The Danger of a Single POC

How to Lose Business

This is a story I hear all too often from new freight brokers:

They land a good-sized account and things are going great.  Over the course of a few months, they’ve developed a great relationship with their point-of-contact, they’re servicing the heck out of the freight and commission checks are rolling in.  Then, the unthinkable happens – their only POC leaves for another company…

…and the new POC gave all of their business to a new broker.

Lack of Diversification

Freight brokers regularly think about diversifying their business, in the sense that they don’t want one customer (or a small group of customers) making up a high percentage of their revenue.  The problem is obvious – if anything happens to that one customer, you risk losing a crippling amount of revenue.  You don’t want all of your eggs in one basket, so to speak.

The same is true of being too dependent on a single point of contact within an individual customer.

If/when that POC leaves, you have no idea what’s going to happen to your business.  No matter how good your track record was, having a new individual managing their freight completely changes the game.  They may decide to continue doing business with you, but they might not.

You don’t know what’s going to happen and that’s a problem.

Build Multiple Relationships

The solution is to build relationships with multiple individuals across the customer:

• Load Planners
• Managers
• Executives
• Buyers
• Dock Workers

It doesn’t even matter if they have direct control over the company’s freight.  The more contacts you have and the more connected you are to the organization, the more effectively you’ll be able to retain the business.

Insulate Your Business and More!

The advantages of having multiple contacts throughout your customer go well beyond insulating your business:

• You’ll gain access to additional freight that’s being managed by other individuals
• You’ll gain internal advocates who can push for you to win more business
• You’ll learn information from other contacts that you can also use to win more business

Making these connections across your customer helps you win more business, retain the business you already have and solidifies your position as a partner for your customer.

Sync Logistics Training

If you found this interesting, check out what we’re building at Sync Logistics Training.  We cover this topic and more in our coursework on Account Management.

Reach out to nick@synclogisticstraining.com for more information.