×

Freight Rate Management

Seafreight, Airfreight, Rail freight, Inland rates, precarriage, oncarriage – how to manage the tariff and local charges

Lead Generation Quotiss

10 Lead Generation Tips for Freight Forwarders

Digital Freight, Instant Freight Quotes, Sales Automation / By

The year 2020 was a unique and unusual time for many businesses, freight forwarding included. Handshakes and offline meetings became history, face masks and videoconferencing became a new reality. Logistic conferences, economic forums, and trade shows are left in 2019, and not coming back soon. Together with the traditional offline lead generation. How do you promote a freight forwarding business in 2021?

 

Today, in 2021, several digital tools have proven to be a great way to generate B2B leads, acquire new customers, and grow the freight forwarding business. We will give you 10 useful tips on how to promote a freight forwarding business that you can start using right now!

 

Lead Generation in Freight Forwarding

 

In economics, one has to run to stand still. And “if you want to get somewhere else, you must run at least twice as fast as that” – The Red Queen. The number of new leads is an important key sales metric for the team – the sales funnel should always be full of potential deals to cover the unexpected losses.

 

The traditional way of lead generation (conferences, meetings, forums, trade shows, fairs, etc.)  is currently unavailable. The freight rates are reaching previously unseen levels, keeping your sales team very busy securing business. Online lead generation can bring certain benefits to freight forwarders, and this time it remains the only option anyway.

 

How to Promote a Freight Forwarding Business?

 

1. Optimize Your Website

Your website is your first most important asset in the online world. Make sure you have the basics covered: your page must have a modern look, the right amount of information, simple navigation, and a clear message to your potential customer. Insert the ‘subscribe’ box to collect emails, connect Live Chat, or add a link for a quick online consultation. Don’t forget to connect analytics to your website to measure the results. You can also invest in SEO and SEM to improve the ranks of your page in search engines.

2. Optimize Your Social Media Profiles

Your social media page is your second most important asset in the online world. In the B2B segment, the preference is given to LinkedIn, but Facebook and Twitter could also be worth considering. Your company’s social media profiles should be regularly updated. This way your potential clients will know that your business is ‘alive and kicking, and they will be more likely to contact you. Of course, your company profile should be visually appealing, and the content should be engaging.

3. Produce Engaging Content

The information that you share on your website, blog, or social media profiles should be relevant, interesting, and engaging. It also should be unique: no copy-pasting from other resources (beware of the Google algorithms). The more engaging is your content, the more people will interact with it (like, comment, share, repost, subscribe, follow) – the bigger coverage you will achieve as a result.

4. Ask Your Clients for Referrals

People trust people and their opinions. Ask your current customers to write a review about your service, or ask them to fill in the survey and answer a few questions about their satisfaction with your cooperation. Post these reviews on your webpage (don’t forget to get permission to use their name, company, photo, logo, etc.) so that your potential customers can refer to this experience.

5. Implement Targeted Campaigns

Keep your sales leads engaged by sending them regular communication. News, promotions, special offers, announcements, industry, or market events – anything that would keep your potential customers in the loop.

There are plenty of email marketing tools on the market, designed for email campaigns. However, with Quotiss freight forwarders can manage their sales leads more efficiently by sending customized freight quotes, targeted for a specific market/campaign. You can also measure the conversion ratio, open ratio, and future bookings.

6. Integrate an Online Freight Calculator

Customization of your webpage would give an extra value differentiator against your competitors. The most common differentiator these days is an online freight calculator. Shipping lines are successfully pioneering online rates, and some forwarders started to offer online freight calculators too. However, in most cases, it’s a simple online form (fill in => submit => wait for email).

Real online freight calculators will soon become the new norm. The ‘only’ problem with them is to ensure that it always gives the quote which is relevant to the client/market, and the level is the same as if it was quoted by the sales rep. This is only possible when a freight forwarder has an excellent internal rate management tool, with applied pricing guidelines. If you’d like to learn more about such a tool, please contact Quotiss.

7. Cooperate with Freight Forwarding Networks

It would be a waste not to use the freight forwarding network effect. Most likely, you are already a member of a few networks of such a business nature. Make sure that other members of the network know about the specifics of your business. You can create separate email campaigns to keep them in the loop of the latest service updates. The network effect will increase the coverage and bring more potential leads to your company page.

8. Keep an Eye on Your Competition

Monitor your competitors online to be aware of what they are up to. Get inspiration and correct your online strategy based on the steps that they take. But also remember, that your value proposition should be unique to stand out.

9. Engage with Your Audience

Always attend to every request that you are receiving from an online channel. Unanswered comments on your company page do not give a good impression.

An idea for advanced companies: organize an online workshop or seminar on a relevant subject. Use every opportunity to tell your target audience about the benefits of trusting their business to your company. Show your expertise.

10. Simplify – Automate

The lead generation process (both online and offline) can be quite costly for any business, and it can be a complete waste of resources without proper follow-up.

Here is tip #10: simplify and automate the process of adding a new lead to your CRM system. The lead management module should be user-friendly and intuitive, very easy to use, and practical. Sales reps don’t want to spend 20 min of their time updating all required fields in their CRM to create a new record, especially when there is an uncertain chance of success. Sending a ‘test quote’ to a new lead should be fast and fully automated.

Quotiss software can help you to automate your sales process, and simplify your sales lead follow-up. This is especially crucial at a time when most sales teams work remotely and need a smart and simple software to collaborate efficiently.

 

Ready, Set, Automate!

Click here to register for a free trial. We’ll help with the initial settings and user onboarding. You can start quoting freight instantly on the same day we sign the deal.

Quotiss Freight Software

6 Reasons Why Quotiss Freight Software is the Right Choice

Digital Freight, Instant Freight Quotes, Online Freight, Sales Automation / By
If you don’t have any freight sales automation software in place today, you should not worry about it. You can get one in under an hour and start sending fully automated freight quotes right away.
Here’s how: Choose Quotiss freight software to power your sales team!

 

If you want to keep it simple, the easiest way is to register for a free trial. It takes less than 1h to set up a working account, which you and your team can test free of charge for 14 days.

Yes, we believe so strongly in the power of our software that we offer a free trial—regardless of the size of your business or the number of users you have on your account.

For most freight forwarding businesses, when choosing the freight software, you’ll get the best results if you look for the following features:

 

  • Easy setup—even for non-technical users (15-30 minutes)

Quotiss account can be created and configured in as little as 15-30 minutes, even for non-technical users.

For example, if you’re already registered for the Quotiss trial and you want to switch to a full version, it only takes about 15 minutes to configure it. This includes adding your logo, users, teams, a set of terms & conditions for your quotes, etc.

 

  • Configuration options to match your brand

Within your quoting software, you’ll find options for the color, branding, and design of your freight quotes. These should be easily configurable from menus you can access directly from settings.

If you need to create custom code to change the look and feel of your freight quote, we offer many options for customization. It can be based on your own design, or with the help of our professional graphic designer.

 

  • Easily searchable

Make sure to choose sales automation software that makes it easy for your sales team to search and find archived freight quotes and historical freight rates. Many software options do not come with a strong native search function. In Quotiss, the search is a state-of-art engine, searching through the entire database by context and keywords in milli-seconds.

 

  • Optimized for mobile

As of 2020, 52% of all web traffic came from mobile devices, with the vast majority of that happening on smartphones. If you’re looking for freight quoting software, make sure the software is optimized to create freight quotes that work well on mobile devices—not just desktop computers.

That way your sales team can create and send freight quotes no matter where they are or what device they’re using.

 

  • A web widget option for your homepage

One of the best features of freight quoting software is the ability to integrate your freight rate database into a widget you can place directly on your homepage.

If you’re a Quotiss user, a web widget is included with your account—meaning you don’t need a separate popup tool to add a quoting widget to your site. With a flexible system of margins per client, per route, per product, and/or per contract, you can make sure that your customer will retrieve the right freight rate online. The same rate as he would get from a sales rep.

 

  • Affordable and supported for the long term

Once you’ve selected and implemented a good-fit freight software, you usually won’t want to make major changes for a while. For that reason, it’s important to ensure whatever freight software you choose is affordable and will be supported by the developer for the long term.

 

Sales Automation Software for Freight Forwarders

 

You can find all these features and many more in Quotiss software, designed for automating sales for freight forwarders.

As a small or medium-sized freight forwarder, you can apply the right software solution and increase your sales productivity without increasing the headcount. When your sales process is powered by Quotiss, you become fast, efficient, and win more deals.

Quotiss is a practical software solution for freight forwarders, which automates all kinds of freight quotes in a smart and simple way.

Sign up for the free trial now – go digital today.

 

Freight Quote Follow Up Quotiss

Why Forwarders Should Always Follow Up on Freight Quotes?

Instant Freight Quotes / By

Did you know that just one follow-up email on a freight quote can boost your sales results? Many freight forwarders seem to think that replying to their customers’ quote requests with a freight quote is already a great competitive advantage. And it’s not far from being true!

According to the fresh Mystery Shopper Report published by Freightos, the majority of freight forwarders have failed the test, again. Similar to last year’s results, 60% of quote requests still did not result in receiving a quote.

Well, it is indeed great if your sales team replies to all quote requests they receive – but it’s not enough. Follow-up emails to those who didn’t respond to your initial message are a must if you think of a truly efficient sales process. Follow-up is so important that the sales team should realize it even before they start sending freight quotes to clients.

The Mystery Shopper experiment also revealed that out of the 25 quotes received, only 2 (two!) companies sent a follow-up to see if the shipper was still interested in booking. That’s only 8%! In short, hardly anyone sends follow-up emails.

 

What does that mean to you?

 

There are three practical matters that are crucial for increasing the quote win ratio, which directly impacts your bottom line results:

  • Instant Quoting (sales reps need a simple tool to quickly generate freight quotes)
  • Email Integration (seamless connectivity and email tracking automation)
  • Follow-up (the feedback loop: was a quote successful or not, why?)

It means that if you do a follow-up after sending the freight quote to your customer, you are jumping right into the “8% club” of salespeople who actually do that. By following up on a freight quote, you show more interest in building a relationship with the client than the majority of whoever reached out to them. This means that just by sending follow-ups on quotes, your sales team will stand out from the competition.

 

Don’t be afraid of sending follow-ups

 

Usually, customers do not comment on the freight quotes they receive for two reasons: either they simply forgot or need some more thinking to place a booking. In both cases, we can increase their engagement by following up.

Sometimes people may feel that follow-ups will make the recipient feel stalked and angry. In practice, this is rarely the case. Usually, people feel grateful, enjoy your interest in them, and admire your persistence. Well, most of the times 😊

This is an actual reply I got lately:

“Hi, Margarita,
thank you so much for following up, because right now it is a very busy time. I would like to look into this in April.
Thank you again and I would definitely like to do a trial of Quotiss software in the future.”

Often it’s the follow-up that makes them hit ‘Reply’. Jason Zook reveals in his article that over 75% of all the deals he’s landed over the years have been a result of sending follow-ups. If you think that you can actually get yourself a chance for landing 75% more deals just by sending follow-up emails, you want to start sending them right away, don’t you?

 

How to Follow Up on Freight Quotes?

 

As you start sending the follow-ups, you immediately realize that keeping track of all the freight quotes is not as easy as you first thought. You will realize that it takes much more time than you initially expected.

At Quotiss, we understand that forwarders can’t afford to spend that much time on quoting and following-up. Automation of freight quotes and follow-ups is the best way to build an efficient sales process and increase the win ratio.

If you want to check how to automate follow-ups on freight quotes, sign up for a free trial at Quotiss, or request a demo.

Freight Sales Quotiss

Freight Sales vs Transparency

Instant Freight Quotes / By

In freight forwarding, the transparency of the freight sales process has never been there at all. With the freight tariffs in a form of extremely complicated Excel ratesheets, and freight quotes prepared manually and sent by email or Whatsapp there is no visibility, no control and often no follow-up.

Usually, the sales manager doesn’t know how many freight quotes were sent in any period of time by the sales team. There is no way to check it if it’s all done manually. It is almost impossible to monitor the sales margins in the quotes. Managers must rely on the reports prepared by sales reps, where the information is unstructured and often biased.

This lack of transparency is also an issue for sales reps themselves – they have to search for freight rates in various files and emails, and there is no clear record of what rate has been offered to a client. This is a waste of time and resources, and it often leads to lost business opportunities.

 

Transparency of Sales is Essential

 

The importance of having transparency in sales activities is crucial for any business. The key to gaining control of the revenue is to have real-time access to sales performance. The live data stream is invaluable in spotting changes in trends and picking up on issues before they become a problem.

Also, studies show that when employees know their performance and have an instant overview of their KPIs, they improve their work. Focus, motivation, and accountability come when teams can see where everyone stands in just a glance.

Transparency in freight sales can be achieved in the organization when both pricing and quoting are managed via the same platform. A platform where all freight rates and quotes are created and stored, in the most structured and most proper visual way, accessible from anywhere and anytime. Quotiss software provides such a platform for freight forwarders.

Freight forwarders get access to more and more digital tools each year. There is a big interest in digitizing the customer interface: offer online freight quotes, online bookings, online tracking, etc. All these customer-facing digital initiatives are very necessary, but hardly possible without digitizing the back office of the freight forwarder.

It’s not possible to offer online freight quotes if your selling rates are maintained in Excel. You run a big risk of low data accuracy, which can cause financial loss and/or reputational risks.

 

Visual Sales Performance

 

Quotiss software automatically uploads freight ratesheets, local port charges, customer database. It contains pricing guidelines and an archive of freight quotes. With Quotiss, the sales team can generate perfect freight quotes in seconds, and email them to customers directly. Thanks to the full email integration, the follow-up is automated too!

Quotiss dashboard is a powerful visualization tool. It provides a full rate history per carrier, client acquisition stats, freight quotes performance, average margins, etc.

Quotiss dashboard puts your commercial KPIs and critical metrics together into an artfully designed and intuitive display. Data is updated in real-time. It allows setting goals and opens opportunities for immediate feedback and action. Everyone in the company is on the same page when it comes to sales performance and pricing guidelines, enabling better communication and collaboration across the teams.

By switching from Microsoft Excel to Quotiss software, you can automate sales activities and get access to the sales performance analysis, in real-time. There will no longer be a need to manage a number of complex freight ratesheets in Excel. That’s right, no more Excel!

With Quotiss, you can increase your sales productivity without increasing your headcount. When your business is driven by efficiency, it directly impacts the company’s bottom line.

 

Would You Like a Quick Start with Quotiss?

 

Click here to register your company. We’ll activate your company’s profile and help with the initial settings and user onboarding. You can upload your ratesheets and start quoting freight from Quotiss on the same day we sign the deal.

3 Reasons Why the Freight Rates are Record-High

Freight Rate Management, Freight Ratesheets & Tariffs, Simplicity & Efficiency / By

 

Freight rates for shipping and transporting goods are going through the roof. What happened and why do we see such an unprecedented surge in freight rates?

 

Freight rates for shipping containers from China to Europe and the US have gone up to the unseen levels. The Shanghai Containerized Freight Index (SCFI), which is used to measure the average spot rates from Shanghai on the major trades, increased by 3x compared to last year (or any other year for that matter). For example, freight rates from Shanghai to the US West Coast rose to a new record of $4,054 per TEU – a 20% increase!

 

1. The Corona Combo

 

The lockdown is a direct effect of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. First, it was the lockdown in China at the beginning of the year, and a couple of months later  – everywhere else in the world. The economic lockdown affected the flow of goods: due to the closure of factories and plants, bookings were canceled. This resulted in blank sailings and capacity cuts. Passenger planes stopped the delivery of the airfreight cargo, causing a surge in prices for the limited capacity of the cargo planes.

Freight rates blank sailings Quotiss

During the summer of 2020, the flow of goods continued almost “as usual“.  But then, another unexpected Corona effect kicked in – the change in consumer behavior.

As Vincent Clerc (Maersk CEO) put it: “We hadn’t foreseen just how Covid would be able to change consumer patterns,” he said, adding that acceleration in demand has been the fastest in at least 10 years. “People use a much, much higher portion of their wages on goods.”

It’s true. There is a change in the spending patterns. When the services became unavailable (restaurants, beauty, tourism, entertainment just stopped), people switched to buying more physical goods that need to be transported. Retail sales in the U.S. in December rose by 4.8% compared to the same period in 2019, causing the surge in demand.

 

2. The Shortage of Equipment

 

A conspiracy theory goes like this: all shipping lines had a secret meeting and decided to send half of their equipment to an uninhabited island far away. This theory could be false, but the truth is that there is a significant imbalance of empty containers on Asia-Europe trade.

Commitment agreements with the shipping lines used to be a space and equipment guarantee in the past, but it doesn’t solve the problem anymore. Even with commitment in place, it’s close to impossible to get an empty container in China these days. Carriers introduced a number of surcharges, pushing rates even higher. For example, Maersk Line is working on a number of initiatives called ‘Delivery Promise’ which should replace the standard ‘commitment’ agreement.

This is very frustrating to shippers. They have to accept the new rules of the game: “Ongoing service unreliability, coupled with the record profits of shipping companies at times of crisis, clearly depicts a seriously disrupted market and demonstrates that carriers have been passing tremendous hikes on spot rates, imposing heavy surcharges above the fixed-term contractual rates,” says Denis Choumert, president of the European Shippers’ Council (ESC).

 

3. Supply & Demand is King

 

COVID-19 and the equipment shortage are both valid reasons for the current freight rate spike. However, the main cause for the rate fluctuations on the market is always the supply & demand balance (or imbalance, to be precise). The lockdown contributed to increasing demand and the lack of shipping containers in Asia resulted in a limited supply. Consequently, freight rates have doubled.

Market forces are the main driving factor behind the freight rate fluctuations. Factors such as fuel prices, distance traveled, terminal costs, etc. don’t impact freight rates as much as supply and demand do.

According to the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD):

“In general terms, the demand and the supply of maritime transport services interact with each other to determine freight rates. While there are countless factors affecting supply and demand, the exposure of freights rates to market forces is inevitable. Cargo volumes and demand for maritime transport services are usually the first to be hit by political, environmental and economic turmoil. Factors such as a slowdown in international trade, sanctions, natural disasters and weather events, regulatory measures and changes in fuel prices have an impact on the world economy and global demand for seaborne transport. These changes may occur quickly and have an immediate impact on demand for maritime transport services. As to the supply of maritime transport services, there is generally a tendency of overcapacity in the market, given that there are no inherent restrictions on the number of vessels that can be built and that it takes a long time from the moment a vessel order is placed to the time it is delivered, and is ready to be put in service.

Therefore, maritime transport is very cyclical and goes through periods of continuous busts and booms, with operators enjoying healthy earnings or struggling to meet their minimum operating costs.”

 

The Conclusion

 

Shipping lines are finally in a good place, making up for the previous years of low margins. Ships are loaded with high yielding containers, the spot market is at an all-time high, and the customers are forced to accept higher rates when signing new long-term contracts.

Freight forwarders make the biggest margins on the fluctuating market, so they are in a good place, too. Although, their sales and booking teams must be under a lot of pressure now.

Importers and exporters, on the other side, have to deal with the new reality of shipping rates. Their dilemma is difficult – accept the “ridiculously high” spot rates, or wait until the market will “normalize“. But as the wise saying goes: “It’s very difficult to predict, especially the future”. Who knows, maybe these rate levels are the new normal?

Instant freight quotes

How to Sell More Freight with a Remote Sales Team?

Instant Freight Quotes / By

There are 3 things one needs to know to visualize the size of any freight forwarding business:

  • how many TEUs/FFEs/mts are handled by the company on a yearly basis?
  • how many people are employed?
  • how many offices are running globally?

We always assume that the more the better. But is it really so?

 

‘Lean’ is the New Black in Freight Forwarding

 

The latest trend, activated by COVID-19 is directed towards efficiency – do more with fewer resources. The main question that forwarders should ask themselves is how to grow annual volumes without growing the administration costs.

In the startup world, the book ‘Lean Startup’ became the bible for any upstarting entrepreneur who is not backed by investors’ money. The book describes the only viable business model – do only the most essential work, cut all unnecessary spending, use the growth hacks and shortcuts wherever possible.

But it’s time to get specific. Here are the tips on how to run a sales support remotely. These tips will help you to create your own “lean” sales team and sell more freight.

 

Where to Start?

 

Usually, remote team tips tend to focus on hiring and managing. But, before you even think about your people though, you need to think about your tools.

Hiring takes months. Learning how to be a good manager takes years. But you could get the software you need to run a remote team today. It is possible. Even preferable.

The software brings structure and routine to chaos and mess. For the sales support team in a freight forwarding company, there are several essential business processes that should be digitized and automated:

  • One reliable source for freight rates
  • Instant freight quotes
  • Follow up on deals
  • Internal collaboration

Once you’ve got all these elements in place, you’ll successfully conquer remote sales support. Read this before stepping into the remote sales support world and you’ll create a solid foundation to allow your business to grow.

 

Maximize Your Team’s Performance

 

Basic email and MS Excel aren’t designed for remote jobs. Invest in sales automation software. The ROI is exponential. And as far as SaaS software goes, it’s relatively cheap.

If you’re planning to offer remote sales support you need sales automation software. Without it, your team will be standing on the shaky ground constantly trying to catch up. It is not only about your customers’ experience, but it also enhances employee experience.

Obviously, we recommend Quotiss software. With Quotiss, your sales support team will leverage the accessibility to the same freight rate management and quoting platform. Every department can see the actual freight rates and active customer quotes in one place.

Quotiss allows the team to collaborate without being in the same place. Our customers been using Quotiss over the years, and scaled their teams without adding unnecessary complexity.

With Quotiss, the team is able to handle a large volume of freight quote requests without a huge staff by maximizing the usage of our sales automation platform.

You can rely on features like replicating quotes in 5 seconds, quick archive search, and direct email replies which help the sales team to respond to customers faster and more efficiently.

 

Would You Like a Quick Start with Quotiss?

 

Click here to register your company. We’ll activate your company’s profile and help with the initial settings and user onboarding. You can start uploading your freight ratesheets and quoting freight from Quotiss on the same day we sign the deal.

The Best Freight Rate Management Software: 4 Unique Ways To Use Quotiss

Digital Freight, Instant Freight Quotes, Online Freight, Sales Automation / By

A totally biased article on why Quotiss is the best freight rate management software for small and medium-sized freight forwarders.

 

At his previous corporate sales job, Quotiss CEO Marcin Zarzecki had never had practical software to send instant freight quotes to his clients but he knew it was crucial to be fast and efficient to achieve his sales targets.

He tried using the corporate tools, but they were not efficient and more so, added complexity to his sales routine. Then he tried good old Excel & Email combination, but that was lacking basic automation. Then he tested some of his own ideas, based on Excel templates automated by a moderate homemade macro. It was overwhelming.

The recipe for success is simple: you’ve got to create a million freight quotes yourself to feel the pain => become an expert in the field => find a solution => test & analyze => remove 90% of complexity => digitize => create Quotiss.

This is the principal moment where Quotiss is different from other startups in the field:

If no one at the C-level of your company ever quoted a freight rate, you can’t claim to be a freight automation startup.

Rather than provide a vague comparison list of freight sales automation platforms, we’re breaking down how our clients use our software to grow their business and how it could work for you too.

 

4 Unique Ways to Use Freight Rate Management Software

 

We’ll save you the time of describing the basic features. Quotiss rate management software includes all the essential functions a freight forwarding business needs.

With the shift to remote work due to COVID-19, we see the increasing interest in the software that can boost sales in freight forwarding. And businesses that never even heard of sales automation software are finding Quotiss. They’re using it to help them collaborate easier and work through quote requests as a remote team.

Below, we will list the not-so-obvious benefits of Quotiss that you can use to boost your sales:

 

  1. Automate Marketing & Communication

You can use our powerful quote distribution engine to streamline and target your marketing message directly to the clients. Group and segment your customers by using custom #hashtags to create mailing lists.

 

  1. Enhance Follow-up on Quotes

Did you know that Quotiss shows the exact date & time when your client opened the freight quote that you’ve sent? Use this data for a targeted follow-up with your customer!

 

  1. Use Sales Dashboard

Your sales performance stats are LIVE. Know your average margins per segment, know your win rates per sales team, know how many sales leads each team generates. Make informed business decisions.

 

  1. Monitor Quotiss Weekly Trends

Clients who’ve been using Quotiss for freight quote distribution since day one, show significant growth in the number of sent freight quotes since the beginning of the lockdown. We started sharing the weekly statistics of sent quotes on our LinkedIn page. Follow us to be up to date with the sales activity trend across the industry.

Would You Like a Quick Start with Quotiss?

 

Click here to register your company. We’ll activate your company’s profile and help with the initial settings and user onboarding. You can start uploading your freight ratesheets and quoting freight from Quotiss on the same day we sign the deal.

Freight forwarding sales

How to Boost Sales in Freight Forwarding?

Freight Rate Management, Instant Freight Quotes, Sales Automation / By

How are you doing with delivering on your sales targets this month, this quarter, or this year? No matter what is the current status of your sales pipeline, it’s essential to fill it up with the business opportunities on a regular basis.

 

Most opportunities in freight forwarding start with a freight quote request. Quoting freight rates can be a devastating experience for the sales team because the effort is rarely rewarded with the actual booking placed by a client. In fact, according to the industry statistics, on every 100 quotes sent, there is a 5%-10% chance of marking that deal as ‘Closed-Won’. No wonder, salespeople are so depressed by this routine task.

There are 2 solutions to this problem:

  1. Make the freight rates irresistibly low and boost you win ratio – obviously, not too healthy for the bottom line results;
  2. Fix the quoting process and make it effortless (even enjoyable!) for the salespeople.

Keep Your Sales People Motivated

 

A good salesperson is golden for any business, and it is especially true for the traditional, relationship-driven freight forwarding. These special relationships bring enormous value when it comes to keeping customers loyal and satisfied. Great salespeople love business development, but they hate the administrative work. Making the routine tasks easy for them will boost their performance, and as a result – will increase sales.

 

Keep Your Customers Satisfied

 

How long do your clients wait for freight rates? Just being faster than your competitor may help to get the deal closed. Sometimes, rate requests from potential clients are left unanswered just because it takes so much time to prepare and send a quote. To keep your customers loyal and satisfied, you need to make their work and life easier. Responding faster with the perfectly tailored freight quote, which contains all necessary information for the decision-making, will definitely help to achieve customer success.

 

Keep Your Management Informed

 

There is a lot of frustration in the freight forwarding business caused by the limited access to the information. It is very difficult for the management team to know how many freight quotes have been sent to the clients today, this week, or this month. And nearly impossible to analyze freight margins inside those quotes. Instead of relying on unstructured and often biased data, sales managers should be able to monitor their sales teams’ performance in real-time – this way they can be more proactive and secure more deals.

 

Get an Extra Sales Boost

 

Quotiss is a sales automation software for freight forwarders. It enables your sales team to generate perfect custom-made freight quotes in seconds. Quotes are emailed to your customers directly from the system and synced with your company email server.

On top of quoting automation, Quotiss has much more to offer:

  • Quotiss simplifies and automates carrier contract management for procurement teams,
  • Quotiss stores your most accurate database of customers and prospects,
  • Quotiss builds client history with a full archive of sent quotes,
  • Quotiss provides extensive sales analytics,
  • Quotiss automates marketing and communication,
  • Quotiss ensures all freight quotes are made in a unique company format and design,
  • Quotiss makes it extremely easy to handover clients internally and onboard new salespeople in the organization.

Moreover, it’s very intuitive – it takes just 1,5 hours of training, and salespeople can start using it immediately.

Contact us today and learn how Quotiss can help you boost your sales!

 

freight ratesheets quotiss

How to Simplify Freight Ratesheets in 2020?

Digital Freight, Freight Rate Management, Freight Ratesheets & Tariffs, Sales Automation / By

Three years ago, I wrote a blog post about the complexity of freight ratesheets distributed by the shipping lines to the market and the problems they create. This year, it remains one of the most popular posts on the Quotiss blog.

Turns out, a lot of logistics companies are still looking for ways to simplify and digitize their freight rate management process. So, I decided to study the changes in the industry of the last 3 years and update the article.

 

Ocean Freight Rates Online

 

The biggest step in the digital direction has been taken by some shipping lines – they finally started to offer instant freight quotes online.

Maersk Line, Safmarine, Hapag Lloyd, CMA CGM, and a few other carriers now offer ocean freight rates online. These rates are no longer some random unusable indications – they are workable, and ‘bookable’.

It became possible with the personalization of the inquiry. Each person (company) needs to register and create an account on the carrier webpage. The algorithm checks the company profile and knows what rate level to offer. The rate obtained online is the same rate that would come via email request. The online rate is faster. The choice is simple.

It’s, of course, very good news for the industry, and this trend will continue with more carriers offering their (workable) rates online.

The downside, however, is that each carrier is developing its own platform for online freight quotes, making it difficult for the freight forwarders to compare the offers. A person has to open each carriers’ webpage, enter login / password / shipment details into different forms on several platforms to choose the best rate.

It is also more difficult for tech companies to integrate the spot rates, as they have to integrate each platform separately.

 

What About the Freight Ratesheets?

 

Well, here nothing changed much in three years. Freight forwarders still receive large Excel files with freight rates, spend their days analyzing and maintaining their ‘own’ Excel files with the selling rates. Even the largest global freight forwarding companies struggle to set up an electronic exchange of buying rates with the shipping lines.

Wondering, what about the online freight quotes? Well, online spot rates are good for spot shipments. The majority of the world’s cargo is moved on contracts, which are negotiated individually and are not available online. The progress is not there yet.

 

What About the Digital Freight Forwarders?

 

Freight forwarders get access to more and more digital tools each year. There is a big interest in digitizing the customer interface: offer online freight quotes, online bookings, online tracking, etc. All these customer-facing digital initiatives are very necessary, but hardly possible without digitizing the back office of the freight forwarder.

It’s not possible to offer online freight quotes if your selling rates are maintained in Excel. You run a big risk of low data accuracy, which can cause financial loss and/or reputational risks.

It is necessary to start from the basics – automate and digitize your freight rate management internally, and after that integrate your automated freight quotes online.

 

Sales Automation Software for Logistics

 

Quotiss software could be the right solution to digitize freight ratesheets using a simplified upload mechanism. Quotiss is a practical tool, which automates all kinds of freight ratesheets in a smart and simple way. All freight rates from all suppliers in one place, available instantly to everyone in the organization.

With Quotiss, you can increase your sales productivity without increasing headcount. When your business is driven by efficiency, it directly impacts the company’s bottom line.

 

Would You Like a Quick Start with Quotiss?

 

Click here to register your company. We’ll activate your company’s profile and help with the initial settings and user onboarding. You can start uploading your freight ratesheets and quoting freight from Quotiss on the same day we sign the deal.

rate management

How to Apply Blockchain Technology in Logistics? TradeLens explained.

Automation & Digitalization, Digital Freight, Freight Rate Management / By

In the previous article, we’ve started the topic of Blockchain – what is blockchain technology, how it works, and what are the main benefits. We hear a lot about the blockchain application in the financial industry – everyone knows the digital currency, Bitcoin. Now let’s see how the same technology can be applied to shipping.

 

What is TradeLens?

 

Blockchain became the buzzword in the logistics industry in 2018, when Maersk Line and IBM announced the partnership project called TradeLens which was established to build and apply the blockchain to the world’s global supply chain. Over time, the project became actively supported by other organizations, and at the moment there are about 100 players who agreed to participate in building the common industry standards. 

 

Who is part of TradeLens?

 

The list of TradeLens partners now includes:

  • Shipping Lines: Maersk Line, Hamburg Süd, MSC, CMA-CGM, Hapag-Lloyd, ONE and PIL
  • Freight forwarders: Agility, CEVA Logistics, DAMCO, etc
  • Ports and terminal operators: Singapore, Hong Kong, Rotterdam, Halifax, Bilbao, naturally the global APM Terminals, etc
  • Beneficial cargo owners (BCOs)
  • Customs authorities in the Netherlands, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, Australia, and Peru

This accounts for approximately 250 marine gateways worldwide. This sounds like a lot, but in reality, is just a small share of the global logistics map.

 

How does TradeLens work?

 

The core idea of the TradeLens platform is to promote the efficiency and security of global trade, ensure transparency, and boost innovation across the industry. All of that via blockchain-enabled technology.

Many processes for transporting and trading goods are expensive, in part, due to manual and paper-based processes. Reducing the cost of documentation will ultimately affect the transportation costs, and consequently, reduce the price of the goods that appear on the counter. Replacing the unreliable and outdated information exchanges, the platform transparent collaboration across the shipping supply chain ecosystem. 

The main projected benefits of blockchain:

– Data transparency and reliability

– Time-saving on data collection and processing

– Increased safety and security

– Cost reduction (due to the above) 

 

Will TradeLens work?

 

“Expanding digital collaboration is critical to the evolution of the container shipping industry,” said Martin Gnass, Managing Director of Information Technology at Hapag-Lloyd. 

TradeLens was launched to help modernize the world’s supply chain ecosystems. And we believe that the only way to ensure sustainable innovation in shipping is to have ALL industry players to adopt the same technology solution and become inter-connected. Blockchain seems to be the best technology to ensure that. But there is a long way ahead until we see that enough industry players have joined the cause to get the real benefits for the connected global commerce. 

Think of it this way: when your container is shipped from Rotterdam to Nairobi, then every single party on the way, including the customs in Mombasa, has to be connected to blockchain to ensure transparency and safety of the shipment.

Also, when we speak about blockchain applications in shipping, we consider the operations and documentation processes. 

At this moment, it is not clear if the TradeLens solution will be used in the freight rate management or applied to other commercial processes in shipping – as this is sensitive data that is not openly shared between competitors. Especially, with Maersk Line being at the top of this blockchain pyramid, it is doubtful that this technology will be used as a sales automation tool.