Freight Agents: Taking Ownership of Your Business

Taking ownership of your Freight Agent business is important to be successful.

It’s been nearly three weeks since we traveled to the magical city of New Orleans for our much-anticipated 2022 Freight Agent Conference. Between the energy of the city, the incredible speakers, and the camaraderie shared with my Trinity family, it was truly a transformative experience. 

This year’s Freight Agent Conference was held at the historic Hotel Monteleone in the fabulous French Quarter. The hotel’s Carousel Lounge, featuring the city’s only revolving merry-go-round bar, was a great venue for our opening welcome reception, where we greeted Trinity Agents as they joined us from 15+ states across the U.S. and Mexico! A culinary and cocktail-guided walking tour was another highlight for our early arrivals. 

We took in the local sights, sounds, and food and had some fun in the evening donning our best flapper apparel for a 1920s Speakeasy Party to celebrate. While this conference is a great way to connect with our Freight Agents, it’s also educational. This year’s theme was on taking ownership of your business and life.

As a group, we focused on owning our vision, efficiencies, wellness, change, knowledge, and expectations of our future. It was a revelation to learn how embracing and applying this simple yet powerful concept affects our success both professionally AND personally.

We had some great speakers talk about ownership, such as Carlos Mendez of Echelon Front and Dr. John Delony, author of the national bestseller “Own Your Past Change Your Future”. It was exciting for me to realize how closely Carlos’ & Dr. Deloney’s messages aligned with Trinity’s culture and values. As an organization, we understand that each one of us is responsible for taking ownership of our future.

WHAT DOES TAKING OWNERSHIP MEAN?

Taking ownership means holding yourself accountable for your work, regardless of the outcome. It’s about taking responsibility and having the initiative to lead. It’s the mindset that you, as an individual, are accountable for the quality and timeliness of an outcome, even when you’re working with others.

WHY IT’S IMPORTANT TO PRACTICE TAKING OWNERSHIP OF YOUR WORK

By embracing this principle of taking ownership, we become more productive in our careers and show others that we can be trusted, even when the job is serious. Taking ownership of our failures and successes can be hard, but when we stop making excuses and blaming others, it compels us to act, empowers us to solve problems, and ultimately, to WIN.

BENEFITS OF TAKING OWNERSHIP

Helps You Foster Positive Workplace Relationships

Taking ownership of your work encourages accountability and communication with your coworkers. It helps you complete your work while keeping in mind how it affects others.

Encourages Career Growth

Taking ownership of your work encourages you to take action and expand your skill set, take on more responsibilities, and learn new skills, which are all proactive steps in growing your career.

Provides a Source of Motivation

Acknowledging your successes and failures empowers you to ask questions about what went well and what didn’t, develop new ideas for improvement, and accept constructive feedback. Once you take ownership, you’ll find yourself seeking to grow and improve more often.

Earn Business Recognition

Nobody wants to work with someone who makes excuses. By taking ownership of your work and business, you’ll build a positive reputation for great service with your customers. With exceptional customer service, your clients are more likely to recommend your business to other clients.

WAYS TO TAKE OWNERSHIP OF YOUR FREIGHT AGENT BUSINESS

Be Proactive, Not Reactive

Taking ownership of your work requires you to be proactive in your daily duties. This means anticipating problems and developing solutions, asking for clarifications on tasks, and working ahead to reduce any stress or issues during busy workdays.

Communicate Your Goals

To reach your career goals, you need to make sure your partners know what you want to achieve. For Freight Agents, this means communicating with your 3PL partner. This helps them understand your needs so they can best support your business.

Ask for Constructive Feedback

Asking for constructive feedback regularly, from your 3PL partner and your clients helps you provide consistent, stellar service. It gives you the chance to better understand what you excel at and helps you determine what areas you can improve upon.

Practice Active Listening

You can practice active listening to enhance your communication skills to take ownership of your work further. This includes taking in non-verbal cues like nodding, smiling, making eye contact, and taking notes, but it also involves making small verbal gestures and asking questions. With active listening, you can better understand the needs of your clients and enhance your memory by focusing your attention on the speaker and taking notes. Active listening ensures you’ll get done exactly what needs to be done and shows the speaker that you are concentrating on them and their needs.

Offering Solutions

Offering solutions is more effective than presenting problems. Instead of going straight to presenting a problem to someone, take a few minutes and consider how you would solve the problem yourself. That way, when you finally present the problem and share one or a few potential solutions that you’ve thought of, it shows you’ve taken the initiative and are invested in your business.

Take Advantage of Learning Opportunities

A key part of taking ownership of your business is motivating yourself to improve your skills. See what learning opportunities your 3PL partner has for you. Learn a new mode, takes a sales course, or see if there is a certification you can earn.

Develop Self-Awareness

Self-awareness helps you understand your strengths, weakness, learning style, and more. By having a clear understanding of your habits and needs, you can hold yourself accountable and set goals for improvement or adjust so that you can accommodate your strengths and weakness.

HOW TRINITY HELPS SUPPORT YOU IN TAKING OWNERSHIP

At Trinity, taking ownership is ingrained in our culture. We own the service and support we provide to our teammates, Freight Agents, customers, carriers, and our community. With every interaction, our goal is to create an experience that supports the professional and personal wellness of everyone we are so grateful and privileged to serve.

Our Agent Support Team is here to help you set and achieve your professional goals, provide constructive feedback to succeed in your business, offer learning opportunities to grow your skillset, and so much more.

Trinity Logistics has over 30 years of experience aiding in the success and ownership of our Freight Agent businesses, with many of our Freight Agents seeing a 50 percent increase over a two-year period from joining. So, if you’re looking for a long-term partnership that takes ownership and is supportive of your Freight Agent business, then let’s get connected. What are you waiting for?

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For information about joining Trinity’s Freight Agent network, feel free to contact our Agent Team by phone at 800-846-3400 ext. 1908 or click the button below.

TAKE OWNERSHIP WITH TRINITY LOGISTICS