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Now straight off the bat, you’ll be thinking that the above looks a little strange. How on earth could the biggest cricketing tournament in the world helps reduce my freight charges?

Well, as the teams are about to break for drinks, let’s read on, to find out how.

First, let’s set the field.

You’re a company that has a large percentage of the export-oriented business. Whether you send goods by sea or air, it’s crucially important to your bottom line that you negotiate the very best rate for each and every shipment.

Traditionally, the only way to do this was to issue an RFQ to your preferred vendors, roll-up your sleeves, and then start negotiating. Today though, there’s another way.

Ok, let’s pause here and head back to the ICC World Cup.

Now, imagine your freight forwarders are the teams in the tournament. These guys are the very best in the business; they’re pros, at the top of their game. For years, they’ve been practicing and refining their craft to produce their best performance for this very moment. Although they play the same game, each team is clearly distinct from the other. They each possess unique qualities and strengths, from India’s majestic King Kohli to the powerhouse of Warner or the all-round ability of Stokes, and have different approaches and techniques.

But when it matters most, who’s going to deliver?

Predicting the winning team before the start of the tournament is an extremely difficult task. Sure, you could take a bet and choose one, but your decision would be based more on gut feel or who your favorite team is rather than anything more scientific.

But why bother? Instead – and to 100% guarantee that you find out who is the best – all you need do is a wait to see who wins. Each team will compete against each other throughout the tournament so by the end of day’s play on the 14th July, the whole world will be able to see who lifts the trophy at Lord’s.

Now, how great would it be if you could use this same process to discover the very best freight RFQ vendor quotation? Well, by combining technology and the strategy of compounded negotiation, with GoComet’s logistics resource management (LRM) platform, now you can.

Here’s how it works.

Upon receiving the freight RFQ, vendors submit their quotes and are then immediately shown their ranking compared to their competitors in the bidding process. Crucially, however, no vendor sees the amounts of the competing tenders, only their position.

The system then deploys psychology, tapping into the competitive nature of each vendor to have them compete amongst themselves to be ranked No.1. Just as the teams in the ICC World Cup battle it out to lift the hallowed trophy on the 14th of July, if your vendors want to ensure they are ranked highly at the end of the bidding process in order to have the greatest chance of winning your business, they’d better improve on their quote.

This process repeats until the end of the bidding period, squeezing and squeezing quotations until you, as the buyer, can view the best possible offers.

As opposed to the traditional, labor-intensive practice of simple negotiation where your team struggles to separately contact each and every freight RFQ vendor to ask for, and then haggle on, a quotation, compounded negotiation ensures that vendors compete amongst themselves. As a buyer, all you have to do is post your RFQ and then get back to watching the cricket – or other important work matters! 🙂

An additional benefit to this process is its transparency, by ensuring each vendor is competing against every other vendor on a level playing field. At the end of the bidding process, you also have the discretion to select whichever vendor you prefer, regardless of their rank.

Of course, when the final standings are decided, factors other than the price might well influence your ultimate selection of your vendor – for example, even though a team might lose in the final, perhaps their stellar previous performances act to persuade you that they will be your chosen pick. GoComet’s platform allows you this flexibility and by requiring a note to be inputted as to the rationale, simplifies future audit reporting.

GoComet is trusted by some of the largest companies in the world and we save our clients between 8-15% of their freight costs. And that’s just one part of our LRM suite of services: we also provide a single source of truth for all of your shipment tracking and tracing in real-time, whoever the freight forwarder, as well as automated audit trails, EXIM analytics, and freight rates benchmarking for the world’s major ports.

So, whoever your favorite team might be at the ICC World Cup, use GoComet to ensure that you always catch the very best deals for your freight RFQs.

Catch like Stokes, with GoComet.

Also check out our Freight Index and Sailing Schedule modules.