Freight 360

Freight Broker Sales 101 | Episode 278

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🎙️ Master Freight Sales with Confidence

Ready to exceed your shippers' expectations? In this episode of Freight360, we share essential strategies to elevate your freight sales game.

🌟 What You’ll Learn:

  • Smart Sales Strategies: Balance price, service, and quality while identifying ideal customers.
  • Cold Calling Confidence: Overcome nerves, build trust, and close deals with ease.
  • Actionable Insights: Leverage market data to enhance your sales approach.

Gain the tools to connect authentically and make every sales call count. Tune in now!

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Speaker 1:

Welcome back. This is episode 278 of the Freight360 podcast. We're going one-on-one today. This is going to be a great one on sales and building rapport, prospecting all the stuff that you need to do when you're early on in your journey as a broker, whether you run your own company or you're an employee. This is likely something that you are going to have to flex that muscle, get stronger at and really lean into to be successful.

Speaker 1:

But first, please make sure to share us with all of your friends. Leave us a comment, leave us a review, ask us a question, whether it's a YouTube comment or through our website or through email, refer us to your friends. Go to the website freight360.net, sign up for the newsletter, check out the Freight Broker Basics course if you want a full-length educational option there from us, in conjunction with DAT. We're here to help you guys, and that whole library is searchable. So if you like today's content and you want to learn more about sales, just type sales in the search field and you'll get a whole slew of blogs, videos, podcasts, the whole nine. But I see, see, you've got a couple of different options for your background today.

Speaker 1:

Hey it's freezing cold everywhere in the States right now. I had to even check Boca's, like in the 50s. Today we're in the negatives. In Buffalo, stephen's probably like single digits. It's cold is what it comes down to for everybody. Two degrees, stephen said so. Houston Texas this week got like half a foot of snow. They have like no plows. Southern Louisiana I saw a funny meme. It was like Buffalo weather in southern Louisiana ahead of the Super Bowl Bill's Mafia, something like that. Because of the Super Bowls in New.

Speaker 2:

Orleans. There was a snowball fight in the French Quarter. They were talking about it. I was listening to the radio in Pittsburgh and they said they were looking at videos of a snowball fight in the French Quarter. I mean there was quite a bit of snow in northern Florida. I mean there were pictures everywhere about. I mean obviously it doesn't snow down there too often. I was talking to TL up in Georgia. He said like the whole city is shut down, basically nothing is open. And I was like Tanner, um, tlx.

Speaker 1:

TL You're like talking about, like I know who TL is. Oh, sorry, I mean, you know, tanner, but um he uh he was like nothing was open.

Speaker 1:

I was like, oh, would you guys get like an inch or two? He's like, that's like a dusting, he's like, but the whole city's literally shut down. My uh. So I have a polaris side by side with a plow and it died on me yesterday. So it's like it.

Speaker 1:

To be fair, I bought it in 2016, the the hours on it are fairly light because I really only use it for plowing and some miscellaneous yard work, and then the occasional like go off around in the woods, um. But like I changed out the battery last year because it was starting to get weak. I've done, you know, the I've sparked plug change, I've done the oil change and the starter started to like cut out power on me mid plow yesterday and eventually I lost the crank ability all together. I couldn't jump start. I couldn't anything, man. So it's, I had it's sitting in my driveway with a plow on it, so I'd like drop the plow, throw it in neutral and like hand push this 1200 pound vehicle back into my garage to get it out of there. But we got, we got like two feet of snow. Luckily I got. I was able to plow, um, everything up until like we might have gotten like another four or five inches last night. Um, so we're able to get in and out of our driveway, but my, my polaris is sitting there.

Speaker 1:

I got to take it to a uh, local shop and I called the guy this morning. I was like, hey, do you guys do atvs? He's like yep, mike, do you guys do pickups? Because my I can't get this in the start. He's like, yeah, he's like I have a trailer. He goes. Problem is trailer is covered in snow right now. It's buried. He's like I'll probably be able to take it out by the end of today. He's like call me in the morning, we'll try to get you that was my next question.

Speaker 2:

I was like do you have a trailer? Can you get it into your truck?

Speaker 1:

the, the um, actually my father-in-law has a trailer that I could probably use if I wanted to, but his is probably buried too. So, um, yeah, the thing with the like a it's a polaris ranger, they're. They're like too big to fit on a standard like atv trailer and they're too big to fit in the back of a pickup truck. If you know someone's got a truck, you need like a special trailer or like an extension kit for a pickup truck because they're like, I want to say it's like nine or ten feet long. It's like there's a weird length on it that like overhangs most, uh, small trailers. So but anyway, we'll get it fixed. Uh, that's like I mean.

Speaker 2:

Speaking of news skip the gym and grab a shovel today, man yeah, exactly, um.

Speaker 1:

But I mean this weather man, we we've seen it affecting transportation across the country um i-90. I was driving out there and I trailers. There was an accident yesterday. A couple tractor trailers um hit each other sort of off the road. Um delays big takeaway, like talk to your customers, right, talk to your drivers, figure out where they're going, what to expect. There's the, there's a chance if you, if you book a truck, they might be living in la la land and have no idea where they're about to be headed to is a winter wonderland. So these are some of the basic things you want to talk about with drivers and your customers too, if they're not thinking.

Speaker 2:

Well, furthermore, too, I want to point out these are people driving in these conditions. Right, it's dangerous. I feel like I shouldn't have this. But like, be kind to people, be nice, have some conversations. Like have some compassion for the work that you're hiring them to do and be reasonable with your expectations, right? Like I've seen so many posts and stuff and comments from carriers saying like I don't know, just dealing with like pretty terrible situations with brokers yelling at them, screaming at them. I think, like they can't control. I mean, at the end of the day, like, just put yourself in their shoes and think about it for a second. Like, if you were driving in that weather in your car, let alone driving an 80,000 pound vehicle down the road. Like, have some consideration.

Speaker 1:

So I started a Be considerate be thoughtful.

Speaker 1:

I started a new indoor golf league this week and they closed the one down in my town so I got to drive like into the city of Buffalo now. But we had a whiteout snowstorm on Monday night when I was driving there On the way back I saw the polar opposites on both ends of the spectrum of truck drivers. I saw the drivers that bailed out parked on the side of the road and I got passed by the most confident, big, bald truck driver ever. I'm driving 30 miles an hour Like I'm comfortable and confident driving in snow, but I take it reasonably. If it's like a whiteout'm gonna go like 25 or 30, that far in front of you like you don't know what's there exactly.

Speaker 1:

This dude just friggin right past me and I'm like good for you. Man like this dude clearly is from alaska or something. Um, but he was confident, he must have had a good heavy load and, uh, he was cruising. But a lot, a lot of other folks. I saw a lot of like empty flatbeds that were just like I'm not, I'm not screwing with this, I'm going to pull over until, because these snow bands in Western New York, like they're like five miles, 10 miles wide, and they'll shift and it's clear, or it'll shift back over you and it's a whiteout, so you could literally drive through it, it's clear, you drive through it, it's a whiteout and you're driving around and it's clear. So, um, yeah, some of these guys waited out, others just barrel through. But yeah, um, I think it was freight wave.

Speaker 1:

Somebody had an article this week the winter weather is officially the bigger disruptor this season than hurricanes for, uh, for freight and transportation. So there's a little news for you um, sports go bills, baby bills took down the ravens on sunday night. Mark andrews can't catch a two-point conversion, um, but I just think, uh, I think buffalo played on all sides of the ball defense, special teams offense. Josh allen had a fairly vanilla, boring offensive stand, but he didn't need to do anything crazy. They got got the win. Eagles moving on to play the Commanders in the NFC Championship. Bills in the Chiefs If you guys have been seeing any of our social this week, there's some clips of me and Trey Griggs, who's a big Chiefs fan, giving our predictions on the game full length. We'll actually drop today, which is Wednesday, so if you hear this Friday it's already out. Trey doesn't give like any, like no love to the Bills. Basically, he's just like oh yeah, it's Chiefs, chiefs, three P Chiefs and I'm like, yeah, I mean Chiefs are good, but I mean it's the Bills man.

Speaker 2:

The officiating looks.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, you like that the thumbnail I did, josh Allen diving the ball and Pat Mahomes shaking the refs and shaking hands with but yeah, should be. Should be a really good weekend for championship matchups. That's why I'm wearing my my Josh Allen jersey in my hat today, really excited for it. I do think it's going to be Bills and Eagles and the Super Bowl. I've been I've been somewhat saying this since like week 12 or 13, and I'd love to see it and, yeah, I. Basically what I'm seeing on social media is, if you're not a Kansas City fan, literally everybody else wants the Bills to win that game, just because they're sick of the Chiefs. What's the line?

Speaker 1:

right now it's kind of like the Tom Brady era, everyone's like all right, we've had enough of the Patriots, but you've got to do better. You've got to beat them. What's?

Speaker 2:

the line.

Speaker 1:

It's like one point, one and a half points, I think, very close. It's kind of like the Baltimore game.

Speaker 2:

Baltimore game was a point and a won. I want to take bills. I should have. I'm like I just had, I didn't. I think that people were overconfident in baltimore because of how poor the steelers played and I didn't think baltimore looked that great and lamar hasn't been great in the playoffs at all.

Speaker 1:

I was really thought the bills kind of had it in the bag, even going into it that's the thing I saw yesterday was like death taxes and the ravens losing playoff games or something like that, yeah, okay. So here, yeah, the official lines for Buffalo, kansas City. It's at two points now. So you've got Kansas City. It opened at one, a spread of one. Now it's at two. That's probably based on people putting money on.

Speaker 2:

Buffalo. Yeah no, it'd be on Kansas City. They want to get the money on even side, so they wouldn't have gave them an extra point.

Speaker 1:

No, they're enticing you to bet on Buffalo now by making it like a plus payout. It's still very, very close. I think you're going to see a big shootout game. The ESPN analytics predictor has a 55% chance for Buffalo to win roughly. We'll see, we'll see, we'll see. All right, anything else on sports?

Speaker 1:

I hope to have a nice discussion about the Super Bowl next week. We'll see, though. All right, well, ben, I'm going to let you kind of lead things off here. Today we wanted to go throwback one-on-one style on on freight sales. A lot of our stuff is fairly like particular on episodes or very specific with a with an interview. So, um, take it away here, man, and I'll fill in. We're going to talk some just one on one level sales.

Speaker 2:

I mean I've just been doing more of this recently with some like larger teams and individuals on like coaching on sales and getting folks into it. And I mean the context is, you know, the past three years sales from our industry has really been you've kind of had to focus on price to some degree, and I would say more so than usual, because the market's been flat for three years. There's been enough carriers to pick up all the loads. So I mean, most shippers haven't really had much of an issue with on-time percentage, right, and it always swings between those two things On-time percentage, which is service, and price to some degree, right. Quality is your third, but like those are the two, I'd say, sides of the seesaw that swing back and forth, where most of the shippers really quick on that.

Speaker 1:

yeah, absolutely we've talked about the price, service speed, quality and how you can usually get two of the three, but you can't get all three. Um, and this is important, when we start talking about conversations with shippers, um, this literally has happened in the last handful of uh of weeks. I've seen a customer that literally wants all three and every time one of them fails and they get upset and it's like you, you're not going to always like if it's going to be cheap, great point, and you want a quality carrier, it's not getting there when you want it to. You're gonna have to wait. If it's going to be quality and you want it on time, like I likely gotta pay more money.

Speaker 1:

And this happens every single time. It's like a balancing. I'm trying to. So, anyway, I just wanted to point that out. So, when you go into these conversations with shippers, um, not every shipper is, you know, necessarily a good fit for you if all they care about is they want all three of those, and if you can can't do it, they'll go to the next person. Do you really want to spend your time working with those people? Just think about that.

Speaker 2:

So, anyway, back to what you were saying. I've had the exact scenario right and I'll even outline some specifics for people to see. This right and like this is where the work comes in in a sales call and then we'll circle back to like tips and things to like start your sales calls, but like I had a customer, same scenario right, you can have it, you can have the quality, you can have the service right, or you can have the price. It's either going to be cheap, it's going to be more expensive, it's either going to be fast or slow and it's either going to be good or poor. And quality Right now in the van world, like I would say, quality really has more to do with, like trailers. So like if you've got a company that ships food grade stuff and they need that trailer clean, then like there's your quality and price is the obvious one. And then services did they show up on time for the appointment? Did they get there with enough time to load when they're supposed to and get to where they're supposed to when?

Speaker 1:

they're supposed to service. Also, in my opinion, comes down to the driver experience, like if you have a driver, that's like mouthing off at the pickup or the delivery cause they you know they're complaining about appointment time, like whatever right Driver disputes. That's all part of the quality.

Speaker 2:

That's quality.

Speaker 2:

Cleanliness of the trailer and they can be defined as any any of these things. I think subjectively, but like the way I look at it too, for, like the listeners, is like quality comes down to that. Right, it's like it's the trailer. If your customer has specifics around the equipment very specifically like that's the quality of the equipment, the driver's behavior, right or manners, and your example like to me, that's quality right. Service specifically in our industry is did they show up on time? Like? Shippers will track the on time percentage. That's what they consider service percentage. Right Now, brokers consider service the communication you provide along with this. But from the shipper's point of view, service is showing up before being there when they need to be there and getting to where they need to be when they need to be there. Now, service can be affected by the quality of the equipment as well.

Speaker 2:

Right, like, if you're paying less money, that carrier doesn't have as much money to spend more on maintenance to get ahead of things.

Speaker 2:

So there's a more likelihood that service will fall with the quality of carrier and that's in relation to price right, the more money you have in a load, the easier it is to get a carrier that's got good maintenance equipment, a good experienced driver and has enough time in between their last delivery and their next pickup to get there.

Speaker 2:

So the less you pay, the harder it is for a carrier to stay profitable. So they cut it close, like they're going to try to book their next load as close to when they're getting empty from the last load. Right, and that's the thing shippers don't really understand. They want to pay less and then argue that the guy's not on time. But from the carrier's perspective, they're getting paid so little on some of those lanes that like they've got to book their next load to where they're literally trying to get unloaded and racing to get to the next pickup and when you've got a window that tight. That's why service percentage falls, because they don't have enough dwell or lag time in between it, because they're getting paid so low. So shippers, to your point, always ask for all three. It is our job to not only differentiate those three categories but ask consequence questions to make them see what is actually most important, based on what could happen in those scenarios.

Speaker 1:

Before we get into those questions, do you want to take it a step backwards here and talk about who are these customers that folks should be looking at? How do we find them? How do we get you know, in touch with them? And I'll give you perspective on this right Out of so, at Pierce Worldwide we've got a vast majority of our brokers are 1099 agents. Of our brokers are 1099 agents and I have seen, I've seen just about every tactic to build a book of business over the recent years. I've seen somebody who just has one and just moves it. That's, like you know, very easy, right, they already have relationships.

Speaker 1:

I've seen folks that have been through non-competes, non-celestics. They're trying to rebuild. They've got to, you know, play by the rules. I've seen everything from blasting cold calls 100 a day to I'm only doing emails and trying to get on RFPs and every mix in between. So I want to know your take on it, because I have actually seen a couple people go just straight up the email RFP style and get some awarded freight. It's not always like great freight, but they get awarded freight, whereas I think that smile and dial faster, faster traction and better relationships because they're you know, they're talking to people. So I want to kind of differentiate between those tactics of approach Great point.

Speaker 1:

So I want to kind of differentiate between those tactics of approach.

Speaker 2:

Great point and, like I have a client that I've worked with right that did primarily email and primarily that for the past few years and it has been effective. They've added a lot of customers over that time period. However, when you don't have a relationship, what you're really selling on is price.

Speaker 1:

That's how you're getting in the deal. It's an email.

Speaker 2:

And the only way they're giving you that load is because you've got a carrier that can run that lane, probably cheaper, more often than whoever they're using. The problem with that is well, the advantage is you can get those customers. Here's the disadvantage One when the market moves, you lose the customer. The second is there's always going to be somebody that can come along and be cheaper. So there's very little durability in that customer relationship. And yes, you can get some quick wins and get some shippers and get some loads moving. However, it really doesn't ever expand beyond that and they don't last very long and it's very hard to build a company around that. You can build a little bit of a book of business, you can get a head start that way, but again, they're not durable. There is no relationship and somebody is always going to come along and underbid you and then you lose that and you got to do that again. So there's a ton of work and you just constantly keep going through shippers right To just keep adding more and losing the ones you've gotten right.

Speaker 2:

The analogy I use with this client I'm like it'd be like fishing, I'm like, except the live well, in your boat has a hole in it. So every time you catch a fish, you threw it in your boat, but then it just swam away and then you had to go catch another one. Like you're just literally catching fish and letting them swim away, that would be exhausting, right, and they don't have to be either. Or right, like you can use emails to try to get people to see if they're interested or responsive, and then jump on the phone, which I think is far more effective.

Speaker 1:

A blend, I think. If all you ever do is call and you never have any other forms of follow up, well, you're kind of setting yourself up for failure there too, correct. I think the way in which you utilize email can be either detrimental or very beneficial, like whenever I get somebody who sends me a clearly like spammy, pre canned email, I immediately delete it. When I get the classic sequence follow up from a CRM that just replies to the previous spammy email with another spam, delete, delete. Eventually I say America's, america's junk. Ok, take it a step further. When I can tell it was written by ai, even like faster, I'm gonna mark it as junk. If I get an email and someone like legitimately customizes it, I'm reading that thing like hey nate, even like linkedin messages, right, hey nate, I you know any album.

Speaker 2:

A lot of times they're like hey, they'll.

Speaker 1:

Their first thing is like hey, I'm big fan of Freight 360. I'm going to read the rest of that, Right, Regardless.

Speaker 2:

Or if they say, hey, look, great game. Last week saw the bills pulled it off, and so you know that they absolutely took the time at least to learn about you or do in some way care about wanting to connect with you, right yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1:

I always laugh at the ones that, like I get an inbox on linkedin and the first message I have to approve to accept it because we're not connected and it's got a freaking calendar booking link in there and it's like what? Yeah?

Speaker 2:

you've established no value, no rapport, and you think I'm just going to give you my time.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, yep, but here's where it's effective, right, if I have a phone call with somebody and this is even like in rapport building in general, right, like we've got you know, it could be a vendor, it could be someone that we're trying to recruit to come to our company, it could be a customer, it could be anything. Right, you have a phone call, I'm definitely going to have a LinkedIn connection sent to them. I'm going to email them a personalized follow-up. All of that because I want to have as many touches as possible without feeling like I'm crowding them, but I want to do them at an appropriate time. Okay, and I think, if you've got the phone call done, we've all met each other, we've talked, even if it's for two minutes.

Speaker 1:

Now it's like email, hey, even if my, my email oftentimes is like hey, sorry, I caught you at a bad time. Here's what I wanted to send over to you If you got time this week. Here's what I wanted. Let me know if you've got a few minutes on, you know, suggest a few dates, right, linkedin message Same thing. Hey, tried to call you. Or, hey, good meeting you earlier. Just wanted to connect on here. Blah, blah, blah Versus the spam attack because you're afraid to pick up the phone or whatnot, I think that's why a lot of people do it.

Speaker 1:

They don't want to pick up the phone.

Speaker 1:

It's fear, yeah, and you gotta remember, these people put their pants on the same way that you do. You could legitimately put think about it this way right, traffic managers are oftentimes not always, but fairly oftentimes um, not the highest ranking person in a company, right? Um, they're fairly lower. There can be a lot of turnover. There might be somebody new in the department. Um, you could be talking to someone that's super new and they're afraid to talk to you because they don't want to screw up. Whenever they got to get put, they know they have to get a flatbed in there. They're afraid to screw it up. They don't know. You know their ass on their elbow. Just put it all in perspective. You're calling because you have a solution and you want to know if that solution is the right solution for them. That's all it is. And if the answer is no or not right now, fine, we'll check it out another time. Move on to the next one. There's hundreds of thousands of shippers out there.

Speaker 1:

So have that mindset of abundance, and you'll be way better off than being afraid for that.

Speaker 2:

Well, that's where I wanted to start, right Like, let's talk about cold calling. Right Like, we could do a whole episode on emails and different strategies, but, to be honest, like I think you covered most of what I would want to cover. We could do some later, deeper dive. But like, let's just talk about cold calls. Right, and the first thing is, our business is based on trust. Right Like, if you really want to grow and have a career in this industry, you need relationships with your customers. You cannot just live on price. You need to be able to provide value, and you can't even get to those parts of the conversation to understand where those things are that we talked about in the beginning of the episode of getting a conversation around. You know, service versus price, versus quality, unless they trust you. Right Like, you can't have any type of depth of conversation until there is some connection. Right Like we talk like getting them to know you, to like you or trust you. Right, like, you can't have any type of depth of conversation until there is some connection. Right Like, we talk like getting them to know you, to like you or trust you. Right, and the interesting thing is, like, this book is one I've been reading. I was gonna send this to you. It's called the Ellipsis Manual. This guy's called Chase Hughes, the author of this, and what he says and I've been able to verify this is that he developed a lot of this training for like interrogation and stuff in law enforcement with the CIA and the FBI and it's I mean, it's literally the analysis and engineering of human behavior, like how you do these high level things that people think are possible in sales, on sales. But the thing I want to point out is, before you can get into any of that, the thing the beginning of the book says is one of the things that really strikes me is that, like you can't use any advanced anything related to behavior engineering or sales, or like NLP, neuro-linguistic programming any of this stuff you see videos on and content on all of that has to start in one place.

Speaker 2:

The thing that precedes any type of like sales, psychology or any of this stuff you see on, whatever it's a TikTok video or YouTube video on this is it is you have to be in a place where you are calm and honestly, genuine, vulnerable in yourself for any of it to work.

Speaker 2:

That's how human beings connect with anybody, right? The analogy I was using with somebody this week is I'm like okay, think about the first time you asked a girl at a dance to dance with you. Think back when you're like at a middle school dance and you're 12 or whatever years old whenever that is right, like you're super nervous, you're probably sweating, you said a bunch of dumb stuff, you walked away, your face was super red, you're embarrassed and maybe they said no, maybe they said yes, but like it wasn't comfortable, it was terrifying and you felt horrible after right. Now you do it a couple more times over years and then you get a little more comfortable with it and then it starts to work and you think that like, oh, I'm doing something different. It's really your state. That is the thing that is most important to changes. That's just confidence through repetition.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, that's why we say the sales feel comfortable. Even like I won't even use the word confident, I'll scale back because it'll start with just being comfortable, because I think there's a level of arrogance that some people have, um, that is, they call themselves confident, confident, but they're just straight up arrogant and it's like it's, it's a, it's terrible experience if you're on the purchasing end of that relationship. Yeah, I agree.

Speaker 2:

Ironically, that's their ego protecting themselves from the fear. So they come across overconfident, which is disingenuine, and it feels uncomfortable. When you want to move away from them, right there you go.

Speaker 2:

So like the thing I think and like this is the analogy I use for them is I'm like, think like you're literally interacting with like a puppy or a baby or a toddler, Like if you acted that way, whether it's a dog or a little child, like they're going to physically move away from you Right Cause you feel this anxious energy. It pushes them away. You have to start before you even make your first call. I feel like take a couple of deep breaths. And the other thing is like you've got to lower the expectations and I know that's hard because you likely have a manager telling you you've got to go get a new customer today, you need more loads today.

Speaker 2:

So you go into this call with so much pressure on yourself that you build up your anxiety, your heart rate goes up and you sound anxious and it makes people not want to talk to you. Like that is step one. And the thing I still do to this day is like take a deep breath or two and I just remind myself like I am making sales calls not to sell anything. I'm making these calls to just meet some people. I'm trying to just make some friends, Just like if you were going to a party with a friend and you don't know anybody. The more relaxed and comfortable you are with yourself, the more people are going to connect with you and just talk to you. That is the objective to start, and most people just miss that so much that they make the job harder than it needs to be in the first place. I think.

Speaker 1:

I agree I think we have so much other content on this, but the whole. If you go into a call and your goal is not to walk away making money but, like you said, to make friends or really just make a connection, make a connection, you got to go into it, um, with a like a, a backup or, I guess, a supporting goal of like let's lower the amount of stress or pressure on this call as soon as we can, right, um. So I think oftentimes people ask like well, how do I open a call? Right? And I think there's, you know, it depends, I think.

Speaker 1:

If you're going into it blind and you don't know anything about that other person, um, you're kind of taking a shot in the dark and I think everyone just kind of has their own personal style. But what I have found is if I'm following up with somebody and I know who they are and what their style is, I open the call depending on who that person is Right. But if you're going into it totally, totally cold and totally blind, don't sound, I don't do that ever.

Speaker 2:

I don't think you ever should do that, by the way, Like I don't ever do. I never make a sales call.

Speaker 1:

You've never spoken Right. You might know something about that.

Speaker 2:

No, but that's my point. I think the next step is if you can get yourself right, slowed down right, and the analogy this guy uses is he's like picture yourself in underwater like you move slower. That is the feeling you want, is like the slow, calm movement, because it'll translate into your voice. But the second thing is like okay, like let's transition to like how you open this right Is, every time I'm making a sales call, I already think about and plan what is in it for them and why should they care, and that is never about me. It is what should be or might be or could be the most likely thing that is important to them. So, whoever I'm calling, I'm going to group prospects in a way that I have something that I feel like is valuable to call them about. So if it's a bunch of produce companies that ship watermelon, I might be reaching out and saying, hey, look, I know this season's picking up soon. I talked to a few other companies and, hey, I'm not sure whether you're lining up new trucks or you got enough relationships. I've got some folks that I think might be a fit. That's why I was reaching out.

Speaker 2:

I can use the same one in every single call in that group of prospects and as I learn something from each prospect, it might change a little bit. Like the first guy I might talk to be like hey, man, I'm pretty good, but I've been having a heck of a time getting trucks into the Midwest. If you got anybody, let me know. Now in my rest of my calls I'm going to be like hey, I've got some guys heading into the Midwest. I know some other folks I've talked to in your space have run into some issues. I don't know if that's helpful, but that's why I was giving you a call. I'm immediately getting to what's in it for them so they don't tune out, throw their guard up and stop paying attention even if I am talking.

Speaker 1:

I want to. I just I want to break down for the one on one sake here. The first, the first mock call you did there and I think it was extremely effective because it was so straight to the point. And low pressure, right, I know pumpkin season's coming up, that's your reason for calling, right, I've got some guys that I think might be a fit. This is your reason, right? Not sure if it's a good fit to work together, right, low pressure Pulls the pressure out. It's funny to give you a call, right? Yep, that's it, straight to the point. And then, obviously, in your subsequent calls, you take the feedback from this phone call and you roll it into the, you know, to the next one, the next one.

Speaker 2:

Right, and it doesn't matter which industry you're calling. If you group your leads in a way that they at least have one commonality and that one commonality is the reason you're calling you can use it over and over again. Right, like, and you can pick any industry and you can do this in anything that anybody ships. You just want to take the whole group, and that's what I found Like.

Speaker 2:

When you try to research every company, it's really inefficient to make sales calls because you've got to make a lot of them. If I got to research 80 companies a day, I will never be able to get calls out if I got to research every company. However, if I research the steel industry and there's tariffs on the horizon, I can group a bunch of steel companies together, use the same opening with every one of them. If I'm calling freight forwarders and the ports might be closing in two weeks, that's my reason to call every single one of them. I'm looking for one commonality to apply to a group. Then I can do research once and apply it to 100 or 200 leads and then keep rolling through those things.

Speaker 1:

I want to give another relevant example for literally right now. Think of winter weather. Keep rolling through those things. I want to give another relevant example for literally right now. Think of winter weather. Right, it doesn't have to be a commodity or it doesn't have to be a specific upcoming thing, like you mentioned, with a tariff.

Speaker 1:

When snowstorms come through an area, like we mentioned earlier in the show, it disrupts a lot of the, the um outbound during that storm, the outbound transportation.

Speaker 1:

During that storm, you get trucks that may be delayed because they got stuck or they had to park on the side of the road. When a storm clears through, it has a similar impact or, you know, result of, like a hurricane right, where you pretty much have a standstill and then a big surge, um, for probably, you know, a day or two after that storm clears to get everything back to normal, right, and those could be great examples of ways for you to get spot freight access Right. And hey, I got a lot of guys that were trying to get back into Buffalo. Do you guys have anything that you've got going outbound? These guys will be available in the next two days, right, something you know, I'm just I'm literally spitballing this right now, um, but that's a way that you could get some, uh, cherry picking, some low-hanging fruit spot freight right and then boom, if you've shown yourself, or even if they say no, the next time you call hey, remember me, I'm the guy that called you last week, when you know x, y and z.

Speaker 2:

So there's always a, there's always a valid reason, other than I've got trucks in the area, um, I'll give you and I'll give you another one, and that is at the root of, like every sales call or every pitch, I guess I'll give you another way to do this within groups or like a geographical region outside of a shipping commodity, where you can not only use this, this tactic, but a tactic that is higher level, higher level tactic, that is, it's called eliciting information and it's where I don't ask you a question but I say something that almost will make you give me information without me asking you, right. So the analogy that I use in this book right and this is pretty interesting, if I wanted to know how much money you make, say you're a manager at Target, right I go. Oh, hey, nate man, I know your job over at Target's been going pretty well. You just got promoted to manager. I heard there say I think you're making 30 bucks an hour, just for an example. Right I go, man, I think I read it in an article the other day you guys are making something like what? Like 55 bucks an hour. You are almost immediately going to be like no man, like we're not making 50 bucks an hour, like dude, I only make 35 bucks an hour. In fact, my raise was only like eight bucks an hour from when I was assistant manager.

Speaker 2:

When you say things in a way that will make them respond without you asking them, because if I asked you how much money you make, like that is rude, that's going to make you pull away. Same thing works in pricing and shipping and here's how I've used this. So like one I can see lanes and like gen logs. So like I can look at companies and know they ship a lane, and then I will look at that and look at a heat map. So yesterday I looked at like Michigan to Georgia. There were some van loads paying like six bucks a mile in the middle of the afternoon there were a lot of loads going for like the high three dollars a mile. So like in this market, like that is a super high rate. So we would call shippers in Michigan and be like hey, lead in the same way, like hey, look, you know I'm pretty sure you guys were moving some stuff to Georgia.

Speaker 2:

Talked to a couple of our drivers that had moved from in the past. Not sure if you guys are still moving that lane, but that was the reason I called. They're going to come out with oh yeah, you know, we still move that a little bit. Or they might be like hey, haven't moved that recently, say. They say like oh no, this is still. Yeah, we're still moving that lane.

Speaker 2:

I'm going to some other folks like there are some lanes going for like six bucks a mile over there. You guys got to be paying quite a bit to head down there. I had three people go. We're not, I'm only paying like two bucks a mile still out of there. Right, you can hear in their voice right the pushback and wanting to defend and you can almost read into the fact that like that's not really true, but like it gives you so much information that from there I'm like, well, oh, hey, you know, just out of curiosity, how often are you guys shipping down there? Oh, you know it's, we're still shipping down there every week. Oh well, like I said, like I got some guys that are heading up that way that I know need to get back to Georgia at the end of the week. So if you guys got some stuff like shipping out on Tuesdays specifically, I'm pretty sure I'd get you a decent rate, just because I know these guys got to get back home and they're looking for some regular freight coming out of that area.

Speaker 2:

Then the conversation just opened wide up. Right, he didn't necessarily have to tell me, yes, I didn't have to negotiate a lane, but I learned that that guy not only is for sure still shipping it I know he's not paying that, or maybe he is a little bit here or there, but it's a matter of time before he's going to have a problem. I created value without having to sell myself on. I can do this better. I can do this cheaper. I'm now having a conversation where he realizes that not only do I know the market, I didn't have to tell him. I've been doing this this many years and I can do all these things Just by explaining.

Speaker 1:

LPL Intermodal has hazmat oversized white glove.

Speaker 2:

I know what's going in the market. Without telling him I know what's going in the market Just by referencing some things that I've seen is opening that conversation, because now they're realizing like I'm not calling to ask for a load, I'm not trying to sell them anything. I'm trying to provide value for a valuable reason and something that makes sense, in a way that, like, opens that conversation up to talk more. Now we're talking about operations. Hey, what are some of the other lanes you guys move? How's your year coming along? That whole conversation might now go 10, 15 minutes just by using those two or three things that you can pull literally from debt.

Speaker 2:

Right, look at a heat map, look at where the market's tight, look at where it's loose. If it's gone from a loose a lane's gone from a loose market to a tight market you can be sure that if they aren't having a problem, their rates are starting to go up. Their other brokers and carriers are starting to take other loads in the spot market and they're starting to see service issues. You don't need to ask hey, do you have any lanes where they're not picking up on time? Hey, do you have any loads that aren't moving? That makes them feel like they're not doing their job well when you specifically ask if you're having a problem.

Speaker 2:

Their job is to make sure their freight moves seamlessly and has good on time percentage. So if you ask them if it's not going well, you're basically going hey. So where in your job are you doing poorly lately? Is it here? Are you doing really poorly over here? Where aren't you doing well at your job so I can do it better for you? That's the context when you just directly ask about their problems. So you want to reference these things that you know are likely to happen. Just by looking at the data, they're going to be far more likely to actually open up and have a conversation with you.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, that's a good point. It's been a good discussion here. Is there anything else we want to throw in on kind of the one on one? Well, I know our next, our I think our next episode we're going to. We're going to kind of break down the how do you manage your pipeline with where these folks are, if it's a brand new prospect, if it's someone you've had a first contact with, if it's something you've started to quote on. But anything else on the one on one side, yes, some tips, because you know prospecting with a purpose. We've kind of hit on that a little bit with having segmented stuff. That's in common. You can roll one conversation at the next, but what else do you have for the one on one here?

Speaker 2:

I think from like the one-on-one level, the biggest thing that is going to help right is we've talked about it a lot in here it's like lowering your expectations to go into a call, having a plan for your calls before you go into them. Group your leads together in a way that you can use that same plan at least more than once. Maybe it's on 10 leads, maybe it's a hundred, but you want to batch them together to save yourself time and to be more efficient. And the most important thing in all of this is like it takes repetitions Like so, if you are just starting to sell and this is your first time, lower the expectations that, like your first 200 calls are probably going to suck and you just need to get used to getting on the phone and having conversations like that is for sure, full stop, the first step and getting good at this. It's just doing it over and over again and nobody like wants to hear that. Everybody wants the silver bullet to be able to get customers without having to suffer, do the work or to feel that tension in their chest when they make their calls. But it's unavoidable, right, and to me like if you focus on it in that way and you look at it like this, like the other analogy is like if you're going to climb stairs, you don't jump from the bottom to the top, you go one step at a time. So set your expectations when you're going into sales this year.

Speaker 2:

If you're just starting at like from here, where can I be at next week or tomorrow? I want to get whatever number of calls today, tomorrow and just set that number, hit it, do that day in and day out and then by next week, move the bar up and you will make progress and you will absolutely get there if you stay consistent with your output. If you're making 50 calls a day and none for two days, you basically lost all your momentum and you got to start again. So, like the other really important thing is consistently stepping it up. Just like if you were going to train for a marathon. You're not going to run 26 miles tomorrow If you've never ran. You're going to run around the block, feel horrible and maybe tomorrow you run a block and a quarter. Right, like, little by little will get you far, much get you much farther than trying to jump from here to where you want to be because you have unreasonable expectations.

Speaker 1:

One of my bosses. This is over 10 years ago now and this was this was really helpful for me when I first started. He goes here's what I want you to do. I want you to make you know we had a goal for I think it was. It was two hours on the phone or 50 calls for the day, because I want you to write down on a notepad, when it happens or right after the call, if you know what was, whether the call went good or not any pushback or objection that you got. I want you to note.

Speaker 1:

Note it down right, and then you know, compile all of it and over time I had a list of like here's the most common objections I'm getting right now. Are they, are they a objection that you always get, or is it specific to the time of year or a current event that's going on right now, et cetera. Right, and then what I did is I had like little flashcard type things that I would write down like the objection and then bullet points on impossible things I could counter with. It wasn't a script, but it was like all right, if they gave me the objection of we're not adding any new brokers right now, ok, the possible bullet points might be like oh so what do you know? What do you guys do if somebody falls out on you? Do you guys have a exception of policy certain times a year? You know what is? You know when in the future do you foresee that Like you could have possible?

Speaker 1:

You know, it's kind of like choose your own adventure and that way you could go through them and kind of like, yeah, all right, if I hear this one, here's some options and whatnot. That way it kind of keeps you free flowing for the conversation. But it also helped me get really good at just not having to ever reference, um, a script or bullet points, because it was like second nature to me, like, yeah, I'm hearing this one the most, I'm hearing this one the second most I'm hearing this one, you know, just about as often. And here's a bunch of possible ways we can go. So, um, and that what works for one person may not work for the next, but but I'll tell you what man right, and just tracking, because you might go to a sales meeting like, oh, yeah, what were the biggest hurdles you had this week? I don't, I don't know. I think it was excellent.

Speaker 2:

No, if you wrote them down, you've got hard hard data, exactly, and you're going to remember them more, right? And the last thing we'll can't remember who it was, but there was. It might've been this guy, it might've been someone else. Did two TED Talks, one on listening and one on what you can do and what you could say right. The one on what you can say had like 10 million views, right. The one on listening, better, had like a hundred thousand people watch it, right. And the funny thing he was talking about is everybody wants to focus on what they can do to make that thing happen, and I think that's human nature.

Speaker 2:

But I think the most undervalued and has the most leverage is learning how to listen, to understand when somebody is talking to you, and Chris Jolly's post on LinkedIn made me think about this, because he had said like same thing. We were talking about emails versus phone calls, and I'm like the other thing you don't get in an email is you get no feedback. You don't learn anything about the other person. And the thing that I think is so valuable in a conversation that most people overlook is slowing down and literally listening to not just the words they're saying, but how they're saying. What they're saying, right, right.

Speaker 2:

What is the tone of their voice? Do they sound frustrated? Do they sound irritated? Do they sound calm when you ask them a question? Did they feel more or less comfortable? Right, all of that is information that we pick up only if you're listening right. And I think when we go into a phone call with a clear objective of I need to get a load and do this, it's like you're literally preparing what you're going to say while they're talking, instead of just being present and actually listening to not just what they said, but what information they're trying to convey to you and how they're talking, and to me, like it's so undervalued and it is such a high lever skill if you can practice that.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, I agree and I'll wrap up with it. This is really just a caveat to what you said and really an extension of it is like I think being a high quality communicator will get you so far, not just in sales, but in business in general right you can communicate very effectively with your colleagues, with your superiors, with subordinates, as you take on a leadership role.

Speaker 1:

people I think you know they're not going to be like, oh he's such a good communicator, but there's something about that person that you're like I really trust what they're doing and I really, you know, it feels good to have a conversation with them because they deliver a message in such a quality way. And you know it feels good to have a conversation with them because they deliver a message in such a quality way. And you know it's definitely a valuable asset or tool to have in your in your rucksack when it comes to sales, because you need to communicate, understand other person's perspective. But it's going to go the whole distance too as you grow your company. You're dealing with vendors, you're dealing with competitors in certain instances. But yeah, just all around, just quality communication overall, absolutely, hey, good stuff.

Speaker 1:

We're going to pick this conversation up next week and move into kind of a little bit more detailed sales stuff. And you know you only got so much time. How do we prioritize, how to use it when prospecting and following up and all that good stuff. We got some awesome guests coming up stuff, and you know you only got so much time. How do we prioritize how to use it when, when prospecting and following up and all that good stuff? We got some awesome guests coming up in the coming months as well. Um, we're like backlogged on guest episodes right now, but I'm excited for it, so yeah, same here and we got two webinars.

Speaker 2:

I think we got a lineup with dat I'm looking forward to do. We got to get a response to them too today actually.

Speaker 1:

Yes, you just reminded me. Cool. Any final thoughts Ben?

Speaker 2:

Whether you believe you can or believe you can't, you're right.

Speaker 1:

And until next time, go Bills. That's a big one.

People on this episode

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Benjamin Kowalski

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Nate Cross

Co-host