How Freight Brokers Find Customers | Episode 348

Most new freight brokers don’t fail because they can’t sell. They fail because they work the wrong process, so we break down a practical way to separate lead generation from prospecting, make more effective cold calls, and focus on the activity that actually creates momentum.

We also cover the real math behind cold calling, what makes a shipper worth pursuing, why quality matters more than volume, and how to build better lead lists using niche thinking, sales tools, directories, and AI as a starting point.

Support Our Sponsors:

Togo: Click Here

OperFi: Click Here

QuikSkope - Get a Free Trial: Click Here

DAT One - Brokers & Carriers: Click Here to get 10% off your first year!

DAT Outgo Factoring for Carriers: Click Here

AscendTMS: Click Here and use promo code RA-freight360! to get AscendTMS FREE for 90 days!

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

Transcript

The Big Customer Question

SPEAKER_00 0:00

How do you find customers as a freight broker? This is one of the questions that we get asked more frequently than I think anything else. Um, so we're gonna break it all down today. We're talking through, you know, how to generate leads versus the actual prospecting, you know, making the phone calls and connecting with these folks. Where do you find them? Quantity versus quality. Is it about how many leads you have? Is it about having the right leads, what personality types? Um, if you know, if there's a right one, what's the best one for selling in brokerage? Ben, what are your thoughts on this episode?

SPEAKER_01 0:32

It was a great episode, I think, because we covered everything from like how to organize leads, how to set up your day, what to look for, what questions to ask, how to identify what a good prospect could potentially be, and also what the difference between a customer is, a prospect, and what some people think are customers that aren't really customers. So definitely want to stick with this one all the way to the end because I think those were really good.

SPEAKER_00 0:57

And we are somehow able to compare freight brokering to Tinder. So check that one out. You're gonna listen all the way to the end. Let's hop into it.

Fourth Of July Warmup

SPEAKER_01 1:06

Very much so.

SPEAKER_00 1:07

We're back with another episode of the Freight 360 podcast, and we're gonna get into a topic today that um oftentimes people ask us about, and that is how do you find customers as a freight broker? Uh, Ben, before we get into it, we're coming up on 4th of July here. Any uh big plans down in Florida?

SPEAKER_01 1:29

No, honestly, I don't know what we're thinking.

SPEAKER_00 1:32

Man, it's like it's kind of like the uh the biggest one I think of uh of our lifetime.

SPEAKER_01 1:36

So yeah, did you remember the Days Than Confused movie from the 90s?

SPEAKER_00 1:41

Yeah. Alright, I read it.

SPEAKER_01 1:43

Yeah, the year it was set was I think the one the 200th anniversary, because that would have been 1976.

SPEAKER_00 1:50

Yeah. It's like the last year of high school or ever.

SPEAKER_01 1:53

Yeah. And I'm like, because I what you just said is I'm like, oh yeah, like I remember from that movie, it was before I was born, obviously. Was it like, yeah?

SPEAKER_00 2:03

Yeah, that's uh the that's a very young um Matthew McConnell thing.

SPEAKER_01 2:10

It's his first movie. Is it really? Yeah, Ben Affleck's in it too. And Ben Affleck's very young. There's some really now famous actors that had like early roles in that movie. That's funny. Classic. Well, maybe the beach to go fire watch fireworks. Like normally where we used to live, you could see them from my place, and we could there was like really cool fireworks shows at the beach, but like the traffic to get there and get back is kind of like a bit much. So I don't know. We'll see. Nice.

unknown 2:36

All right.

SPEAKER_01 2:37

Yeah, people over, a little barbecue.

SPEAKER_00 2:39

This is kind of a standard, like the whole it's a multi-day celebration. So, like, actually, tonight we're doing uh tie-dye t-shirts and maybe some fireworks. Um we've got some activity and fun stuff tomorrow. I don't know about the third and then Friday, they just do they do fireworks in our town.

SPEAKER_01 3:00

So it'll be good, man. I would I would say this that like as a kid, the 4th of July was absolutely my favorite holiday of the year. Like being able to just go light off fireworks as like a little boy was like the day that like I look forward to, like maybe more than Christmas. And my next door neighbors, um, they used to have the fourth of July party every year, and like well, their kid, I'm him and I were like really close friends because we're neighbors, obviously, but we also roasted a pig every 4th of July. So we would drive to go pick up like a whole pig and we would start roasting it at like five in the morning. So like our parents would like let us hang out, and I don't remember like actually lighting fireworks off that early, but it was like so fun because all you did was like eat pig, hang out, light off fireworks, and then when you're in your 20s, same thing except you added beer. And I'm like, this was like my favorite holiday for sure.

SPEAKER_00 3:48

It is a lot

Market Update And Helpful Links

SPEAKER_00 3:49

of fun. Um, in the news, um, we put out every week we do one of our newsletters has the market updates. So Dean from DAT um puts a nice write-up together and we kind of rake it out as a you know, market all together, and then we we go by dry van reefer and flat pad, but we're seeing record um rate numbers right now, and a lot, it's kind of like the perfect storm of the market correction plus entering peak season plus heading into a holiday um weekend here. So a lot of uh that's good for everybody, right? I mean, I guess except for the the end the end consumer who's gonna pay a little bit more. Um, but it's healthy to see rates get to a good place for carriers to get um paid more than they were historically and brokers, um, you know, all around. So if you're not subscribed to that newsletter, definitely check it out. You can go right to our website and um you know get yourself signed up there and share us with your friends and um you know check out the Freight Broker Basics course too on our website if you're looking for an educational option. Um before we get into it, I did want to say too, this show is brought to you guys by Ascend TMS. So if you're looking for a new TMS, we we definitely uh strongly recommend Ascend. It's a great, great TMS that's web-based out there, and you can get 90 days for free without even having to put a card in there. But you do need a referral code. We have one. It's in the show notes or description down below. So check that out. Um, but we're gonna talk customers today and how to, you know, how brokers get business. And it's one of the, you know, it's one of the questions we get very often. Um, and we we do coach as instructors for the TIA's new broker training as well. And we this is I I believe it's the first one we ever do, right? With with every single new session of students that comes through because it is so important. We talk about, you know, yeah, how do you get your brokerage set up and how much does it cost and what tools do you need and all that. Um, but at the end of the day, revenue coming in is what's gonna lead to profit ultimately. And you aren't gonna have any revenue coming in if you don't have any customers. So we kind of wanted to talk through um just in general, some of the the basic methods for generating leads and getting new business. Um, and it we have seen a lot of these have they're evergreen and they've been the same for you know years and years and years. We've seen a lot of newer tools and techniques that have come out um in the recent years, though, that I think it's it's worth a refresh conversation from any of our content that we've put out historically because you've got you know the the um mass adoption of of AI and new business-to-business lead generation tools that are out there, and we'll talk through a bunch

Lead Generation Versus Prospecting

SPEAKER_00 6:42

of that stuff. But I I kind of wanted to start off with the difference between lead generation and the actual act of prospecting. So you want to kind of just run us through that at its at its core level, Ben?

SPEAKER_01 6:57

Yeah, sorry, my dogs were going nuts. And they kept picking it up on the microphone. I tried to run out there and throw them a couple of treats.

SPEAKER_00 7:03

Um good, man. Doing it live. I like it.

SPEAKER_01 7:05

Yes, very much like the biggest thing for like efficiency and effectiveness is separating lead generation from actually making phone calls. Because one, what happens when you do both is it's just kind of human nature that making cold calls is uncomfortable for most people, and even people that have done it for like literally years and years, like it's less like emotional friction, I guess, to like research than it is to pick up the phone and call someone you have never talked to. And also momentum. Once you make the first phone call, the second one's easier, the third one seems like nothing. By your fifth call, you can just keep calling, right? So momentum is super important and valuable and makes the job easier when you've got your calls lined up. But what happens when you also mix them is that like you go read about a company, go to LinkedIn, do your research, spend I don't know, anywhere from two minutes to 10 minutes, and then they don't answer. Then you start that over again. Because the truth is the vast majority of phone calls any salesperson makes every day when you're cold calling are no answers, voicemails, couldn't read somebody, call me back later. Is a big one, bad phone numbers, right? Like there's so many misses to just getting someone that actually one will answer. So, like that's a small percentage in and of itself. And then answers and is not busy enough that they'll actually talk to you is a smaller percentage. Yeah. So when you like read about every company before you call, like you just end up wasting a lot of time. Because the truth is, if you call that company a week later, like you probably need to refresh your memory if you're making 50 prospecting calls a day. Like you're just not gonna remember that. So it's just not like a really good use of your time. And also, like research is a different skill set than talking, use different aspects of your brain. So you get the same momentum when you're doing research. So if you sit down and block out doing lead gen and fill your funnel into your CRM, you get faster at it, which means you get more loads and leads in there quicker. And then the other added benefit of not just getting more done with each task and the momentum. The third thing that I think is also super helpful with this is that you can do it strategically. Because like making eight hours of consecutive cold calls can be exhausting, even when you have momentum. So, like, if you do it strategically, once you got two or three hundred in your system, your CRM, and you start disqualifying and you want to add a few, like you can call for two hours, spend 45 minutes doing some lead gen, maybe a little bit of research notes that they're in your CRM to just give yourself a break from talking or dialing, because most of the time maybe you're not even talking, you're just dialing. Then take 15 minutes, go take a walk around the building, go back, start that over again. Like you'll get a lot done without feeling exhausted. Because I guess the last point, not to go super long on this, the term multitasking is a oxymoron. Like, no human being is actually able to do two things at the same time. It's actually task switching very quickly, and that burns more calories and mental energy than doing one thing over and over again, right? It's why momentum, it gets easier to do something because you're not switching tasks, which is why the brokerage job in and of itself becomes very exhausting because you like move a load, got a problem, make a prospecting call, talk to a customer, you're constantly task switching. But if you can minimize that at any way in anything you do, you just like get more done. And at the end of the day, you're not as tired and you don't get burned out as

Cold Call Outcomes And The Math

SPEAKER_01 10:42

fast.

SPEAKER_00 10:42

Let me let me give you some stats here. So I um uh this was probably like a year ago, but I just pulled up my my percentages here on the outcome of of the of the cold calling like blitz, if you want to call it that. Like different categories of what happens. And this goes to like the whole, if you can run through them all um back to back to back, it saves a lot of time. Cause to your point, if you spend 15 minutes researching and it goes to voicemail, well, you just wasted 15 minutes, right? So here's the uh here's the percentages I had. So there's the six categories were um no answer, then there's getting a voicemail, then there's getting either the wrong person or the gatekeeper. So someone, you get someone on the phone, but it's not the right person. Um, then you get the right person on the phone, but the call doesn't go anywhere either because of objections or just bad timing. And then there's actually a uh a brief, decent phone call that you have with the right person. And then there's what turns into a quote opportunity or a definite follow-up call. So those are my like six buckets that I tracked here. And this is over multiple different industries and commodities and different sales reps that I did this with. So out of a hundred, I'll just give you percentages. So out of a hundred, it'll be this number. So no answer, 45. So 45%, almost half, you don't even get to a voicemail because you get stuck in a phone tree or whatever the case might be. Um, another 30%, you get a voicemail. So now we're at 75%. So three out of every four calls, no one even answers the phone. That is a staggering amount. So if you think about if you spend all that time researching and 75% of the time you don't even talk to a person, it's a waste of your time to be going back and forth from final lead, call lead, final lead, call lead. Then you've got getting the wrong person, whether it's a gatekeeper that's trying to get in the way or um the person's extension change, whatever, that was 12%. Um, getting the right person on the phone, but you didn't have a conversation with them because they were busy or just gave you a quick objection or hung up was 10%. So now we're at 97% already have been taken up with not good calls. Okay. Um having a decent brief call was anywhere in the um two to three percent range. And then that last 0 to 1% range was having a real opportunity where you might get a quote request or you know, set up a follow-up call. So you could make a hundred calls and have on a good day one good one that actually is turning into something, or we can call it three good ones that with work could turn into something, but that's the sheer volume of calls you got to make.

SPEAKER_01 13:27

And it's funny that you ended there because like I didn't know what those numbers were. That's the first time I've heard yours in this scenario, right? But the number I always used to use at like TQL, because like I always try to bring it down to like a day, and I always wanted to give myself like an achievable thing that per day I felt like was a productive day. And when you make just a hundred calls every day or 120, like you still kind of feel demoralized if you didn't get business, because like that's also like your job. But for me, what I simplified it to really quickly was like, if I like connect, and here's what I meant by connect, like had like a decent conversation, even two or three minutes with somebody I didn't know or never met. And it seemed like there was possibly the potential for at least 20 or 30 loads a week that the company shipped. Not even that I would get, it's just like a bare minimum. I'm like, oh, like that's a really good day, right? So, like every day, like a really good day was like three or four people I never spoke to, I actually connected with and talked a little bit about, whether I learned much or a little, just literally a very short conversation was like a really good day. A bad day was like zero, but even over five days, like there was almost always one or two days every week where it was zero, one or two days where it was five, and the other two days was like three. So, like my averages almost always ended up like that. And the thing is, like when you set your goals like that daily, and you don't really worry about long-term results, like winning bids, dedicated loads, how much I'm gonna make. Like, if you really just simplify it into a chunk of a day, the job also is like less stressful because most of why sales is hard isn't that the job is hard. It's the pressure we put on ourselves to reach some unrealistic goal. Like your boss, your manager, yourself are going, you need to make this money every week, you need this many loads. So every day you go to work and you just like don't get any closer to it because it takes months to actually turn a prospect into a customer, it takes more months to actually get real load volume and revenue and GP that like you can't really connect the result to what you do every day in any way that makes sense in your head when you're making phone calls. So when you simplify it to that, like you can go home every day or finish your day if you work from home and be like, oh, like that was a good day. Like I absolutely got a little bit closer to growing my business. And if you just do that thing every day and ask a little bit better questions over time, you end up doing really well in the industry. Like really just looking at it that simply.

SPEAKER_00 15:58

Agreed. Agreed.

Quantity Versus Quality In Leads

SPEAKER_00 15:59

And then there's always the thing too about quantity versus quality, and there's a balance between the two because I think putting in the numbers is very important. But if you're putting in a lot of quantity and the quality of your leads is bad, that's where it's you're just gonna even diminish those conversion rates even more. So that's why I think it's really important. We'll and we'll talk through a lot of the different ways to source quality leads today. Um, but I think, you know, for example, we I think you talked recently about, you know, if a if a boss at TQL was like, hey, you need to do X amount of calls in a day or X amount of uh talk time minutes wise in a day. If you're just calling like dead numbers that you know are dead, you're not gonna get the results. Like 1% of zero is still zero. You know what I mean?

SPEAKER_01 16:48

So yeah, um here's the other one. The other thing, too, is like we'll define quality for everybody and like what a qualified prospect is versus disqualified and different ways to look at it. But the other one, this was from a training today. Someone had like all these active prospects. And I was like, hey, like these are all active. What how do you define qualified? Like, what is it, what is worth your time? And one person was like, Well, I think most of my leads are kind of like they ship about five to ten loads a week. And I went, Okay. And this person's been in the industry a while. And I was like, Well, I mean, how much of those 10 loads a week would you ever expect to get in a perfect situation? He's like, I don't know, probably like 20%, 15% is about industry. I'm like, okay, so about a load and a half a week. I'm like I think that's even high if they're only moving that many, but agreed. Yeah, and I was like, Well, like, how many are your leaves? He's like, I don't know, probably half. I'm like, how many hours do you think you've already spent trying to turn those prospects into customers? He's like, I don't know, a lot. Like, I couldn't even count. And I'm like, so even if you got all of them to give you business like next week, literally all of them, how many loads would you have next week? Like, I don't know, like 15? Like, okay, like, does that actually help you make commission? Well, no. Like, okay. Like, what do you think it should be? So, like, when you just think about it very simply, I feel like this gets clear where and this used to be my issues like analysis, paralysis. I would think too much, overcomplicate it, and make the job too hard. Like, what's qualified? Qualified, most companies, if you're moving 20 to 25 loads a week, you probably have at least one broker and broker some freight, right? If you're shipping less than that, it doesn't mean you don't move their loads. And if they offer you them and they're decent margin and they're not a lot of work, like take the business. But I wouldn't actively spend hours a day or a quarter chasing business that doesn't actually help me as a broker in any

Qualified Prospects And Quote Charities

SPEAKER_01 18:43

way. Like I just Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 18:45

Because I here's the thing too, is like when when does a shipper need or when is it in their best interest to use a brokerage, right? Um, and I'll give you some examples of like real-world stuff that I've seen recently. But if they only move, you know, a couple loads here and there, they probably have the ability to source capacity on their own, or maybe they have uh some brokers that are in their bullpen, like you said, that low volume. They might, you know, they might send an email out, hey, I got this one. Like there's a there's a customer right now that I'm on her. I had to like put a rule to throw it to my trash folder because I don't, you know, I I'm not a big fan of the you know, send it out to 40 people. And there's like it's like three times a week. She sends an email out and it's a it's like a building commodity, and she's like, hey, you need to get this um, you know, this one go to go out this afternoon, send your quotes in. And like, who knows how many brokers are on there, but it's probably like 30 or 40, if not more. Like basically anyone who ever calls her, she's like, cool, I'll add you to my list, right? Um, but when you see it's like, you know, twice a week and I'm competing against 40 people, not worth my time, right? It just really isn't worth my time in general to you know deal with trying to get a quote really quick and send it back. Because she's just obviously very price sensitive and doesn't have a lot of volume.

SPEAKER_01 20:07

Right. And if they don't care about service, then they're not a brokerage customer. Like here is my other favorite when I told this story. I just remembered it today that made me laugh was we would sit every Friday and like do a round table and everyone talk about like their prospects or customers and how things were going. So like share ideas, what's going on in the market, right? And there inevitably would always be somebody that was like, Oh, I got these three customers that I've just been quoting so many loads all week. Like I must have quoted 20, 30 loads a week. And Jason, my manager at the time, would be like, Oh, well, how many of the 30 loads did you get from like these customers? Well, I didn't get any this week. When was the last time you moved any loads with any of those three customers? Oh, I think I got one load last month. And he would like jokingly, but to get the point across, he'd be like, You realize like those aren't customers. That's a charity. Customers pay you for the work you provide for them. You're working all day sending them rates, that helps the shipper. They negotiate with their other brokers based on your numbers, so they get all the upside, you do all the work, and you make no money. Is that a business or a charity? And he used to say it that way intentionally, like jokingly, but to really get people to get in their head that like a customer is somebody that pays you for the work you do. If you're just quoting loads all day and they're not giving you any business in return, that is not actually a customer.

SPEAKER_00 21:24

Yeah. Yeah, if uh like you hit you're talking about your roof. Like if you got three people to come out and give you a quote for your roof to get redone, um all three of them don't have a customer. You know what I mean? They have a process.

SPEAKER_01 21:36

There were five, by the way.

SPEAKER_00 21:37

Yeah. Five. Okay. But yeah. All right. So back to the whole

When Shippers Need A Broker

SPEAKER_00 21:41

point, right? So now let's look at a large customer, okay? And I'll give you a real world example of this. So a large shipper that does a high volume every single day. It's very, very predictable. And what will happen here is primarily they'll put a bid out and a lot of carriers. And sometimes brokers will submit their bid and be awarded predictable uh amount of volume in these lanes. And a lot of times you'll see motor carriers that will win the vast majority, the lion's share of those of those lanes. And then a broker might win a lane here and there if they've got strong carri capacity in there and they had the best rate. Um, but then oftentimes brokers will become the backup um in what's called the routing guide. So let's say we've got you know Savannah, Georgia to Dayton, Ohio, goes to ABC Trucking. And if ABC Trucking gets that tender and they reject it because they don't have a truck available, maybe it broke down or whatever, um, it's gonna go to the next person on the bid, which could be a broker, could be another carrier, who knows, right? But a lot of times brokers will fall on that. So, for example, we have um a customer that we're we were working with for probably the last nine, about nine months ago, we started with them high volume of produce that's imported. And we actually won some of the lanes on the bid. So we'd had, and the bids would run like once a month. They'd reevaluate every month based on what they had projected for uh the produce coming in and their buyers. And we would go like, you know, three months in a row of high volume, doing very, very well. And then we'd have a month where we had nothing, right? And then we'd have a month where we didn't win anything, but we might have been the backup on some of the lanes. So we might have moved a little bit. And then we went back to we won for a few more months, primary lanes, and then we've won nothing in the last few months. So those are those are kind of your high volume predictable ones. Now, where brokers tend to be really, really effective is the unpredictable um shipments, meaning we can't forecast a month in advance or a quarter or a year in advance what our lanes are going to be and the volume of those lanes, because we don't know who's buying the product yet. Right. And that's gonna be where brokers can come in and give you know very quick access to the market through it's the spot market, right? Through, you know, their carrier relationships, load boards, etc. And there should be a good volume of loads in there because that that that shipper, if they're a small shipper with with a low volume, but it's unpredictable, they probably have a Rolodex full of carriers that have told them, hey, I'm interested in running this lane. And if you guys have anything pop up, I'd love to know. When where they've got more and more business, there's going to be a higher need for more capacity, which is where brokers will come in and be able to fill those holes. So I think that's kind of the sweet spot is the um high enough volume each week, and there's enough unpredictability that they need um someone that's flexible, like a broker, to be able to go out there and source capacity in the open market in real time. Um, because again, a carrier can't just quickly reposition the reposition their truck 500 miles in the snap of a finger, but a broker can go out there and find, you know, maybe 12 or 15 eligible carriers within a reasonable radius to make that pickup on time. I think that's where we do a really good job. So those are what I would consider quality leads versus, you know, the the poor quality is the you know low volume or um they're a pain to work with, or they throw 80 million brokers on their, you know, uh their lead or their load list that goes out every single morning. Um, anything else on the quality side that you think is is relevant to adding because I want to get into different sources.

SPEAKER_01 25:35

Yeah, like the timing is really important, right? Because like here's another way that I would like get around or try to understand that is like, okay, say a shipper ships 10 loads a day and say they own their own trucks and they have whatever the exact number of trucks to move the loads they do. 10 loads a day. Well, as soon as that shipper uh has 15 loads a day, they need a broker. Now, as soon as one of those trucks can't make it back to pick up one of the 10, they need a broker, right? So anytime it's unpredictable, up or down, that's when the broker's a fit, right? And like that, these are the questions you ask to determine is it a fit to work with this as a show.

SPEAKER_00 26:15

Yeah, like finding out lead time or predictability, those are really good um conversations to have.

Finding Niches From Everyday Items

SPEAKER_00 26:20

So let's talk about how do you find these leads, all right? Um, to give you context, everything around you, there's a high probability that it was moved on a truck at some point in time, whether it's the materials that were used to build your house, or um in your case, the TV behind you, or the hats behind you, or the furniture behind you, in my case, the guitar behind me, the piano behind me, the plant behind me, the wall decorations, et cetera, right? Like the all that stuff probably moved on a truck at some point in time. Now, you know, the the stuff that we would consider that's and I think the the number was like 80% or high 70%, something like that. Um the the other like 20% that people are like, well, doesn't everything have to move on a truck somehow? Well, we're we're counting out things that would go um on like a parcel type of like a you know Amazon delivery or UPS or FedEx or um you know a small local courier, things like that. Those are not gonna be our our standard full truckload or palletized LTL type of shipments that we're gonna deal with. But there's so much out there that there's almost almost too many ideas of where to look for leads that you would ideally want to try to find some sort of a niche to start with and think about things that you either have experience with or you have a level of interest in. Um, so some of the examples we oftentimes use is like, hey, if you grew up in the agricultural, you know, world, right? Farming or anything of that nature, start with that because you're familiar with it. And assuming you like it, right, that's gonna be things like produce or you know, it could be agricultural chemicals, things like that. I have a buddy whose company manufactures and sells um chemicals to local dairy farmers in our region. So um, all of that is is a is a you know realistic type of prospect out there. If you worked in the service industry, food and beverage, right, you understand how food gets delivered to you from the various suppliers. And so you've got an understanding of how things are packaged and how often things come in and all that stuff. So you've got some level of understanding or interest in it. If you're a big golfer, right, you love golf, right? Think about all the stuff that goes uh on a truck that's related to golf. It could be the raw materials that go into making the grips or making golf balls or clubs, it could be the finished products that are going to retailers, it could be the apparel that's being sold, you know, your Travis Matthew and your uh Nike and all that stuff, right? Like those are huge opportunities to look into. What you don't want to do is prospect a niche that you have no interest in, no knowledge of, because you're gonna sound uh, well, first of all, you won't be interested in the conversations or curious about it, but you're also gonna sound very um uneducated. So like don't go prospecting very specific hazardous chemicals if you know nothing about it and care nothing about it, because they're gonna be talking a lingo that you probably have no idea or understanding of. So those are kind of like my basics as like there's just so much out there. Tone in on something. And if you find that like it's not working or the time of year isn't right, then you can pivot. You can always change and try a new approach. But just look around you, whether it's in a grocery store or in your in your office, your home office when you're driving to work, if you see a construction site, oh hey, you know, someone had to move those cranes there or those crane mats there, or these construction cones or whatever the case might be. Those are all ways to generate ideas for leads. And if you go in a grocery store and turn the package around on, you know, crackers or, you know, mushrooms or whatever, you're gonna find out where it was manufactured or produced or grown, whatever. And that gives you an idea of the company that you can start to look at and throw into your into your CRM. Thoughts on everyday items or what's around us in general.

SPEAKER_01 30:10

Almost anything is a prospect. Any physical thing that you see anywhere, there's someone that ships it. So like there's not a shortage, there's usually an overwhelming amount of options that you need to narrow it down to, which is really more the issue, right? And the things that I try to look for, right, after interest, because interest, you're curious, you'll ask better questions, you'll get more traction with it, like you said, is I look for like opportunities within a niche.

Demand Signals That Create Opportunity

SPEAKER_01 30:40

So, like a supply chain, thinking about it very simply, is like what makes sourcing trucks more or less predictable? Does the volume go up or down, right? So shortages in any commodity tend to create capacity issues for a shipper. So I look for things that are in high demand but short supply of literally anything, right? Um produce. If I see an article where it's like, oh, there was a drought in Florida, so the strawberry crop crop is 60% of what it was expected to be, there's probably a capacity issue there, or vice versa, right? Because now everybody planned on getting a hundred percent of those strawberries. A lot of people aren't. They're paying more, they need them faster. There's just less of them, right? Those are things that are pretty good indicators that it could be a good customer. That's why, like, when the oil price goes up, drilling in Texas starts to increase. Crane mats and everything, and pipe that supports the drilling industry is a very good industry to be in and to ship. That's why, like, back in when I started, this was like the first steel tariffs were around a year or two after I was in the industry, like 2017. Sound about so like I made a ton of money shipping steel because uh they had to source it from different places all of a sudden. Like overnight, every supply chain that existed for where they bought the raw materials and the steel changed because there was like tariffs on this country, not this country. So all of a sudden, every company that had to buy steel had to figure out where they were going to buy it from next week at the same price, and all of their lanes where they had dedicated carriers didn't match up anymore. They shipped from this port to this steel mill for the past five years. Now all of a sudden it's coming from a completely different port because it came from a different country. Huge opportunity for brokers because all of their routing guides, which is a fancy way of the dedicated carriers that work directly with the shippers, all didn't match up with all the trucks. So, like those are other good indicators to find good opportunities.

SPEAKER_00 32:40

Absolutely. So I think to summarize what you just said there, like think common sense or maybe a little bit even analytical about why would a product be in high demand right now? And that is when you're gonna have a an influx in um need for carry capacity brokers to do their work. It's like FEMA after a hurricane or produce when it's coming up on that season, Christmas trees in November, December, pumpkins in the fall, right? That stuff all is seasonal.

SPEAKER_01 33:11

COVID was like a really extreme example where like there were brokers making like 40 grand a week shipping hand sanitizer, oh yeah, masks, any of the stuff that had toilet paper, huge demand, yep, different routes, like brokers did very well because like all the carriers that used to run those lanes, like they just didn't match up anymore with where these carriers were located.

SPEAKER_00 33:34

Yeah.

Tools And Databases To Build Lists

SPEAKER_00 33:35

Now um, let's talk like actual tactically, how do you find these company names and their their information? So uh I won't go too in depth on it, but there are a lot of B2B lead generation tools out there. So business to business. So you've got things like Zoom Info, Zoom Info. What do you got?

SPEAKER_01 33:54

Can I add something else too? Because we were talking about the difference in lanes. The other interesting thing that I read after COVID related to like the TP shortage was that most of the time prior to that, people were at work eight or nine hours a day.

SPEAKER_00 34:07

So they didn't go to told us this whole story years ago when he came on the show during COVID. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 34:12

So they didn't go to the bathroom out of their house 24 hours a day. You know, is you were literally living in your house to where you were spending half your day at work and half your time at home. The kind of toilet paper that goes in your home is not the same kind that goes into an office. Yes. Versus a small role. So the supply chain changed drastically, where like a lot of what the whole country needed became a different type of product, and they just didn't have enough of it made, which is what created the shortage. Not just people like um I forget what it's called, and you like hoarding, buying a bunch of things just to like that was part of it. But it started because there just wasn't enough. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 34:50

Yeah. Yeah. It's like bottled water when a storm is coming in, or you know, whether it's a hurricane in your area in the summer, fall, or a snowstorm in my area in the winter. Exactly. So, but you've got a lot of B2B lead sites like ZoomInfo, you've got Apollo.io, um, seamless AI. Um, now specific to our industry, right? Genlogs has a great shipper sourcing tool based on all the data that they have. Um, you've got shipper CRM. There's a lot of them out there where you can, you know, Blue Book, for example. Blue Book is a produce-specific um platform where they've got marketing and you know, dispute resolution, but also they've got you could just go in. I did this like I think uh last month for one of our guys. He wanted, there was like two different commodities he wanted to prospect. And I can just go in there and pick the state, what kind of uh fruit or vegetable it was, and boom, it split out like 300 matches that you can get all the contact information. And now if you're a blue book member and they're a blue book member, you already have something in common. So they can kind of pre-vet you through their platform and you can pre-vet them and know how they pay their bills and what their credit rating is. Um the internet is is really kind of the primary method here is like you can eat like the large language models now. This is what did not exist when you and I started, is you can go into Gemini, GPT, any of them, and literally say, and I remember doing this like two years ago when they were still refining ChatGPT, but I was like, you know, give me the top 50 steel manufacturers in the US. And then I was like, wow, okay, that's way too broad. I need to narrow it down to a specific region because there's that many, right? So you can get really granular and go, all right, I want to go southeast, or I want to go Georgia or just Tennessee or whatever it is and a commodity, and it does a lot of the research for you. Just keep in mind, like AI is not 100% perfect, so you need to kind of fact check yourself on certain things. Um it's a great starting point, right? And then you can use whatever you find there or just through an internet, Google search, whatever, and that's when you can start to do a little bit more granular research on LinkedIn or the company's website, or maybe it's a trade organization that has a bunch of members, or another great one that we always talk about is a um chamber of commerce website. So if you if the area that you're um researching um leads in has an online chamber of commerce website, you can oftentimes just it's just kind of like a directory, right? You can search by the industry or commodity or whatever, and it's gonna show all of them with the you know the point of contact for the member, et cetera. Um another great database is Data Axel, um, aka resource USA or reference USA. Sorry, yeah, depending on um which library you access online. Um sometimes they call it one versus the other. But basically you just you know get a get a free library card through your town or county or whatever, and in the resources section, you'll find um something like a uh reference USA or Data Axel. And it's basically just a business listing of you know, you all the businesses, manufacturers in the entire country. And you can, you know, hundreds of thousands. We did this live on a TIA training once, and I picked, I think I did like steel, and then it narrows it down to like a certain kind of steel, and then it narrows it down even further to like, you know, where it is in the level of production. So it's not raw, but it's an actual like semi-finished product. And we were able to then go region and I still could pull like 300 leads that were that specific. So, you know, and what's good about batching them together is these shippers, even if they have different sizes, if they're shipping the same product, they're gonna deal with the same issues and um situations when it comes to what happens when a truck doesn't show up. Has there been a boom or a, you know, a decrease in the amount of demand for their product to be sold to their customers? Are they dealing with tariff issues? Like all those things are in common. So you're gonna have similar conversations throughout the day. So when you have those, let's call it, you know, if you do 100 call calls in a day, call it 500 in a week, if they're all in the same commodity. Now you've got like 12 to 15 potentially really good conversations with people that are all having the same situation going on, right? So you can kind of snowball one into the next. Oh, I was just talking to so-and-so um over in Tennessee, and you know, we he was saying the almost the exact same thing. Um, and then you've kind of just injected rapport and trust into your conversation with that prospect because you've just validated that, well, you've talked with potentially a competitor of theirs or maybe a supplier of theirs, or um someone that's in the same realm as what they do. So I think um, you know, when you put all the pieces together, it's not just like a one size fits all. I'm gonna go to Google and just there's this magical list, right? You've gotta, you've gotta, you know, get the leads, get some information on them, put them into your CRM, and then make methodical decisions about who to call and when, etc. So it is a numbers game, but quality definitely is a big, big factor into it. Like I said before, like if if the quality is junk and none of them are qualified or quality at all, and you make a thousand calls, it's still gonna result in zero, you know, good customers.

You Learn Quality By Calling

SPEAKER_01 40:07

So that's the thing that I also want to get across, which I think is like, in my opinion, um not possible, which is you can't tell what a good lead is before you call it. You don't know if they're qualified or not. So like you can't solve that through research, you solve it through better conversations. The second thing is you could find a company that ships 50 loads a day, really needs a broker, but once you get onboarded, they're very price sensitive and it's not worth your time, you don't end up making money. So just because they're big and they ship a lot doesn't mean you're gonna make money and they'll be a good customer. And sometimes companies that ship less that don't seem like they'll spend a lot of money become your most profitable customers. The only way to determine, like you said, what is quality is through the prospecting process, which is asking questions to develop trust and to understand like how and the ways they actually do business. And for me, like a fancy way to say is like how volatile is their shipping, meaning like if it's super predictable and they do the same thing to the same lane every single day, like probably don't need a broker. If it changes wildly every day, like produce brokers, they only can use brokers. Why? Because literally yesterday they didn't know what orders were picking up today. Some of them they literally do business every day the way we do. They sell more produce, they negotiate more truckloads, and then they've got to find trucks the same day or the next day. And it's something that is that unpredictable, you can't use a trucking company. Most of the time. There's probably some lanes that they can't, but like that's why brokers do really well with other brokers because it's very unpredictable.

SPEAKER_00 41:43

Agreed. Yeah, you really do learn a lot about the quality of the prospect through the conversations.

Tinder, Trust, And Finding Your Voice

SPEAKER_00 41:49

And it made me think of an interesting analogy. So, you know, the comedian Aziz Ansari? I do. So he wrote a book, I don't know, it's probably 10 years ago about like dating. It's kind of like a funny spin on like dating in the modern world. And there was this part in there about online dating. So like the emergence of like um match.com and okaycupid and like Tinder, like all of them, right? And it talked about how it shouldn't be called online dating as a service. It should be called online how to connect me with somebody that I might date. Because until you actually meet that person and have those conversations face to face or over the phone, you really don't know the quality of that candidate in the dating pool. And the same thing goes with if I, if I get 100 leads from Zoom Info or Shipper CRM or whatever, right? DMB, um, I don't know the quality of them. I don't know how many loads they ship per day or per week or if they even need me if they have volatility, but it's it's it's really in the follow-up and the prospecting, is where all of that is.

SPEAKER_01 42:52

I love that as an analogy. Because here's what else is true. And I don't mean that as a pun, but like you also don't know what is actually true based on a dating profile or a company profile. Oh, I have these interests. Like everybody's dating profile is like either a very old picture or the best picture they've ever taken with the best lighting, right? From the best angle, the most interesting things about them, none of what they are like on a day-to-day basis or to actually have a conversation, then you're communicating via written text, which is way different than actually talking to a person to see if there's actually a connection or you guys get along. None of that is available there, right? Which is also why you can't build trust with a prospect via email or via text messages, and you can't assume that because everything looks good on a website or on paper, like that that company is a good fit or that that person would be a good fit. And my other analogy I use to dating is always like here's the other one that's a very similar thing, I think, is like people will prospect in our industry. They'll just call every company going, Hey, do you have any business? Can I move some loads with you? Can I talk to your decision maker? I'm like, that is the equivalent in dating of everybody you meet going, Do you want to get married and when do you want to have kids?

SPEAKER_00 44:06

Yeah, you want a network children?

SPEAKER_01 44:08

Yeah, yeah, exactly. It's like you don't know anything about each other and you're asking for business. You don't know this person at all, and you're asking things that are like very uncomfortable and inappropriate for where you're at in the and on top of that, cycle of a relationship.

SPEAKER_00 44:23

If you're single and looking to date somebody, but you're too nervous or afraid to talk to new people, you have a very low probability of ending up in a relationship. The same way that if you're a freight broker and you're too afraid to pick up the phone and call people and work on your communication and finding, I always say like find your voice, because everyone's pitch and/or if you want to call it a script, their approach to starting a conversation and the questions to ask and how to weave in different side talk is totally different person to person. So you've got to go out there and work on that. And if you're if you're just you know deathly afraid and you don't want to work on that because you're too nervous to be rejected, this is probably not the sales part of brokerage is probably not the right fit for you if you're not willing to improve that part of yourself. You might be a really good, you know, billing analyst or um, you know, a good IT person at a brokerage, but when it comes to selling and whether it's carrier sales or customer sales or both, um, you really, really, really got to find a way to use your personality and connect with others. And that doesn't mean that you have to be type A or super outgoing or loud or whatever. It's just you have to find a way to use the way that you communicate and your your style and find a way to connect with others. So like the simplest way to do it is like this, right? Based on your personality, if you went to a random party and there's a hundred people there, how would you, you know, and you approach someone who's you know really super quiet, right? How would you using understanding your personality, how would you talk to that person versus someone who is very type A, very outspoken, the loud one in the room, right? And think about that, that there's not one perfect nature, one perfect personality to succeed in this industry. It's finding a way to communicate and relate with others and have a conversation about what's going on in their life, how can you make their their job uh you know less stressful and solve some of their problems for them? That's really what it comes down to. So I think it's a mix of like we said before, numbers, so quantity and quality. Those two gotta match up. So anything else? I know that's kind of a lot we got we

Final Thoughts And Sign Off

SPEAKER_00 46:40

packed in there. I think it's a good one. All right, well, final thoughts.

SPEAKER_01 46:46

Whether you believe you can or believe you can't. Right.

SPEAKER_00 46:51

And until next time, go bills.