How a High-Growth Freight Forwarder Built a Scalable Lead Generation Engine

Campaign Objective

Forrest Contact was engaged to support the national growth of a fast-growing Australian freight forwarding business by generating qualified appointments with high-value importers and exporters across Australia.

The objective was to build a more scalable and consistent outbound lead generation engine that could create sales-ready conversations for the client’s internal BDM team.

The Challenge: Reaching High-Value Importers and Exporters at Scale

The client had already built a strong reputation for customer service, technology-led logistics and client retention. However, as the business scaled nationally, its internal sales team was managing too much of the prospecting process themselves.

To continue growing, the business needed more than ad hoc outreach. It needed:

• Qualified appointments with the right importers and exporters
• Sales outreach that prioritised decision-maker conversations, not unqualified contacts
• A consistent outbound engine that could operate across multiple states
• A process that protected senior sales time and improved top-of-funnel activity

The freight forwarding sector is highly relationship-driven. Buying decisions are operationally important and often tied to trust, timing and service reliability. This meant the campaign needed to do more than generate meetings. It needed to create relevant, well-qualified conversations with businesses that had genuine international freight requirements.

Forrest Contact’s Approach: Qualification-Led Outbound Calling

Forrest Contact ran a dedicated outbound SDR campaign designed to create real conversations and measurable pipeline outcomes.

Strategy pillars

1. ICP-based targeting to focus on businesses with regular international freight needs
2. Human-led outbound calling to reach operational and supply chain decision makers
3. Discovery-based qualification to assess fit, freight type, shipment frequency and timing
4. Consistent follow-up workflows to ensure interested prospects were progressed appropriately

Campaign Overview and Approach

The three-month campaign focused on Australian importers and exporters, with a stronger emphasis on importers moving freight regularly.

Target prospects included organisations shipping full container load sea freight or air freight, with activity that aligned to the client’s service strengths and commercial priorities.

Forrest Contact used a structured calling-led approach to identify and qualify businesses based on:

• Shipment frequency
• Freight type
• Current provider relationships
• Operational challenges
• Buying intent and timing

Rather than focusing on meeting volume alone, the campaign prioritised commercial relevance. Prospects were qualified before being handed over to the internal BDM team, ensuring sales conversations were better aligned to the client’s ideal customer profile.

Results and Pipeline Impact

The campaign successfully validated outbound calling as a scalable and repeatable growth channel for the freight and logistics sector.

Across three months, Forrest Contact delivered:

• 288 SDR calling hours
• 4,681 dialled numbers
• 760 live conversations
• 33 qualified appointments

The campaign achieved a 16.2% conversation rate, with one qualified appointment generated for every 8.7 hours of calling.

Beyond the direct appointment results, the campaign created increased pipeline activity across the national market and gave the client a structured outbound prospecting process that could be measured, refined and scaled.

What Mattered Most

This wasn’t just “activity.” The campaign consistently generated:

• Decision-maker engagement
• Qualified freight and logistics conversations
• Better use of internal BDM resources
• A repeatable outbound lead generation process
• Stronger national market visibility among importer and exporter prospects

Why It Worked

This campaign succeeded because it was built around strong targeting, disciplined qualification and direct human conversations.

• Strong ICP alignment ensured the outreach focused on businesses with genuine international freight complexity and regular shipping requirements.
• Quality qualification protected the client’s internal sales time by filtering prospects based on shipment frequency, freight type, operational needs and timing.
• Human-led outreach helped create meaningful conversations in a relationship-driven industry where automated channels alone are unlikely to deliver the same depth of insight.
• A proven sales handover process allowed the internal BDM team to focus on progressing qualified opportunities rather than spending time on cold prospecting.

For high-growth logistics businesses, scalable sales growth depends on consistently reaching the right importers and exporters at the right time.

Through a targeted outbound strategy, disciplined qualification and conversation-led prospecting, Forrest Contact delivered measurable pipeline outcomes while helping the internal sales team focus on what they do best: converting and retaining the right customers.