Hunt #5: Earn $500k in shipping & logistics

Good morning hunters!

Today's newsletter covers an overview of the world of logistics & shipping sales, some recently captured HOT jobs I think are interesting, and some parting words of wisdom.

Enjoy!

Was this email forwarded to you?

Main event

Recently met with someone who graduated college in 2022 and has spent the last 2 years at a large, top-rated third-party logistics company.

Her story & experiences are fascinating and it sounds like this industry could be a great alternative to a traditional BDR role for several reasons (which you’ll read about below).

Let’s jump right in!

Brief overview of her background

Before graduating college, she accepted a SaaS role at a company that offered her a $75k salary. She quickly signed her offer and launched her career shortly after graduating college.

She knew it was the wrong fit immediately after starting her onboarding process. The deal cycles were long, orientation was boring, the culture sucked (especially because all of her colleagues were AT LEAST 10 years older than she was) and she had no one to relate to. Yikes.

Instead of wallowing in a bad-fit role, she left after 2 weeks, moved home, and spent a month figuring out her next move.

A recruiter at the logistics company called her, and as soon as she spent time in the office and met her would-be colleagues, she knew it was a great fit to start her career.

Overview of the company

They’re a large player in logistics & shipping and are an authorized resller for UPS which provides them the ability to offer customers better pricing than they’d receive directly from UPS.

Plus - customers receive MUCH BETTER service from them than what they’d get by calling a 1-800 number at UPS.

And, given almost every company in the world ships SOMETHING out, virtually everyone can be a customer of theirs (even if they currently work directly with UPS).

With offices all over the country, they offer employees the ability to move from city to city which is advantageous to her because she can try out new cities without leaving a role & company where she is having A LOT of success.

Day in the life

Her day typically starts at 8am and ends at 4pm.

When she joined, she focused all of her attention on finding customers. At her company, salespeople work full-cycle and are rewarded with promotions as they reach new quarterly revenue thresholds (she’s received 2 promotions in the last 2 years!)

What I found fascinating is how efficient she is at booking meetings with potential clients.

When she started, she booked 5 meetings over her first 100 calls. In SaaS sales, those are unheard of numbers for most people/industries.

Now, 2 years later, she spends 50% of her time on new business activities which typically results in 5 meetings per week which translates to roughly 4 new customers per month (she has 67 currently in her book!)

The other 50% of the time is spent on engaging her active customers (which can include supporting them when shipments are damaged & delayed) along with simply calling to foster deeper relationships & grow their accounts.

At first, she prospected smaller customers, but as her experience and confidence has grown, she’s going after larger companies and works closely with presidents and CEO’s.

She runs all her meetings herself, works on pricing proposals, and receives dedicated account management support for each customer that spends $1k+ each week.

Earning potential

She wasn’t shy to say that her base salary isn’t large, but the earning potential is very lucrative, especially as someone builds their book with large customers.

She has one colleague who in his 5th year, should exceed $500k in earnings. Sure these numbers are not “normal”, but it shows the potential with the right attitude and ability to bring on (and retain) large customers.

One of the things I loved about her company was that commission rates increase as your book grows. New team members start at 3% of profit (she’s currently at 13%) but rates can be as large as 30%.

And there are weekly contests that are extremely lucrative…in fact, there’s a current contest that blew my mind:

• Top 10 salespeople will each earn a trip for 2 anywhere in the world

• The 11th-20th best salespeople each get $25,000 cash

Those are the types of contests you don’t typically hear about in SaaS!

Final thoughts

Here are the top reasons why she loves her job:

• Surrounded by salespeople in their 20’s

• Fun and collaborative office culture

• Every day is different

• She’s build deep and fun relationships with customers

• Incredibly lucrative job in terms of earning potential

• She’s making a huge impact - customers often tell her that working with her has helped them reduce their shipping work from 8 hours per day to 2 hours per day. Wow!

So there you have it - if the world of shipping & logistics sounds intriguing, I invite you to check it out further. There are a few large industry players who might love to hear from you!

Recently captured interesting companies

EDGE Sports Global: Helping private and public clients build athletic venues

Morse Micro: Wi-Fi pioneers and innovators

Atlantic Heating & Cooling: HVAC services in the Boston-area

Eco Auto: Lowering the barrier of entry to sustainable transportation

Kimball Midwest: National distributor of industrial products

Jack’s Abby: Craft lager brewed in Framingham, MA

BSN Sports: Sports apparel and equipment from world’s top brands

Uptime Energy: Balanced alternative to extreme energy supplements

Stewart Painting: Full-service painting company in the Cape & S. Shore

Berkshire Brewing: Small-batch ales & lagers brewed in Worcester, MA

Words of wisdom

I met a very successful sales rep recently who never had an interest in tech sales. Why? Because he wanted to get into outside sales and knew that path would be severely delayed if he took the traditional BDR path.

My advice to everyone is to really think about what you want to do with your career and find the best path to get the knowledge & experience you need to be successful.

That’s all for this week. Happy hunting!

Jay Green “The Quota Hunter”