6 Logistics Sales Challenges and How a Specialized CRM Can Help Solve Them
When was the last time you closed a deal?
Like so many logistics companies, you might be running into sales challenges that are increasingly difficult to solve. The industry is becoming more competitive, with services becoming commoditized and new businesses entering the market daily.
What most small and mid-sized logistics businesses lack is a robust sales strategy that can keep pace with market trends and in any economy.
But first, let’s take a look at the top logistics sales challenges 3PLs are facing and how a CRM specialized in logistics sales can help solve them.
Lack of Qualified Leads
Generating leads can be relatively easy if you’re doing the right marketing activities. Getting qualified leads is the hard part — leads that fit your ideal customer profile (e.g. right industry, job title, revenue, and employee size).
Out of all the leads that come in every day, how many of them are qualified? What’s your lead-to-MQL (Marketing Qualified Leads) conversion rate? Do you have a system to determine and track this ratio?
The most cost-effective way to keep track of this data is to use a logistics CRM such as Supply Chain Relationship Management (SCRM). SCRM’s Sales Pipeline feature helps you keep track of your historical conversion rate, qualify your leads, and have 100 percent visibility over your sales funnel (from Leads to MQL to Prospect to Customer).
Inconsistent Communication
Logistics service providers handle massive numbers of transactions and shipments daily. Imagine if your sales team uses different tools and platforms to talk to these clients. It is easy to miss important messages, forget scheduled phone calls, and overlook follow-ups.
If you receive many emails, calls, and meeting invites, do you have a system that helps you keep track of all your communication in one place? Have you missed important client requests or calls in the past?
One way SCRM can help you solve this challenge is that it will automatically keep track of all your emails and phone calls with clients and leads in one place. You can document and centralize all conversations and meeting notes with customers under their accounts in SCRM.
This way, you’ll never miss critical emails or phone calls again.
Slow Quote Turnaround Time 
Potential customers often contact multiple service providers and evaluate the first few responses they receive. This means that if you take a little bit longer than your competitors to send a quote, you’ll likely lose the opportunity to win the customer’s business.
Ideally, you should aim to deliver a quote within three minutes of receiving the request. But is your CRM equipped to handle this level of speed and accuracy?
With a specialized CRM for logistics, you can quickly create and send quotes in minutes. You will also have access to historical customer quote data and real-time market rates, which will allow you to create competitive quotes that are more likely to convert.
If you want to secure more shipments, quickly sending quotes is the key.
Overlooking Requests for Quotes
In the logistics industry, managing large numbers of transactions and customer requests can be challenging and overwhelming. With so many shipments and customer requests to handle, it’s easy to miss potential business opportunities.
How do you ensure you’re not missing out on any requests for quotes? Do you need a system that lets you stay organized and on top of incoming requests?
Thankfully, SCRM can help you stay on top of your game by centralizing all emails and quotes in the same place. With SCRM, you can be more responsive and attentive to quote requests, ensuring you provide timely and accurate responses to your customers.
Inability to Measure Sales Team’s Performance
Do you know which of your salespeople is generating the best results? If not, you may not have an accurate way to track, measure, and manage your sales team’s performance.
As Peter Drucker said, “If you can’t measure it, you can’t improve it.”
With SCRM, you can get real-time snapshots of your sales team’s performance. Get detailed reports such as Sales Owners Lane Conversion, Sales Owners Activities, and Sales Owners Avg Awarded Lane Deal Size.
This way, it’s also easier to reward top-performing salespeople and support underperforming ones.
Finding Great Sales Talent
The best salespeople are in high demand, and competition for them is fierce. Building a competent sales team that can connect, build relationships, and close deals with customers could take years of trial and error.
To secure long-term success, be sure to identify salespeople who aren’t just good at following processes but are also highly resilient, strategic, and great negotiators. So, make sure to compensate them well.
How do you spot these top performers?
As we mentioned above, a tool that gives you accurate, real-time data on sales team performance is a valuable asset to make sure you reward and motivate the right team members.
SCRM: The First-Ever CRM Designed for Logistics Service Providers
After customers spent years wrestling with the same sales challenges enumerated above and struggling to find the right tool to help solve them, we decided to design and develop that very tool they needed from the ground up.
Supply Chain Relationship Management was born out of necessity. Our customers needed a logistics-focused CRM to streamline lead qualification, centralize customer communication, and generate accurate and profitable quotes in record time. We believe it can also help you improve sales performance and gain and retain customers.
If you’re interested in learning more about this one-of-a-kind software, you can request a free trial here: Supply Chain CRM to Secure More Shipments.
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