2 months ago I have posted the article Converting sales lead to order – forwarders tale. In this post I have tried to attract the attention of the forwarding community to an important but highly undervalued process. The process of sales. As any process the process of sales has an input which has to generate a result. But what we provide as an input in freight forwarding, how we manipulate this input in order to get the desired result and what result do we get at all (is it the desired result?).
Firstly, I would like to accent on an important point. The sales process starts from the end of the marketing process. It is the sales lead and the cold call that are the inputs of the sales process. Now, let us take a short look at the freight forwarding sales process. I see three steps which I put in form of questions.
Question number one: What we sell? Freight – no, definetely not as we do not own the freight, transportation – again wrong answer, we do not provide transportation services (we are forwarders not carriers). You might be laughing for saying obvious things but belive me my practice thought me that they are not obvious at all and many salespersons tell to their customers they sell freight or transportation. Actually as forwarders we sell – organization, coordination, consolidation of various services which aim at the proper movement of our customer’s freight from one location to another. That is it. This is what we do. This is what we sell. Organization, coordination, consolidation !!
Question number two: How we sell? Normally, most of the salespersons, being eager to close the deal start by overwhelming the prospect with information about the organization and the products they can offer. This is very wrong approach, I can say it from bitter personal experience. Firstly what we need to know is what is actually our customer looking at. What kind of transportation they use, how they perceive such vague notions as “short tranzit time” and “low freight cost”, what is their understanding of the “quality forwarding services”. And this we can find out only by listening and asking the right questions. We should understand that selling freight forwarding services is not like selling “sneakers”. You can not impress the prospects by telling them how good is it for them to ship using your services 100 kilos from New York to Sofia, Bulgaria if they do not have the need to ship. This is the starting point. Unlike foodstaff for example, our customers must have loads in hand in order to look for our services at all. On my practice I have this case when I spent 30 minutes explaining what opportunities my company had just before realizing that the prospect does not have international shipments at all. So the starting point is: either start selling with a sales lead or do your homework before making the cold call. There are many books on this topic that is why I will not go there. But I would like only to share with you what became one of my foundations in selling freight forwarding services – Does my prospect have any international loads at all !?! Only the positive answer to this question will put the prospect in my list.
Question number three: When we stop the sell ? This is easy. We stop selling in two cases. Either prospect tells you – “We are not intrested in your services” or they give you an order. Many of you might object to the last but it is my understanding that after you receive your first order you should start serving your customer in order to get repeated orders which is different process from sales (though closely related to it).
Whether you agree with me or not – please comment or remain silent!
If you have other views on selling freight forwarding services – share your comments with us!
Want to tell us more about selling process in freight forwarding – this is the place to do it!
I can’t say enough to agree with the original author… I do not sell freight… I sell a service …one which you have to identify prospects and seek to find where your service is needed, and if at all
I walk in to every potential client believing they will be my next big account. If I find out to the contrary then I spend the remainder of my time there connecting as best as possible and being kind to the people who were nice enough to give me an opportunity… You never know when they may change gard.
It’s funny having a job that revolves around human emotion rather than any real product… This job is about selling yourself.
Good luck and good selling !
You can make a mill. If u want
My 2 Cents
The Key word here is – “SELLING”. Try Marketing instead of selling – as till you have actually converted a lead into a customer, its Marketing. Its a sale only when you have a customer/client.
When you start – you have a lead and a service which you present to the lead with the intention of converting the lead into a client. So what all do we have :
1. A lead ( you research this one)
2. A Service (you have this one)
3. A presentation ( you create this one)
4. A opportunity to showcase the presentation to the lead. ( you create this one too)
These are the only factors that we control and can manipulate to assist us in reaching the desired outcome (converting the lead to a client – i.e. getting their buy-in, or business). Usually it takes time for the lead to verify all that you present to them, they must have a need (not a desire)for the service, your service should appear better than the competing service providing companies, your presentation should have gone /done well, you must leave something behind with the lead- that will constantly remind them of your company or its services, & so on.
How you go about arranging for all the above – how much of it is planned and executed to perfection will vary and that will determine the conversion factor of your effort.
I also do not buy into the theory that the Big companies have an advantage over the SFF since even at those “Big companies” – there is a person who has to sit down and plan the strategy with which they will end up with more customers and more sales. Imagine that person is you and that “Big company” is your SFF.
I have been putting togather a document that goes into more details, which will be available from my blog at parbir.wordpress.com
I tried looking for your document on your blog and was unable to locate it. Do you have a link for it or have you posted the document yet?
Which document you mean?
The problem that many have in the Freight Forwarding industry is that is has turned into a commodity service. You need Freight. This is not a service in which you sell items that are an added-value to your customer. This is essential such as manpower, lights/electrcitiy and machines.
The problem is that the Freight Forwarders fight for the cheapest price and everyone has a better price. Big Freight companies would cut their price at first to get the retention of a customer or give them rates for signing a year contract.
Your simply fighting for volume in this game nowadays. No one wants to pay and no one wants to make change with their current adjustment!
More than agree with you
hi..i have came into freight forwarding sales one month ago…this article is very useful for the beginners like me..to starts the carrier in the field of freight forwarding sales .thanks for publishing articles..
I was searching on how to sell freight forwarding services, and Google search directed me to this article. I agree with what you said. I have experienced a lot of times when a prospective clients will ask me questions and seek advise from me on how to import or export their stuff, only to find out later that they will not import/export because it is much cheaper to buy locally, or they will use the services of multinational companies because their rates are much cheaper. This is kind of frustrating.
Anyway, I hope you could come up with more articles about marketing a freight forwarding service.
Finally a selling blog that makes sense… I have been reading ones about the irrelevancies of the “Freight Forwarding Sales Rep.” Unfortunately I could not comment one those because they disabled the comments from their snooty one sided blogs. You make good points. Sales is sales is sales and all real sales men/women know that. Ask questions, learn about their business, ASK FOR THE SALE, follow up and service the account no matter how big or small. It will inevitably lead to more sales. There is no need to talk about your company and the great things that they have done if you notice that your prospect starts to look at his/her watch or checking his/her phone and so on. We sell worry free shipping. We’ll corrdinate, consolidate, and ship your freight while organizing the paperwork for clearance and tax. Thats it. End of story.
And to those that have had bad experiences with any kind of sales rep… Bad ones are out there. Just like there are bad chefs, and bad singers. The key is when you find a good one keep them, like a good husband or wife. Don’t generalize people in a field where there are literally hundreds of thousands of us. There are bound to be bad ones. But on the brighter side there are definitely excellent ones.
interesting topics mate…….
i think there is another added value for us to the customer….
is to provide assistance, consultation and protection for the in-experienced supplier or buyer, or whose perhaps assessing a new contracts, to make sure that they’re not going to be a scam victim…
meaning to say… we have to protect supplier/buyer, to avoid any fraudulent activity (ex : when the goods gets there, buyer wont pay to the supplier etc etc)
what do you think? do you think we could provide such service ?
If one understands what the customers CRITICAL SUCCESS FACTORS (CSF) – then you are better positioned to close the sale.