8 LTL Freight Software Features to Win More Shipments

1. Real-time LTL Carrier Rates

When generating LTL quotes, you need a CRM + quoting tool that lets you see an overview of the real-time cost and transit time of different LTL carriers right from your quoting software tool. This enables you to easily select the carrier based on the lowest cost, fastest shipping time, or customer preference while quoting. With real-time LTL carrier rates in your quoting tool, you can quote faster and win more shipments.

2. Set Default Quote Rates

Setting default quote rates is a great way to strategically guide your sales team and how they set profit margins when quoting. You must be able to set a Global Quote Rate, and you can adjust for certain exceptions with a Company Quote Rate.

A Global Quote Rate allows you to set a default profit margin across all companies to set a standard for your sales team. On the other hand, a Company Quote Rate enables you to make exceptions to that rule. For example, if you want to offer a lower margin to gain the trust of a new customer and retain them, you can do that. Default quote rates allow you to set the pace for your company’s sales team.

3. Average Awarded Margins

To get a sense of your customer’s buying appetite, your LTL software tool must collect data regarding the margins of awarded LTL shipments and provide you with an average. If the data shows a trend of your customer accepting quotes with 20% margins, then you know that sending a new quote with 20% margins will most likely be awarded. This helps standardize the quoting process and takes the guesswork out of deciding on the margin for each LTL quote.

Standardizing profit margins also keeps salespeople from adding higher than normal margins, which results in lower conversion rates. Conversely, it keeps salespeople from offering lower-than-normal margins and losing out on profits.

Additional note: When searching average awarded margins to study customer trends, you must be able to filter your data by date range. Margins in the last 30 days might be different from your margins last year because of the variance in truck supply and demand. Having the flexibility to define a date range gives you control over your average awarded margins.

4. Smart Price Suggestion Widget

An LTL software tool must feature a smart price suggestion widget to help you create more effective quotes. This tool suggests a “smart” price range based on data, like real-time LTL carrier rates, default quote rates, and average awarded margins.

All this enables you to streamline your team’s performance, especially when managing a big team. It’s best practice to set margins in a unified manner across your team, and a smart price suggestion widget will help you do just that.

5. Generate a Professional Quote

Data is certainly important when creating a quote, but so is professionalism. The appearance of your quote reflects your brand’s reputation. You want to create a polished, error-free, and easy-to-read quote. You may have crunched all the numbers for a quote your customer is most likely to accept, but if it is full of errors, typos, and formatting issues, you may lose your customer’s trust.

Generating quotes with Excel or another manual-based system often results in these kinds of errors. Additionally, each salesperson may use a slightly different format for generating quotes. To build credibility with your customers and provide the most professional quote possible, your sales team must use a CRM + LTL quoting tool that enables them to generate professional quotes.

6. Email Integration and Templates

The simpler the process, the fewer errors. The quicker the process, the higher the conversion rate. Email integration and templates are two LTL software features that hit on both rules of thumb for securing more shipments.

Your logistics CRM + quoting tool must integrate with your email provider so you can easily generate a quote and send it to clients via email. This decreases the overall time to create and send a quote and reduces the manual steps that often result in errors, for example, forgetting to attach the quote.

On the other hand, email templates speed up the process of writing emails with quotes and reduce the chance of typos or poorly written email copies.

Some LTL quoting software even allows you to insert a small preview table directly into the body of your email. This lets your customer preview key details from your quote without opening and reading the entire attachment.

Simple additions like email integration, templates, and preview tables simplify communication with your customers, provide them with a better experience, and improve your brand image. All this leads to boosting conversions and securing more loads.

7. Quote Activity Tracker

A thriving sales team will have multiple leads and quotes in the pipeline at once, so you need an organized way to keep track of your quotes and the activities related to them. A quote activity tracker allows you to track all the calls, emails, meetings, notes, and tasks related to an individual quote. That way, you are constantly and easily updated on the latest activities related to a quote.

8. Quote Dashboard & Filters

An LTL software tool must also feature a quote dashboard to see all your open and awarded LTL quotes at once. You can see estimated pipeline revenue, profits, average gross margins, open lanes, and awarded lanes. It would also be best to have the functionalities to sort, filter, and search for quotes by status, origin, mode, company name, and more.

As you manage your sales team’s efforts, a quote dashboard lets you get a comprehensive picture of your company’s sales efforts related to LTL services. Knowing where you’re succeeding and where you need to improve allows you to direct your team’s strategy and secure more shipments as you advance.

What Are LTL Freight Quotes?

Over the years, the shipping industry has undergone a significant transformation. Logistics providers have adapted to these changes by offering cost-effective shipping methods that cater to businesses of all sizes.

When a shipper does not require a full truck for its load, Less Than Truckload (LTL) shipping is a more efficient option. With that, LTL freight quotes are pricing estimates that carriers provide for shipping goods that don't require a full truckload.

By asking for LTL freight quotes, shippers can save money while ensuring their goods are delivered safely and efficiently.

How Are LTL Quotes Priced?

When a client requests an LTL freight quote, they provide you with details about their shipment. That includes the weight, dimensions, origin, and destination. They also need to specify any special requirements for pickup and delivery, such as liftgate service, inside delivery, or delivery notification.

After that, you determine the shipment’s freight class, which depends on its density, value, handling characteristics, and other factors. The freight class helps determine the shipping rate, so accurate classification is essential for obtaining an accurate quote.

Then, you calculate the LTL freight quote based on all these factors. Once you have calculated the quote, you provide them with an estimated shipping cost and delivery timeframe.

If you're interested in the counterpart of LTL, which is FTL, you can find more information by clicking this link.

Using SCRM As A CRM With A Quoting Tool

Supply Chain Relationship Management (SCRM) is not your typical customer relationship management system used to stay on top of your customers and track your sales. With a quoting tool as one of its best features, SCRM makes it easy to create and send quotes in less than three minutes.

Aside from real-time market rates, it can easily allow you to access the historical lane rates. With SCRM’s quoting tool, you can increase the number of won deals while increasing deal profitability.

If you are using a generic CRM for your logistics business, you may not have this feature that allows you to secure more shipments. However, using SCRM will provide you with the following benefits:

• Access to real-time market and historical lane rates
• Ability to create precise and profitable quotes in 3 minutes or less
• Increased ability to secure more shipments

Click this link to learn more about this specialized CRM with a quoting tool.

Conclusion

To enhance your LTL shipping services, you need an LTL software tool that leads your team toward data-driven, professional quoting practices. Real-time LTL carrier rates, default quote rates, and average awarded margins allow you to create quotes with the highest conversion potential. A smart price suggestion widget similarly gives your team a framework for generating quotes that close. LTL software tools also help you enhance your presentation with more professional-looking quotes and emails. Finally, you can track your sales team’s performance with a quote activity tracker and dashboard.

To see a CRM + LTL quoting software with the features discussed, request a demo here.

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