Wait a minute… I’m a company driver, or a lease operator; I don’t have to search out customers. The company I drive for takes care of all that. All I want to do is keep the truck loaded, get paid for the miles I drive, and make enough money to keep the home fires burning. But a salesman? That’s not me-- I’m a trucker.

Well, guess again. We’re all salesmen from time to time. When you had your first meeting with the recruiter, you sold him your talents and skills as a trucker. You explained how you’re a safe driver who delivers the load on time. You presented yourself as a neat, clean individual with a positive attitude. The purpose of doing all this was to present the recruiter with a positive image of you and your capabilities.

Salesmanship is a skill every driver needs to master, irregardless of whether they’re a company driver, lease operator, or owner-operator. It’s imperative for success.

What are you selling?

1. Communication ability
2. Able to say what you’ll do; do what you say
3. Able to deliver “no surprises”
4. Ability to anticipate
5. Honesty and truthfulness
6. Safety
7. Quality… quality, quality!
8. Able to exceed expectations
9. Clean and Neat
10. Careful

The idea here is to provide consistent top-notch service to your customers. Your customers are anyone to whom you provide a service and from whom you expect to receive revenue. This includes the trucking company you either work for or are contracted to, as well as shippers, receivers and brokers.

To get a good perspective on what is the best approach to selling yourself, try to “walk a mile in the other man’s shoes.” Looking at what you’d require of a trucker if he either worked for you or was going to haul loads for you is the best way to determine your customer’s needs.

The cornerstone of this approach is communication. Without an excellent transmission of information from the trucker to the customer, everything else within your service plan comes to a screeching halt.

The next stone in line of importance is Say what you’ll do; do what you say. Nothing can destroy a business relationship quicker than promising an action will occur and then it doesn’t. The other side of this coin is don’t promise more than you are capable of delivering.

No surprises means the trucker doesn’t let the unexpected surprise the customer by not communicating. There are always situations and events over which the driver has no control. When one of these occurs which is going to affect a promise, the trucker needs to immediately contact all parties concerned. They may not be happy with what’s happened, but it gives them opportunity and time to make necessary adjustments to their plan.

Anticipate potential problems and have solutions for these problems ready for your customer if they should occur. Since we live in an unpredictable world, your best preparation is to be ready for the worst-case scenario.

Honesty and truthfulness are virtues that will always work toward a win-win hauling experience. If you tell the truth, you don’t have to remember what you said. No matter how bad it seems, when you explain in an honest and truthful manner what happened, a complete picture and accurate details will make the situation easier to handle and move more quickly to resolution.

To complete this rock-solid customer service foundation, we must never forget safety. Not much else can sour a customer’s attitude towards a trucker and his company more than an avoidable, preventable mishap. Although the shipper may never see the driver doing a pre-trip or post-trip inspection, or constant and consistent in-transit load and equipment observations, or the vigilance in defensive safe driving habits, these activities ensure the on-time arrival of the customer’s product or goods at destination.

And we all know a foundation is nothing more than a base on which to build. To really build the proper customer service plan, you must continue placing stone after stone on this foundation, thus building the walls of success.

To set you apart from the crowd, there are additional components necessary for a successful customer service plan. The idea here is to go beyond satisfied customers and create raving fans: