How a road freight team won 180+ shipper opportunities in 6 countries
A Lithuanian road freight team won 180+ shipper opportunities in 6 countries with automated lead generation, from 1,149 replies to its own salespeople.
Written byVytas MikulėnasFounder, Lean Sales Systems- Published
- Updated
- Reading time
- 6 min read
TL;DR
- Tempus Trans, a Lithuanian road freight company, reached 6,500 decision makers by email in 6 countries, with LinkedIn on top.
- Its salespeople got 1,149 replies and 180+ replies tagged Interested, many of them real freight requests with loads, routes and dates.
- The system found the contacts, wrote and sent the messages from the reps' own accounts, so the team only handled replies.
On this page
Tempus Trans is a road freight company from Vilnius with 20 years in international LTL and FTL transport. From May 2025 to July 2026, Lean Sales Systems ran automated email and LinkedIn outreach for its salespeople in 6 countries. They got 1,149 replies and 180+ interested shippers, without spending their own time on prospecting.
| Client | Industry | Service | Market | Period |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Tempus Trans | Logistics, road freight | Managed lead generation | Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Poland, Bulgaria, Romania | May 2025 to July 2026 |
Key results
| Decision makers reached | Replies | Opportunities | Hours of manual work saved |
|---|---|---|---|
| 6,500 by email, plus LinkedIn | 1,149 | 180+ | about 1,080 (estimate) |
Opportunities are replies tagged Interested in Reply.io, after removing clear mis-tags. Hours saved is an estimate; see the estimates section.
About the client
Tempus Trans moves part loads and full loads by road between the Baltics, Poland, the Balkans, the Caucasus and Central Asia. It sells to shippers: manufacturers, wholesalers and retailers that send goods across borders, and has sales staff in Lithuania, Poland, Romania and Bulgaria.
The challenge
Tempus had a strong network and experienced salespeople. What it lacked was a steady flow of new shippers to talk to in every country it served.
| Challenge | Why it hurt |
|---|---|
| Crowded market | Road freight has thousands of carriers and forwarders. Logistics managers get offers every week and ignore most of them. |
| Many countries, many languages | Each branch had to find its own shippers, in Lithuanian, Polish, Romanian or Bulgarian. A small team cannot research 6 markets by hand. |
| Hard to find the right person | The person who orders transport is often a logistics or supply chain manager, not the name on the company website. |
| Salespeople busy with daily work | Reps quote, plan loads and serve current clients. Cold prospecting always comes last. |
| No system for follow-up | Without automatic follow-ups, most first messages get no answer and the lead is lost. |
Markets and focus
Lithuania was the main market. The other countries ran from the same system, each with a local salesperson as the sender.
| Market | Who we reached | Companies | Volume | Result |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Lithuania | Logistics, supply chain and transport managers, owners | Manufacturers, wholesalers and retailers that ship abroad | 1,516 emailed, 749 LinkedIn requests | 88 interested |
| Latvia and Estonia | Logistics and purchasing managers | Manufacturers and distributors | 1,045 emailed, 721 LinkedIn requests | 52 interested |
| Bulgaria | Owners and logistics managers | Importers, e-commerce and production companies | 1,188 emailed, 1,437 LinkedIn requests | 35 interested |
| Poland | Logistics managers, including conference exhibitors | Manufacturers and distributors | 2,279 emailed, 1,191 LinkedIn requests | 26 interested |
Romania was a quick, low-cost test: 472 emails and 271 LinkedIn requests from the same setup.
The solution
We built 1 outreach system and ran it for each country from the client's own sales accounts.
| Building block | What it did for Tempus | Why we used it | Tools |
|---|---|---|---|
| Lead research | A data platform that combines many data sources found shipping companies in each country and the person who orders transport. One Polish list was built from conference exhibitors. | Finding the right logistics manager by hand in 6 countries would take months. | Clay, LinkedIn |
| Email finder and verifier | Found work emails and checked each one exists before sending. Only 2.9% of emails bounced. | Bad addresses hurt the reps' own mailboxes. | Email verifier |
| Automated email and LinkedIn outreach | An automated outreach tool (a "sequencer") sent short messages and follow-ups in the local language from each salesperson's own email and LinkedIn account, and stopped when someone replied. | Reps had no time for daily prospecting, and buyers trust a real local person more than a generic offer. | Reply.io |
| Replies to the sales team | Tempus did not use a connected CRM (customer database). Every reply landed straight in the salesperson's own inbox, and each month we sent a report by country. | The reps could answer a freight request the same day. | Reply.io inbox |
What made the difference. The first email was short and asked 1 simple question: who in the company is responsible for ordering transport. It came from a named Tempus salesperson, in the buyer's language. In Lithuania that email got a 23.94% reply rate, and many answers were freight requests with loads, routes and dates.
What changed
| Metric | Result | Tracked in |
|---|---|---|
| Decision makers reached by email | 6,500 | Reply.io |
| LinkedIn connection requests | 4,369 (1,278 accepted) | Reply.io |
| Email delivery | 97.1% (191 bounces) | Reply.io |
| Replies | 1,149 (682 email, 467 LinkedIn) | Reply.io |
| Reply rate in the main market, Lithuania | 23.94% by email, 33.6% on LinkedIn | Reply.io |
| Opportunities | 180+ replies tagged Interested (204 before removing mis-tags) | Reply.io inbox |
| Time to first interested replies | Within the first month, May 2025 | Reply.io inbox |
| Tempus team time on prospecting | None; reps only answered replies | Campaign setup |
Many interested replies were concrete requests: 2 loads ready to ship, a load to Germany, a load to the UK, full pallets into Latvia. Some threads show shippers that already started working with Tempus. Tempus did not share how many deals it closed, so we do not count them here. LinkedIn messages and phone calls to the reps come on top of the tagged count.
Extra benefits
- Each branch got its own pipeline of shippers, without hiring researchers.
- Outreach ran from the reps' own accounts, so every new contact knew a real Tempus person.
- Clean lists of shipping companies and logistics managers for 6 countries that Tempus can reuse.
- Tested messages in the local languages, ready for the next campaign.
- A low-cost test of Romania before investing more there.
What this could be worth (estimates)
The numbers below are estimates, not results reported by Tempus Trans.
Work the system did
| Item | Estimate |
|---|---|
| Value of outreach work done (activity value, not return) | about €29,300 |
| Hours of manual work saved | about 1,080 hours |
| Full-time months saved | about 7 months |
Projected deals within 12 months
| Scenario | Close rate | Projected deals |
|---|---|---|
| Pessimistic | 5% | 9 |
| Average | 10% | 18 |
| Optimistic | 15% | 27 |
Assumptions: 6,500 decision makers reached by email, €4.50 and 10 minutes of manual work per contact, 160 working hours a month, 180 opportunities, and 5% to 15% of opportunities closed within 12 months, typical for mid-market B2B. Tempus Trans does not share deal sizes, so we do not estimate revenue.
What the client says
We have been working with Vytas now for over 2 years.
What happened next
After the first wave in the Baltics and Poland, Tempus kept the system running. It added a Bulgarian campaign from its Bulgarian office in December 2025 and new lead lists for more countries in spring 2026.
Most companies treat this as a hiring problem
It is a system problem. A freight company does not need more salespeople to reach new shippers in new countries. It needs a system that finds the right logistics managers and starts the conversation for the reps. Lean Sales Systems builds and runs that system. See more results in our case studies.
FAQ
How fast did the first interested shippers reply?
The first campaigns started in May 2025, and the first replies tagged Interested came in the same month. Most months after that brought new interested shippers, with the strongest months in July and August 2025 and again in May and June 2026.
How much time did the Tempus sales team spend?
The reps did not research contacts or send messages. Lean Sales Systems built the lists, wrote the messages in each language and ran the campaigns from the reps' own accounts. The salespeople only answered replies and quoted the freight requests.
Who did the campaigns target?
Logistics, supply chain and transport managers, and owners of smaller firms, at manufacturers, wholesalers, retailers and importers that ship goods across borders. In Poland, 1 list was built from conference exhibitors.
