Workshop Guide: Defining Your Ideal Customer in Freight Forwarding

Objective:

To align sales, operations, and finance on the ideal customer profile (ICP) for your freight forwarding business. This workshop will help your team focus on profitable, long-term relationships instead of chasing low-value leads.

Duration: 2.5 – 3 hours

Facilitator:

Recommended: Sales Director, VP of Sales, or an External Consultant (e.g., ALL2S Consulting)

Participants:

✅ Sales Team ✅ Operations & Customer Service ✅ Finance & Credit ✅ Leadership/Strategy Team

🔹 Be strategic on who represents each group. You want a good mix of experience—not everyone has to be a senior manager. The voice of desk operations must be adequately represented, or process needs to be in the room to ensure realistic execution and support alignment.

📍 Step 1: Pre-Workshop Data Collection (1 Week Before)

🎯 Goal: Establish a baseline understanding of your current customer landscape.

✅ Pull key data from CargoWise or internal systems:

Number of active customers (past 12 months)
Total shipments by customer, trade lane, and vertical
Top trade lanes (volume & revenue)
Key industry verticals served
Profitability by: Customer Trade Lane Vertical

📌 Why This Matters: Many companies assume they serve all industries equally, but data often reveals certain lanes and verticals are far more profitable than others. This pre-work ensures we focus the conversation on facts, not assumptions.

🚨 If you need help analyzing your CargoWise data, ALL2S Consulting can assist in bringing your current state into focus.

📍 Step 2: Workshop Kickoff (15 Minutes)

🎯 Goal: Set expectations and outline the importance of defining the right customer.

✅ Facilitator opens with:

Why defining an ideal customer profile (ICP) is critical.
The impact of bad-fit customers on profitability, efficiency, and team morale.
The cost of onboarding a new customer ($400+ on average with minimal initial profit).
The importance of playing the long game—hunting caribou, not rabbits.

💡 Key Message: In a time where costs are being monitored like a hawk, we cannot afford to waste resources on low-value leads.

📌 Time Management Tip: I was once told a task will fill as much time as you give it. If you schedule 3 hours, it will take 3 hours. If you give it 3 days, it will fill 3 days. This process does not have to eat up a ton of time. If you complete your pre-work (i.e., pull the data, analyze it, and provide it to the workshop team in advance), you can have very focused conversations that don’t take days—but instead just hours.

Especially with the senior leaders in the room, it is hard to pin them down, and they often cannot afford to spend days in workshops. One way to keep things on track is to have a timekeeper who is very draconian about it—when time’s up, time’s up. If people know you are serious about time limits, they will often cut out extraneous discussions that pull the group off-task.

⏳ So, make sure you have a timer AND a timekeeper with a strong cut-off game!

📌 Documentation Tip: With all the good insights coming from this workshop, you need to make sure you have a note keeper to document everything. There are templates available to recap and codify what has been agreed upon. If you need one, I have them—and I’m not too stingy to share. Reach out, and we can discuss what you will come to find as a significant step in the right direction toward moving your organization into better strategic alignment.

Often, when workshops are scheduled, people roll their eyes and believe they are a waste of time. But making sure the efforts are documented and finalized—distributed by senior management with the full weight of enforcement—will ensure: ✅ A happier sales team because they know who to target and where to hunt. ✅ A more focused operations team because they won’t be spread too thin across too many different types of customers. ✅ A satisfied finance team because this is a proactive way to manage the risk of bad debt and identify opportunities to maximize profitability.

📍 Step 3: Identifying the Ideal Customer Profile (60 Minutes)

🎯 Goal: Define what makes a high-value, long-term customer and what to avoid.

✅ Break into groups & discuss:

What industries/verticals align best with our expertise?
Which trade lanes or logistics models do we excel at?
What characteristics make a high-value, long-term customer?
What red flags indicate a bad-fit customer?
Are there specific Incoterms, payment structures, or shipment patterns that don’t work for us?

📊 Activity: Create a customer scoring system:

A-List Customers: Strategic fit, recurring shipments, strong financials.
B-List Customers: Moderate fit, potential to grow into A-list.
C-List Customers: One-off shipments, price shoppers, high-risk.

💡 Red Flag Alert: Customers who “date” forwarders—jumping around looking for the lowest price—are risky. You want to be the marrying kind and play the long game with committed partners.

📍 Step 4: Documenting Your Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) (30 Minutes)

🎯 Goal: Create a clear ICP to guide sales, marketing, and operations.

✅ Outline the Ideal Customer Profile: ✔ Core Trade Lanes & Vertical Focus ✔ Typical Shipment Types & Volumes ✔ Preferred Customer Behaviors (long-term relationships, contract shipping, etc.) ✔ Financial & Operational Fit (payment terms, creditworthiness, service expectations) ✔ Red Flags to Avoid

📌 Deliverable: A 1-page Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) shared across departments.

📍 Step 5: Aligning Sales & Lead Generation (30 Minutes)

🎯 Goal: Ensure sales teams are targeting the right customers.

✅ Key Discussion Points:

How do we qualify leads before investing resources?
What messaging attracts the right customers?
How do we implement a lead scoring system?
How do we create a smooth handoff process between sales & operations?

💡 Sales Tip: Don’t send your hunters to bring home rabbits when you need caribou. 🦌

📍 Step 6: Review & Optimize (Final 15 Minutes)

🎯 Goal: Plan how to keep refining your ideal customer profile over time.

✅ Quarterly Strategy Check-In:

Review new customers onboarded – do they fit the profile?
Identify misaligned customers and adjust strategy accordingly.
Adjust target markets or service offerings based on profitability trends.
Gather feedback from finance, operations, and customer service to refine criteria.

💡 Big Picture: The freight forwarding business thrives on long-term, strategic relationships. Saying “no” to the wrong customers today will make space for high-value customers tomorrow.

🚀 Final Takeaway: Focus on the Right Customers, Not Just More Customers

✅ Hold regular strategic conversations to refine your customer criteria. ✅ Align sales, operations, and finance to avoid misaligned leads. ✅ Always play the long game—short-term wins with the wrong customers will hurt long-term profitability.

🚨 Need expert help to analyze your CargoWise data and structure your ideal customer strategy? 📢 ALL2S Consulting is here to help!

🔗 Reach out today and let’s get your business on the path to strategic, profitable growth.