THE HUNT BOARD

Notes from the sales floor.

Practical writing for forwarders’ sales teams — queue building, quote follow-up, wallet share, response speed. WebCargo/Freightos, MIT/Oldroyd and Salesforce data cited; unverifiable statistics refused; buzzwords omitted.

QUEUE BUILDING·5 MIN READ

How do freight forwarders actually find new customers?

Strip away the '11 tips' listicles and three channels remain: referrals and conferences, trade-data lists built by HS code and lane, and inbound RFQs. The real question is what happens after the list exists — because a list without cadence is a spreadsheet.

QUOTE FOLLOW-UP·5 MIN READ

Why quote follow-up is the highest-ROI hour in forwarding sales

Freightos mystery-shopped the industry: 60% of quote requests never got a quote, and of the forwarders who did quote, only 8% followed up. An hour spent chasing sent quotes competes against silence — here's the mechanism that makes the chase automatic.

WALLET SHARE·6 MIN READ

The wallet-share playbook: selling where you already win

WebCargo/Freightos analysed 500,000 quotes: existing customers win at 22.7% versus 13.4% for new, and the curve compounds with quoting volume. The playbook — graduate wins into accounts with real credit terms, then grow share measured against invoiced revenue.

LEAD RESPONSE·5 MIN READ

The five-minute rule: what lead-response research says about speed

MIT/Oldroyd found calling a lead within five minutes gives ~100x the contact odds of waiting thirty; HBR found first-hour responders 7x likelier to qualify. B2B-wide studies, honestly labelled — and what a first-touch policy changes for a forwarding desk.