Revealed: the secrets of sales success

After dedicating 15 years of my life to auditing and finance in freight and shipping, I took a leap of faith in May 2006. I decided to follow my dreams in sales within a supply chain 4PL environment. This resulted in much concern and disappointment from my family, as I did not possess a sales background or degree.

It worked out rather well. I am proud to say that, after three decades in the supply chain and logistics industry, I have earned a reputation as an expert in my field; this is among some of the most influential and respected industry leaders within the freight and supply chain industries.

Fast forward 16 years to 2022… In these challenging times, we understand that our clients have been hit hard by the global supply chain crisis. We are here to work with them. Furthermore, we understand that there is a serious shortage of skilled salespeople in our industry. These people are essential to help clients understand and make important supply chain decisions.

The salespeople I come across are just as smart as me – some even more so. We are playing the same game with the same rules. But I have been blessed and trained with certain skills they simply don’t have.

As a result, their clients don’t know how to identify the gaps in their supply chain. These salespeople have no clue how to help their customers increase their turnover. Furthermore, they cannot help customers improve efficiencies and reduce costs, and they don’t know how to choose a freight forwarder or customs clearing agent – which is essential if a company wants to achieve cost advantages.

The problem, you see, is that the average salesperson in the freight industry confuses quantity with quality. They simply don’t properly understand where their future growth is going to come from, and they adopt the classic idea that last year’s top customers must be their most important customers.

This is simply wrong. At best, it’s a stay-where-you-are strategy.

What should they be doing instead? Sales directors need their teams to strategically target the right customers. Those teams need to understand the customers’ objectives and build the right relationships. This can lead to spectacular growth and long-term predictable business – instead of the “here today, gone tomorrow” cycles all too familiar to sales directors.

Most books about sales focus on sales training and soft skills. Yet, in many companies, their biggest problems come from salespeople being too good at selling – but to the wrong customers.

I am currently working on a book (the title of which may well be I Wish Someone Had Told Me About Freight Forwarding and Supply Chain Sales as a Career Choice), in which I will explain that the wrong clients cost you money instead of earning you money. If sales directors don’t realise this and direct their sales team accordingly, they will all work harder and harder for the same returns.

My book will be directed at CEOs, national sales directors/VPs, and the heads of support departments who want to understand how to align their organisations’  resources and business objectives with the market opportunities. I will also help them target the right customers and build a new business based on quality relations.

In my book, I set forth the principles of Customer Quality Management (CQM), an approach to a sales strategy that focuses on identifying and developing customers with the greatest potential and then working on realising that potential. We categorise customers as gold, silver, and bronze clients, and then work on an effort matrix and potential versus actual business.

I delve into the Pareto Principle, which states that 80% of consequences come from 20% of the causes. This – coupled with the simple truth that business is still about people and relationships – is explored along with copious practical examples and case histories, which I discuss in-depth. For instance, I reveal how we managed to secure business from some Fortune 500 companies.

I also go into how, as a salesperson, I did three things differently from most salespeople out there.

Firstly, I consistently hit around 200 to 350% of my target every single month. I did this by qualifying hard. I worked smartly to qualify every prospect in or out of my pipeline and used my freight auditing experience to talk to “the people with the money”, namely the financial managers and directors. I only worked on opportunities when I was super confident that I could convert them into business.

I adapted for each and every prospect. By this, I mean I listened to the way they spoke, what they said, and the language they used. I then uncovered their direct needs (disregarding their implied needs in the process). There is an enormous difference between direct and implied needs, as I explain in my book.

I treated each prospect as an individual and told a story that was real. I also overcame way more objections than other salespeople. In fact, I literally pushed past 99% of objections that cause salespeople to give up. By pushing past those extra objections, I won more business and solved more clients’ problems in the supply chain and freight forwarding industry.