Getting New Customers & More Q&A | Final Mile 85

Ben & Stephen answer your freight brokering questions and discuss:

• Prospecting as a New Broker – Key advice for getting started and landing shippers.
• Using the BOL for Leads – How to leverage Bills of Lading to start conversations.
• Building Carrier Trust – Overcoming factoring issues and earning credibility.

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Chapters

• 0:38 Episode Introduction
• 1:03 Advice for New Freight Brokers
• 4:07 Prospecting With a BOL
• 7:29 Helping New Brokers with Carrier Trust

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:19

Welcome to this week's episode of the Final Mile. Nate's still out. This week, steve and I are going to be answering your questions, so keep them coming. You can either email them to us at info at freight360.net, share them on YouTube under the comments under the videos or on our Facebook group. This week we've got three of them, so let's just kind of jump right in. First one just started at TQL. I'm a couple weeks into my prospecting phase Was wondering what your biggest piece of advice would be. What would you say would be your biggest piece of advice to somebody?

Speaker 2: 1:01

jumping into prospecting somebody jumping into prospecting. Yeah, what I've told everyone I've talked to that has been interested in becoming a freight broker is I always tell them write down your hobbies and your interests, whether it's sports, food, um, activities, whatever your hobbies are, write those down and then come up and then go to like an AI, chat, gpt, grog or just go to Google search, type those hobbies in and find companies within those hobbies and interests and figure out what they do. So take Nate, for example. His hobby is very clearly football.

Speaker 2: 1:46

So you type in football what companies services are provided for the football industry that may end up on a truck. So you've got cleats, you've got leather for football, you've got, you know, the plastic and stuff for helmets and face masks and you know you've got lawn care management facilities. There's concessions at NFL football games. There's, you know, large events with bowl games that get trucked in for, like the entertainment industry with trucks. Figure out what those are, because the easiest conversation to have is the ones that you have a little bit of knowledge on. So if you can look up Rydell because you're interested in football, the person that works at Rydell probably is interested in football. So you can have that conversation and lean into the actual prospecting.

Speaker 1: 2:42

Agreed. I'll give you a couple points of advice. The first would be you've got to make at least a hundred calls a day If you literally are just starting, so there's a couple of weeks in for sure. The metric you want to maximize is can you make a hundred calls between eight and five, like that is for sure? Without that activity you won't make it Right. The second is expect to come in early and stay late to do prospecting and lead gen, cause you got to make a hundred calls and you only got eight to five. And even if you want to eat lunch, you're going to have to spend an hour or two in the morning or after.

Speaker 1: 3:19

And the way I always look at this, I'm like well, hey, I can avoid traffic. It takes me 45 minutes to an hour to leave at 5. If I leave at 6.15 or 6.30, it only takes me 20 minutes to get home. So I only really lose 30 minutes. I get an extra 30 minutes of work and then I get to drive home a little faster. So I would look at maximizing the time on the phone and generating the leads and you're going to have to work more than eight hours.

Speaker 1: 3:41

And be the first piece of advice. The second piece of advice is what you said Look at something you have an interest in, a curiosity about, or two, look for topics in the news that you're either interested in or likely to have supply chain issues, and luckily in this administration there are no shortage of issues to find to call companies about. You could probably throw a dart at a wall and any company you hit is going to have some issue related to their supply chain right now because of what's going on. So that, and then, like the third piece of advice, stick with those groups until you get to one of two things happens. Like if I pick steel, I am calling steel companies at 100 hundred a day. Sort their prospecting system by the commodity, just call steel companies, whatever they ship. Have the same conversations over and over.

Speaker 1: 4:34

And one of two things happens once you talk to enough people, after either a day or two or a week or maybe a little longer, once you actually have enough conversations, you'll either find one of two things they're having no problems at all and all of them will tell you to follow back up at a later time this year in a different season. But it's important that you differentiate that from a blow-off, meaning like you actually talked to somebody, had a conversation, you felt like they were paying attention and you were actually talking. And they are genuinely telling you like, hey, like everything seems to be moving pretty good, but hey, we onboard usually around June when our season starts. Then, if I hear that enough, I'm going to move to another bucket and then work on those later this year, right? Or the other is, everyone is starting to tell you like hey, we're having some issues, we're not onboarding brokers right now, but like, yeah, we're seeing some things. That is the cue that to keep digging deeper and to call more companies and to stay in it right and consistency is by far the number one thing that is going to pay off.

Speaker 1: 5:31

If you're putting in a hundred calls and you are strategic about calling a certain group every day of whatever that is over and over again, you will likely make it right. Most of the folks don't make it because they don't make enough calls and they randomly call prospects that have nothing to do with each other and they're not really getting anywhere or learning anything. Yeah, um, again, nate and I did this episode years ago called prospecting with a purpose. That is a really good episode to listen to if you're just getting into prospecting. Second question up Thank you for the enormous information you guys always put out. That has been helpful. I have a question how do you prospect using a BOL? What do you say, or how do you start the conversation in the first few seconds? Have you ever prospected with BOL, steven? How would you go about it?

Speaker 2: 6:23

Oh, yeah, yeah, that's my favorite thing to use because you have the information there. So, first of all, what is a BOL? A BOL is a bill of lading. It's what tells the driver and whoever is involved in a transaction that this product picked up for this customer at location A and is destined for location B. It's got the weights and the requirements and all that kind of stuff. And typically the information you will find on there is who was holding it. So if it was a cold storage, it's going to be like a lineage, maricold, whatever. And then it's going to say who is responsible for the freight bill? Um, which may be the customer, or maybe the customer's customer, right? Um.

Speaker 2: 7:12

And then what you can do with that information is you want to do a little bit of research and kind of try to figure out what that come, what the companies associated with that transaction are and what they're doing. And then from from there, you can kind of extrapolate out like hey, they're getting this product from here for this. So this is how I can start the conversation. You'll say things like hey, I know we just got this load with you going to X and we've got trucks there, you know, two or three times a week. We're just looking to see if maybe you're sending product out of there or maybe you're bringing in freight from somewhere else. Since we're coming there regularly, maybe it'll fit from our lanes right.

Speaker 2: 7:56

So you're going to be looking for. You want to open the conversation into. Where are they moving product outside of what you know already?

Speaker 1: 8:07

Yes, I would say like the only other thing is like your customer's info is on there, right? If it's a BOL that you've picked up and delivered to, my lead in is just going to be like hey, wanted to reach out. Looks like we've got a mutual customer in common. We've delivered your facilities. Drivers really appreciated how you guys operated there. You guys were pretty quick to get them in and out.

Speaker 1: 8:29

We just wanted to see if this lane would be a fit for you, and then I always kind of have this prepared as like what direction or what is my question. So if I'm calling a company and I see the BOL, I'm probably also going to have another lane in mind that I want to ask them about, right? So I go in with why I'm calling them. Hey, you know we've got a mutual customer in common. We both work with ABC. We've delivered there a few times. We wanted to reach out and see if it made sense for us to talk about possibly working together down the line, right, like that's pretty much the whole conversation. I mean anything else you could think that's worth adding that we're missing.

Speaker 2: 9:07

No, I think that's I mean, that's pretty much it. The biggest thing is just matching that BOL with your existing information right and doing some like in prospecting. Lead gen is about research and understanding that company before you call them, because any extra information you have going into the cold call is better than no information at all. Um, yes, yeah, so, like for, especially if you know their industry. Um, you know they're so, for example, in the beef import, whereas my niche those, the grinders and stuff that I deliver to, like they're not getting just product from my customer. They have way too much um output to just source it from my customer, so they're getting it from other places. And if we're sending trucks there, they're also they're not the end of the supply chain, so they've got to send their uh end product somewhere else, whether it's to a cold storage or to a distribution center or whatever. So if I've got trucks that are ending up there they're empty, why not repurpose them to send them somewhere else if it's a fit?

Speaker 2: 10:21

You know, and that's the biggest thing, when you're in the, when you're in a calling phase, like you don't want to come off, as you know, desperate. You want to come off as maybe I have a solution for you and maybe I don't. Maybe where you're sending trucks to doesn't work for me and I don't want to. You know, I don't want to take that on Um and conveying that will give you uh, it'll, it'll convey a sense of, like professionalism within what you're trying to do, because you're not just trying, you're not another broker that's saying I got all these trucks, I got, I got the cheapest rates. No, no, you have a goal in mind and you're trying to make it work with them, if it's possible, right.

Speaker 1: 11:10

Yeah, and I think here's why that works Right. It's because you are really like parlaying Right. Like if I work with you, stephen, and you're my customer and your customer is Acme Steel, when I call them they know you and I know you. So when I tell them I work with you, they're more likely to have a conversation with me because they figure like I've already vetted Steven, I've known him for years and I trust him. If he trusts Ben, then it's at least worth the conversation. That's really why that works right. Third one can you guys create a video on how new brokers with their own LLC hire? I guess established carriers or established carriers drivers somehow don't trust new brokers because of their factoring companies don't do business with all new brokers. This will help new brokers who start their own companies. What are your thoughts on that one?

Speaker 2: 12:05

so it sounds to me like this is a newer brokerage that probably has not established their credit history yet. Um, and they're trying to cover their freight and the common response that they're going to get for a few months, if not a year, is going, is going to be you know well, the factoring company says you don't have any credit history, so we can't work with you. Now what we've established in a previous episode is that your factoring company, the carrier's factoring company, does not have to be legally involved in the transaction. So just because the factoring company won't factor the load doesn't mean the carrier can't haul it. And then that's going to be on you to try to negotiate with them to not factor the load. So maybe it's pay half up front, but during that transaction you want to make sure that they're still sending that information to the like, ansonia or whatever who does the credit history, so that it will speed up your credit reporting and get you established that the factoring companies can start to see your credit history.

Speaker 1: 13:17

Yeah, it's definitely one of the harder things to do is to be able to get the carriers to first start working with you in your first year of business as a freight broker. Like I think that's probably one of the hardest, and like fraud has made that even harder than it was previously, so like it is an uphill battle. Um, the thing I would say and we've done like whole episodes on this, but the thing I would say is like one, the time it takes to convince a carrier to work with you outside of their factoring company makes it really hard to cover a load same day, cause it usually takes a day or two to get that carrier to be willing to work with you, right. The other thing that makes it easier is if you've got dedicated freight or some loads consistently, it's easier to get a carrier to be willing to do extra things to work with you, right. So one of the things that's helpful is like working or finding lanes that are fairly local or fairly consistent and then going and finding a lot of carriers that could run that lane, having enough conversations with them to be willing to work with you when the next load comes up. You're going to have to get them on board before you've got the next load.

Speaker 1: 14:24

Like, if I got a load today, I'm probably not going to be able to get that carrier through the headache of the factoring and me paying them direct to move a load today. But if I can talk to their dispatcher or the carrier owner and say, look, you know, like we're a newer business, I would like to be able to work with you guys, build a long-term relationship. Can we work together for my loads next week, then spend more time, because it's really a sales process. You got to establish trust, you got to get that carrier to want to work with you and you need to have something that they're going to want right, and that's usually more freight. So like finding shippers that ship locally and have lanes consistently week over week at least then you can go to a local carrier like, hey, look, if these local runs work with you, I'd love to be able to find some fit over the next couple of weeks and hopefully build a long relationship. Can we operate where we can pay you direct half up front, maybe quick, pay you for free, maybe give you 75% of the rate or line haul when you pick up the other 25% at delivery and then slowly build trust, because it really is just. It takes time and patience and you got to make lots of phone calls to find the carriers that are going to be willing to do extra steps to be willing to work with you. Right, there's no fast way to get through that. Like. I've worked with companies at private equity funding that had literally almost like endless amounts of money. In this context, like, and still having more cash doesn't establish trust because they don't know, even if you have that money, if you're going to pay them when you're supposed to. There's no reporting, there's no credit yet, right? So getting those things to happen over and over again are really helpful.

Speaker 1: 15:56

Another way to go about that is, once you've got a few carriers that are willing to work with you, ask them what lanes and loads they would need, right. Then go and find shippers that are likely to move those freight or move those lanes. Talk with that shipper until you can get that shipper to give you the load that matches with the carrier you found. It's like, hey, you either start with a load or the carrier. In this scenario, you could start with a carrier. Get two or three carriers that are willing to work with you get a list of the lanes that they want, go prospect for what the carrier wants Once you've got a shipper that can move that lane or need you for it.

Speaker 1: 16:31

Now you've already had the carrier right. So it's like, instead of the horse in front of the cart in this scenario you put the cart in front of the horse, get the carrier in line, then go find the freight, then go back to the carrier Right. But it's really just kind of working back over and over again until you can kind of get enough of them on board and then little by little it changes Right Because, like, you need to move. I think it's about four loads, four separate transactions every month to get reported to Ansonia over at least five months for them to establish your credit. So it really is just building this step-by-step, load-by-load and just having more and more conversations with carriers over time and doing this more and more with shippers and finding that overlap between the two.

Speaker 2: 17:15

I think, the more we talked about it during this, one of the things that if I was a broker with a newer else uh, mc having these issues I think one of the things I would target is newer carriers, because they're going to have the same issue trying to get loads from freight brokers. Now your vetting process is going to have to be very thorough because they are going to lack, you know, inspections and you know time on authority and stuff like that, but they're having the same exact issues that you're having, just getting freight from brokers, versus you giving freight to carriers, so working out those relationships could be a net benefit, and then explaining to them, you know if you can send this to, you know the credit companies, or you know, figure that out so that your payments to them are still getting recorded.

Speaker 2: 18:09

I think that that's probably a good avenue to take as well.

Speaker 1: 18:14

Yeah, and again it's just finding what one side needs and then working to get to the other right. Most of the time, traditionally you're going to start with getting loads first and then you're going to work back to get carriers. In this scenario, if you're having a harder time getting carriers, you want to work back upstream to get shippers. Maybe that match with the carriers you've already found. And again, local tends to be easier, mostly because those guys tend to be in the same area. So a lot of local lanes will probably work for one carrier. If you're trying to find a lane for a carrier that's moving long haul, like it's just harder to match up because of the days of the week and the time they're actually driving. Between point A and point B my driver's only going 200 miles. He's probably back and forth a couple of times, you know, within a day or two, so you can match those up a little easier. So like, starting with local will likely end up being a little easier than probably going long haul. Sweet man, anything you want to wrap with.

Speaker 2: 19:11

No, I mean, you know, uh, keep leaving your comments, uh, below and uh, if you've got any questions, you want to expand on anything that we've talked about in the episode? You know, If you've got any questions, you want to expand on anything that we've talked about in the episode?

Speaker 1: 19:24

you know, let us know, Leave it in the comments, Reach us on Facebook, LinkedIn, X, and we'll always try to answer your questions every week here on the final mile and remember whether you believe you can or believe you can't. You're right.