Global trade’s unpredictability creates prime opportunities for outbound sales. At Flexport, we grew to $5B by consistently connecting with the right shippers at the right time—a strategy any logistics company can adopt.
Author:
Published on:
Global trade is hard and the stakes are high. Our business is high-impact, urgent, and never-ending.
This makes the market an ideal playground for sales. New fires emerge every day. A competitor’s shipment delay can ruin a new product launch, or conflict in the Suez Canal can change the freight market overnight. Therefore, buyers are always looking for new solutions. To succeed, you need to be knocking on their door with the right solution the moment they are considering a switch.
Flexport figured out how to dominate in this environment, growing to $5B in revenue in just 7 years. We ranked the companies who were best suited for our services using data on their trade lanes, growth rates, and a few other factors. Then, we gave this intelligence to our sales reps with the goal to set as many warm meetings as possible. Over my six years at Flexport as Head of Demand Generation, I powered our outbound approach by giving our reps the perfect shippers to pursue.
I have spoken to many logistics industry executives and sales leaders who think Flexport’s success was driven by luck, chance, and fairy dust. This is a myth - we grew rapidly by building an excellent outbound engine. More than 90%+ of our business was generated through outbound sales. This included companies based in the Midwest and the South, shippers least likely to be charmed by Flexport’s Silicon Valley-oriented technology pitch. There was no magic when it came to generating new business for Flexport - it was hard, gritty work. We had to keep reps accountable to consistently making 50+ dials a day, every day, for multiple years. We had to feed dozens of reps with hundreds of new accounts every month. We had to hire great reps, fire the bad ones, and keep the team pushing. This was hard work, but importantly for you, it is work that every company in logistics can accomplish.
Some CEOs say outbound sales does not work in logistics because logistics runs on “relationships”. Ultimately though, relationships fail when sellers make promises to customers that do not materialize. Relationships flourish when there is a strong fit between what buyers need and what sellers can provide. To us, outbound sales is the fastest way to share the services you offer with many eligible buyers, which quickly filters for buyers who need your exact offering right now. Done well, outbounding plants fledgling relationships that your team can convert into sturdy, long-term partnerships.
Other CEOs are skeptical of outbound sales because they have seen limited results from small-scale outbound sales experiments. This conclusion comes after assigning someone with pre-existing responsibilities, like a customer care associate, to make cold calls in their spare time. However, these experiments fail for other reasons. First, the associate inevitably prioritizes their current job and tackles new fires throughout the day that only they can solve. Second, “hunting” for new accounts is a brand new skill set that must be taught. The reps who bring in the most business both focus 100% of their time toward outreach, and deliver crisp, compelling pitches, even to stakeholders with zero initial interest in talking to them. The organizations best at outbound sales can find and train “hunters” and arm them with material that resonates in the market.
(As an aside, some companies are systematically set up to fail with outbound sales. In many cases, sales software slows teams down. Other reasons in future posts.)
Outbound sales is a solved problem that can yield lucrative results. Luckily, the challenges that come with building and maintaining this motion have playbooks that can be oriented around any organization’s strengths. In logistics, buyers are constantly looking to solve new problems. Outbound is the most effective tool to get them in front of you.
If you are interested in learning more, we are happy to chat!
