Fixing Machine - Tip 2

Morning habits

Mr Average. Arrives, grabs a coffee and the sports pages of the local newspaper. After reading the sports news, he or she then proceeds to go through, in order of receiving, each and everyone of their 900 inbox emails. Sometime around mid late morning this chore is finished. During that time they recieve phone calls from various people and can be heard saying 'Ihavent finished reading all my overnight messages so i am not sure what you are talking about. Let me get back to you soon!". Sometimes during the course of a day you will ask this person about a certain message and it will be apparent that even by 3 pm they havent finished checking emails. You are fired!

Star Brokers. Arrives, grabs a coffee, while computer is booting has a quick glance at the sports section of the nespaper and sees that Barcalona have done a number on Manchester United.
Once the computer is up and running the first thing he does is go straight to the Baltic Exchange Daily Market report or a report generated from the fareast (depends on his time zone). First he looks at the BDI to gauge the overall market and then he checks any specific routes important to his customers to see if they have changed. Then he has a quick skim of the fixture reports and a read of the commentary to see if anything major has occured in the world markets.

Key point - within 10 mintes the broker knows what the market is doing.

His second task is to then find an efficient method to go through his inbound emails. I always found the best way is to first do a search with your name in it. Read all the emails that are addressed to you. Then do a search and read all th emails for a particlual vessel or charterer that you are primarily concerned with. Badabang - Within 20 minutes you know exactly what is going on and a good idea of what is urgent and what is not. Then read the paper!

Most importantly you will not commit that cardinal sin of telling a client you are too busy to respond effectively to a phone call because you are still reading your overnight messages.

Being able to respond in a fast and accurate manner to questions regarding the market, a ship or a cargo is a major step to becoming a 'fixing machine'.

Yours
VS