The move is part of Geodis’ global expansion strategy, in which it aims to move from a European multi services company to a worldwide logistics provider. Since 2007 it has strengthened its position in the Americas and is expanding in China, India and Russia.

Jean-Louis Demeulenaere, deputy CEO of Geodis, said: “With this partnership, we will strengthen the skills and expertise required to service, both IBM’s and our existing and future clients, core logistics needs in more than 120 countries. IBM’s global logistics operations will significantly upgrade our services portfolio.”

Hat tip to China Logistics News.

Lately it seems to have been an ongoing feature of what I call “Annoying and/or Idiot Sales Person of the Week” syndrome here at work, only it’s been almost every single day that I’ve had to endure at least one phone call from a sales rep that left me shaking my head in disgust or annoyance. I know you have a tough job trying to drum up new sales, but you’re not going to get any new customers by ticking them off or just plain coming across as stupid. Perhaps I’m being unduly harsh, but I need to get it off my chest and I figure a post on some of the more common occurrences and what to avoid might help those in the sales arena. So here’s some things to avoid when calling a new customer for the first time:

1) Don’t try to be a “friend” on that first call: I’m not your friend. I’m not your “buddy”. I don’t know you, so don’t pretend that we’re long-lost high school buddies because we aren’t.

I get these calls all the time. Someone has learned my full name and calls me out of the blue and when I pick up the phone I get the “Hi (your first name), what’s going on buddy / pal / friend?”. I don’t recognize the voice, which invariably gets my mind wondering exactly whom I am speaking to. The sales rep happily pushes on as if we’re best friends and may mention sports and the weather or a variation of something similar. After wasting my time with mindless one-sided chit-chat – I’m usually just listening, still wondering who the hell I am really speaking to – the sales rep finally begins to explain why they really called, at which point I simply cut them off, tell them I’m not interested and hang up the phone. You may have managed to increase the amount of time spent on the phone per customer call, but you’ve invariably turned off a potential customer to future business with your company.

- You’ve just wasted my valuable time.
- You pretended to know me, when you don’t. Deception upsets people and while I might not remember who you were, I will certainly remember the company you claimed to represent.
- Maybe I’m old school, but I find it rude to address a potential client on the phone by their first name. It’s either Mr, Mrs, or Miss until you’ve met them in person and have reached a comfort level or they’ve told you it’s ok.

* Be courteous, be friendly, but be professional and don’t pretend to know someone you don’t. *

2) Failing to indicate who you are and where you are calling from: If you don’t tell me who you are and why you are calling, you are wasting my time. I don’t like people who waste my time.

For whatever reason, this seems to be a problem with trucking companies, particularly truck brokers. I envision some poor sales bloke sitting at a desk with the yellow pages open dutifully calling down the list and crossing off the names. They’ve called so many companies in such a short period of time that I can only guess that boredom and monotony have set in and they’ve completely lost sight of why they were calling companies in the first place. The call goes something like this:

Ring! Ring!

Client (me): “Hello, this is John Doe from ABC Company.”

Sales Rep: “Hi there, where do your domestic deliveries originate from?”

Client: “Um, are you trying to track down a local delivery?”

Sales Rep: “Oh no, I’m just trying to figure out your deliveries.”

Client: “Do you need to place a pick up or something…..? I can pass you on to Domestic Transportation….”

Sales Rep: “Who handles your domestic loads?”

Client:”I’m sorry, who am I speaking to? What company are you with.”

Sales Rep: “Well, I’m John Smith from Super – Fast – Rocket – Expedited – Warp Speed – Trucking and I know we could handle your freight….”

Client: “Sorry, not interested. Good bye!”

I’m sure he meant to introduce himself and tell me why he was calling. Really, I’m quite sure, but somewhere between call 500 and call 501 he got the order mixed up and went straight to confusing me with vague, general questions about deliveries and introducing himself later. I’m geared to solve problems and handle requests, so when I get these vague phone calls I’m going to assume it’s a warehouse or a customer asking about a pending delivery or pick up. When you finally get around to telling me who you are, you leave the customer wondering what kind of idiot you are who doesn’t introduce themselves properly to people. Sure, I may still not be interested and the phone call might be shorter, but if you annoy people that’s the image they are going to have of the company you represent.

* Introduce yourself from the get go. Tell people who you are and where you are calling from. *

Yes, this is common sense but it isn’t common practice. No, you are not going to get sales by trying to confuse the customer. Which leads me to my next gripe….

3) Trying to sneak into the customer’s door by pretending to know something specific about their business: I know who my providers are, so don’t call me because you managed to grab a waybill or invoice somewhere down the line and pretend to know my business.

This one really gets my goat. There is no surer way to convince me NOT to use you than try to talk your way into my office using shipment specific information that you happened to get ahold of. This is when sales reps call me inquiring about shipment status, claiming that there is a problem with billing, or making up some non-existent issue with the shipment in question, and then try to finesse the conversation into an opening for them to come in and talk to me. It must work otherwise sales reps wouldn’t try it, but I think it’s a cheap trick and dishonest.

* If you know about my business, come right out and say so and explain that you’d like an opportunity to discuss that particular area of business and how you can better serve it. A straight-forward, professional approach is the way to go. *

4) You don’t have anything to offer the customer, but continue to drone on and on….: Look, if, in the course of the conversation we both discover you have nothing to offer me, then please give up.

This is for those providers whose services I obviously don’t need or simply don’t fit with my business model and I’ve explained as such. Or providers who are speaking to the wrong person but just don’t get it. For example, I had a mom-and-pop NVOCC contact me about LCL export pricing. I explained that we strictly did imports only, zero export, and that all our traffic was full container, no LCL. But the person kept pushing on – maybe there was a chance we might do LCL in the future? Um…..no. Could we, might we, maybe start exporting? Um….no – I thought I already said we only do imports. Another time a domestic guy would not let me hang up the phone without being rude, even though I explained until I was blue in the face that he needed to be speaking to our Domestic Manager.

* Know who you are talking to and what area of the business they handle. If you get a sense that their business model doesn’t fit the services you are offering, politely end the call. *

These are good phone calls to learn about a company and their business, but once you understand you have nothing to offer them – or they make that clear to you themselves – it’s time to end the call.

Those are probably some of the most annoying things I’ve experienced lately, but I’m sure others could add to the list. What do all of these experiences have in common? A lack of professionalism, poor communication skills, and wasting other peoples time. Again, it sounds like common sense, but it’s certainly not common practice.

An industry report states that the logistics sector is expected to grow 30% annually over the next three years. Which suggests it is just about to double in size.

Jones Lang LaSalle, a global real estate money management and services consultancy, said revenue in the logistics market is expected to double from US$105 billion to US$210 billion by 2009 .

1. The Adaptive Process of Operating in Low Cost Regions

I believe that tracking and responding to the relative positions of low cost regions will be an ongoing theme for global supply chain managers. Five years ago, China was “the” source for low cost products; now Vietnam is competing against inland China and parts of India for that same position. Add in the importance of market proximity, whether to the U. S., Europe, or emerging urban markets in India and China, and it becomes even more necessary to understand how an area’s character fits with a firm’s global supply chain strategies.

2. Managing the Risk Inherent in Global Outsourcing

Unfortunately, we see many firms that have not placed their outsourcing strategy within the context of a complete global strategic plan. There is invariably pressure from the top to reduce direct, visible cost. This quickly evolves into an outsourcing strategy to take advantage of the incredible pool of low cost labor in other regions of the world: Asia, Latin America, and Eastern Europe.

When pursuing an outsourcing strategy, it is hard for many companies to stop and consider risk because they are blinded by the huge savings potential.

3. Lean Six Sigma Logistics

While the practices of Lean and Six Sigma are commonly applied in manufacturing, they are rarely used elsewhere in the supply chain. This is changing, though. Leading companies are finding that the application of Lean and Six Sigma makes good business sense in logistics management as well, given that wastes and process variation exist throughout our logistics and supply chain networks.

4. Use of 3PLs

Looking to the future, many 3PL-customer relationships are evolving from conventional customer-supplier relationships to true “partnerships.” Accomplishing this objective would allay a frequent criticism from this year’s survey respondents: 3PL providers many times “react” to situations; they do not anticipate and identify opportunities to improve. To be fair, the study results also suggest that customers sometimes limit their 3PL providers from demonstrating their full set of capabilities. The good news is that upgrading the quality of customer-3PL relationships is an objective of 3PL users in all of the geographies studied.

5. Structuring High Performance Supply Chain Relationships

Management’s goal should be to establish the correct amount of closeness in their firm’s supply chain relationships, not to just get close for the sake of being close.

6. Trading off the positives and negatives of Service Level Agreements

For example, a retailer could require a supplier to achieve a certain fill rate (fraction of demand met from inventory) over a specified review period. Such service level measures are often part of a supplier scorecard. The important question is, are these service level agreements (SLA) effective at resolving misaligned incentives and improving performance?

The short answer is, yes, usually such SLAs do improve performance by providing a supplier incentive to improve service, thus improving the overall performance of the supply chain. Recent research has shown, however, that imposing such SLAs on suppliers can drive strange inventory management strategies.

7. The Impacy of Reduction in Supply Chain Variation on Shareholder Value

Supply chain management should be viewed as a powerful tool affecting all three drivers of financial performance/shareholder value. While holding the right mix of inventory could result in revenue growth, providing the same level of service with a lower amount of inventory (safety stocks) would result in shorter cash-to-cash cycle time and higher liquidity, allowing firms to grow faster and create shareholder value.

8. New Product Launches and the Supply Chain

To ensure the success of a product launch, one needs to pay close attention to supply chain design, sales and operations planning, as well as supply chain coordination.

9. Revitalized Supply Chain Command

The next era, the era of revitalized command, is already upon us.

The multinational enterprise is becoming more risk-averse and less likely to over-extend itself through alliances; at the same time, it is showing an emerging bias toward more direct absorption and control over assets in its network.

10. Transforming Supply Chain IT into “Business Technology”

The visibility of the entire supply chain in real time is one of today’s overarching goals, and automation plays a big role in that. Nonetheless, more than half of supply chains are still managed manually with phone, fax and paper, making it virtually impossible to have visibility into the overall supply chain….

Read the whole thing.

The Unisys study found that despite the billions spent on shipping industry consolidation in the name of efficiency and better customer service, almost three-quarters of large shippers would rather do business with several shipping providers than centralize their operations with one major supplier. Respondents overall felt that the bigger a logistics provider was, the less flexible and user-friendly its systems were.

Rather, many respondents indicated that they had an intentional, specific logistics strategy to diversify their business among multiple providers so as to encourage competition and lower prices. They felt that multiple suppliers keep prices and services competitive, and that often niche logistics providers deliver a better service, communicate faster, and are more flexible.

Emphasis ours. The author seems to disagree with the findings of the Unisys study, stating:

But there are more variables that are part of the overall cost equation than just rates. In addition to reducing costs, shippers also have the conflicting tasks of improving customer service, enhancing their supply chain execution, keeping up with technological advances and requirements and serving new markets. In such cases, employing many logistics providers may actually serve to increase costs when the performance of those relationships is examined in greater detail. What is gained through more competitive rates may be more than compromised by the difficulties and waste inherent in employing multiple providers, all of whom may employ different IT platforms and don’t have the expertise or scope to see the overall picture.

Current research also routinely indicates that shippers are looking for closer, more integrated relationships. Such relationships are far more strategic in nature and more focused on value creation. I’m not at all certain such relationships are possible when shippers try to have them with 30 different logistics service providers or when the providers involved have the feeling they are always just one low-ball rate quote away from losing the contract.

I’m not sure what kind of companies the author has been speaking with, but I highly doubt major shippers would be utilizing 30 different logistics service providers, nor would they want their current providers to work under the assumption they were “…one low-ball rate quote away from losing the contract….” With the complexities and difficulties of today’s global supply chains, companies are looking for stability and visbility: service providers that will offer dependable service at value rates and provide a high level of visibility into their clients’ shipments/supply chain. That just isn’t going to happen if your supply chain strategy is simply to juggle service providers based on the lowest cost.

My current company employes four logistics service providers. We split Asia between 2 service providers based on both costs and coverage respective to the areas they covered, gave Europe (excluding Italy) to another provider, and decided to keep Italy with a small niche provider who doesn’t even have any offices in the U.S. but does such a great job – and with great rates – out of Italy that it just didn’t make sense to give it to anyone else. In all cases it boiled down to who could service those origins best at the most economic cost. And underlying it all was a requirement that all the providers meet our EDI/Technology requirements as well as bringing a high level of visibility to the supply chain that other providers either could not meet or do as well. Companies that employ an old-fashioned, simplistic logistics strategy of always going with the lowest provider, playing providers against each other in a simple cost-cutting strategy, will soon find themselves out of business. Those days are gone.

It is a sign of things to come, and for the Li & Fung Group (China’s largest trading, sourcing, and outsourced manufacturing company) there will be huge benefits all over the place from this deal on the cost and revenue side of the equation.

Outside of the savings that will result from the integrated network, Li & Fung as a group will be able to purchase raw materials on behalf of clients, manage the manufacturing, and then management the movement of goods from manufacturing site to retailer…. potentially on a massive scale.

Li & Fung, already a behemoth in the trading world, is positioning itself to be a one-stop-outsourcing shop to their clients. Need to source product from Asia? No problem, we can help. Need help with compliance and manufacturing issues? No problem, we can help. Need help getting the product from point A to point B? No problem, we can help.

It will be interesting to see how many of their clients are willing to put all their eggs in one basket – I doubt many will do so, but that’s beside the point. Li & Fung is expanding their service offerings, I am sure some clients will only use them for trading services while some clients only use them for logistics services. And of course IDS Logistics is a subsidiary of Li & Fung, they operate under a different name/structure. But it’s still interesting to see Li & Fung’s continued expansion as one of the largest trade services providers in Asia.

Lowe’s designed its distribution centers with “driver friendliness” in mind and has a written policy to be friendly and courteous to all drivers, according to Steve Palmer, vice president of transportation for the Lowe’s Cos. “What does being friendly and courteous cost?” Palmer says. “It doesn’t cost us anything.”

Friendly DCs
Lowe’s DCs are designed to be clean, friendly “visitor centers” to work with drivers to lower their turnaround costs and reduce idling time. Lowe’s measures all gate turn times in order to maintain timely receiving cycle times, he said.

“It’s friendly to the driver but it makes sense to us to reduce these cycle times,” Palmer said.

It was refreshing to see this concept being reported on, as it is something that rarely makes headlines. There is a lot to be said for treating your vendors and their frontline employees with respect and kindness. That’s not to say they don’t deserve a good kick in the rear end when they screw up, but I’ve found that most vendors respond well to kindness and respect.

In my younger years in the industry I worked with a person whose philosophy was that the only way to get the drivers and trucking companies to get the job done was to hound them incessantly. Drivers could expect at best indifference and more often than not endure a lecture about customer service or at worst a verbal lashing if it was felt they did something wrong. No effort was made to make their jobs easier, in fact my colleague went out of his way to make their lives miserable if he felt that they were not doing a good job.

While he managed to get things done, we rarely had a regular driver, dealing with different drivers often. The vendor rarely visited us and never extended us any favors or special services.

On the flip side I worked in another office that did things much differently. Whenever possible they took the time to ensure a dock was available whenever they knew what time a delivery was coming in. We concentrated on driver turnaround times and always made sure the drivers had access to simple amenities such as coffee, sodas, and snacks. Often, particularly if it was an important delivery or pick up, one of the supervisors or managers would go out to the warehouse and introduce himself to the driver and engage in some friendly chit-chat, get-to-know you questions, etc. At the end of these seemingly innocuous conversations the supervisor or manager would make a simple demand or ask a “small favor” in regards to the cargo. We also double checked our documentation and ensured everything was correct so that the driver could pick up or deliver his load without any problems – again, the emphasis was on improving turnaround time. This, possibly more than anything, gained the trust and respect of the drivers. It got to the point that drivers working for the same company would fight amongst themselves and their dispatchers so they could handle our loads; they knew their carrier drops and deliveries would never get held up due to improper paperwork and when they came to our dock they were taken care of expeditiously and treated in a respectful and friendly manner. Some of the drivers would go out of their way to express their appreciation, for example making us the first stop on their delivery list or assisting one of our customers with a special service without indicating it on their bill of lading.

Most of the time this “friendliness” strategy worked, but of course there were always a few vendors who did a poor job or had a negative attitude no matter how nice you were to them. In those cases we simply stopped doing business with them.

Both methods worked: criticising and hounding vendors for the most part pushed them to get the job done and treating vendors with respect and a friendly attitude improved turnaround time and gave the vendors incentive to do a good job. But while both methods garnered results, the latter was much better at establishing and maintaining long term relationships.