For any small business, shipping is a complicated process
from cost perspective. You might have to overpay if you haven’t or poorly
planned the shipping of your package. As a result, you will not only lose the
profit but you might see a drop in sales because of inefficiency in shipping
process.
If you are a company that doesn’t deal with the delivery of
pallets or can’t have logistic support due to affordability problems, you need
to set and follow some guidelines that would help you make your shipping
process effective from efficiency and cost perspective.
By managing shipping costs, you can actually enhance
profitability of your small business. Every dollar you save, while shipping the
package to customer, helps in improving your business services and
profitability.
Some factors that should be taken into consideration before
dispatching packaging supplies are as under.
Analyze requirements
of delivery and shipping fee
After finalizing the carrier for shipping your items, work
with the carrier’s small business specialist to know about shipping
requirements which usually include mode of shipping and the time at which items
are due to be delivered. Remember, not working on the shipping criteria can
cost you up to 40% extra along with original fee.
What you can also ask from the specialists is the written
comparison between two modes of shipping. That will help you to know whether or
not your items would be safe if you pick less expensive option.
Transportation cost
charging
Make clear policies on when you will pay for the shipping of
package and when the customer will. Standard shipping, which usually involves
delivery in three days after dispatching, is paid for by the company. However,
the fee for item’s delivery within at most two days is payable by the customer.
After establishing the policies, share them with your
customer support team to ensure that business management and customer-business
interaction are on the same page.
Postage meter is a
must
Postage meter is used to weigh the package and generate a
label on which weight of the package is printed. The use of postage meter
eliminates guess work which is done by mailers in order to avoid waiting for
the package to be weighed.
Moreover, the rates of shipping may get doubled if weight of
a package exceeds standard limits even by a few grams. This is the reason that
accurate weighing using postage meter should be deployed by the businesses that
deal with product shipping.
Manage consolidation
The packages that weigh in the range between 150 pounds and 20,000
pounds are referred to as “less than truckload” or LTL. While sending LTL, it
is imperative to coordinate with consolidator, i.e. the service that combines
shipments from different sources for creating a truckload.
Remember, if you insist on sending your shipment in a way
that it wouldn’t be shipped with other items, you will have to pay more if your
shipment turns out to be less than a truckload.
