We've discussed the signs that you're NOT ready to hire a consulting company. This type of check can be helpful to confirm you're not making a decision based on the wrong train of thought.
It is also important to approach the decision from the other direction—taking a look at the goals and business challenges that are ideal for a consulting relationship. This way you and your consulting partner are set up for a successful and transformational working relationship.
Here are five situations when your trucking company is in a position to benefit from consulting.
You want to improve retention: drivers, customers, management
Even with the best customer acquisition and recruiting strategies, if you're churning at an alarming rate, it's a sign you need to focus on your retention efforts. Like a leak in a bucket, poor retention is an issue you want to solve quickly to prevent what's flowing in from going to waste. To put it another way, churn is costing you a ton of money in multiple ways.
The right partner has the expertise to examine your business and identify where changes need to be made for improvement, including retention. They can work with you to develop a plan for your processes—for employees, contractors, and customers.
For example:
- Investing in training
- Effective and scalable compensation
- Targeted go-to-market strategy
A consulting partner works with you to ensure strategies fit your business and help you achieve a competitive advantage. Retention is about providing value and delivering—showing that you value the people you depend on, and being able to deliver on your promises.
You want to accelerate your growth
When you're experiencing growth struggles despite your company's best-laid plans, it can be time to bring in a consultant. You get an analytical perspective of your plan that helps you understand your business better and the biggest hurdles to success. From there, your consulting firm builds a roadmap for moving forward.
For your unique business, growth may mean uncovering how to strengthen and maximize existing relationships with shippers or how to most effectively acquire new customers. Often, the process of scaling is a challenge for trucking companies. It can seem like a straightforward goal, but there are pieces to the process—the strategy for costs, resources, and implementation—that can make it difficult to navigate without experienced help. A partner can help you understand where to start, what to do next, as well as help you implement strategies to increase revenue.
Wherever your growth challenges are, you should be able to find a consulting partner who understands your industry so they can expertly advise on speeding up or course-correcting your growth strategy. Whether the struggle is with building relationships with shippers, scaling your organization to meet freight demand, or onboarding new customers, bringing in a consulting partner shows that you are committed to finding a solution and doing the hard work to make improvements.
You want to expand your freight offerings
Maybe you do dedicated (dedicated carriage, contract carriage, private fleet), and want to add OTR operations (over-the-road, highway services, or irregular route). You're interested in adding a freight brokerage, warehousing, or other modal capabilities to your portfolio to better serve your customers, as well as gain new ones.
Your goals are able to take shape more quickly when you have guided knowledge on your side. A consulting company knows how to bring ideas to actionable plans and then to realization. They bring confidence that the proper details are considered, allowing you to meet your goal with an efficient timeline and use of resources.
Goals of developing new offerings, brought by your existing team, also benefit from a consultant's expertise. When dealing with a topic as important as explaining your business or your operating model and processes, you want to know that the steps you're taking will best equip your team for your new vision.
You have technology challenges to solve
You have a feeling that your TMS or other software deployed throughout your business is not as effective as you need it to be. Where to start and what to focus on? Companies often delay changes because they are overwhelmed by the number of choices and complexity of systems.
Technology is an area of business that is especially important to get right. Maybe you have a pain point that you would like to resolve with technology, but you are struggling to find the right solution on the market. You don't want to invest in something that won't meet your needs.
Consulting firms help you through these tough decisions and the “unknown unknowns”. They know what solutions are out there, the industry, and how to tell if something is a good fit for your business needs. The essential operations of your trucking company—from driver management to load planning and dispatching to invoicing—are too important to leave to an ineffective solution.
You want to increase your bandwidth or the depth of your expertise
It can be difficult to fill every gap and need in your business. Look, everyone has a day job, and often that gets in the way of the bigger, longer-term things you need to work on. When you're after greater bandwidth to accommodate your growing needs, your consulting company is the place to start.
When you see a gap in your company's knowledge on a particular subject matter, consultants are able to be your experts. By bringing in expert consultants for help on a specific goal or initiative, you save time and money on bandwidth that would otherwise take months to attract, recruit, and train. One of the most important lessons in business is that you can't do everything; the best leaders find people who can accomplish certain tasks better than they could.
Hiring a trustworthy partner for your trucking business
It's important to remember that your consulting firm works for you—to walk you through challenges, help alleviate constraints, and equip your trucking company to excel. Request a free preliminary consultation to discuss how CarrierDirect can be the right consulting partner for you.
