What a freight brokerage should review from last week’s calls

The worked example in this post is our freight brokerage sample: Bellhaven Logistics, a fictional brokerage with four reps covering dry van, reefer and flatbed. The numbers are invented. The questions the review answers are the ones a sales manager at a small brokerage asks every Monday.

Margin, loads and quotes for the week

Start with three numbers and what moved them. Bellhaven’s team booked 120 loads from 201 quotes, a 60% win rate, for $56,450 in gross margin. That was $4,700 more than the week before, and most of the gain came from produce reefers out of Salinas into the Southeast.

Put one sentence under the numbers that says what moved them. "Margin up $4,700, led by reefer loads into the Southeast" tells the team what to keep doing this week.

Reps by margin, with quotes and win rate

Rep	Calls	Quotes	Booked	Win rate	Margin	vs prior week
Dana	212	64	38	59%	$18,450	+$2,550
Marcus	188	51	29	57%	$14,200	-$750
Alicia	176	47	31	66%	$13,960	+$2,180
Ben	154	39	22	56%	$9,840	+$720

Calls alone say little about a broker. Quotes per call and win rate say more, and margin says the most. In the sample, Alicia made the fewest calls of the top three but booked two out of three quotes. That is worth asking her about in the Monday meeting.

Why quotes didn’t book

Eighty-one quotes didn’t turn into loads. The reason for each one came from the last call about that quote:

Reason	Quotes
Another broker was cheaper	29
No truck at the time asked	17
Shipper covered it in-house	14
No answer after the quote	12
Load cancelled by shipper	9

Most brokerages have a rough feel for this list without the counts. The counts change what the team works on: 17 losses to "no truck at the time asked" is a carrier coverage problem, while 12 quotes with no answer afterward is a follow-up problem, and each has a different fix.

Missed calls, by hour

Bellhaven answered 93% of 386 inbound shipper calls. Of the 27 it missed, 11 came at noon or after 4 PM, when the desk was covering carriers or at lunch. Two of those callers named a load they then gave to another broker.

"I tried you at noon, got voicemail, and gave it to the next broker on my list."

A shipper with a load to cover calls the next broker, so a missed call at a brokerage costs more than one at most businesses. An hour-by-hour count shows whether the misses are random or come from a gap in the schedule.

What shippers told the team

Two themes came up on more than one call. Six shippers asked for reefers into Atlanta or Charlotte, and three said other brokers had already turned them down. Separately, nineteen calls were shippers asking where a load was, including four calls from one customer about a single late delivery.

"I shouldn’t have to call you to find out where my truck is."

Where-is-my-truck calls are worth counting every week. They take rep time, and a shipper who has to chase updates is already looking at other brokers.

Shippers at risk

The review lists accounts where something said on a call gives a reason to worry, with each account’s margin over the last 90 days:

Account	90-day margin	What was heard
Pembrook Foods	$21,480	Another broker offered a dedicated reefer lane at $2.85 a mile
Arlo Building Products	$16,220	Late delivery into Columbus; buyer asked twice for a service review
Kestrel Paper Co.	$12,940	New logistics manager starts Nov 2 and is reviewing the broker list
Sandoval Produce	$8,710	Said Laredo rates ran $150 to $200 higher than last month
Wexford Metals	$6,380	Asked twice for tarped flatbeds on short notice; both passed on

Each of these came up on a call during the week, before any of it showed in the load numbers.

Follow-ups tied to promises

The last section lists every open promise from the week’s calls, with the rep who made it. One example from the sample: Marcus promised Brightline Plastics a rate on three dry vans to Memphis by Monday at 10 AM, and no quote was in the system yet. Listing it gives Marcus a reminder and the manager a reason to check on Monday morning.

How to run this review without software

You can build a rough version of this in a spreadsheet: export last week’s quotes and loads from the TMS, add a column for the reason each lost quote didn’t book, and have each rep list the promises they made. The hard part is the reasons and the quotes, because they live in the calls. Our quote follow-up guide covers how to track open quotes by hand.

Morning Tally builds this review from the call recordings and the TMS or CRM, and emails it before the Monday meeting. The full three-page freight brokerage sample is on the samples page.

Common questions

What is a good win rate for a freight broker’s quotes?

It depends on the freight mix and how quotes are counted, so compare each rep with their own last eight weeks and with the team, rather than with an outside benchmark.

How do you find out why a quote didn’t book?

Ask on the last call about the quote, and write down the shipper’s reason in their words. Reading it from call transcripts works too, if the calls are recorded.

Should the weekly review include carrier calls?

The sales review should focus on shipper calls. Carrier calls belong in a separate operations review, except where a carrier problem cost a load.