Mike McCarron

Imagine that your only contact with a certain prospect has been your semi-annual chin wag. Sure, it took 47 phone calls to reach him, but one day your persistence will pay off.  The truth is, the only thing you’re wearing out is your personal brand. Think how you feel when your home phone rings during dinner. On the other end of the line is someone unable to pronouce your name selling duct-cleaning service you probably don’t need.  That’s how this busy, educated, tech-savvy transportation buyer thinks of you.

I’ve spent a lot of time dealing with freight brokers, so  I figured I knew the business.  But as I prepared to moderate two industry events recently, I found this old dog has a lot to learn. At the first event, I invited six industry leaders to sit down for a state of the union.  These are all “first generation” freight brokers—baby-boomer entrepreneurs who have been breaking trails for an industry that didn’t exist 30 years ago.

If you’re in the transportation business, you’re also in the acronym business.  It’s amazing how many of them are part of our industry lingo.  In fact, there are so many that Gene Orlick, a trucking pal from Canada, produces an annual list.  The 2014 version of Gene’s List contains 138 legit entries, plus a dozen zingers that only his closest buddies will get.

Pricing power—or the ability to raise rates without losing a customer—is hard to achieve in a commoditized business like transportation.  But a report from Simon-Kucher & Partners gives reason to hope.

I’m continually puzzled by our industry’s approach to contracts.  Few carriers feel the need to have contracts with customers, and many flat-out refuse to see the value in them.  We have no problem spending millions of dollars in equipment so a customer can “try us out.”  If he doesn’t like us, we expect him to cordially return the iron so it can rot against the fence until sales can find some other “tryout” customer.

Every January I see a surge of suppliers who want to set up meetings. It seems like every Dale Carnegie comes back from the holidays committed to working harder and being a better version of last year’s model. It’s the same reason the company fridge is full of salads the first month of the year. I call it the “January Syndrome.”

I cringe when I look at some of my older columns. Time has made some of my thoughts so contradicting, I wonder what song sheet I was singing from back then. One area where I’ve changed my tune is the value of customer surveys. In the past, I’ve penned how essential they are, insisted they be done annually, and made a lot of important business decisions based on their results. Fast-forward a decade and I think customer surveys of any kind are totally and utterly useless. A waste of your time and your customers’.