I really enjoyed reading these posts because they are all accurate!! Ive been in the Forwarding Industry for 10 years, Airfreight Supervisor until last May when I was approached to become Sales by my Management Team. I had to think it over for a couple of weeks because what SwizStick said was Right ON! These types of Sales people are all over, and that is NOT me at all….I dont have a pitch, I dont cold call, I dont pretend to know you….. And if this is the only way I could be successful than I was NOT going to take the Position. Coming from the Operations side was and still is a big challenge because as any FF knows, Ops and Sales have completely different points of views, and clash most of the time on how things should be done. It works to my advantage most of the time though as I know how to “speak the language” of Ops and also know when they are feeding me a line of BS. People who come from Ops into Sales dont have the typical “Car Salesman” approach. I am straight forward, to the point, and Im not going to promise you things that I cannot deliver. Then you have the customers, as Jake talked about. The ones who waste your time because they either dont know what they are doing, or they are only benchmarking your rates so they can go back to their current FF and say XYZ offered me this, you need to match or Im switching. These are not the kind of customers that I want. To me, it should be a beneficial partnership between the two companies. We offer Value Add Services and Expertise, not just rates….And the company I work for is the largest FF in the World, however we dont want to be the cheapest, and dont go for companies who dont want to meet with us but only get rates, because that only means they want the cheapest, and you get what you pay for. Its a package, there are many things to consider when choosing a forwarder besides the cheapest price. With that said, I really enjoyed the posts! Take Care

Still, there are SOME considerate and intelligent people in Logistics, just as there are SOME considerate and intelligent people in sales. But man, recently it’s been one bad call after another.

Thanks for the comments, too true, too true. Having worked both sides of the aisle, I know exactly what you are talking about. There certainly are some clueless logistics managers and directors out there that make a 3PL/Forwarder’s job difficult.

I think I’ve run into each of the people you mentioned above more than once on the provider’s side of the fence.

1) I call them up and the first thing they ask me is what my price is, without apparently considering that there are multiple service levels for any particular (international) freight move. Dumb.

2) After identifying the myself, telling them why I am calling and asking for a meeting to discuss the issue further, they berate me for “bothering” them and slam down the phone… never considering that there is someone in their company doing the same thing to their prospective customers.

3) Logistics directors (directors!) who send me dumb emails asking moronic questions… usually things they could find out by Googling one word (What’s the tare weight of a forty foot ocean container?) Duh.

4) Importers who don’t set up their international trade transaction correctly and when the shipment gets screwed up, delayed or is otherwise problematic, blame my company.

5) Prospective customers who schedule sales meetings and then don’t show up. When asked, they say things like “oh, you could have met with anyone in the office” or “I’m sorry, but my daughter’s T-ball game got rescheduled”.

6) Logistics managers who don’t know the first thing about how their company operates, only about logistics or shipping or when the truck is supposed to show up at the warehouse… but then go on and on about their little piece of the pie as if it were the most challenging and interesting job in the world. Boring.

What do all these things have in common? Not sure, but my guess is that the smart people are working in marketing or finance.