Direct marketing through the mail and direct sales tend to be some of the best ways to generate new business. First you'll need mailing lists, names, addresses, and phone numbers to follow-up of all the potential customers you'll be targeting. Now then, I'd like to use a case study for this point and I will use the example of an automated truck wash business and discuss direct calls and sales to:
All LTLs
Trucking Companies
Companies Hauling Their Own Goods
Trucking Companies
Companies Hauling Their Own Goods
Why should you reach out to them, rather than allowing them to find you? Well, it's simple really, you see, right now due to the high fuel costs obviously Trucking Companies and companies with fleets of vehicles of all types are very concerned with saving money. This is where a low-cost high-volume strategy comes in nice, and of course can be accomplished with a semi automated system. Thus, it gives the truck wash with robotic technology an advantage.
Some of the trucking industry might say that it is a disadvantage not to have human labor and a hand wash. And whereas that might be so for independents with very nice trucks, those who make the corporate decisions, such as the CFO of large companies are very much concerned with the cost.
It makes sense to talk to the local Walmart distribution center and get a flyer up on the bulletin board in the break room, and also talk with someone at the company to get a vendor number. In fact, regardless of the company anyone who has a distribution center within 200 miles of your truck wash should also be contacted. Personal visits should be made to any trucking company that has a depot within a 200 mile radius, or that runs routes up and down the freeway or Highway nearest your truck wash.
Indeed, the best way to get a list is to sit on an overpass, or nearby a freeway on-ramp, and write down all the names of the trucks that go by. Eventually you'll start seeing patterns, and those are the companies you should call first. Whereas, this might sound like such common sense it's ridiculous, you should also know that very few truck washing companies actually do that. I bet the top truck washing companies do.
It also makes sense to be on a first name basis with freight forwarders, less than load or LTL salespeople, dispatchers, and drivers in your local area. If there's an agricultural area and you wish to also do washouts, and you have the reclaim capability to handle the extra debris, there is big business in it.
When doing sales, it makes sense to find the nearest metro areas, grab phone books, and start dialing up every trucking company, and every company in any industry which has a fleet of vehicles that are of the proper size to fit through your automated tunnel wash.
These trucking companies need to save money due to fuel costs, some companies are shipping a larger percentage of their freight through intermodal strategies, putting the truck trailers on a flat bed train and having the trucks pick them up when the get there - for instance in the Journal of Commerce there was an interesting article recently entitled; "Intermodal Volume on US Railroads Climbs 6 Percent," by Mark Szakonyi, Associate Editor, published on March 8, 2012.
So, you need to contact these companies direct by any means possible and explain to them how you can save them money and solve their fiscal cost challenges. Indeed, I hope you will please consider all this and think on it.
Lance Winslow has launched a new provocative series of eBooks on the Truck Washing Industry. Lance Winslow is a retired Founder of a Nationwide Franchise Chain, and now runs the Online Think Tank; http://www.worldthinktank.net
