To make the most profit for your Amazon FBA and importing business you must know how to get the best shipping quote. 5 great tips are revealed in this series.
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Full Transcript:
Welcome to the GoodLife Warrior Podcast. I’m Yuping. We make sourcing easy, fun, and profitable for your business. This episode was originally aired as a video on my YouTube channel, youtube.com/goodlifewarrior. As always, high-quality professional sourcing content delivered to you with passion and my unique Chinese accent. Enjoy.
What’s up sourcing warriors. I hope you’re having a great day. If you’re importing products, you know that the shipping cost can play such an important part in your bottom line. Sometimes a good product can become an unprofitable product because the shipping cost is so high it eats away all the profit margin. So, in today’s video, I’m going to share with you five tips to help you to get the best shipping quote.
If we just met, my name’s Yuping Wang. I’m here to share with you the best sourcing and moneymaking tips. By the way, if you’re a complete beginner, very new to sourcing, I have created this, what to say T-sheet. The link is below. It’s a free download. It has some great information to help you start sourcing not like a rookie. It will help you start, source and talk like a pro. So, free download, feel free to check it out.
So to get the best in shipping quote, the tip number one is, try not to waste your freight forwarder’s time. When you send the quote request, please try to give them as complete and accurate information for your shipment as much as possible. What do they need? They need the basic information, your shipping method, are you shipping air or ocean? This sounds so obvious, but some people just forget to mention, right?
Number two, you’re freight term, FOB based or Ex work based? Do you know the origin documentation fees, as port clearance fees are completely different when you’re quote Ex work based and FOB based. The pickup location, the city and zip code, they need to know exactly where this shipment can be picked up, so they know the domestic porting of a trucking cost, right? Discharge port. Sometimes if you have a specific port, you want your shipment to offload, you can tell them either is LA or New York. So the quote can be completely different when he’s arriving to West Coast versus East Coast.
So the product name and the harmonized code. Sometimes you don’t know the harmonized code, but you need to give a very detailed description of product, so the freight forwarder can use data to try to use a HTS code and give you the estimated tax and duty.
So finally, the shipment detail. You need to give them very specific, each carton’s weight and dimension and the total number of cartons. This is the total weight and the dimension they will be based off to give you a complete quote. When you ask for a quote request, if you can give them the complete and accurate information, they will think and respect that you are quoting like a pro instead of a rookie, they keep nagging you, “What about this? What about the city? Where is going to be discharged? And what about how many number of cartons?” At the end of the day they’re wasting so much time they feel so tired and working with you. So if you can respect them, respect their time and give them the complete information, they will give you as much of a good quote to you as possible.
To get the best of shipping quote and tip number two is to make sure your identical quota request is sent to three freight forwarders, and one of the free forwarder must be your Chinese suppliers freight forwarder. The Chinese supplier’s quote is going to be cheap, but you don’t necessarily need to use them. I would tell you in a minute why you need that quote.
The tip number three is to make sure your quote criteria is consistent and identical to all three freight forwarders that you’re asking to quote. Sometimes when you’re talking to the supplier, they may have changed the Ex work based to FOB based, sometimes the shipping quantity have changed from 10 cartons to 12 cartons. Disregard all those change for now. You can always update your quote after you get the quote back from the three free forwarders, apple to apple. In order to get the best quote you need the apple to apple quote, otherwise there is no way for you to know how to negotiate with them.
Tip number four, to get the best shipping quote is to make sure you ask each freight forwarder to give you the breakdown quote. The breakdown quote has to break down the service fees was this, the shipping charges was this, the documentation fees and the pickup and delivery charges, all of these line categories are broken down. So now you can compare apple to apple and line by line. Only with breakdown quote you can actually see the difference, you can actually find ways to negotiate with each one of the freight forwarder. Sometimes the freight forwarder will lump sum the whole entire quote and say, “From China to U.S. my freight quote is $3,000,” and the other break it down line by line. If one is lump sum, one is breakdown, there’s no way for you to compare. So you must ask each free for each freight forwarder to give you the detailed breakdown quote.
The tip number five is to negotiate. Oh yes, you can negotiate with the freight forwarder, just like you can negotiate with the suppliers. A lot of times, if you know how to negotiate it, that they will be able to either lower or match the quote you presented them, but you have to do your homework. Compare the apple to apple, the three quotes, the total, and you compare the light items. What is driving the total to be different? If you can explain to them that, “Your pickup cost is much higher than the other freight forwarder. Would you be able to match or lower your costs to so I will go with you?” That’s only if you like this freight forwarder, their communication is much better, but their price is a little bit higher, therefore you are spending time to negotiate with them.
So there are the five tips. To summarize. Number one, give them as complete, accurate quote information as possible, quote like a pro, don’t waste their time. Number two, send the quota to at least a three freight forwarders. Number three, keep the quote criteria consistent so you can compare the quotes, apple to apple. Number four, make sure you ask the quota to be broken down line by line. You can compare now which cost driver is driving each quote to be higher or lower. And number five is to negotiate.
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Have a great day, guys. I’ll see you soon.
Check out the link, the Sourcing Warrior Mastermind link, undertake Sourcing Warrior’s quiz to find out your sourcing IQ. Make it fun, learn something, have a great day. I’ll see you in the next episode.
