Business Development Representative

Required Experience and Qualifications

• Minimum of two years of successful experience setting qualified appointments for domestic US freight brokerage or transportation services.

• Demonstrated experience conducting outbound calls directly to shippers.
• Working knowledge of truckload transportation and common shipper challenges.
• Familiarity with freight terminology, lane discovery, shipment-volume qualification, pricing requests, carrier selection, and customer onboarding.
• Ability to communicate confidently and professionally with transportation executives and operational decision-makers.
• Strong discovery, active-listening, objection-handling, and appointment-closing skills.
• Ability to document detailed and accurate call intelligence.
• Experience using a CRM to manage prospecting activities, follow-ups, and pipeline.
• Comfort working within a structured, measurable, and highly accountable sales environment.
• Receptive to direct coaching, call evaluation, role-playing, and continuous improvement.

Projects

Kodiak's Team at Great Lakes Transport Solutions is seeking an experienced Business Development Representative to build our commercial sales pipeline by identifying qualified shippers and scheduling discovery meetings with senior sales leadership. This is not an entry-level appointment-setting position.

Candidates must understand domestic US freight brokerage,

speak confidently with transportation decision-makers, and know how to uncover legitimate shipping opportunities. The BDR's responsibility is not to quote or close freight during the initial call. The objective is to reach the appropriate decision-maker, determine whether the shipper's transportation needs align with our capabilities, gather meaningful operational intelligence, and earn a qualified discovery meeting. The successful candidate will participate in the meetings they schedule, learn directly from senior leadership, and have the opportunity to advance into a larger sales role based on measurable performance.

Primary Responsibilities

• Conduct consistent outbound prospecting to manufacturers, distributors, importers, exporters, and other qualified shippers.
• Reach transportation, logistics, procurement, and supply-chain decision-makers.
• Clearly communicate the reason for the call and establish our team's relevance without relying on a generic sales pitch.
• Identify the transportation services currently used by the prospect, including truckload, LTL, drayage, warehousing, transloading, and cross-border transportation.
• Gather freight intelligence, including commodities, equipment requirements, shipment volume, origins, destinations, recurring lanes, facilities, cross-border activity, current providers, service challenges, and upcoming bids or expansions.
• Determine how the prospect selects and onboards new transportation providers.
• Identify a legitimate business reason and appropriate timing for a discovery meeting.
• Schedule qualified discovery meetings with senior commercial leadership and confirm the date, time, attendees, telephone numbers, and email addresses.
• Prepare a concise pre-meeting briefing containing the intelligence leadership needs to conduct an effective discovery conversation.
• Attend and shadow scheduled virtual meetings to learn discovery, qualification, solution development, objection handling, and closing.
• Maintain accurate prospecting activity, call outcomes, opportunity intelligence, and follow-up commitments within the company's CRM.
• Participate in call reviews, role-playing, AI-supported sales coaching, and ongoing professional development.
• Consistently achieve expectations for outbound activity, qualified appointments, pipeline creation, conversion, and sourced profitability.

Compensation

This position offers a competitive base salary with quarterly performance bonuses based on the profitability of the book of business procured by the BDR. The compensation model rewards both immediate pipeline production and the long-term financial value of the customers the BDR brings to the organization. Bonus eligibility and calculations will be based on clearly documented account attribution and actual realized profitability.

Freight Brokerage, US Domestic Logistics Sales, Business Development, Cold Calling, Lead Generation, Appointment Setting, Truckload Transportation, Shipper Prospecting, Cross-Border Transportation, HubSpot, CRM, Consultative Sales, and Supply Chain Management.

Domestic US Freight Experience

U.S.–Mexico and U.S.–Canada cross-border freight knowledge

Experience prospecting manufacturers, distributors and importers

ZoomInfo, LinkedIn Sales Navigator or similar research tools

Experience supporting RFPs, spot quotes and customer onboarding

Existing shipper relationships