How you adjust in the next few months will be critical in the success of your business 2020 and beyond. Being in the freight forwarding industry, it is common that the backbone of our business is how we generate sales. Typical sales strategies, which are a mixture of site visits and networking events, are not possible anymore in the new normal. Most businesses are moving online and we have to adjust to this phenomenon.

This guide will help you figure out what can work best for you and your business so that you can still hit your sales goals and revenue targets.

Every freight forwarding company has a specific scope of commodities that they specialize in. Whether it is moving textiles, mobile phones, or even chemical material. It is critical that you assess how COVID-19 has affected these industries. There are a few possibilities that may occur.
1 - Demand is down and the company no longer wants to ship any more cargo in the next few months.
2 - Demand is stagnant and they do not plan to increase shipment volume in the upcoming months.
3 -  Demand is up and they plan to increase shipment volume. 
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You have to clearly identify where your customers fall into the groups mentioned above. This will help you get a clear understanding of how you will engage your current and future customers. 

The new normal is spurring a lot of online business to popup. This is a perfect opportunity for you to build relationships with growing businesses. Identify the potential customers/leads and start creating relationships early on. Every business needs a supply chain partner. Let them know the advantages of having one by creating value for them early-on. Several businesses are not educated on the advantages of having an overseas supplier. Let them know about the lower cost that you can provide. They may not have any FCL shipments soon but taking full advantage of the number of online businesses can give you more LCL and Consolidated shipments to help you reach your revenue targets.

There are a ton of technologies that you can check out in order for you to find more leads. A great resource to take advantage of is Linkedin. Finding common connections and connecting with people there is a great way to start. However, one strategy you can take advantage of is checking out the e-commerce websites (Amazon, Shopee, Lazada, and more) and seeing the top items being sold. This can give you an idea of what is high in demand and who to target. You can see who the vendor selling the item is. Using email scrapers is also a great way to find their email if you know their name and company.

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If you're just getting started, we highly recommend Email Finder.  It's a tool by the makers of Hunter.io that givers their users free monthly requests and find professional email addresses in seconds. Here's their steb-by-step guide on finding email addresses.