Whether your freight company wants to expand a customer base or desires to increase trade lanes, you will need a plan in place. To achieve your goals, you may require a plan A, a plan B, or more. An effective strategy analyzes the past performance, projects future trends, and maximizes your current potential.
Take, for instance, you want to increase sales for a trade lane.
If that route is a popular one and operated by many forwarders, customers may not pay a premium for a service that’s only as good as others. To lure customers, your strategy must be to offer quicker, cheaper deliveries with real-time tracking service. For supporting your plan for increased sales, you may have to:
- analyze the history of transactions in that lane
- generate projected sales numbers
- develop processes for control and visibility
- improve your job turnaround time
- reduce costs to meet your projected numbers
Not all strategies may work as expected. But by avoiding some of the common pitfalls, you can anticipate healthy revenue postings.
Common reasons for not achieving success
Incomplete business plan: If a strategy is executed without analyzing all factors that affect your business, you can’t be sure of realizing all your goals.
Not open to modern ways: The belief that technology is beyond the reach of small forwarders has prevented the steady growth of many forwarders. With technology, a company can identify weak spots and opportunities for growth.
Craft strategies that work for you
Often the best resources are readily available but we tend to undermine their potential. With help from technology and your team’s insights from the operational experience, you can transform your processes to boost your revenue. We share a few strategies to help you generate more money as a forwarder.
Give our experts a call to discover how our innovative solutions could help your business.
Fostering leads and inquiries
Not all sales conversions can happen in a short span. Shippers can be undecided about choosing a new forwarder. Give them time, track leads and nurture the prospects. Approach them with solutions that serve their purpose. Create marketing campaigns and measure the outcomes with KPIs. For easy and systematic management of your leads, Freight CRM software comes in handy.
Knowing what your customers want
Shippers rely on logistics service providers like you to conduct their trade smoothly. Keeping the complexity away from your customers puts them at ease. Implement technological solutions to reduce the customer’s intervention. A successful freight forwarding strategy must have the customer at its core. Keep customers notified about the progress of their shipments with easy access via portals, mobile apps and auto-alerts.
Leverage anticipated volumes to negotiate rates
The freight rates you provide your customers are majorly derived from the contracts agreed with carriers. To negotiate better rates, you must present your projected volumes to carriers. This is possible when you capture data from all functions and every transaction. A more manageable way is to use freight broker software. It helps strategically position your company for appealing rates and competitive advantage. The outcome is better rates for you and more value to your customers.
Take action today
Building steady revenue in your freight forwarding requires identifying your strengths and developing constant insights into the opportunities for improvement. An effective business strategy enables you to move freight at the lowest possible cost using the most optimized route. In a chaotic forwarding industry, execute well-crafted strategies with freight software to maximize your revenue generation.