One of the keys to being successful in transportation sales is finding the right kind of customers. The ideal customer will like your company’s service offering and believe in your business philosophy. In other words, these guys get it.
My friend and former boss Craig Winn called these prospects “Right Thinking Guys” or RTGs.
As a salesman, you know immediately when you have found a right thinking guy. They like the way you do business. When you find a RTG, things move fast and they are very receptive to your messaging. Their mindset matches your company’s mindset – no education or convincing necessary.
In short, right thinking guys are the perfect prospects. Sales to RTGs are more likely to close and the deals happen faster.

Connecting with the Elusive Right Thinking Guy

Naturally, everyone who sells is looking to connect with more RTGs, the question is how?
One way to reach the RTG is by cold calling. This approach is time consuming, but you are bound to run across some RTGs at some point. Of course with cold calling you will mostly get voice mails and people who don’t want to hear from you.
Even if you talk to a RTG, he might not talk to you long enough to realize that you provide exactly the type of service he is looking for. All the cold calling experts suggest that you only get 20-30 seconds to gain favorable attention when you call a new prospect. You are also supposed to say something credentialing and provocative in those first 30 seconds. I just don’t think there is enough time to communicate your company’s philosophy and service offering in this brief time.

A Better Way to Reach the Right Thinking Guys

The only way for the RTG to understand and like your company’s philosophy and approach is to COMMUNICATE those things to him.

I recommend the following process:

• Determine your ideal customer. Get very detailed. The better you understand your customer, the more likely he will become your right thinking guy. Most transportation companies don’t do a great job on this step. A superficial understanding of your ideal customer is not enough. Do a deep dive and write it down.
• Determine your ideal customer’s biggest unmet needs. This is where your detailed understanding of your ideal customer becomes useful. Become an expert in your ideal customer’s problems and your solutions that can address them. If necessary, modify your solutions to align to your customer’s problems.
• Develop content about your customer’s biggest unmet needs and your corresponding solutions. By content, I mean share your expertise with your ideal customer. There are dozens of ways to create and distribute your content. The most popular ways are blog posts, magazine articles, white papers, ebooks, webinars, seminars, speaking engagements and videos. Ideally, right thinking guys will discover your content and reach out to you. When a prospect engages with you in this way, you are recognized as a credible resource, maybe even an expert. What a great way to begin the sales process!
• Capture and nurture marketing leads. When a prospect attends your webinar or downloads something from your website, you need to capture their contact info. Some of these shippers might be ready to buy, but most will just be educating themselves. The contacts info you collect will become your list. Nurture this list. Provide great content to them and deepen your relationship with them. Ideally, you can convert these marketing leads into sales leads and eventually into a sales.

Need More RTGs? I Can Help!

I help transportation and logistics companies get more sales by targeting right thinking guys. If you are interested, please contact me at 517.375.0631 or [email protected]. Click the link to register for my next transportation sales webinar series.
Right thinking guys picture from one of my favorite movies, “Dumb and Dumber.”