Most onboarding decks cover warehousing footprint, SLA headlines and account management structure. What they rarely cover is how the LSP behaves when volumes spike unexpectedly, how quickly they escalate a service failure or what their subcontractor dependency looks like at peak. Those omissions are not accidental.
The questions that expose operational reality tend to make a pitch uncomfortable. Ask an LSP what percentage of their current client base falls within your volume band and how they prioritise resource allocation when two accounts clash. Ask what triggers a formal escalation versus an informal workaround. The answers tell you more about day-to-day fit than any reference call arranged by their sales team.
Contract terms compound the problem. Minimum volume commitments, liability caps and exit notice periods are often buried or softened in pitch conversations, then hardened at heads-of-terms stage. By that point, the selection decision has already been made emotionally.
Pressure-testing an LSP before signing is not about distrust. It is about building the kind of shared understanding that makes a partnership functional from month one, not month six. Our blog sets out the specific questions worth asking at each stage of the process.
