Hiring the right shipping provider is essential to the profitability and size of your business. You may have noticed that many online businesses now provide shipping options to customers all over the globe. Shipping may be completely free to certain countries, while a small premium might be charged by the company for sending products to other countries. Either way, it is essential for business owners to be careful when hiring different shipping providers.
If the company doesn’t handle the products with care or fails to deliver them on time consistently, your business will be adversely affected. Customers will stop ordering, and you will begin to see a bunch of complaints and negative reviews about your business all over the Web. Hiring the right sea freight services provider is essential to the longevity and profitability of your company. Here are just a few of the many factors that you should consider before you sign a contract with any shipping company.
Rates
The first thing you need to check is the company’s shipping rates. Nobody wants to overpay for shipping. Take a look at the company’s price list and then make a decision about whether it’s affordable for you. Many businesses often factor the cost of shipping into the price of their goods, thus offering ‘free shipping’ to their customers. It’s not really free, per se.
One very important step that most business owners fail to consider is negotiation. Many shipping companies are more than willing to negotiate with business owners that can offer consistent business. If you are going to be shipping products exclusively with a particular company, the freight service provider will often be more than happy to offer you a significant discount. Negotiation is extremely important if you want to maximise your business’ profitability. Try to whittle down the rates to the lowest possible amount in order to maintain the highest level of profitability. It is important that you get quotes from several different shipping providers before coming to a decision.
Pallet Delivery
Many businesses do not ship parcels one by one. If your company has branches in other parts of the globe, you will likely require pallet delivery services. A pallet is a wooden foundation on which goods are kept and secured using shrink or stretch wrap. A pallet makes movement and handling considerably easy, since forklifts can simply slide underneath in order to lift up the whole pallet, along with the unit load on top, to move it from one place to another.
Talk to the company’s customer services manager and ask for information about the company’s product handling, shipping insurance and other information, such as making shipping arrangements for picking up the goods from your company’s warehouse and delivering them to another country. Also, before you start shipping large loads with the company, you should ideally send a smaller load first in order to see whether the goods arrive on time and are delivered carefully by the company.