At this point your getting comfortable with talking to drivers and broker customers.  Your learning the basics to the trucking business and you might be anxious to start developing your own customers.  Direct customer freight is freight that does not move through a broker or logistics company.  You have a direct billing relationship with the controlling party of the shipment.  This is where is you want to be and I’m going to start talking about how you get there.

Residual Commission

The most exciting thing about developing new customer business is receiving the additional commission each and every time our office moves a load with your customer.  This means that even if you don’t quote, book, or dispatch the load, you will get the commission for the sales portion.  Of course if you provide the other three functions as well you get the entire commission payout!

Ideal Customer

The ideal customer has the following attributes:

1. Good credit
2. Ships regularly
3. Easy loads: no tarp, light loads, easy loading/unloading.
4. Excellent Rates

So these four things are a wish list in a perfect world.  The reality is a customer is not likely to possess all four, but that doesn’t make them not worth pursuing.

Good Credit: An account needs to have generally about $5,000 in order to do any business and if they can’t get $5,000 in credit then we probably can’t get credit at all and we need to move on.  An account that has $100,000 credit gives you the opportunity to move a lot more freight.

Ships regularly:  Building up a customer following is about the numbers.  You don’t want just one customer you want 10, 20, 50+ customers.  So customers may ship every day or every week while others may ship only a few loads per month.  It’s all about revenue and you want your name on as much of it as possible.  It doesn’t make since to sale to someone who moves one load and that is it.  We use the website to generate those leads to us.  Here we are talking about building a relationship with a customer who ships regularly.

Easy Loads: Typically if a shipper loads regularly they have the loading/unloading down, but customers can require tarps or have heavy loads that drivers are less inclined to haul.  Perhaps only one in five drivers will take a load from a given customer, but if you are hauling a couple loads a week out of shipper you are making money.  This is where that residual income can come into play.

Excellent Rates:  Excellent rates means that the drivers will take the loads offered.  Unfortunately, customers who ship regularly are often approached by a lot of carriers and so rates get depressed because the demand for loads can be greater than the demand for trucks, but that can be the reverse as well.  Not too worry, usually the market rates are inline and some driver’s accept the loads as the alternative can sometimes be slim.  Again, its about revenue!  What is the difference to you if a load pays only 1.50 rpm for a total of $3,000 linehaul vs a load that pays 2.00 rpm for a total of $3,000 linehaul?  The answer?  Nothing.. That’s right your commission is the same in that scenario.  It is true that it will be easier to find a truck on a $2.00/mile load than a $1.50/mile, but that doesn’t change your commission.

Would you rather move 2 loads a day at $1,500 each or 5 loads a day at $1,000 each.  Again, it’s about the total revenue.  If your putting the time in this business of 8 hours a day you might as well push as much revenue as possible.  So 5 loads a day is generating $5,000 in revenue per day vs the $3,000 in revenue the other way.

Generating Leads

Over the years we have gathered many ways of developing leads.

• STARS
• Broker Loads
• Manufacturing Lists

There are other ways as well, but these three ways will give you more leads than you can handle.  Other ways to develop business is through good old fashion networking, talking to drivers, and other referral business.

The Sales Call

When making a sales call to a new prospect customer, keep in mind that it’s a process and this process takes time.   There can also be dead ends and negative attitudes by the people your selling to but generally speaking they are professionanl.  We are selling professional to professional and this is a far cry from contacting people at home while they are having dinner.  Read this article on  Trucking Agents – Sales Life Cycle for the life cycle of a new trucking customer.

Asset Based

We are asset based, which means we have approximately 300 trucks at our disposal that we operate.  When you call a customer you absolutely can tell them we have 300 of our own trucks.  Many customers don’t want to work with brokers and although we broker too, we tell them that we understand that, but we have trucks and those are the trucks we are interested in loading.  If we have the opportunity to broker the customer’s freight in the future that is great, but at this stage it’s about getting our foot in the door.

Customer Packet

Often a customer is going to want information on our company or will require information to set up a carrier for hauling approval.  We normally send our customer packet for this purpose.  It is several pages and includes information, like:

• Insurance
• MC Certificate
• Permit
• License
• Safety Rating
• Banking
• W-9

You can find the customer packet in our Google Drive account in the Sammons folder and document is called “customer packet”.  You can either email or fax this document as needed.

Customer Development Steps

1. Make initial contact – Find the person’s dept, name, phone, fax, email who is involved in making the decisions.  This person we will call the “traffic manager”.

2. Sell to the traffic manager that you have 300 trucks and that you regularly have trucks in their area.

3. Send customer packet to customer for setup or carrier approval.

4. If customer has a contract for us to sign, let Dave or I know and we will send to Sammons Corporate for review.

5. Send available truck list to customer.

6. Provide rates as necessary.  Start with the rate calculator, but Dave and Travis are good resources as well.

7. Keep up communication with customer until providing trucks for them is routine.

Sample Sales Call

I will use the initials DP: for you the dispatcher and TM: for the traffic manager at the customer.

TM: Good morning this is John may I help you?

DP: Good morning John, this is Travis Smith and we operate a fleet of 300 trucks and wanted to see about getting our trucking company set up with you to assist you in hauling your freight.  Would you be able to assist me in that?
To keep the traffic manager engaged in the conversation, always end with a question throughout the conversation until you have all the information you need.

TM: Are you a broker?

DP: No, we have 300 of our own trucks and are interested in loading your product with our trucks.  What is required to approve us as a carrier for you company?
If you don’t ask a question, you have given control back to the customer and the conversation will end sooner than you want.

TM: You can email me your information and I can review it.

DP: Certainly, I’ll send that over to you right away, I realize your busy, but what types of trailers do you utilize?  Flats, Steps, Double Drops?

TM: Mostly flats and steps.  Do you have those?

DP: Yes, our entire fleet is made up of flats, steps, and specialized trailers.  Could you tell me the product that is being shipped and if tarps or any special loading requirements are necessary?

TM: Most of our loads require tarp, but on occasion we have loads that aren’t tarp.

DP: Great, that is no problem.  What size tarps do you typically need?  And, can you give me an idea of how many loads you ship a day or week, etc?

TM: 4′ tarps are fine in most cases and we only ship about 15-20 loads a week.

DP: And do those loads go nationwide, Canada, or certain destinations?

TM: We ship nationwide and each load can vary.

DP: I understand, would it be best to email you a list of our trucks in the area or is their a number we should call when we have a truck available?

TM: If you have a truck in the area you can call xxx.xxx.xxxx.

DP: Perfect, one final question if I could, because I know your busy.  How long does it take to get carrier approval and when would be the best time to follow up with you?

TM: Send me your information and give me a call next week.

DP: I certainly will and I really appreciate you taking the time to speak with me today.  Have a great day!

TM: Your welcome.

 Follow up

Enter sales notes in STARS and add a follow up date as necessary.  Let Travis or Dave know where you are on an account so we can add your name as the salesperson on the account.  Most of the time you will need to be proactive in setting up a new customer.  Meaning don’t rely on voicemails being returned to you etc.  You are going to have  to pick up the phone and make the necessary outbound calls.