Investing in the right logistics technology is crucial amid the fierce competition in the 3PL industry. Current technologies primarily focus on customer order processing and neglect aspect of customer relationship management. The proper logistics technological features can help you effectively manage your customer relationship and the entire sales process, from lead conversion to customer retention. This strategic integration boosts your sales through the expansion of your market and sustained customer satisfaction.
This article describes the essential logistics CRM technologies to help you penetrate the market, retain customers, and increase logistics sales.
A specialized logistics CRM is a logistics technology for 3PLs to boost sales and increase market penetration. A CRM with features specific to the logistics industry can help you efficiently cater to the particular needs of your customers. Some specialized features include a logistics dashboard that monitors important industry-specific KPIs and a full logistics quoting tool that helps you quote all transportation modes in one tool.
If you want to achieve the above-mentioned special features with a regular CRM, you'll need to customize your software and spend a lot of time and resources. However, with a specialized logistics CRM, you will get these essential features out of the box.
Related: What Is a CRM for Logistics and Freight Forwarders?
Sales pipeline management is another essential logistics technology that enables you to organize all your leads in the sales pipeline. This also helps you attain a complete view of the sales funnel. With sales pipeline management, moving each lead into the next stage is more systematic, enabling you to win more sales.
Sales pipeline management tracks your leads across various stages - leads, qualified leads, prospects, customers, and lost deals. Knowing the deals that turned into wins or losses allows you to identify the reasons for the outcome. This critical data aids you in implementing new strategies to win more deals.
Another essential logistics CRM technology that will allow you to boost sales is sales cycles. This technology allows you to be consistent when it comes to sales touches. It helps you maintain sales consistency by automatically configuring recurrent tasks for your sales workforce, including calling, emailing, and meetings with your customers.
Having a CRM with the sales cycles technology allows you to maintain timely sales touches. It ensures you always follow up with customers at the right time, which will help you convert more leads and boost your sales.
Given the lengthy sales process and diverse customer buying behaviors, this technology optimizes sales processes. It ensures timely customer follow-ups, facilitating higher lead conversion rates and a sales boost.
Related: 3PL Sales Strategies & Processes: The Sales Pipeline
Customer ranking is when you categorize your customers according to your pre-defined criteria. If you are concerned about retaining your customers to generate more profit, customer ranking will help retain your most important customers.
By ranking customers, you can prioritize customers and better serve the people who bring more business to you. For example, you can automatically set the top 25% of customers that turn in the most profit to become five-star customers.
Rankings allow you to focus directly on the top-rated customers, as it will help retain your most important customers. Therefore, you can boost your sales by keeping your top-rated customers.
Email and call auto-synchronization is a logistics technology you can use to enhance your sales efforts. With this CRM technology, you gain access to a unified database containing all your company’s interactions with leads and customers.
By having a unified database that can capture past interactions, you ensure that you and your team comprehensively grasp the communication history with leads and customers. You can use this to deliver a consistent customer experience to your leads and customers, leading to increased logistics sales and better customer retention.
If you want to generate a single quote for multiple logistics services, you need a full logistics quoting technology. An efficient logistics quoting tool allows you to include multiple transport modes (air, ocean, and inland) and logistics projects (warehousing or distribution).
Due to the competition in the logistics industry, there’s a need to respond quickly to your customer's quotation requests. This logistics quoting technology lets you immediately provide customers with a consolidated quote of all the requirements they need, thus increasing your chances of closing deals.
Without such technology, you will have to prepare multiple quotes separately for each mode of transportation and other logistics requirements. This process consumes substantial time and heightens the risk of losing the deal due to delays or inefficiencies in responding to client demands.
Quickly providing your customers with an all-in-one quote can make you stand out in the logistics industry. Your customers will get a consolidated quote within minutes with all the necessary details, saving them valuable time. This efficient quoting technology can help retain customers, boost sales, and penetrate the market.
Related: Freight Quote Software: 6 Must-Have Features to Win More Lanes
Technology forms the backbone of logistics since it is essential for streamlining operations, monitoring sales, informed decision-making, and elevating customer satisfaction. Given the industry's distinct requirements, logistics providers demands agile and efficient technology to adapt to industry dynamics.
Customer Relations Management (CRM) stands as an important technological asset, extending business boundaries within sales and operations. Hence, investing in proficient logistics technology, such as CRM, significantly amplifies market outreach and sales potential
Click the link here to discover a reliable logistics technology that can help you boost your sales and scale your business.
Working with a CRM that includes the above-mentioned six 3PL logistics technologies can help you increase your sales. This blog also underscores the role of specialized logistics CRM with the mentioned technologies in customer retention and market expansion within the industry. These specialized logistics technologies that allow you to organize your leads, ensure consistent sales touchpoints, rate customers, and more can help retain your customers and penetrate the market more efficiently and effectively.
We encourage you to explore a CRM equipped with these essential logistics technologies. Take the next step by scheduling a demo to experience firsthand how these logistics can boost your sales.
Thank you for reading our article. For more educational content, you can explore all our blogs here. You can follow us on LinkedIn, Twitter, or Facebook to get supply chain industry trends and efficiency tips. If you have other inquiries or suggestions, do not hesitate to contact us through this link.