Junior Sales Specialist - Cold calling

#1

Hi all,

I just started my first job, I’m a Junior Sales Specialist in freight forwarding company.
I work from 8 am to 4 pm, so I do have 8 hours every single day. My job is to looking for new customers which would be interested to contract out their loads, so we can organize a truck for them. Company ears by adding margin, for example manufacturer gives us 33 pallets of frozen meat to ship and pays 1000 £, we organize a truck and pay a transport company 950 £, so 50 £ stay in our pocket. I’m kind of broker.
I have been trained but I feel I’m not effective enough. These are my numbers:

  • I make 100 cold calls
  • 45 people say they are not interested because they already have a transport company and do not see additional value to change them towards us
  • 40 people say I need to send email to info@theircompany and never come back to me
  • 10 people ask for tough stuff we cannot organize, like one pallet from UK to Turkey, they pay 100 £, I’m not able to organise that without my own logistics network like warehouses, own trucks etc., so they are wrong prospects
  • 5 people want to speak with me, but usually our price is higher than others gave

The thing is current sales people and freight forwarders base on customers they found many years ago, they have been working with them since forever.

Nowadays the market is hard, there is a big competition, a lot of freight forwarding company are calling and making ridiculous prices.

Please help me with following questions:

  1. What is the best way to find manufactures or trading companies in food industry which can have loads for companies like us?
  2. We are not different than other forwarding agents, what value I can create and pull potential customers? What do they want to hear from me? What is the best coll calling script?
  3. How many times should I follow them up after cold calling and sendig company presentation and how should I act?
  4. What skills I can learn in order to be more effective?

I need your advises!

#2

HI Nissenel,

There are a few things to unpack in this question. To me, it seems like you’re having trouble overcoming different types of objections from your prospects, which are mostly occurring because your company hasn’t differentiated itself enough from its competitors.

As for finding potential leads for your company, you most likely have to do some online research. A thorough search of all companies on LinkedIn that have to do with your industry is a good starting point. Finding them on Linkedin can be useful as companies often have their contact details and website info available.

If your company isn’t different than other forwarding agents, you’re going to have a hard time selling potential customers. Think about it from their perspective: Why would they put in added effort to switch clients if they’re not receiving better value or better price? This is something I think you should ask your manager about, and see if you can come up with a value add your company provides compared to competitors. Once you have this, you’ll have a much easier time demonstrating value to prospects.

The nature of the follow-up depends on how your relationship with the prospect is. I’ll add some links below with good tips on how to follow-up and handle objections.

I hope this helps, and good luck!

#3
Hi Nissenel, While I can't answer all these questions, I can answer #3 for you. If they don't pick up the phone, I like to follow up with CTE (call, text or email) no more than twice in a week. If you did connect with them, check in with them, build rapport (that is very important) and learn about their needs. When you've gauged exactly what they need and they feel comfortable with you, offer your services. They accepted your call and probably see some value in what you can bring. Capitalize on that opportunity by perfecting your sales pitch. This video should help out a ton: https://www.badgermapping.com/blog/how-to-deliver-sales-pitch/
#4

Nissenel,

I cold-called for over 20 years and made many discoveries. One is board meetings and sales reps spend a lot of time second-guessing what their prospects want.

I wrote a brief questionnaire of 5 questions that management would like to know. One asked the existing client, why did you select us over the competition and how can we improve? If my buyer was present, I asked him or her directly and if not I left the questionnaire behind. I did this with every existing account on my route.

The results were dramatic. We learned that many of our assumptions were false and how to expand our base.