A new season of hiring means welcoming lots of new members to the team. Change can be challenging, so it’s important to focus on creating a long-term plan for your new hire’s success within your organization. This helps build an employee development framework for both you and the individual so they can make a smooth transition and feel empowered to take on their new role, while working toward their career goals and meeting organizational needs.

We’ve put together the four necessary points you need to focus on when planning and building out your long-term success plan for your employees.

Misalignment of sales and marketing in costs much more than leaders in transportation and logistics think. According to Jeff Davis, keynote of the TMSA Digital Transformation Conference in Chicago this last Tuesday, it’s estimated that lost sales productivity and wasted marketing budget cost companies at least $1 trillion each year.

Google’s algorithms calculate which transportation and logistics companies are on page 1, according to Nathan Misirian of Autumn Consulting. He was one of the featured speakers at the TMSA Digital Transformation Conference this last Tuesday in Chicago. He said there are five areas to concentrate to strengthen your SEO:

• Title and Description Tags. Misirian advises that it’s important that title algorithms are a maximum of 8 words, punctuation is limited, and consistently lead with a company name. When it comes to description algorithms, ensure there is a maximum of 18 words, reuse 3 keywords from the title, use only one sentence, and limit punctuation.
• Integrate Keywords in Navigation. Ensure title and description keywords match, use up to three words, and link directly to a keyword-rich page name.
• Readable Banner Text. Misirian recommends to make sure to separate text from image layer, ensure that title/description keywords match, match to navigation keywords, and link directly to a keyword-rich page.
• Page Headings. He recommends using two headings per webpage. Make sure to separate text from image layer, match title/description keywords, match navigation keywords, ensure page name uses multiple keywords, and make sure page title matches keywords.
• Keyword Hyperlinks. Make sure to use keywords in the first sentence, use multiple words for hyperlinks, use 3-4 paragraphs of content, match title/description keywords, match navigation keywords, ensure the page name uses multiple keywords, and make sure page title matches keywords.

Marketing budgets in transportation and logistics continue to demonstrate a strong presence of digital marketing activities, said Brian Everett, TMSA’s CEO at the TMSA Digital Transformation Conference this last Tuesday. In fact, according to preliminary results of the annual report published by TMSA, digital advertising now makes up 14.5% of the annual marketing budget, website/SEO comprises 12.2% of budgets, content creation and marketing constitutes 12.2%, and Email marketing comprises approximately 5.3% of the marketing budget.

Looking for a unique promotional item that can be given to customers, prospects, employees or even your drivers? 

As a member of TMSA, Affiliate member HALO Branded Solutions, a provider of promotional marketing products, brings you a unique opportunity to save 10% off any promotional product or apparel order through December 31. Make sure to take advantage of this limited-time offer! 

Transportation and asset-based logistics companies are attracting more female drivers by highlighting women on the job in their paid advertisements and media relations initiatives. One transportation company successfully doing this is NFI Industries, which was featured as a best practice in advertising this week at the Women In Trucking Association's Accelerate! Conference & Expo in Dallas, Texas. The Transportation Marketing & Sales Association was represented as one of the exhibitors. 

According to Beth Potratz, President of Drive My Way, relative content through paid advertisements can help people envision themselves working for a particular transportation or logistics company. Potratz, who leads Drive My Way (a recruiting platform matching drivers and owner-operators to over-the-road trucking jobs), facilitated a panel discussion that highlighted advertising best practices of NFI, a New Jersey-based carrier specializing in transportation, warehousing and intermodal services

The average annual turnover rate for salespeople is 20%. Many factors account for that number, but a sizeable amount of voluntary turnover occurs from burnout and lack of motivation. To combat turnover, it’s crucial to put added resources behind your onboarding and development process to ensure your hires maintain the engagement, mental toughness, and willingness to tap into the personality traits that contribute to success in the role. We’ve previously discussed what the different sales jobs entail and which personality traits are best suited to those jobs, but how do you nurture your employees so that they maintain their performance and resist leaving?

Avoiding a Bad Hire

Just because a candidate exhibits the right personality traits doesn’t mean they will perfectly adapt to the role without additional coaching and development. Unproductive workers reduce revenue potential by 40%, and another 36% of your team can also experience negative performance trends when affected by negativity from a low-performing or unhappy co-worker. As we’ve previously outlined, it doesn’t always come down to experience. Look for candidates who are adept at navigating the modern sales force.

The office environment can be a challenging place. You have to deal with all kinds of personalities at any given time, you see things that are broken but lack the resources or influence to fix them, and, often, people who don’t understand your work are there to tell you how to do it. But, we all just want to produce good results and receive acknowledgment for our effort. In an ideal world, you are in a role that plays to your strengths and motivations and limits exposure to your weaknesses, and you are partnered with a manager who serves as your advocate. In reality, you’re likely motivated by some aspects of your job and not always by others, and your manager has many other responsibilities that prevent them from being the best coach they can be to their team. In this scenario, the best you can do is do your best. And achieving your best requires a measure of self-management.

Motivation is often a set factor. In other words, you can’t choose what motivates you at work any more than you can choose your height or your family members. You can’t make yourself be outgoing if you’re shy, and you can’t spark competition if trophies don’t interest you. And the external factors that can stand between you and your goals—economic upheaval, competitive threats, disruptive changes, and mergers and acquisitions—aren’t something we can always plan for. You can, however, choose how you conduct yourself.

Do me a favor: take a look at your current customer list and ask yourself, which of these customers can we not afford to lose? Got it? Now, do you know what’s being done to make sure that doesn’t happen? Finally, do you think other leaders in your organization would answer those questions the same way you did?  If you answered “no” or were less than confident in any of these, it may be time to create or revise your key accounts strategy.  This can lead to:

• Alignment on high potential customers
• Deeper relationships and broader business with selected customers
• Employees capable of growing those relationships
• More consistent business and improved forecasting with selected customers

So how do you get there? Leverage our 5-step model to create a strategy that works for your business.

American Logistics Aid Network Urges Precautions, Preparation For Hurricane Dorian

As Hurricane Dorian heads toward the mainland U.S., the American Logistics Aid Network (ALAN), a TMSA Affiliate member, is urging residents of Florida, the Gulf Coast and other parts of the Southeast to start preparing – and advising the logistics community to get ready to help. TMSA members are encouraged to support the efforts of ALAN, which also is a TMSA member. 

Outside it’s warm, but muggy, sunny, but hazy and beautiful, but buggy. It’s summer in all its glory, but let’s face it, August is tough. It creates tension while promising relaxation. Even those of us lucky enough to go on vacation can’t escape feeling a little anxious. It’s like we’re 13 again and know school is just around the corner.  

In this month, people can behave rashly—even erratically. As slow as August can be, one should never underestimate it. The eighth month is notorious for market swings, changes in work roles and responsibilities, vendor shifts, territory grabs and relationship changes.  

We’ve been talking a lot lately about mental toughness in athletes; what it is and how to spot it. While some people are more naturally inclined to possess the traits that suggest mental toughness, it’s also a skill that can be developed. Not everyone needs to be a North Carolina point guard to understand mental toughness or learn how to leverage those qualities in their professional careers, you can also cultivate mental toughness on your own teams.

Applying mental toughness to the workplace

Before approaching a strategy for mental toughness, you should consider what it means to value mental toughness in the workplace. Why should you prioritize building these skills in your team if they aren’t naturally inclined to do so on their own? If these are skills typically associated with athletics, how can they apply to the workplace?

Building mentally tough teams requires mentally tough employees. In our latest whitepaper,our research team defines the psychological advantage of six essential personality traits that make up mental toughness. And while some people are more naturally inclined to possess these traits, mental toughness is also a skill that can be developed by honing in on these key characteristics and building upon them over time.

During a recent TMSA conference, we participated in working lunches where several contemporary sales and marketing topics were discussed including a discussion on sales incentives and how an organization can use incentives to drive more effective revenue generation. Over two days of discussion, we had participants who held a range of roles, from individual producers to sales managers and commercial leaders; representing small logistics organizations to major publicly traded transportation companies. 

In our discussions, we came to a common agreement, across the board, that incentive drives behavior. Each of our organizations were commonly bound by their membership in the transportation and logistics industry, however, each had a different strategy relative to how they motivated their sales team to reach the organizations independent revenue or sales goal.

Hubtek had the pleasure of Hosting a Roundtable at TMSA’s Marketing and Sales Conference last month. The topic for our table was “Best Practices in Outsourcing Sales.” Below are a few of the key takeaways that came from their discussion. 

Culture 

Work culture is a concept which deals in the study of: Beliefs, thought processes, attitudes of the employees. Ideologies and principles of the organization.

At TMSA’s Annual Conference last month, I had the pleasure of hosting a discussion group of sales and marketing practitioners on the topic of “Leveraging Sales Feedback with Marketing to Drive Results.” At first, I was fearful that it might evolve into more of the same old ‘sales wants more leads from marketing’ type of discussion. However, I was delightfully surprised at the level of interest in collaboration and openness across both functions sitting around the table! I was also surprised that the same challenges were present across multiple participating companies.    

At this year’s Compass Awards, a direct mail campaign by VantagePoint Logistics took some of the top honors. Yes, a 147-year-old medium (or 537 or 3019-year-old medium depending on who you ask) bested video, VR, social and digital everything. 

Make no mistake, the work was excellent. It was a luscious, high budget, multiple-piece highly-personalized campaign to a very limited, high-value audience of 150 people. It worked; recipients loved it. When the company called to request a meeting, the prospects were excited, it was as if they already knew them. They couldn’t wait to make it real, to move to the next piece in the sequence: the meeting. 

Food Logistics magazine, a TMSA Affiliate member and Media Friend, recently announced its annual Food Logistics’ 2019 Top Green Providers. According to Jolene Gulley, Group Publisher at AC Business Media (the publisher of Food Logistics): “This initiative showcases companies that have found new ways to promote sustainability throughout their operations and for their customers. This year’s list consists of 3PLs, technology companies, transportation providers, cold storage providers and many more that have upped their game to become leaders in the sustainable global food supply chain.”

Congratulations to these TMSA member companies for their accomplishments that have allowed them to be named to Food Logistics’ 2019 Top Green Providers.

There were big financial gains in 2018 for most motor carriers, driven by the strongest economy in decades. According to Daniel Bearth, Senior Features Writer at Transport Topics, mergers and acquisitions continued to rearrange the business landscape – with the most notable one recently being XPO Logistics and Daseke Inc. Transport Topics, a TMSA Affiliate member and Media Friend, recently announced its annual 2019 Top 100 For-Hire Companies, which is based upon financial standing of motor carriers.

The Transportation Marketing & Sales Association boasts approximately 25% of those making the 2019 list as members.  Congratulations to these TMSA member companies for their accomplishments that have allowed them to be named to Transport Topics’ 2019 Top 100 For-Hire Companies!

2 Roundtable Discussions. 15 Participants.

I had the opportunity to facilitate two roundtable discussions on lead generation and conversion strategies through digital, and while both roundtable discussions were with different groups, on different days, the key takeaways were very similar. Discussion participants varied in their levels of experience in digital marketing. Some participants were very seasoned and some were more novice. Our conversations focused on the basic tenets of developing a lead generation and conversion strategy. Here is what we discovered.