How to Find Customers

So you are a transportation agent and you need to find or grow your business. I assume you must have solved the issue of finding enough drivers or owner operators if you need new customers, if so good for you. If not maybe we can help you with that also.

Or, perhaps you are a transportation brokerage agent and are looking to start or grow your existing brokerage operations. Maybe you are a truckload agent and are looking to add additional revenue by adding transportation brokerage or transportation logistics to your service offering.

It really does not matter where you are in the trucking industry, finding customers can be difficult. We want to take a few minutes to give you some ideas on the best way to find new customers. This is not a sales tutorial, we have those on the site as well if you need help in learning how to do sales. This is just about how to find new customers.

Everyone needs to know how to find potential customers online.

Let’s start easy.

1. Friends or acquaintances. Good old fashion networking. Where do your friends work? Can they help you get into the companies they work for? Can they provide you with names of people you should contact?
2. Social Media. Search for Transportation Managers or Shipping Managers in their title. We suggest using a professional site such as Linkedin or Facebook if you must.
3. Drive around. Drive around the area you live and look for manufacturing companies. Write down their names and follow up later.
4. If you have been in business for a while I hope you have been keeping those rate confirmations when you load a truck. After about two years most non back soliciting restrictions are up and you can use those for customer leads.
5. Old customer lists from previous companies. Just make sure you are not in violation of a non-compete or proprietary information agreement in your previous employment contract. There is probably a wait period after you leave a company before your non complete expires.
6. Both paid and free. Such as:
   1. Thomas.net
   2. Salesgenie.com
   3. infoUSA.com
   4. Many others, just do an online search or “how to search for customers”
7. Lots of way to do this and probably the most expensive and difficult to measure your success. We would suggest advertising on social media like Facebook or Linkedin if you want to try this. Be very selective and really narrow your targets so not to waste too much money. If you are larger with a much bigger budget this can be a way to passively (buy expensively) market your services.

There are other ways that require more effort that we are not going to get into today. Maybe in a later blog?

We are also curious what works for you. Please comment below on the best ways you have found to find customers as a transportation agent. We are curious about your experiences, especially if you tried something out of the ordinary.

Let us know.