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Alexander Nowroth
Sales and
Business Models
in the Logistics
Industry
Ensuring Growth with Innovative
Strategies
Sales and Business Models in the
Logistics Industry
Alexander Nowroth
Sales and Business

Models in the Logistics
Industry
Ensuring Growth with Innovative
Strategies
Alexander Nowroth
Lebenswerk Consulting Group
Düsseldorf, Germany
ISBN 978-3-658-39755-5 ISBN 978-3-658-39756-2 (eBook)

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-39756-2
© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Fachme-
dien Wiesbaden GmbH, part of Springer Nature 2023
This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher,
whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation,
reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any
other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation,
computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed.
The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this
publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are
exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use.
The publisher, the authors, and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in
this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher
nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material
contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains
neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
Responsible Editor: Manuela Eckstein

This Springer imprint is published by the registered company Springer Fachmedien Wiesbaden
GmbH, part of Springer Nature.
The registered company address is: Abraham-Lincoln-Str. 46, 65189 Wiesbaden, Germany
For Melody and Ella Grace, to whom I
owe my personal growth.
Foreword
This book is a novelty. For the first time, the currently prevailing unhealthy
balance of power in shipping is so clearly brought to the fore, namely the one
between the shipping companies and the forwarders. The disruption caused by
the shipping companies and its consequences for customers, the supply chain and
the healthy middle are not only shown in this book, but also questioned, and the
effects on the end customer are set out. The current situation affects large and
small companies and threatens to destroy the entrepreneurial middle class, an
essential part of the economy.
And for another reason this book is a novelty: It deals constructively with
sales in the logistics industry. Since there is almost no literature on sales in
logistics, this area has hardly developed professionally and is often still very
traditional. Alexander Nowroth's book finally creates the basis to take the next
step—and he takes this step himself in practice.
The importance of cooperation between the various stakeholders is empha-
sized in the different chapters of the book, because in today's world it is of great
importance to create and maintain togetherness in order to be able to move for-
ward progressively. The necessary communication and cooperation challenges
each individual team member up to the willingness to take on responsibility
themselves. Appropriate self-motivation, a concrete goal in mind and the assump-
tion of responsibility are an incredibly strong driver for any company. This
applies to the operational area as well as to sales.
Whether the collaboration takes place in the logistics chain between custom-
ers, forwarders and carriers or in sales between the hierarchical levels and teams:
It is and remains the basis for good cooperation and communication. This is made
clear by Alexander Nowroth and questions old structures in which performance is
often not considered objectively or, worse still, only measured in terms of profit-
ability.
VII
VIII Foreword
This book calls for questioning what has become established and regularly
leads the reader onto the path of “continuous improvement”. This and the various
models that Alexander Nowroth shows support the reader in the task of question-
ing his strategy and business model and adapting them to the current situation.
With this book, Alexander Nowroth also provides suggestions for innovation
and progressive progress, which is admittedly a rocky path, but one that must
definitely be taken. However, you don't have to go it alone, because the author
accompanies you with his knowledge and ideas and gives you various kinds of
assistance in your undertaking.
I wish all readers a lot of enjoyment and I am sure that you will smile from
time to time because you have caught yourself or your organization in the wrong
corner for the second, third or even fourth time.
Many thanks, Alexander, for the insights, your constructive criticism and
above all your ideas that you share with us – and not least for the constructive
collaboration.
March 2022 Felix Wenzel

Hamburg, Germany Managing Partner, a. hartrodt GmbH & Co. KG
Preface
The year 2021, in which I began writing this book, will go down in history as the
most extraordinary since the invention of the container in 1956. So many black
swans1were sighted that their number may have exceeded that of the white ones:
just to name a few, the blockade of the Suez Canal by a stranded container ship
and the outbreak of the Corona virus in various Chinese port cities. Explosive,
never considered possible rate increases of up to 1000% led to the fact that the
shipping companies worldwide accumulated a profit of more than 100 billion
dollars in 2021 and 2022. Never before seen capacity bottlenecks in almost all
modalities (in particular containers) and an unending burden on the supply chain
led to a massive strain on all stakeholders involved in logistics. Just before com-
pletion of the original German version of the book in early 2022, the military
conflict between Russia and Ukraine broke out, shaking us all to the core because
of the human suffering it caused. The conflict led to unprecedented sanctions,
which isolated Russia from most of the world's countries. Shipping companies
stopped calling at Russian ports within a very short time, the Trans-Siberian Rail-
way was avoided by many companies and leading forwarders, thus pouring more
water into an already overflowing barrel.
And somewhere in between the front lines of these disruptive developments is
sales. I call sales a “temporary” giant because in 2021 and 2022 you didn't have
to be particularly good to be incredibly successful. After all, all that mattered was
that the logistics companies had freight capacity. If this capacity existed, it was
easy for them to bring it to the insatiable market.
1A black swan is an event that is completely unlikely, completely unexpected, and (almost)
everyone is amazed.
IX
X Preface
You are probably wondering why I wrote this book at a time when many com-
panies were benefitting from the incredible revenue growth and the profits they
had made. The reason why I am writing this book now is, on the one hand, to
examine how the role of sales has changed so rapidly and deeply in such a short
time. Plus, how organisations can safeguard themselves with much more robust
volume growth against the inevitable future big rate decreases. On the other hand,
it is my goal to support organisations in the transition of sales to a hybrid organi-
zational model. Sales is no longer just the front line where solid sales and margin
growth should be ensured. Rather, the sales organization today decisively deter-
mines how innovative a company is and will be in the next few years, because
sales is the first and much earlier than all other departments to notice the game-
changing changes – for example, with regard to customer needs. This is partly
due to the fact that sales enjoys a high degree of trust with its existing custom-
ers. If such a trust relationship exists, we are honest with each other and provide
information that can be of considerable importance with regard to innovations, for
example, and which must be communicated internally into product development.
However, my practice shows that in many cases, due to wrong incentives, out-
dated structures as well as excessive bureaucracy, sales often only inadequately or
not at all meets this role as an innovation driver.
With this book I also hope to close a gap in the professional literature.
Although there are hundreds of books that deal with the topic of sales, there is
none that primarily deals with strategic, transformative issues in logistics sales.
For many years I was successfully employed as a salesperson and sales manager
on different continents in the logistics industry. And from day one it was clear to
me that anyone who calls himself a salesman in the logistics industry is more of a
consultant than just a salesman in the traditional sense.
The job of the salesman is not over with the conclusion of a deal: Because
of the ever-faster innovation cycles, the rapid market changes and the constantly
changing customer needs, sales always has to have its finger on the pulse of the
customer. Day in and day out. They have to point their customers to solutions and
present them with ideas they have not thought of before. During my active time in
sales I went so far as to tell my customers: “My goal is to understand your busi-
ness better than my own.” And I meant it.
In 2016, I finally found my calling when I co-founded a consultancy to share
my expertise and knowledge with other companies, always with the goal of hav-
ing a greater, positive impact on the logistics industry, but also other service
driven industries. Meanwhile, I look back on dozens of successfully completed
projects and countless encounters with wonderful people.
Preface XI
This book is the distillation of my knowledge, my experience gathered in

practice, and my ideas regarding sales in the logistics industry. My intention is
to inspire you in your thinking and acting, and to enable you to make even better
decisions. Therefore, I will deliberately evolve the know-how to a how-to …, that
is, what actually matters in practical implementation.
The structure of the book is quickly explained. First, we focus on strategic
topics, such as renewing the strategy and business model, and then move on to
tactical topics, such as immediately implementable efficiency improvements,
recruiting and cross-selling techniques. I am particularly concerned with the top-
ics of leadership and talent search and also address the question of how to keep
high potentials.
You, dear reader, have a really challenging task ahead of you: transforming
and shaping a sales organization that has been largely static for decades into a
hybrid and perhaps even into a digital organisation one day. I am wishing you that
this book will be a valuable companion on this journey!
Düsseldorf, Alexander Nowroth

December 2022
Contents
1 Upheaval in the Logistics and Sales World: Five Trends You

Need to Know!. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
1.1 Trend 1: Disruption Causes Tension . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
1.2 Trend 2: Exponentially Accelerated Change Requires
Strategic Adjustments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
1.3 Trend 3: Sales Struggles with Bureaucratic Shackles. . . . . . . . . . . . 8
1.4 Trend 4: Sales Becomes More Digital. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
1.5 Trend 5: Closing Rates and “Hit Rates” Gain Importance . . . . . . . . 11
References. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
2 The Most Important Players and Business Models at a Glance. . . . . . 17
2.1 Why a Good Business Model is Essential for Survival. . . . . . . . . . . 17
2.2 The Business Models in the Logistics World. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
2.2.1 Category 1: Capital-Intensive Shipowners and Airlines . . . . 24
2.2.2 Category 2: Less Capital Intensive—Carriers. . . . . . . . . . . . 32
2.2.3 Category 3: Rising Stars—Start-Ups. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44
2.3 How to Adapt a Business Model. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45
2.4 How to Check Your Business Model for its Competitiveness. . . . . . 46
2.5 Defense of the Business Model against Related Industries. . . . . . . . 51
2.6 Derivatives from the Business Model Adaptation for Sales. . . . . . . 52
2.7 Interview on the Topic of Record High Freight Rates. . . . . . . . . . . . 54
References. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57
3 Sales Management: A Guide to Creating a Long-term
Performance Culture . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61
3.1 From an Autocratic to a Meritocratic Leadership Style. . . . . . . . . . . 63
3.1.1 The Unfair Balance of Power and Force. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64
XIII
XIV Contents
3.1.2 Characteristics of a Meritocratic Leadership Style . . . . . . . . 66

3.2 The Basics of a Performance Culture . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 68
3.2.1 Smoothing Disproportionate Performance Distribution . . . . 68
3.2.2 The Right Sales Team Size . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69
3.2.3 Who is Allowed to Stay in the Team? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 70
3.2.4 Increasing Return on Sales. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71
3.2.5 Gross Profit . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71
3.2.6 The SEAL Elite Squad. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72
3.2.7 Virtual Sales Team. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72
3.2.8 The Entrepreneurial Added Value . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73
3.3 Make Recruiting the Best Talent Your Top Priority!. . . . . . . . . . . . . 74
3.4 Stakeholder Management: Efficient Linkage with Operational and
Product-related Departments. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 76
3.5 Weighting of the Incentive System . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77
3.5.1 Progressive Incentive System and Recognition. . . . . . . . . . . 77
3.5.2 New Business Bonus—Extrinsic. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 78
3.5.3 Bonus New Business Profit—Intrinsic. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79
3.6 Remove Typical Performance Obstacles from Your Path . . . . . . . . . 79
3.6.1 Example Bureaucracy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81
3.6.2 Example Pipeline Reports. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 82
References. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 84
4 How to Win and Retain Talent in the Company . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 85
4.1 Three Things You Need to Know Before You Hire a New
Salesperson . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87
4.2 What Really Matters When Hiring New Employees. . . . . . . . . . . . . 91
4.3 How to Structure & to Conduct Successfully the Job Interview
with an Applicant. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91
4.4 Overcoming the Shortage of Skilled Workers. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 95
4.4.1 Solving the Skilled Worker Problem. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 95
4.4.2 Using the Principle of the Wisdom of the Many. . . . . . . . . . 100
4.5 Retaining the Best Salespeople in the Company. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 102
4.5.1 Solving the Resource Problem at the Operational Level. . . . 105
4.5.2 More Conflict Hotspots in Practice. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 106
4.6 Which Skills will be Required in the Future Hybrid Sales. . . . . . . . 109
References. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 111
5 Cross-Selling and Hidden Customer Needs—The Sales Turbo . . . . . . 113
5.1 How a Dream Becomes Reality. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 113
5.1.1 Creating a Culture of Togetherness. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 114
Contents XV
5.1.2 Making Employees Part of the Solution . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 114

5.1.3 Regularly Review and Update the
Cross-Selling Process. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 115
5.2 The Importance of Hidden Customer Needs. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 115
5.3 Determination of the Cross-Selling Potential . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 119
5.4 Practical Guide: Creating a Systemic Cross-Selling
Organization. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 124
5.4.1 The Five Biggest Cross-Selling Killers and
How to Avoid Them. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 124
5.4.2 How to Implement Cross-Selling Based on Six Central
Success Criteria. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 129
5.5 The Implementation Phase of Cross-selling . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 147
References. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 152
Upheaval in the Logistics and Sales
World: Five Trends You Need to Know! 1
 This chapter gives you an overview of the market environment and

profiles the most important protagonists. We intensively deal with the
current, unique market conditions that have led to massive disrup-
tions for many protagonists. Specifically, this is about exponential vs.
linear developments. Here, a guideline is formulated for how an expo-
nential development can be better managed. We also review the indi-
vidual business models and examine which protagonists are currently
and in the foreseeable future under the greatest pressure to change.
In addition, you will receive practical knowledge of how to increase
sales efficiency in the short term.
1.1 Trend 1: Disruption Causes Tension
The traditional business model of the logistics industry and in particular of logis-
tics service providers is facing a disruption that has never been seen before. The
tension between the various service providers has never been more intense than
it is today. Shipping companies and forwarders are exemplary for this: They are
service providers in the classical sense. However, it is the case that the shipping
companies are also service providers for the forwarding companies, after all, as
asset owner they provide the forwarding companies with the transport capacities
for their containers. In parallel, the shipping companies also offer these capacities
to end customers, since they are not necessarily dependent on a forwarder, but can
also ship containers directly with a shipping company. This inevitably leads to a
conflict of interest.
© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Fachmedien Wiesbaden 1

GmbH, part of Springer Nature 2023
A. Nowroth, Sales and Business Models in the Logistics Industry,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-39756-2_1
2 1 Upheaval in the Logistics and Sales World: Five Trends …
In addition, service in the logistics industry leaves much to be desired. So at

any time, around two-thirds of all ships were delayed in 2021 (Weinrich 2021).
Since there are no real alternatives, no forwarder can get around the five larg-
est shipping companies. Neither start-ups nor alternative technologies are able
to physically move containers on the world’s oceans for the foreseeable future.
Alternative transport modes such as rail or intercontinental transport by truck
make up less than one percent of the volume transported by sea from Asia to
Europe. Of course, the shipowners are well aware of this and are pushing ever
harder in order to secure further market share. Consequently, the rationalization
wave of the last ten years has increased the market share of the top five shipown-
ers from 40% in 2010 to just under 65% in 2020.
While this rationalization wave is now slowly ebbing, a new trend is becoming
apparent, namely the increasing hunger of the shipowners for the forwarding mar-
ket. The best example of this is the shipping company Maersk, which in Novem-
ber 2021 took over the German air and sea freight forwarder Senator International
for EUR 556 million (Norddeutscher Rundfunk [NDR] 2021). Although Senator
International is not a heavyweight in the world forwarding market, the company
nevertheless brings enough volume to the table to rank among the top 10 largest
air freight forwarders in Germany (Senator International 2021).
For the forwarders, this development creates an almost insoluble dilemma:
If they want to grow in the area of sea freight, they are inevitably dependent on
shipping companies such as Maersk, MSC, CMA CMG and the other big players,
since a considerable proportion of the business is generated by tenders, and only
the large shipping companies are able to offer the most cost-effective rates.
The takeover of Senator is almost a beacon for the forwarding industry, which
until now has felt safe, as no shipping company has so far entered the tender busi-
ness. But now Maersk can join in this segment in a big way and will become a
little smarter with every tender as regards the shipment data of possible future
customers. This is similar to the principle of machine based learning: Through
processing new data over and over, more and more knowledge and thus more
control over a new business field is gained.
In the field of airfreight, however, the situation looks different, because the
carriers, for example Lufthansa, are not allowed to conclude business directly
with the consignor. This is reserved exclusively for the forwarders, since a for-
warder must always be interposed between the airline and the end customer as a
shipping agent. But thanks to the acquisition of Senator, this business is no longer
safe from Maersk.
Is Maersk therefore a jack-of-all-trades and greedy? This remains to be seen,
but it is clear that nothing is safe from Maersk. And it is by no means unlikely
1.1 Trend 1: Disruption Causes Tension 3
that other large shipping companies—as so often with other groundbreaking

world’s firsts by Maersk—will follow the Maersk example very soon.
The Existence of Many Forwarders is in Danger

When you read the previous sentence, dear reader, you may have been shocked.
Perhaps you work for a forwarder that has been in the market for several genera-
tions, perhaps even for well over a century. How can it be, you now ask yourself,
that what has been achieved in recent years and decades should suddenly become
obsolete?
Of course, the market is much too large to be dominated by shipping companies

alone, but the signs of a massive displacement competition are increasing. The
shipping companies, but also most forwarders, are currently enjoying record prof-
its. Everything points to the fact that the forwarders are doing business as suc-
cessfully as ever and that a decline in freight rates is not to be expected in spite of
all predictions.
Service providers, in particular shipping companies, are no longer willing to
give up any of their margin. In the fourth quarter of 2020 and especially in 2021,
they have become increasingly aware of their power and have realized how lit-
tle power those who cannot provide any shipping space have. This has gone so
far that some desperate forwarders, for example the French logistics company
Geodis, chartered a small container ship at horrendous prices in order to at least
temporarily alleviate the capacity problem for the most affected routes (Whelan
2021). Even some industrial companies followed suit, Costco and Walmart are
two prominent examples (McCarthy 2021).
The explosive increase in freight rates is certainly due to a combination
of several unforeseen factors, but we will have to get used to such events more
and more in the future. And for forwarders it applies that they will have to prove
themselves in a hypercompetitive environment that is fueled by their former loyal
service providers. Last year still partners in the acquisition of large contracts,
today it is quite possible that the shipping company uses its newly gained knowl-
edge advantage to its own advantage and tells the former common customer:
“Load directly with us and save the costs of the forwarder.” Today, it seems, noth-
ing is sacred anymore.
Another fact supports this: Approximately 70 to 75% of containers are bun-
dled in long-term freight rates, and only about 25 to 30% end up on the spot mar-
ket (where freight rates are traded individually at the current day’s price). This
means that it is becoming increasingly difficult for shippers to credibly sell real
differences in their service portfolios to their customers. The main argument for
involving a forwarder has always been that he can find the best logistical solu-
tion for the respective customer and maintain a certain independence in choosing
the service providers. However, this is now diluted by the fact that, for example,
more and more shipping companies are travelling together on certain routes with
so-called “Vessel Sharing Agreements”(VSAs). This is similar to a “light” cartel,
as there is no longer any real competition or it is at least severely restricted. The
competent regulatory authorities could oblige the companies by abolishing these
VSAs—similar to the conference ban of 2005. Whether this will happen remains
to be seen.
The only means available to carriers to counter this existential threat is the
anchoring of systemic capacity to innovate. Only by developing and offering
highly attractive, relevant products can a company secure a dominant position in
certain industries However, the biggest hurdle on the way there is not—as is often
assumed—the lack of innovation competence, but the unshakeable desire and the
understanding that despite current record profits, continuous innovation is indis-
pensable! Success makes you lazy, and such a resounding success as the logistics
industry is currently experiencing makes you complacent and even partially blind.
Let’s take a look at a family-run German logistics company that is part of my
customer base. For example, there is the managing director who is always busy
generating as much new business as possible, driven as he is by sales figures and
various profitability KPIs. Nobody in the company is concerned with the topic
of innovation as long as the good times continue, with the opportunity to make
more money than ever before. First of all, one is inclined to think of oneself and
of today and not of tomorrow. That is human, of course, but is anything other than
conducive to innovation. Innovation means thinking radically differently and at
the same time being open to the fact that one’s own business can move in a com-
pletely different direction.
 Many shipping companies have grown strongly in the last twelve to

eighteen months, so there is a great danger that the organizational
structure has remained unchanged, although it ought to have been
adapted or changed urgently due to the increasing business.
Employees are at the end of their tether in terms of their workload and have no
headspace and even less free capacity remaining to deal with creative, experi-
mental activities. Every minute invested in innovation would be a “lost shipment”
for them. That’s roughly like not wanting to change the tires during a car race
because you’re afraid of losing the time you need to do it. However, the fact that
1.1 Trend 1: Disruption Causes Tension 5
you will gradually become slower with worn-out tires—which stand for an over-
loaded organization in this example—and thus lose the race in the medium term
is ignored.
Being innovative means consciously withdrawing from day-to-day business
and critically examining one’s own business both from a distance and up close.
The “Skunk Works” approach, which was invented for this very purpose, is
known from Silicon Valley (Pratt 2018). Here, a department is de facto hermeti-
cally sealed off from the rest of the company. This allows the employees assigned
to this “skunk” team to concentrate 100% on the development of innovations. If
you now think that this is not possible for you, that you cannot stop the relevant
employees and that you would rather leave the whole thing completely to exter-
nal consultants and other service providers, this can certainly work, but such an
approach entails the not inconsiderable risk that these external consultants will
not gain a deep insight into your business. Ideally, you should work with external
and internal employees together and give them the opportunity to think freely, to
nurture their ideas, possibly to reject them or to check their feasibility. Your motto
can therefore be:
 Precisely because you are so successful, you can afford to take a step
back to take two or three steps forward in the long term through a
serious innovation approach and thus keep your competitors in
check.
It is not so important whether you now make 1.7 or 1.85 billion euros in sales—
especially for family-run companies—but it is all the more important what inno-
vative power you have and whether you also plan for the time that will inevitably
come after the current “high”: namely the crash into more normal realms. Always
keep in mind: the greater the party, the more severe the hangover!
By no means do I want to paint too black a picture, but I absolutely want to
shake you awake, because time and again in my daily work I experience that profit
and sales growth are blindly chased after as if there were nothing more substantial
for the success of the company. At the same time, many company owners swear
that they think fundamentally in the long term and by no means only from quarter
to quarter. However, too rapid growth is unhealthy; this applies not only to chil-
dren, but also to your entire organization. So you should make compromises. Such
a compromise can look like this: you make concessions in terms of sales and profit
growth because your colleagues are getting more and more tired due to excessive
overtime hours leading to more and more avoidable mistakes being made.
1.2 Trend 2: Exponentially Accelerated Change

Requires Strategic Adjustments
The developments described above show how little can be predicted nowadays
and that almost nothing seems impossible anymore. The only way to deal with
this uncertainty is to permanently adapt one’s own strategy and possibly also the
business model to the prevailing circumstances. Let us first deal with the topic of
strategy in times of stormy change.
This is a very difficult undertaking, as strategy is often confused with plan-
ning or, even worse, made into a kind of hybrid: the term “strategic planning”.
The term “strategic planning” is nothing more than an oxymoron, because strat-
egy is something entirely different from a plan. The development of a strategy
is a creative and highly emotional process, because with strategies one thinks in
future states. These must be imaginatively and therefore emotionally conceivable.
A plan, on the other hand, is nothing more than a mere concatenation of different
activities. The saying “Culture eats strategy for breakfast” in this context brings it
to the point:
 “Strategy eats planning for lunch, right after breakfast!”
It is a habit to always pour everything into plans. Creativity and innovation are
much too individual to be able to squeeze them into an Excel cell. But time and
again, various controlling guidelines and other bureaucratic instruments allow the
strategy process to degenerate into a planning process in most companies. The
creativity is left completely on the track.
It is by no means the case that plans make no sense. On the contrary: They are
important in order to be able to organize things or activities in a highly structured
way. Historically, plans used to have a very long horizon, often extending over
three or even five years. This may have worked many years ago, when the world
ticked much slower and the further development was easier to predict. In addi-
tion, plans are primarily designed for linear growth or linear development. How-
ever, they fail completely in the face of exponential change. And it is precisely
these developments that are now encountered much more frequently than linear
ones. Indeed, I would describe the developments since the financial crisis of 2008
as exponential and the years from 2010 as the exponential decade. Just think of
the global population growth, the increase in CO2 emissions, the rapid spread of
the Corona virus and the rapid growth of some highly innovative companies such
as Tesla or Amazon.
1.2 Trend 2: Exponentially Accelerated Change Requires Strategic … 7
THE LOGISTICS INDUSTRY IN 2023
Competition with
unprecedented disruptive
power and speed
More extremes than
equalies
Predicons and historical
values lose their validity
Number of things we
can't control
keeps increasing
Many entrepreneurial
processes are geared
towards linear growth
WE ARE THE FIRST

GENERATION TO HAVE TO Exponential growth
DEAL WITH IT Linear growth
Fig. 1.1 The logistics industry in 2023
Figure 1.1 illustrates what happens when you “rest” on the linear line, that is,
when you notice a relevant exponential development too late. For example, if the
entry of a new competitor or the product launch of another competitor cuts your
own line, it is already much too late to catch up. You will simply be left behind.
The half-life of plans in 2023 is almost zero. For comparison: For my projects,
for example, we plan a maximum of two to four weeks in advance, even if the
entire project duration extends over six or twelve months. Otherwise, too much
can be overlooked on the sidelines, and you run the risk of running in the wrong
direction.
Thus, the “change has changed”, as Garry Hamel already noted a few years
ago (Hamel 2014). This requires that we finally stop wasting time with outdated
planning excesses, that is, no longer try to force the future into a corset that it
doesn’t fit into anyway, and that we accept living with a certain degree of fuzzi-
ness. Today, more than ever, the formula “progress beats perfection” applies. Or,
to put it another way: “The fast eat the slow.” It is high time to deal with other
control elements—also in sales.
The word “controlling” also includes the often negatively perceived term
“control”. I would like to focus in particular on the elimination of control ele-
ments, because, as we will see, the sales performance in many companies is
massively restricted by an almost excessive bureaucracy, which is absolutely
unnecessary or counterproductive.
1.3 Trend 3: Sales Struggles with Bureaucratic

Shackles
The excessive efficiency gains of recent decades have led to enormous bureau-
cratic burdens, with which sales also have to struggle. Did you know that a sales-
person in the logistics industry spends on average only about five to six hours
per week with customer meetings (virtual or analog)? That’s not even 15% of his
working time. The reason for this is too high a burden with avoidable and to a
large extent sales-inhibiting tasks.
I distinguish three types of tasks that concern sales:
1. Revenue-generating tasks (e.g. customer visits, pipeline formation, customer

events)
2. Revenue-preventing, unavoidable tasks (e.g. admin requirements such as travel
expense creation, operational trifles, but also internal meetings, etc.)
3. Revenue-preventing avoidable tasks (e.g. internal meetings, operational tasks,
etc.). These make up a much larger proportion of the tasks of the sales depart-
ment than many salespeople are willing to admit.
I estimate that the revenue-preventing avoidable tasks can make up to 50% of a

salesperson’s weekly hours. This is not solely the responsibility of the salespeo-
ple, as it can also be caused by chaotic meetings that are controlled by sales man-
agement, which distract the sales department from its actual task.
Bureaucratic processes are usually introduced by leaders under the false
assumption that they can control or above all increase the performance of their
employees. Pointless bureaucratic processes, such as excessive travel authoriza-
tion procedures, travel expense accounting and reporting processes, massively
reduce the time available for revenue-generating tasks and demotivate your team!
So I remember that during my time at a publicly traded logistics company,
a simple flight in economy class to a customer in China had to be approved by
the CEO himself. Neither my branch manager nor the regional manager could
1.4 Trend 4: Sales Becomes More Digital 9
THE 4 BIGGEST BUREAUCRACY MONSTERS AND TURNOVER INHIBITORS
ACTIVITIES-
PLANNING &
ACCOUNTING REPORTING
MEETING CULTURE
Excessive
visit reports Frequency & NON-SALES
Necessity ACTIVITIES
Complicated
pipelines Duraon
Travel planning
Any manual Preparaon and Operaonal
Travel expense acvies follow-up acvies
report
Fig. 1.2 The four biggest bureaucracy monsters and sales inhibitors
approve this flight, even though they were responsible for a seven- or eight-digit
budget and disciplinary responsibility for hundreds of employees year after year.
Processes of this kind have one thing in common: They serve to unmask the
two to five percent black sheep who want to cheat the company, but they pun-
ish the 95 to 98% honest employees by condemning them to fill out forms, even
though they could use this time to generate revenue. The result: mediocrity and
service by the book.
In Fig. 1.2 the four biggest bureaucracy monsters are listed. Probably you will
recognize your own company here. We will mainly deal with this in Chap. 2 and 4.
1.4 Trend 4: Sales Becomes More Digital
Selling has become a “commodity” and is too static. This has led, amongst other
things, to the fact that most distribution organizations have become much too
large. On a scale of 1 to 10 (1 = very low, 10 = very high): How static is your
sales organisation? Take a look at all your new business deals from the last twelve
months: How many were analog (including Zoom/Teams) and how many were
digital, i.e. without you coming into contact with the customer face to face? I am
sure that your distribution is rather weakly digital and most of your deals are con-
cluded in an analog manner.
Due to Coronavirus, the average number of personal customer visits will
decrease in the long term. This is because customers simply had to get used to
the fact—whether they wanted to or not—that appointments took place digitally.
This way you could take more appointments per day and felt—subjectively—
more productive, even though the opposite was often the case: From one call
you rushed to the next, and the content and substance were often left behind in
personal conversations. This increases the importance of a personal appointment
all the more. This is especially true if the salesperson is able to achieve a higher
appointment density than the competition. Across all industries, it can be seen
that the salespeople with the highest number of appointments are among the most
successful in their field, in all quantitative categories! That is why it is essential to
focus on tasks that generate sales.
Everyone wants to become increasingly digital, including those who work in
sales, but they are still stuck with the idea that it is better to meet their customers
physically and to communicate with them face to face.
 Interestingly, the Coronavirus pandemic has not led to a digitaliza-

tion push, but rather to a wave of nostalgia à la “How nice it was
when I could still meet my customers”!
Despite all the programs and tools such as Zoom, Teams, Slack and the hardware
available today such as tablets and smartphones, digitalization in sales seems to
bounce off the personal beliefs of salespeople: The physical customer appoint-
ment plays an increasingly important role, the more it is threatened with extinc-
tion. Its supporters emphasize that trust can best be built up during a physical
encounter. If you don’t see each other at all or only digitally, they argue, trust-
building will be significantly more difficult and, as a result, the scope or size of
the deal will be substantially impaired. In addition, in times of crisis, people tend
to focus on what they already know and what they have had good experiences
with in the past. This presents another hurdle in the attempt to convince a cus-
tomer to switch service providers in an already difficult time.
On the other hand, proponents of digital distribution are of the opinion that
all this is old hat and outdated thinking, because thanks to their algorithms and
1.5 Trend 5: Closing Rates and “Hit Rates” Gain Importance 11
excellent data preparation, companies can very precisely articulate what they
want. This also explains the trend of recent years that more and more tenders are
taking place only online or partly in the so-called e-bidding process. The advan-
tage of this is that such a tender is much more cost-effective—for both sides:
Hardly any or no appointments have to be kept, communication takes place
exclusively by e-mail, and the input of rates or conditions creates an immediate
obligation.
I am convinced that for really important deals, personal exchange is essential.
However, I think that the number of customers who actually have to be visited in
person to be closed is massively overestimated by most salespeople and also sales
managers!
1.5 Trend 5: Closing Rates and “Hit Rates” Gain

Importance
Most sales organizations stay far below their potential because they grossly over-
estimate their abilities, have no knowledge whatsoever regarding their “hit rate”,
and lack any discipline whatsoever. This is evidenced by the evaluations of doz-
ens of conversations with salespeople and their sales statistics. Let’s start with the
statistics and take a look at the success rate:
Assuming a success rate of 15% for tenders and large offers, this means that
success was not achieved in 85% of cases. To put it bluntly: time (working time)
and money (wages) were wasted. Some will now argue that this is part of the
nature of sales and that one simply has to accept misses if one wants to be suc-
cessful. The comparison with a striker in soccer is often made here, who finally
also records more misses on the opposing goal than goals. It is all the more
worthwhile to deal with techniques that increase the probability of success and
reduce the duration of the sales cycle. A success rate of 15% means a hit rate of
(100 / 15 = 6.7) that only about every seventh customer conversation is success-
ful (= success). Consequently, it must be the goal of the sales management to
increase the success rate as much as possible. Here are four tips from practice:
1. Continuous, rolling measurement from the last four quarters

2. Pre-selection of suitable new business
3. Number of offers sent to a verified decision maker
4. Number of offers in which a meeting was agreed before the offer was made
The problem is that—and this really affects all industries—90 to 95% (!) of sales-
people have no idea what their closing rate is, but they act on feeling at best. If it
doesn’t work out so well, you keep hearing the same excuses: reference is made
to a “difficult market situation”, “poor rates” and a “weak product support” or
generally to the fact that the current year is simply a “difficult year”. These are all
just tired excuses, because there are also salespeople and whole companies that
act and grow much faster and sustainably than their competitors.
Do the following thought experiment: Imagine you ask your sales team who,
in terms of their likelihood of closing, thinks they are better than the sales aver-
age. The overwhelming majority of those asked will raise their hand without
thinking twice. Then follow up with the question of who has already measured
their own likelihood of closing and knows the team’s average likelihood of clos-
ing.
If you ask the same question in relation to driving, then just under 80% (by the
way, mainly the male respondents) will report here as well. In other words, the
majority of your salespeople overestimate their abilities and thus also their own
closing rate. As a result, their sales pipelines are completely underdeveloped and
significantly below the level at which they should actually be. Worse still, most
salespeople do not even know what their closing rate and their hit rate are.
I experience this again and again when I ask salespeople for an assessment of
their closing rate in project workshops. After an initial assessment, I ask them to
check their estimates against the numbers from the last twelve months. Most of
them then open their eyes in disbelief, because the actual closing rate turns out
to be significantly lower than their estimate. This is also one of the main reasons
why the sales organization does not even work at cost in most companies. There
is no or only insufficient clarity about the closing rate and the hit rate.
Online tools such as freight calculators or tendering tools are much further
ahead in this respect, as they are incorruptible machines or computer programs.
The question now is: Is the static trade phasing itself out? The answer is a clear
no if you face the described activities resolutely. You do this as follows:
a. Closing Rate and Hit Rate

First, measure these two criteria once per quarter, and do so rolling for the last
four quarters. This means that in the first quarter of 2022 you will look at Q1
2021 to Q4 2021 and at the next measurement in the second quarter of 2022 you
will look at Q2 2021 to Q1 2022 (etc.). You measure the closing rate by simply
dividing the number of won tenders and large offers (attention: no spot quotes) by
the number of tenders you have participated in. The resulting percentage is your
completion probability.
The hit rate is now obtained by dividing 100 by the completion probability.
The following is a calculation example:
Calculation Example Hit Rate
• Last 4 quarters: 15 Tenders

• 2 won
• 2 / 15 × 100 = 13.3 % closing rate
• Hit-Rate = 100 / 13,3 = 7.5
– The potential in the pipeline must therefore be 7.5 times as high as
the volume, i.e. the container and airfreight volumes/gross freight
forwarding turnover /gross profit (GP) or the sales target, in order to
be able to achieve it realistically!
– Important: Measure continuously once per quarter for the last four
quarters!
• Target: GP of 250,000 euros p.a. (revenue target: 2,500,000 euros p.a.)
• Current hit rate 1:10
• Pipeline: Volume/Revenue/GP or sales target × 10!
– FOCUS on pre-qualified potential
– FOCUS on potential with decision maker access
– Continuous “replenishing” of the pipeline with new matching potential
b. Strength of Pipeline
As you now know, the hit rate is your multiplier for the amount of potential that
must be in your pipeline (or your team’s) in order to have any realistic chance of
achieving your sales target.
Exercise
As already described briefly above, ask the members of your team once to
assess themselves where their hit rate is and then show them a comparison
measurement with the “actual” data!
In addition, break down where the hit rate differs for different sales cat-
egories (e.g. sea freight or airfreight business).
If the new business target is one million euros and your probability of
success is 10%, this means that the pre-qualified potential must always be
10 million euros! This is real, realistic potential.
In other words, if a customer awards a total of 15 million euros and

you know that there will be multiple awards, the potential should only be
3 million euros. And only this counts for the consideration of your pipeline
strength.
This also answers the question of which numbers to use for a pipeline.
c. Sales Team’s Engagement with the Achieved Numbers

Everyone who wants to be part of your team has to be able to recite these num-
bers in their sleep. If this is not the case, the relevant person is simply too expen-
sive for you because they can never have predictable success!
Your meetings should revolve around the changes in values and what you as a
team can do to improve the ratio of sales time to won deals.
It may be that in one or two quarters the hit rate deteriorates, for example for
sea freight. This means—provided you recognize this in time due to your regu-
lar measurement—that you can then counter with a campaign concerning other
products. You can measure this quite simply with your CRM system (Customer
Relationship Management System). If this is not possible, it is advisable to check
whether this function can be programmed or whether your CRM system should
be scrapped.
Two things that are related to the coronavirus crisis are extremely dangerous
for sales organizations in the logistics industry: On the one hand, you don’t even
have to be really good to sell successfully. Primarily, it is about capacities, and
those who have a strong product behind them can unload these capacities within
a very short time due to the exploding demand. Those who do not have these
capacities have almost no chance of being successful at least in sea freight. On
the other hand, the already mentioned exorbitant evolution of freight rates is to be
mentioned. This obscures the sense of how successful one actually is. The follow-
ing example illustrates this:
Example
Assuming you shipped 100 containers from the Far East to Europe for a cus-
tomer in 2020. Since you made 2000 euros in sales and 10% profit per con-
tainer, the sales were 200,000 euros and the profit was 20,000 euros. Even if
the volume of containers halved from 100 to 50, you still generated twice as
much sales and profit as the year before if the freight rates quadrupled and the
profit margin remained the same! ◄
In this context, a proverb comes to mind that says: “Give a man money and power
and find out his true character.” It is admittedly not easy to stay grounded with
the current freight rates and the profits being achieved, and it requires a certain
amount of humility to consistently look at the volume development (e.g. the num-
ber of 20 ft standard containers or the weight breakable by airfreight). This is a
question of constant reflection and questioning of one’s own status quo. The fol-
lowing questions will help you find the right answers:
• How strongly is my customer portfolio geared towards a particular prod-

uct or geographical area?
Most salespeople have a certain “favorite product”, for example, sea freight
or airfreight, which they are very good at and with which they are particularly
familiar. While it is good to have very good knowledge of a product and thus
be able to exude a great deal of self-confidence in the sales conversation, too
much focus is dangerous: What happens, for example, if the market is sud-
denly saturated, if there is no more capacity available, or if the sector in which
the relevant salesperson is operating is heavily affected by the effects of the
Coronavirus crisis? It is better to bet on different horses: IT solutions, sustain-
ability solutions (e.g. CO2 calculator) and other more complex products that
include a consulting element in the acquisition.
• What data insight do I have regarding a product of my company? What is
withheld from me?
It is not uncommon for sales to have to achieve ambitious goals, but manage-
ment only grants them very limited data access. This can result in sales having
no or only insufficient knowledge of the product and margins, and the acquisi-
tion process being unnecessarily prolonged. Do it differently, do it better!
• How can I sell tried and tested products in a more innovative way?
Let me explain this point using an example: If a customer regularly or semi-
annually carries out a tender because he does not trust the market, the seller is
well advised to consider how a different approach might look: For example,
he could offer a two or three year validity, which would bind the customer for
longer, but save him good money compared to the quarterly rates. At the same
time, the customer must deliver a certain volume minimum—similar to what
has been the case in contract logistics and the express sector for decades. A
nice side effect of this variant: The business and growth become much more
predictable.
 The higher the rise, the deeper the fall. Is your team mentally pre-
pared for this?
Conclusion There will be a consolidation of freight rates one way or the other,
the question is only when this will be the case. On the one hand, the rates have
never been at such a high level, and on the other hand, rate volatility is as certain
as rain in Seattle. However, the level will be slightly higher than the starting level.
An old danger is always to see success as a constant. Therefore, it should be one
of your most important tasks to ground the sales in this respect.
In Chap. 2 we now turn to the most important business models in the logistics
industry and find out how we can create a future-oriented, resilient model for the
future.
References
Hamel G (2014) Manage Change in a Hyper-Changing World. Published by Tim Ragan.

https://timragan.wordpress.com/2014/07/17/gary-hamel-change-itself-has-changed/.
Last access on 17th February 2022.
McCarthy K (2021) Costco, Walmart rent out own shipping containers amid supply chain
hiccups ahead of holidays. In: ABC News, 29th September 2021. https://abcnews.
go.com/GMA/Living/costco-walmart-rent-shipping-containers-amid-supply-chain/
story?id=80298745. Last access on 14th February 2022.
Norddeutscher Rundfunk (NDR) (2021) Reederei Maersk übernimmt Hamburger Luft-
frachtspedition. In: NDR.de, 2nd November 2021. https://www.ndr.de/nachrichten/ham-
burg/Reederei-Maersk-uebernimmt-Hamburger-Luftfrachtspedition,maersk300.html.
Pratt MK (2018) SkunkWorks project (Skunk Works). Published by Techtarget.com.
https://www.techtarget.com/searchcio/definition/skunkworks. Last access on 17th Feb-
ruary 2022.
Senator International (2021) Top 10 of most successful German Air Freight forwarders.
In: Senator International, 26th March 2021. https://www.senator-international.com/en/
news/news-detail/article/top-10-of-most-successful-german-air-freight-forwarders.html.
Weinrich R (2021) Schiffe unpünktlich wie nie zuvor. In: Eurotransport.de, 8th Novem-
ber 2021. https://www.eurotransport.de/artikel/container-chaos-haelt-weiter-an-schiffe-
unpuenktlich-wie-nie-zuvor-supply-chain-gestoert-11195101.html. Last access on 14th
February 2022.
Whelan S (2021) Geodis the latest forwarder to dip its toe into the charter waters. In: The
Loadstar, 12th January 2021. https://theloadstar.com/geodis-the-latest-forwarder-to-dip-
its-toe-into-the-charter-waters/. Last access on 14th Februar 2022.
The Most Important Players and
Business Models at a Glance 2
 What distinguishes a bad from a good and a good from an excel-

lent business model? There are hundreds, if not thousands, of books
on this topic, but none that specifically address the logistics service
industry. The following remarks should therefore not be added to the
mass of existing publications, but should rather delimit the different
business models of the most important players in the logistics service
industry from each other. I would also like to show how the transition
to an excellent business model succeeds, because this is indispensable
for long-term competitive advantage and margin growth.
2.1 Why a Good Business Model is Essential for

Survival
First of all, it is important—as with so many things—to come up with a clear

definition. Did you know that there is no generally accepted definition of the term
“business model”? Let’s try it anyway: A business model is strongly simplified
the way money is earned. I go one step further, because nowadays the justifica-
tion for the existence of the company must also arise from the business model. In
plain language: A business model must be constantly adapted, for example to a
new product.
First of all, to make money: This can be done in different ways, for example
by selling products online or offline, automated by virtual bots or analog by sales-
people. Or by so-called omnichannel, that is, numerous different communication
channels (Internet, radio, Google Ads, etc.). In plain text:
© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Fachmedien Wiesbaden 17

GmbH, part of Springer Nature 2023
A. Nowroth, Sales and Business Models in the Logistics Industry,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-39756-2_2
18 2 The Most Important Players and Business Models at a Glance
 The business model is the heart of a company. It describes how a

company generates revenue and is constantly adapted to changes in
market conditions to make the company future-proof.
Without an excellent business model, a logistics company is not future-proof. It

doesn’t matter whether it’s a carrier, like a shipping company, an international
logistics company, or a 4PL (4th Party Logistics Provider).
Let’s start with what makes a bad business model. Here the focus is on very
short-term profits, for example, quarterly. Jeff Bezos, owner and long-time CEO
of Amazon, was congratulated a few months ago by analysts for his excellent
quarterly results and then asked if he wasn’t particularly proud of his company’s
performance this quarter. He replied that the said quarterly result had been con-
ceived two to three years ago and that the current good figures were the fruits of
work back then. (Channel 24 2020) In other words, Amazon is already dealing
with the 2025 quarterly targets in 2022. Planning three years in advance is not
particularly spectacular (since many companies are specifically dealing with the
next three to five years), but the way in which quarterly results are planned in
advance so consistently and radically, and thus questioning one’s own status quo
and never being satisfied with being number one, is new. A bad business model
is primarily focused on short-term profit and inflexible. Let’s look at some well-
known negative examples:
Examples
In 2007, Nokia had a global market share of around 50% for mobile phones,
which was unimaginable at the time. Within the following six years, this share
fell to 3.5% (Lee 2013). The reason for this was that the Nokia managers were
looking back at the past successes and—instead of taking risks and being
brave to tackle the next innovation—they were disproportionately concerned
with the optimization of the past.
The same fate befell the company Quelle in Germany. Perhaps some may
will still remember the thick book-like catalogue that arrived by mail every
year and in which you could choose the things you liked. At the end of the
1990s, Quelle even had one of the world’s most powerful shipping manage-
ment systems (Demel and Birkenstock 2017), but it missed the jump into the
digital age and did not invest in its Internet presence in time. ◄
These examples show that a business model must be constantly adapted to both
market and customer needs in order for the relevant company to remain success-
2.1 Why a Good Business Model is Essential for Survival 19
ful in the future. This is especially true and particularly true for corporate lead-
ers who believe that their organization is an impregnable fortress. I remember the
CEO of a well-known airline who, at a large logistics congress in 2018, claimed
in his keynote speech that his company could not be “disrupted”. This may ini-
tially appear to be plausible, as an airline is extremely capital intensive. What the
good man probably considered to be the least “disruption risk” was the pandemic
that spread across the globe a little later, forcing his proud company to accept
billions of euros in state aid to avert bankruptcy. We see: The disruption of a busi-
ness model can take place in very different ways—not only on the part of the
competition, but also through external circumstances.
Thinking of a business model only from the perspective of competition is
no longer enough today. However, it is a very good beginning, because history
teaches us that companies that have been in the lead for a long time are hardly or
not at all concerned with new business models. Apple is a good example of the
opposite: With the bold iTunes Store at the time, the company created a really
clever new business model that also heralded the final end of the lucrative CD
sales of the established major record companies.
What must the Nokia managers have thought when the Apple people started
thinking about the smartphone in a completely new way in 2007? Not only with
a much larger screen, without any buttons and with a closed system (from which
it is so difficult for the customer to break out) as well as coupled with iTunes—
which in turn created a completely new business model!
What did the VW and BMW managers think when they learned about the
beginnings of Tesla and when Elon Musk announced that he would sell his vehi-
cles directly to end customers through so-called “Experience Stores”, which com-
pletely turned the dealer business model upside down? I remember very well the
Australia manager of one of the largest German supplier companies who four
years ago predicted a dark future for Tesla. So it is this feeling of security and
thinking from a size perspective that will eventually be the downfall.
So a good business model is up to date and does generate profits, but it is not
as fast in adapting to the respective circumstances as an excellent business model.
The Three Business Model Categories

We now divide the logistics service industry into three different categories, which
have partly the same or also completely different business models:
• Category 1: Highly capital intensive

This category includes companies that are highly capital and asset intensive,
such as shipping companies or airlines. These companies have the disadvan-
tage that they have to incur very high capital costs to create their offer (of the
same assets such as ships and planes), to operate them and to expand. Their
great advantage is that it is very difficult for their competitors to jeopardize
their business model—due to the high material and financial entry barriers.
• Category 2: Low capital intensity
These are companies that are less to moderately capital intensive, such as
freight forwarders, ship brokers or logistics real estate developers. Most of
these companies maintain their own or partly own fleets or a global office net-
work and have often been around for 30 to 50 years, in some cases for 100
years or more.
• Category 3: Start-ups/Post-Start-ups
These often copy the existing business model of Category 2, but due to the
high digitalization of the processes, they can realize this business model at
much lower costs. In addition, these companies operate highly automated, so
that a higher turnover per FTE (Full Time Employee) is possible and the man-
tra is not “More turnover = more employees”, but “More turnover = higher
scalability” and a dynamically increasing result per employee is achieved.
The business models of Category 2 are under the strongest pressure, as they are—
as already mentioned briefly—endangered by the technical component of Cate-
gory 3 and questioned in their existence by Category 1.
 A missing or insufficient further development of the business model

can mean the death of the respective company!
A good diagram that really shows everyone the danger of an exponentially

increasing development is Fig. 2.1. You can see a linear curve that represents the
linear growth of a company. Most processes in companies (budget and planning
phases) are based on linear growth because this was the most common develop-
ment in many areas a few years ago. Only in recent years have there been a num-
ber of exponential developments such as:
• CO2 emissions caused by humans,

• population growth,
• increase in heat and rain periods,
• increase in mental illnesses among workers,
• increasing amount of information that a person has to process every day,
• increasing sales and market share of new market participants.
LINEAR VS. EXPONENTIAL GROWTH
1000
800
600
400
200
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
Exponenal Growth Linear growth
Fig. 2.1 Linear vs. Exponential Growth
This list could be continued indefinitely. The examples given may be very differ-
ent, but they share one important aspect: they are difficult or impossible to pre-
dict!
So how can it be possible to keep this development in check, for example
when it comes to the growing market share of an important competitor? The
only, in my opinion, effective recipe is the continuous rethinking, adaptation and
optimization of one’s own business model. Inseparably connected with it is the
innovative power, i.e. the creation of new products that prove themselves on the
market. For this you need a good portion of humility and the serious question-
ing of your own status quo. Probably the aforementioned companies Nokia and
Quelle did not have or did not do just that.
It seems to me that many companies have lost courage since the optimization
excesses of the 2000s, which were called all sorts of nice names like Six Sigma or
Kanban. The reason for this is as simple as it is dangerous: Due to the efficiency
gains through the permanent optimization of processes, at a certain point no one
dares to question a process or a product as such. The result: The products wear
out over time, meet increasingly less enthusiasm among customers, and new com-
petitors invent completely new products or business models.
Because large corporations have difficulty keeping up with exponential change
due to their wealth of processes and the resulting excessive bureaucracy, they set
up innovation hubs, so-called “accelerators” or “venture capital funds”, in order
to buy innovative creativity. This may be justified in some cases, for example to
develop new technologies, but all too often this is associated with the unrealis-
tic expectation or hope that this will change the entire company innovatively. As
a result, most “accelerator” programs fail or are discontinued after a very short
time. It would be better to systematically make the entire company agile, fast
and resilient against disruptive competition. The central core of this project is the
business model.
How do you know that you need to adjust your business model to the changed
circumstances or even need a completely new business model? The following
questions will help you find an answer:
• Have your main revenue drivers of the last five years stagnated or even
declined?
• Is the percentage of revenue from products that are less than three years old
less than 10%?
If you answer these questions with a yes, then it is high time to get to work! The
first step is therefore:
 Take a close look at the needs of your customers!
In order for the existing business model to be optimized at all, you need to take a
close look—and I really mean take a close look—at the needs of your customers.
The following questions will help here:
• How well do you know the existing and anticipated needs of your customers?
With the latter, it is important to clearly distinguish between what a customer
wants, and what she actually needs.
• What feedback is currently being provided by all functions in direct customer

contact (Customer Service, Operations, Sales) to Product Development?
• What platforms are available for exchange?
You must also deal with geopolitical developments that can affect your busi-
ness model, such as global pandemics or natural disasters. For this you need risk
management that not only assesses the risks regarding the current impact on the
company, but makes it clear how resilient the business model is against a similar
future crisis. I already mentioned the CEO of the aviation group who did not take
a pandemic into account in his remarks. Was this really one of the much-quoted
“black swans”, an unexpected or unlikely event? Not at all, because pandemics
have always existed in human history. The best known is the Black Death in the
fourteenth century. A less well-known but very deadly pandemic was the Spanish
flu, which raged all over the world a little over 100 years ago. But at that time the
world was in no way comparable to ours today in terms of globalization. As more
and more parts of the planet were settled and an exponentially increasing amount
of travel was recorded, but hardly any investments were made in a global pan-
demic early warning system, it was only a matter of time before something like
the Coronavirus pandemic occurred.
You may now object that one can always be always wiser after the fact. How-
ever, it must be countered that there were indeed voices that warned in good time
before such an event, including Bill Gates in a much-publicized speech from
2015 (TED 2015). In a style almost reminiscent of Orwell, this speech seems
almost ghostly realistic when you look at its wording today. Bill Gates predicted
that if something would kill several million people in the next few years, it would
be a pandemic and not a war. Nevertheless, the states had invested disproportion-
ately more in military armament than in an effective pandemic prevention sys-
tem. At that time, the Ebola virus raged in West Africa, and it remained a regional
event because the virus was not transmitted through the air and, secondly, the
often poor residents of West Africa were only able to travel internationally in
exceptional cases.
You can see from this that when revising and developing a business model,
you also need to deal with scenarios that may occur. If you imagine such scenar-
ios, you can compare them with the current business model and check how stable
this is against such events. Data-based tools like EIDOS® can help with this.
Let’s now take a look at the most common business models in the logistics
service industry and how scenarios can be developed to be as resilient as possible
for the future.
2.2 The Business Models in the Logistics World
2.2.1 Category 1: Capital-Intensive Shipowners

and Airlines
Market Share Overview or the Oligopoly of the Top Five

On the one hand there are the container shipping companies: an oligopoly in
which the top five control around 65% of the entire market (see Fig. 2.2) and
whose market share has increased massively in the last ten years. The shipping
companies are extremely capital-intensive and, after a break of about five years,
have been competing to place orders for new ships with a berth capacity of up to
24,000 TEU (TEU = 20 ft standard container) between 2019 and 2021. Typically,
the delivery of the completed ships takes place two and a half to three years after
the order is placed.
MARKET PART
Maersk 17%
Mediterranean Shg Co
(MSC) 15.9%
COSCO Group 12.9%
CMA CGM Group 12.4%
HAPAG-Lloyd 7.1%
ONE (Ocean
Network express) 6.5%
Evergreen Line 5.2%
HMM Co Ltd 2.9%

Yang Ming Marine
Transport Corp. 2.6%
Zim 1.5%
0% 2.5% 5% 7.5% 10% 12.5% 15% 17.5% 20%
Fig. 2.2 Market share of shipping companies. (Source: Statista 2022)

2.2 The Business Models in the Logistics World 25
On the other hand, there are forwarders and, as well as, companies that send con-
tainers to shipping companies without the help of forwarders. Forwarders could
not be more different to shipping companies in terms of their market position-
ing than they are currently: They are part of an extremely fragmented market in
which the top five account for less than 10% (!) of the world market. In addi-
tion, they are less capital-intensive, that is, not a single forwarder has a ship with
which he could cover the container transport volume attributable to himself.
Rather, the forwarders take on the role of a middleman, since they are positioned
between the customer and the shipping companies with regard to the mediation of
the transport volume. Their position is similar to that of an online platform for the
mediation of air travel, which is positioned between the airlines and the customer.
The “Amazon effect” in the Logistics Industry

The notorious “Amazon effect” has now also affected the logistics industry. With
the term “Amazon effect” I refer to the trend that a company is striving to control
every single point of contact of a customer with the acquired service itself. Since
the shipping companies are increasingly confident that the key assets (e.g. ships
and terminals) are subject to their control in the supply chain, they are strongly
interested in eliminating the forwarder as an intermediary in order to have direct
access to the customer and to control the entire process.
However, forwarders currently still offer a variety of services that some shipping
companies do not yet have in their portfolio (e.g. customs clearance, LCL and so-
called Buyer’s Consol). In order to close this portfolio gap, in particular the lead-
ing shipping companies have integrated a large number of traditional forwarders
into their respective companies in the past twelve months (see MAERSK with
Damco and CMA CGM with Ceva) and have acquired additional expertise (e.g.
customs clearance agents).
Another very important component in this market is the massively increased
demand for transport capacity from China, which is partly due to the fact that
people worldwide are increasingly doing their shopping online during the Cor-
onavirus pandemic. A significant proportion of the goods affected come from
China. So certainly part of the enormous increase in freight rates is due to the
sharply increased demand. But that’s not even half the truth!
Good Times for Shipping Companies

Almost all shipping companies have been writing off high losses over the last five
years and have now recognized the opportunity: a demand for ship space that has
increased massively within a short period of time and no possibility to increase
freight capacity (neither by themselves nor by a competitor, which is related to
the years-long lead times of the shipyards). In addition, there was the Suez Canal
crisis (you remember the Ever Given, which blocked the Suez Canal for eight
days in March 2021) and repeated local Coronavirus outbreaks in China, as a
result of which important ports were shut down to a few percent of their actual
capacity.
In the first half of 2021, Maersk achieved a staggering net profit of $6.5 billion.
Estimates suggest that the container shipping industry will generate a net profit of
more than $100 billion for the first time in its history in 2021 (Holt 2021). Pretty
much the same can be said about 2022. This makes it possible to build up huge
cash reserves, with which new markets can be opened up and competitors can be
taken over excellently. This is what happened at Maersk: The Danish container
giant has taken over the Dutch KEP provider B2C (Maersk 2021b). Furthermore,
Maersk has acquired LF Logistics, an Asian logistics provider, for more than $3.6
billion (Gronholt-Pedersen and Jacobsen 2021).
The opposite—taking capacities out of the market—is, on the other hand,
possible in the short term and without any problems. This happened above all in
2020, when the share of so-called blank sailings amounted to 15% and was sig-
nificantly higher than in previous years (ShipInsight 2021).
In view of the good market situation, the question arises as to whether it is at
all possible to “disrupt” the business model or this unfolding unbreakable oligop-
oly of the shipping companies. Various scenarios are conceivable:
a. External Competitively Delimiting Influence: Inshoring Production

You avoid transporting the goods by “Inshoring”. This means that production
capacities are deliberately built up in the country in which the respective product
is sold most. In an interview that n-tv conducted with me in November 2021, I
put forward the thesis that the persistently high freight prices will also prompt
established import companies to rethink their procurement. For most import com-
panies, the business model has been to produce cheaply in Asia and then bring
the goods to the European sales market in a cost-effective way. In view of the
currently high freight prices, this business model is obsolete because it simply
does not pay off anymore. Furthermore, the increasing “green consciousness” is
influencing purchase decisions, so that Inshoring is further accelerated. You can

read the complete interview in Sect. 2.7.
b. External Competitively Delimiting Influence: 3D Printing

Important parts or machines can now be produced using a 3D printer. Whole
houses or cars can be produced in this way—not yet in the usual quality of sepa-
rately produced products, but also the quality of 3D printing is increasing rapidly.
The KEP companies FedEx (Scott 2018) and UPS (Weize 2016) take this dis-
ruptive scenario so seriously that they are pumping massive amounts of money
into research and development of their own 3D printing technology in order to
be leaders in these solutions in the coming years. The calculation behind this: the
declining volume of shipments is to be compensated by new sources of income!
c. Competitively Relevant Influence: Consumer Behavior

Similar to the trend of eating vegetarian or vegan only, a trend may develop
according to which products that have to be brought to us over long distances
are less desirable for certain consumers because the long transport route has
harmful environmental impacts. It is conceivable that these products are labeled
with information about the transport-related CO2 emissions—similar to the cal-
orie information on food packaging. However, changing consumer behavior is
extremely costly and laborious: Not even one percent of all private customers
at Lufthansa decide to pay a surcharge for the CO2 compensation of the flight
booked by them (Hegmann 2021). The influence of consumer behavior on the
transport volume of the container industry therefore remains questionable.
d. External Competition Influence: The First Digital Shipping Company

The establishment of a new shipping company by the forwarders is probably the
most radical way to make life difficult for the established shipping companies.
For many years it has been unattractive for investors to invest in shipping com-
panies or even to seek majority stakes, as there have been many good, but also
extremely bad years. The main reason for this are the enormous capital costs,
which have to be borne for the purchase of the ships as well as permanently for
their maintenance and technological upgrades.
Now the oligopoly is experiencing good times without any end in sight. This has
not happened even during the conference times in the 1990s and 2000s: Then
whole areas of navigation were divided between the shipping companies in
annual conferences, before the European Union put an end to it in 2006.
As with any boom, there are some stories s that look much better than others.
The key to a shipping company is the maintenance costs and the art of ensur-
ing the maximum and permanent utilization of transport capacities. Not least for
this reason, the shipping companies have a great need for digitalization, but there
are individual exceptions. Hapag-Lloyd, for example, currently earns the most per
container because the group has very consistently digitized all value-adding pro-
cesses already and at any time measures the revenues of its customers or with
booking software can optimally design the offer for profit maximization.
One scenario would be for an investor or shipping consortium to purchase a
slightly struggling or comparatively weak shipping company, modernize it in its
entirety, and thus build up a counterweight to the shipping companies. A disad-
vantage of this scenario would be that the forwarders involved would certainly
become “persona non grata” with other shipping companies. But how bad would
that really be, especially since most forwarders already feel like this because of
the poor service, the often-complained-about unreliability, and other problems.
One would have to check whether such an approach can be excluded on competi-
tion law grounds. A similar construct has existed for years and very successfully:
the intermodal association “Kombiverkehr” (Kombiverkehr Deutsche Gesells-
chaft für kombinierten Güterverkehr mbH & Co. KG 2022). It is characterized by
a peaceful and fair coexistence between 230 (!) logistics service providers and the
monopoly Deutsche Bahn. The transport companies involved in Kombiverkehr
KG and DB Cargo are focusing on expanding the joint network into a real timeta-
ble operation.
Overall, it must be noted that the container shipping industry is much less trans-
parent than many other large industries and is long overdue for a disruption. But
instead, a rationalization has been taking place for years, in which the big ones
absorb the small ones. But since the fast are eating the slow in many places today,
the scenario described previously is not entirely unrealistic. For this, a small
group of financially strong logistics service providers is required, which acquire
a medium-sized shipping company and thus ensure a little more equality of arms.
Arms Race and Bet on Economies of Scale

And what are the world’s largest shipping companies doing? Their calculus is
very simple: building sheer size. As you may know, MSC and Maersk have been
locked in a bitter battle for the top spot with the largest market share (by con-
tainer berth capacity in the total fleet) in the container shipping industry for about
two decades. Currently, Maersk is just ahead of MSC, but will very likely have to
hand over the top spot to the Italians for the first time in the next twelve months.
Both companies then have a global market share of just under 20% (!) (Statista
2022). This is completely unthinkable for any other area in the logistics industry
with a comparable size of market.
Achieving such a market share cannot be accomplished purely organically. There-

fore, in particular, Maersk has systematically acquired other competitors in the
last 20 years: P&O Nedloyd and Hamburg Süd are the most prominent examples.
The more containers a ship can take on, the better the overall costs can be allo-
cated to the containers and thus the margin can be increased. What this can lead
to in times of massive freight price increases is shown by a look at Maersk’s bal-
ance sheet figures for the first half of 2021: an operating profit of an amazing
6.5 billion US dollars is reported there (Maersk 2021a). In other words: over a
billion dollars in profit per month! Maersk has more than tripled its profit com-
pared to the same period last year. Of course, the management of the company
will assume that it is rightfully so successful, after it had suffered massive losses
mainly in the years up to 2018. Nevertheless, it is never good for the innovation
process if only a few players each have a very large market share.
In the home computer sector, for a long time there were only two alternatives:
Apple or Microsoft. Nevertheless, both companies have surprised the market and
thus the customers with new products time and again. So it is not necessarily the
case that the ability to innovate suffers when competition is restricted in the sense
that the market shares are distributed among only a few players.
But why is this perceived differently in relation to the shipping companies?
Most forwarders I speak to loudly complain that the good old merchant’s word
has now become obsolete. A Hamburg-based traditional forwarder, whose com-
pany has been successfully operating on the market for 140 years, told me that he
had once been a Global Key Client and had only dealt with the top management
of one of the top five shipowners until he was suddenly presented with a new
team and downgraded to a Global Forwarder customer. Although he was assured
that nothing would change for him, the service suffered noticeably. The affected
company moves just under a million TEU per year, so it is by no means a small
fish. Another forwarder complains that the transport business operated in partner-
ship mainly between Europe and South America for years is increasingly becom-
ing a victim of so-called direct carrier deals: The shipowner no longer quotes for
the forwarder, but approaches the customer directly and thus does everything in
its power to acquire the business itself.
After the The winner takes it all principle, Maersk is currently trying to draw
all customer value creation in logistics to itself. Maersk and the other large ship-
ping companies know only too well that you cannot get around them because no
one else owns container ships and can transport goods on the world’s oceans. The
forwarders have to submit to this, they simply have no other choice. However,
what they do have is the ability to shift into a much higher gear of innovation:
finding out more about the customer and their hidden needs.
The largest advantage of the forwarders over the shipping companies is based
on the extensive relevant knowledge regarding the forwarding business. The ship-
ping companies that want to take this business for themselves first have to acquire
this knowledge with great effort. In addition, a logistics service provider can offer
a variety of services that a shipping company does not have: above all, its neutral-
ity and its flexibility in choosing the space on the ship. However, the latter fell far
behind in recent months, as many forwarders were hopelessly overwhelmed by
the capacity problems that arose during the Coronavirus pandemic and, in par-
ticular, after the blockage of the Suez Canal. Although many forwarders recorded
record profits, they were still more in the wake of the wave than surfing it con-
fidently. Exceptions such as Expeditors International and DSV Air & Sea are
exceptions that confirm the rule.
So what will be the goal of MAERSK, MSC, CMA CGM, Hapag-Lloyd and
Co.? The acquisition of Senator International by Maersk shows that they want to
control the entire process. Of course, the numbers that a shipping company gener-
ates with this (in the traditional freight forwarder environment) are low, but please
remember the exponential curve that remains flat for a long time until it suddenly
increases sharply and cuts into the established market!
The Tension With the Customers (Freight Forwarders)

The relationship of the freight forwarders to the shipping companies has always
been fragile, but this fragility has now reached a new dimension not only for the
reasons described above. There is a great deal of mistrust between the two parties
because the shipping companies are increasingly attacking the business of their
own customers and the freight forwarders have to pay the price if there are mas-
sive misloads and guaranteed transport capacities are cancelled at short notice. Of
course, this can’t go on forever.
Imagine the following scenario: You have been bidding for years on a large
tender, say 3000 TEU, and have always been offering with CMA CGM, partly
also with MSC. Now you learn from your customer that this one will also invite
shipping companies to the tender. As a result, your customer invites CMA CGM
to submit a bid as well. Now two options are conceivable: Either CMA CGM
politely declines and refers to the already existing participation by your company,
or CMA CGM submits a bid and terminates the cooperation for this customer
with you. In any case, it is extremely important that your product manager is in
close exchange with your sales department, so that—if something like this hap-
pens or is about to happen—this is anticipated in time.
Someone once said that it is important to keep your friends close and your
enemies closer still. From this it follows that as a sales manager you have to deal
much more with the shipping companies. In addition, there will be differences,
that is, there will also be shipping companies that are not quite as forceful with
you as others. The instrument you have in your hand and with which you can
exert pressure is the volume you can withdraw from the shipping companies and
give to the competition.
How delicate this can sometimes be is shown by the example of Schenker and
Maersk, after Maersk had stamped out the in-house shipping brand Damco for
reasons of market rationalization. When this happened at the end of 2020, Schen-
ker openly declared to all then existing Damco customers that they wanted to
match their rates (Jakubowska 2020). Maersk reacted angrily and immediately
terminated all existing rate contracts with Schenker and declared Schenker to be
“Spediteur non grata”. Schenker had completely miscalculated and underesti-
mated Maersk’s appetite for freight volume and market share.
This underlines the plans of Maersk or other shipping companies to wrest as
large a market share from the freight forwarders as possible. The underlying con-
sideration is as simple as this : Imagine you are the shipper of a good, that is, the
customer. Why should someone be intermediated between you and the shipping
company as the owner of the cargo ship and make your life more difficult than it
already is? In addition, this would mean that this middleman would take a piece
of the cake.
One could object that the shipping companies do not want to get rid of the
freight forwarders completely, but are willing to give up a certain capacity share
to them—probably 25 to 30%—to sell them to the highest possible spot rates.
This would create a very profitable mix calculation for the shipping companies.
You can see: The shipping companies are significantly less threatened with
extinction than the freight forwarders. Solely due to the special market constel-
lation, the freight forwarders are far more dependent on the shipping companies
than vice versa. In addition, some of the largest shipping companies can rely
heavily on the help of their home country. This definitely plays a significant role:
In the case of Hapag-Lloyd, the German state intervened with billions after the
financial crisis in 2008 to avert insolvency (Jakubowska 2020).
To offset this unfair advantage, it is necessary to redefine the rules on the part
of the logistics service providers. At present, however, hardly any logistics service
provider dares to do this, and this is reflected in the low single-figure percentage
stagnating margins.
One almost gets the impression that a widespread lethargy has taken hold in
the logistics service market, but there are exceptions that will be presented below.
Furthermore, we will take a closer look at the secrets of two “brand stars”. These
are companies for me that have constantly increased their margin over several
years and are well above the industry average of 3 to 4% EBIT margin. And last
but not least, you will see that most of these secrets are also applicable to other
companies—regardless of the size of the company.
But let’s first deal with the question of why the logistics service industry is
characterized by such weak margins.
2.2.2 Category 2: Less Capital Intensive—Carriers
A carrier organizes the transport of goods from A to B or takes over the storage
of goods. Most carriers generate a low margin for the effort and pressure they are
exposed to, in the single digits. The first and nevertheless most important reason
for this is the very difficult market situation from which no logistics service pro-
vider can escape: Due to the extremely fragmented market situation, there is sim-
ply too much choice for customers, in whose eyes each of the providers does the
same as its competitors. Furthermore, the entry barriers into the market are very
low. So you don’t even need your own assets, as digital carriers have been doing
more recently. Since one can traditionally only charge small surcharges for ser-
vices that one buys elsewhere (for example, the physical sea or air freight trans-
port), a clever portfolio is needed that allows a large number of logistics services
to be offered in-house as a whole and thus to gain an advantage over the competi-
tion. Good examples of this are logistical additional services such as the assembly
of semi-finished products in the warehouses or relevant IT products that can be
developed completely in-house and thus sold to any number of customers.
Most logistics service providers also have the problem that they still offer their
services according to the one-size-fits-all principle, instead of using smart solu-
tions to set themselves apart from the competition. Furthermore, there are hardly
any differences in the way in which the companies serve certain customers, let
alone a selection process with which customers they actually want to work with.
The internal costs are too high, too much manual work is necessary and the IT
processes are too little thought out. This results in a vicious circle from which it is
difficult to break out. You have to take a step back in terms of turnover or number
of customers, in order to take two to three steps forward in terms of margin.
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választóherczeghez, kit aztán szerelemmel, a legnagyobb
önfeláldozással, finom gyöngédséggel, édes hízelgéssel s őszinte
megadással kényeztetett egész a koporsó bezártáig.
Midőn I. György először ment Hannoverba látogatóba,
távollétének tartamára fiát nevezték ki személyesének. De ezt a
tisztességet nem is bizták többet soha ő walesi herczegségére, mert
közvetlen rá meghasonlott az apa és fiu. Mert második fia
kereszteltetésekor királyi versenygés támadt, s a herczeg,
Newcastle herczegének orra alatt hadonázva öklével, gazembernek
czimezte, s kiszállt atyjával szemben. El is kellett aztán mind neki,
mind nejének Sz.-Jakab palotáját hagyniok, s a család királyi fejének
parancsára herczegi gyermekeiket is elvették tőlük. Az atya és anya
kesergve sirtak, midőn kicsinyeiktől megváltak. A kis apróságok,
száz csók kiséretében, nehány szem cseresnyét küldtek papának,
mamának s a szülők könyeikkel áztaták a gyümölcsöt – de
harminczöt év multán már nem voltak könyeik, midőn Frigyes
herczeg meghalt – Frigyes herczeg, idősb fiok, örökösük –
ellenségük.
A király menyét csak úgy hivta, hogy „ c e t t e d i a b l e s s e
m a d a m e l a p r i n c e s s e “, – s ez utóbbi látogatóinak meg volt
tiltva, hogy a király színe előtt megjelenjenek, s midőn ő királyi
felsége Bathba ment, az udvaronczok oda mentek utána, s a
Londonban eltiltott hódolatot Somersetshireben nyilvániták ki.
A „cette diablesse madame la princesse“
kifejezés a királyi após haragjának egyik okát megmagyarázza.
Menyem-asszony igazán eszes egy fehérnép volt, nagy hajlama volt
az éles gúnyolodásra, s szurós nyelvével szerette nevetségessé
tenni a megrottyant szultánt és ránczos háremét, s piszkolodó
leveleket irt róla haza, a család minden tagjának. Ily módon
száműzve a király közeléből, a herczeg és herczegasszonyt
Leicester Fieldsen üté föl sátrát, „hol“, mondja Walpole, „a következő
uralkodási felvonás legtöbbet igérő tagjai s a legszebb és
legkedvesebb fiatal nők képezék udvarunkat.“ Leicester Fieldsen
kivűl még Richmondban is volt lakásuk, amaz idők
legmulatságosabb társaságaitól látogatva. Oda jártak a Herveyk,
Chesterfieldek s a twickenhami kis Pope uram s vele néha a Sz.
Patrick egyházi korhel esperes (Dr. Swift) és egy egész sereg fiatal
nő, kiknek csinos arczaik mosolygva néznek ránk a történelem
könyvéből. Megfordult ott Lepell, a balladák eldallásának mestere;
meg a kihivó, gyönyörü Bellenden Mari, ki a walesi herczeg
szépettevő bókjairól hallani sem akart, hanem – összefonva karjait
szép mellén – megmondta ő királyi felségének, hogy csak hordja el
magát, s aranytelt erszényét a szeme közé dobván, utána kiáltott,
hogy jóllakott már vele, hogy mindig csak előtte számlálgatja pénzét.
Bizony nem igen magasra ágaskodó fejedelem volt ez az Augustus.
Walpole beszéli, hogy a királyi kártya-asztalnál, a játszi herczeg-
asszonyok egy este Deloraine asszony alól kikapták a széket, – ez
pedig, kölcsönben, a királyét húzta ki alóla, úgy hogy ő felsége
hanyatt vágta magát a szőnyegen. Akármily állásban – jobban
mondva fekvésben – lássuk is ezt a György királyt: így vagy úgy,
mindig van valami nevetséges rajta; még Dettingennél is, hol pedig
oly vitézül küzdött, még ott is figura figurája van – a mint, az angolt
törve, kiabál, kardjával hadonász, mint egy vívó-mester. Az akkori
gúnyképek közt a „Cullodeni hős“ czimü jól meg is czirógatja György
fiát. –
De már elég volt Walpoleból, Györgyre vonatkozólag, ennyi
idézet – annyival is inkább, mivel e kedves kötetek mindenki kezén
forognak, ki a mult évszáz pletykáit szereti. Igazán nem lehet semmi
mulatságosabb, mint Horace levelei; mintha mindeniken hegedűk
szólanának végig, viasz-gyertyák, szép ruhák, jó viczczek, gazdag
ezüstnemü s pompás fogatok csillognak-villognak bennök – soha
ragyogóbb, vigabb, hahotázóbb sokadalom, mint a melyen ő vezet át
bennünket. Hervey, az utána következő tekintély, már setétebb
szinben látja a világot, őt mintha a félelmesség szelleme lengné
körül. Nehány éve, hogy örökösei az ickworthi leveles-láda födelét
felnyitották; mintha Pompeji nyilt volna meg az ember előtt! mintha
kiásták volna az egész mult évszázat: templomaival és játékaival,
kocsiival, nyilvános helyeivel, bordélyházaival. Midőn a halottak e
városán végigsétáltam, végig e borzasztó önző koron, ez istentelen
cselszövényeken és tivornyákon, e szemtelen, sovár, küzködő,
kikendőzött, hazudozó, tányérnyaló – tömegeken: ugy szerettem
volna egy párt találni köztük, kikre jó szemmel nézhessek.
Fölkerestem e kor történelmében jártas barátaimat, s szólék:
„Mutassatok nekem vagy egy derekat ez udvarnál; keressetek ez
önző udvaronczok, e kicsapongó, vigadó tömeg közt bár egyet, kit
szerethessek, tisztelhessek.“ Ott van II. György, az a páváskodó kis
szultán; ott van az a puposhátu, ijesztő Chesterfield lord, s ott van
Hervey János, gyilkoló mosolyával s kisérteties festett pofájával –
gyűlölöm őket! Vagy ott van Hoadly, egyik püspökségtől a másikig
görnyedezve, – tul meg a twickenhami kis Pope uram lépdel
barátjával, az ír esperessel, uj reverendájában, szintén bókolva, de
bozontos szemöldei alatt a méreg sugári fénylenek s mosolya
mögött a gúny és gyűlölet reszket. És már: lehet ezeket szeretni?
Pope-ot szeretném: legalább szellemét, gúnyját, nagyságát,
értelmességét lehetne szeretni – csak ne lennék a felől is bizonyos,
hogy mihelyt azt hiszi, hogy valamiben elejébe tettek, vagy hogy
gúnyosan tekintettem rá: azonnal megfordul és leszúr. És lehet-e
bizni a királynéban? Nem a mi rendünkből való ő, – a királyokat és
királynőket már helyzetük egyedülállókká teszi. E kifürkészhetlen
asszonynak volt egy kifürkészhetlen vonzalma, s ez egyhez aztán hű
is, minden gyötretés, mellőzés, kín és idő daczára. Férje kivételével
valóban nem gondol semmi teremtett lénynyel. Gyermekeihez elég
jó, sőt talán elég gyöngéd is, – de azért darabokra szedné őket, ha
tudná, hogy férje kedvét megnyerné általa. Egész környezetével a
legnagyobb barátsággal, jóakarattal és természetességgel bánt, –
de ha a jó barátok meghaltak, a lányok férjhez mentek: az utánok
következőkhez csak oly barátságos, csak oly jóakaratú. Ha a király
kivánja: rámosolyog, ha még oly bús lenne is; sétál vele, ha még oly
fáradt is, s vastag tréfáin jóizüen nevet, ha még oly metsző is testi
lelki kínja. Valóságos csuda, a mit Károlinának férje iránti
odaadásáról olvashatni. Miféle bűbája lehetett ennek a kis
embernek? Mik lehettek azokban a csodálatos, harmincz lap hosszú
levelekben, melyeket – ha nem volt otthon: nejének, s ha
feleségénél Londonban volt: hannoverai hölgyeinek irt? Mért
választotta Károlina, Németország legbájosabb és miveltebb
herczegnője ezt a kis piros-pozsgás, meredt szemü herczegecskét,
egy császár kezét utasítván vissza? Miért szerette őt annyira utolsó
órájaig? – mert iránta való szeretetből pusztitotta el önmagát, mert,
noha podagrája volt, hideg vizben áztatta meg lábait, csak hogy
sétálni mehessen vele. A halál fátylával szemén, elviselhetlen
kínoktól gyötörtetve – még akkor is tudott férjéhez, urához egy
halvány mosolyt, egy gyöngéd szót intézni. Olvastátok-e halálos
ágya csodálatos történetét? Hogyan kérte a haldokló férjét, hogy
házasodjék meg ismét, s hogy böffentette vissza feleletét az öreg
király: „ N o n , n o n , j ’ a u r a i d e m a î t r e s s e s . “ Ennél
kisértetiesebb bohózat aligha volt valaha. Én is tanuja vagyok e
bámulatos jelenetnek, – én is ott állok ama borzasztó ágy szélénél,
bámulva az isteni gondviselés különös útait, melyeken elrendezé
teremtményei számára az életet, szeretetet, jutalmat, eredményt,
szenvedélyt, cselekvést és halált – és csak kaczagni tudok – itt, a
halál jelenlétében, szivem mély búsulásában. Lord Hervey sokat
emlegetett passusában, melyben a királyné halálos ágyát irja le, a
részletek groteszk borzalma felülmúl minden szatirát, – a jelenet
ijesztő gúnyja megdöbbentőbb Swift legfeketébb lapjainál, vagy
Fielding legmerészebb ironiájánál. E jelenet feljegyzőjének alakját
valami ördögi veszi körűl, s valóban félek, hogy ama borzasztó
versek, melyeket Pope majdnem sátáni gonoszságának egyik
rohamában irt Herveyre, nem hazudnak. Elijedek, a mint
visszatekintve a multba, úgy tetszik, hogy amaz ijesztőn szép arczot
látják szemeim, a mint rágondolok a halálos ágyán vonagló
királynéra, ki fölkiált: „Imádkozz, imádkozz!“ – és a mellette álló
királyi vén bűnösre, ki őrült fájdalommal csókdossa halott ajkait, s
avval ott hagyja, hogy még többet vétkezzék; – és az udvari
lelkészek csoportjára, és az érsekre – a mint a haldokló
visszautasitja imáikat, de a kik az illem kedveért kénytelenek a nép
aggódó tudakozásira mindenféle kibuvó ajtókat felnyitogatni s
erősítgetni, hogy ő felsége ez élettől „istenes lelki állapotban“ vált
meg. Milyen élet! Milyen czélokra szentelve! Hiuságok hiusága!
Egészen más szószékbe való tárgy ez, mint a felolvasóéba.
Szószékbe? Azt hiszem, hogy az a szerep, melyet a szószékek a
királyok halálánál játszanak: a legkevésbbé épületes czeremonia. A
hazug dicsériádák, a kellemetlen igazságok átcsillámlása, az
utálatos hizelgések, a tettetett bánat, a csúszó-mászó hamis-szólás
– mindezt az ég nevében szórják szét állam-egyházunkban, s mind
e gyászdalokat emlékezetet meghaladó idők óta zengedeztetik a jó,
rosz, bűnös, kicsapongó királyok és királynék ravatala fölött. Az
állam-papnak le kell darálni a közhelyeit, ki kell tennie közszemlére
szónoki gyászrojtozatainak egész készletét. Halott avagy élő legyen
az a király: a lelkész hizelegni kénytelen – éltében kegyes voltát
hirdeti, ha pedig „indíttatva érzi magát ő felsége“, hogy meghaljon:
„legvallásosabb és legkegyelmesebb királyunk“ gyász-
istenitiszteletét kell végeznie.
Olvasom, hogy lady Yarmouth – legvallásosabb és
legkegyelmesebb királyunk kegyencze – ötvenezer forinton adott el
egy püspökséget egyházunk egyik férfiának. (Fogadott vele 50,000
forintba, hogy n e m nevezik ki püspöknek; a nagytiszteletü ur
vesztett – és fizetett.) Vajon ez volt az egyedüli főtisztelendő ur e
korban, kit ily kéz vezetett a fölkenetésre? Ha bepillantok Szent
Jakab palotájába, II. György idejében, egy egész sereg reverendát
látok, az udvarhölgyek hátsó lépcsőjénél tolongva, – kövér
erszények csúsznak lopva ölükbe, – és az a bűnös vén király ásitva
hallgatja udvari kápolnájában a mennyezet alatt, a neki papoló
káplánt! S miről szól a prédikáczió? – igazságosságról és
itélettételről! S míg a káplán papol, a király németül fecseg, majdnem
oly hangosan, mint a szónok; oly hangosan, hogy a lelkész – (lehet,
hogy épen bizonyos Dr. Young, az, a ki „Young éjszakái“-t irá s a
csillagok ragyogásáról, az égnek dicsőségéről s e világ teljes
hivságáról elmélkedett) – a bizony: sirva fakad katedrájában, mivel –
a hitnek védője és a püspökségek osztogatója nem akar ráhallgatni!
Valóban nem csoda, hogy e közönyösség és romlottság közepette
az egyháziak is romlottak és közönyösek. Valóban nem csoda, hogy
a kétkedők szaporodnak és az erkölcsök megvesztegettetnek, a
mennyire csak egy ilyen király befolyásától függenek. Valóban nem
csoda, hogy Whitefield feljajdult a pusztaság közepett, hogy Wesley
odahagyta a megfertőztetett templomot s a hegynek oldalára vonult
prédikálni. Tisztelettel nézek amaz idők e férfiaira. Melyik a
magasztosabb látvány: a jó Wesley János-e, körülvéve napszámos
gyülekezetétől, a bánya szádánál, – vagy pedig a királyné káplánjai,
a mint az előszobában a nagy Vénus képe alatt reggeli imájokat
mormolják, mig a szomszéd szoba ajtaja nyitva van, s ott benn a
királyné öltözködik, botránytörténeteket beszélve lord Herveynek,
vagy viczczelkedve lady Suffolkra, ki úrnője lábainál térdel a
mosdótállal? Mondom, meg vagyok ijedve, midőn e társaságon
végigtekintek, s látom ezt a királyt, ezeket az udvaronczokat, ezeket
az államférfiakat, ezeket a püspököket – ezt az arczátlan,
magamutató könnyelmüséget és bűnt. Melyik ennél az udvarnál a
becsületes ember? Melyik a tiszta lélek, kit szeretnünk lehetne? Ez
az illatszeres levegő megfojtja az embert! A mi mai udvarunknál is
van még kelendőben néhány özönviz előtti badarság s ízetlen
czeremonia, melyeket kikaczagok, – de, mint igazi angol, ha
összehasonlitom a multtal: ne ösmerjem-e el a jelen nagy
változását? Ha Sz. Jakab palotájának úrnője ma elmegy mellettem:
üdvözlöm a bölcs, mérsékelt, példás életü uralkodónőt, a jó anyát, a
jó nőt, a mívelt hölgyet, a müvészetek fölvilágosodott pártfogóját, a
nép diadalmiban és bánatiban gyöngéden résztvevőt.
György és Károlina egész udvarában egyedül csak Suffolk
asszonyt látom, ki megérdemli, hogy az ember szóba álljon vele.
Még a nőgyűlölő Croker is, levelei kiadója, szereti őt, s ama
tisztelettel viseltetik irányában, melyet gyöngéd leereszkedése, úgy
látszik, minden férfi és néhány nő szivében is fölkeltett, a ki csak
közelébe jutott. Sok finom vonást jegyeztem föl, melyek jellemének
bájáról tesznek tanuságot. (Megjegyzem, hogy nem azért említem
meg, hogy bájos, hanem mivel jellemző.) Levelei a gyönyörűségig
józanok. Egyikben, Mr. Gaynek, Tunbridgebe czimezve, – a mint
tudjuk, ez az úr szegény, kegyvesztett poéta volt, – így szól: „Jelen
lakozásának helye ugyancsak megtöltötte fejét doktorokkal és
gyógymódokkal; de – szavamra mondom – hej sok úri dáma ment
már oda vizet inni, a nélkül, hogy a kis körme is fájt volna – és, hej
sok úri ember panaszkodott szíve elvesztén, a ki pedig el nem
veszté. Ohajtom, hogy kegyed se veszítse el a magáét, mert nem
igen örülnék a szívtelen barátnak, már pedig nagyon szeretném
hogy kegyedet barátaim közé számíthassam.“
Midőn Peterborough lord hetven éves volt, a fékezhetlen ifjoncz
nehány lángoló szerelmes, jobban mondva udvarló levelet irt
Howard asszonynak. Csodálatos maradványai e levelek ama kor
kelendő regényeskedő modorú széptevésének. Nem szenvedély az,
nem is szerelem, hanem udvarlás; a komolyság és szinészkedés
vegyülete; magasra ágaskodó bókok, mély hajlongások,
esküdözések, sohajok, szerelmes pillantások, a Clelia regények és a
szinpadi Millamont és Doricourt modorában. Az egész csak a
legnagyobb mérvü szertartások, illemkedések, fellángolások nagy
halmaza volt – rendszeresitett térdeléstan és széptevéstan, melyek
a mi őszinteségünk idejében már kimentek divatból. Howard
Henrietta elfogadta a jó öreg lord széptevését, illő elismeréssel
válaszolt sajátságos szerelmes leveleire; mély pukedlit vágott
Peterborough mély hajlongásira és segittetett magának Gayvel a
levelek fogalmazásában, midőn válaszolt vén lovagjának. Ez pedig
irt hozzá csinos verseket, melyekből sem az igazság, sem a báj nem
hiányzott, igy kiáltván föl:
„Egy értelmes asszony! mely csodás teremtmény!

Ki soh’sem túl-büszke, sem víg túl a rendén!
Kutatod: ez angyal, hogy ki légyen? Ejh ki?
Képzeld! Howard asszony, hogy ő, nem is sejti!“
A nagy Pope is magasztalva ir róla, és pedig cseppel sem

kevésbbé tetszetős sorokban, s oly képet állit elénk, hogy meg kell
vallanunk: eredetije vonzó egy hölgy kellett hogy legyen. Im egy pár
vonás a képből:
„Tudok valami ritka dolgot –

(Irigy! hallgass e hir ha bánt –)
Tudok, csak képzeld, egy okos nőt,
Ki szép, hű s elmés egyaránt!
„Kit szenvedély, hir el nem kaptat,

S nem ejt meg hivság, éldelet,
Ki épen úgy tud hahotázni,
Mint mélyen érzeni veled.
„Egy foltja sincs hát! – az irigy szól –
De, meg kell vallanom, van egy:
Ha az egész világ dicséri,
E nő süket s nem hallja meg!“
S még a mi több: még az asszonyok is versenyt dicsérték és

szerették. Queensberry herczegnő tanubizonyságot tesz
szeretetreméltóságáról, midőn igy ir hozzá: „Ezt s ezt csak azért
mondom kegyednek, mivel szereti a gyermekeket, és hogy a
gyermekek is szeressék kegyedet.“ A szép és kedves Bellenden
Mari, kit kortársai „a világ legtökéletesebb teremtésének“ neveznek,
igen bizalmasan ir az ő „kedves Howard asszony“-ának, „drága
helvétá“-jának, amaz országból küldözvén leveleit, hova a szép Mari,
házassága és az udvarhölgyek sorából kilépte után, telepedett le.
„Hogy s mint van, édes Howard asszony?“ kezdi Mari. „Hogy s mint
van, édes Howard asszony? ennyi az egész mondandóm. Ma
délután kedvem jött az iráshoz, de a mi a levél tárgyát illeti, jobbal
nem tudom mulattatni, mint mezei gazdaságom ujdonságival. Épen
azért a saját fogaim számára hízlalt megehetőségek következő
lajstromát terjesztem kegyed elé. Az egész Kent grófság csak úgy
tudja, mint jó magam, hogy van négy kövér bornyúm, két hízott
disznóm, készen minden órán, a hentes kése alá; tizenkét
sokatigérő fekete verőmalaczom, két fiatal kappanom, három
pompás ludam – mindenik alatt tizenhárom tojás – (récze-tojásokkal
vegyest, természetesen, mert különben a többi nem kél ki jól);
ezeken kivül van egy csomó tengeri nyulam, galambom és pulykám
bőviben, s nem megvetendő mennyiségü marha- és ürühúsom. Nos,
édes Howard asszony, ha az elősoroltak közűl valamelyikbe villáját
bele akarja ütni: csak mondja meg.“
Vidor egy társaság kellett hogy legyenek ezek az udvarhölgyek.
Pope egyik nagyon kedves levelében egy egész csomóval ismertet
meg bennünket, közülök. „A vizen mentem“, mondja, „Hampton
Courtra, s legelőször is a herczeggel találkoztam, midőn épen a
vadászatról jött meg hölgyeivel, lóháton. Bellenden és Lepell
asszonyok mindjárt pártfogásuk alá vettek, a pápisták vendégül
fogadását tiltó törvény daczára s pompás egy ebédet tálaltak, olyan
fűszerrel, a mit még jobban szerettem: alkalmat nyújtottak, hogy
Howard asszonynyal beszélgethessek. Mindnyájan abban
állapodtunk meg, hogy az udvarhölgyek élete minden dolgok között
a legnyomoruságosabb és azt kivántuk, hogy bárcsak minden
asszony, a ki irigyli ez állapotot, meg is kóstolhatná. Reggel
vesztfáliai sonkát kell enniök, kölcsönkért kabalákon árkot-bokrot be
kell vágtatniok, a nap hevén aztán, a hideggel a hátukban és (a mi
százszor roszabb ennél is) az igen kicsi kalaptól véresre dörgölt
homlokkal haza jőniök – a mi együttvéve különben, idővel a lehető
legjobb vadásznőket csinálhatja belőlük. Mihelyt aztán a nap
izzadságát letörülték: a herczegnő osztályában kell egy óráig
mosolyogniok s mellesleg megnáthásodniok, – onnan meg el az
ebédhez, akár van étvágyuk, akár sincs – éjfélig aztán tehetnek,
mehetnek vagy elmélkedhetnek a mit, a hová s a miről épen kedvök
tartja. Nincs egész Walesben az a puszta ház, előtte egy hegy,
felette egy varjúfészek, a melyik unalmasabb lenne ennél az
udvarnál. Miss Lepellel három vagy négy óra hosszant sétáltunk a
holdvilágon, s valamirevaló emberrel, egy árva lélekkel sem
találkoztunk, a királyon kivül, ki a kerités alatt egy maga fogadta
kihallgatáson a vice-kancelláriust.“
Azt hiszem, vigabb Anglia volt az elődeinké, mint ez a sziget,
melyen most mi lakunk. A népek, előkelők úgy, mint a
közönségesek, sokkal többet mulattak. Felszámitottam azt az
életrendet, melylyel államférfiak és előkelők akkor idejüket eltöltötték
– s fel nem foghatom, hogyan végezhették el dolgaikat a mellett a
tömérdek evés-ivás, lakmározás és kártyázás mellett! Játsztak azok
minden kigondolható játékot, melyek – a krikkel és labdázás
kivételével – ma már mind kimentek divatból. St. James-Park régi
képein még ma is láthatók a sétány hosszában a méták, melyekkel a
labda-távolt mérték, ha az udvar labdázott. Már most csak képzeljük
el, ha a Birdcage-sétánynak ma is ez lenne rendeltetése s lord John
Russel és lord Palmerston alá s fel ütögetnék a labdát a fák közt! A
legtöbb ilyen vig testgyakorlat immár a multhoz tartozik s a régi, jó
angol játékok már csak régi regényekben, régi balladákban vagy
régi, megfakult ujságok hasábjain járják, melyekből elolvashatod,
hogy Winchesterben a winchesteriek és hamptoniak pártja ekkor s
ekkor kakasviadalt rendez; vagy, hogy a cornwalliek és devoniak
birokra mennek egymással Totnesben – és igy tovább.
Ezelőtt százhúsz esztendővel nem csak mezővárosok voltak
Angliában, hanem emberek is voltak, a kik bennök lakjanak. Akkor
sokkal társaságosabbak voltunk és sokkal egyszerűbb
mulatságokon tudtunk mulatni. Minden városnak volt vására, minden
falunak búcsuja. A régi költők száz meg száz kedélyes dalt irtak
nagy bot-viadalokról, május-fák megmászásáról és szerecsen-
tánczokról. A lányok, nagyon könnyü öltözetben, versenyt (cziczét)
futottak és a barátságos vidéki nemesek s jámbor papok nem
tartották szégyennek, hogy e játékoknál nézők legyenek. Dob és sip
hangjaira tánczoló medvék járták be a vidéket. Néhány jól ismert
dallamot zengett az egész ország évszázakon keresztül s úr és
szegény ez egyszerü zene mellett mulatott. Ha egy fiatal ur
vigasságot akart szerezni női ösmerősének, azonnal czigányok után
küldött. Midőn Fielding, a divat-uracs, a nagyon finom gentleman,
még csak a szépet tette azon hölgynek, kit később elvett: saját
szállásán vendégelte meg imádottját és ennek barátnőjét és pedig a
vendéglőből hozatott ételekkel, vacsora után pedig egy hegedűst
hozattak hármuk számára. Képzeljük el e hármat egy nagy,
csertáblázott teremben – a Covent Gardenen vagy Sohon4) – két
vagy három ezüst fali gyertyatartó fénye mellett; az asztalon nehány
fürt szőlő s egy palaczk florenczi bor; a tisztességes hegedűs
régimódi moll-hangú nótákat húz, mig a divat-uracs egyik hölgyet a
másik után hivogatja el, s nagy komolysággal tánczol velök.
Az egészen nagy urak, fiatal nemesek nevelőik, sat. kiséretében
külföldre mentek, a „nagy körútra“; az otthon maradt gúnyirók
viczczelték ezek francziás és olaszos fogásaikat, miket az utazásból
hoztak magokkal, – de a nép nagyobb része soha sem hagyta el az
országot. A vidor falusi nemes, sokszor husz mértföldre sem volt
szülötte faluja határain túl, a melyik pedig elment: a fürdőket,
Harrogateet, vagy Scarborought, Bathet vagy Epsomot látogatta
meg. A régi levelek tele vannak e mulatóhelyek leirásával. Gay sokat
beszél a tunbridgei hegedűsekről; a hölgyekről, kik jóizü kis házi
bálokat rendeznek magok közt és az úrfiakról, kik, váltogatva,
theával s zenével mulattatják őket. Az egyik fiatal szépség ezek
közül nem igen sokat adott a theára. „Van itt egy fiatal hölgy“, mond
Gay, „a ki szörnyű válogatós. Elég fiatal lányt ismertem, ki, ha
imádkozni talált, szép fogatért, nagy czímért, jó férjért vagy sok
imádóért könyörgött: de ennek, pedig csak tizenhét éves és
hozománya 300000 forint, vágyai netovábbját egy kancsó jó sör
képezi. Ha barátai termete és arczszine tekintetéből le akarják e
szokásról verni: azt feleli a legőszintébb egyszerüséggel, hogy
karcsu termete és finom arczszine elvesztése miatt legfölebb a
főkötőtől esik el, mig a sör neki szenvedélye.“
Minden kis városnak megvolt a maga társalgó-terme – régimódi
komor szobák, a milyeneket alászállott mezővárosok elhagyatott
kongó fogadóiban még most is láthat az ember, mert London, ez a
nagy élődi, mindenünnen magába szivja az életet. A törvénykezés
szakában s egész télen át az északi nemesség nagy része Yorkban
lakott. Shrewsbury ünnepélyeiről volt hires. Olvasom, hogy
Newmarketban „nagy számu volt a jó társaság egy csomó
gazemberrel és zsebmetszővel egyetemben.“ Norwichben két
társalgó volt, s a tagok alig fértek a nagy teremben, szobákban és a
csarnokban. Cheschireben (Károlina királyné egyik udvarhölgye irja,
ki Hampton Courtba s az ottani mulatságokra vágyik vissza –) egy
falusi lakba vetek egy pillantást s nagyon vidor egy társaságot látnak
szemeim: „A dolgozó szobában kilencz előtt gyülünk össze,
eszegetünk s bolondozunk, össze-vissza, tizenkettőig, s akkor
mindenki saját szobájába vonúl, hogy egy kicsit rendbe szedje
magát, mert biz’ azt öltözködésnek nem lehet nevezni. Délben aztán
a nagy harang gyűjt bennünket a nagy szobába, mely mindenféle
különös fegyverrel, mérgezett nyilakkal, hires emberek különböző
viseltes csizmáival és czipőivel és I. Károly király Edgehillben elvett
kengyeleivel van fölékesitve“, – itt ebédelnek, azután tánczolnak s
megint vacsorálnak.
A mi Bathet illeti, a kiről az irás csak szól, mind fürdeni és inni
ment oda. II. György és felesége, Frigyes herczeg és udvara, s a
mult évszáz minden csak valamennyire nevezetes embere, mind-
mind látható volt ama hires diszcsarnokban, hol Nash, a divat-uracs,
elnökölt s képe a Newton és Pope mellszobra között függött.
„E kép, e két szobor között,
Jó csipős gúny-beszéddel mondja:
Bölcseség, elme szűk dolog,
De annál bővebb a bolondja!“
Szerettem volna látni azt a bolondot. Csillogó, himes-hámos,

máncsetlis, burnót-szelenczés, piros sarkú, szemtelen egy bolond
volt ez, ki nagyon is jól tudta, hogy lehet az embernek tekintélyt
szerezni magának. És szerettem volna látni azt a csudálatos vén
bolond Peterborought is, nagy csizmáiban – úgy van, olyan vakmerő
volt, hogy Bath sétányain csizmákban jelent meg! – Szerettem volna
látni kék szalagjait és rendjeleit, azt a két fő káposztát a hóna alatt s
azt a tyúkot kezében, melyeket oly hosszú alkudozás után vett
ebédjéhez. Chesterfield is sokat járt oda, játszott százakban s
mosolygott, podagrája daczára. És Wortley Mari is ott volt, az ifjú, a
szép; és ott Wortley Mari, a vén, a csúnya, a kiállhatatlan. És elment
Chudleigh kisasszony is, megmenekülve az egyik férjtől, hogy a
másik után leselkedjék. Walpole is sok napját töltötte itt el;
betegesen, ingerlékenyen, bolond, szenvelgő divatfi módjára,
ragyogó elmével, mély érzelmességgel s barátjaihoz gyöngéd,
áldozatkész, hű szivvel. S ha én, meg te akkor élünk vala, és végig
ámolyogtunk volna a Milsom utczán – egyszerre csak hirtelen
lekaptuk volna kalapunkat, midőn egy kisérteties, hosszú, vékony,
sovány alak, flanellbe bonyálgatva ott vitette volna el magát
hordszékében, melynek ablakán egy sápadt arcz tekint ki; a
bozontos felporzott paróka alól nagy, égő szemek meredtek volna
felénk, rémitő homlokránczolás, rémitő sas-orr – s mi halkal
suttogtuk volna egymásnak: „Ez ő! Ez a nagy képviselő! Ez Mr. Pitt!“
A mint tovább haladunk: a harangok elkezdenek csilingelni, s találjuk
Smollett Tobiást, mogorva barátunkat, karját a Quin Jakabéba, a
szinészébe öltve, ki azt is megmondja, hogy a harangok Bullok5)
uramnak, egy tottenhami jeles baromtenyésztőnek szólanak, ki épen
most érkezett a gyógyforrás használatára. Tobiás pedig botjával
megfenyegeti Ringworm ezredes ajtaját – a kreol lovag épen
szomszédjában lakik, s az ezredes két szerecsenje a vadászkürt
müvészetet tanulmányozza nagy szorgalommal.
Ha meg akarjuk kisérteni, hogy a régi társadalmi Angliát állitsuk
képzeletünk elé: azt a vonást el ne feledjük, hogy jó csomó órát
kártyázik minden nap. Ez a szokás közülünk már majdnem egészen
kiment divatból, de ezelőtt ötven esztendővel általános volt s még
azelőtt ötven esztendővel uralmát majdnem az egész országra
kiterjesztette. „A kártyajáték annyira divatba jött“, irja Seymour, a
„Court Gamester“6) szerzője, „hogy a ki a szokott játékokat egy
társaságban nem tudná: nagyon közönséges és egészen
hasznavehetetlen embernek tartanák.“ Mindenütt csak kártya járta.
Hogy valaki egy társaságban olvasson: illetlen volt. „A könyvek nem
a társalgó-szobákba valók“, mondák az időtöltött nők. Ha pedig
akadt valahol egy-egy könyv: szintugy irigykedtek és haragudtak
rájok az emberek. Herveynél megolvashatod, hogy II. György dühös
volt, ha csak könyvet is látott, s neje, bár szerette az olvasást: csak
titokban, zárt ajtók mögött olvashatott. Hanem a kártya, az már az
egész világnak menedéke volt az unalom elől. Anglia királyai és
királynéi minden este órákig elültek s játszodtak pique és carreau ő
felségeikkel. Az európai udvaroknál, azt hiszem, maig megvan e
szokás, nem a nyereség, hanem az időtöltés kedveért. Eldődeink
kivétel nélkül űzték. „Könyvek! az Isten is megáld, hagyj békét
nekem a könyvekkel!“ szokta Marlborough Sára néni mondani, „én
más könyvet nem ösmerek, csak a férfiakat és a kártyát.“ „A jó öreg
Coverley Rogérius uram minden emberének egy szál kolbászt s egy
játék kártyát küld karácsonyra“ – mondja a „Spectator“, a kegyes
földesúr rajzát akarván adni. Az egyik régi jó irónő, kinek levelei közt
kutatgattam, igy kiált föl: „Bizony, a kártya minket, asszonyokat, sok
minden pletykázástól mentett meg!“ – Az okos vén Johnson is
sajnálta, hogy kártyázni meg nem tanult, mert, úgymond: „sok
hasznát látja az ember az életben, – gyöngédséget kelt, s összébb
fűzi a társaságot.“ Hume Dávid soha sem feküdt le, mig a wistjét ki
nem játszta. Walpole is egyik levelében egészen fellelkesül a kártya
iránt való háladatosságban. „Oltárt épitek a makk filkónak“, kiált föl
kedélyes uracsos modorában, „kedves Grafton herczegnőm
menekvésének emlékére!“ A herczegnő tudniillik Romában
kártyázott, holott egy bibornok hangversenyében kell vala lennie, hol
a padló leszakadt, s valamennyi szent kegyelmesség a pinczébe
zuhant. Még a puritán papok sem nézték görbe szemmel e szokást.
„Nem hinném“, mondja az egyik, „hogy a becsületes Luther Márton
vétkezett volna, midőn ebéd után egy pár óráig koczkázott, hogy
lelkét a gondtalanságban megnyugtassa s emésztését elősegítse.“
Az állam-egyház szolgái is mind kártyáztak, elkezdve a püspökökön,
le az utolsóig. A három szent király napján az egész udvar pucz-
gálában szokott kártyázni. „A mai három szent király napján ő
felsége, a walesi herczeg, és a térdszalag-, tüske- s bath-rendek
lovagjai, illető rendjeik díszöltönyében jelentek meg. Ő felségeik, a
walesi herczeg és a három idősb herczegnő – előttök heroldok
lépdelvén – a királyi kápolnába vonultak be. Manchester herczeg az
állam kardját vitte. A király és a herczeg az évi szokás szerint
aranyat, tömjént és mirhát áldoztak az oltárnál. Este aztán ő
felségeik a nemességgel a főkapus javára játsztak nagyban; azt
mondják, hogy a király hatszáz, a királyné háromszázhatvan, Amália
herczegnő húsz, Károlina herczegnő tiz, Grafton herczeg és
Portmore gróf több ezer aranyat nyertek.“
Vessünk még egy pillantást ugyanez emlékiratba 1731-ből, s
lássuk, mivel foglalkozott eldődeink egy más része.
„Cork, január 15-én. – Ma itéltek el valami Croneen Timit, St.
Leger uron és nején elkövetett rablógyilkosságaért; a büntetés im’
ez: két perczre fölakasztják, akkor lecsapják fejét s testét négy felé
részelvén, négy keresztútra teszik ki. Croneen St. Leger urnál
szolgált s a gyilkósságot a szolgálóval egyetértve hajtotta véghez, kit
máglyára itéltek; ugy szintén a kertészszel is, de a kit később
főbeütött, hogy az ő osztályrészét is magának kaparíthassa meg.“
„Január 3-án. Egy irlandi nemes Staffordshireben a stonei
országúton meglőtt egy postalegényt, ki két nap mulva meg is halt. A
nemest elfogták.
„Norfolkban egy bungayi nemes istálójában egyik legény egy
szegény akasztott embert talált, s midőn levágta és segitség után
szaladt: kését ott hagyta. A szegény ember feleszmélve, elmetszte
torkát a késsel s a közellévő vizbe beleugrott; de akkorra már a
segitség is megérkezett, kihúzták még élve s úgy látjuk, hogy
életben is marad.“
„Tekintetes Finch Tamás urat, gróf Nottingham testvérét, hágai
követté nevezték Chesterfield gróf helyébe, ki már vissza is indult.“
„Cowper Vilmos Esq. és tisztelendő Cowper János ur, ő felsége a
királyné rendes káplánja és Nagy-Berkhamstead rektora, Hertford
grófságban csőd-törvényszéki biztosi titkárokká neveztettek ki.“
„Tekintetes Creagh Károly és tekintetes – Macnamara urak már
három esztendeje esküdt ellenségek, minek következtében már több
mint ötvenszer marasztaltattak el békeháboritás bűnében,
összejöttek együtt Eynes urral, Gallowayből, egymásra sütötték
pisztolyaikat s abban a nyomban összerogytak mindhárman – békés
szomszédaik nagy örömére, – mondják az irlandi lapok.“
„A búza ára 26–28 shilling, az árpa köble 20-tól 22 shillingig; a
három száztóli papirok 92-ön állnak; a legfinomabb czukor süvegje
9¼ penny; a thea-lepény fontja 12–14 shilling, a pekkóé 18 s a
király-theáé 35 shilling.“
„Exonben nagy ünnepélyességgel ülték meg Courtney W.
baronet úr fiának születésnapját; a jelen volt vendégek száma
meghaladta az ezeret. Egy egész ökröt sütöttek meg; a népnek egy
hordó bort s több átalag sört és almabort ütöttek csapra. Az öreg
Vilmos ur egyszersmind Powdram kastélyt s egyik nagy jószágát is
átadta immár teljeskoru fiának.“
„Két Charlesworth és Cox nevü ügyvédet, hamisitás sülvén ki
rájok, a királyi börze előtt szégyen-padra állitottak. A nép az elsővel
igen kegyetlenül bánt, de a másiknak jobban volt dolga, hat vagy hét
utczagyerek pártfogása alá vevén, kik fölmásztak a szégyenfára,
hogy megóvják védenczüket a söpredék bántalmazásitól.“
„Egy gyermek elszerencsétlenedett, beleesvén a vasrács hegyes
rúdjaiba egy lámpatartóról, hova azért kapaszkodott föl, hogy jobban
láthassa a szégyen-padra állitott Noedham anyót.“
„Lym Marit hamuvá égették a máglyán, mivel részes volt úrnője
meggyilkoltatásában.“
„A gyalogságnál szolgáló Russel Sándort a januári ülés-szak
utszéli fosztogatásért halálra itélte, kegyelem útján pedig
deportáczióra; e közben azonban egy jószágot örökölvén: minden
büntetés alól fölmentetett.“
„Russel János, gróf, Spencer Diána úrhölgygyel Marlborough-
házban megülte esküvőjét. Jelenlegi vagyona 300000 ft.
készpénzben s nagy-anyja, az özvegy Marlborough herczegnő
halálával még 1000000 ft. néz rája.“
„Márczius 1-jén, mint a királyné születésének évfordulóján,
melylyel ő felsége negyvenkilenczedik évébe lépett, a főnemesség
egész fényben jelent meg Szent Jakab palotájában. Ő felsége
öltözéke pompás volt; fátyla a legszebb himzésü muszlin volt, úgy
szintén a walesi herczegné ő királyi felségeé is. Azt mondják, hogy
Portmore lord öltözéke volt a legértékesebb, noha egy olasz gróf
kabátján a gombokat huszonnégy gyémánt helyettesité.“
A király születés-napján minden hű alattvaló új ruhában jelent
meg. Swift többször emliti e szokást; Walpole is mindig csak erről
beszél, gúnyolván ugyan e divatot, hanem azért mindig a
legfinomabb kabátokat hozatja magának Párisból ez alkalomra. Ha a
király és királyné nem voltak népszerüek: a díszteremben ugyan
kevés új ruhát lehetett látni. A „Jó hazafi“ czimü lap 3-ik számában (a
lap szelleme a pretendens, a scotok, francziák s a pápaság ellen volt
irányozva) Fielding egy czikket ir, felvévén, hogy a scotok és a
pretendens elfoglalták Londont s őt épen akasztani viszik, loyalitása
miatt, – midőn már a kötél a nyakában, igy szól: „ekkor kis lányom
háló-szobámba nyit s végét szakítja álmomnak, felnyitván
szemeimet s jelentvén, hogy a szabó épen most hozta haza
gunyámat, ő felsége születés-napjára.“ A „Temple Beau“-ban7) az
uracsok emlékeztetnek „a születés-napi bársony öltözetért járó 400
forintra“. Meg lehetünk győződve felőle, hogy Fielding Harry uram is
kikapta a maga emlékeztetését.
A nyilvános napok, tagadhatatlan, nagyon fényesek valának, de
a zárt udvari élet borzasztó unalmas kellett hogy legyen. „Nem
akarom kegyedet“, irja Herwey Sundon asszonynak, „Hampton
Courti foglalkozásaink részleteivel úntatni. Nincs az a száraz-malmi
kabala, mely egyformább, változatlanabb körben forgana, – úgy,
hogy egy naptárból – a hét napjai – s egy óráról – a nap órái
mutatására – teljes tudomást szerezhet magának az udvar határain
belül előforduló minden mozzanatról, a nélkül hogy emlékezetén
kivül valami más segédeszközre szorulna. Séta, hordszék, reggeli
tisztelgés – ez van reggel. Este a király kártyázik, vagy koczkázik, a
királyné meg papucsot játszik8), hol persze szokás szerint a szegény
Charlotte asszony huzza a kurtát, mert a királyné fejkötőjét czibálja,
a walesi herczegné pedig körmeit kopogatja. Grafton herczeg
rendesen beveszi álam-italát egy sorsjátéki tábla képében, hogy
aztán – állandó szokásához hiven – nyugodtan alhassék Amália és
Károlina herczegnők között. Grantham lord egyik szobából a
másikba ténfereg (a mint Dryden mondja) mint valamely gyakran
megjelenő szellem, de melynek szólania nem szabad; fel-felszítja
magát, mint az ember a tüzet szokta, nem valamely meghatározott
czélból, hanem csak épen hogy jobban pattogjon. Végre aztán föláll
a király; a játszmának vége van s mindenki megkapja
elbocsáttatását. Ő felségeik Charlotte asszonynál és Lifford lordnál
vonják meg magokat; lord Grantham Fraces asszonynál és Clark
uramnál, – az egyik rész vacsorál, a másik lefekszik – s igy lesz az
estből és reggből egy nap.“
A király Hannovera iránti ragaszkodása száz esetlen tréfára adott
okot angol alattvalói közt, kik előtt a „Sauerkraut“ és a kolbász eleitől
fogva nevetség tárgyai voltak. Midőn a mostani herczegi férj9)
közibénk jött: a nép örömmel fujta az utczán a dalokat, melyek
mindenike Németország csodamód ízetlen voltáról szólott. A hús-
árusok orjási kolbászokat aggattak kirakataikba, a mi a közhit
szerint, úgy látszik, a német fejedelmek mindennapi ételük és
gyönyörűségük. Emlékszem a Lipót herczeg és Charlotte
herczegasszony házasságakori gúnyképekre. A vőlegény tiszta-
csupa rongy volt. III. György feleségét is német koldus
herczegasszonynak hivta a nép, mert tudni kell, hogy brit felfogás
szerint minden herczeg koldus, kivéve a brit herczegeket. György
király vissza is fizetett nekünk. Ő meg azt hitte, hogy Németországon
kivül nem tudják sehol: mi az illem. Marlborough Sára egyszer épen
akkor ment a herczegasszony látogatására, midőn a királyné ő
felsége épen egyik orditozó gyermekét lasnyakolta. „Hja!“ mondá a
végrehajtásnál épen jelenlevő György, „azért nem tudják Angliában
mi az illendőség, mert nem nevelnek benneteket gyermekségtöken
kezdve jól.“ Erősen is állott mellette, hogy nincs az az angol
szakács, ki jól meg tudja a sültet sütni, sem angol kocsis, a ki jól
hajtson – egy szóval kétségbe vonta nemességünk, lovaink és
marha-pecsenyénk jeles voltát!
Mig szeretett Hannoverájától távol volt: ott minden azon mód
maradt, mint jelenlétében volt. Csak úgy 800 ló állott az istálóban, a
kamarások, udvarmesterek és lovászmesterek egész készlete csak
úgy megmaradt; minden szombaton megtartották az udvari estélyt,
hol az egész hannoveri nemesség megjelent s oly czeremoniát vitt
véghez, hogy rendkivül szépnek és meghatónak kell azt itélnem. A
társalgó-teremben ugyanis egy nagy karosszék állott s benne a
király – arczképe. A nemesség előjárult s mélyen meghajtotta magát
a karszék és a kép előtt, melyet Nabukodonozor király állitott oda;
mindenki csak suttogva mert e felséges kép előtt beszélni, épen ugy,
mint akkor tettek volna, ha a királyi választó maga is ott lett volna.
Mindegyre csak vissza-vissza ment Hannoverába. 1729-ben két
egész esztendőre ment át, mig Angliában Károlina uralkodott
helyette, – a nélkül, hogy angol alattvalói csak legkisebbet is érezték
volna hiányát. Harminczötben, meg harminczhatban ismét, – és
1740 s 1755 közt nem kevesebbszer mint nyolczszor látogatta meg
a kontinenst, de e mulatsággal aztán a hét esztendős háború
kitörtével föl kelle hagynia. Itt is mindig csak egy húron pendült a
mulatság. „Életünk olyan egyforma, mint a szerzeteseké“, mondja
egy udvaroncz, kit Vehse idéz. „Minden reggel tizenegykor s minden
este hatkor, a legnagyobb hőségben kocsizunk Herrenhausenbe,
végig az orjási hársfa-soron, kétszer lepetvén el napjában vastag
porral kabátainkat és kocsiinkat. A király társaságában soha a
legkisebb változás sem fordul elő. Az ebédnél s a kártya-asztalnál
mindig ugyanazon arczokat látja s játék végével mindig egyként
szobájába vonúl. Minden héten kétszer franczia szinészek
játszanak, a többi napokon pedig a csarnokban van szinház. Ilyen
módon – ha a király mindig Hannoverában mulatna – tiz esztendőre
is meg lehetne napi rendjét állapitni minden lépésének s minden
dolgát, ebédjét, mulatságait előre meg lehetne határozni.“
A vén pogány megtartotta nejének tett igéretét. Yarmouth
asszony folyton nagy kegyben részesült, s a hannoveri társaság a
legmélyebb tisztelettel viseltetett irányában – habár Angliában,
midőn közénk jött, egy kis elhanyagoltatást is kelle szenvednie.
1740-ben a király két lánya ment férjestől Hannoverába, a felséges
atya látogatására; Hessen-Casseli Mária és Anna, az orániai
herczegnő (ez utóbbiról, férjéről és lakodalmáról Walpole és Hervey
mulatságos rajzokat hagytak az utókor számára). E látogatás
nagyon fényessé tette a hannoveri udvart. A király magas vendégei
tiszteletére egy csomó ünnepélyt adott; a többek közt egy nagyszerű
álarczos bált, a herrenhauseni zöld szinházban – már t. i. a
kertszinházban, hol a szinfalakat a hárs- és puszpángfák, a
szőnyegeket pedig a pázsit helyettesíték, – hol a Platenek tánczoltak
György és atyja, a néhai szultán előtt. A szinpad és a kert nagy
része színes lámpákkal volt kivilágitva. Majdnem az egész udvar
fehér dominókban jelent meg – „épen“, mondja e jelenet leirója,
„épen, mint az eliziumi mezők szellemei. Estére kelve, három nagy
asztalon teritettek vacsorára a csarnokban, s a király igen jókedvü
volt. Vacsora után megint tánczra kerekedtek, s reggel öt óra volt,
mire – teljes napfényen – Hannoverbe haza tértem. Néhány nap
mulva megint nagy mulatságunk volt a hannoveri dal-szinházban. A
király töröknek volt öltözve; turbánján nagyszerű gyémánt forgó-
csillagok; Yarmouth asszony volt a szultana, de a legszebb
mindnyája közt a hesseni herczegnő volt.“ Mig tehát a szegény
Károlina sirjában nyugszik, ime, a derék kis Györgyike piros képével,
fehér szemöldeivel, meredt szemeivel, hatvan éves lábaival,
Madame Walmodennel kézenfogva, rugja a port s töröknek öltözve
szökdincsel! Még husz egész esztendeig adta ez a vén kis Bajazet a
törököt, mig el nem jött a guta, mely kiszoritotta a levegőt az öreg
ember torkából, miután ez meghagyta, hogy, épen mint az előrement
szegény Károlina koporsójából: az övéből is vegyék ki az egyik
oldalfalat, hogy bűnös, vén csontjai és hamvai elegyedhessenek
össze ama hű lélek maradványival. Oh te herrenhauseni pezserkedő
kakaspulyka! Oh te semmirekellő kis Mahomed! miféle török
paradicsomban vagy te most s hol vannak kifestett huriid? Yarmouth
asszony tehát szultanának volt öltözve, s ő felsége a török ruhában s
gyémánt forgójával igen jókedvü volt, ugy-e? Barátim! épen úgy
atyáitok királya volt, mint az enyimé – jertek, ejtsünk egy tisztelet-
könyűt sirjára!
Azt mondá nejéről, hogy soh’ sem látott nőt, ki méltó lett volna,
hogy saruja szíját is megoldja. Gyakran ott ült órákig arczképe előtt
egyedül és sirt – midőn aztán fölszikkadtak könyűi: átment
Walmoden asszonyhoz és elbeszélgetett róla. Egyszer aztán
máskép esett. 1760-ban, október 25-én – életének hetvenhetedik s
uralkodásának harmincznegyedik évébén – apródja királyi
csokoládéját vitte szobájába, s ime! a legkeresztyénebb és
legkegyelmesebb király ő felsége ott feküdt a padozaton, meghalva.
Elmentek, hogy híják Walmoden asszonyt, – hanem Walmoden
asszony sem tudta fölkelteni. Ő felkent felsége immár csak élettelen
hulla volt. A király meghalt; éljen a király! A költők és papok azonban
természetesen illendőképen elsiratták a boldogultat. Itt van néhány
sor abból a mesterkéletlen versből, melyben az Isten egyik angol
szolgája megkönyezte az elköltözött nagy hőst, s a melyet magad is
megsirathatsz, avagy kikaczaghatsz, a mint épen kedved tartja:
A megtört küszködők lábánál fekszenek,

Még ott is osztva, hogy ki köztük leghivebb?
És minden egyaránt, ki látja magzatát:
Apát, fényt, hírnevet megifiúlva lát.
S az anya gondjai az ifjú György szivét
A szép és jó iránt is gondossá tevék;
És fénylő ősei fénylő erényeit
Fénylőbb erényei homályossá teszik;
Már több áldása nincs e földnek, ide lenn:
Az üdv méltó foka már neki csak a – menny!
Ha jó lett volna, ha igaz lett volna, ha életében tiszta lett volna, ha

a tanácsban bölcs lett volna: avagy mondhatott volna-e többet ez a
poéta róla? És egy pap, az Istennek szolgája volt az, ki eljött és
könyeket ejtett a sirra, melyen Walmoden asszony ült s kérte az ég
kegyelmét az alatta szunyadó szegény öreg ember számára.

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Sales and Business Models in the

Logistics Industry 1st Edition

Industry Trends in Cloud Computing Alternative Business

Circular Business Models in the Manufacturing Industry:

More Sales Please: Promote your small business online,

Logistics Management: Contributions of the Section

Project Management in Logistics and Supply Chain

Advanced Business Models in International Higher

Testing Business Ideas 1st Edition Alexander

Digital Supply Chains Key Facilitator to Industry 4 0

Sales and Business

ISBN 978-3-658-39755-5 ISBN 978-3-658-39756-2 (eBook)

Responsible Editor: Manuela Eckstein

March 2022 Felix Wenzel

This book is the distillation of my knowledge, my experience gathered in

Düsseldorf, Alexander Nowroth

1 Upheaval in the Logistics and Sales World: Five Trends You

3.1.2 Characteristics of a Meritocratic Leadership Style . . . . . . . . 66

5.1.2 Making Employees Part of the Solution . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 114

 This chapter gives you an overview of the market environment and

1.1 Trend 1: Disruption Causes Tension

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Fachmedien Wiesbaden 1

In addition, service in the logistics industry leaves much to be desired. So at

that other large shipping companies—as so often with other groundbreaking

The Existence of Many Forwarders is in Danger

Of course, the market is much too large to be dominated by shipping companies

 Many shipping companies have grown strongly in the last twelve to

1.2 Trend 2: Exponentially Accelerated Change

 “Strategy eats planning for lunch, right after breakfast!”

THE LOGISTICS INDUSTRY IN 2023

WE ARE THE FIRST

Fig. 1.1 The logistics industry in 2023

1.3 Trend 3: Sales Struggles with Bureaucratic

1. Revenue-generating tasks (e.g. customer visits, pipeline formation, customer

I estimate that the revenue-preventing avoidable tasks can make up to 50% of a

THE 4 BIGGEST BUREAUCRACY MONSTERS AND TURNOVER INHIBITORS

1.4 Trend 4: Sales Becomes More Digital

 Interestingly, the Coronavirus pandemic has not led to a digitaliza-

1.5 Trend 5: Closing Rates and “Hit Rates” Gain

1. Continuous, rolling measurement from the last four quarters

a. Closing Rate and Hit Rate

Calculation Example Hit Rate

• Last 4 quarters: 15 Tenders

In other words, if a customer awards a total of 15 million euros and

c. Sales Team’s Engagement with the Achieved Numbers

• How strongly is my customer portfolio geared towards a particular prod-

Hamel G (2014) Manage Change in a Hyper-Changing World. Published by Tim Ragan.

 What distinguishes a bad from a good and a good from an excel-

2.1 Why a Good Business Model is Essential for

First of all, it is important—as with so many things—to come up with a clear

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Fachmedien Wiesbaden 17

 The business model is the heart of a company. It describes how a

Without an excellent business model, a logistics company is not future-proof. It

The Three Business Model Categories

• Category 1: Highly capital intensive

 A missing or insufficient further development of the business model

A good diagram that really shows everyone the danger of an exponentially

• CO2 emissions caused by humans,

LINEAR VS. EXPONENTIAL GROWTH

Exponenal Growth Linear growth

Fig. 2.1 Linear vs. Exponential Growth

 Take a close look at the needs of your customers!

• What feedback is currently being provided by all functions in direct customer

1.1 Trend 1: Disruption Causes Tension

1.2 Trend 2: Exponentially Accelerated Change

1.3 Trend 3: Sales Struggles with Bureaucratic

1.4 Trend 4: Sales Becomes More Digital

1.5 Trend 5: Closing Rates and “Hit Rates” Gain

2.1 Why a Good Business Model is Essential for

Exponenal Growth Linear growth

2.2 The Business Models in the Logistics World

2.2.1 Category 1: Capital-Intensive Shipowners

2.2.2 Category 2: Less Capital Intensive—Carriers