When I started my career as an independent owner-operator under my own authority, I spent a lot of time putting my business plan together. One of the sources I used was the Small Business Administration. Utilizing the SBA turned out to be a great asset as I charted the course for my new business.
U.J. Cozart was my aide at the SBA. He put me through the paces and helped me put together a business plan, a backup plan to the business plan, and a backup to the backup plan to the business plan. Having a backup plan became very handy as I embarked on my new business venture. A few times I had to dip into that plan b.
I will never forget one of the last meetings that I had with U.J. Cozart. He had run my plan past peers in the trucking industry. He told me that I had everything in order. I was ready to get started. He was almost ready to let this bird fly on my own. But as he leaned back in his chair and put his feet up on the desk, he looked me squarely in the eye and asked me “Why would any company use your service to ship their products?”.
I paused for a second before replying and before I could say anything, U.J. stopped me and said, “You hesitated, and I don't even want to hear your answer at this time. Take a week and come back to me with a good answer”. My answer was going to be that I was going to be professional, on time, and reliable. But thinking back to when I was running the freight desk at a shipper, I thought “Well, that's not a very special reason for anyone to use me, because that's what every trucking company says”.
I was still thinking of the question posed to me by U.J. as I arrived home and picked up my mail from the mailbox. The answer came to me as I opened an envelope with a toothpaste sample in it. For many years I had been buying the same brand of toothpaste. I never really thought about it before, but I had been using the same brand of toothpaste that my parents had bought many decades prior. It turns out that this toothpaste sample that I had just received was from the opposing major brand. I decided to give this free trial a chance. I thought to myself, “This is the answer I need to take back to the SBA”.
My plan was to use a “special introductory rate” that was good for a prescribed time frame to demonstrate to a shipper the benefits of using my company to transport their products. I also would ask them to give me the shipment going to the consignee which they regularly had trouble with. At the end of this trial period, I would have a better idea of what it took to conduct business with this “troublesome” customer, and they would also have a clear view of what my company was all about.
My process would be arriving at the consignee at the scheduled time, typically first thing in the morning. I would walk in with a box of donuts to introduce myself and inform them that I would be delivering to them regularly.
As a result, when I started my business, this simple little step, often, led to the consignee requesting the shipper to send me with the next delivery. The key to this whole process was that when it came time to negotiate what the actual freight rate was going to be, I had the upper hand because I had successfully pleased the consignee who in the past was normally complaining about something.
I will say that there was much more to the process than this. However, it’s important to have a reason as to why any new prospective customer would want to utilize your services over the carriers who are already servicing their business.