Sales of logistics services: ‘Ripe for digitization’

For many decades, the role of B2B sales across industries has been essentially the same task. Existing of presentations, meetings, body language, asking questions, adjusting to the customer, the right amount of small talk, persuasiveness, perseverance and the deal closing skills…all focused at the face to face selling process.

Of course, that has changed a lot in the last year, even if many salespeople in logistics are hoping to come back to the table with all potential customers.

logistics industry typically behind in adoption of new technologies

The logistics industry usually lags behind when it comes to introducing new technologies, but it is thanks to accelerated digitization that many venture capital firms invest money in start-ups. But sales was a low-tech job for a long time and was based more on the art of selling than anything else, so that the digitization of sales is not so much in focus, but logistics.

Now, however, there is a great opportunity to advance digital sales and break away from traditional sales methods. Especially in logistics. Let me explain why.

Logistics is no basic service!

Logistics services are seen by many as a basic service, I think it is a fundamental mistake, logistics services can be very diverse, depend on different routes, require different types of equipment and complementary services, and depend on capacities and transition times.

It is generally quite complex, the market is opaque and it is difficult to find the right partner, which means that traditional face-to-face meetings can only be as effective and only as so many.

Beyond the obvious

Freight forwarders need to partner with other larger freight forwarders who outsource to them or join brokerage firms to do business. In a digital world, algorithms perform search tasks and can automate the search task for carriers and allow carriers to limit themselves to your specific and unique profile.

This opens up a completely new path, that goes far beyond what LinkedIn or Google are offering.

Platforms they way out of obscurity

Logistics service providers and their sales managers need to establish themselves on a variety of platforms that exist today or will be introduced in the future, as platforms are becoming more and more common in the logistics industry. This presence should be as specific as possible in order to move away from the assumption of commodity and would need to highlight the unique geographies, services and types of equipment that the freight forwarder could offer to shippers.

In the future, connections will not be established via website navigation or Google searches, but via very detailed and transport-specific searches on platforms specially designed for the logistics industry, whether AI-controlled, semi-automatic, fully automated or manual, the fact is that logistics sales and relationship building can benefit greatly from the offers of digitization and will therefore change quickly.

Small operators as well as large ones benefit from this, as digitization not only promotes online collaboration and transparency, but also balances the competitive conditions between different logistics providers.

The question that remains is how quickly marketers will be willing to abandon their attitudes towards in-person selling in exchange for digital matchmaking?

Original source of content:

Author: Pieter Kinds – CEO and founder Tendrx

https://log-tech.medium.com/sales-of-logistics-services-is-ripe-for-digitization-379ccf373f6