I know over the last few weeks I have not allocated enough time to the packaging business and it has been kind of neglected due to the focus having to be elsewhere. This means I need to make up for lost time and the fastest way is too target what is right in front of you.
Over the course of the next month the plan moving forward for the packaging business is to try and land the service providers our logistic business deals with on a daily basis. One or two have changed recently or are on hold for reasons I cannot mention, but it opens up a unique opportunity to grab these companies as packaging clients.
The biggest problem with most businesses with regard to new clients is having a contact allowing you to get through the door. In these cases this is already in place and there is a working relationship so in theory the hard work has already been done. Up till this point we have not really been in a position to service the bigger companies needs and why things have somewhat stalled for the first month or so back this year. I feel more damage can be done if you are not ready and any chance you would have had would be blown so the forced delay was the smart move.
Over the last couple of weeks i have chatted personally with two companies we service with regard to their packaging requirements and have been given the green light to start sampling. Again I have no idea about the volume ,but one of these clients has 7 warehouses so I would imagine the volume is a decent number. Having already established a working relationship should speed the process up and this should result in landing a new client, but again nothing is ever guaranteed.
When going through the list there is roughly 5 accounts that I would consider low hanging fruit and are clients i would like to land as soon as possible. On hand I have samples to start the process off but I will need far more as I believe I have enough for two of them and will order the balance of samples later this evening.
This week the samples for the independent textile factory will be delivered and then handed over to the client. Unfortunately the timing of the visit in November last year was not ideal and they had not been clear on what they were using. The samples we took along for the visit were incorrect and with the factory shutting new orders until mid January we are now ready to supply. We now know the volumes and specifications this company requires and this is a lucrative account. This would have taken around 6 months from start to finish and is the normal type of time required when landing a new client.
This is the reason why the low hanging fruit clients that you already know or have a name are so key in speeding the entire process up. From experience I would suggest that landing one of these clients would take 2-3 months so less than half the time it normally takes. One could go from having very little turnover to a mid sized business within 6 months and a major business within 2 years and why planning and strategizing your direction is very important. There are some other companies with people I know which will follow once these are sampled and well on their way.