Customer story: CR Express

How CR Express Transforms Their Sales Strategy and Generates Leads On-The-Go With FlippingBook Online

CR Express, a full-service logistics company based in Elk Grove Village, Illinois, boasts a fleet of over 150 tractors, more than 200 trailers, and a vast 280,000 sq ft warehouse space. Situated within the largest industrial park in the United States, the company employs around 250 individuals, including office staff, warehouse workers, and an outsourced team for administrative tasks.

With 25 years of experience behind them, CR Express now offers a diverse range of services such as airport transfers, drayage, storage, and freight shipping. Their commitment to excellence was recognized with a “Service Provider of the Year” award in 2023—for their dedication to delivering exceptional customer experiences.

Challenge

Presentations are a key element that CR Express incorporates in their marketing and sales chains. As Project Manager Alexander Amro tells us, the team regularly sets up meetings with new and existing clients—mostly freight forwarders. Many customers are already using CR Express for one of their services, but have no idea the company has effective solutions to a whole range of logistics-related tasks.

We were in need of a marketing material that would educate customers about CR Express. We wanted to take advantage of a platform like FlippingBook to capitalize on cross-sale opportunities.

To have something to fall back on during pitches, Alexander used to create Google Sheets, write plain Word documents, or print PDFs to hand them out. This approach came with a complete lack of transparency: with a presentation shared via email or as a printed file, he could only guess whether the client had opened or read it. And when you're dealing with global customers, like CR Express was, you often face a whole internal network rather than a single decision maker.

A lot of times, I'd email a customer to share the file. And I never knew if they opened it or not. But I wanted to be able to track that to understand if people at least had an idea of what I'd sent them.

Working with the documents on-the-go also presented a challenge: Alexander adjusted by storing all the links to different files in a dedicated spreadsheet, but navigating it from his phone was pretty cumbersome.

Search for Solution

Luckily, the search for the right solution didn't take long. On one occasion, Alexander reached out to a digital marketing specialist and asked her to create a holistic company presentation that could be easily shared with customers. That's how the company was introduced to FlippingBook, and decided to look no further.

I really liked how our presentation looked in the new format. The FlippingBook team was super helpful in getting us onboarded. From there, I just took the product to the board, and they approved it, too.

Solution

After the free trial, Alexander continued using FlippingBook to share presentations about specific offerings, and used them to brief customers on the company's services. Some pitch decks are shorter and product-focused, while others go over technical nuances—like Electronic Logging Devices, or ELDs, that the company uses for all of their trucks. The team also distributes a general flipbook that covers the principles, culture, and philanthropy—on top of the capabilities CR Express has.

Now people could explore not only who CR Express is and our purpose as an organization, but everything we have to offer to our customer base, and the management team behind it all.

CR Express quickly discovered another FlippingBook feature to aid their sales: individual trackable links, and the engagement statistics they come with. Alexander started sharing flipbooks with customers during every initial meeting or phone call. Knowing whether clients opened it or not, and studying which page they spent the most time on, was perfect to keep the conversation going.

Finally, Alexander hoped the solution would help him share presentations while he was on-the-go: and once again, FlippingBook delivered, with a convenient mobile app to distribute and track sales collateral in one tap.

The app was a nice aid for me as a salesperson: I could see when people opened the presentation and what exactly they were looking at. And I can check that for each flipbook through my smartphone.

Results

Being able to monitor how customers engage with flipbooks, through trackable links, is a key advantage FlippingBook gives CR Express. Now, Alexander can gain better insights into what services to pitch, and always follows up at just the right moment.

I would follow up with customers and remind them about their interest in a specific service, like our warehouse or domestic truckload. I could also track the time it took me to close a deal.

The value of FlippingBook goes beyond ROI for the company, even though Alexander is sure they're covering the cost of the product through added sales.

ROI shouldn't always be about dollars. What CR Express is trying to do is to allow customers to rethink the way that they view trucking companies. I would say that with FlippingBook, the aspect of camaraderie with our customers has improved.

FlippingBook has helped CR Express in redefining their image in the eyes of customers, taking trucking to the next level and expanding their network to new contacts, leads, and sales opportunities.