Freight 360

Sales Pipeline Management & Follow Up | Episode 279

Freight 360

We recently talked about prospecting and lead generation, but how do you follow up with a shipper? What do you say? When should you follow up? These are common questions and we're breaking this down in detail on this second episode in a series on freight broker prospecting.

Support Our Sponsors:
QuikSkope - Get a Free Trial: Click Here
Levity: Click Here
Bluebook Services: Click Here
DAT Freight & Analytics - Get 10% off your first year!
DAT Power - Brokers & Carriers: Click Here
DAT Express - Brokers: Click Here
Truckers Edge - Carriers: Click Here

Recommended Products: Click Here
Freight Broker Basics Course: Click Here
Join Our Facebook Group: Click Here
Check out all of our content online: Click Here

Speaker 1:

Welcome back. It's another episode of the Freight 360 podcast. We are at episode 279, as we wrap up the month of January here. This is like the roughest time of the year if you live in Buffalo, for multiple reasons Number one, it's cold, and number two, the bill's lost to the refs I mean the chiefs this past weekend. So we'll get into that in just a minute.

Speaker 1:

But if you're new, you caught us at a great episode. We're going to continue last week's discussion on prospecting and we're going to dig a little bit further into the next steps. And this is really good stuff if you're brand new or if you're growing your book of business. So definitely make sure to stick with us through the entire episode. And if you haven't, make sure to check out last week's episode on the 101 of freight broker sales. And our website, freight360.net, is a great resource for all of our content. You can sign up for our email newsletter, which comes out twice a week. There We'll head on some news today, but make sure you sign up for that.

Speaker 1:

We get you all the latest content from all the sources out there, as well as some really good analytics and data on the market broken down by equipment type throughout the country, so share us with your friends. Like us, comment, ask your questions, we'll answer them. And you got the free broker basis course too, if you're looking for a full-length educational option. We did that in conjunction with DAT in the last few years and it's available. A lot of folks will use it for training for their company, if it's a smaller company, or just ancillary additional training in addition to whatever you've got as well. And if you just want to start your own brokerage, it's kind of your how-to guide. So, ben, how are we doing? Man, how's South Florida? Well?

Speaker 1:

well, there's no days till I migrate um South. I'm at 58 days uh as of today.

Speaker 2:

So, weather's beautiful, no complaints.

Speaker 1:

Very good man, Very good man, Very good. We were talking about it off air before recording that finally it's warming up a little bit. We hit, let's see. It's currently 31 degrees here in Orchard Park. It hit 32 yesterday. For those of you who are not in the United States, that would be zero degrees Celsius, or energy drink, whatever you call it and but we're supposed to get over 32 this week, which will be nice because that big layer of packed down snow and ice in my driveway might finally go away. So we'll see. Real quick.

Speaker 1:

On sports, the bills got. I can't say it cause I don't want to say they got. No, they got fucked by the refs man. It was bullshit. Josh Allen had a first down. Clearly, when the Bills were up, Was about to put a dagger in the Chiefs, as he did in Week 11. But nope, didn't happen. So this drops. On friday, you can also catch me on the podcast with trey griggs. We're down the street. On friday, I will be donning a travis kelsey jersey. What trey doesn't know is I will also be wearing a philadelphia eagles hoodie underneath it. So I might have to show that off. We'll see. But yeah, did you watch the game, Ben?

Speaker 2:

I did watch it. I saw there's a pretty poor face mask call. Oh yeah, the ball that basically the ground aided the catch was absurd. Oh yeah, that one too that they didn't call One. It just should have been no catch. And two, it was not clear at all that either one had possession Like both of them literally.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, you could have marked interception or reception, but either way those were both trumped by incomplete pass.

Speaker 2:

Exactly. And then they just decided and I think it went to replay and I'm like you watched the replay and I'm like there wasn't anybody't anybody, I think, watching that, including the announcers. They weren't like, yeah, the ball clearly was aided by the ground, as it was almost brought into possession, I guess, by both people simultaneously and somehow was like a 25 or 30 yard gain that they got and I think they eventually scored on that drive bs face mask.

Speaker 1:

I mean like there were absolutely some just clearly horrible calls yeah, yeah, I mean it's, it's, it's getting to a point where, like you, I mean, if you follow barstool at all, like prez bill- beher said this morning he's like I'm not even watching the chiefs anymore, and they were like you're not gonna watch the super bowl.

Speaker 2:

He's like I don't care, he's like I'm not watching it.

Speaker 1:

He was like every game I've watched of the chiefs play this year he's like has been ridiculous, so yeah yeah, I think you know the um, the takeaways, and I always hope that it, at least when you hear the reaction of folks, I hope it like it leads to like progress and um, more fairness in the game and to the credit of the Chiefs man they know, like Patrick Mahomes knows how to draw penalties and that's part of his strategy.

Speaker 2:

So I have to give credit where credit's due, for that right they said the same thing, his grading was the same way and it's like he knows that he'll get those calls. So he will run down the sideline and get the extra two yards because he knows nobody wants to hit him there and get the flag. So he exploits those because but again, you give him credit for exploiting within the rules, for sure. But the fact that they happen so consistently that his behavior has changed literally is evidence that they're happening more than they should, right, right.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, there was a stat that like analyzed out of every game where a team dominated, like it was like time of possession offense and had a lead going into the fourth quarter, leading the fourth quarter, whatever it was, there's been like three times in recent history that that team didn't win Out of like every game, out of like 90 instances. There's been like like three times in recent history that that team didn't win out of like every game, out of like 90 instances. There's been like three times. And the three times that they didn't win was Chiefs versus Bills, chiefs versus Bills and Chiefs versus Houston. So like I don't know man, it's kind of like when you there's that one girl who's always like always has an issue with guys that she dates and it's like you're kind of the common denominator in all those issues, right, and it's I don't know man, when I see the, when I see the chiefs and all those stats. Here's the question.

Speaker 2:

This is the thing they were debating this morning. I was thinking about this Was it like, okay, let's just take it for a fact, for example, and say that, like they are objectively getting calls, they shouldn't right, like what would be the motivation? Right, because the rest of the NFL owners wouldn't be on board with it. You wouldn't think and like unless there were individual instances where there were refs getting somehow some incentive, some way for doing. That is the other argument, but it happens so much it's hard to justify that. The third was that there's just the human bias, that they're so good that just human beings are making decisions where they feel like, oh well, he wouldn't have done that. Like they pointed out, like Travis Kelty, like Kelsey, like legitimately taunting somebody and not getting a call.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, and the bill's got a penalty for it.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, and they're like, or they, the refs, just thinking like this is just such a good guy because we see him everywhere, that like he wouldn't have Like. What do you think is the root?

Speaker 1:

cause I don't know. I mean, I'll tell you what like conspiracy theory is and that's that the nfl is making a ton of money on their um dominance and taylor swift and all this stuff. Uh, I don't really think that's.

Speaker 2:

There's a conspiracy there but the owners of the teams also own the league and I can't imagine that any owners of the other teams are okay because, like, they're clearly not making as much money as the chiefs are in merchandise and all these things, so like yeah I don, yeah, I don't know, man, I think it's probably just a human bias, like you know, kind of like what you just outlined before.

Speaker 1:

Everyone thinks you have it. It's like the, it's like the Patriots right, you have this mindset they're the greatest and like they're destined to win. Therefore, other teams are going to try to be cheap against them and they're going to win.

Speaker 1:

Therefore, other teams are going to try to be cheap against them. I don't know. Either way, dude, the Bills beat them in the regular season so many times and they can't do it in the postseason. That's a Bills problem. If you know, you got the refs I shouldn't even say the refs. If you know you have penalties you have to combat.

Speaker 1:

Play smarter. The Chiefs definitely had schemes that the B bills never saw before. They never played those, a lot of those plays before in the season. So it was very, very smart on andy reed, steve spagnolo, the whole. Either way, I'm not gonna sit here and gag on the chiefs, um, but I will say like I hope it leads to progress and change. Like the coin toss change. After the 13 second game a few years ago they changed the rules in the playoffs, like both teams get possession of the ball and overtime. Um, now the spotting of the ball, like I saw something yesterday. I don't want to waste a ton of time on sports, I'll wrap it up with this, but in tennis, when that ball hits the line and they have that like that little I've been watching a lot of tennis lately too, right, and they show they like zoom in.

Speaker 1:

They show that graphic of the ball and where it like where it hit on the line. You can do that, but we can't spot a freaking football accurately like there's already, there's already chips in the NFL balls that test for air pressure. Um, they don't do anything with spotting and I would. I would say like, yeah, I have no issue with um adding in some sort of technology that gets an accurate spot of the ball when the ref can't see it accurately.

Speaker 2:

Or if there's debate over it to that point like and then we could write like gene steratore, who's always on the networks and I think he's from pittsburgh originally, so he's on all the time and he was like listen, he's like I can tell you from doing this 30 years, most of the time we can't see exactly where the ball is. He's like we're gauging where somebody's foot is based on relation to what you think happened, and he's like you're making a best guess. And he was like on that spot, by the way, the guy who had the clear line of view for it deferred to the guy the ref that couldn't see that at all and is the one that made the call he came, he had a marked uh over the first down and then he like shuffled over as he went up to the ball and then all of a sudden it was short.

Speaker 1:

So yeah, anyway, that's sports. Um, even like the um, replay assist, they're gonna start, I think, next year with some more of the um, like the slide rules for quarterbacks, if they're, if it's gonna call a penalty or not, they're gonna start to use replay assist a little bit more. So we'll see anyway.

Speaker 2:

Um other news yes, I wouldn't ask you other news like comments related to the worldwide express and Express and Global Trans lawsuit levied by Freight Essentials. Do you read into that at all? No, what do you got? You really should dig into this because it is all about agents. Basically, when Worldwide Express acquired Global Trans within some period of time, their largest agent was a company called Freight Essentials and again, these are alleged because the defendants haven't responded yet. But what is alleged and I read through this Leffler had something there.

Speaker 2:

Freight Caviar had it a couple of days ago you could just look up I think it's two days ago's newsletter, dug into this and they interviewed him when him and his wife I think it was him and his wife were on vacation with their one-year-old Basically executives or somebody higher than them at Worldwide Express reached out to their customers and said they acquired Freight Essentials, which was a 1099 agent, and that they would now be working directly with Worldwide. So they legitimately at least from the allegations went directly contacted their customer and then they said they were directed to lie to the customer and say that Freight Essentials was owned or purchased by Worldwide Express and those companies were going to directly work with them. Wow, and it said that they were their largest agent at the time, doing like $40 million.

Speaker 1:

This is why contract language is so important and I can't wait We'll get Leffler on this year. At my last company we had a clause in our agent contract that clearly stated it handled both sides. And to my company, now we handle it the same way and here's, here's how we, here's how we write it to protect both parties. Your the clause will state um, that basically, the, the broker cannot, like, if an agent leaves, like if we terminate or they quit whatever, we cannot then try to solicit their customers, their employees, their subcontracted agents or anything. And there's a period of time, right if, through normal business practice, another agent, um, you know, does business with them. It's a different story.

Speaker 1:

But we as a company cannot do that and we also don't have the business model that, like Global Trans and Worldwide do, where they have the manpower to go in and work those accounts.

Speaker 1:

But we do that intentionally as to create an environment for agents to succeed and not feel threatened. And on the contrary and this is like extremely rare, but we do have language in there that states if we ever assign you an account, or if we ever, if, for whatever reason, you get business because of us, you can't take that with you Like, let's say Yep, and like it's again in the agent world. It doesn't really happen. But like, let's say, a customer reached out to us and was like hey, do you guys have any trucks available? Because we have freight, we need to move, and we're like, oh yeah, we'll give it to one of our agents. That is a good fit. Right, if we get you an account, for whatever reason, you can't go like just steal it from us, yeah, same way we can't steal yours, right, it keeps. It's not a non-compete, it's not a non-solicit. Well, I guess it technically would be solicitation language, but it's intended to protect both parties, so it's like what's mine?

Speaker 2:

is mine. It is a non-solicit. It's all it is. It's exactly what it is. It's a non-solicit for a period of time.

Speaker 2:

I can't go after your customers, you can't go after ours, I can't. You bring your book of business over to my agency. I'll give you a better percentage. And then and that's why, again, like I've heard lots of companies where I've seen I'm not going to mention it in there Like, yeah, it's great where there's an agency and a W-2 model, I'm like that creates a whole lot of potential conflict. Yeah, again, I don't know that it does create, but there's a lot of potential If those folks in W-2 realize the setup. There's a misunderstanding a lot of times related to the risk it takes to be an agent versus W-2. And then when somebody's got a book of business and they're trained and they know what they're doing, they're like well, damn, I'm making 25 percent, my boy's doing the same job and he's getting 70 percent. Yeah, but your boy had no income, risked losing, not paying his bills and providing for his family. To get that you took a different path. That is arguably well, is less risk. That's why you need that there, because it is a give and take.

Speaker 1:

You know where I've seen this. I'll give two examples, and I'm not bashing on these companies, I'm just giving you real world. This is people that I've talked with in depth numerous times and have expressed this to me. So Online Freight, ofs, online Freight Services they were bought by Echo I can't remember what year it was but they operate two different business models Online Freight is agents and Echo is W2. And I've talked to people, people, as recently as this week, two different people from OFS that are like dude, they're like pitting us against each other. It's like a terrible environment, like I'm an agent but they treat me like I'm a child and they know that I can, if I, my account can just be absorbed by this other entity that we're basically like one company owns its competition and the other company is owned by its competition and the other one is Armstrong and Armstrong as they've grown referenced.

Speaker 2:

What's that? That was the one that was referenced. I saw the other day.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, armstrong, internally within its own company, has both W2s and 1099s and I've got a guy that's at our company now. That was previously with Armstrong and it was the same situation where they and I had a. I have a buddy who literally worked there. I won't say his name or what he did, but he worked on the corporate side and he would like tell me straight up, like admit, like how they would handle things and it was like, yeah, I mean, it's like if one of our W2 guys wants to like work an account, like they're clearly the more profitable, like we're just going to take the account from the agent and it just it is what it is as part of business and I'm like that's so dirty man, that is not how you like, that is not how you get a good reputation and, you know, retain quality people long-term.

Speaker 2:

I want to take a minute to just break that down. For a second right, because this is similar in what we talk about the free market and what happens in all business, right, so, okay, there are rules and guidelines and contracts and regulations to be able to make people do business honestly and ethically. And again, if you just take it and say, like that is the motivation for those in the first place, right, okay. So when a company operates outside of that right, the same thing always happens Over a short period of time, they benefit, right, which is a problem with the incentives of that larger company, upper management pushing down on lower management until they start skirting the lines and operating in a gray area trying to get away with it.

Speaker 2:

Right, and then the habit starts Well, it worked once, I can do it one more time. Oh, I got another bonus. Oh, this worked one more time. Right, because the employees. Right, okay, if they get another bonus or two and then eventually it doesn't work and they don't get paid, they'll leave and go work somewhere else. But the larger entity, if it keeps doing that, it is going to be a much larger disservice and financially worse off in the long run because agents are no longer going to work in that scenario and they're going to lose all of it or most of it over time. So even though skirting the law and doing unethical things might be awarded in the short run, in the long run, almost 99.9% of the time, it ends up being a disaster and you get far more penalized in the long term than you got awarded in the short term.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, there's a flip side of that too, which is, if you have, if you get a little bit too laxed or loose with certain agents and they have leverage on your company, it gets dangerous. We had an agent that grew so large that literally, the threat of him leaving was used multiple times to get things handled, yep, and the ownership was like this is the one they were getting ready to sell. This is like 2019, 2018, 2019. It was like diversification yeah, it's like I'll just leave. And it's like, well, you do 40 million a year, and yet he ended up going toification. Yeah, it's like I'll just leave. And it's like, well, you're, you're, you do 40 million a year, um, and yet he ended up going to global trends. Ultimately, it's funny Um, not, as wasn't. The agency you mentioned in global trends did end up buying, buying his agency eventually, and he got out of the industry. But, um, there's multiple agencies like that where it's like you know you threaten to pull your business. I think you need to have a healthy balance. So, like with Pierce, where I work now, I think we do a very good job at we've got.

Speaker 1:

Obviously, it's like you're 80, 20 or you've got like your big hitters and you've got a bunch of smaller fish, but we have enough big hitters that if one left it wouldn't like move the needle, it would suck. I mean, a lot of these people are. I become friends with them. I do so much interaction and work with them and help them out and whatnot, that, like you, become part of each other's lives. That's why we try just about everything we can to make something work. But ultimately there's a line that's drawn and that line is this we are the broker and you are the agent. And because we're the broker and you are the agent, and because we're the broker and you're the agent, we make the decision on contracts, we make the decision on credit, we make the decision on carrier qualifications and things like that. Right, if you, if you want to threaten us because you do so much business that you want us to approve X, y and Z.

Speaker 2:

You're now go get your own.

Speaker 1:

Go, start your own company. You're welcome to do that. I hate to lose you, but like that, ultimately, I think that's how you have to, the mindset you need to have when it comes to it. But yeah, I mean not to go down the rabbit hole of the agent model, but that's, that's the reality. So interesting article. Anyway, I'll look into that one that you mentioned.

Speaker 1:

Other news that you got anything else on that Don't. I'll just kind of rapid fire here. This was in our newsletter. Make sure you subscribe on the website free360.net. It'll come out Tuesdays and Thursdays and this actually this first one was from the Steven Pettit, the guy that does the communications for DAT. But the California Wildfires basically was like hey, we're not going to see the trickle-down effect in the produce world for a few months because they were in low harvest season. So what would be coming in the later springtime out of the California area? That's when it's going to hit. So those of you that move a lot of produce loads out of California and we've had Dean on here to talk about what does he call it? The salad bowl. There's a certain region that he referred to it.

Speaker 2:

As I can't remember it, it's the salad bowl.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, okay, like that's where you're going to see impacts, when you would normally see those harvests, so you could see anything from the price of produce and other regions going up, or more stuff coming up from over the southern border, etc. What do you?

Speaker 2:

got. Here's the other inverse non-effect that happened related to the regulation. Again, when I listened to them break down the regulations recently, they put a cap on what's for price gouging was the motivation? Like where companies can't come in and charge 10 times as much for, like, rental homes, for example, because all the people were displaced. There's so many people that need homes. People that own the homes are like well, listen, I got 25 people that want this home, like they're charging a little bit more, so they cap that and I think it's a 10 percent%. But they also capped all of the improvements, like builders, for example, on going to rebuild, and they're like okay, great, that should make it theoretically less expensive for people to rebuild.

Speaker 2:

However, the problem is in supply and demand. When you regulate anything right and you go, you companies can't charge more than 10%. There are not enough construction companies in the United States, full stop. There's not enough plumbers, there's not enough builders, there's not enough carpenters, there's not enough painters, there are not enough of those folks, right. So there's already not enough people to rebuild all of that in a short period of time.

Speaker 2:

And when you cap it at 10%, people that are slow in other parts of the country that are construction companies and builders this time of year would have moved their family there temporarily, maybe lived in trailers, sent some guys to work on site. If they could have made more money, they would have taken the larger risk and the higher expense to move their company temporarily to California to help rebuild quicker. So what in a free market economy could have happened much faster? Again, there's a cost to that. They theoretically capped it, which means they're going to only build as fast as the smaller number of companies that are available to rebuild. So you're not going to see a huge boom and lumber being shipped there. In the same way, you could have construction materials, all of the other things that would have been driven there very quickly had these companies been allowed to divert resources temporarily there to get them built faster.

Speaker 2:

And what should have happened is that should have happened. Prices would go up and then, after it dissipates and it's all rebuilt, they kind of come back down. That's what should happen. But every time the government intervenes and regulates pricing in one way or another, it adversely affects the timeline to get these things done as well. And we could go on a whole episode having a conversation about it. But Now you're right.

Speaker 1:

You're right. The owner of my old company has property in Key West and after a hurricane there years ago he mentioned the same thing he's like. Not only is there a limit on the amount of like builders he goes, there's literally one way in and out.

Speaker 2:

Yes.

Speaker 1:

Like Highway 1. I mean, I guess you can fly and boat, but like, yeah, ok, anyway. Moving on, ai is set to dominate our industry this year. We've seen a lot of stuff emerge in the last handful of years with AI and people say like, oh, is it going to replace humans? No, I think it's going to change. It's going to enhance the humans and change the way that the humans are used. But I think with a lot of predictive things for pricing, for capacity, for fraud prevention, I think the AI part's huge. I don't think we're there yet. On the cold calling, the prospecting piece, I think there's an opportunity there to simplify it. But when we talk about or, you know, when we get into the topic today, I think there's a real advantage to. If you're a good salesperson, there's a real advantage to putting yourself on the field instead of putting an AI in your place because you are your biggest strength. But I don't know what are your thoughts on the AI boost coming into this year as it pertains to our market?

Speaker 2:

I think it's two things. I don't think they're mutual, exclusive. I think it is both going to make people get more done in less time, more efficiency. But I do think it is ultimately going to reduce the labor need across our industry. And I think where you're seeing this is larger companies are slower to adopt it, so they're not seeing the same efficiencies, but smaller companies are able to grow so much faster without hiring when the need comes up. So so many people in companies and owners I've talked to are like, yeah, like I'm not getting rid of employees, but our business is growing and I haven't needed to hire more people because I'm getting more done with less.

Speaker 1:

right. Your headcount per dollar, I think, is where you're going to see the difference Correct and if you can scale, your headcount can still go up, but you're going to have to hire less per dollar.

Speaker 2:

Now that agents are out and like I've been able to test them or see what they can do I know they just got released on browser stuff, but like there are so many task oriented things that have been tried to be automated for like eight or nine years, with I can't remember what it was called, the first one that came out to basically recorded what you did I would not, hubtech I what you did, I would not. What would hub tech, I think, did this like 2016 or 17,. It would show you build a tender and it would record how you did it, and then it would I can't remember the name for it.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, it was hub tech.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, and there there's a name for that.

Speaker 1:

Oh yeah, the, it was like a female name. Automated, Automated, automated action yeah you would show it how to build a load and it would do it. It would basically create a login for it and it was like a ghost user.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, it used the UI, it wasn't on like the backend.

Speaker 2:

But the point is like I think that's going to happen more and more and I think like I know I think about this a lot because I think it for sure is going to drastically affect. I heard an interview the other day and it scared the shit out of me. It was with Kevin, no, chris. Yeah, it was with Chris Saka and Tim Ferriss, and Chris Saka was one of the guys, was instrumental in Uber, built Uber Eats, twitter, and he's like, listen, he's like there is a cabal and all of these guys was instrumental in Uber, built Uber Eats, twitter, and he's like, listen, he's like there is a cabal and all of these guys that own these companies, these major CEOs, all meet and all talk about exactly what this can do, and he's like it is astounding.

Speaker 2:

And he's like human beings predict the future based on the past. That's human nature. And he's like this is logarithmic, growth, exponential. He's like this stuff is going to go like 1, 1.1, 1.4, 11. He's like it's not going to be in dozens of years or in a half a decade. He's like it's going to be in single digit years.

Speaker 2:

He was talking about the fact that, like fusion, creating energy without the massive risk and how we do it nuclear now. He's like we're literally doing that now. He's like naming examples of things that have never been able to be done. He's like we're literally doing that now. He's like naming examples of things that have never been able to be done. He's like they're going to be able to. To, um, like, look through your genes, to break down your dna, to come up with individual like medicines, to like literally cure cancer within like five, ten years. He's like it is going to impact how humanity lives in a drastically different way that I don't think anyone's prepared for.

Speaker 2:

And he said one of the guys I think it might've been my I can't pronounce his first name. The guy's last name is son. He owns SoftBank, the largest VC, and he was going through a slide deck and he's like on slide 11, they were like and this is where we're going to have to redistribute all the wealth, and then goes to the next slide deck and he's like in my head I'm like whoa, whoa, whoa, wait a minute, don't just this is going to grow, so fast and replace the need for human jobs that, like they know the people that are doing this, that that would have to happen and that has never been done effectively in all of human history, and that is a task that terrifies me and I'm both excited and terrified.

Speaker 2:

We'll see.

Speaker 1:

Lastly, rates. Rates are on the rise, man. I mean I was looking at it yesterday with somebody. We got a good question actually on rates that will hit on Final Mile coming out on Tuesday. But this is coming to you as of january 29th.

Speaker 1:

Um, from rate view, if you look at across all three, you know van reefer flap it right. Van broker to carrier rates are um 217 a mile right now. National average it was at $1.97 in September. That is $0.16, so basically 8% increase in four months. Huge, okay, flatbed. Yep. $2.45 a mile that one not as much. That's up about $0.06, about 3%. Reefer $2.56 a mile, up from $2.37, so about $0.20. That's a big jump. Diesel's down that's what I want to also include here. That's with fuel and Diesel's down. Diesel is $3.66. It was $0.10 cheaper in September. So yeah, keep that in mind.

Speaker 1:

I think clearly Ken Adamo's had some really good stats on social media as well about number of brokerages and carriers, the, the. You see like the graph and it shows the pre-COVID trend and the peak during COVID and it's come back down, you know. So I think there's like 20, just under 25,000 active brokerage authorities in the states right now and it had peaked in the in the upper 30s a couple years ago. So, yeah, the market's doing what it's supposed to do, right, it's just taking a really long time this cycle, but, as we've said for years, this is how it happens. This is a natural occurrence in a free market. So anything else in news we spent over 32 minutes just getting up to the content here.

Speaker 2:

No, I think we just jump into it at this point, all right.

Speaker 1:

So pick us up where we left off. Ben, we were talking about, you know, prospecting, batching your prospects before you reach out to them, having that cold call. Where do you want to start off today?

Speaker 2:

I mean, you tell me where you're going to want to transition to, Like I genuinely don't remember where we kind of left it off.

Speaker 1:

I'll give you kind of my high level view here and we'll break it down Right. And I was kind of saying this off air before, but we always say lead gen and prospecting are two different tasks and they require two different parts of your brain. And I want to zoom in on the prospecting side and break up the cold call from the what's next portion, right? So during your cold call, there's a series of things that you'll do, such as you're qualifying or disqualifying a prospect, like is this company even worth my time, right? Do they do they ship enough? Or the types of things that I'm able to, or desiring to do business around that area. Okay, um, it could be. You know we talked about price. You know versus service, versus speed, pick two of the three. We talked about batching into commodities regions. We talked about building rapport and all that. So now, when you move to the next step in prospecting, we've got our. How do I manage my pipeline? How do I manage that sales funnel? Who do I follow up with? When do I follow up? How often do I follow up? What's the gap between my last call and the next one? And I wanna give my high-level overview. Is that the idea of prospecting with a purpose still exists in this next phase. Meaning, if I'm gonna go to follow up, like, let's say I get into my office today and I'm going to go to follow up, let's say I get into my office today and I'm going to, hey, I've got you know 50 companies that I plan to make follow up calls with and you know a bunch of them are somewhat scheduled. The rest I'm just going to reach out. Hopefully they're available. Here's what I don't want to do Right, small potato grower and then call a Fortune 500 company and then call a midsize company in the Northwest and then a massive company down in Florida. Like, you've got to have some intentionality behind this, because the same concept applies of your conversations will likely have certain things in common. If you batch them together, right. If you're following up with companies that you already have rapport with and they're in, let's say, southern California, right, they're all dealing with a lot of the same issues right now. Ok. If you call a bunch of companies like, right now, florida, this is a great time to prospect future business as the produce season is a few months away, right, those peak volumes you'll see into the later parts of spring, you can build a lot of rapport right now with a lot of citrus companies and other growers of produce in Florida as they're estimating and preparing what does our harvest volume look like this year? When do we see? Which week do we think it's gonna start to kick off? What's our demand gonna look like this year? When do we see? Which week do we think it's gonna start to kick off? What's our demand gonna look like, et cetera.

Speaker 1:

Right, so that's kind of my high level overview is managing that pipeline, and a CRM is like a really good way to do this. We used to do, used to have like tags for prospects. Like once I've identified like yeah, they're qualified, all right, let me put them into a bucket. Like like once I've identified like yeah, they're qualified, all right, let me put them into a bucket, like it. Like we call them like one, two, three.

Speaker 1:

One being like these guys you want to stay on top of like all the time. Two is like hey, and this is kind of you can decide how you want to space out, like follow up in two days, follow up in a week, follow up in three months, like you can. You can create like a code or a category like that in your crm and like follow up one, two, three, four, five, whatever that looks like, and that'll determine when you want to follow up, and then you don't have to think about it, you just know. Oh yeah, I deemed them a two I'm going to follow up in a week. I deemed them a one I'm following up tomorrow or the next day. I deemed them a four I'm going to follow up in two months. So that's kind of my high level. What are your thoughts around that?

Speaker 2:

Okay, let's start at like the beginning, and what I would say is the first thing is you want to have 250 leads in your CRM before you start calling? Okay, for sure, we can't say this enough. Separating the task of calling and lead generation is so important because if you try to do them together, human nature is you're going to go a little slower every time you make a phone call because you're justifying I need to learn a little bit more, or you spend more time trying to pick the perfect lead. That tradeoff versus making more calls is never worthwhile and you just get less done and it's more stressful and you spend more energy and get less out of it. Right, so separate them. The next thing is when you're generating leads, so separate them. The next thing is when you're generating leads, if you don't put the criteria in the fields, the little boxes in your CRM, you can't sort that criteria later. So when you're putting them in, you want to create a field if your CRM doesn't have it for the commodity. Okay, now you want to be kind?

Speaker 1:

of specific CRM should be able to give you that option to create you also want to be general.

Speaker 2:

So let's say you got watermelon, I use like watermelon and produce in that field. So like if I wanted to call all produce in Florida, I could sort all my leads by the state Florida and then produce. And if I wanted to sort more specifically I could go to watermelon or other melons or lettuce, right. So you want to be very specific with one of the commodities in there and I feel like you want to be a little general with the second one in there, because you should be able to sort by either one of those words in that field. So to your point, I can now bucket my leads If my 250 leads I put in there. I'm first going to think about which categories. Okay, say I'm going to go steel and steel pipe and in Texas there's a hundred leads. Then I go, I want to go produce in Florida, I'm going to go watermelons and I'm going to go oranges, citrus, okay, so my category would be all of the watermelon companies in Florida. I would put watermelon in the commodity and then I would also put produce and then all the citrus ones Florida citrus would put watermelon in the commodity and then I would also put produce and then all the citrus ones, florida citrus and then oranges. So if I wanted to just call orange companies, great. If I wanted to call citrus companies, I can sort by that or Florida. So you want the geography, city, state, and you want the commodity and a little bit larger of a commodity category, because sometimes you want a group by like bit larger of a commodity category, because sometimes you want a group I like, again, wildfire in California. Let's say there's a bunch of issues there in the spring, like you said earlier. I want to call all the produce companies in the salad bowl because they're likely to all have the same issue related to shipping. Maybe I just want to call the lettuce companies in the salad bowl because a disease ran through all of these fields and supplies down, so like they're having issues there, so very specific and a little general. That's how you want to line that up, right?

Speaker 2:

And then to the next piece. I am calling to your point in buckets. So maybe when I start calling the next week, that Monday I'm going to call all the steel companies, maybe that morning in Texas, then maybe that afternoon I'm going to call Watermelon in Florida and then on Tuesday maybe I'm going to call the steel companies in Texas that I didn't get a hold of Monday and then the ones I do get a hold of and have a good conversation with. I'm going to roll out to probably 10 days, based on what they say to me and when I think that feel should be. But a good rule of thumb is you're probably like a little bit more than a week, but not longer than two weeks, somewhere 10, 11 days.

Speaker 2:

And I also schedule my follow-ups usually for a different day of the week and a different time because sometimes you can get a hold of them easier. Sometimes if you miss them, you want to try a different day of the week because different industries have availability based on how they move right. So you're moving the buckets to different days and times during the week, keeping them in a bucket to increase the likelihood you'll reach somebody, right, okay, now the next thing is two follow-ups right, the two approaches I take to the follow-ups is all the companies I didn't reach yet I'm still calling in that whole bucket. So I'm moving the whole bucket maybe from like today, wednesday morning to maybe next Tuesday afternoon, because maybe I didn't reach any of them today and it's maybe a little more likely those logistics people are available Tuesday afternoons because I got a bunch of freight to move Mondays or Wednesdays, whatever. So I move that whole bucket on my calendar into the future of the ones I don't reach so I can still call them in a group with the same category and the same intro into that conversation Makes it easier.

Speaker 2:

Less thought, less decisions, more activity right Now for the follow-ups and this is the thing I don't think people think of the most is okay, if you need to speak to somebody 12 to 14 times over two to three months. That is the sales cycle before you can expect to have enough trust to work with them. Right, think about that more as one long line with one person. Okay, if you were going to date somebody you didn't know, just as an analogy, right? Okay, you're not going to start talking about marriage and kids when you go for coffee for the first conversation or in your first chat and a dating app.

Speaker 1:

You're going to talk about Some people. Might man Maybe?

Speaker 2:

Okay, and I'm not saying that like you can't, I'm just saying like a typical scale up of trust is the deeper the questions go, the more they trust you.

Speaker 2:

So, like you talk a little bit about surface things like hey, what kind of music you like, what kind of hobbies, what do you do in your free time? If they you jive a little bit and they trust you, you ask a little deeper questions and the relationship gets deeper over the times of calls. So if I'm talking to one person, right and I know it takes 12 to 14 calls over three months I think about it like one long conversation that just has pauses in the middle. So as I'm getting off my first conversation, I'm trying to line up what I want to ask them next time. I don't ask them everything I want to know in my first call because I know I got to talk to them a bunch and then you run out of things to talk about. So, like I will literally end my first call much shorter than I need to in some ways, because I know I want to keep it short and they don't really know me that well. Yet Just the number of times you talk to somebody makes them more comfortable with you and trust you more, regardless of what it said.

Speaker 2:

So I stop my conversation and I literally will write in my CRM the questions I wanted to ask but didn't get to ask. And then I think about what they said and I put a note on what I'm going to say in my follow-up, right when I'm on that call or right when I get off so say I'm talking to you and you tell me oh, I got my kid's soccer game this Saturday. I'm a coach and my daughter's birthday is next Tuesday and we talk a little bit about your outbound. I'm going to go want to talk about inbound reminder. Ask Nate about his kid's soccer game, if they won and how his daughter's birthday went. I roll that call out 10 days. So before I call you the next time when I schedule my follow-up, I literally just look at my notes, I review real quick what you told me and I already have my questions, because the best way to determine what you want to talk about next is, while you're having the first conversation, not guessing two weeks from now what you should start talking about.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, let me, I'm going to. I'm going to add in here, I'm going to hammer the same point and give you a different, different description of it. So an example, let's say so before you make your follow up call, read your notes from your previous call, right? So if it's call number two, read call number one's notes. And call number one's notes might look like and oh, by the way, either write them in your CRM while you're on the call or I'm on a notepad and then put them in your CRM. However you want to record them, make sure that the notes are being taken and put into your CRM. But the notes might look like you know John Doe, he's been the traffic manager for three years and they do eight to 10 outbound flatbeds a day. He's an Ohio State fan and grew up in Pittsburgh, I don't know Right. So then you like your. Your next call, I don't know Right. So then you like your.

Speaker 1:

Your next call, like in the reason for having those like unwork related notes is rapport building, number one. But number two it's. It is great filler conversation for any phone call you have. It's great starter conversation, it's great filler in the middle and it's great ending. But you could you know that that phone call number two might be like dude, I'll stay one. The championship man, like, how are you feeling? Right? Or like dude? I saw the Steelers because he's from Pittsburgh, right, steelers, yeah, rough, rough playoff game, you know whatever? Right, and it's great because it gets them out of that like work mode and more like I feel like I'm in a bar with my buddies having a beer right now.

Speaker 2:

You know what I mean feel like you cared enough to remember and it makes them realize you actually paid attention when you talk to them the first time. Imagine if you could have a conversation with someone you just met and remembered literally everything they ever said that was important to them, and when you saw him two months later you were able to recall and talk about all of that. That person's be like god damn man one. I didn't even remember us talking about that, but this guy really paid attention and he cared enough that he actually remembers it. And that's when I realized, like I'm like this CRM is the most powerful way to outsource your memory.

Speaker 1:

You don't remember any of this shit and eventually you just put it right in there. Eventually you just get to know the big things about somebody. Like think about, we had a call with DAT this week going over like a web, some webinars. We're going to do this upcoming this year. One of the first things Hans brought up on the call was, like Nate, he's like let's talk about the elephant in the room. We bought the Bills game, right, and I was like you know what I mean.

Speaker 1:

Obviously you address the personal aspect of the calls first and then, yeah, it kind of changes the tone of a conversation. So I can't agree enough. So then we talked about call one notes. Call two's notes right, do the same thing, right, All right, it's just a string, exactly right. And eventually and here's what's really cool Like HubSpot does this now and I would imagine a lot of other CRMs do. But they've got like the AI summary tool where, like, you can click on the button and it's like it summarizes all your notes and kind of like throws it in front of you real quick or you just go back and read your last handful of calls. But you know you don't want to be all filler talk, because the reason for a phone. You have to have a reason for a phone call, or you should have a reason for a phone call.

Speaker 2:

Right, there's a member of guys to say say, like you should, you should only touch base and baseball. Um, don't just call someone to touch base. How's it going? Just touching base? You got any loads to move today? Nope, all right. Thanks, I told you I'd let you know if I needed your help. Okay, bye.

Speaker 1:

That call accomplished nothing and your reason could be um, it could be news related, it could be capacity related and it could be and I know we talked about the 12 to 14. You know this is you got to build rapport. It could be, hey, um, I know I haven't done anything for you yet, but I literally have a driver that's it's going to be empty this afternoon in your area looking to get reloaded to go xyz. Is there any chance you guys might have a need for something like that today? If not, I'll help them find something else, but I wanted to at least offer it up to you first. Right, like those are great reasons to reach out to somebody.

Speaker 2:

And I want to point out right Like, this is the job. The job of sales is not mindlessly calling people until somebody says, yes, that's not sales. Like you can get an AI bot to do that now. Right, like you literally get happy robot to call and just be like you got any loads. Hey, I got a truck there, okay, hang up. I could literally pay them to do that right now 26 cents a minute, and have them do that 4,000 times a day If I wanted to.

Speaker 2:

That is not a sales person. That is not a skill. The skill is in working hard and thinking about how to build rapport, what you talk to them about and what you can creatively talk to them about the next time. That is fundamentally where the job is and, yes, it's hard, but that's why that position pays usually more than any other position in the company, because not only is it hard to put yourself out there and make a phone call and potentially be rejected well, you will certainly be rejected, right, a lot of times before you get a yes but just thinking about how to connect with another person right, that is not easy.

Speaker 2:

There is no silver bullet. There's not exactly the same thing you can say to every person to get them to like you, like, think it like they'd be like, okay, it's your first day in high school and you know everybody. You don't know anybody. Do you think anybody could give you a script of what to say to every kid in that school to get them to know you, like you and trust you? No, you've got to listen to that person, feel out what's important to them when they talk to you. Listen more than you're talking to understand what is important to that person so that you could build an actual relationship.

Speaker 2:

Relationships come from listening far more than talking. Questions are the best way to get them to tell you the information, but then you've got to put some time in to think about like okay, like I talked to this person two or three times, where do I think I am? Do I know how they make decisions? Yet Do I know anything about how they decide which trucks and brokers are used on which lanes? Do I know about which lanes are more important to their customers versus which ones aren't? Which are price sensitive? Which are service? Do I know what this person I'm talking to? What are their metrics for performance? Does their boss care more about price or service? Does it service only matter when the customer doesn't get a load picked up, or do they actually care about service because they have some problem? You want to understand what it's like to be them in that job as much as you can if you want to keep it as simple as possible.

Speaker 1:

And this is where you can roll in what you talked about on one call and discovered and put into another call and it could be like hey, I was just talking with so-and-so over at XYZ man, that truck rollover on I-95 is like it's killing them on all their. They're getting delays on all their trucks getting in there and loaded and whatnot, you guys having the same issue.

Speaker 2:

You guys running that.

Speaker 2:

Right, you added value Exactly, I don't know if you saw this yet, but a couple of my other customers up by you have been running to this for the past couple of days. It's gotten really bad. Are you guys having any issues there? No, man, we haven't even seen it, we're all good. Hey, no worries man, just giving you a heads up. I thought it might have been helpful to try to give you an idea on something that might be coming around or might be able to pop up later today. Now that value. You had to think a little bit and go oh, this thing my customer had might be affecting these other prospects, requires the thought and the effort, but you've got to be able to make those connections to be able to follow up effectively over and over again.

Speaker 1:

I'm going to throw in here and this is extremely related, but it's not one of the things I had intended to bring up, but it's very relevant is, you know, we tell you, we told you like how to prospect, how to group your prospects, when to follow up, how to take notes and all of that. But I've had. I had somebody asked me like they're like Nate, I listened to you, like you just talk so well, how do I get good at, like the actual delivery of the of the talking?

Speaker 2:

Pause right there and be like I also walk very well. And guess how I learned to do that? I kept falling down until I didn't fall, yeah.

Speaker 1:

So and? But I want to take a minute to talk about that, the concept of being a good communicator. And there's not like you can't just listen to 30 of our podcasts and all of a sudden like, dude, I got it, I just got to say it like that. No, you have to practice this and there's multiple ways to do this. But number one, remember that when you're making these calls, that is practice, right there. Right, the first maybe 500,000 calls you make are going to be you figuring out what's working, what's not working with your, with your communication. Right, but expand that out to the rest of your life.

Speaker 1:

If you're on the phone for, let's say, three hours a day, every other hour in your day that you're not sleeping is an opportunity to engage in communication in some way, shape or form, and this is to. I mean, I like to be a like a bubbly communicator just because it makes me feel good and it's enjoyable. But, like who doesn't matter who I'm talking to, man is somebody. If I get a cold call and I get them, like, I'll have a great conversation with them and I'll nice, nicely tell them like no, I'm not a good fit. Here's where I would look, though. But, like you go through the drive-thru, you go to get coffee, you go to the convenience store, you go to the grocery store, it doesn't matter what it is A waiter at a restaurant, a bartender calls, anything like. Just that's how you, that's how you grow that muscle is you just have to do it.

Speaker 2:

Yes, and again, just because you won. The thing I want to point out is it's something you've been doing your entire life, like it's no different doing this over the phone or to sales call in person than meeting somebody you've never met at a party, where maybe your neighbors invite you over and you met their friends and you didn't know them Right. Like it's the exact same thing, right. And the thing the other thing I've noticed about myself is that, like, if you don't do it for a while, it atrophies, meaning like you've got to practice it again to get it warmed up. Because, like I know, if I'm doing lots of management stuff or consulting for a while and not like selling, when I get back into it it takes me a couple of days to get back into the rhythm and to find my voice and to find the rhythm of the situation and what people are saying, right, objections and all this. And the other thing I want to point out is like I noticed this a lot with myself too, in the sense that, like, from the pandemic to working from home, I wasn't in offices, that I was my whole professional career prior to that Like I would be around dozens or hundreds of people on a daily basis. And then when I wasn't, when I went back into some of those settings, dude, I felt super awkward. Like I teach communication for a living and do this.

Speaker 2:

But like when I went back into some social settings even like PTA meetings with my daughter and stuff, where there's like hundreds of people in a room I'm walking in, I'm like I feel anxious. I'm like I feel awkward walking into there because it doesn't feel like I've been doing it in a while. But to your point, like, okay, you talk to a few people or it wasn't great, didn't really make a lot of friends. But then the second meeting, you get a little more comfortable by the third event. You go to where there's a bunch of people there, like you start to practice it again and then you feel more comfortable with icebreakers Just how to talk to people about something related to parenting, to open up the conversation, something personal, something that is a common interest. Then maybe you take the conversation a little deeper. But you do have to just do it to get better at it. You can't learn it by watching or reading or listening. It'll give you tips and things to focus on, but it is a skill that has to be developed by doing.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, and I think if you can find some commonality with whoever you're talking with, it changes the conversation. So like, for example, we talk about taking notes on their hobbies and their you know what their interests are. If you can identify something that you both have in common, that is like the ultimate yes. And here's a way to practice it Like if, if you're at the grocery store and you're waiting in line behind somebody, strike up a conversation Like I don't maybe people think this is weird, but like if I see someone's got an interesting, like you know, arrangement of items in their grocery cart, I'm like, hey, you throwing a party, what time is that? I'll show up. You know what I mean. And you start talking about what they're doing. Maybe they're going to watch a football game or like whatever it is. You start, you find something in common. You can I'm going to kill five minutes waiting in line shooting the shit with you, right?

Speaker 2:

And the funny.

Speaker 1:

We had. We're not just talking about like with this random person about how to sleep, train a baby. Now we're like we've got something in common. It makes everything like way easier. But what do you got? You were going to add something in there.

Speaker 2:

I was just going to say. I've noticed over the years like you are far more effective and better at this and more comfortable at it than I am Right, and like I can tell that, like when we're places in social settings where there are lots of people right, like you do that without hesitancy, like for me, like it for sure still takes some effort in a lot of ways, and like I can even tell, just when I spend time with you, that you practice this more than I do, because it literally just happens in a way that is smooth, without having to feel forced.

Speaker 1:

So you know I think we're part of it came from is when I well, I've always been a social person but I, when I spent time away, when I worked for Conway Freight Trucking Company this is going back years I spent the first like four months on the road and throughout our region at different service centers doing sales calls with people just to kind of like learn how you sell LTL and like how they run operations and all this stuff.

Speaker 1:

I lived out of a hotel, like by myself, and then I got this job in the middle of Pennsylvania, in Milton, pennsylvania, where 80 and 15 intersect, and I lived there by myself. I didn't know anybody Right. So for literally like a year of my life I had I was forced to just either interact with strangers or sit there and stare at my phone. And I decided I was going to interact with strangers and it made it very easy to talk to anybody about anything and not make it awkward. And it was if you. If it gets awkward, you just move on to the next one. That's how cold calls are, but I think that just kind of has catapulted over time.

Speaker 2:

You're right. And what's what's funny is talking about practicing. Like when I moved to Florida same scenario I knew nobody right, just literally moved down here and started just meeting people that I would see grocery stores and the apartment building and people around Right. When I did that and practiced and put myself in situations with lots of people I didn't know going to events or wherever, just to go network, talk to other people, I got far more effective at it.

Speaker 2:

And back then, like it's so easy for me to make cold calls because, like you're just doing it all day. Like it feels like it isn't work when you're doing more of it, right. But then there's a period where I didn't do it at all and then it got hard to do again. Right, like you've got. This is why, like, salespeople that have early success getting a large customer, tend not to have long careers because they just let that atrophy focus on one customer. A year and a half later, business drops and they just can't do it again. Well, it's not that they can't, it's that they're too scared and uncomfortable to try it again. So they just leave the industry and try to do something easier.

Speaker 1:

Yep or send emails all day.

Speaker 2:

Oh, I'll just send emails to get customers. This will work because this isn't scary. Just press a button all day.

Speaker 1:

Exactly so, like quick little things you can do throughout your day. First of all, all when you're like at the grocery store or convenience store, like eye contact and like ask someone how their day's doing. Like I, I have seen yep, I'm shocked by this, this, the generation below us of their lack of eye contact. It's like it's uncomfortable that people won't look each other in the eyes anyway, not all of them. Um, if you're at the gym, say hi to the person working there, or someone who's working out hey man, how's your workout? Like you know or whatever. Just talk to a stranger. Talk to your neighbors, just say hello, right, ask someone how they're doing. It's that simple and that kind of practice will make you more effective as a communicator.

Speaker 1:

When it comes to phone calls, now, I will add into this there's a tactic of mirroring the person that you're speaking with. So, like, if I get on the phone with somebody who is not like exuberant, like myself, I'm going to tone it down a little bit, I'm going to try to match them as close as I can without being like a robot. And if someone's loud and very excited, I'm going to, you know, I'm going to try to match that as well. So I think there's there's a level of like psychology that goes into it and effective communication. But at the end of the day, like you said I love how you said it I'm also good at walking. How did I get good at that? Well, I did. I tried it until I stopped falling. Right's it's that's funny.

Speaker 2:

Here's what happened. So I was talking with my tennis coach. We were talking about like just working on basic, like ground strokes, right. And I've been doing it for like three months, twice a week and he's like you, you're making a lot of improvement. I'm like, yeah, I know, but like I still feel like it's not second nature. He's like, yeah, you just got to keep doing it until you build that neuropathway, until it becomes second nature. And it was funny, like my cousin, who's a really good golfer, all people used to ask him all the time like dude, how do I get better at golf? And his answer was always the same Dude, you just got to hit more golf balls every day, right. And then I would laugh because he had asked me. He's like dude, well, how do you get better at skiing? Like dude, you just got. It's literally everything we do that you've ever been good at you got good at because you did it over and over again, right, there is no shortcut.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, and I think we kind of went off a tangent here, which is very good. I think we might have to go part three on this and take it into the how do we, how do you ask for the business and how do you get to that next, level, objections and closing.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, for sure I think that'll be part three of this little series here, but I think it was well worth digging into that communication part. So I challenge all you guys. So you know last week's episode, lead generation, batching those calls If you haven't, try to get yourself a list of 50 like prospects that are similar, Right, and then add on step two here. Take yourself out of your comfort zone a little bit. If one of your developmental needs is to become a better communicator or to feel more comfortable talking on the phone or whatnot, practice it in some different way, like we mentioned on the show today. So I think that'll be good and then we'll dig into objections asking for the business and what that next phase looks like. So anything else on this topic Use your CRM, Take notes.

Speaker 2:

Make more phone calls, yes, and do it separately than generating leads. Do those two things, you're off to a good start. Good stuff. Final thoughts Whether you believe you can or believe you can't, you're right.

Speaker 1:

And until next time, fly eagles, fly and go Bills.

People on this episode