Sales in logistics can prove difficult to scale for small or growing companies who rely on long-term, account-based, business-to-business revenue streams. But it doesn’t take enterprise-level market penetration or a globally recognized brand to boost sales in logistics services and kickstart real business growth.
Many of the challenges faced by growing logistics companies are actually within your control. You can take action to fix things like marketing/sales misalignment, a poorly defined value offer, lack of sales resources, or inefficient internal sales processes. In this piece, we’ll share seven actionable strategies you can deploy to improve sales in logistics, freight, and transportation.
How to Boost Sales in Logistics in 7 Steps
1. Define a Formal Sales Process
A loosely defined — or undefined — sales process is the #1 obstacle to success in logistics sales. Research from HBR has shown that companies with a formally defined sales process experience 18% more revenue growth than companies that don’t.
First, subdivide your sales pipeline into its constituent parts (stages):
- Lead Generation
- Lead Scoring & Qualification
- Assessment of Needs
- Proposal / RFP
- Closing & Delivery
Next, define a unified set of strategies and processes your company will use within each stage.
- Lead Gen — An efficient marketing machine is key to lead generation, but so are outbound sales strategies such as cold calling (of qualified leads) and attendance at the industry events or trade shows that will be frequented by potential clients. Decide what info you’ll need to collect and record across all lead profiles for proper scoring, evaluation, and touchpoint targeting. Most logistics businesses will care about name and contact info (email, phone, etc.), but also consider things like the lead’s role in their company or how/where they heard about your company. Automation platforms work wonders in both reducing the data entry burden and leveraging Big Data to your advantage here.
- Lead Scoring & Qualification — Not every lead you collect will prove valuable. This stage is essential to separating the strong/hot opportunities from those that are either less likely to convert or a poor fit for your company. Decide upon a list of traits your logistics business values in a lead, and review your collected leads to evaluate how they match up with your ideal customer profile. Score them, then pursue the top rated leads first. The basic framework should take BANT into consideration (budget, authority, needs, and timeline). Does the lead have the budget to buy, the authority to make a decision, a need for your service, and the intent to make a purchase soon? If you can check all four boxes, that’s a hot lead.
- Assessment of Needs — Have your reps engage with customers to identify their needs and which precise logistics service (or service package) will offer the best match. This is also the time to offer the leads sales collateral specific to those services to educate them on your offerings and answer any lingering questions about their options.
- Proposal / RFP — A logistics sales proposal isn’t something to just email and wait. Make sure you have a formal presentation where you can explain your proposal, take questions, and negotiate the terms (if necessary) for a revised final version.
- Closing & Delivery — Once the contract is signed and the deal is closed, it’s time to make a smooth handoff to customer service and get to work fulfilling the terms of the agreement. Make sure that you are able to deliver your logistics services exactly as negotiated, and that everyone is on the same page as the sales team on what that will entail.
This is just an overview of sales process fundamentals — your own process will likely differ, have intermediate steps, and contain a lot more information (technology used, where to store information, who’s responsible for what, etc.). If the sales process you create is repeatable, measurable, and scalable, you’ll be able to keep your reps accountable and maximize every opportunity.