Join us in our conversation as we dissect the art of effective sales communication, with tips on pitching Freight Tech products, building trust, and handling objections.
You’ll hear about real-life experiences that highlight the importance of preparation and persistence in sales, whether it’s distinguishing between cold and warm leads or mastering follow-up strategies. This episode is packed with actionable advice and personal anecdotes designed to inspire personal and professional growth. Don’t miss this engaging conversation that seamlessly blends adventure, sports, and sales strategies.
Sponsored by SPI Logistics. If you're looking for back-office support such as admin, finance, IT, and sales as a freight broker - reach out to SPI Logistics today! Learn more about becoming an agent here: https://success.spi3pl.com/
Standing Out is a sales, marketing & leadership podcast powered by BETA Consulting Group, created to highlight best practices from industry leaders with incredible experience and insights! The goal is to entertain, educate & inspire individuals & companies to improve their sales, marketing & leadership development outcomes.
Join us in our conversation as we dissect the art of effective sales communication, with tips on pitching Freight Tech products, building trust, and handling objections.
You’ll hear about real-life experiences that highlight the importance of preparation and persistence in sales, whether it’s distinguishing between cold and warm leads or mastering follow-up strategies. This episode is packed with actionable advice and personal anecdotes designed to inspire personal and professional growth. Don’t miss this engaging conversation that seamlessly blends adventure, sports, and sales strategies.
Sponsored by SPI Logistics. If you're looking for back-office support such as admin, finance, IT, and sales as a freight broker - reach out to SPI Logistics today! Learn more about becoming an agent here: https://success.spi3pl.com/
Standing Out is a sales, marketing & leadership podcast powered by BETA Consulting Group, created to highlight best practices from industry leaders with incredible experience and insights! The goal is to entertain, educate & inspire individuals & companies to improve their sales, marketing & leadership development outcomes.
What's up everybody and welcome back to another episode of Standing Out, a podcast about sales, marketing and leadership. I'm your host, trey Griggs, founder and CEO of Beta Consulting Group. Do us a favor check us out online at betaconsultinggroupcom. You can learn about all that we're doing for clients in logistics and transportation. Help them tell their stories, as well as all of our podcast highlights and everything else that's on there as well. Click that little button on that homepage there that says schedule a call with yours truly. Tell us your story. We'll help you write yours and I hope to hear from you guys real soon.
Speaker 1:Also good to be back in the saddle. I had a little vacation. You may not have noticed that because we recorded some episodes in advance, but it is nice to be back from a vacation time. Had a great time with family up in Alaska. If you've never been there, folks put it on the bucket list. It's an amazing place to explore. It's just an adventure unlike any other. You feel like you're walking through a movie the landscapes, the sights, the mountains, the rivers, the animals. We saw moose, caribou, we saw a bear, tons of eagles just incredible. Glaciers, waterfalls I mean it really is incredible. It's breathtaking. So if you have never been there before. Put it on the bucket list. Make sure you make that a trip, especially if you can take your family. That's an incredible memory and incredible time to be out in nature, very limited cell phone usage because you're out there with nothing. There's no coverage out there in a lot of places Denali, national Park, glaciers, things like that so incredible time and it's good to be back in this huddle Before we get started.
Speaker 1:Today we've got a great show with a good friend who's been on the show multiple times. We'll get him on here in just a minute, but before we do that, I always want to say thank you to our sponsor, spi Logistics. They're actually out of Canada, vancouver, where we ported at the end of our cruise. But listen, if you are a freight broker and you're just tired of dealing with having your own MC and all that work back office work or if you're an agent, happy where you're at right now, make sure you check these guys out Joe Chandler and the guys over there just phenomenal people. They've got the back office support, admin, finance, it, sales technology everything that you need to allow you to stay in your sweet spot of working with customers, booking freight and just staying kind of in your lane and having fun and making a lot of money.
Speaker 1:So check them out at successspi3plcom. Again, successspi3plcom. Let them know that you heard about it right here on Standing Out. All right, listen, our guest today is a good friend of mine. We talk a lot about golf, about basketball. We're going to do that today a little bit, and we're going to talk a little bit about sales. So please, welcome to the show my good friend and the founder of Sales-CRM, josh Lott.
Speaker 1:This is your karaoke song, isn't it? You know, I know all the words to this.
Speaker 2:You know, I know all the words oh, I've seen it.
Speaker 1:All right, stop what you're doing, because I'm about to ruin the image and the style that you're used to. I look funny, but you don't want to make money? All right, we'll let that slide.
Speaker 2:I watch that video every time it pops up on my feed. Legendary.
Speaker 1:Man, I'll tell you, man, like that uh, that that's literally one of my favorite songs to do gets the crowd going. It's a throwback to, like you know, younger days. I mean that was eighth grade for me, dude. I don't know when it was for you, but for me that was eighth grade, so it brings back some good memories.
Speaker 1:I was a young cat at that point yeah, you probably like kindergarten at that point I don't even know I don't know our difference, but I'm sure it was something like that Good to see you, my friend.
Speaker 2:How are you doing you too, man? Glad to see you back from vacation. Looked like you're re-energized, ready to get back to it. Everything's good over here.
Speaker 1:Man, it was tremendous. Have you ever been to Alaska? No, Dude it's pretty far out, it's pretty far out. People don't realize this. Um, it's about five times the size of texas, which is crazy. Texas is huge.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's unbelievable.
Speaker 1:Maybe not, maybe four they've got a shirt up there that you know one of the tour shops. They got a shirt up there that says, uh, everything's bigger in texas until you get to alaska, and it's a picture of the state of alaska with the state of texas inside of it. Really it's a huge state, it's absolutely huge and it's it's far away. I mean people don't realize how far away it is. It took us from from St Louis here in Midwest. It took us eight hours of flying to get there to Fairbanks. I mean it's a long ways away. It has its own time zone as the Alaska time zone. So it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a distance. It's just natural, as it was, as always has been, and not a lot of places are like that, especially in the, you know, in the States.
Speaker 2:So it's pretty cool. I'm going to have to make that hike out there one of these times, but bucket list. Man hopefully I can get the train, you know, not the bus well, yeah, well, yes, the train is definitely better.
Speaker 1:Actually, this is cool. They've got this train from denali national park down to anchorage and the train has glass windows and a glass roof, um, yeah, so you're able just to look out and see all these things, and they're bringing you drinks. It's just just really fun, man. So it's a it's a neat thing to do, but, yeah, if you can, you can get to Alaska and do that incredible trip. Really enjoyed it. Two weeks away from work. Man didn't check in once. Team.
Speaker 2:That's awesome. I was going to say shout out, shout out to the beta team for for holding it down, having some fun out there and bringing on some new business. I saw that.
Speaker 1:To no doubt, I'll tell you like that was crazy because, um, you know, like I, I had a lot of confidence in the team. I really wasn't that concerned about checking the first box, which was taking care of our clients they do a great job. But I was actually pretty shocked when I came back and we had a new client. I was like that's, that's incredible.
Speaker 2:So it's just showing me go back for another two weeks.
Speaker 1:I know, maybe maybe I need to leave more often, but it's just showing that we're doing the right things and and the dynamic of a company Again, very blessed, very thankful. That's all we're here to talk about, man. We're here to talk about you. One thing that you and I was talking about we've got to start with this is the NBA Finals. It just ended yesterday. This is going to drop next week, so it'll be a week later. It just ended yesterday. I feel like we've got to recap this a little bit. Boston wins their 18th championship in a five-game series over Dallas, after losing by 48 in game four Kind of a pretty wild series. Have you noticed that these games are not close like they used to be? I feel like back in the day, finals games used to be really close, with the exception of maybe a few. I don't feel like they're that close anymore. They all seem like one.
Speaker 2:This year was tough. I think it always kind of depends on the year. And then the tough part about NBA it's just all about the matchups you know, series by series. So, like I don't know, I think Boston would have had a much harder time with matchups with Minnesota, but Dallas' matchups against Minnesota just kind of favored.
Speaker 2:Denver favored Minnesota.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, exactly so that that's what's so crazy about the playoffs is that it really is kind of just hey, based on your seating and who continues to advance, and then also just injuries and you know who's actually still healthy and still playing. Because, I mean, boston got through a lot of their early series with a lot of injuries you know from from others in the east so, um, but they earned it. They were the best team all year. They were the only team above above 60 wins and yeah, just matchups wise, not not a potential for dallas, but yeah, that game four, they just got dominated both sides of the ball and then I don't, don't know, I just feel like Boston, yeah, boston just didn't.
Speaker 2:They came out flat. And that's the tough part is like teams, for whatever reason at the highest level, will come out flat one game and they just turn it around the next game and you know they can go from a 50-point loss to or you know, a 30-point loss to a 20-point win, you know, up at 20 at half last night Talking about coming out flat, you and I went to the last home game for the Phoenix Suns against the Clippers and they were down like oh my gosh.
Speaker 1:What was it like 37-4? Yeah, it was like 37-6. It was unbelievable.
Speaker 2:I've never seen that.
Speaker 1:That was crazy. And he still got it to within seven points in the fourth quarter. I mean with on three-point shooting, there's a lot of one-on-one play, a lot of two-man play at the top. The NBA, it's definitely changed man. It's changed from even 10 years ago. I blame a lot of that on Steph Curry.
Speaker 2:Steph Curry man. He's the one that changed the whole. He changed the game.
Speaker 1:I mean 6'9", and if you can't shoot a, three.
Speaker 2:You're not there, so it's changed a lot. You got Wimby. We'll just call him Wimby. Yeah, wimby, he's got seven foot five shooting threes. I know it's absolutely crazy when did your love for basketball come from? From my pops man just growing up. He's from Indiana, he's from Southern Indiana in Evansville.
Speaker 1:Basketball state man yeah.
Speaker 2:It's basketball state. I mean, that's, that's all they do up there, and so that's kind of how many times did he show you Hoosiers?
Speaker 1:Did you watch Hoosiers a lot as a kid?
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, plenty. Yeah yeah, definitely watch Hoosiers. Yeah, like you know, there's just so there's so many roots there and you know he would tell me about all the players that he got to watch growing up. And you know, and I mean I don't know if he actually played against them, but high school basketball there is one of those things where they're always going to, you know, the biggest arenas and it's not, it's televised there. So it's not like that in most states, but in Indiana it's. It's a big deal.
Speaker 1:Well, he was back when it was one division for the whole state. Like everybody played. It was crazy. Like they stayed. They stayed with that for a long time. He was probably back in the Bobby Knight era, like the heydays of Indiana University and Isaiah Thomas all those guys that played there. Oh yeah, that's pretty cool man. It's awesome. Yeah, it's neat to think about that. My love for basketball came as a second sport. It was to keep me in shape for baseball in the winter.
Speaker 2:Really.
Speaker 1:In Missouri and I just got so addicted to it I don't know.
Speaker 2:But you ended up making basketball your main sport over baseball, right.
Speaker 1:I did yeah.
Speaker 2:I did too. It was actually the same for me.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, I mean it's a great winter sport, obviously in the Midwest because it's so cold, but yeah, switched it into main sport. Played in college and still love baseball, but it's just different. It's very different. I've got some good memories from baseball but I just couldn't get away from like, if I had the choice of playing baseball on the playground with my friends or playing basketball, I'd go play basketball basketball all day. I mean, yeah, all day, all day. So, speaking of another sport that we like to play, and that is golf, the us open just wrapped up, also on sunday, on father's day, and man, what a what a final round. Did bryson lose it or win it? Or did Roy lose it? How do you feel about it? Did Bryson win it? Did Roy lose it?
Speaker 2:And I don't know about this. I mean, I guess technically you have to say that Rory lost it, because I saw some stat that he hasn't. He was 496 of 496 within four or three feet, I think inside three feet. Yeah, and then what he missed too.
Speaker 1:So that three feet, yeah, and then what he missed, two. So that one. That one really rocked him. The last one was a much harder putt. If you looked at him, he actually lined up outside of the hole on a three and a half footer. That's a hard putt, like anytime you have to start the ball outside of the hole on a three and a half footer. That's scary, especially downhill. So that one, that one to me is justifiable. But you had to know that the first putt that he missed was in his mind.
Speaker 1:Uh, on that last part, to be doubt, but you know, it's all mental even if he makes those putts and he stays at 700 600, bryson still had a shot to make a birdie somewhere along the way. So it's hard to tell. But I will say this even though rory missed those putts, I still feel like at the end of the day, bryson won it because he made the craziest par. I saw a stat online that um the the chances of him getting it up and down from that bunker was like 1.3 percent. That's insane, it was so small.
Speaker 2:You know that was an incredible shot, yeah, but he's also I mean, that guy's just hot right now, man, he's, he's in contention in all the tournaments right now like he's really figured out his game, I feel like from 150 and m you know, versus where he probably was two or three years ago I'd like to hit just one drive in my life the way he does.
Speaker 1:Just one flies at 350, 340 in the fairway, a lot, I mean. It's just it's really impressive what those guys can do. But you know, pressure is real, man. Like, competitive golf is a different thing than casual golf and anybody who? Who is? Is, you know, harping on rory?
Speaker 1:you just don't know like pressure's a real thing. I mean, those guys make it look easy but it's. It's a lot of pressure, especially with him wanting to win so bad and finishing so high and needing another major after 10, 10 years since. Anyways, lots, a lot of good stuff to talk about you, and I could talk about these things for a while, let's get into.
Speaker 1:let's talk a little bit about SalesDash and what you're doing. I want to hop a little bit on social media some of the stuff that you've been doing on social media. You had a post recently on LinkedIn with a kind of a concern about you know, new open AI releases and what that's going to do for interpersonal skills, and do you think that as AI advances, it's going to push people more towards wanting more human interaction or do you think they're going to want to avoid human interaction more?
Speaker 2:It's a good question. I mean, I think it'll be a little bit of both, but I think, in general, to me it's going to be one of those things that actually, when people are doing more of the personal reach outs, people have better conversions. And so I just think, a general rule of thumb, human nature, the majority of people are going to look for the easy route. The easy route is going to be the automated stuff where they don't have to do a lot of things and it's not going to be able. There's always the conversation in sales about quality versus quantity, but I think it's a really good time for people that do focus on the quality, do focus on relationships, the more that people go that route, because people are going to just use the same tools, right, and those tools are going to craft messages that are very similar, that are are not unique and don't stand out. And and even just from, like listening to some of the shows that I've listened to recently where, like, it seems like more shippers are talking. I was at the Reliance Partners panel here in Nashville recently and then Will and Matt from the Two Dogs, one Pod podcast. They've had a couple shippers on there and you just hear what the shippers say about, just like you know, standing out and being unique and being human. So I don't know.
Speaker 2:I'm just a big believer that to really build relationships, I kind of put it simply of if I sent you an automated message, trey, to ask you how your week was, friend to friend, you'd probably be like yo, josh, stop, I can't build a relationship with you. If I was to send you an automated message as a friend, you'd probably look really negatively on that if it wasn't actually me reaching out to you to check on you, see how your vacation was, see how your family's doing, how are you doing all those things? So I kind of always just use that as a personal rule of thumb. But everybody's going to be different and I can understand why some people may leverage that tech.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and the way that you talk to me is different than the way you might talk to another friend. You guys have different things you talk about or the whatever, whatever kind of communication. You guys have the words you might use, the language, whatever. It's all different. I I agree with you. I think that, um, the more the people can do, things that are almost old, school is actually going to stand out more, like if you write a personal letter or anything personal or anything that's kind of one-on-one or outreach it's. It's amazing how I think that's going to actually make it even more valuable when you do those types of things.
Speaker 1:Even though AI is going to provide a lot of benefits, I think all technology good technology at least has a benefit, but it also has a drawback. I think the drawback is going to be looking pretty vanilla until it gets to a point where it can personalize it based on, maybe, past conversations. Like, can it listen to our conversations over the last four months and then create a text message that sounds like me talking to you? That might be a game changer when it can do that, if it can do that, but until that time, I think you're right, it's going to be very vanilla. I think AI is a great tool to help become creative and stand out, but I don't think it's a great tool in itself just for communication. Stand out, but I don't think it's a great tool in itself, just for communication, maybe it will at some point, but I don't think it is right now.
Speaker 2:I think in its current state right now, I think it's fantastic for just creativity around ideas and messaging and all those things, but I mean I think, if you're using it, in your end sales and to me, sales equals relationships then I kind of think that you're limiting yourself, because I'll give one example and I was going to respond to this guy today but you know I'll get solicits in my inbox and I know you do too, you know, whenever you're the founder of some company. But it was just like hey, really excited about what you're building and all this stuff, and I'm and I read that and I'm just like it's BS.
Speaker 1:You don't even know that'm building.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you have no idea what I'm building, so to me that's just like it comes off as false, and at that point I just don't really.
Speaker 1:You want to respond and say what's the most exciting thing about it, what are you most excited about?
Speaker 2:What's it out to you? The?
Speaker 1:most, just to see, because you're right.
Speaker 2:They probably haven't looked at anything thing. But yeah, candidly I mean, you know it's, it's a little bit limited out there the humans that get excited about crm software.
Speaker 1:So, right, right, yeah, my, my favorites. When they ask me if they can move freight for me, I'm like, unless you're moving a suitcase, I got nothing for you.
Speaker 2:I have no freight yeah, I get a couple of those every now and then yeah, yeah, I know it's.
Speaker 1:It's really kind of interesting and I think you know, generationally too it's it's fascinating about. I think people enjoy texting more now, but I think that the personal conversations are going to stand out even more moving forward. So it's real interesting from a sales perspective. Do that One thing you also post on LinkedIn. As you said, you lost the sale because you didn't do a good enough job of communicating value. Talk real quickly about the importance of that and what that looks like. How do you see people successfully communicating value?
Speaker 2:Well, it's tough right, because it's a very individualistic thing and what's valuable to you as a business owner is going to be valuable to somebody else. So if you're a freight broker and talking to a shipper, some people care about price. Some people are going to say, hey, I don't care about price, I care most about service and getting from A to B and whatever it costs, as long as it's reasonable. Then they're going to say send it and go with it. So I think that's the biggest difference. But I just think with that, it's about living within yourself as a salesperson and can you live with those results. And I just think it's so easy for salespeople to get frustrated and for me in coaching the amount of salespeople that have coached just from previous teams you know they can be really frustrated about a prospect and complaining about the situation. But look, at the end of the day, it's their decision and you have to figure out exactly what that value is of them, for them, and it's different. And so you've brought this up before in our conversations around.
Speaker 2:Let's just take tech companies, let's just take Freight Tech, for example. Freight Tech companies will go through demos and pitches and think that these are the things of value. And then when you go to a customer to ask them for a video testimonial or to write a testimonial, what do you like? A lot of the times that language and what they say is different than what the freight tech company is pitching. And I think that that's like prime time example number one of sometimes not having the full awareness to what people see of the value of your product or service. And so I you know Nick Dangles had a good comment, but it does help. You kind of just question yourself in terms of, hey, how can you communicate more effectively, how can you do a better sales presentation or pitch? But overall, the whole objective of it is to make the focus more on them, compared to you, and to really understand what they actually need. And the first thing is to figure out is there even a need there?
Speaker 1:Yeah, and this is what's crazy is, you know, when I was coaching sales reps as well, it frustrated me to know in when they would start a sales call with a demo like you have no idea what these people actually want or need. You know we need to ask them some questions first and find out what their need is and if we can solve it, you know. If not, let's get off the call. And if we can by asking questions, you know how to pitch it, it in a way that shows them how it's going to help benefit them with what they value, with what they want, with what they need. And so I agree with you you can't just go in thinking that you know the value for every customer. Each customer has a different need.
Speaker 2:And then here's the other challenging part, though, from being somebody that hosts software demos. Some people want to go through that process, right, because it makes sense. I think that that makes sense. But then there's some people that say, no, we just want to jump straight into it and see the stuff, and what's funny and ironic about that situation? And for me I'm like, look, I'm going to, I'm going to go through it and I'll ask my questions throughout the demo.
Speaker 2:But a lot of times, when you're asking those questions in advance, you're doing that to cater the demo or maybe, sorry, tailor the demo um in a in a specific way, and to answer those questions that you know are probably coming along, because when you've done enough of them, you can anticipate that those are going to come up and you can get in front of them. So, like I always like to get in front of what we don't have, you know, when it comes to a crm, whether it's in, you know certain integrations or just you know certain features that people may ask about, and just be very candid up front, just in case that may be a deal breaker, cause it may save their time, if that's like the one thing that they need, and I don't want them finding out about that later on. But I also feel that it's a trust builder, if I can get in front of that and if I know it's something that others do care about.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I agree with you on that to door they used to have this thing called stop. It was just the stop sign and they said whenever you hear buyers signals, then you always remember the word stop and that is shut up, take out your pen, because we were taking orders, we were literally writing orders on paper, and so they'd always say if you hear buying signals, you just stop and take the order. I think there's some validity to that. But on the flip side too, especially selling software, software the last thing you want to do is sell something to somebody and then there's an expectation that was missed because you didn't go through that. Or you know they they thought it was one thing, because they heard it from a user, maybe, and that user doesn't sell it as well as you do.
Speaker 1:In terms of like, just asking the right questions, they might give their highlights. Or this is the greatest thing since sliced bread you got to buy it. Then they buy it and they aren't happy with it because maybe there was something missed along the way. So I think those questions are really important to ask and to help communicate the value specifically to that person. So there's a lot to be gained from that process, especially selling software. So I think that's worth kind of looking into, that's for sure. Also, you got a YouTube channel that you've been building up. I've had the privilege of being in some of these videos that you've got going on YouTube, which I love You've got you got a couple of clips that you've had. There's one that you had with Christina Booker talking about rejection and how preparation goes a long way in prospecting. Talk a little bit about that as well, too, like the idea of like you know how, how you take rejection and how you use that in future opportunities.
Speaker 2:For sure. So I mean, I think in any sale, like again, when you've been through enough conversations, you start to hear some of the same objections, rejections, all those things as time goes on and at a certain point you can either predict or you should sort of just know that this is going to happen and how you're going to answer to those. And so it's just strictly around preparation. Christina had a lot of really good points on this. She said you know, hey, when I'm, when I'm cold, calling out to shippers, there's typically five, six things that I'm going to hear. And for her, and I think for any freight broker, freight agent, it's always just going to be around.
Speaker 2:Do you know what you're going to respond with when they say that, Right? So if you know that a common one is hey, you know, we're all set right now on our, on our carriers or brokers, or you know, like, not moving anything right now. Whatever the case may be, you just want to know hey, how are you going to respond to that? Because if you're fumbling, you don't really know how to respond and you're just not prepared. And when you're not prepared, of course it's not going to be a successful call. So just thinking it makes a lot of sense when you can think about hey, how are they going to respond when you bring these things up? What questions do you think that they'll have in advance? And, at the end of the day, preparation is going to help you not be nervous, it's going to help you be more confident going into the conversation, and then, obviously, you can speed up the sales cycle by being able to go through those things a lot more efficiently.
Speaker 1:Yeah, man, I totally agree with that. I always go back to my door-to-door days. I remember this there was one time where I was with a trainer I was a trainee at that time and I was with one of my trainer and we were walking up to this door and there was a no solicitation sign in the window.
Speaker 1:No solicitation sign in the window and my first reaction is let's get out of here, I don't want to go into this, they don't want us here. And this guy's like no, no, no, let's go in. I was like what he goes? Yeah, just watch this, let's go in. So we go in and of course the lady she's like guys, hey, there's a no solicitation sign, please, we have. You guys had that thing. And this lady kind of said something you know, but we're not interested. He goes, I get it. Listen, we sell no solicitation signs that are much bigger, they're much brighter. We'll keep people, guys like us, out of here. And I can get you one of those today, along with a three pack of paper, and save you a trip to the store. What do coming? And he was so calm, he knew what to say and we got the sale.
Speaker 1:And I remember walking out of that store like I can't believe that, like he went into a place where he knew they didn't want him there and he sold him because he was prepared for it and that taught me a lot about being prepared for objections and how to handle those, how to even make them laugh a little bit. I learned this if you can make somebody laugh, you got a really great shot. You got a really great shot with them, so it's important to know what those are. Let me tell you another little trick. If you know what objections you're hearing on a regular basis, get your customers to speak to that objection. So if you have your customers that will do testimonial content. Ask them a question specifically related to that objection and have them talk about why they did it in spite of that, it's a great point.
Speaker 1:It's such a great tool to use, because now it's not me trying to overcome the objection, it's my customer telling them why they shouldn't wait. They should get this right now. You know, whatever, whatever the objection might be. So there's a lot of value that can be taken away from knowing that what objections are coming, or that this every no is one step closer. Yes, the only way to get to yeses is through no's. There's no other way, you know.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean, that's just the game, and especially if you haven't had a chance to actually explore it with somebody you know, of course, if you see that no solicitation sign, you're going to think, hey, there's, there's no opportunity there. But I mean again, like your, your trainer, he's been there, done that, he understands it and that's a real.
Speaker 1:That's actually a super clever way to get around that, because everybody else, I mean, if I saw that, I was like oh, I'm good, I know I was so genius and it just it showed me that when you're prepared and when you're ready for it, you can have confidence and you can actually overcome those things and do it. In a way that was really funny. I mean, this lady was laughing and I guarantee you that she hates she hated door-to-door salespeople and she was laughing. We sold her paper, we sat down, we started going through office what else do you need? Rehashed her for some other products and got that. I was just blown away. I couldn't believe it, but I I'll never forget that uh experience. His name is donnie boyer, by the way. Shout out to donnie boyer, shout out my guy, good friend, donnie's, donnie's one-up guy man. He's still doing it today. He's still doing door-to-door stuff.
Speaker 1:He's phenomenal door-to-door oh yeah, but he but he runs an office now of door-to-door professionals, so he's not he's not always going out in the field, but he still can do like that's the thing, like he can always hop back in the field and be successful. He just knows how to do it, but now he's a manager of people that do that.
Speaker 2:So pretty impressive, incredible Door-to-door has got to be much different today than it was 20 years ago.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean there's less people actually in offices, number one so there's less opportunities to do that. But at the same time I also think that maybe people might welcome it more because there's probably fewer people in the office. A lot of companies have these hybrid models where there's fewer people in the office, fewer people to talk to. If I'm an extrovert and I'm in an office and nobody's there, I welcome somebody coming in to talk, so I don't know, it's kind of 50-50. Everybody's different. Everybody's different. That's for sure. True story.
Speaker 1:If you can get people laughing on a sales call, you got a great shot. Bring some humor to your sales out there, folks, all right. Last thing Talk about this before we have a little fun today is you also put a post out there about follow-up? I believe in this. This is huge. You said the amount of leads you have does not matter if you do not follow up. How you follow up matters, and it takes effort to do that. Talk about some of your best strategies for follow up and how you think about that with sales-CRM, to help salespeople with their follow up is so critical.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So I mean, it all depends Is it a totally cold lead or is it somebody that you've actually engaged with? I think if it's somebody that you've engaged with, I mean, the reason why I'm such a CRM nerd is because to me it's like I can't do sales without it. I just forget everything. And the thing that I love about it is like I don't know I'm an odd lover of you know the six months go by and then all of a sudden that lead pops back up. I've got all the notes and I know exactly how to follow up with, like. That to me feels like the best overall buying experience that you can provide to somebody. You know, and of course, not every time it's going to work out. But, um, it's like, yeah, I totally forgot about that conversation, that person.
Speaker 2:Six months goes by faster than I think we all think and it can come back up. But you know, if it's, I think if it's a cold lead you've never engaged with. I always love the principle learn this from josh brown, who, who's super big on LinkedIn about just poking the bear and again, it kind of starts with finding a need, but it's asking a really strategic question to learn more about their situation and do they find themselves with that kind of issue or problem. I think he's very good about that and I would say what a lot of people do that, I see, is they'll write this big book of like hey, here's all my services, this, this, that, and it looks, you know, just like a lot of text. And when you get a lot of text from a stranger that you've never seen before, it's very easy to just click arrow or exit out and just trash delete right.
Speaker 2:So I really like his method of that because it's just a very simple, like one line question and you're just trying to p peak interest right and curiosity and trying to learn one nugget of information, versus go for the close and then, I think, in followups, after you've actually engaged with somebody whether it's on a call or a meeting, demo, whatever it may be um, it it's really just one, like verbally, were you able to get some next steps? And I really learned this at Tesla when I was there. But when you get a no, there's obviously a reason. You got to know right. There's, there's pieces of information or something that they still have to think about or or still have to figure out, and I think your job is as a salesperson sales advisors to figure out what that is and like that's the reason you're following up with. So you, you know over there it was, was it the trade-in, was it the financing, was it the leasing, was it the configuration, timing like there's always something and you want to make that your follow-up and not just say, hey, are you ready to move forward like they would already if they if they were, they would have already moved forward. But you need to go with the reason as to why, um, and one of my trainers there, one of the coaches that was a regional coach, and some people like this, some people don't, but mentally always put myself in the position that if I was to call them back and say, hey, this is Joshua Tesla, joshua Sales Dash reason for my call is blank.
Speaker 2:That makes me get back into the emotion of okay, well, why did they not move forward? And I got to have that specific reasoning in terms of you know what we're actually talking about for the follow-up. It shouldn't just be are you ready to go. It should be about the specific things. You know information needs, that they have timing, teammates to get involved, whatever it may be, and that's what I think makes it a little bit easier. But yeah, that's kind of what I would say around faults and it's just do them and do them over and over. People get busy, you get busy, I get busy, people we are engaging with get busy and stuff pops up. So I think, professionally and persistently, staying in front is always a good thing and as a salesperson, your goal is to get to a yes or a no and no's are okay.
Speaker 1:Yeah, no's are great. In fact, I heard somebody once say that no's are really just unanswered questions. There's a question in their mind that they don't have an answer to yet. That's why it's a no. So it's just digging a little bit deeper. And my best tip for follow up on top of everything you said, just remember my best tip, one of my extra tips, is this is when you follow up, reference that because it gives them something, a good feeling, something to talk about. Oh, we paid attention, oh, I didn't even know. I said that, whatever it is, but it just gives a good feeling when you follow up, as opposed to just, yeah, are you ready to go? Hey, can we schedule the call?
Speaker 2:try to do something yeah, have some kind of personal relationship if you can, or just know something personally. You know sometimes, sometimes it is fun not talking software and talking about some other real life stuff. That's going on.
Speaker 1:So yeah, I mean, if you're a prospect of mine and I want to reach out, I might have sent you a text. You know, this morning. Can you believe that game last night? It was amazing. I can't believe they won it. Just we start talking about something else and then eventually might get into hey, let's jump back on a call and talk through. You know, whatever it is like that's. I think that's a real easy way to do that and it just makes people comfortable because it's personal. You feel like somebody cares about you. They actually know that they're talking about something you care about. I think that matters, so a lot of good stuff man.
Speaker 1:All right. Again, these are always questions I don't think about. It could be funny, it could be serious, it could be a good question, it could be a dud, I don't know. Let's see what it is. Today's random question of the day is who actually tests the specific dog food when?
Speaker 2:they say that it has a new and improved flavor.
Speaker 1:That's a good question. How do we? Yeah, Like you know, when they come up with a new flavor and they're talking about it, do people actually try that, only dogs try it.
Speaker 2:Who actually tests the specific dog food?
Speaker 1:Oh, like the people, not necessarily the organization like the FDA or somebody? I mean, do people eat the dog food to test it out? Do they have dogs? Try it out and see if they like it?
Speaker 2:It's got to be just dogs. There's no way that people are actually eating it. But also, don't put anything past people, man, I don't. You know, you see something. You see some weird stuff out there on the internet, so I wouldn't be surprised you hop on tiktok and there's just some guy that's just testing out all the purina cat dog.
Speaker 1:Sorry, so that would be a great tiktok channel. But if you were a dog food taster, do you think you'd let anybody know about that? Like, how do you have a shot of like you getting married someday or having a girlfriend if you're a dog?
Speaker 2:Yeah, no, I don't, I don't think you do, I don't think that's yeah no. I don't, I don't think you do. That would be a great.
Speaker 1:Tik TOK account, though that would be a great I would. I would watch that. I would check that out. Question all right, josh, we get out of here, but before we do that, what's next for sales? Dash crm. It's summer, no events going on. What are you guys working on? What are you guys doing?
Speaker 2:man. So I am two things, I think. Uh, one, we're like diving a lot more into our carrier side and looking at some some pretty cool other freight tech integrations for the second half of the year that we're going to be looking at. So really, really excited about that, very happy with a lot of the feedback that we've gotten on the product for where it currently is, but really happy or excited about the direction that we're going. Now it's just time to execute, so excited about that.
Speaker 1:Who's your ideal customers right now? It was brokers. Are you selling to carriers now as well?
Speaker 2:I would say primarily brokerages and agencies, carriers too, if they have a sales team. So just anybody that's reaching out, and particularly to, to shippers. For the most part that's looking to do prospecting, but we do have a shipper and a carrier side. The carrier side's getting stronger and stronger. Um, it's a very simplistic system, but there's some good stuff that we're working on right now.
Speaker 1:Um where, even in the next month or two, don't use, but after that that's a good thing. A simplistic system is good. You, you know something. I'd rather have a simple system that I use a hundred percent of, than something that's too complex I use 10% of, like that's you know, agreed.
Speaker 2:No, we don't. We're. We're trying not to be one of those companies that just adds to add. You know all the feedback that we get and really what's on our roadmaps, typically from the brokerages agencies that we do work with that requests things, and when we hear the same things over and over again, it's typically what we're building. So, yeah, the and a lot of the interest that we've had has been on the carrier side, so we're doing that and then I don't have too too much to share right now but working on onboarding first sales and operations rep right now.
Speaker 1:Hey, I mean that's crazy, it's kind of wild. You got to transition into those kind of things. I'm in a similar boat in terms of operations on my side of getting myself out of the seat of some of that kind of stuff. Do you have built in the system, do you have a the ability for customers to submit change requests and for the customers to vote on it?
Speaker 2:No, we don't have one. I think we, at a certain point, we will look at implementing one of those boards. I saw one. It was super expensive. So I'm gonna be honest with you, that's the reason why we haven't implemented it yet, because the monthly cost was, in my opinion, pretty outrageous. I kind of have an own internal system that I'll say, hey, like this company, this company, this company. And then when we start to hear it multiple times, it's really when we know probably need to prioritize it a little bit more. Some of them will joke, be like well, tell me who your customers are so I can call them and then try to get them to pitch these things more to you. But yeah, that's kind of the way we do it now. But eventually I think we will move to more of a board like that. That's more public and people can do sort of the, the upvotes on what they would like to see and then also submit new ideas dude, I think you can almost do that with google forms.
Speaker 1:To start off with. You know, if somebody submits a change request, put it into a google form and send it out to your customer base and have a vote on it right there, just like almost like a notification.
Speaker 2:Have a vote, yeah I just want to blow them up with emails because, honestly, we do get a decent amount of requests on some very interesting stuff. I've seen this other SaaS tool that's out there and they have a really cool public board. They send out one email and say hey, here's two, three new feedbacks that we've received, but you can click and see everything, so you can see what's most upvoted yeah. Yeah, well, it's a live board.
Speaker 2:So you can actually see what's got the most upvotes and like how it's actually moving day in and day out.
Speaker 1:So I think, right, but the email notification is monthly, right, you send it out maybe once a month. You let them know, hey, go check the board, kind of thing could be part of a newsletter. It'd be good. But I think you totally build that out, man, that'd be really fast.
Speaker 2:Yeah, see that yeah, we do do a weekly newsletter. I send it out almost every week, just kind of depends if we actually have good stuff to add. So I'm skipping this week and going into next week, based on an update that we're doing tomorrow or Thursday. But it's a good way to like people read it, which is cool. I get people that say, hey, it's good to keep up with the updates. Of course, not everybody reads it, but that in particular, has been a good way to just kind of stay engaged with our customer base.
Speaker 1:Yeah, very cool man, josh. Hey, listen, man. Always good to have you on the show. Thanks for sharing your knowledge about sales and for building a product for the industry. I think it's just awesome. And thanks for being on the show. Maybe I'll have to come back and we'll cut it up. Maybe do some more website roasting here soon.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we got to do some more website roasting soon. I think that that would be good, but always good man. Thanks for for hosting. Hope to see you in the next couple months and play a little bit of golf and chop it up we are going to play a little golf, that's for sure.
Speaker 1:Anybody wants to check out uh josh's youtube channel? Just go to youtube and search for sales dash crm and you'll see uh his youtube channel. Subscribe to it. Check out all the good content he's putting out there. And uh, I gotta get you out of here with your song, man. I mean we've got to listen to more of this. I mean it's just oh yeah.
Speaker 2:I need to see the live performance.
Speaker 1:To that man. But hey, thanks for coming by, but we'll talk to you real soon. We'll see you, bud. Thanks, Trey, good to see you, man.
Speaker 1:All right, everybody, I'm not going to wrap that. We're going to let that go for right now, but want to start. I want to end the program with a new segment called the tip of the week. We'll come up with a better name later, but today's tip is about sales and it kind of goes with what josh was talking about. You know, the saying goes that time kills all deals.
Speaker 1:So here are two tactics that will help you close more deals, things I've used in the past in my sales experience. One is openly discuss timelines and next steps on sales calls. Okay, so talk about that and try to get agreement with here's where our timelines are, this is where we're, and so everybody's on the same page in terms of what to expect of the timeline and the next steps of the sales process. I think it's very, very helpful. And then when you're on that call this is number two make sure that you always schedule the next call on the current call, if it's needed. If there's a next step or next call that needs to take place, make sure you schedule it on that call. Don't email later and try to schedule it. It just wastes time. Everybody's right there. Grab your calendar, look real quick, get that call scheduled and keep it moving because, as they say, time kills all deals, so don't let too much time go by on your deals.
Speaker 1:Also, a couple of announcements. We are moving forward towards the Broker Carrier Summit which is coming up in October October 23rd through 25th, down in Fort Worth, texas. Hope to see you there If you're a broker or a carrier, especially if you're looking for like-minded partners in the industry, people who are going to take care of you and want you to succeed in your business go to brokercarriersummitcom to learn all about that and to register right now for the event. It's going to be a great time down there in Fort Worth. Again, just one of the most phenomenal events that are out there.
Speaker 1:Also, take a moment and subscribe to our YouTube channel right here, and if you're not on YouTube right now, you can search for beta podcast network, beta underscore podcast underscore network. Subscribe to that so you don't miss any of the content. You get a notification for every episode of standing out, as well as our other content that is on the YouTube channel as well. And again one more thank you to our friends over at SPI logistics for sponsoring the show. We appreciate that. Check them out at successspi3plcom. And until next time, remember, friends.