Best Practices for Being a Successful Freight Broker or Freight Agent

1. Best Practices for Being a Successful Freight Broker/Freight Agent Online Freight Broker & Freight Agent Training Connect with us on LinkedIn Or Google+

2. We have compiled a list of 15 tips and tricks that Freight Brokers and Freight Agents can use to better utilize their time. Keep in mind that Freight Brokerages are selling a service and not a physical product, so start selling YOUR services and not someone else’s equipment. For more industry tips visit our website at LogisticsAcademy.org or connect with us on LinkedIn. We hope you enjoy!

3. 1 Understand your customers’ needs more than any of your competitors. Keep in mind that you are competing with more than 564,000 trucking companies and more than 14,000 other brokerages, which seems like a lot but it is also a 1.4 trillion dollar industry.

4. 2 Target what really matters to your customers: Affordable and reliable transportation.

5. 3 One the of the advertising industry's original "Mad Men", Ogilvy, realized that while customers may lack specific knowledge of an industry, they do know something far more important: the reasons they will buy or not. Anyone can belittle a Transportation Manager's naiveté or lack of experience. Successful brokers (and all other good salespeople) will patiently and respectfully give them the information they need to make an informed decision. (If your customer won’t budge on the rate and you know it’s a challenging lane, let them sweat a little bit.)

6. 4 Don’t take freight unless you can move it. And remember, you can move anything for the right price.

7. 5 Speak to your prospect just as you speak to your family or friends. There's never any time that you should switch into "sales mode". Affected speech patterns, exaggerated tones, and slow, hypnotic sounding "sales inductions" are never acceptable in today's professional selling environments. Speak normally, (and of course, appropriately) just as you would when you're around your friends and loved ones. You CAN become friends with the people who you are calling every day, duh.

8. 6 Pay close attention to what your prospect isn't saying. Is your prospect rushed? Does he or she seem agitated or upset? If so, ask "Is this a good time to talk? If it's not, perhaps we can meet another day." Most salespeople are so concerned with what they're going to say next that they forget there's another human being involved in the conversation.

9. 7 Alwaysremember to ask a prospective client whether or not they send out an email list of their available loads.

10. 8 Stay in touch with your contacts. You want to be the idea that flashes into their head when they find out that they need to book a load last minute. If you were the last person in your ear, you have a better chance of being their first thought.

11. 9 Negotiating on the phone is different than negotiating in person, so PREPARE. Know in advance what your target terms are, what you will say to persuade your supplier to agree to those terms; and how much you are willing to negotiate. You must also prepare yourself for the questions that carriers will be asking you about any freight that your customer is moving. Avoid stumbling in your speech on the phone (or in person), you always weaken your negotiating position when you stumble, so be prepared.

12. 10 Make sure that you have all of the information that you need from your shipper when selling freight to Carriers. You must do your due-diligence when you get information about the load from your customer – if the dispatcher has a question that you don’t know the answer to, you’ll have to call your customer back to ask them for more information.

13. 11 Don’t JUST post your load on the load boards. Search for trucks within a 100-150 miles of your origin and start calling them!

14. 12 Don’t try to multi-task while you are negotiating with a Dispatcher, Driver, or Traffic Manager. Even tasks as simple as checking email during a negotiation can dull your focus and could result in you failure to relay the shipping terms that the supplier is requesting. Eliminate the risk of such a silly distraction if this is a problem and just turn off your desktop screen and/or cell phone. I promise, your email will be waiting for you when the call is over.

15. 13 Never tell the customer that you are going to simply “Post their load” – you are essentially telling the shipper that you don’t actually have a truck for the load.

16. 14 It’s okay to take notes while you talk to people. Keep track of who you’re calling. You can do this in your head or on a piece of scratch paper while you work on the load. If you are testing the waters with different rates this is can be especially helpful. You wouldn’t want to call someone twice offering them different amounts of money – it gives the dispatcher on the other end an idea of how much wiggle room you have in the load.

17. 15 • It’s not rocket science. A Freight Brokers primary objective is to relay the following information: - Load Origin(s) - Load Destination(s) - The total loaded miles - The commodity - Total weight - Required equipment (Van, Reefer, Flat-bed, etc.)/length - Loading Hours - Unloading Hours - Rate + any other important information unique to the load

18. That completes our list! We hope you have enjoyed this list of tips and tricks we have compiled that Freight Brokers and Agents alike can potentially use to better the utilize their time. Visit our website to learn about our Freight Broker Training course at LogisticsAcademy.org if you think that you could manage doing this list of things plus some data entry.