Freight 360

Email Campaigns & Building Freight Brokerage Success | Final Mile 59

September 03, 2024 • Freight 360

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Ben Kowalski & Stephen Ruhe answer your freight brokering questions and discuss:

  • How to Write Emails as a Freight Broker
  • Funding a Startup Freight Brokerage
  • Hiring Sales Reps
  • How to Differentiate a Freight Brokerage

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Speaker 1:

Welcome to this week's episode of the Final Mile where we answer your Qs and, as that we get all week Questions you guys either submit to us directly at info at Freight360.net, or on YouTube, our Facebook group. We pull them together and try to answer as many of them as we can during the week and the ones we think are worth sharing with the audience we cover on the show every week. So Steve and I are going to dig in today and answer a handful of them. How's your morning coming along, steven? Good?

Speaker 2:

good, I can't complain. I know you guys just did that podcast with Thilo from Levity and I always get giddy about AI and tech. It's fun to listen to. It'll be a good one for anyone who's listening to this. If you haven't listened to the last podcast that came out on friday, I'd definitely listen in on that yeah, I thought it was really enjoyable.

Speaker 1:

I enjoyed the conversation. I mean I think he's a great guy. They're doing really cool stuff over there. So anybody out there interested and what is available for? I mean anything from a small brokerage or agency all the way up to the large brokerages. I mean Levity is a great company to research, reach out to and listen to the episode to get some more insight into what it can do, whether it's a fit for you and what the value could be. Let's jump right in. First question Can you shed some light on how an experienced broker writes emails? Are there things to keep in mind? I'd like your insight into this one. First, We've talked quite a bit about emails. I've seen a few that you've done, even recently. How do you think about it? How do you frame it? What are some of your takeaways or how you approach that question Emailing prospects?

Speaker 2:

It's a fun topic because there's the same evolution for everybody. That first email is three to 500 characters long. It's a bunch of this is who am? This is who we are. We have trucks in all 48 states or whatever you know.

Speaker 2:

Just a bunch of fluff but no real direction towards who they're actually reaching out. Like they could send that email to 200 other people and they would maybe think it was for them, but it's it's just so broad and basic that I maybe think it was for them, but it's just so broad and basic that it's not effective. It's very easy to delete. And so as you start to learn what's effective and A-B test your emails, you get to a point where, oh, maybe I should do some research, maybe I should find out where their facilities, what kind of commodities are they actually shipping? And then you have more information. But now your email is 200 characters long. You're not introducing yourself and you're just going straight to the point. And that tends to be more effective, especially for an introductory email, because all you're trying to see is are they clicking on it? Are they opening it? Are they engaged?

Speaker 1:

And can I reach out to them?

Speaker 2:

So what are some of the? Do you have any thoughts on subject lines or how or what you say in your emails that you have found effective? So for the emails, I usually I'll pick one or two facilities that I know they have. I obviously don't know what's going in or out of they have. I obviously don't know what's going in or out of, and then I'll try to match that up with something I have in mind and reference that company that's maybe in the same city and say you know we're shipping out of or we're coming into here. I know you have these commodities. I'm not looking to take over your freight tomorrow, but I'm just looking to see what you have available, to see if it even fits my network.

Speaker 1:

But you have available to see if it even fits my network. Nice, so, and that's a one-to-one email, right, like you write that in reference to one prospect you're going after, correct?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I've done. I've gone away from blasting out emails to multiple I know you have done it.

Speaker 1:

Why have you moved away from it? Tell me how you started and why you moved away, because this is probably the most common question everyone's thinking out there. It's like well, if I can automate emails, I can send thousands instead of making hundreds of phone calls and I can just get business easier. What was your experience?

Speaker 2:

Your click-through rate, your return rate, is very low and there's not a single email that you can craft in this industry to those prospects that can hit a broad market and be effective. You'll get a one to 2%. But a crafted email that's very short and direct to the point is going to be a much higher effective rate than a broad email that you're going to put somebody. Now I'm not saying you can't put them on mailing lists, but that's something you would put them on after you've had a conversation not before, not to get prospects to talk to you.

Speaker 1:

I couldn't agree more right, and I think if anyone out there thinks about this from the receiving end of getting emails, right, if that email can be written to a large number of people, it's usually not specific enough to resonate to any one of them, right, and I think that's with any marketing message anywhere, right, like, the broader the message, the less it usually speaks to one individual, especially in our industry. And the other thing I think it's important and you pointed this out is, like the types of customers we work with, the types of people that are our customers and the types of business they do, are so different across the industry. They're different across the country within a commodity. They're different within a commodity not only by region but by even the person that might be reading it. And then if you're sending it to all these different shippers, they're not having the same issues or have the same need, so it's just not likely to resonate with anything enough to make them want to read it, let alone respond to it, let alone pay attention and not just throw it into their junk folder. Right, some of the things that I think I well, this is kind of what I do, like if I'm running a training on emails and the things I talk about, and some of this comes from Kevin Hill, who used to be on Freightwaves. He's got a blog out there. I can't. I'll try to find the link.

Speaker 1:

But it's like 10 or 12 things that you need to keep in mind when writing an email, and I was actually trying to find it as we were doing this. I couldn't find it quick enough. But the first one is length. Okay, so I would say that one of the most common mistakes is trying to sell somebody in an email. The reality is is I want everyone to think about, like, what is the actual objective of an email? It's to get them to read it first and to maybe respond. So you're not trying to sell them, you're not trying to convince them and you certainly shouldn't only be talking about yourself. I'd say those are the most common errors somebody makes when they first start this. The second is the length. Like, effective emails typically aren't more than excuse me 120 words. So when I'm writing an email like, I keep that in mind. The other thing I do is like I write them many, many times before I decide to send them, especially if I'm going to do them to a group and I'll talk about that in a minute, meaning like I'll put them in GPT and go, hey, rephrase this a couple of times, and I'll see and read them a few times and see which one I feel like I would respond to the most. And then I almost always wait until the next day, go to sleep, read it the next day with a different frame of mind and see if I still like it or if maybe I like the others, because that to me, has really helped me hone what and how I'm writing this.

Speaker 1:

The second thing I think is important to the grouping I don't think I think you can send some more than one, but I think there's a quantity number. That is really the sweet spot, meaning like, if you can find the variables of one or two categories, you can write an email that seems like it's written to one person but actually does resonate to many and think about when we talk about prospecting, like, for instance, I always use this example. It's like, hey, if I'm going to send this email and let's say I want to work with steel pipe companies, okay, that's my commodity. Well, there's a very high likelihood that whatever somebody needs in that industry. Most other people are kind of experiencing the same thing.

Speaker 1:

The second thing I look at is the region. I'm not going to send that same email to every pipe manufacturer in the company because transportation is different in different parts of the country at different times of the year. So I'm going to pick a region, maybe like the Southwest right or maybe even just Texas. So if I've got a group of leads and they're all pipe manufacturers or distributors and they're all within Texas, I can write an email that is almost specific enough that it seems like I wrote it to one company, but it is at least general enough that I can send it to two or 300 companies. That's how I group my prospects If I'm going to do any type of like. I wouldn't call it email marketing, but like email prospecting.

Speaker 1:

The other thing is I've seen a huge response rate difference with a follow-up email. I send that email, say it's to two 300 prospects. If I send another email the next day and it just says not sure if you got a chance to take a look at this, but can you respond when you get a chance right, my response rate goes up. It like doubles. And then if I send a third email. It is literally the same thread and this is the important piece. You can't send a different email. But if you send it as like a forward of the last email, meaning like I sent that email, and if you technically do this manually, you would go to the sent folder and go to resend that email to you again, that person can see that they received that email yesterday and I think there's something psychologically that makes them go oh yeah, I did miss that yesterday and they just pay a little bit more attention.

Speaker 1:

And then the third one is really just similar and I'll literally read an example, because I did this a lot in the tanker world, where everything's very in a tight region, meaning most of the shippers are in a state, they're all looking for carriers that are located within their state. And when I was working with an asset company last year, these emails I was able to get somewhere between 9% and 13% open rates. My responses were far higher just with these follow-ups, and I was going to go through literally just to give you an example of what some of those emails were and just kind of what I did. But like literally, the first email was like hey, we're looking, we're looking to add capacity for one of our customers lanes. Please respond if you're interested in working with us. We've got these loads and, to your point, we're telling them hey, we work with you, know customers in your industry. We've got trucks literally as an asset company located in the state where you are right. We're an asset based tanker company. We've got a terminal in Indiana. We deliver to the Midwest, southeast. Our drivers are experienced hauling liquid fertilizers, soil conditioners and incesticides.

Speaker 1:

So, like we knew that the biggest hot point for these customers were, they wanted drivers experience with their commodity. They wanted to know where the truck trucking company had other customers Like where do they service Some companies don't service other areas, so they want to be able to answer this question before they're ever even going to decide if they want to respond. So, real quick, what's in it for them? And then it was just hey, could you point us in the right direction? The person that handles like your bulk tanker loads, and then space, space. Could you tell us who we should reach out to regarding this?

Speaker 1:

And to me, that last line is one of the more important ones. You need a hook. If you're not asking a question, they have no reason to respond, even if they want to right. So, even if you provide value and get them to read it, you want them to want to respond. You need to ask them to. The other thing I picked up from Kevin is postscript. Long time ago, when we used to write manual letters, writing PS at the bottom of a letter was always usually the most important thing you wanted them to pay attention to outside of what you wrote in that letter. Psychologically, people pay attention to that PS right. So I always put a PS at the bottom and for these it was PS. We also have hopper bottoms and end dumps if you move bulk solids. So we knew that those things likely would resonate with these types of customers in this area.

Speaker 1:

And then to the point I was making before. The follow-up email was just following up on the previous email. Would you be able to connect us with the person handling this? Third follow-up email was just reaching out to see if you had a moment to review the last email Again. We've got some drivers headed into your area regularly space, space. If you don't have a current need, let us know. If you've got a bid coming up, we could participate. So those simple follow-ups that were literally just the forward of the last email. We got huge response rates because they're like oh yeah, this person like literally reached out three times.

Speaker 1:

If you send three separate emails, most times people don't connect that and they just feel like there's just three random emails.

Speaker 1:

When they see you reaching out repetitively, whether it's on the phone or an email, it shows persistence, it shows that you care and that impression comes across without you having to say that. And the only other thing I want to say regarding this is the subject line that I find most effective is to put subjects that are similar to what that customer probably sees with their current providers right. So I almost always use, like a state, a lane or equipment type, because most companies and shippers, when they need a truck or a broker to help and the subject line it'll be like Ohio to Nevada, reefer or, you know, cali to Florida van, right. So they open them more because it seems like something they should be opening in their day-to-day work, even if they realize, oh, this is like a prospecting email. I've at least gotten them to that next step. And at least those are the few guidelines I found to write effective emails to be able to get higher response rates.

Speaker 2:

So a couple of things I want to touch on. So I think I sent you and Nate a screenshot of my last crafted email, yep, and my subject line had nothing to do with the company. It was literally discovery in parentheses. Not the credit card, that was my subject line.

Speaker 2:

The reason I picked that is because you're sending them to their business email, where they don't want spam, but it looks like a spam email that they get to their personal. My open rate on that my first open rate, I think I sent it to 120 companies was 79%, highest I've ever gotten.

Speaker 1:

And it's fantastic. And why do you think that's the case? Right, because you found a creative way to spark their curiosity, to make them want to see what it was about. Right, it looked different than everything else they see. It's literally the opposite of what I was saying, but it is effective in another way, right, right, it stands. Effective in another way, right.

Speaker 2:

Right, it stands out in their inbox. So the couple of things to keep in mind when you're crafting an email is how does that subject line stand out? And then an outlook and I'm sure other ones do this as well. They'll show you a preview up to 50, 60 characters, yeah. So how can you get your point across so that they're not opening the email but they're seeing it in the preview?

Speaker 2:

So then my follow-up to that was name dropping them their title and then piling on to the joke that was in the subject line, because I've got their interest, sparked a little curiosity, and now they're going to open the email. When they open the email, they see a GIF of Liam Neeson Hilarious. So then they're going to read it. And then one thing to keep in mind when you're crafting these emails you don't want to write one email to send out to a bunch of people. You want to write a template that you can change one section of it to tailor to another, so that you can use that same thing over and over and over again, but you can send it to other people. So it's got. So you're not recreating a bunch of work, but you can't just mass email that thing.

Speaker 1:

I think it's a great point. You know what it reminds me of when I was first in sales, when we were trying to get people to call us back, leaving voicemail. That's a whole other question. It's like you shouldn't be selling somebody in a voicemail either. The only goal of a voicemail is to get them to call you back, and one of the things that the senior salespeople would teach us is the best way to get them to call you back is to create the curiosity or the suspense, just like you did, and the most effective voicemails you could leave honestly and again, I don't suggest anyone do this now but it sounded like a bank was maybe calling right, and you would leave a vague, cryptic voicemail of like, hey, this is a really important issue, I need you to call me back and just leave your phone number and like people just always call it back, because usually those voicemails back in the day sounded like the bank was calling you and you needed to find out what it was right. Today, like the one of the voicemails I'll use more is like I'm still trying to create the curiosity. I sound rushed and I go Stephen, give me a buzz when you get a chance, and then I just leave my number and hang up right and I intentionally stutter because I'm creating some of this curiosity of like what? What is this important? I don't know. Let me just call back and again like, if you're sparking that curiosity, that is the first step in being able to get them to take action.

Speaker 1:

And I think, for anyone out there that wants to look more into this, if you're writing an email, one of the things I always do after I write it is I ask GPT or Gemini. I go hey, please rewrite this email in AIDA format. And for anybody out there, that's a marketing formula for attention, interest, desire, action. Most of the marketing you see in all of the ads follows that format. It grabs your attention, it keeps your interest, it needs to get you to desire something and then, most importantly, make you take action. And, no matter what you're writing, it will put it in that format and give you some ideas on how to keep tweaking it to be able to get them to actually respond and one of the ideas where I kind of got the idea to write that email in the first place and everyone can do this.

Speaker 2:

Just go to your mail, your physical mail that you get, and pull it out and you're going to see at one point this week something that looks like a bank statement that says urgent, must read, and when you open it up it's an offer for a house. I get 10 a week, yeah, and there's probably a mortgage thing or whatever. They're grabbing it. You're opening it because they grabbed your attention with this urgent thing.

Speaker 1:

They're grabbing you're opening it because they grabbed your attention with this urgent thing, or they make it rip down the side, like when you get a check that's like stapled together and has like the you can't see through on one side. You're like, oh, what is this?

Speaker 2:

and you're like, oh yeah, it's an ad yeah, or they'll put that little fake credit card in there so you can feel it on the outside. It's all psychology they're using on physical mail.

Speaker 1:

So just apply it to your inbox, your outbox, and see what happens one of the most effective mailers I think I'd ever heard of and I know they still do this because I saved it and I was going to do a youtube video on it is nielsen is the company that used to try to get you to put a box on your tv so that they could sell your information to marketing companies to see what you watched.

Speaker 1:

And to this day they mail out $2 in their mailers to get people to respond to their physical pool and they have a huge response rate. And it's funny because they literally mail you two $1 bills like real money and when you look at it and you open it you're like I just got $2. But we talk about this in sales. The psychology of reciprocity makes people feel guilty, so they just respond and fill it out because they were given money and it's to this day they still get it. Like I saved one. It's in my office somewhere because I was going to do a video on it and like again, a lot of the things that you see in marketing to your point, whether it's in the mail, whether it's on TV, whether it's an ad on any type of social media is usually following some similar format.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, if it draws your attention, figure out a way to recreate that for your Exactly the people you reach out to All right.

Speaker 1:

Number two do I need to take out a small business loan of 50K or so to help me get started as a freight broker? What are your thoughts of 50k or so to help?

Speaker 2:

me get started as a freight broker. What are your thoughts? Um, yes or no it it just depends on what you're trying to do, what you're trying to accomplish. Um, and then a lot of these people, when they're asking starting out as a freight broker, like, are you actually starting out as a freight broker or are you going to go be a freight agent somewhere that'll back you up? Um, so then that $50,000 isn't really relevant, correct?

Speaker 1:

I think for sure. I would want to understand if you're going to work as an agent, you don't need to cash flow the business, so you wouldn't need the 50 grand for the cash flow. However, if you were going to start out, whether it's starting your own brokerage or even as an agent, I think a reasonable expectation is you are probably not going to make enough money to pay your monthly bills inside of six to eight months. I would say eight months to a year is probably even pretty fast if you need to make five or 10 grand a month. Again, I've done it myself in shorter times. It's taken me longer at other periods of time. It depends on the market. It depends on what you've done before, how shorter times. It's taken me longer at other periods of time. It depends on the market. It depends on what you've done before, how long it's going to take you to get used to doing this. I mean, every individual is different, every market, what you go after and the resources. You have the coverage, the ability to get trucks to do this. If you're working in an agent model, it'll be faster. You're starting your own brokerage? You're looking at like six to nine months just to get your credit off the ground as a broker to be able to book trucks at good enough rates to be competitive in the market. So again, how and where you are and what journey you're taking, I think would be helpful to understand whether or not I would.

Speaker 1:

The question I ask anybody before they start is I'm like hey, what do you have saved and what's your run rate? How much money have you set aside to start a new business? Because it doesn't matter if you're a freight broker, if you're going to be a plumber, if you're going to start an ice cream shop, if you're going to start a tech company. The question every business entrepreneur should be asking is how much time do you have before you run out of cash? Because that's the break-even number. If you can't get it off the ground by then, it doesn't work. So if you've got zero money and you're trying to start a new company, you probably need to borrow some money to just be able to live. Again, if you have no expenses and you're able to still live with your parents or whatever and you don't have a lot of bills, the 50 grand I don't think is as relevant. But if you've got monthly expenses and, for sure a family I wouldn't be able to expect to support yourself on whatever your monthly bills are inside of a few months.

Speaker 2:

So yeah, and one thing to keep in mind unless you're doing like a W-2 position is you're still starting a new business, and most businesses in any industry, whether it's retail or a restaurant it's one to two years before they're profitable at best. So that's something to keep in mind when you're transitioning from one thing to the next, whether it's careers or it's becoming a freight broker or anything is, if you have a family, what are your expectations to provide and how much do you need to set aside before you start this new venture, or is there a way that you can start this new venture and still support? So those are basic things with any industry that you need to take in consideration, especially ours.

Speaker 1:

Agreed, and it's any business. Right to your point, all right. Next question to get shippers, should I hire two to three salespeople and have them make cold calls to shipping managers? What do you think?

Speaker 2:

no, I say no because what are you doing now? Are you, are you taxed? Because if you're taxed and you're the one bringing in customers, maybe you should build out your ops team first with reliable people that you can trust to handle what you're doing. Open you up to bring in more sales. Create a reliable system that works for you before you start bringing on sales people. Yeah, exactly to my knowledge.

Speaker 1:

Create a reliable system that works for you before you start bringing on salespeople.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, exactly, to my knowledge, salespeople, depending on how you structure it, are going to cost you more in the long run than an ops person.

Speaker 1:

I agree, and I think it depends on where this person is in their business journey. I mean, if they've got a freight brokerage that's operational and profitable and you've got profit to play with, then yeah, you should maybe look at hiring some people to grow. If you are just starting out and you don't want to make the calls and you think hiring somebody else is going to get this done, the two things I would say is one no matter who you hire is never going to care as much about the business as you are Full stop right. The second thing I would point out is it is sales in the first place. To find and hire salespeople Like, you need to put applications out there.

Speaker 1:

You need to be able to I'm sorry field applications. You've got to put job descriptions up on different websites, whether it's Indeed or wherever. You're going to have people reaching out to you. You have to interview them. Then you have to pick the person you think is best suited for this job, which, again, is very difficult. No matter how long you've done this.

Speaker 1:

Even the biggest companies in our industry that have recruiters that only do this day after day, year after year, they're still only getting a success rate 10% of the time, meaning for 10 people, they hire. One or two of those people make it into the second year and again, it's not because they're not good at it. It's just very difficult to judge somebody's ability to succeed in sales on a few interviews, even in a few weeks. I've seen some folks come in that I definitely didn't think would make it in this industry and have gone on to kill it. I've interviewed people and thought people were going to absolutely be superstars and a month later they weren't even part of the company. Right, it's just really hard to interview and choose and hire salespeople that are going to perform in the same way.

Speaker 1:

It's very hard to make a lot of phone calls to find a customer that's going to work with you. So if you're starting your business, I think for sure what I would say is it makes more sense to get on the phone to make the calls yourself. Because, also, once you bring these folks on, you're still going to have to train them. And if you haven't been able to do it, who do you want them to learn from? Right? Again, it's the manager versus leader mentality. Somebody in this organization needs to be able to do this and lead the folks you're hiring so that they can follow and understand and improve day in and day out until they get better enough at it that they're closing customers Right. So again depends on a few things, but hopefully that helps.

Speaker 2:

Oh yeah, and that was exactly what I was going to say when you were finished is you know if you're going to hire two to three salespeople, how do you know you're hiring the right people If you don't know how to do the job? Even if you're calling people and you have the experience you need to, at least you may not have the personality to do it, and that's fine, but at least with the experience you know what needs to be done and then maybe you can use that to hire somebody effectively. But if you're not doing it because you don't want to, you don't have the experience how do you know you can even hire the right person?

Speaker 1:

Exactly? What are you interviewing for? What are you looking for? Again, if you are interviewing the things I tend to look for, like hey, is this person competitive? Do they have a growth mindset? Are they willing and open to learning? Because that's what's really required for a salesperson, right?

Speaker 1:

No matter where you are in your journey, if you're not curious and you don't want to keep getting better at it, you're probably not going to succeed. I mean, I've been doing it for 20 some years and every single day I think about this, because the market changes, the people I talk to change, the environment changes. What worked last week doesn't always work this week, right? Like, even though the structure tends to be the same and the activity, how and what you say to people in different markets is how you can either get it to resonate with them, get them to connect with you and be able to hopefully do business together, and, again, if you're not doing this yourself, it's really hard to be able to interview for these things. Last one too, and I think this is a good segue into that how can I differentiate my services from other brokers? What would you say is a good service from a broker? How do you differentiate yourself yourself when you are selling. Steven, what's your approach?

Speaker 2:

Well, I cater to what my customers needs are and that's how you differentiate Cause what ultimately happens as you bring in customers, you're going to you're going to fall into something that's going to your niche. That niche is gonna have different requirements. Now the staples are communication, um, like that. That is a service that is a must for brokers.

Speaker 2:

But when you get into, like, for example, hauling imported beef, it's like do you understand what a coa is? Do you understand what a COA is? Do you understand what a health cert is? Can you facilitate that with your customer? Can you help them understand different market variations? What are the different things that that customer needs? And then how can you apply that to other prospects that you're looking for? And through the experience, that's how you like. Just writing out, starting out blank, what services can I provide as a broker with no experiences with other shippers? That list is going to be either really short or very long and impossible to do, and you just you need to get that experience with customers and what you like and don't like and how you can tailor that service to correct what I used to call.

Speaker 1:

It's like pulling on the thread or going down the rabbit hole. When you find something where's a fit, or you've got one customer, keep trying to find other customers in that industry. They're likely to have the same needs. You're likely to be able to connect with them faster. I would say the biggest way that I think brokers differentiate themselves is like think first. From the other point of view, don't think about what you need to do differently. Think about what a customer would want to know or think about before they're going to work with anybody, right? And we always kind of say and it sounds like cheesy, but it's like that you want them to know you, like you and trust you, right, okay, well, one. You can't get them to do any of those things, and I think the most important thing in differentiating yourself that comes right before what you said is listening, right, listening twice as much as you're talking, because I don't know how to differentiate myself even as a person to work with you, steven, until I understand what it's like to do your job.

Speaker 1:

What are you running into? How are your orders coming in? How quickly are they coming in? What are the expectations of your managers on you? Is it the expectation that all your loads get picked up every single day on time? Do you have one or two days to get them picked up? Do you have customers screaming at you if they get delivered late for any reason? Are your orders coming in the morning of and you've got to book those trucks that day? Are they coming in a week before? You really have to understand how and what that person actually is doing at their job to determine one.

Speaker 1:

If there is a way for me to help you if there's a need. And then, furthermore, I don't know how to differentiate myself from anyone else you're working, unless I understand how you're working with the other people, because what we said earlier in this episode is there's such a disparity between every shipper how they operate their SOPs, the systems they use, where their loads come from, how they book the trucks, how they talk to their trucks, how and where the orders come from in the first place. What are the metrics that that load tenderer or logistician is accountable for? Is it on time? Is it mostly price? Is it a few other things? Is it communication? If I can't understand any of those, I don't know what's important to you. So whether I'm different than every other freight broker isn't really relevant to you. It's only relevant to you if it's literally relevant to you, and the only way to understand what you need is to be able to talk to you.

Speaker 1:

But I think so many brokers think about sales and I think this is in every sales industry is like we're so focused on us. What do I need to say to make you work with me? What do I need to do to make myself sound different than everybody else? Right, and there are things we talk about that can make you sound a little different by not sounding salesy, not constantly asking for business every time you call, not making that call all about you. I don't think you should announce who your name is and who you work for when you call. I think those are the simple things you can do to not sound like other brokerages when you're on the phone. But if you really want to differentiate yourself, you need to first be able to find out and understand something about the person you're talking to, and to me, that's the glue in the whole industry. It's the relationship. You can't have a relationship if I don't understand you versus me, whether that's a girlfriend, a husband, a wife, anybody like. That's all communication, that's every relationship and every instance in human life.

Speaker 2:

I think right and and nate says this all the time you know you can read a book, you can like take a course, you can do whatever, but if you don't actually take the steps, yeah, then it doesn't really matter. And and something that drew me to this podcast in the first place, and why I am where I am today, is because this content and what we're putting out and what other people are putting out will help you get past the painful steps of learning these things. Yes, but you still have to do the thing. So we can help you figure out that email, figure out that cold call process, understand the industry a little bit better, but we can't make those calls, we can't write those emails. That's still on you. We can just what may take you a year.

Speaker 1:

Maybe we can get you down to eight months, maybe we can get you down six months, but you still got to do the thing you still got to experience the ups and downs and the issues to get we we all by doing not by watching and not by reading right.

Speaker 1:

Like we do learn reading right. And you know, to remind you, I was thinking of this the other day too, like when I first got into coaching and I was going through the certification and you know, it's like hundreds of pages of content and strategies and all these techniques and everything. And I remember starting this and I'm like, oh, I can't wait to be able to do this. And I genuinely remember like two months of studying this and taking the exams to be able to pass it. Even when I was I could regurgitate right what I read and pass a test. I still couldn't do it. Like it took me another year of actually doing those things that I read about before they became part of my behavior and I was able to actually execute them Right.

Speaker 1:

And I'm like you know, whether you're thinking of riding a bike or whatever analogy comes to mind like you can't learn to ride a bike by watching a YouTube video. You can see what to do, which allows you to start, but learning a bike, learning to ride a bike, involves falling, making mistakes. That's how we learn Right. Learning to ride a bike involves falling, making mistakes. That's how we learn right, and I can't remember the whole line, but it's like experience comes from, like everybody wants experience but experience comes from making mistakes right, like that's literally the learning process of everything we do and being human right. And if you're not going to do the thing and you're just going to watch others do it, you're not likely to improve Because even if you understand the difference, you haven't practiced it enough to be able to actually do it yourself. I think yeah.

Speaker 2:

And to kind of build back onto the podcast from Friday with Tilo and Levity the advent of AI and all these softwares is great it's very helpful and you can spend a lot of money getting software, but if you don't understand the process that the software is solving, then the software won't work. So if you can't tell AI exactly what you need to do, step for step for step, you're going to have mistakes, you're going to have errors in the code, it's going to give you things that you don't know or understand and you're not going to be able to fix it.

Speaker 1:

And you don't know if they and you're not going to be able to fix it. Or and you don't have to write it wrong, right, like because you haven't done it yourself, like I always think back to, like, whatever grade it is, you learn long division, and I mean every kid goes. Well, I don't need to learn long division. I got a calculator. Everyone has a calculator. Well, you learn long division, not because you're not going to use that tool, but because once you do it and learn it manually, if you accidentally fat finger into a calculator and it gives you the answer, you at least have some intuition that, like, yeah, that doesn't seem right, I'll do that again, right Cause, if you never learned to do it, I think in the first place, using the tool creates more errors to your point. So that's a really good point.

Speaker 2:

And the uh. The old adage that the teachers used to like to say, that they can't say anymore, is you're not going to walk around with a calculator in your pocket. Ironically, we all do. Ironically, I've got the internet in my pocket, but again, that still doesn't take away from if you don't understand the process, you're not going to be able to tell these solutions that you purchase how to solve your problem. Oh yeah, couldn't agree with you more Any final thoughts?

Speaker 2:

No, no. I think these are all great questions. Keep sending them in. I love looking at them and kind of going over them, and it helps me also take a look at like what I'm doing and and how I can get better in my day to day. So that's fun.

Speaker 1:

Favorite part of doing the show is that it helps me learn every day, helps me improve, and being able to help other people helps me work on being better at it myself. For sure, like man, whether you believe you can or believe you can't, you're right.

Speaker 2:

Oh, yeah, yeah.

People on this episode

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Benjamin Kowalski

Co-host
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Nate Cross

Co-host