Training Tuesday:Consistency

There are a million sales tips and “tricks” out there designed to help you become a better salesperson, but you may find the biggest key to long term success is consistency. You must be consistent – create a routine of practicing your sales presentation, prospecting, maintaining relationships with existing clients, and pitching to potential customers. If you do not do these things regularly, you can’t guarantee that you will have reliable sales numbers.

If you can consistently practice your sales presentation, you can make the presentation itself more consistent based on what works in real sales situations and you can continue to fine tune it. If you don’t practice and instead rely on charisma and “winging it,” you cannot necessarily reproduce an effective sales pitch. Without a dependable sales presentation, the level of success you can expect from a prospect in a sales interaction varies widely.

Having a steady sales pipeline also relies on consistent prospecting and interactions with existing customers. If you don’t spend ample time each day or week prospecting, it doesn’t matter how stellar your sales presentation is, because you won’t have a potential customer to share it with. You must also maintain relationships with your existing customers, both to help prevent them from leaving for the competition and to increase your chances of successful referrals to their contacts who may need your services.

Consistency is key – that may be a cliché, but it certainly applies to sales. It is crucial that you put in reliable work and effort in order to create and maintain a steady rate of sales success.

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LTL 101:Pick-Up and Delivery Tips

Pick-Ups:

  • Any pick-up (P/U) entered after 2:30 PM local time should be called into the carrier to insure availability, otherwise the request will roll over to the next day
  • Lift Gate P/Us must be called into the carriers because Lift Gates are not readily available at every terminal
  • All Container Freight Stations and Airline P/Us require Delivery Order and Entry paperwork (3416 document), these need to be sent 24 hours in advance because drivers will need these documents in hand prior to P/U
  • P/Us are not Guaranteed
  • All carriers require a 2 hour window for P/Us
  • P/Us are done in the afternoon because drivers have to deliver freight before they can start pickups
    • If your shipper needs an AM P/U it is best practice to call the carrier to set something up which will most likely incur additional charges
  • The shipper must have our system generated BOL to provide to the driver at the time of P/U or our rates will not apply
    • This is not something the carrier will have via our P/U requests in BTMS
  • If an LTL driver needs to reference a P/U number, it is best practice to put that number on the first line of the shipper name. Please see the example below:

           ABC Distribution Co > Ref # 123456

           4567 Main Street

           Anywhere, NY 10014

Deliveries: 

  • Transit times and delivery dates are estimations and can be delayed for many reasons
    • Add an additional day if a shipment is interlined
    • Add 2-3 days if a shipment is traveling by rail
  • Stress to your customers, if the shipment must be delivered by a certain date and time, spend the extra money and have a the shipment guaranteed
    • If “Guaranteed” is not on the BOL at time of P/U no adjustments can be made to the invoice
  • Volume Shipments cannot be Expedited or Guaranteed
  •  Re-delivery Rates are based on weight and can get very pricey

It is imperative to make sure the consignee is ready to accept the freight so that additional charges are not incurred

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