go around. But the companies that prepare properly will capture a disproportionate share.
While your competitors are still checking their phones, hoping for calls, you could be systematically working through a pipeline of qualified leads. While they're scrambling to find extra vans at peak times, you could be running at optimal capacity because you saw it coming.
The data is clear, the signs are obvious, and winter is definitely coming.
The only question is whether you'll be defending Castle Black or getting overrun by the army of the dead.
Ready to start gathering intelligence?
MoverAlerts gives you real-time access to people moving in your area - from "Just Listed" right through to "Deal sealed”. Contact us if you're interested in finding out more about our moving company leads and moving company flyers. Because in the game of removals, you either know what's coming or you get left behind.
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