Free Freight Sales Cold Calling Script

The primary reasons freight sales professionals often struggle with cold calls include:

1. The rep does not understand who the decision maker is, what their day is like, their motivations and their fears.
2. The rep is not certain what to say, when to listen and how to salvage a call from initial rejection.

Understand the shipper

Logistics expenses are a significant part of a company's budget; thus, the decision maker is often a manager. The shipping manager is typically responsible for everything related to the dock, the yard and the warehouse. Consequently, this decision maker has countless sales reps trying to sell everything from pallets to shrink wrap to freight services. The shipping manager is responsible for inbound and outbound freight and is often working under time constraints and deadlines. The shipping manager is a high-pressure, fast-paced job. 

Freight transportation is a service. Selecting a service provider is different from buying a product. Once a shipping manager selects carrier vendors, they don't change unless there is a valid reason. 

Try to put yourself in the shipping manager's shoes. To help with this, we suggest reading our prior blog, "Best Time to Make Sales Calls to Freight Shippers". Now that you understand their week, imagine the manager trying to get answers to countless questions. The manager may be trying to locate lost freight, missed pickups, late deliveries, damages, last-minute hot-shot shipments, etc. Add the endless stream of sales reps trying to get their attention via emails, texts and calls, and you can imagine how a shipping manager may be difficult to reach. When you finally have an opportunity to speak to this person, you want to make a solid first impression. If you upset them, you may never get a second chance.

Finally, the shipping manager's top motivation is to earn money to support themselves. Their top fear is losing their job. 

Increase your cold calling success

We carefully crafted the below cold call branching script decades ago based upon our understanding of whom the decision maker is. The script starts by telling the shipping manager who you are, the company that you work for and where you're calling from. This direct delivery is on purpose. When the shipping manager answers the phone, they are trying to figure out who is calling them and why. The script continues to tell them that you have never spoken to them before. This answers their questions and now they are listening. The script will continue, but it is important to understand the message you are conveying using this approach. In the shipping manager's mind, they think that the caller understands that they are busy, is direct and respectful of their time. Follow the script and pause silently after questions. 

Salvage a call from initial rejection

Since shipping mangers don't change transportation service providers without a reason, there is an extremely strong chance that when you cold call a manager, they will not be open-minded to change. The reason for this is that the shipping manager is not going to risk their job security to try a new provider without a valid reason. This is called finding the right lead at the wrong time. Most sales reps do not know how to salvage the call when they are rejected. If you test the branching script, you will learn the proven method to salvage the call 90% of the time. The reason this works is that the script frames the response in a manner that is non-threatening and useful to the shipping manager. 

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Below is our proven Freight Sales Cold Call Branching Script. Feel free to test several call scenarios. If old answers appear during testing, reload your browser page to clear the cache. 

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