Client case study · TMC Transportation
TMC Transportation is one of the world's leading flatbed haulers, employee-owned, with a fifty-year record built on quality, integrity and training. Its trucking division had a deep culture of driver development. Its logistics division, responsible for brokerage, was newer, and it wanted the same thing for account management.
The brokerage business was doing well. Leadership could also see that its largest accounts had considerably more in them than the division was capturing, and that nothing in the way accounts were being managed asked anyone to go get it. Account management had grown up executional, which is what usually happens when a business comes from the asset side.
So the leaders were the ones expanding accounts. With a sales force just under 100 people, that put a handful of leaders inside every growth conversation the division wanted to have. The stated ambition was to double growth in two to three years, and the leaders knew they could not be the mechanism for it.
I've seen brokerages grow fast in the industry and you can lose who you are really quick. You have to form your identity early on and it needs to be sacred.
Mike Crist · SVP of Development & Training, TMCTMC had the capability in-house. What it did not have was the time. Building the program internally meant years of development before any payoff, and it meant pulling the training team off onboarding and everything else it already carried. Outsourcing carried its own risk, because logistics sales is specific and TMC's processes are its own.
Why not have somebody who has years and years of experience at a large transportation organization; has learned through success and failure; and has built something that is tested, tried and true, and that can be customized to your organization and can deliver an ROI relatively fast, do the work?
David Bennett · Vice President of Logistics, TMCThe level of comfort that we had with Holly and Sara was more important than bidding this out to nine different people. They have a great resume, a great body of work, and a ton of experience. Their consultative nature and the way they got to know us individually, made us want to dive in.
Mike Crist · SVP of Development & Training, TMCFive months of development came first, built on TMC's culture, business model and strategy rather than on a curriculum lifted from somewhere else. What launched was the Growth Account Acceleration Program, with twelve high-potential account managers drawn from branches across the network.
The program ran nine months. COVID restrictions made it virtual, so it combined virtual classroom, self-guided learning, peer feedback and leader feedback. Every participant chose a real growth account out of their own portfolio, and every piece of homework was done on that account. The target was to grow it 30%.
Competency was assessed before and after across nine areas of account management, which is what set the program's focus at the start and measured the movement at the end. Leadership was brought in deliberately and early, primed on how to coach and reinforce what was being taught, because the alternative is a program that ends when the sessions end.
Education is nothing if you don't apply it. And I think the way they push for folks to apply this and put the marker out there to grow these accounts by 30% was fantastic.
Keith Chyla · Vice President of Logistics, TMCThe feedback I've received from every single person that has gone through their course is "they get my struggle" when it comes to specific things like setting up discovery calls, asking questions and overcoming objections.
Shane Conaway · Sr. Manager of Professional Development, TMCEvery account in the program hit 30% growth or beat it. The target each participant had been given at the start, on a real account from their own book.
Participants attributed 72% of that growth to the program. Self-reported attribution, collected from participants at the end of the program.
All nine areas of account management competency improved. Measured on the same pre and post self-assessment instrument that set the program's focus.
Half the participants volunteered to come back as mentors. 50% committed to mentor the next cohort.
TMC approved a second year. On the strength of the first, and the program ran again.
When these folks go through the course, they don't just sit on the information. They stand up and go over to other sales representatives' desks to share the tricks, tips and best practices they got out of GAAP.
Shane Conaway · Sr. Manager of Professional Development, TMCThe 30% was the growth target set for each participant's chosen account at the start of the program, measured on that account over the nine months. It was achieved or exceeded on every account in the program.
The 72% is participants' own attribution: asked how much of that growth they credited to the program, they put it at 72%. It is a self-report, not an independent audit, and it should be read as one.
The nine competency areas were assessed by participant self-assessment before and after the program, using the same instrument both times.
Twelve people went through the first cohort. TMC's sales force at the time was just under 100. The twelve were selected as high-potential account managers from branches across the network.
This engagement was delivered by Luminaries Consulting, which Holly LaBoda co-founded and where she led this work. The rights to this case study carried to Formula L⁴ when Luminaries dissolved.
The quotes are verbatim from the case study recorded in April 2023 and they name Luminaries, because Luminaries is who TMC hired. They have not been altered. TMC is not a current Formula L⁴ client.
The program on this page is the direct ancestor of the Formula L⁴ Operating System: a diagnostic first, then the operating model, then leaders developed to run it and sellers equipped to execute it, with a real number attached to real accounts the whole way through.
That's the whole conversation. Thirty minutes, no prep, no pitch.
Logistics · Supply chain · Distribution · $50M–$500M