How CRM became a Bad 3-letter word

By John Golob, President and Founder of Lanetix, a CRM software company exclusively focused on the transportation and logistics market. John has worked in CRM software since 1994.

I enjoy seeing the Marketing Director and her colleague at the TMSA Conference in Fort Myers; they’ve worked together for years and last June, they were brimming with excitement over their CRM project, green-lighted by the trucking company's CEO.

“How did your CRM project go?” I asked, eager to learn the details.

“Don’t ask,” the manager responded while her colleague shifted nervously. “I had to cut my marketing budget in order to pay for the CRM consultants.”

“Seriously?” I replied, after having heard about their project plan, business case and detailed needs assessment.

“Yes, we just didn’t expect it would take so long—” she started to explain.

“And cost $200 per hour!” her colleague chimed in.

Behind this unfortunate conversation is a painful reality in our industry. If you want to implement a CRM, you need to make some difficult choices:

• Focus on supporting transaction spot market quotes in CRM…or emphasize long-term contracted rates?
• Convert your Accounts to represent Shippers…or water them down so they support Carriers?
• Build workflows for quick-and-dirty onboarding events…or model the longer, more complicated processes?

If you want all of them, then you need to write a big check for consultants to come in and build everything you need. And yes, be prepared to wait because it’s going to take a long time. 

Not anymore. 

Motivated to turn that conversation into a solution, we at Lanetix decided to develop and launch LxRoadFreight, our new CRM software exclusively marketed to the long tail of domestic freight service providers. We ship out-of-the-box functionality so on day one, you will get: carrier management, spot quotes, contracted rates, workflows for driver retention, even damage awareness for your exception handling.

Asset-owning carriers and freight brokers with as few as five employees can now take advantage of the same functionality as the Global 2000 transportation companies. Not only will you deliver an exceptional experience to your customer-facing teams, you get to keep your sales and marketing budget where it belongs —funding exciting programs— not hiring consultants to customize what you thought you bought.