Hunting and Farming as 3PL Sales Strategies
Posted on Tuesday, May 17th
As a transportation or logistics salesman, the process of finding customers to support the business can be very similar to hunting in that you need to hunt down your potential customers on a constant basis while having no guarantee of success. To this end, you can either buy contact lists or search the Internet for contact details of potential customers. Then, you start calling them one by one. As a salesman, you need to find effective ways to convince your potential customers that your company can help them save money while also providing services of a better quality than other similar companies. Informing them of any TMS or discount arrangements you may have with various transportation companies will help increase your chances of success too. However, as a cold caller, you should know you have only got 20 to 30 seconds at your disposal to prove your credibility. It should be noted that the mission of logistics and transportation salesmen has become rather difficult in the context of an increasing number of shippers switching to mobile phone numbers and calls from unknown numbers being regarded as quite a nuisance. In fact, this perception and the constant talking to answering machines this kind of job involves tend to cause high levels of dissatisfaction among its practitioners despite the varied strategies used by sales managers to motivate their staff into staying in business. However, there are other strategies to recruit potential customers you can rely on as a 3PL salesman apart from hunting them down. One of them would be the so-called farming strategy, which is based on a completely different approach. As opposed to hunting, this strategy focuses on the exchange of information between the logistics or transportation salesman and the shipper as a means to stir the latter's interest and build credibility. At the same time, it aims to stimulate engagement and interaction between the two parties. Of course, successful farming also requires a certain set of skills as well as a significant amount of persistence. To start with, as a logistics or transportation salesman using the farming strategy, you need to know those particular aspects about your business that set it apart from your competition. However, you need to focus on a niche for any attempt to convince your potential customers that your business outplays its competitors on all levels is bound to prove ineffective. Provide them with insight into those strategies that have helped consolidate your successful partnerships within the industry, whether they are all within the same area of expertise or spread across a number of different ones. Farming as a sales strategy has proven to be highly effective over time due to the engaging approach it is based on. Therefore, your chances of being successful in your mission to expand your customer base are guaranteed provided that you do it properly. Indeed, you will need to invest more time resources than you would as a hunter, but your conversion rate will be significantly higher too.
