Traditionally, hauliers are run by small teams who undertake many roles within the company. In the logistics industry, there are usually very limited resources available for sales, with less than 20% of members previously having a dedicated sales and marketing person. The lack of resources meant businesses weren’t tracking sales processes efficiently, not capturing new prospects and not utilising a sales strategy.
In challenging times where hauliers and logistics companies are facing increased difficulties throughout the sector, Pall-Ex Group set out to differentiate from competitors, offering members the opportunity to not only increase sales but also improve commercial and brand awareness.
Solution
To do so, Pall-Ex Group began investing heavily into improving the commercial acumen of its network members, through the implementation of a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system and the creation of the Member Sales Coaching programme, offering guidance to enhance sales strategies and provide regular sales training.
Customer Relationship Management system
The introduction of a CRM system has allowed members to collate a database of prospective customers and manage and track the sales journey from beginning to end. Pall-Ex Group’s main aims when implementing a CRM system to the membership were to streamline the sales process and support pallet volume growth, using dual-branded email marketing and prospect engagement visibility. The system was rolled out to the membership in October 2023 and has since seen countless new business wins as a direct result of the offered support.
Insights
The CRM System allows members to see how engaged the prospects in their system are as a result of receiving email marketing. With insights into which contacts have the highest engagement rate, members and Business Development Managers have full visibility and can reach out to prospects with targeted enquiries.
Pall-Ex Group have a number of members that have won accounts as a direct result of the email marketing campaign.
Sales pipeline
Using the system, members have full visibility of how BDMs are interacting with prospects and where they are positioned in the sales pipeline. This allows members to identify sales opportunities with ease, plan and assign follow-up actions and manage sales performance. It has also streamlined the sales process for Pall-Ex Groups’ BDMs, as they no longer have to use multiple spreadsheets to store data and collect information. This has led to an increase in productivity and the ability to provide more tailored support directly to members.
Sandler partnership
The Member Sales Coaching Programme was created to offer effective, professional training for members – not only in sales but customer service, account retention and sales management. The sessions are provided externally by Sandler Academy and give members the opportunity to learn new skills and techniques and to share best practices throughout the Pall-Ex network. The sessions are held on a monthly basis at no extra charge to the membership.
Specifically targeted at growing businesses and increasing freight volume, the Member Sales Coaching programme is designed to empower learners to sell confidently and successfully without being reliant on BDMs.
Developing Internally
With a particular focus on developing staff internally and training from within, Sandler Academy provides tiered training depending on what stage of their career each salesperson is at.
The training is split into:
Junior Sales Coaching
Advanced Sales Coaching
Customer Retention
How to Manage a Salesperson
The training is delivered in the form of assignments, sales training exercises and bitesize Zoom sessions, with four different sessions available every month. The comprehensive learning platform covers a range of topics including cold calling, up-front contracts, questioning techniques, customer retention, and managing and recruiting sales personnel.
The Pall-Ex Group BDMs have continued to provide external sales support, but the extra benefit of internal sales coaching means a reduced risk of staff shortages and extra sales expertise for existing staff members. Alongside developing internally, 56% of the membership now has a dedicated salesperson, which is twice as high as the industry average.
Looking to the future
85% of members are actively attending Sandler training sessions and 64% of members are enrolled on the CRM system, which is proving significant to the success of their businesses.
With plans to continue expanding the commercial tools throughout the membership, Member Commercial Manager, Gareth Fenton, discusses how this will be implemented in the coming months: “We are looking to continue to offer sector-leading commercial support and training to our members, but also to keep innovating as a business. For the Member Sales Coaching programme, we are planning to add additional content to the schedule, alongside analysing feedback from participants to discover areas in which we can develop.
We are keen to ensure that our members’ are actively using our CRM system as a part of their everyday commercial activities and we will continue using the marketing tools to increase brand exposure and promote all facets of our network.
Overall, the feedback on the implementation of our commercial tools has been overwhelmingly positive. Members are fully involved and engaged in the coaching sessions, with subjects such as upfront contracts proving to be a particular success. We have evolved our commercial support strategy to encourage members to grow and learn as much as possible and by doing so, the results have been fantastic. Pallet volumes have increased throughout the network and each member has a renewed faith in their commercial ability.”
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