Fixing Bad Carrier Reports | Final Mile 155

🚩 Fighting a false broker report on a carrier vetting platform

📞 How long to chase a prospect before cutting them

🤝 Beating the "we're happy with our current brokers" brush-off

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Transcript

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False Vetting Reports And Responses

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Welcome back for another edition of the Final Mile is QA, all from our audience, the listeners here. So if you're if you've got questions and you want us to answer them, there's a bunch of ways to do that. Uh, you know, leave a comment on YouTube, send us a message right through our website, freight360.net. Join the Facebook group and interact in there. Um, check out the sponsors down below, help support the channel. Our first question um, as a carrier, how should I deal with a false report from a broker against my company on a carrier vetting platform? All right. Um, I've dealt with this on the opposite side too. If a you know someone leaves a nasty Google review on a brokerage. Um and we've gotten this question in various forms in the past. And I'm curious on your take, but my the way that I've always dealt with it is like you can't always get a bad re like report or a bad review removed, but you can usually respond to it, right? And I would say what you want to solve for is to like correct the issue at hand, not get the report removed necessarily. So like if in the case if I flip the flip the table around here, and let's say a carrier is like, you know, so-and-so brokerage sucks to work with, you know, they don't they don't pay tonus and or detention and blah, blah, blah. And it's like, all right, what was the shipment you dealt with? Who was your point of contact? Um, here's my phone number. If you want to call and discuss it, I want to make sure we make you whole on this and and treat you correctly, right? Even if that's the last thing you see on the review, the fact that somebody took the time to say, like, hey, I want I want to be accountable here and deal with it, um, that's my big thing is like addressing it versus just like letting them compile. Because like if you look at like a shitty restaurant or a crappy hotel, like very often you don't see them respond at all. It's just like this way sucks, food's terrible, the staff is rude, et cetera. But like, I guess from your perspective, like there's a lot of different vetting platforms. So whether it's highway, you know, my carrier portal, carrier share, um, carrier 411. Um, I don't know that you can get these reports removed, right?

SPEAKER_00 2:16

The only way I've seen where they mostly get removed is if you can get the person that placed it to remove it, is typically how I've seen them remove.

SPEAKER_01 2:28

Which would require you to, you know, interact with them and have a conversation. Have a conversation and resolve the issue at hand.

SPEAKER_00 2:34

Yeah. And also, like almost all of these things are always a result of like um unclear expectations at the onset, right? Like I didn't ask what their detention policy was. I assumed. I didn't confirm this detail, I didn't ask this, and then everybody gets upset when their assumption isn't correct. And that's why we talk about this. Like the best way to deal with these is to prevent them in the first place, which is if you're a carrier and you book a load, make sure those things are clear when you book the load, make sure they're put into writing, and then accept the load. Don't take the load, run the load, then ask for the detention policy after the fact. Because some things you can file on a bond for and some you can't. And the more you have in writing and the clearer it is, the easier it is to have any of these things fixed before they get to that point.

Bond Claims And Exempt Produce

SPEAKER_01 3:25

Speaking of bond, I learned something new. Um, I was dealing with the TIA's like fraud hotline where they deal with the FBI on like you know, fraudulent activities.

SPEAKER_00 3:37

Yep.

SPEAKER_01 3:37

Did you know produce is exempt from the bond? So if you like if a carrier hauls a load of produce and doesn't get paid by the broker, it's the bond won't pay it out. It's an excluded commodity. I had no idea. Never knew that.

SPEAKER_00 3:54

That's wild. I never knew that. Here's another question for you that came up recently, and I could not find an answer to this um related to that. So I had a I think it was a broker or carrier. Anyway, somebody asked me recently, um, the brokerage didn't pay the carrier or was withholding the total pay to the carrier because the carrier gave the wrong bill of lading and it needed to be a blind bill of lading. And they owed the carrier like $2,500 for the lane. And they're like, hey, it's in our broker carry agreement, it's in our Raycon. If you use an incorrect paperwork, we have the right to withhold the total payment to the carrier. And I said, I kind of feel like you can't withhold all of it, but I genuinely don't know. I tried to research it and I did not get a clear answer. I got maybe, and I got possibly. I could not get a clear yes or no.

SPEAKER_01 4:49

Yeah, I've never come across that one. At the end of the day, bond the bond filing. Um, think of it like in its most simplest form is like filing a claim on an insurance policy, and you're gonna deal with an adjuster who's gonna look at the facts, get both sides of the story, and they're just gonna make a decision.

unknown 5:08

Right.

SPEAKER_01 5:08

Like they can't do anything illegal, but they have a lot of subjective um abilities to kind of say, like, you know, here's the facts on what was agreed on, and here's what I think based on both sides of the story.

SPEAKER_00 5:22

And this was an interesting one too, because like I kind of felt like they both had a point where I'm like, okay, that seems like a lot of money to not pay a driver for a small thing. But on the customer side, the shipper likely lost that customer for good because the receiver who they bought the product, who they sold the product to, they found out who actually sourced it and then they just cut them out and then didn't buy from them anymore.

SPEAKER_01 5:49

So I'd be willing to bet that if it was clearly outlined in writing in the agreement, which again, there's some subjectiveness there. Like you an adjuster might say, like, yeah, that wasn't clear and obvious. But if it is clear and obvious, I think the uh bond would probably say, like, no, we're not paying out. Um, but I don't know. I've seen crazier things. So interesting. That's an interesting one. Um, all right, next

Prospecting Follow-Up Cadence Rules

SPEAKER_01 6:19

one. What's the right follow-up cadence for a prospect before I cut them from my pipeline? Um I'll give you my take. I'm curious on yours, and I'll kind of overly generalize it, but every customer is different depending on the volume of business they have, seasonality, but I'll just go with like we'll say a medium-sized shipper that is a qualified prospect, has enough business that I could be uh, you know, a real um asset to them as a broker, and we'll say they ship year-round. Um I would probably say I'm gonna likely make 10 to 15 attempts before I recycle them. And this is like a mix of calls, um emails, probably mostly calls though. And then again, like if I'm not getting if no one's answering the phone, I probably have a bad number, or I'm not using the best available number. If I'm getting to a if I'm getting to a gatekeeper who's giving me the runaround, that's a different situation. If I'm having a conversation and it's just not really going anywhere, that's another situation. But um, I think you usually get like a gut instinct when you talk to someone, you're like, this isn't going anywhere. But I I mean, I'm all about the, you know, try different days of the week, try different times of the day, um, try different contacts. And if you do a dozen or so and you're not getting anywhere, yeah, I might recycle them and try to refill my, you know, that, you know, for lack of better terms, that time slot in my prospecting time for a different prospect that I may have more luck with. But I'm curious how we actually, because we get this question kind of a lot, and we usually give a better answer when we ask questions about the customer or the prospect, but what's kind of like your general rule of thumb on the cadence there?

SPEAKER_00 8:19

I know two questions. How frequently do you follow up and when do you drop them? And it's like, well, it it all depends on seasonality and how much I feel like I want that customer, right? If I've determined for some reason I think it'd be a great customer fit for my carrier network or the type of freight they move, and I think that'd be profitable. Like I've followed up with prospects for years and closed them two or three years later, and they were very valuable. I've had companies that I've talked to that I felt like they just weren't going to be worth the effort and the time to keep following up, and I've cut them after two conversations. It's mostly based on the questions I've gotten answered from those phone calls and what I've determined as to why I feel like they would be a good customer, right? Like that's why it's like very case by case basis, right? Like I've talked to companies where I'm like, I've prospected cross Christmas tree shippers. Well, those are ones that like you find out pretty quick. You could call them every week, but that does you no good unless you're calling them basically from the beginning of August through September. Because like they're just not even shipping and not going to talk to you, and they'll tell you that. So you move those prospects to that time of year. What I've talked to them where they're like, hey, like we do handle our shipping, but rarely we do like 80% with our local trucking company and they have a brokerage, and sometimes we have overflow. All right, how long have you guys been working with that brokerage and that trucking company? Oh, 15 years. Okay, like I'm probably not gonna spend a ton of time. They clearly have a good relationship. And a trucking company with a brokerage, if they ship whatever, 10 loads a day can probably handle that volume. Oh no, we ship a hundred loads a day off the farm and we work with multiple brokers and we re-evaluate them every year. I will follow up with that one until in through the season. Because if someone else drops the ball, I might be able to get in the door and get some really good loads to be able to help. So, like it very much depends on how much I want to work with them and how much effort I feel like it's worth to put into it.

SPEAKER_01 10:23

Yeah, so a um I'll give you a generic cadence that some people will go through. So let's say you've got 200 leads that you're prospecting and you're gonna be aggressive and make a hundred dials a day. Okay, if you were to do here's a four, here's what a four-week cycle could look like. I'll call it like bucket A is the first hundred, bucket B is the second hundred. So let's say Monday, I'm gonna call bucket A, Tuesday B, Wednesday A, Thursday B, Friday A, the next Monday B, and so on and so forth. So after two weeks, you've attempted all 200 leads on all five days of the week. And then the second half, so weeks three and four, maybe you switch the time of day. So now you've hit after a month, you've hit 200 leads every single day of the week. So every every single customer or prospect has been attempted to be contacted Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday in both the morning and the afternoon, right? That's a generic example of how you can go through and you would have made what is that, 10 attempts on those customers um in a four-week period and all 200, right? That's not the only way to do it, but that's one way to go about doing it. Some people will break it up and say, all right, you know, I prospect, you know, I make 50 calls a day, and either they do the same cadence with 100 total, or maybe if they have 200 total or 250 total, instead of every other day, it's every four days or every five days, they're hitting the same um prospect again. And it obviously, depending on if you get a hold of somebody or you get a gatekeeper or you have a good conversation, it might change how that cadence goes. But that's a that's a um one way you can go about hammering out dials and hitting them all every day and at different times.

Handling Happy With Current Brokers

SPEAKER_01 12:14

So all right. Our last question here is uh how do I deal with the quote, we're happy with our current brokers, end quote, pushback when making sales calls. So you say give up. You know what's funny though, you say that, but like I I have dealt with people that were very new, and um when you hear like they'll be like, yeah, the objection was like um, you know, it could be like, yeah, we're happy with our current brokers, or we're not adding any brokers, or it's customer routed. And the broker's response is like, all right, thanks, have a nice day. And it's like, well, that was the easiest objection for that prospect to give you. Um so I think there's a couple different ways you can go about responding to the we're happy with our current brokers. Um you can go with I know you like the pattern interrupt of like, oh, that's great. Things are going well. You ever have any issues? But a lot of times I'll ask, like, well, you know, what happens if you guys have overflow or if someone falls out last minute? Um, do you guys ever have a is there ever like a situation where you guys will ad hoc, you know, onboard a new provider, you know, that's not part of your bullpen and your your kind of your standard lineup?

SPEAKER_00 13:37

Or you can just ask like the kind of straightforward question you could always ask is like, hey, do you guys do like any annual RFPs or onboarding windows? Like most medium to larger companies, even if they are happy, usually have once a year or twice a year where they open it up to people that have reached out to them throughout the year. They'll include a smaller number of them to be able to bid on those lanes. That doesn't mean you'd be awarded them, but like most will give you an opportunity to at least participate as like and they'll have some sort of a scorecard, right?

SPEAKER_01 14:07

So, like just because they have their their current brokers, right? One of those current brokers might have a certain number of service failures that poorly rates them on their scorecard, which they're not welcome back to the RFP the next year.

SPEAKER_02 14:20

Exactly.

SPEAKER_01 14:21

Or it could be so egregious that they could just get they get the boot instantly when a load got stolen or something like that. Um I had a conversation with a customer on Monday, so just a couple days ago, they do um, they're actually a brokerage and they specialize in like when there's a storm and like utility companies need parts for like the power lines, the grid, they are the expert in you know getting projects done for that, but they where they struggle, like they have really good customer relationships, but they struggle with finding capacity. So they enter into co-brokerage agreements and they try to find brokerages that have strong carry capacity and certain equipment types in certain regions of the country, and that's kind of how their business model works. But we were talking through it, and I was explaining how like we go about um, you know, sourcing and selecting and tracking our carriers, and she was kind of blown away. And it surprises me because like they're a brokerage too, but they just don't really deal with a lot of the carrier selection and vetting stuff. And she's like, Yeah, you know, we're having a lot of change to our current brokers um because loads just go missing. And I was like, What do you mean they go missing? She's like, Yeah, like they get stolen or something. I'm like, I'm like, yeah, this is not really a new thing. She's like, Yeah, well, it has been for us, but that's a real thing. And this is a customer that like we had been trying to work for a long time, and they had reached back out to us saying, like, hey, we're seeing more and more of these issues. Um, can we can we talk and see what you guys are doing that might be different than our current, you know, folks? So it's a real- That's the thing.

SPEAKER_00 16:03

Like, like again, it's kind of goes back to like assumptions. I had this with someone I was working with on someone that they said, like, oh, well, this customer only picks the cheapest rate. And I go, okay. Like, so I don't think there's an opportunity. Now, the assumption there is that the person choosing the cheapest truck or broker knows the risk they're taking. And here's what I meant in that scenario. I'm like, well, what did they ship? This company happened to ship high value food, I think it was meats or something, but we're talking like, you know, 500,000 to like, you know, um over a million dollars per truckload. And I went, they ship with the cheapest truck. They go, yeah, look at the rates. I looked at the rates and I looked at the mark, and I'm like, yeah, if you're not getting them, one, you don't know that they pick somebody cheaper, is the first thing. You might actually have been too cheap and they might have paid someone else. And if you didn't ask, you don't actually know. You assumed you didn't get the load because you assumed they went with somebody cheaper. I'm like, did you ask? Well, no, I just thought, okay, well, first, like, let's ask. Here's the second thing. If they are and you did confirm they're shipping with cheaper people, the next question you want to ask is like, hey, just out of curiosity, like, have you ever had any issues with loads picking up on time or delivering on time with any of your providers? And if you get a no, like, oh, hey, no worries. What about claims? And because where I'm going with that is, okay, you're shipping just say a million dollar load, say you ship 10 or 20 a week and you're picking the cheapest carrier. It is almost a certainty that that shipper does not know that the brokerage's contingent cargo insurance will not pay for a claim. And if you can get them to talk to you more, I'm gonna go, well, like, where are you guys insured with? Do you guys use third-party insurance? You'll almost always get a no, or what is that? You're like, oh, well, I don't know if you guys are aware of this, but like contingent cargo for a brokerage doesn't actually cover you in a claim. It actually provides like legal funding to actually protect the broker, not the shipper. So if you guys do run into a claim, whether it's damage, loss, refer, breakdown, whatever, like, do you know if your broker is verifying the trucking company has a million dollars in cargo insurance? No, why would I do that? Well, because that's the real insurance. And oh, by the way, our other customers that ship high value, we use a third-party insurer with a first position insurance policy. So if it's stolen, damaged, or lost, you get paid out immediately. You don't wait 60 to 90 days and then get a no. Are you okay rolling the dice on $10 million worth of freight every week with the cheapest carriers with no visibility into their insurance? Because you do this pretty frequently, and it's probably not a matter of if, it's probably a matter of when you're gonna end up with a claim, and then you're gonna run into these issues. Again, hey, if that's the risk you want to take to save a couple bucks, have at it. But I can tell you, I got two or three other customers that had been doing that for years, and then after they lost 750 grand and the insurance company said, Sue me, now they want us to use these insurance policies. So, hey, let me know. Like, I can't tell you how many shippers I've talked to that have been in business for decades that aren't aware that they are like under or completely uninsured on these things that they're moving on cheap carriers.

SPEAKER_01 19:31

So you don't know until you find out in a very, very unpleasant way. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 19:38

Yes. Avoid assumptions.

SPEAKER_01 19:40

Good questions, though.

Avoid Assumptions And Closing

SPEAKER_01 19:42

Um, continue to send them our way and we'll keep answering them. Ben, final thoughts.

SPEAKER_00 19:46

Whether you believe you can or believe you can't, you're right. And until next time, go bills.