90-day plan

What to do, in order, starting Monday

Twelve weeks from a cold start to a working territory. Build the system first, then hit the phones — most BDMs do it the other way round and spend a year without a list.

It's August — three things are time-critical right now

Cherries and summer stonefruit. The season runs November to January and the decisions get made in September. Call Yarra Valley and Goulburn Valley growers this month. In November you're too late.
Retail peak air. Black Friday and Christmas air freight gets booked October–November. Every importer on the target list should hear from you before the end of September.
Chinese New Year 2027 (early February). Seafood, lobster and premium food exports surge into it. Start the capacity conversation with seafood exporters in September–October.

01 Weeks 1–2: Build the foundation

Resist the urge to start dialling. Two weeks of setup makes the next fifty weeks work.

Week 1 Learn what you're actually selling

Spend two full days in the new facility. Not a tour — a shift. Watch a build-up, watch a reefer load, watch a DG acceptance. You cannot sell a building you haven't stood in, and the operations team will become your most valuable internal allies.
Learn the three lanes you're genuinely strongest on. Not the brochure list. Ask the operations manager and the pricing team: where do we actually win, what's our real transit, what's our cut-off? Write them on a card.
Get the exact DG capability in writing. Which classes, which packing groups, lithium battery limits, what needs referral. Over-promising on DG is the fastest way to burn a new account.
Get the cold chain specifics. Temperature ranges, reefer capacity, active container options, data logger offering, excursion procedure.
Find out the live animals and perishables policy before anyone asks you about abalone or day-old chicks.
Meet the customer service team by name. They will save you or sink you. Buy them coffee in week one, not week thirty.

Week 2 Set up the machine

Set up the CRM properly. Every account needs: sector, precinct, priority score, contact, next action, next action date. If your CRM doesn't force a next action, use a spreadsheet that does.
Build the trigger monitoring system — LinkedIn Sales Navigator saved searches, job-change alerts, Google Alerts on your top 50 company names, Seek alerts for logistics roles in Melbourne. One hour, runs forever. See the trigger system.
Book the standing Thursday tour slot with operations. Get it in the branch calendar as a recurring commitment so it's real.
Ask your branch manager for the domestic transport and warehousing customer list. Cross-reference for importers and exporters. This is your warmest pipeline and it already exists.
Introduce yourself to five overseas Mainfreight branches on your key lanes. Video call, not email. Ask what they need from Melbourne.
Write your one-page leave-behind. The facility, the three lanes, the DG and cold chain capability, your mobile. One page. No corporate brochure.

02 Weeks 3–4: Build the list

Target: 200 named accounts with a named contact for at least half.

Week 3 Harvest the public sources

Load the 80 companies from the target list into the CRM and score each one.
Work the Austrade EMDG recipient list — filter to Victoria, pull every company that fits your sectors. This alone should add 40–60 names.
Pull member directories from AAAA, AusBiotech, AMIC, AUSVEG and the Victorian Chamber. Another 40–60.
Check Global Victoria's trade mission participants for active exporters.
Scan the latest CBRE / Colliers / JLL industrial reports for companies that have just moved into new Melbourne facilities.
Score everything using the prioritisation model. Sort descending. That's your call order for the next year.

Week 4 Go to the market, literally

Melbourne Market at Epping, 5am, at least twice. Get a pass, walk the floor, meet produce and flower traders. Expect 15–25 names per visit. Nothing else in this plan has a better hour-for-hour return.
Two drive-days of door-knocking — pick Dandenong South and Laverton North. Eight doors a day. Goal is names, not meetings. See how to door-knock.
Find contact names for your top 50 via LinkedIn and by ringing reception. Never call a company blind if a two-minute call to reception gets you a name.
Identify 10 customs brokers without their own air product and book coffee with three.

03 Weeks 5–8: The contact blitz

Now you dial. Target: every one of the top 100 accounts contacted at least once in four weeks.

Weeks 5–6 First contact, top 50

40–50 dials a week, in two blocks: Tuesday–Thursday, 8:30–10:00am and 2:00–3:30pm. Outside those hours, do everything else.
Lead with the facility hook. It's your strongest opener and it has a shelf life — a new building stops being news after about a year. See the scripts.
Book your first two facility tours. Even if only one person turns up, run it.
Five face-to-face meetings a week, clustered by precinct using the drive-day routes.
Start the perishables seasonal calls — cherries, stonefruit, berries. It's the right month.
Log every single contact the same day. Non-negotiable. A conversation you didn't record didn't happen.

Weeks 7–8 Next 50, plus the referral channels

Contact accounts 51–100.
Second touch on anyone from weeks 5–6 who didn't answer. Different channel, different time of day. Most first attempts fail; most people quit there.
Ride along with a domestic transport rep to two of their customers. Cross-sell warmly, never around them.
Coffee with three customs brokers and one airline cargo rep.
Run at least two facility tours. Three prospects each, same sector.
Get your first quote out and track the hit rate. Below 15% means you're quoting freight you were never going to win — re-qualify earlier.
Post on LinkedIn twice. A photo from inside the facility, and one useful observation.

04 Weeks 9–12: Convert and systematise

The list exists and the phone is ringing back. Now turn activity into accounts and build the cadence that runs from here.

Weeks 9–10 Push for first shipments

Go back to everyone who showed any interest and ask for one shipment. Use the trial ask. Small, reversible, specific.
Open accounts even for tiny volumes. An account number is a beachhead. Freight follows access.
Over-service every first shipment absurdly. Proactive updates, a call on arrival, a short debrief afterwards. This is the audition and it decides the next two years.
Send the break-up email to everyone unresponsive after 5–6 touches. It'll produce more replies than anything else you send.
Contact accounts 101–150.

Weeks 11–12 Lock in the cadence and review

Finish the list to 200.
Set the quarterly touch schedule across all 200 so roughly 16 come up each week automatically, forever. See the cadence system.
Build your Victorian seasonal calendar (below) into the CRM as dated tasks, working eight weeks back from each peak.
Review the numbers honestly with your manager. Which sectors responded? Which openers worked? Where's the hit rate? Cut what isn't working rather than doing more of it.
Pick two sectors to specialise in for the next six months. Depth beats breadth in year one — you want to be known as the forwarder for perishables or DG, not a generalist nobody remembers.
Diarise every contract renewal date you collected, three months ahead of the date.

05 Your daily rhythm

Time	Block	Why
7:30 – 8:30	Admin, quotes, follow-up emails	Before anyone's available to talk. Never spend prime calling hours on admin.
8:30 – 10:00	Call block 1	Logistics people are at their desks and haven't been buried yet. The best 90 minutes of the day.
10:00 – 13:00	Face-to-face meetings / drive-day	Clustered in one precinct.
13:00 – 14:00	Lunch — with a prospect, partner or colleague where possible	Five lunches a week is 250 relationship touchpoints a year.
14:00 – 15:30	Call block 2	Second-best window. After the lunch lull, before the afternoon crunch.
15:30 – 16:30	More meetings, or facility tour follow-up
16:30 – 17:30	CRM, log everything, set tomorrow's list	Never leave without tomorrow's call list written. It removes the hardest decision from your morning.

06 The Victorian seasonal calendar

Build this into your CRM once. Every entry is a dated reason to call, which means you never have to invent one.

Call in	For	Who
Aug – Sep	Cherry, stonefruit and berry season (Nov–Jan)	Yarra Valley and Goulburn Valley growers and packers
Aug – Sep	Retail Christmas and Black Friday air (Oct–Nov)	Importers, online retail, fashion, homewares
Sep – Oct	Chinese New Year surge (early Feb 2027)	Seafood, lobster, abalone, premium food, gifting
Oct – Nov	Table grape season (Jan–Apr)	Sunraysia and Mildura growers and packers
Nov – Dec	Valentine's Day flowers (Feb)	Flower importers, Melbourne Market traders
Jan	Citrus season (Mar–Oct)	Citrus growers and exporters
Feb – Mar	Mother's Day flowers (May)	Flower importers and wholesalers
Mar – Apr	End of financial year capital equipment purchases	Machinery importers and distributors
Year-round, monthly	Breakdown and AOG availability	Manufacturers, aerospace, mining suppliers — stay top of mind
Year-round, quarterly	Pharma and clinical trial planning	Biotech, medtech, research institutes, CROs

07 Track these seven numbers

Weekly, on one page, visible to your manager. Activity metrics are leading indicators; revenue is a lagging one. In the first six months you should be judged on the first six lines, not the seventh.

#	Metric	Weekly target	What it tells you
1	Dials	40–50	Are you actually doing the work?
2	Conversations with decision influencers	15–20	Is your list any good, and is your opener landing?
3	Face-to-face meetings	5	The strongest single predictor of revenue in this industry.
4	Facility tour attendees	3–6	Your highest-conversion activity.
5	Quotes issued / hit rate	8–12 / >15%	A low hit rate means you're quoting freight you can't win. Qualify harder.
6	New accounts opened	1–2	Beachheads. Count the small ones.
7	Gross margin from new accounts	Track monthly	The real scoreboard — but don't expect it to move meaningfully before month 3–4.

08 What day 90 should look like

You're on track if…

200 named accounts in the CRM, scored, each with a next action and a date
Every top-100 account contacted at least once
6–10 facility tours run
3–8 new accounts opened, most of them small
1–3 accounts shipping regularly
A quarterly cadence running automatically
Three or four genuine referral relationships
A pipeline of 15–25 real opportunities with dates against them
At least five contract renewal dates diarised for next year

Warning signs

No list. Busy, lots of nice conversations, nothing written down. The most common failure by a distance.
Only quoting. If every interaction is a rate request, you're being used as a benchmarking tool.
No tours. You're not using the one asset your competitors can't match.
Chasing only big names. Impressive pipeline, no revenue, tenders decided overseas.
No second touches. Calling 200 companies once achieves almost nothing. The value is in touch three, four and five.
Discounting to win. Freight bought on price leaves on price.

The one thing to remember

This job is coverage and timing, not persuasion. You cannot talk a happy shipper into leaving their forwarder. What you can do is make sure that on the day their forwarder lets them down — and one day it will — yours is the name on the whiteboard and the mobile number in their phone. Everything in this playbook exists to make that true for two hundred companies at once.

Be patient, be specific, write everything down, and go and stand in that building with as many customers as you can.