Pitch Like a Pro: How To Win Project Cargo Business

By Luke King

What does it take to win project cargo business in today’s highly competitive market? Project shippers from Fluor, Siemens Energy and Mitsubishi Americas share their insights on what they look for in logistics providers – offering valuable advice for potential partners seeking to secure major project cargo deals.

From Issue 6, 2024 of Breakbulk Magazine.


Winning project cargo business is a question of knowing your client, starting small and building trust to win ever-bigger moves, global shippers suggest.

“Try to convey your message with a personalized approach and understand where you can propose value to our operation,” said Agustin Harriague, vice president, logistics, inventory and warehousing at Mitsubishi Power. “Ditch the PowerPoint, do your homework and talk about how you can contribute to what we are looking to do in the market.”

Harriague was among the panelists at a Breakbulk Americas session, “How to Win Project Cargo Business: The Shipper’s Advice,” during which logistics service providers were urged to demonstrate a deep understanding of the client’s needs.

“Show you know where I’m going to have future projects,” said Bill Keyes, director of logistics, Fluor. “So if I’m doing a project in Chile and you’ve done route studies there, bring that to demonstrate you understand the area. Understand the challenges I’ve had in the past, how I solve them and how you’re prepared to solve them.

“Share that information with me. Don’t make me tell you this is what I expect – you should know my business as well as I do. For a global EPC, you’ll need an international presence, you’ll have a network of agents.”

“Trust” was stressed numerous times during the panel, and suppliers were advised to be realistic about what they might be asked to handle – at least in the early stages of a new business relationship.

“We’re going to start slowly,” said Guillermina del Pino, head of project logistics (Americas) at Siemens Energy Inc. “If you fail, I fail – right? There’s no other way. So I want to make sure that we are on the same page, and I tell this to every company that visits us: You’re not going to move a gas turbine on the first shipment.

“There’s a lot of risk involved, so we start slow and small, and we get bigger. It will take some time, but our commercial relationships are for the long-term. I’m not developing a supplier for one project.”


No Buck Passing

Emphasizing the point, Harriague added: “Trust gets built way before you’ll ever get a purchase order. And there can be no finger pointing to the carrier. In logistics, we have to own it – you don’t have the luxury of saying: ‘My carrier screwed up, or a freight forwarder screwed up.’ Well, who hired them? You did. So the bottom line stops with you. There’s no passing the buck on this.”

Keyes said logistics providers must talk to their strengths.

“Freight forwarders are sitting on a treasure trove of data, you already have metrics. A lot of people don’t take credit for what they’ve done in the past. They don’t demonstrate that treasure trove, how their performance has been in the past and how that will lead to success in the future.

“They don’t say: ‘These are the challenges and problems we had on the last project. These are the solutions we brought that made a difference.’”

Being able to demonstrate the strength of your entire team is another must for Harriague. “Who are the operations team standing behind you? In logistics, they are not even going to be behind, they are going to be on the front line working with us. What’s their reputation?

“Do we know these people? Do they have previous experience they can carry from other operations? Those are the type of factors we use to make the bridge from sales into execution.”

Risk mitigation is becoming increasingly important – and an area where Keyes says logistics service providers have a valuable contribution to make. “You know, you can’t predict the future, but you can say: ‘Hey, there is risk in this area.’ Somebody in this room knew six months ago that there could be a strike on the East Coast.

“Who took the time to plan that and say: ‘If this kicks off, there could be another strike because the contract’s only good until January so we’re suggesting, go to the West Coast or into the Great Lakes?’”


Mitigating Risks

In agreement was del Pino. “Since COVID we’ve started looking a lot at risk assessment and mitigation. Service providers are the ones shipping all the time with different customers, so tell me what you’re seeing.

“Is there construction on my route? What’s the season? The knowledge that you have from other customers means that you can put a risk in your proposal, but just as important - what would be your mitigation? What’s the solution?” 

Asked how logistics suppliers can maintain an ongoing relationship with their customer, Keyes said: “What really helps once you’re in the game, is to do the routine routinely. Don’t make me worry about my 50 shipments on the water, just do them. Recognize that when there’s a big challenge, we embrace it together. And that’s going to help build your reputation.

“That response is going to keep you as a long-term partner to the EPC – how you solve problems, what you do and how you demonstrate savings. We appreciate hard dollars, but that can also mean savings in schedule.

“If that steel doesn’t get there by a certain time and it delays construction because of fabrication, it might be costing the project $1 million per day in construction costs. It’s important to show an understanding of the cost impact of your performance on construction and fabrication when we’re moving these materials.

“The reputation that you built on the routine, day-to-day stuff during the project is what’s going to keep you in the game and demonstrate you’re a successful partner.”

And when things go wrong? “Pick up the phone,” says del Pino. “Just pick up the phone when there’s a problem. You might not have a solution immediately but, for me, a subjective metric that I take into account is whether I can quickly contact this person or company when things are not okay.

“If I have to go and execute terms and conditions, then we have a bigger problem, right? My expectation is that when you build a partnership, things are solved without me needing to go and execute a contract – because that’s when the partnership ends, and we don’t want that.

“The reality is we start from a win-win position. I want to make sure that you get something out of it, and I get something too.”


Read more: Agustin Harriague – The Project Cargo Enabler

TOP PHOTO: (L-R) Dennis Mottola, Agustin Harriague, Guillermina del Pino, Bill Keyes. CREDIT: Hyve
SECOND: A Mitsubishi Power unit is transported in the U.S.. CREDIT: Mitsubishi Power