Freight 360

Cold Calling Tactics | Final Mile 87

• Freight 360

Share episode

Nate Cross & Ben Kowalski answer your freight brokering questions and discuss:

📞 What does “100 calls per day” really mean—total dials or the number of companies contacted?
đźš« Is there a way to get more customers without cold calling? What can a new broker do after struggling with outreach?
đź’¸ When does a shipper typically pay a new brokerage, and how do you cover the carrier payment before you get paid?
đźš› Why would a truck driver change the MC number and company name on the side of their truck?

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

All right, welcome back for another edition of the final mile, where we answer your questions. Continue to send them. Send them our way. You guys have been doing a great job of asking questions in the YouTube comments, email them over, etc. Make sure to check out all of our other content Freight360.net. We've got the YouTube channel. We've got the Freight Broker Basics course for your educational option, and please take a moment to check out the sponsors in the description box, which will help support this channel.

Speaker 1:

Alrighty, first question Does making 100 calls per day mean total amount of calls or is it the amount of companies to go through per day? And then there's another question that kind of they're similar. I'm a new broker. My biggest problem is finding customers. I've been cold calling for about a month and I've only obtained one customer. How can I get more customers without calling? Is there any other way that one can find customers? So this is a good prospecting question, or two questions that we can have a discussion around. So when we say 100 calls a day, it's 100 phone calls, it's not, you know, I mean ideally like you're probably going to call a hundred different companies. That's what it would come down to, but we're not really call this call a hundred different companies in you know, five times each.

Speaker 1:

we're saying a hundred phone calls, and that's, that's just a metric that we arbitrarily use. There's a range. What would you? You got something I would add to this.

Speaker 2:

So it's a hundred calls to a hundred different people because, like, let's say, I'm working a large company that has many locations, many points of contact, like 20 of those calls might be to the same company, right there might be 20 different locations, different departments, divisions, like Cargill, for example, I'll bet there's 300 people that work in their transportation department over like at least two or three dozen different commodities, if not 100 or 200 commodities, right?

Speaker 2:

So you could probably theoretically take some of these very large companies and call 100 different people at the same company. It's 100 phone calls to 100 different people. The other thing I would add is like expect that you're only going to reach two or three on a good day. So like 95% of those phone calls will go unanswered. You don't call it a dead lead because they didn't answer. You can follow up at another time of day and another day of the week to the 95 people that didn't answer. So like you're not going to just call them dead leads.

Speaker 2:

And also like, again in a winning situation, like I might make five to seven attempts to reach a person the first time over two or three weeks and then I'd speak to them once. I might try four or five more times before I speak to them twice. So after that, like you're going to need to speak to that person usually eight to 12 times over two to three months before they trust you enough to start quoting freight, discussing what they need and trusting you enough to actually give you an opportunity to quote or run a load Right, so like that's kind of what the whole thing looks like. That's kind of what the whole thing looks like Exactly.

Speaker 1:

I think to like examples of cold calling blitzes or sessions that I've done with folks we might pull up like seven different individuals at. Let's say, I've never called on a company before. Right, I've done my lead gen, I'm like all right, here's like the seven people I think are like where I'm going to start and I'm going to, based on how each one reacts, we'll pivot our right. But if I make seven phone calls and it's just one company, that's still seven phone calls. And that's what we're talking about, because and what I like about that, when you're you're batching down to a very micro level there, it's like all right, now not only have I batched my calls to like the same region or equipment type of commodity, I'm talking I'm reaching out to the people at the same company.

Speaker 1:

And this could also go with, like you know, companies that have branches, like maybe you onboard through corporate, but there's like 50 different branches that all ship stuff. Kind of like you mentioned, cargo, like freight forwarders are notorious for this cargo, like freight forwarders are notorious for this. I could call three different people at one branch, two at another, one at another and so on, and like if I hit 100 calls. That is just as effective, if not a better method, because I'm hyper focused in one company. Right, that's just as effective as if I called one person at 100 different companies. But to answer the question like 100 calls for sure is like, if you're using the number of calls, it's the number of phone calls, whether it's the same company or the same person or not, and what do you got?

Speaker 2:

Two things to add right. The biggest common mistake is that everyone calls 100 leads, makes one phone call and then looks for a hundred more leads.

Speaker 2:

That is the biggest mistake right, all the money's in the follow-ups and trying right, because from the customer's point of view or the prospect, right, they get somebody that calls them once and gets through all the time. That's not who they're choosing. They are going to spend more time with someone that cares and shows enough interest and understands their business, different from everyone else that calls them once to give them a shot. So it's like think of a marathon Everybody runs and does the same thing, but by the end only a few people have done that enough to differentiate themselves from the whole pack. Everybody's calling these people once a day and never calling them again.

Speaker 2:

You want to be the person that has tried dozens of times over two or three months. That shows them and they start thinking, wow, you know, like Nate has really been trying to solicit our business, genuinely cares. I've talked to him a bunch over the past three or sometimes six months, right, like, and now they're going. You know what, if I do need help, I'm going to give them a shot because, like Nate has showed like follow-up, attention to detail, he cares, he seems to understand what we need. Now we'll give them a shot. It's like a long interview process.

Speaker 1:

Yep and I want. So I'll just to wrap it up, because the second question was like how do I, you know, how do I get more customers? And I'm going to, we'll stick with the calling, the cold calling. Um, there's a, there's a sales coach. I used to listen to stuff that used to always say like uh, the FU money is in the followup, like FU followup. But it's like you know, it's an FU money and like that's where, like a good salesperson um makes their money. And we often get like the question of like when and how often do I follow up? And like it depends Like what I've always said is like try to figure out and I talk about this in like CRM content that we've done is like categorize your prospect on like a number of like where are they in the pipeline?

Speaker 1:

Like are they soon? Like are they ready to buy now? Are they soon or are they someday? Right, and a lot of times it's someday, which means like I'm not going to expect to get business from them right away. So you're probably not following up tomorrow unless they have told you like hey, call me on Thursday, I'll know what I have coming for next week, right? That's a follow up. Soon, that's a soon one, right? If you during COVID, you had a lot of buy-now customers. You call them and they're like I can't get trucks, can you find me one? What's the price? You know what I mean. So that's how you figure out. The follow-up is like I mean honestly, that's one of the best traits of a good salesman or freight broker is like being able to gauge where that prospect is.

Speaker 2:

Listen, yeah, you'll get the feedback, not just what they're saying but how they're saying what they're saying. And you got to find that middle ground, like a rule of thumb is like seven to 10 days, like just long enough that it doesn't seem like you just talked to them.

Speaker 1:

You can't even like arbitrarily put a number on it, because there's so many factors Like literally, like if you say seven to 10 days, like what if I call a produce shipper and it's like they're not even in season? If I call them next week, they're like dude, I still have nothing new. You know what I mean.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, you got to listen to what they're saying, questions to gauge where that is Like. That's exactly what I'm asking. That's why I'm asking when I saw it when is your peak season when you start lining this up? What does that make sense for you?

Speaker 1:

And sometimes I'll ask them Big takeaway, and we've said it before like your first, like 500 to a thousand calls are not meant for you to land customers, it's for you to develop in your technique, right, you could land customers right. Like this guy said, he landed one in his first month, so congratulations.

Speaker 2:

That's awesome, but you have to keep doing it and you can speak to that in a very few sentences.

Speaker 2:

Those emails can be effective not for getting customers but getting somebody on the phone to talk to Right Like I never looked at emails as a way to close somebody because there's no relationship, there's no rapport. But it can be effective to gauge or get someone's interest to talk to you. So like let's say, hey, I found out there's tons of cargo theft with companies that ship from Laredo, out of Mexico. Like I could find a list of shippers that probably ship that lane through gen logs or something and then send an email to the group of companies and going hey, if you guys have had any instances of claims or fraud or issues in the past, let us know we might be able to help. Like those emails when they're very specific, let us know we might be able to help. Like those emails when they're very specific, hit a very narrow need. Even if it's to 100 or 200 companies, you'll get 5 to 10 percent will respond like hey, yeah, let us know, we've run into this, can you help?

Speaker 1:

Sometimes that helps get someone on the phone easier than the cold call. So I'll give you one one last analogy on this with the method of communication. Like, think, compare the way you talk with a customer to if you are starting to date somebody, okay, and to get to know this person and to build rapport, you can email them, you can text them, call them, facetime them or go spend a day with them at the beach, right. Or you know out to dinner Yep, right, them at the beach, right. Or you know out to dinner yep, right. Think about, like, if I email this person, it's kind of like it like if you basically the same way, if you were doing like an online dating thing, you message somebody, right, it's the same kind of concept. Like they don't know anything other than like the words that you sent. They don't know what you look like. Well, they might know what you look like, but, um, they don't get like the tone of voice. You know, are you upbeat, are you funny, are you Eeyore, you know? And then you have like phone call. You can get a whole lot of phone calls, right, if you can go spend time in person with them, I mean you can get, you can get really, really far.

Speaker 1:

But the reality is with sales you work up to that point and you're going to spend a lot of the efficiency of it. You can take a lot of phone calls and build rapport. It's kind of that good middle ground. But you can get to a point of like the in-person, like if you're, let's say, like you're starting to do some business and you want to get to the next level, pay your shipper a visit, right. Or if they're going to be at a trade show, go meet with them there and hey, try to go meet six other freaking potential customers.

Speaker 1:

But the reality is there's cost and time that goes into those in-person meetings. So there's different ways to do this stuff in the prospect. But I just want to point out, like the effectiveness versus the efficiency, the phone call is definitely like the the meat in the middle balance that you're going to get the most bang for your buck. But you definitely want to sprinkle in like email, like here's what I hate when someone calls me and it could have been an email Like I hate that. Or if someone emails me and it should have been a phone call, like there's definitely a time and a place and I think when you can, can determine, you know how, because you really you should communicate with your customer the way that they want to be communicated with right there's two things right.

Speaker 2:

When I saw a meme that made me laugh it was a picture just said um, stop calling me to touch base. I don't want my base, my base touched by anybody. Right, like nobody wants that phone call. That's good. The other thing I looked up is like grammar and tone of voice change the meanings of things so much where people don't think about it. Right, like where you pause and how you inflect can change drastically the meaning of a sentence or a text. Right, there's just so much more information when you're speaking to somebody over the phone, like in writing, and then in person, you get even more right.

Speaker 1:

And I just asked the placement of a comma can change the entire meaning.

Speaker 2:

Here's one. So I asked Chad Chibutia. I was like, give me an example of where punctuation drastically changes the meaning. This isn't that great, but it still makes the point right. I find inspiration in cooking my family and my dog Okay, that sounds horrible, right, like they're literally cooking their family and their dog. Or I find inspiration in cooking my family and my dog right. They mean completely different things based on where I pause and where the punctuation is right.

Speaker 2:

And I don't think people spend enough time to pause to read what they're going to send before they send it. Because I get messages people were interviewing colleagues, people all the time where I'll look at it and I'll go. I genuinely don't know what they're saying. I think I know what they're saying but like I don't really know what they're asking. Like we were interviewing somebody the other day and he sent me like I'll literally read this text message I was with my wife at the park and I just started laughing because I was like I don't. I like I kind of know what they mean, but I don't think I know what they mean here.

Speaker 2:

And it says it's just a text message, right. And it says here hey, ben didn't get right phone Question mark and I was like I'm not sure what you're asking. And then they say write phone number asterisk. And I was like I still not sure what you're asking. You didn't get what phone number from who right? Like there's no subject, there's just half of the sentence. And it's like then he calls me. He's like oh, I wanted to make sure I had your phone number right when I texted you and I'm like OK, well, like add that to the message. Like hey, did I get your phone number correct, right? Like it's just the question, without referencing the who Right? And again, I think the more people get used to typing and texting and talking to people in chats everywhere, they're losing a lot of the rest of the meeting. It's getting even worse than talking.

Speaker 1:

I losing a lot of the rest of the meeting. It's getting even worse than talking. I had one yesterday, not to go off topic or down a rabbit hole, but this is important stuff with communication and, and I hate to say it, but like there's a generational thing to this, like nothing on you, younger cats it's the habit, it's people spend more time talking in chats, so I had a.

Speaker 1:

I had a guy didn't have his phone number but he tried calling me yesterday and I was busy, didn't even like see the number. I saw that my phone was ringing but I didn't like remember the number. No voicemail. Ten minutes later I got a text. It just says someone's name. That was it, nothing else. Yeah, I have no idea what they wanted. I have no idea if it was a person. That tried calling me and eventually, like an hour later, when I was free, I look at I'm like oh, it's the same number. So I call them. And here's the worst part is like so clearly they wanted to talk to me about something, but they could have texted me and said hey, nate, this is so-and-so, can to get a chance? Um, and uh, the guy's like yeah, basically it was, it was a, it was the equivalent of like just calling a touch base. And I'm like, yeah, pointless, but anyway yeah, I, I want to.

Speaker 2:

I want to spend a second on that because, like, I think a lot about this, because it's like, what does service mean? Service is communication. If I make you work to figure out what I'm saying, that causes stress and does not make you want to talk to me anymore.

Speaker 2:

Right service is also communicating in a way that makes you understand quickly and effectively and efficiently what I meant, needed, wanted to convey whatever information. Like, you shouldn't have to work to figure out what I'm trying to tell you. The clearer I explain it to you, the easier it is for you to talk with me. Guess what that is all of freight brokerage? It's all just communication. If you can't communicate clearly with your customer or your carrier so that each of them understands what you're saying, I'll look at instances in companies where, like, there are nine emails where basically, the carrier and the broker are just trying to say what I could put in two sentences, but each one of them just puts a little bit. The other person asks the question, then they clarify, then they ask a question, then they ask a question. It's like wait a minute, hey, do you realize you spent probably 10 minutes with nine emails that you could have spent 30 seconds? If you just waited 10 seconds, read it and went, would I understand this if I got this and went? Oh no, okay, hey, can you please make sure when your driver arrives at the receiver he verifies the pickup number? Let us know if there's an issue, instead of pickup number question mark, they're like what I have the pickup number? Yeah, is the pickup number good? Is the pickup number good when the first or second stop? Like just slowing down to think about getting all the information across clearly once, it saves you everybody more work, not just that person, but you having to respond nine other emails to just get the message across.

Speaker 2:

And the last thing I want to say to this is like I'm working with Levity to automate a lot of this and I really immediately thought that written communication was easier for AI.

Speaker 2:

But what I learned is verbal was actually easier for AI than writing, and the reason is because a conversation is linear and an email what we have to train it to do is to go back and ask the other person to clarify so many times that you have to teach it so much more. In a conversation it just goes oh hey, did you mean this? And then the person clarifies, but in an email that takes six back and forth. So it's actually easier to get it to talk. And I'm like, holy shit, this is just like people Like if you literally talk over the phone, it's far clearer and faster than you trying to send an email and people think they're saving time and they're like I got 300 emails a day. Well, why do you have 300 emails a day? How many of them are to the same person, on the same subject? Right, there's probably. You can probably cut that in half in most scenarios.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, unfortunately we are, you know, lazy. Well, I mean, we can only control us, right. The people on the other end of the communication, unfortunately, can be the reason you get those 300 emails. So I deal with that a lot myself, um fair point all right and what.

Speaker 1:

Actually, what I did recently switch in my email is to like the conversation mode where it like just loops them all together so I'm not constantly jumping between, like different threads, um, and it's been actually fairly beneficial for me. But anyway, next question if you start your own brokerage company, usually when does the shipper pay you as a broker and how many days? So how can you pay the carrier that did the load if you haven't gotten the money from that shipment? So basically, um, I'll give you the standards, right, like, most brokerages will have terms on their invoice that says like 30 days due in 30 days. The reality is shippers will pay whenever they pay. Some are 40, some are 20, some are 60. It just depends.

Speaker 2:

Some are 120.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, so it's a great conversation to have with a prospect. It just depends. Some are 120. Yeah, so it's a great conversation to have with a prospect. How do you pay the carrier? Well, standard, I feel like 28 to 30 is probably an industry benchmark. If you're not paying within a month to a carrier, you're not going to be well-viewed in the eyes of the carrier world and to look better. You can offer quick pays, standard, faster payment terms, things like that. Now, the main question is how do you pay that carrier?

Speaker 1:

Well, this is where we always say the broker becomes the bank. We have to float the transaction, either with cash on hand or through a factoring service where, for a small fee, they will fund the transaction for you. That's it in a nutshell. Check out our factoring content. Anything to add in there? Nope, this is like the big like. I wish carriers would see this, though. The ones that complain about brokers like we are literally your bank. So all right. Last one I saw the TikTok of the driver changing the MC and name on the side of his truck. Why would they do that? Had you seen that video?

Speaker 2:

by the way, I did see it yeah, um, so I wanted to.

Speaker 1:

There's two. There was I mean the one I saw, at least like the guy parked his truck, got out, he pulled off the like mc number, underneath was another one, and he pulled off the, the magnet of the company name and address, and there was another one underneath. This could be, you know, two vastly different scenarios. Right, one could be legitimate, like we talked about on the podcast episode that just came out last week leased on. Drivers would should be doing this if they're operating properly. Right, meaning what? Let's say, I am a owner operator, I have my own authority, but I have zero customers. Right, you are also in the trucking world and you own a trucking company and you have customers. I might, you know, run one load that I want to run off the load boards and then you got some customer freight. That is a great backhaul for me and I want your freight. So what I can do is operate under my own authority for the freight I want to pull off the load boards and then I could be leased onto you for the freight that you've obtained from your customers.

Speaker 1:

Now what happens is, when I'm operating as me, I need to have my truck displayed as me and insured as me. When I'm operating as under your company, I need to be displaying myself and be insured as your company, right? And this is where we get into the issue of lazy leased-on situations where the carrier says the driver's insured, but why aren't they on the insurance? Well, the reality is we've had it when we a customer is like hey, you told me that so and so is going to show up and it's a different MC on the side of the truck. And then the driver is like oh, I didn't switch my placards and it's like so what happened? Was you just?

Speaker 1:

This is a double broker situation technically, because the carrier that was tendered the load is not who, in practice, actually showed up to haul the load. In practice actually showed up to haul the load. Um, now, in another scenario, depending on the context, this dude might have a hundred different mc and whatever's on the side of his truck or in his cab and he's impersonating some legitimate carrier um to steal freight, to do whatever. Yeah, who, who knows? Um? But yeah, there's a wide range of scenarios in which that might be happening, but there are legitimate and completely illegitimate versions of that. Anything contextually to add or any insights I know you've got some probably stories that you've dealt with.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I saw a theft with a client like two weeks ago where it was fraudulent. We found the trucking company owner thought they sold their company to somebody legitimate, never got paid and then the guy who pretended to buy the company got the logins to highway, changed all the phone numbers and apparently had 50, we found out like 15 other trucks that day threw placards on their truck as that MC picked up loads, stole all of them and then all disappeared. That's the egregious one. Now on the other side, right like you see it often, where, like, the carrier is leased on and is doing it correctly and that's what should happen, right. So there is no way to understand this unless you get more information, which is true again with a lot of things. I know it's part of human nature to want to just find the simple explanation to apply to everything. Unfortunately, like, very few things are just black and white. Yeah.

Speaker 1:

Yep, precisely All right. Good Q&A session there, ben. Keep sending them our way, everybody, and we'll continue to answer them Next time I'm on camera here. It should be sunny and warm in Florida, so final thoughts.

Speaker 2:

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

Speaker 1:

And until next time go Bills.

People on this episode

Head Shot

Benjamin Kowalski

Co-host
Head Shot

Nate Cross

Co-host