How One Simple Question Can Make You More Money in Trailer Rentals! 047

Justin Martin shares practical insights on asking for what you want, whether in job negotiations, business, or everyday life. Learn how simple questions can unlock significant opportunities and how to apply these strategies to grow your trailer rental business and beyond.


KEY TOPICS
The importance of asking questions in negotiations and business
How asking for a higher salary led to a $5,000 increase
Applying asking strategies to trailer rental and entrepreneurship
Using customer feedback to increase revenue
Building partnerships through asking and communication

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Song: Avatar

Artist: Kia

Music by: CreatorMix.com

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:19

What's up guys? Welcome back to the Trailer Hustle Podcast. My name is Justin, and this is the Trailer Owners Network. I'm super glad that you guys are here with me today. As always, it is Monday, April 13th, and uh I've got a pretty great week lined up. Lots of rentals kicking, lots of things happening. And something pretty cool happened a couple weeks ago when I was on vacation. And I want to share it with you guys, and I want to also kind of tie it in, if you will, to our business. Excuse me. And kind of tie it into entrepreneurship and in life in general because it was a pretty cool thing that I got to witness. And it's it's um it's great. I'm I'm celebrating it. It's an amazing success. I'm I'm very stoked about it. My girl got a new job, and she didn't just get another job, she she got her dream job. Okay. Um, I'm gonna spare you all some details. But the coolest part was I got a chance to sit next to her while we were in the hotel, and while this company was talking to her about the onboarding process and like the um the offer, the offer that's gonna be coming and talking about the compensation and things like that. And the compensation was just a little bit lower than she had hoped for. Um, not by a lot, but just just you know, you know, we all have our thresholds, you know. And she even said beforehand, like if it comes to it this, I'm gonna ask for this, and blah, blah, blah. I had this whole plan. And she said something, and I've heard it plenty of times, but I never really saw it in, well, I shouldn't say I never saw it in action. I have plenty of examples of how I've seen it in action, but it was cool to see her um do this and and spark this thought process for me yet again. And that is you don't get what you don't ask for. Okay. There's plenty of reasons why people won't ask certain questions. Their fear of rejection, their fear of awkward conversation, their fear of the word no. Um, you know, but you're already starting at no if you don't ask the question. The answer is no, because you're not gonna get what you weren't asking for, right? So I was listening to the conversation she was having, and they they told her the offer, um, broke everything down, then they told her the compensation package. And she said, um, and I'm gonna mess up the words, I don't remember exactly how she said it, but it was something along the lines of on the on the salary, are you guys firm there or do we have any room to improve that in this offer? It was something along those lines. And they immediately responded with a smile. You could hear the smile through the phone, you know. Um, no, no, that's not the uh that's not the cap. We we certainly do have um wiggle room or we have um room to improve there. It was something like that. And sure enough, about 30 minutes after that call concluded, after they got done talking, she got an email with an offer at$5,000 more per year than what the initial one was.$5,000 a year is pretty huge. You know what I mean? For just asking a question. If you could ask one question and make$5,000, wouldn't you do it? She did it, and it was it was pretty awesome to see the success of you don't get what you don't ask for. You know, she asked, she got it. Uh I I mean it was it was awesome. And what's funny is the the compensation she was offered, she's prepared to take. You know, I mean it was great, great package. Um but she just she still asked the question and she was able to get it. And it's um it's pretty awesome when you see stuff like that. Um it was really, really cool to me. And you know, you gotta remember that nobody's thinking about you unless you put yourself in front of them. So that's why you know, it's not because people are against you, it's just you're looking out for yourself better than anybody else is gonna look out for yourself. All right. And so I made a little list here that I'm gonna kind of to keep myself on track. As you guys know, sometimes I ramble. Um, and I wanna I want to go through a handful of things as to how this can be applied to trailer rentals or just entrepreneurship in general. You know, um, I think that most people are leaving money on the table every single day, and it's not because they're not working hard or anything like that. You're just not asking. Okay. So Kia's story, my my girl's story is is it's such a clear-cut, perfect example. You know, she didn't demand anything, she didn't threaten over anything, didn't overcomplicate it or anything like that. She just asked a question. Um, and she unlocked more opportunity, more money, more value. Um, you know, she immediately made herself more valuable to this company as well. So nothing exchanged, nothing changed except for the fact that she opened up her mouth and asked. So anyway, I'll quit beating that horse. Um, but uh, you know, this also uh isn't about it's not about just you with your employer jobs or whatever. This is just business 101 with everything. So um in the trailer runners on entrepreneurship, the difference between the people that are just average and the people that are killing it is usually just a few uncomfortable questions. You know, it could be um, you know what, I'm gonna stick to my list so I don't start rambling. But, you know, pricing. A lot of guys just set their price and they leave it there forever. They don't ask their customers questions like, hey, you know, what would you be willing to pay if the trailer had a winch? What would you be willing to pay if the trailer had this type of strap? What would you be willing to pay if I offered this type of feature? Hey, what would you be willing to pay if I offered appliance dollies? Whatever, whatever the question is. What would you be willing to pay if I dropped it off for you? You can ask the customers these questions. They're telling you how you can make more money. Okay, they will, that's the market study right in front of you. So, you know, and if you're if you're just guessing, you're gonna do like I did early on, learn from my mistakes, guys. Please, I screwed so much shit, so much stuff up early on. You know, your guessing is costing you money. My guessing early on about my pricing strategy is costing me money, even still to this day. I'm still climbing out of it, I'm still modifying things, I'm still asking questions, I'm still learning, I'm still making sure that I modify things in a way that are, you know, good for me and my business. But um, but ask those questions, guys. Um, you know, I I don't I don't see it enough, people asking or talking about getting live feedback from their customer. The customer's already paid you, by the way. Asking this question, is it going to impact their rental at all? All right. They've already paid, they've got the trailer great. Hey, question for you. I know you paid 120 bucks for this rental. Would it have been of greater value to you if the trailer was two feet longer? Would it have been of greater value to you if I included blank, if I did this, if I dropped it off for you? What would you have paid if I would have dropped that off for you if you're considering doing deliveries or something like that? Um, all that stuff is important. The other thing being partnerships. Um, you know, this is one of the four main ways that I market my business. And I've talked about that in a lot of videos, the four four ways that I market my trailer rental business. But one of the ways is local partnerships. That just not just being U-Haul and having them send customers to you, but dealerships, ATV service shops, plumbing companies, um, electrical companies, door and window companies, roofing companies, HVAC companies, um, contractors, landscapers, all these guys. You know, you've you gotta go there and ask these guys, hey, do you mind referring people to me? Here's what I have to offer. Here's how I can help your business as well. Um, you know, it is oh, same with storage facilities. Well, I got a whole thing lined up to talk about with storage facilities. My local guys are great. Atlantic Self Storage, shout out to you guys. Um, you know, the worst case they can say is worst case they say no. You know, if you're asking them questions, most of the time they won't even say no to your face, they're just not going to respond after the fact. They're not gonna actually send you anything. Um, but uh, but yeah, you know, you could you could definitely start getting some deals just by asking. Go there, ask the question. It can feel very foreign or very uncomfortable to you if you're not, if you didn't grow up in a business or in a company or a career, we'll say, of being like talking to customers or it's you know, doing business-to-business transactions or in sales or customer service. It can be a little daunting for some people, but guys, just ask. There was a great thing that Discount Tire used to teach us um when it came to wheel sales. Okay, I don't know if they still go by this or not, but just ask. They wanted us at 10% wheel sales, right? So for every hundred units that were sold, 10 of those they wanted it to be wheels or rims, a lot of you guys know them by. And you would just ask, hey man, you ever thought about replacing those? Get rid of those hubcaps? You know, back then it was way hubcaps were way more prominent than they are now. But um, you know, in 06 to you know, 2010 in that range when I was anyway, still there. Actually, yeah. When did I leave there? Goodness gracious. 2017? Anyway. Me and my rants. Um, but it was just ask. And the more no's you get, the higher your no count, the higher your yes count. Okay? It makes a huge deal. Just ask. Even a little old lady? Yeah, even a little old lady. I've proved that time and time again. I had guys that proved that to me, and man, I hated it when they were right, because then I was like, well crap, now I really have to do this, but it really does work. You gotta get out of your comfort zone a little bit. Okay. So another thing is like, even with like your Facebook marketplace leads or whatever leads you get, you know, I see a lot of, and even I'm guilty of this sometimes as well, but we're answering questions, we're sending information, we're hoping that they book. Right? How often are you saying, hey, you want me to go ahead and send you that link to book? Pretty good line. What about when do you want to pick it up? That's your closing, okay? Do you want me to lock that in for you? I know when when I was in retail sales and I'm, you know, I used to do training and stuff like that with people on this, I would always teach them cash check or charge. That's that's a closing, cash, check, or charge. How do you want to pay today? Yeah, do you want to use financing for that? Did you already have our rooms to go card? Did you already have our discount tire card? Do you already have that financing through Synchrony? Whatever your line is, that's a closing. I know with discount tire, you had the six steps to a sale. You had the greeting, the qualifying, the recommendation, the features of benefits, the closing, and the benediction. So those are your steps to a sale. You know, the greeting is very simple, of course. You shake their hand. Hey, welcome into how you doing today. Qualifying. What brings you in today? And you talked to them about that. Recommendation. You make recommendations based on the qualifying process. Features of benefits. You tell them the features and benefits of what you recommended and why it'll help them and how it'll help them. The closing is cash check or charge. You've done everything else, right? So after the closing, you have your benediction, which is you go over the sales, kind of the after-sale uh follow-up type thing. But anyway, this is a close, guys. Ask those questions, right? Do you want me to lock that in for you? Do you want me to send that booking link to you? When do you want to pick it up? Assume the sale. Okay. Ask these questions. Same with buying equipment. I tell a lot of guys this when I when I talk about uh dealerships and stuff, and a lot of dealers are gonna hate me for saying this. And most of you guys may not do this, but I've been very fortunate. The dealerships that I've bought trailers from, I ask for a spare. Hey, man, do you think you guys could throw in a spare on that? I know there's not a lot of margin on the trailers. It is what it is. But I asked if they can throw in a spare tire, 100% of the time they've said yes. I've never had a dealership tell me no. Now, if you're buying from like a hardware store that sells trailers, they're not gonna do it. But a dealership, most of the time they will. They'll work it in somehow, or they'll just toss it in, you know. Uh, to them, it's it's well, anyway, we'll skip that, what I was about to say. But ask that question. You know, when you're buying equipment, what's your best price? I mean, they may say this is the best price. Or they may say, eh, we could probably, you know, if the price is 10, 555, uh, we can make it 10 flat. We could do 10.2, we could do 10. You never know. You never know until you ask. You know, can you throw in straps for a spare? Um, any cash discounts? You know, now obviously I don't recommend anybody go and abuse people, but ask the question: the amount of customers that you guys probably get, if you're listening to this now and you're already renting trails or you do drunk removal, you do high shot, or you do any of these things, how many times do you get asked do you do military discount? I don't care their level of service. They were military, they're asking for a discount, right? Does that have anything to do with your business? Probably not. Do you offer it? I personally don't, but people ask. Now they're gonna be, if they're consistent at asking, they go to Lowe's and ask, they're probably gonna get five or 10% off. They go to another company and ask, they'll probably get a discount. I personally don't do it. I make sure that my pricing is aligned with the with the area and make sure that if I'm gonna I have my discounts in place. You guys have heard all my content about discounts. But they ask consistently, and you know what? They probably save a lot of money everywhere they go, or most places they go because they ask. They're consistent. They ask that question. All right, you know, you don't have to fear looking stupid or feeling awkward or getting rejected. You know, this is actually kind of common practice these days for that kind of stuff, but you gotta for for what I was just talking about regarding like discounts and that sort of thing. But um I think one of the big things when it comes to hearing the word no, all right, this is uh this is pretty big. You you kind of have to reframe the word no a little bit, because no really is just letting you know where the line is. Okay, if they say no, it's more so just you know, they're they're not they're not mad at you, they're not giving you shit, they're not being aggressive. That's you just okay, I know where we stand now, I know where the line's at. That's a line. You know, maybe the line's here, but you were here, you know. Maybe instead of being here, maybe you could just come back a little bit. Ask. You never know, whatever the deal is, whatever that situation is. Um, you know, and a lot of times no just tells you what works. Um, sometimes it's a no, but, and then they walk you through something else. Um, but it just tells you what to adjust. So don't be afraid of the word no, guys. No's turn into yes a lot. And a lot of times it happens only because you you ask the question just a little differently. Yeah, one thing that I was extremely good at was selling protection plans on the products that I would sell, whether it be tires, selling the certificates for free replacement, a discount tire, first of all, it makes it super easy to sell it because it's such a great program. But then even with selling furniture with rooms to go, when I was with that company for for years, it was done for like seven years, selling extended protection plans that they call guard it on the furniture, the same thing, made it pretty easy to sell it, but I was extremely good. I mean, if any of my old co-workers are watching this, comment below and tell everybody I'm not full of shit. My numbers were incredible on that. I wasn't shy Steve, I wasn't anything, but you ask in a different way. I would sometimes get three no's and the customer didn't even realize that I pitched it to them, you know? And on that fourth one, I'd say just the right thing or in the right way. And I know some of y'all might be thinking, like, oh, sleazy salesperson or whatever. Telling you right now, you do the stuff well enough, you do it long enough, you start to learn strategic ways to talk to people and help people out without sounding like a shisty salesperson, without being one as well. And you end up getting much better feedback and you you end up helping people a lot better. A lot of people in those types of sales environments, they're they're guards kind of up anyway. So unfortunately, they kind of sell themselves short because they don't want to be sold by the salesman. So they say no to anything, even though it is something they probably would want and benefit from. So you have to kind of do the customer a favor and keep them out of their own way by not being so direct sometimes. I know some guys, they're just sharks, and that's how they sell, and that's fine, but it's not me. But you ask differently sometimes, and that'll that'll also make a huge difference. You know, even if you are used to asking questions, just start asking a little differently sometimes, you know. So it's it's it's a very easy thing to apply to life. It's an easy thing to apply to business. I mean, think of how many examples or think of all the different ways you could incorporate this into your daily life and your current habits every day and and everything else. I mean, you can incorporate this into your relationship, right? You might think there's a problem, but unless you ask, I mean, sure, there's plenty of science to let you know there's a problem, but you know what I mean. Sometimes there's that weird passive aggressive back and forth, whatever. And or maybe you think you're on the same page and then the comment comes up, you're like, wait, I thought we were past this. You know, ask, talk, talk about it. It's fine. Um, okay, it's enough of the Dr. Phil stuff there. But, you know, back to my girl's situation, since I kind of touched on that, you know, she didn't wait to be recognized for this or anything like that. She didn't wait five years for a raise, she didn't do anything, she just asked a question. So if you're not what you get, if you're not getting what you want out of um business, so like more rentals, more opportunities, more money. Um ask yourself one question. Did you actually ask for it? Okay. If there's something you're missing out on, are you not asking for it? Okay. You can ask for higher rates, better deals, more exposure, partnerships, reviews, referrals, upgrades, opportunities, the reviews, especially. I talk about that all the time. Ask for these review reviews, guys. You know, none of it happens though if you stay quiet. On the reviews thing, I want to touch on that really, really, really fast. Stick with me, guys. Okay, I know we're 17 minutes in here almost, whatever it is. But on the reviews thing, when you ask a question, guys, shut up after you ask the question. All right. I'm not gonna put this person on blast and say their name, but I had somebody send me a video from his meta glasses. He was telling me he was having a hard try, hard time getting shout out to you, bro. I I love you, man. But he was having a hard time getting reviews, and he's like, I ask every customer. I send them links, I do this, I do that. It's an automated email that goes on. And I got a whole thing about over-automation, but anyway, that's just coming soon. But he's telling me all these things about why I'm not getting reviews. I watched your video, this, that, and the other. I said, Well, you didn't watch my video. Because he sent me video of him talking to his customer, sent me three, or yeah, three about reviews specifically, his interactions. And every single time it was, hey, I'm gonna send you a link to do a Google review. If you could do one, that'd be great. That was it. Okay. The flip side is if you said, Hey, Mr. Customer, would you mind if I text you a link and make it super easy for you to do a Google review for me? Then you wait for the customer to say, Yeah, absolutely. Great, thanks so much. I'm gonna make this super easy. Link's coming your way right now. If you could knock it out, that'd be amazing. Thank you so much. You be quiet. It's another thing in in it's a human nature thing, you know. One big thing in sales that I remember that made a humongous difference is this stupid sentence that really makes a huge difference. May I make a recommendation? Now, if you say, may I make a recommendation, what I think you should do is da da da da. No. You wait for the customer to give you permission. Hey, may I make a recommendation? Yeah, yeah, for sure. Okay. Based on because you told me blank, I recommend you do XYZ. Because XYZ. Okay based on everything you told the expert, here's what I'm suggesting you do, here's what I recommend. But once they've given you permission, most of the time, they're gonna do exactly what you say. Um, it's it's very, very, very, very important. The same thing, like even like to bring it back to the warranties and stuff that I used to sell with, say, rooms to go. If somebody was on the fence about it, there was a 90-day refund policy on it. You don't want it anymore. Within 90 days, you can get 100% refund on the warranty. Okay, we're not supposed to call it warranty, you're supposed to call it, you know, protection and coverage, whatever. So what? Um, but I would do that a lot and it works really, really well. May I make a recommendation? Yeah. Okay. Because you told me you have a dog and you're worried about drinks and the kids and da-da-da-da. I recommend you go ahead and add the protection to the sofa for now. You got 90 days. Get it in the house, let the newness wear off, let life start actually happening around it. If at that point you realize we're probably not gonna need that, I think we're gonna play it safe, then call the 800 number, they'll refund it to you, they'll send you a check, no big deal. But you'll probably end up wanting to keep it at that point. But there's no risk, just add it on there, you know, and you can just refund it if you want. Man, it's that little thing, a mayhem recommendation, you're listening to them, you're allowing them to give you, you're waiting for them to give you permission to recommend something or to sell them or to ask another question that is more meaningful. Okay. So, so anyway, we could get into that, we get into a whole sales thing on that, but um, you know, nothing happens if you stay quiet, guys. Ask for that raise. Ask for more money when you're interviewing. Ask your customers what you could do to bring higher value to the customer to where they will then spend more. Ask them how much they would have spent. Okay, it's gonna make your business better. And not even just with trailer rentals, with anything you guys dive into. So um, I do have a great video lined up. I'm hoping tomorrow or the next day um where I'm gonna be talking, basically walking you through trailer rentals, okay? Start to finish, what's it take? Here's where it starts, here's where you go to go with it. Okay, it's not gonna be a super in-depth thing, but for those of you that just want a good playbook of like, these are all the things I need to check off the list. This is what I need to do. I've got a video coming out here soon. I've got the script written for it, as far as like my outline and how I want to do it and my whole process, whatever, all the behind the scenes crap, all that's done. I just gotta shoot it, edit it, the whole thing. The fun, the fun part. Um, so that'll be coming out soon. Also, uh man, my my my Max D um H6X has been getting rented like crazy lately. And And I'm going to do, I mean, I know I'm already planning on doing quite a few different videos with this thing. It's just, you know, time and it stays booked. If I've had a hell of a time trying to make content because it's just been on the road so much. It went out for three weeks to one guy not too long ago. So actually, while I was on vacation, it was gone. So anyway, I have a lot of content I want to make about that trailer specifically because it's my favorite, my fleet now, and it's also now my most expensive. Um, I've raised my rates on that specific trailer just to kind of test the market, see if people are willing to pay. News flash, they are. Um, and it's uh it's packed with features and uh just really, really good quality. So I'm gonna be doing some videos about that, breaking that down. So if any of you guys are thinking about Max D or you're thinking about a trailer of that style, you can kind of be pretty well informed as to um, you know, what it is, what it's all about, and all that. And feel free to reach out or comment below with questions about stuff in these videos. Um, so anyway, so I hopefully we'll have that coming by the end of this week. Um, also, I want to talk to you guys about um Ride Dog GPS, who sponsored this trailer. Um, you know, they supplied me with one of their lifetime GPS units. So if you have not yet reached out to Ride Dog, you definitely should comment. Uh, check the links below in the description of this video, guys, because Ride Dog GPS is an amazing partner of Trailer Hustle. They've been a great company. They sponsored this trail and said, hey, this was a sponsored trailer from Max D. We want to jump in the mix as well. Can we send you a GPS to put on it? I said, absolutely. Um, luckily, I'm already a customer of Ride Dog, so that it makes it easy because I'm still going to the same app as always. Um, but it's a very, very, very good company. Recommend you guys check them out. Um, so I'll be going over all that as well in those videos. So, aside from that, guys, I hope y'all have an amazing day. I hope this helps you guys. I hope these videos help y'all. Thank you so much for tuning in and paying attention to these things here and there. With that, remember this is the trailer owners network. This is y'all's network. I am so glad that you're here. Can't wait to see you tomorrow. Y'all have an amazing day. Take it easy.