How often do you analyse the sales reports of your company? Any freight forwarder, big or small, should measure several commercial parameters to know how their sales are performing. If we do not measure our results we are going blindly and it will be more difficult to improve and to plan based strategies.
Here are 5 types of sales analysis a freight forwarding business should conduct regularly.
Offers issued and offers accepted
This parameter gives us a general overview of our sales process, we can compare from month to month, from season to season or from year to year how many quotations we are issuing. As well as, see if certain circumstances are influencing the quoting requests we receive or our quoting capacity, such as a sales campaign, participation in a networking event, a new commercial team, etc. The % of offers accepted vs offers issued should remain stable, significant changes in these numbers should be analysed for further consideration. If there is an increase in the % of offers accepted this could be a good sign that our sales team is well trained and better understanding customers’ needs and that our rates remain competitive. On the contrary if we see a sudden drop in the % of offers accepted we will have to make adjustments in our sales management and continue monitoring until we again reach an acceptable %.
Top origins/destinations requested
It is important to have deep knowledge of the most requested locations, ports, airports of origin and destination for import and export freight services. This will allow the freight forwarder to concentrate its efforts in obtaining the most competitive suppliers’ rates for those lines. Further, alternative transport methods could be studied and offer customers cost saving solutions to their transportation requirements.
Individualized Clients Activity
To conduct sales analysis of individual clients’ activity can help us immensely in understanding customers’ needs and focus our sales strategy. Several ratios can be measured with this objective, for example for identifying growing customers, customers demanding new services, customers that often request for quotes but hardly contract us, customers that we are losing, etc. By monitoring clients’ activity, a freight forwarder can take advantage of arising opportunities and anticipate weakness handling.
New Clients/Agents
We should pay special attention to new clients and partners to detect their potential and gain loyalty as relationships are at an early and fragile stage. It could be worth knowing where a new customer has heard of our business, from our website, a referral, a fair or meeting, so we can identify valued sources of new contacts.
Secondary to this, you can complete a sales analysis of the services requests for each new client, keeping a detailed database of their leads, inquiries and contracted services. We can obtain useful information that can serve us to approach the new customers with tailor made solutions for engaging them to our business.
Sales campaigns success.
Sales analysis will also allow you to see if a commercial or marketing campaign has been successful. You can track leads, valued requests, effective contracts and customer feedback. This will allow you to make any necessary adjustments and improvements in your overall sales strategy.
For more information on how to get automated reports for your sales and freight quoting process, please visit Freightalia.
