Sales Funnel Management for Freight Brokers | Episode 242

Speaker 1: 0:19

Welcome back. It's the Freight360 podcast. We're at episode 242. And make sure to do the whole like, subscribe, comment, share us with your friends. Head over to our website, Freight360.net, Check out all of our free content and you can even see the Freight Broker Basics course. That's our full educational product. That'll teach everything from how to get your brokerage started, get that pipeline filled up with customers, build carrier relationships and even hire your team members as your business grows. All right, Ben, how are we doing today, man?

Speaker 2: 0:56

Doing well, man. Sweet Nice weekend. Weather's nice. How's your week coming along so far? A couple hours of it.

Speaker 1: 1:03

Yeah, we're recording on a Monday today. It's not bad. It's it's not bad. I gotta play a little army this week, so we're trying to get a lot of stuff done on monday, but it's a beautiful day here in western new york. Um, we're looking at sunny and 75 today, so I'll take it. We've gotten a ton of rain, which is, you know, pretty normal for april. Um, they always say april showers bring may flowers, but I think we're gonna have a nice, um, a nice, uh, mid part of the spring here it's like 86 in pittsburgh.

Speaker 2: 1:30

This morning I was listening to the radio and I think it was like in the 80s over the weekend, so I can imagine you got some warm weather up your neck of the woods too um, I mean, I was out of town this past weekend.

Speaker 1: 1:40

I was playing army again up at fork drum, um, but but it was, it was nice. There was like high sixties and, um, yeah, I don't know, I assume if it was, if it was nice in Pittsburgh, three hours up the road in Buffalo, probably not too different. So, um, well, cool man, we're going to talk. We Talk about your pipeline and how to keep it in check, some of the stuff that we do with clients that we've worked with and do work with, and some of the things that you would expect a good one-on-one with the sales manager to be, as well as maybe a sales team meeting if you do it in a group setting, but if you're just a broker by yourself, these are self-questions that you can analyze and look at and ask to try and figure out where you're at and where your focus is. We'll get there in just a little bit Sports. The NFL draft man. Did you watch any of that?

Speaker 2: 2:34

No, but I know Pittsburgh got a couple really good picks we were excited about. They got a tackle and one of the top three centers in the draft. They weren't sure they were going to get the center because of the tackle they picked up and I was really excited to hear they were able to get the center.

Speaker 1: 2:47

Yeah, I was actually a cab driver once I was gone over the weekend, cab driver that I was Uber driver that I was riding with on Saturday. He was from Pittsburgh and he we're talking about the draft and he was talking about the, the center that you guys got the center, I think is zach frazier, I believe I know the tackles.

Speaker 2: 3:09

troy fawutano, as I think how you pronounce it, pronounce it, but yeah yeah, so zach frazier.

Speaker 1: 3:17

Uh, basically because the bill's got a center as well, um, bill snagged up, cedric van pran, granger, um. But anyway, those two centers were pretty much the only two centers in the draft that had like reputable starting time.

Speaker 2: 3:32

So yeah, and I think frazier, what they were talking about this morning anyway. Oh, I'm looking at right here too. He was a four-time heavyweight champion as a high school wrestler, but I think they mentioned he might have some injuries. That that's why they thought he didn't get picked sooner, that they're gonna wait and kind of see how it plays out. But I didn't really get to read too far into it. Wasn't there a guy from duke? Wasn't he like the other, like supposedly top pick center?

Speaker 1: 3:59

I don't know, those were the only two that were on my radar. Um, I watched a lot of the draft but not all of it, so I didn't catch that one. But yeah, it's kind of a unique position. Obviously Not a lot of teams. Usually you hear about teams wanting to draft a QB or a stud receiver, maybe a running back later in the draft, some D tackles and whatnot. But the center, yeah, it's a key position though obviously.

Speaker 1: 4:26

Um, the bills man. I was so like the bills on thursday night, the first round. It's like so long right, there's 10 minutes for each team to pick. It goes till like midnight. Um, the bills were the 28th spot traded back to kansas city. Um, which the last time the Bills did that, kansas City got Pat Mahomes. So this time they do it again and they picked up Xavier Worthy.

Speaker 1: 4:52

I think that was like the fastest wide receiver in the draft and the Bills need a receiver and everyone's like what are you doing? So then we get traded back to like the 32nd pick, which we then again trade away to Carolina. So the Bills didn't even make a draft pick in the first round and everyone's up until midnight waiting, but we ended up picking first pick of the second round, keon Coleman, wide receiver, out of Florida State, which come to find out. Josh Allen pretty much handpicked him. He said that's the guy I want. He's got the quick speed off the line and makes the moves that that'll work for our offense. Um. So that's kind of a blessing in disguise. Everyone was frustrated at first but bill's got 10 drafts or uh draftees 10 draft picks this this year, which is a record um draft class for the buffalo bills.

Speaker 2: 5:39

But obviously not everyone's gonna get signed um, so we'll see what happens I would say this the one thing I really noticed about the draft this year was we talked about this before, like the steelers have just always had such a consistent team in my lifetime that like there was never really much changing in the draft. They were talking about that this morning too. Like basically, even like last year, like, yeah, these guys are gonna be good in like three, four years. Right, two, three years, yeah, and it's like this is the first year I can remember where it's like we need people and they're drafting people that can play now.

Speaker 2: 6:12

So I get now what I think I missed as to why everybody would get so fired up about the drafts in the past. I'm like it doesn't matter, like it's such a risk. No one knows how these guys are going to play the games. Play different college versus nfl, like it's all a crap shoot, right. But now that I'm kind of in it and I care and we need people, it's funny, it's like watching it through, like this different perspective where I like get the excitement oh for sure, yeah.

Speaker 1: 6:36

I mean there's definitely like there's guys that you can plug and play year one and then there's guys that you hope by year two. And then there's guys that you think like, yeah, maybe in three or four years, but, um, so like some of those receivers will come out real quick, right away, tight ends can be. The same way some of your linemen um qbs, you can usually assume their first year is going to be just get acclimated to the nfl, gets put some size on you. But yeah, that's all I got for sports. Was there anything in golf?

Speaker 2: 7:07

No, I looked it up. There was a tournament, Shane Lowry and Rory one. I'm sure it was some match play tournament that I'm not familiar with. It was the Zura classic down in new Orleans and I didn't have time to catch up on even the format. But that was about it, Gotcha.

Speaker 1: 7:23

Well news up on even the format, but that was about it, gotcha um well news I uh. So every weekend dean croak, who's been on the show from he's from dat he sends out his uh market update. That goes out like officially on tuesdays I think, and we include snippets of it in our thursday newsletter in the market update section on, like you know, van reefer and flat. So I was looking at it. Did you see the one from this past weekend or no?

Speaker 1: 7:46

I did, but I don't remember, yeah, so I mean like I just read it I was just kind of depressed, like it's basically saying like the van market still sucks, the reefer market still sucks, but the the flatbed market is what it started to started to pick up a little bit, if I read it correctly. Really what they do is they're comparing load to truck ratio. So basically this is based off of DAT's load postings versus truck postings and obviously you're going to have skewed numbers there because you might have 10 brokers posting the same load. But they'll compare it to where that same stat was year over year. So the same time the previous year and the previous week. So like, for example, I'll run through, let's go through van.

Speaker 1: 8:31

So dry van volume was pretty much flat. So it still didn't change and truck postings decreased from last week. Line haul spot rates decreased by another penny. So there's not a whole lot of movement, especially upward. The reefer market let's see decreased 3% for load-to-truck ratio week over week, although it did say renewed strength in the produce market, boosted truckload spot market volumes following last week's 5% increase in load post volume. So the reefer load to truck ratio increased 8% week over week.

Speaker 1: 9:17

It looks like All right Equipment went down. So that would make sense Spot rates flat, so still bad. But where's the flatbed? So the load post volume fell here, it says, after being flat for the last two weeks. Flatbed line haul rates showed renewed strength following last week's penny per mile increase averaging just over $2.02 a mile. The national average is $0.13 a mile lower on an 18% higher volume of loads moved compared to last year, highlighting excess capacity. All right, I guess I was wrong. It's just bad around the horn there. I thought I read something good about the flatbed market, but maybe not. So yeah, I mean what, what have you seen like this year compared to other years in the beginning of the year, because I like normally by april, going into may, we're starting to see a boost and it seemed like, at least from my perspective and what I'm seeing within pierce, um, like we've had, you know, we've had, you know we've had some wins, but I mean overall it's been kind of a flat first, like four months of the year.

Speaker 2: 10:28

Have you seen anything different or I haven't seen much different, right, I've seen a lot of the same things you're talking about. But the other thing is like it's anecdotal but like I'll look at some lanes that I'm like are much higher than kind of expected, like, and again they're to less dense areas. I was working on something last week going into Nevada from New Jersey and it was being like 245 mile, like average, like for a van, and again like there's not a ton of freight coming out of there so you're going to pay going into it. But the other thing I have noticed, where I guess I've seen more of this, is just changes within a given week and again anecdotal, but I was talking with one of my clients about this last week. They'll see like a lane into the Midwest, for instance, maybe coming out of the East, where they'll be fine Monday and Tuesday to cover their loads at like a decent margin. You know, I don't know 11, 12%, but like Wednesday or Thursday they'll lose 10, 12% to cover the loads, like they're swinging that much. And so I'm seeing swings in the middle of the week.

Speaker 2: 11:38

And I'm also seeing carriers where they've got drivers stranded in the middle of the country to go back west for days. I mean just no spot freight coming out, nothing going in that direction. So I mean I'm seeing some odd things here and there, but nothing to make up or to shed any light for any specific reason. Just like odd anomalies where there's here and there but nothing to make up or to shed any light for any specific reason. Just like odd anomalies where, like there's just nothing there, where that's. I've like really not seen that very often in some areas where you're seeing a lot and then nothing, and then a lot, just peaks and valleys through Monday, even just through Friday in any given week.

Speaker 1: 12:13

You know I got to remind myself of, as though, like, just compare it to go back like five years to 2019, and that's like a that's probably a better reference point to where the market is, versus when you compare it to the post. Uh, shutdown like boom. So, um, we got what's. Did you put something in the show notes here about dallas? That might have been producer steven, I think he did so I'll read this dallas's outbound tender volumes have grown approximately 50 percent over the past five.

Speaker 1: 12:43

There you go, past five years. Compared to the national average of 18, two largest outbound markets in the us ontario excuse me, ontario california and atlanta have both lost a significant share. The ongoing capacity glut is hiding a rather significant shift in national freight flow patterns. So there you go. Yeah, five-year comparison right 50%. So the national average sounds like outbound tender volumes is 18% higher than it was five years ago. But compare that to two years ago. Obviously it's going to be much lower. So we'll see where.

Speaker 2: 13:20

Yeah, and he also pointed to. Stephen wrote this that Dean mentioned and I was aware of this. In fact, every time I see an article like this I feel like sending it to you, stephen, related to the meat market. But yes, the cattle market in the US is significantly down. I think some of it was drought, some of it might.

Speaker 2: 13:36

I can't, I don't want to misspeak, but for sure the US cattle market is down, meat production is down. Supply of even processed meat, I think, is in shorter supply this year for a lot of reasons, which again is usually increasing transit times for the stuff that is available. But to your point, like that's really why Chicago became Chicago in the first place, was all of the cattle in the 1800s were driven from Texas up through the middle of the country to the slaughterhouses in the Midwest because the trains took the beef to the major cities in the country. That's why Chicago was this huge meat town. There's still a lot of that happening there and for sure, if you're going to see a significant decrease in meat produced in the us, the freight coming out of there is obviously going to be affected, which makes a lot of sense yep, um sweet.

Speaker 1: 15:36

Well, let's we got anything else in the news before we get into our topic today.

Speaker 1: 15:55

All right, jump into it. Yeah. So we're going to talk about? Uh, all right, jump into it. Yeah, so we're going to talk about prospecting, kind of reviewing yourage. It could be just you, it could be a small team, it could be a large organization, right, there's all different shapes and sizes and forms of freight brokerages. But these are the kinds of things that you should be thinking about and discussing If you've got another employee or a manager in, like a sales meeting or one on one, because it's important to have, first of all, to keep yourself in check on what's going on with your business. But, number two you have a second opinion besides your own. A lot of people get lost in their own way of thinking and their own train of thought and they get blinded. They have their blinders up and they don't see certain risks or maybe even opportunities that might be there, that somebody else might For sure.

Speaker 1: 16:52

That's like why I really enjoy doing a lot of stuff with you, because there's things that you think of that I never would have, and I think probably vice versa and being able to you know, even working remote, being able to bounce that stuff off of one another, is extremely helpful.

Speaker 2: 17:07

A hundred percent. I hate doing this stuff by myself because I know I don't have that other perspective right. One of the things I love most about the first time I got into free brokerage sales was just that I had a really good buddy that I worked with at TQL and we had similar ways of like kind of similar but different ways and like looking at things I would say similar and we were both curious different perspectives on how we looked at them. So this is what we did every day, like in between our prospecting calls when you walk around the building after an hour calling session, lunch after work, like, hey, this is what I'm hearing, this is what I run into and he would see things that I didn't see and vice versa on his prospects. And we used each other as sounding boards to learn and find more information that we could use to do better at what we were doing.

Speaker 1: 17:56

Did you guys have like a structured sales meeting or anything like that with your teams?

Speaker 2: 18:01

Yeah, so there was a biweekly pipeline review similar to what we're going to do here. I think it was every other week. It might have been once a month, but I think it was every other week. We also had at least once a month, maybe every two weeks, where the whole sales floor would kind of semi-circle around the manager, like Friday afternoon, and we would discuss what was going on, what people were seeing, helpful things, to kind of share information. So I would say three different ways. We did that.

Speaker 1: 18:30

Yeah, gotcha. Yeah, I've been exposed to like the Monday morning and Friday afternoon meetings, which it always like kind of made me scratch my head. I was like what's really changed from Friday afternoon to Monday morning? It's like pretty much the weekend, but either way. It's like pretty much it's the weekend, um, but either way it's good. And then obviously like periodic, like quarterly or um midway through the year, and we've talked about like annual review of your book of business and stuff like that and other episodes, um, but I do think some sort of a structure, oh, and I would do like a one-on-one too, usually like once a week or every two weeks with a boss.

Speaker 2: 19:05

So pipeline reviews. Yeah, we're always one-on-one. The other thing I did and this was not in freight, this was in like the patent world when I worked in sales for like. It's all applicable, though.

Speaker 1: 19:17

It doesn't really matter what industry you're in.

Speaker 2: 19:19

And here is the thing that we did that is very helpful in, I think, all sales right. We get this question a lot. We're talking pipeline reviews like what do you say in a follow-up call? Right, it says the sales cycle in that industry was very long, like six months, right, sometimes a few years, getting a product developed right.

Speaker 2: 19:41

So you needed a creative way to keep your clients engaged in what was sometimes a very boring process, like you're just talking to them like once a month and like nothing's really happened. Yet Engineers are working on something, something's happened over there, like it's just not really that, it's some of it's just paperwork, right, and waiting and filing things. But you've got to keep your clients engaged in the process, otherwise they sometimes just want to give up and let their product fail or whatever it was you've been working on, right. So the hardest thing to do was like well, how do you keep somebody excited in something that is like really kind of a boring process at periods Like and there's nothing really exciting to talk about? This is what we do, like those I think it was like once a week, or maybe even twice a week, in the morning we would all get together as a team and we would come with the follow-up calls that were most important and we'll talk about this today like our hot list, right, Like these clients are really important. They've got maybe some of the best products we think would be successful. We want to keep them engaged, right. And you'd be like, okay, I'm on call seven.

Speaker 2: 20:36

It's been three months, and they would share the product, the idea, and then the team would brainstorm things that were happening either in current affairs would brainstorm things that were happening either in current and current affairs, what's going on in the news, the market, whatever, or even just a story like, hey, yeah, I was somewhere and we ran into this problem and somebody wished they had this product.

Speaker 2: 20:56

And this is how we would have come up with our follow-up ideas to keep people engaged in the process, which is what we talk about in freight too. It's like you really should put some thought into what you're going to say when you follow up, because if you just call and say, hey, how's it going? Touching base like that did not only didn't create value, you detracted from the value you've created already, like it's even worse than not calling. So a lot of this, I think, is really helpful to get people in the mindset of what you should be thinking, what you should be asking and really what you should be learning in your prospecting phone calls to determine am I getting closer to a customer or am I just wandering around in a field talking to people with absolutely no strategy purpose, hoping somebody goes hey, can you move my load? That's not what we're looking for.

Speaker 1: 21:43

Yeah, and I've done this in. What I'm going to recommend here and talk about is stuff that I've actually done and I still, you know, will do with folks myself is, you know, if you're going to dedicate time to a one-on-one, for example, you definitely want to cover, like, your current business, but that should be, in my opinion, like a very small portion of the discussion, right, a quick review of the numbers, how it compares to what your goals were, et cetera, but really focus on the opportunity that's ahead of you, right. So these are, like you kind of mentioned, your hot leads, your warm leads, your lukewarm leads, your cold leads, opportunities that are coming up. Because, like you just mentioned with the patent thing there, when it could take months, think about a company that isn't in their shipping business yet but it's coming up, so something seasonal like Christmas trees or pumpkins or a certain kind of produce, right, they would fall into an upcoming bucket like that.

Speaker 1: 22:40

Maybe a project-based construction company that's going to be they've got a project coming up in eight weeks from now, right, and you're hoping to be part of that business. Or maybe it's just a year-round shipper that you're in the process of building rapport with and you haven't gotten to that point yet. Right, these are the things that are ahead of you that you really want to focus on and look at. Okay, where am I at? What are the hurdles I've got ahead of me? Is there any objections that I'm being, you know, thrown, having thrown at me by this prospect? Is there anything I need to get done administratively to be able to work with this customer, like insurance or you know what right it could be? A whole bunch of things. So, the things I want to outline right.

Speaker 2: 23:24

First off, what this isn't. This is not talking about what you're doing now, your existing volume, the existing loads, and it certainly isn't a time to discuss all the reasons why you're so busy. You can't prospect. That is not what this is for. Right, and why I'm saying this is the most common thing when I would run these at a company was the people not making their sales calls would want to spend the whole pipeline review talking about all the business that they had because they weren't really doing prospecting. They weren't prospecting, right. So it's like, well, look at this. And then it's always gets into the conversation of, well, this customer said they're going to do this and I know it's coming. I'm like, yeah, but we've been working with them for three years. There isn't anything you don't know about them. If it comes, great. If it doesn't, it is what it is. But there's nothing really much you're going to do to move the needle to make that happen. It is either going to come or not.

Speaker 2: 24:22

At that point you've got as much of a relationship as you're ever. You can't prospect what you're doing with existing customers and I would even go to say it's probably not really penetration of your existing customers, because, again, you should be doing that and you should be meeting more people. If it's not a new division or a new location under the umbrella of your existing customers, it's not really. Prospecting Like this is just you building more relationships. And again, this is where most of your excuses come from. Salespeople is like oh, my customer said they're going to give me this. That's why I haven't time to prospect, because I'm just making sure I just really service them. No, this is a cop out for not doing the thing you don't want to do, which is pick up the phone and call companies you're not working with, right?

Speaker 1: 25:04

This is the framework, because there are different personality types handle meetings like this different. Right. They might get defensive. The whole point here is not to beat anybody up. It's to be productive and try to get you moving in the right direction. So if you can't go into it with the right mindset of being humble, being honest and being transparent about what's going on with your pipeline, if you can't do that, then you're wasting your time, even going through the motions of it.

Speaker 1: 25:31

So, um and I say that you know nicely, because it's a you know for people that are out there that they have blinders up. They might not realize that they have one of their weaknesses as um, in admitting where they're actually at instead of just trying to find all the good stuff in life or in their business. So again, if you're a manager, you should set the tone of these conversations in a way that they're very, very productive and constructive, and not to beat anybody up. It's just. All I'm going to be doing if I'm the manager is I'm going to be taking a mirror and I'm going to be holding it in front of you so you can see what's you know who you are. That's really the point of all that. You can see what your book of business looks like. You can see what your prospecting looks like, uh looks like, or the lack of it for that matter, which is the case for a lot of people like you just mentioned. So I just wanted to add that in there.

Speaker 2: 26:23

And here's the thing, right For any managers out there, that we're not going to go too deep into this. But, like everyone thinks, like I can either be supportive or I can tell the truth, and there is no middle ground. The reality is there is, and these are best done by managers that genuinely can get their salesperson that they're managing to understand. The point of this is to support the salesperson to grow faster and give them the tools and information to be more successful. This is not for the manager to, you know, browbeat you and yell at you, to make you scared, to make you want to do more of this. Right? This should be a supportive conversation where this person has done this enough that they can help you learn from their experience, right? And this is why we're asking these questions, right?

Speaker 1: 27:06

So, yeah, let me get in there really quick Cause you just brought up a good point like to support people. I I've done this like so a lot of times with, um, certain agents in our company. I will do these meetings with them, uh, either at their request or I'll suggest it, and they're productive Cause we find out that like hey, there's, there's something that we can do from our level that's going to support them in their journey, whether it's hey, there's this product out there that's going to really help us get the information that we need to get us over the hump with these guys and get in their bid. Or hey, there's this.

Speaker 1: 27:39

I had one with somebody a few months ago where we found out if we can get her in this organization or get the company in this part of a member of this organization. It would allow her to get to a conference and have conversations with certain people in that niche and that's all it took. It was like all right, $500 annual thing. Boom, our brokerage is now a member. Now she's got doors open with these two people in Florida who are in these different members of this produce organization or whatever it was. But little things like that you can find out about that you otherwise wouldn't if you're not having the conversation right, because the person that's making the calls might doubt, like, oh, the prospects asked me for this and there's no way my boss is going to go for that. Well, you don't talk about it, right? The?

Speaker 2: 28:27

answer is no. You're never going to know. Don't ask. The answer is always no, right? Exactly so I'm going to go through one that like an example that I mean we do this all the time. I do this with my clients, right? This is what used to be done with me, this is how I learned, right? So we'll just go through like a simple example of kind of how I did this with somebody last week, right? So the first thing we're gonna do is sit down and I go okay, let's look at all of your prospects, right, and the first thing I'm looking at is how many active prospects are they working? Which is the first thing, right? Like what is the total number of prospects you're actually working? This could be 200 for somebody new. This could be 400 for somebody that's been in it.

Speaker 2: 29:08

You're really not actively working much more than probably 400 or 500, even if you get really good at this, because there's just only so many hours in a day, days in a week for you to be able to do this. It's usually somewhere in there At the big companies. You have like a limit on what you can have active, like back in the day, like I think TQLs was, like I could have 80 or maybe 90 active prospects in my name that I was like working Right, and then you either had to drop one to add one or you could add someone a list that you were waiting to get if somebody else couldn't close them, right. So you really have like a finite number in the bigger companies For agents and people that are out there or working your own brokerage, right, like there is no limit on what you can have, but you should have an active list of at the very least 200, I would say to 300, even from start, right.

Speaker 2: 30:00

So those are your first. Where are you at? How many are you active, working? Second you're going to look at is what is their activity, though? Like, how many phone calls are they making, right on an average, on a given day or over a week, right? The next thing you want to know is not just how many people you're calling, but, okay. Are they actively following up with people? Or are they just calling a list of a hundred one time and then calling another list of a hundred one time? Scrapping that, calling a list of a hundred, scrapping that, right. Like, again, the sales cycle is you got to talk to a prospect eight to 12 times and right now it's like closer to four months to close a customer right, so it's a long period of time that you've got to follow up.

Speaker 1: 30:37

It's not just the what you do, it's the how you do it. You're absolutely right.

Speaker 2: 30:40

All the money's in the follow-up. So the next thing you want to look at is like, okay, well, of all of these prospects that you started with, say you have 300 and say you're two months into the job, the next question I'm going to go is how many of them would you consider active prospects? Now here's what active means. It means you spoke to them and had a conversation right, not spoke to a gatekeeper, not got blown off and left a voicemail Like you actually spoke to somebody in that department in either transportation, right, or maybe procurement, and you had to have learned something. Like I mean, a conversation isn't. I call Nate, nate says I don't need anything. Nate hangs up on me Like that's not a conversation. Right, I needed to learn something. I didn't know before. That phone call that I now know after. That makes it active. I had to learn something right. You're either going to win or you're going to learn right.

Speaker 2: 31:28

Most of this is you're learning right. So now, those two or 300, right, if you've been doing this a month or two, you should probably have 25, maybe 30, maybe even closer to 50 companies that you've talked to right, had conversations with, you're starting to build some rapport and they're probably still telling you that they don't need help from a broker or have any freight to give you or any quotes to give you. Right. But you are learning a little bit either about them personally, like maybe Nate likes the Bills. Nate lives in Buffalo, nate's got two kids. Maybe it's their busy season's coming up in a month. He says I should follow up closer to June. It could be that, hey, they just cut their asset division or they just added something Like it doesn't matter, they hired somebody, somebody got quoted, they just added something Like it doesn't matter.

Speaker 2: 32:11

They hired somebody, somebody got positive or negative information. It can be negative too, where you feel like, oh, this makes it less likely they'll do business with me. But remember, in your first couple of calls, they don't know you so they don't trust you and they're probably not telling you the truth. But you want to have learned something, right, that's your active list right Now. From those active lists, the next question you want to ask and this is the one that they'll be asking over and over and you should also be asking yourself is okay, now, all these active prospects, which would you say? You would categorize them, and they usually do like three buckets, but you can do two, maybe it's. These are the highest likelihood to become customers, these are the lowest likelihood. These people I don't think will work with us at all. That's usually the three buckets, right, yep, really, these people I don't think will work with us at all. That's usually the three buckets, right, yep, really likely. Maybe probably not at all, right.

Speaker 2: 32:57

And now, within those, right now, we get into really the pipeline review, because this is your pipeline, the leads you've reached out to, sent an email to or trying to talk to, like they're not your pipeline yet, they're just company phone numbers that you've researched, that you have the ability to build a rapport with, but they are not in your pipeline. The pipeline funnels into your business, into your TMS, where they become customers, right. So from there now is when we really get into these questions, where I'll go through this with a client or someone on my team or an agent or whatever it's like. Okay, now let's go one by one and I want to start asking you questions to learn what you know or have learned, because if you don't know these, it's not to shame you or to make you feel like you should, it's to teach you. These are the questions you need to ask when you speak to them.

Speaker 1: 33:45

Again, You're just identifying gaps in knowledge that then can give you information on what to throw into your next phone call and find out Right. And a lot of this stuff is like well, unless you're going a different direction, A lot of this stuff the way I do it is, it's the same kind of questions that you ask when you're prospecting Right. These are the kind of things that you want to make sure that somebody either knows or can identify that they don't know yet.

Speaker 2: 34:14

So little tangent. But, like everyone asks us, what do I say when I follow up? I don't know what to talk about. These are the questions, these are the things you want to get answered right. And again, if you want to build rapport with somebody, you don't make friends by telling people what to do and that you know more than them and to try to educate them. You build friends by asking them questions and getting them to talk about what they're interested in. These are the ammunition. Like to go and prospect right, Like these are what get you. The rapport is asking these questions in a way that makes them want to talk to you. Right, that's the nuance piece. But like this is exactly what you, like you said you want to be asking.

Speaker 2: 34:51

Now, some of them are really simple, right, and the first is everybody has done this at almost I've met, including myself which is you get a prospect, they're easy to talk to, you enjoy talking to them and no one else wants to talk to you.

Speaker 2: 35:04

So we end up believing that that's going to be a good customer, because we're getting results and it feels good, so we keep talking to them. I can't remember the name of my company the one mine was, but like it was like two and a half months when I finally turned them into a customer and I was so excited and found out they shipped like four full truckloads maybe a week or a month, like just so low volumes that like no matter how much this person liked me, there was never really enough to turn it into a business relationship other than to help here and there and maybe to learn a bit which, again, but this is a big cost to me because I spent hours and hours talking to this person, over two and a half months that could have been spent trying to get to know somebody that I could have been working with, right?

Speaker 2: 35:50

So the first questions you want to understand as quickly as possible is how many loads a week are they moving? Or how many loads a month, or how many loads a day? However you want to ask, it gets you around the same information, and I want to know what it is now, what it is at the bottom of their season, meaning the slowest they are, and I want to know what it is the most at their busiest time of the year. Those are the three things I really want to know.

Speaker 1: 36:14

Yeah, I go very, very similar. Hey, what does their seasonality look like? Is it fairly consistent throughout the year? Do they have a peak in the spring? I mean, obviously certain commodities is going to be self-explanatory right Like the Christmas tree example, not shipping a lot of Christmas trees in May and June. Like the Christmas tree example, not shipping a lot of Christmas trees in May and June. But certain kinds of farms that have different types of they grow different stuff throughout the year and they grow different stuff different years.

Speaker 1: 38:01

But yeah, your traditional like manufacturing, you might get a low time at the tail end of December and the beginning of the year and then you get kind of a boom into the spring and summer. If it's a food product, obviously holidays, seasons and summer is going to be big on that. But I love to know what is the year round peaks and valleys look like? Or is it consistent? And, to your point, what is their volume? And I even like to break that down by the type of you know their LTL, their full truckload partials, anything that could be segmented right. Because if you can have a conversation and your answer is, yeah, they're pretty consistent throughout the year, with the exception that they have a pretty big boom in the summer months. They're doing about 40 truckloads a day on average. They do a little bit of LTL here and there. It's by exception, and every now and then they might have an expedited ship. That's got to go super fast, that's a great answer right, perfect.

Speaker 1: 39:02

And if you don't know the, if you can't answer it like that, it's not to say that you're not doing your job, it's just like you know. Here's what. Here's some of the conversations that you can have and legitimate questions. You can ask that prospect the next time you're on the phone with them.

Speaker 2: 39:15

And then and then the next one, and I'll give you an example that we're running to, like a close one to what we're seeing right now, right? The other one is like I want to know what's going inbound versus outbound and if, if I can get them to tell me a little bit about what is likely to happen, right? So, for instance, we were talking with a lot of produce shippers call it in California, and right now a lot of them are having a hard time getting a lot of their supply inbound up from Mexico and Central America because there were a lot of droughts. So you have higher prices, lower volumes, and most of them said like they literally couldn't get enough product to fulfill their customers orders, right, so where's their volume at? Lower than where they want it would be? They can't even get enough product to fulfill the orders coming in, right, so it's slower than they would want it, well, again. So the next question that we wanted to ask is okay, well, you bring most of this stuff up from here in the winter months and definitely when you guys have operations in Arizona, closer to there. But hey, let me ask you, I know California's watermelons are going to be coming online and about two or three weeks. When do you expect your volumes or you to be able to start pulling enough product from local farms to meet your orders? Like, are you thinking that's two, three weeks? Like, I'm just curious. And if you ask, in a way it's like I'm asking about the industry. I'm not asking them how many loads they move today and how many loads they'll move in three weeks. I said, hey, I know you guys everyone's kind of running into this out of curiosity. With the horizon coming up, you know, with everything coming to crop in the next two, three weeks, what do you guys normally see when the season really picks up with local produce, you guys.

Speaker 2: 40:48

Now here's the veteran tip is most people just ask what that volume is. I find if you give them a choice, they're more likely to just pick one. And I will say something like hey, I know you guys mentioned when you guys are kind of slow. You're probably like I don't know, 20, 30 loads a week. I got to imagine when stuff's coming in from a local farms and you've got what you need to get out to your customers. Are you guys like 50, 60 loads a week? You, you know, 60 to 75, a hundred plus. I mean just trying to get an idea on kind of where you guys fall when everything's really fired on all cylinders, right, and most people are like, yeah, you know, on the higher end of that, oh, you know, we're probably about double what we do now. They'll give you some idea to know. Again, I'm trying to think about what it looks like in this building If there are only 10 going out a day and they think that'll double. Okay, there's a likelihood they're going to need some help, either in the time of when they're going out or just in the volume over the next few weeks leading up to this. It gives you, like, the timeframe at which point in time their needs will increase for what we provide as a service, right? Just your time capacity or additional capacity, right? So again, it gives you this benchmark of where it was when it is.

Speaker 2: 42:03

And another great tip is to use the timeframe in the past and the analogy I used for somebody, a client, the other day. I was like, well, if you were on a date and somebody asked who were the other people you're dating right now, well, when people are dating, they're all kind of dating other people, but no one really feels comfortable enough on a first date to share that Like, oh, I went out with this other guy two days ago and he was really nice, because it's going to make the other person feel threatened, right, or just not comfortable. They don't trust you. But if that person asked you, hey, you know over the years, or even like last year or past couple of years, like what are the kind of people you tend to date or that you kind of enjoy spending time with, they'll tell you everybody they've met and didn't like or whatever happened two years ago and last year. They're far less likely to tell you about what's happening in the present.

Speaker 2: 42:45

So use the same thing in shipping. Like, hey, last year, when things were kind of slow and they were ramping up, what did you guys do when you were really busy last year, when all the local produce was firing? Do you guys really see your volumes? Are you expecting about the same thing this year? You might be like, yeah, we were at 100 loads a week last year at peak season. We're expecting about the same. Great, I've got at least a general idea that this company is worth me continuing to build a relationship with, because there's probably an opportunity there.

Speaker 1: 43:12

So one of the things you can do, too that's relevant now is you can ask a couple things you could ask about hey, how was last year? But also, how are things compared to 2021? Late 2020. Obviously, a lot of industries were impacted and they might just be like, oh man, it was crazy, and they'll spew out a ton of information because, you get, everyone remembers what it was like then.

Speaker 1: 43:39

It would mean it was, it was a shit, exactly, um, but also into the like, because you mean, you already kind of hinted at it.

Speaker 1: 43:44

But, looking into the future, right, I think it's a, it's um, to lower the, the threat, as you called it, of a conversation or really this like the, the awkwardness of it, because you, what you want to know is like, who are you, who you're giving your loads to and how can I get into the next thing? Right. But you can ask things like about the past, but also about the future, and you already kind of alluded to that um, because you want to be able to project where things will be in the future and if that means there's a higher probability that it's worth your time to pursue this prospect or think about if they're like we're actually going to be shutting down this plant in six months and all of our stuff's being absorbed by this company that's acquiring us and you're like, okay, I've got to shift my focus here, and had I not asked that question, I could have spent the next four or five months wasting my time.

Speaker 2: 44:36

I'll give you a better one If I find that out. I'm like this is fantastic. This is like inside baseball info, because now I'm going to go prospect the company that's going to buy you and I'm going to go. Hey, you know, I've heard some buzz amongst people in the industry that you guys might be working with them in the near future. I've been talking with Jamie over there. They've had great things to say about possibly working with you guys if the merger goes through. I'd love to know who I would need to be connected over there with.

Speaker 2: 45:00

I took that little bit of information and turned it into what seemed like a very good conversation starter with this other company. I might not even have been prospecting right and I might get both right at the end of the day. So we're going to transition a little bit to like some other questions or things we want to understand. So the next thing I always ask really close to those questions, right? Because, again, we really want to know if there's, if they're, a potential fit, like are they qualified to be a customer that we want to work with, right? So that's why those first few questions you want to get answered or get some information on as soon as possible, right, but really close to that.

Speaker 2: 45:35

And sometimes they happen before. Sometimes they happen right after right, and we talk about this a lot is some personal information. Hopefully you have been able to get them to talk about something about them personally right Now. I think better salespeople, or even people that come from the service industry, I think, are very good at this, but it's getting somebody to share about something they have personally right.

Speaker 2: 45:58

So we talk about Mondays and Fridays great opportunity to just ask people like hey, how was your weekend, how was your Monday coming along? Or hey, what do you have planned for the weekend? Any of those are really great openers to get somebody to share, usually what they're really interested in. And again, these are great cues that make somebody else enjoy talking to you, which is the point, right For the first handful of calls. I care more about trying to make friends and acquaintances far more than business. I want to know if they're worth working with and then I just want to build rapport with them so that we can build some trust to see if we want to work together Right, that's really the timeframe.

Speaker 1: 46:39

Yeah, and when you get to know personal things about them, it makes it really easy to open a future call, right Cause then you've got something to reference back to Um. Like you know, the sports analogy is like an obvious one that we talk about a lot. If it's a Monday and you're calling this week, you're like, hey, what do you think about your team's draft picks over the?

Speaker 2: 47:00

weekend.

Speaker 1: 47:01

Right. Hey, I saw you guys snagged up that. You know that QB from whatever, and you'll get them talking Right Because you know they're passionate about it. Yeah, I mean, those are great ways.

Speaker 2: 47:13

Here's one of my other ones that I think is really useful that I haven't talked a lot about, but I was going through this with a client late last week and it's have you ever heard the term like commiserate? Right yeah.

Speaker 1: 47:26

So commiserate, only from a Blink-182 song.

Speaker 2: 47:29

Right, and I'm curious. Actually, I want to look up the actual definition of this word.

Speaker 1: 47:36

Is that watching, waiting?

Speaker 2: 47:38

commiseratingiserates with them on a loss, oh, to feel or express sympathy, condole, right, like to feel or express sorrow or compassion for it right now. Here's where I feel like this is a really effective one to use, right, you walk into just about any office at nine o'clock on a Monday morning and mostly people again, very generalization wish they had one more day of the weekend, or probably still thinking about what they were doing Saturday or Sunday and wish maybe they had one more, at least even a few hours, to start their day like their weekend. Right, so they're not fully into work and again, they're still probably thinking about it. And if you walked up to a water cooler into any office and didn't know anybody and you just went oh man, mondays, tell me about it. And had a sip of coffee, I would be willing to bet more than half the people would be like, even if they were in a good mood and excited for work, that day would bite on that and be like oh yeah, man, let me tell you what we had. Three day weekends, man. Let me tell you what we had. Three-day weekends, man, it's just this way. And again, it is a negative thing, so you don't want to stress it too much, but if you can do it in a way that allows somebody to connect with you about something they want to express a negative emotion can be really valuable, because that opens that door right.

Speaker 2: 48:56

Like the other one I'll use is like on Wednesdays or Thursdays, right. And there was this old cliche I remember the guys used to say on the construction sites they'd be like Thursdays or Wednesday, but like one more and out the door. Like one more, get up to go to work and then you had the weekend, right. And this is this thing like on Thursdays or Wednesdays I'll be like, oh man, on Wednesdays I'm like, ah, two more and out the door. Then it's the weekend, you're looking forward to it. Yet and you say it in this way that almost most people will be like oh yeah, it's been a tough one. But I'll tell you what I'm keeping my head above water and I'm looking forward to this weekend because I'm going kayaking, I'm going hiking whatever insert there, right.

Speaker 2: 49:34

That is this open door to allow somebody to now talk about what they care about. Oh, you kayak, tell me about that. Oh, you do this, right, like it doesn't matter what it is. Oh, I got my kids' t-ball game tonight. We got those every Wednesdays.

Speaker 2: 49:46

It gives that person permission to take the conversation out of the business world and into a topic that is a little more personal, and these are just really great ways to connect with people, because this is what they care about, too right, like they care about their kids.

Speaker 2: 50:00

The t-ball games, the soccer games, like I was talking to my buddies this morning, same thing like about our daughter's gymnastics class, like these are things that are of interest to us and if you can get somebody to share that, to me this becomes so valuable of a note to have in your crm because now, at any point in time, I can door right If you've told me you've got two boys and one of your kids starting T-ball and it's on Thursday. Every time I talk to you I can ask how your kids are doing, how T-ball is coming along, how's your little one doing. Like we can have an actual conversation, more like parents outside of work than we are two people discussing whether or not there's going to be a potential to do business together. That builds incredible trust and to me, those are the things you really want to know very early on. Something personal and their volumes, right.

Speaker 1: 50:49

Yeah, and this might sound obvious, but to at least explain why that rapport is important. The whole know, like and trust right? People do business with those that they know, that they like and that they trust. So if you're building rapport with a prospect and maybe a new lane pops up or a spot load pops up that someone else fell off of, when they think about what do I want to do with this load, they might be like you know what I really like. Talking with Ben, let me reach out to him and let him know that, hey, I finally got. I got one for him to work on, right.

Speaker 2: 51:20

You're going to be top of mind when it comes to exactly.

Speaker 1: 51:23

So I mean, I know that sounds obvious, but this is why we spend time building relationships and sales, because it's not just to butter them up, it's to truly get to know them so that we can, when we do business together, it's with somebody that I know and that I like and that I trust, versus someone that we've just done it with them for years. Their pricing is good, they're a pain in the butt to talk to, but they get the job done. No, I'd rather work with someone that I like.

Speaker 2: 51:49

For sure. And I want to stress the point too, that we're all human and we all forget and we all aren't remembering everybody we've ever met that could help us at any given time. Right, we're focused on the thing that's in front of us, Otherwise we wouldn't be able to function right, like that's how the brain works. And I have a client that's been in mortgage for like 30 years, right, and this just happened to her recently. Mortgage has been really slow, so she wasn't doing as much networking getting out in the community, and she also lives in a smaller community where she knows everybody because she's been there for decades, and she got into the habit of just not spending as much time interacting with people because there wasn't a need in the market. So it just's like I got four deals. I got more deals in the past week than I have in the past two or three months. I was like, oh, what would you do different? She was like, oh, I was just out, I went to a charity event, I went to this networking thing and this other thing in the community and I just saw people that knew me and knew me for years and they literally went oh, I can't believe I ran into you. We are looking at possibly buying a new house and I completely forgot that you were in the area. Give me a call next week.

Speaker 2: 53:04

This top of mind thing seems like it isn't strategic or seems like it's just a nice to have when it happens. But you can create more of this, right, like you can. Like the other analogy I heard, for this is like hanging around the rim for business deals, right. The most successful people in business tend to be people that surround themselves with other people that are very active in business, so they get they have more people talking to them about things that are happening.

Speaker 2: 53:29

More opportunities, right? Nobody's going to run into you and ask you to ship their freight at the grocery store or probably at a bar, but it happens occasionally and for sure people aren't going to bang down your phones to get you to help them. We are in a very proactive industry where it's offense is everything, like if you aren't reaching out, they're not talking to you. You can be intentional to create more opportunities. You've got to meet more people, talk to more people. Build the Rolodex right Of just the names and names of everyone you're talking to, because the more of these you have, the more people that are thinking of you when they need help right, which is the whole point of prospecting to begin with.

Speaker 1: 54:10

Yep. So to kind of put a bow on this one, what would you say? So we kind of talked through like the team setting right, Probably one, last one before we wrap it up All right, what do you got?

Speaker 2: 54:23

So last one and again I want to go a little further down the line, because we talk a lot about rapport, but you do want to understand their lanes, right? You want to understand, once you've had these two things, you've understood and you've got this rapport like, how many loads a week are they shipping or per day? Are they shipping inbound and just not that? But are they the one arranging inbound transportation or the places they buy it from, like you want to know what they're actually controlling. And then, in addition to that, I want to know what lanes maybe they have dedicated carriers on they've worked with for years and never have an issue. And I want to know the ones that are that come up now and then where they have more problems, because that's where I'm most likely to help. So I want to know that about the inbound, and I want to know where those places are. What are the lanes? Where do they pick up from? Are there issues where they load that some carriers don't like to keep going back to? That's why they have issues, right? Whatever that is, I want to understand as much as I can about what's coming in and who's responsible for it, because if it isn't this company, it's another company and then I'm going to call them next and I want to know the other side, right?

Speaker 2: 55:29

Very simply, you don't need to think about logistics as this complicated things where trucks are moving everywhere and there's buildings and there's all these different things you don't know. Think about it simply. There's a box, there's a box, there's stuff in there. It's a warehouse. It is being brought in there by a truck and is being taken out by a truck. How many come in and how many are they responsible for? Right? Are they brokers, carriers or their own trucks Coming out?

Speaker 2: 55:46

Same three things your trucks, a broker, truck or direct carrier relationship. What is the number of them? Who has which? Where are they going? Where do you need help and where are they going? Where do you need help and where do you not need help? Now I have a very clear understanding, as much as I'm ever going to have, of what it would be like to sit next to this person at their job all day long, because you don't just want to help with problems after they've happened. You want to be able to understand this supply chain well enough to help prevent problems. That's where we're going. That's why you need to know both of those things and those qualitative things in order to actually be a good broker to work with them in the first place.

Speaker 1: 56:26

And you're not going to get all this stuff in one conversation.

Speaker 2: 56:28

No.

Speaker 1: 56:29

This kind of just reinforces what you said. Your 8 to 12 phone calls, I mean in some of this stuff I mean even with customers that you're growing. I know we're talking about prospects right now, but think about customers that you're growing, you can't stop. You know how they say, like never stop dating your spouse, always keep that relationship healthy. It's the same thing Like never stop building the relationship with your customers because somebody else is trying to. And if you don't keep doing that and you don't keep building that rapport and learning more about what's coming up as far as changes in their future, you're going to be behind the ball on that. So just kind of keep that in mind. Anything else on this one.

Speaker 2: 57:09

No, I think we covered really the whole spectrum, really what you should be understanding. And you should be asking these questions of yourself, right? Because again, at the end of the week, look at who you've talked to and ask yourself the questions. In fact, maybe print them out and leave them on your desk for a while and then every time you look at your notes before you make a follow-up call and you go, this is a good lead. Read your notes and can you answer these? Do you know something about them personally? Do you know what their volume is now? Do you know where it will be or where it will peak? Do you know what's going inbound? Do you know what's going outbound? Do you know if it's their own trucks, a broker truck or an asset truck, Inbound and outbound? And do you know where they are most likely to need help? On any of those six, right, the three coming in and the three going out, because that's gonna that's going to allow you to ask better questions about where your need is. And, to your point, if you can't, then remind yourself, like in your CRM for your next call, like I schedule my next call maybe for two weeks. Now I will go into that call note even though it hasn't happened, and I type the questions I need answered. So when I talk to Nate in two weeks and I pull up his card, I read everything I've already put and then I see three questions I wrote for myself. Hey card, I read everything I've already put and then I see three questions I wrote for myself.

Speaker 2: 58:20

Hey, nate, you know what I made me need to ask you out of curiosity? Boom, and you can just ask them some directly, especially if I know something personal about you, right? Hey Nate, how was your kid's t-ball game? Oh yeah, blah, blah, blah. We catch up on that. Hey, real quick, while I was here, while I have you, I was really curious on your inbound stuff. Is all that on your own assets or just most of it, because that's another one that catches most people? I'm FOB Well, it's almost never 100% FOB and what's important of it is and where and when do you make the decision to them to do it or you to do it right? Those are the things you want to be able to understand, to be able to tell your manager, because he can now help you to your point. Maybe ask them this tell your manager, cause he can now help you to your point. Maybe ask them this hey, we can do this. Hey, did you think about showing them this option? Right, like? This is the point.

Speaker 1: 59:04

For sure. So the to. To finish this up, what I wanted to kind of hit on just real quick is how often do you do these? And it's going to be a little bit different for everybody when you're.

Speaker 1: 59:15

So, again, if you're the, the manager, this is something you should think about implementing. How often? Um? But if you're the, if you know, if you're the one that's getting or having the meeting with the manager, um, you know, there comes a.

Speaker 1: 59:30

There's certain times when you you got to tell your manager like, hey, I need to be doing this with you every week, or something like that.

Speaker 1: 59:36

Um, but you know some of your season folks. It might just be kind of a you know, a quick little oil change once a month, or something like that. But if you are totally on your own just one guy or gal working from home as a freight broker you got to figure out some way to put this into your, your rhythm of your week, right, and it could be that, hey, at the end of the week, on Friday, I'm going to take some time to have a little internal reflection on where my book of business is and all that stuff, and you don't have a manager to be asking you questions, right, take the information that we gave you in this episode, in this conversation, and write this stuff down. Ask yourself these questions, take notes on where the gaps of knowledge are with some of your customers. And so, ben, what you said is awesome too with the CRM. Do something with it. Don't just have the conversation and then not take any action or record it.

Speaker 1: 1:00:32

So that was my final wrap on it.

Speaker 2: 1:00:34

And I think that's totally true. Right, like, these aren't misses. Like, if you don't have these questions answered and you've talked to a prospect four or five times, that does not mean you wasted the four or five conversations. That just means this is good news. You have a whole lot of things to talk about that you haven't thought of yet, right? So you got enough to now talk to them at least six to 10 more times, just from what we gave you in this episode, right? So again, don't beat yourself up If you haven't been asking some of these things. Look at this as a great opportunity to go and learn more about your prospects and the companies you've wanted to build relationships with, for sure. All right. Final thoughts Whether you believe you can or believe you can't, you're right.

Speaker 1: 1:01:14

And until next time go bills.