| Midwest Moving & Storage |

IOMI training now a condition of employment

JANUARY 20-22, 2014 ELK GROVE VILLAGE, IL – Midwest Moving and Storage feels so strongly about the benefits for success that training by the International Office Moving Institution (IOMI®) provides that it’s required to remain employed by the company. Hosting its fourth IOMI training seminar since 2008, Midwest not only trained every key sales, administrative, operations, and customer service employee, but every one of the company’s movers were also IOMI-trained and certified.

Ed Katz, IOMI® instructor, demonstrated how Midwest uses their patented Mat-A-Doors® to minimize the risk of damage to the lobby side entrance into passenger elevators that are converted to haul freight during an office move.

Leading by example, Tom Pera, General Manager, left, went through the exhaustive three-day training again to demonstrate his strong support for the entire IOMI® process. According to Mr. Pera, the training is now a condition of employment.

New sales employee, Troy Foster, received his Certified Office Mover® diploma after passing the rigorous final exam.

Left to right: Catherine Ahaus, Project Manager, Tom Pera, GM, and Ed Katz, Instructor. Catherine, who just joined the company, will add tremendous depth to MIDWEST’s ability in the move management arena. Prior to this, she was a highly respected leader as a relocation consultant for CB Richard Ellis as well as several Fortune 1000 companies.

Every mover attended the training to learn the best practice methods for minimizing the risk of damage to their clients’ furniture, computers, and office buildings. Included in the training were the latest techniques for reducing their customers’ nonproductive down-time by using the Spider Crane®, Rock ‘N Roll Jack®, and plastic crates.

Ed Katz trains Ruth Bernal, HR Director, on how to train the movers to treat the customer. A large part of the training dealt with how to supervise the job, how to communicate professionally and politely with the customer, and how to reprimand an employee who doesn’t follow instructions.

Midwest adds homeland security to office moving expertise

OCTOBER 14, 2011 ELK GROVE VILLAGE, IL – Midwest Moving and Storage added another competitive weapon to their cache of building manager-friendly tools by completing training in IOMI’s Homeland Security for Office Moves.

Homeland Security for Office Moves takes a first-responder’s approach to preparing moving companies to recognize the warning signs of criminal and terrorist activities involving office buildings.
“Movers that make protecting the buildings they work in a priority become trusted partners of the building managers,” said Ed Katz, head of the International Office Moving Institute (IOMI®). “Not only is everyone safer, protecting office buildings generates referrals.”

Midwest chose a team training approach, watching the online videos together. The entire process – enrolling in and paying for the training, watching the video lessons, and taking the final – were all accomplished online over the internet.

Midwest’s Customer Satisfaction Director, Tom Pera, called the online training “valuable”. Twenty-two Midwest employees successfully passed the final exam and became IOMI®-certified in Homeland Security for Office Moves.

“Another great tool from the International Office Moving Institute,” Pera said.

Employees of Midwest Moving & Storage watch online training videos to become IOMI®-certified in Homeland Security for Office Moves.

Movers & Building Security: General Manager Tom Pera explains it.

Midwest Moving & Storage execs show Ed Katz, head of IOMI®, one of several brand new, customized local office moving vans purchased to meet their ever increasing demand for service. [L-R] Marc Mendoza, Warehouse Manager; Bill Owens, Executive VP/GM; Tom Pera, Director of Sales and Marketing; Dan Bensfield, Operations Manager; and Katz.

Estimating and ops drill keeps Midwest growing

APRIL 12–13, 2011, ELK GROVE VILLAGE, IL —

When something works, keep doing it.

That philosophy prompted Midwest Moving & Storage to invite Ed Katz back for more IOMI® training to reinforce its best-practice methods.

Luis Toledo credits IOMI® practices for the company’s dramatic growth over the last three years, and the president of the 25-year-old Chicago company sees training of all key employees in IOMI’s® estimating and operations vital to continued demand for their office moving services.

Tom Pera, director of sales and marketing, also applaudes the training.

“The IOMI® method is a comprehensive sales, marketing, operations and invoicing process that will enable us to take our company to the next level. Ed is an exceptionally effective and very easy to listen to instructor.”

To meet increased customer need, Midwest recently purchased customized local office moving trucks and nearly another thousand four-wheel dollies. The company selected high-quality, rubber-capped dollies designed to minimize the risk of damage during transport.

Ed, we’ve grown so much since you were here last that we wanted to have you back to ensure that all of our key employees practiced the IOMI® drill in estimating and operations.
– Luis Toledo, president, Midwest Moving & Storage

During Katz’ visit, he audited Midwest’s IOMI® practices, the company’s second audit in three years. They passed with flying colors.

Maurice Cervantes, left, Business Development/Inside Sales and Chris Greiten, Coordinator/Operations Assistant

[Top to Bottom] Marc Mendoza, Warehouse Manager; Tom Pera, Director of Sales and Marketing; Dan Bensfield, Operations Manager; and Bill Owens, Executive VP/GM

Paul Badalamenti, Commercial Account Manager

Kevin Reinhardt, Marketing/IT Coordinator-QA

Karen Vaneé, Commercial Business Development, receives her IOMI® Certified Office Mover® diploma from Instructor Ed Katz.

IOMI® operations training included ongoing instruction in Midwest’s Boxless Move® practices.

Ed Katz conducts an audit of Midwest’s IOMI® practices.

Attendee Comments

Mr. Katz has shown that selling service and safety are less costly than selling just price.
Paul Badalamenti, Commercial Account Manager

Ed; thank you so much for your time and knowledge. I greatly look forward to implementing your processes.
Kevin Reinhardt, Marketing/IT Coordinator – Quality Assurance

Mr. Katz opened my eyes to a whole new way to speak to people and develop our business.
Maurice Cervantes, Business Development/Inside Sales

Ed did a great job! He certainly is a subject matter expert.
Chris Greiten, Coordinator/Operations Assistant

The IOMI® method is a comprehensive sales, marketing, operations and invoicing process that will enable us to take our company to the next level. Ed is an exceptionally effective and very easy to listen to instructor.
Tom Pera, Director of Sales and Marketing

Ed, we’ve grown so much since you were here last that we wanted to have you back to ensure that all of our key employees practiced the IOMI® drill in estimating and operations.
Luis Toledo, President

2008

Recertified, rejuvenated, and handling customers with care

MARCH 19 – 21, 2008 – Midwest Moving & Storage Cares became a slogan with teeth after the company completed Certified Office Mover® training in 2006. The Chicago-area mover backed up its commitment with Recertification Training recently and, for good measure, underwent the scrutiny of a performance audit to ensure service reflects the promises made by their sales staff.

According to Ed Katz, as the proof of the pudding is in the eating, customer satisfaction relates directly to how well Midwest took to its lessons.

“The customer, Denise Rippinger, president of Corporate Artworks, went on and on about how pleased she was with her sales representative, Mike Stone, and how much she loved the extensive building protection,” said Trainer Katz, head of the International Office Moving Institute (IOMI®). “She couldn’t get over the way the crew handled her furniture and fragile artwork, and loved the fact that she and her staff had little downtime because Midwest moved her lateral file cabinets full using their Spider Crane.” Katz conducted both the Recertification Training held at Midwest’s corporate headquarters and the performance audit.

Midwest’s best-practice methods to minimize the risk of damage to office buildings helped win the job of moving Corporate Artworks into their own new building. Corporate Artworks provides and installs works of art for companies nationwide.

2006

MARCH 22 -27, 2006 ELK GROVE VILLAGE, IL – Quality starts at the top and at Midwest Moving & Storage, Inc. that’s Luis Toledo, company president.

His philosophy is simple: Even though Midwest is one of Chicago’s largest and most succussful office movers, Toledo still keeps a hand in operations. It’s not unusual to find him overseeing the loading of one of his many moving vans or making sure movers don’t cut corners when it comes to protecting office buildings. He also insists managers stay tuned in to the front lines.

“To ensure we render the service that our sales people present in their proposals, managers and
leaders work a move several times a year. That way they see what’s really happening and make changes if necessary,” said Toledo.

After three intense days of training with Ed Katz of the International Office Moving Institute, Toledo is ready to take Midwest to a new level of excellence.

Toledo learned the moving business from the ground up, working on the back of a truck as a mover for someone else. Today, Midwest is the only Certified Mover® with unionized labor that can work in any office building in metropolitan Chicago. And only Midwest offers The “Boxless” Move®.

To a moving company, a real hall of fame gets through an office move without damage. Here, Luis Toledo, right, inspects Midwest’s “hall of no claims” which features Masonite-covered floors, Koroflex on the walls, and Mat-A-Doors® protecting the double entrance doors on both sides of the lobby as well as the lobby side of the passenger/swing elevator. When working in an office building, Midwest Moving behaves as a guest that wants to be invited back. Therefore, they go to great lengths to minimize the risk of damage to floors, walls, doors and elevator entrances.

Movers carefully prepare a sensitive copier for transport. Midwest President Luis Toledo makes sure that every monitor, CPU, and printer is wrapped with two layers of anti-static bubblewrap before being placed in his custom-made computer crates. Most movers choose to take a shortcut and up the risk of damage by wrapping only the keyboard, mouse, and cables in a bubblepack bag and simply blanket-wrapping monitors, CPUs and printers.

Luis Toledo, (left), president of Midwest Moving & Storage, with his dad, “Mr. T”, who is also an employee.

After three days of intensive classroom training led by Ed Katz of the International Office Moving Institute, Midwest Moving & Storage earned its Certified Mover diploma.

Comments from Attendees

This seminar has helped me gain the confidence I needed to perform my job to the fullest.
Mike Jackson, project manager

Thank you very much for all your help, I have seen your training come out in many ways from the movers to the salespeople to the inside marketers, I hear your voice and ideas come from their mouth, that is validation!
Bill Owens, operations manager

I feel that I can now take my company to a new level of excellence after taking Ed’s seminar.
Luis Toledo, president