How to Grow a Customer from 0 to 100 with Terralanes
Sign up for a FREE ACCOUNT at Terralanes.com
Step 1: Create an account on June 22nd
Head straight to our website and create a FREE account if you’re the first person from your brokerage to sign up. Or have a teammate invite you to their account!
Step 2: Build your customer
When you log in, start building your customer with the add data tool. Terralanes allows you to create customers, locations, and lanes on the fly, taking a minute or less for each page.
Add Customers, Locations, and Lanes
If you’re working with a customer who has two warehouses in the US, you’d add two locations to this customer and then build the lanes that pick up or deliver to them, regardless of whether or not you own those lanes.
Check out the customer map
After creating a few lanes, you should be able to see an extensive spiderweb of opportunities represented on your customer map.
Each line across the map is a unique lane belonging to a customer, and each solid dot is a customer location. Hollow dots are shippers and receivers you pick up from or deliver to on behalf of your customer.
As you learn more about this customer and new opportunities with them, make sure to add their locations and lanes in Terralanes.
Step 3: Prioritize Opportunities
Once you add a lane, visit the lane page and update the lanes’ rate and total volume, so you can know which lanes are worth focusing on.
Lanes Table
Head to your customer’s page and take a look at the Lanes table with the Opportunity tab open. This table orders your lanes by spend.
All volume in Terralanes is recorded by month.
Once we know which opportunities are the biggest hitters and our fastest route to a growing with this customer efficiently, we can start to have strategic conversations with our customer about these lanes.
Step 4: Strategic Acquisition
Now that you’ve got your biggest opportunities lined up, you can knock them down. Visit any customer, location and lane page and open the drawer in the Opportunities workflow. The drawer has steps that need to be completed in order for you to be in the best position to win a new opportunity.
Requirements & Pain Points
Understanding the requirements and pain points of a lane is a great way to start that process. Call up your customer every now and then and ask them about a few of these opportunities you’re not handling. A great question to ask is which of your competitors they are using on that lane today and why. All of these notes can be logged in our Conversation Toolbelt and can be updated at any time.
Carriers and Market Rates
Once your contact has given you some insight into what you’ll need to acquire a new lane, use the My Favorite Carriers and Market Feedback sections to add potential carriers you could work with and log some rates you’re currently hearing in the market.
Notes in the Ledger
The Ledger is a fantastic way to keep notes on every opportunity. Anyone can log a note on any page and any note can be filtered by user or key word. You should always be able to find something you’ve written before! Communicate with teammates and leadership or simply keep track of what you’re learning about an opportunity.
Convert
As you complete each section of an opportunity, you’re learning more and more about that piece of business. You’re more than likely in a great position to win the business based on all of this knowledge.
Communicate with your customer about how you can be the solution to the problems they’ve been having on this lane opportunity. You know the requirements, and you have several potential carrier partners lined up to service this. You understand what the incumbent brokerage is doing to serve the account and you’d like to prove your service alongside them.
All that’s left to do is ask for the business.
If your customer gives you a shot, then head back to the lane page you won and change the Owned Volume in the Conversation Toolbelt from 0 to however much volume you received. Well Done!
Step 5: Maximizing Potential
The Total Potential workflow in Terralanes shows you what you could be making if you owned 100% of the volume and freight spend with a customer, location, or lane.
Is your Owned business close to Total Potential or way below?
If you’re a bit behind, your competitors are getting the majority of that customers business and volume. You can keep track of that volume and spend in the Lanes table on any customer, location, or lane page.
Increase Owned Volume, Shrink Opportunity Volume
In a Lane table, pay close attention to the volume in the Owned vs. Opportunities workflow. Work to bring the volume in Opportunities down to 0 and bring Owned Volume as close as you can to the Total Potential volume.
Using Terralanes to manage your owned business, unify tribal knowledge, and serve customers and their lanes perfectly is a great way to prove to your customer you can handle more or all of the volume on a lane.
Step 6: Rinse and Repeat
You’re creating relationships with your customers every time you move a load and have a conversation with them. As your relationship grows, you’ll be made aware of more lanes within a customer’s business, which brings in new opportunities, requires more strategic conversations, and requires more hard work to maximize your volume on the business you manage.
Constantly log new opportunities, acquire them as owned business, and realize your full potential. If you continue to work through this process, YOU WILL GET THERE!
Conclusion
Terralanes is THE TOOL to go from 0 to 100 with any size customer. No matter how big they are, their money is green, and it’s yours for the taking as long as you’re using Terralanes to get to it as soon as possible!
On June 22nd, head to Terralanes.com and sign up today!
Or send us an email at john@terralanes.com to schedule a walkthrough and demo!
