We're joined by Kary Jablonski, the CEO of Trucker Tools, Kary Jablonski. We discuss going beyond the mechanics of closing a deal. Kerry emphasizes the crucial role of specificity in showcasing value to clients. Through her lens, we gain a clearer understanding of how to pinpoint a client's needs and articulate the direct benefits of our solutions. She also stresses the significance of building trust, which often hinges on our ability to present ourselves with honesty and effectiveness.
Thanks again to your our sponsor, GoPayhawk. Stop overpaying and start thriving with GoPayhawk's payment process solutions. Visit GoPayhawk.com today and use code TLS24 to learn more about receiving a $250 credit on your payment processing solutions.
We're joined by Kary Jablonski, the CEO of Trucker Tools, Kary Jablonski. We discuss going beyond the mechanics of closing a deal. Kerry emphasizes the crucial role of specificity in showcasing value to clients. Through her lens, we gain a clearer understanding of how to pinpoint a client's needs and articulate the direct benefits of our solutions. She also stresses the significance of building trust, which often hinges on our ability to present ourselves with honesty and effectiveness.
Thanks again to your our sponsor, GoPayhawk. Stop overpaying and start thriving with GoPayhawk's payment process solutions. Visit GoPayhawk.com today and use code TLS24 to learn more about receiving a $250 credit on your payment processing solutions.
Welcome to episode seven of the Last Sell, where we dive into the sales game with stories from industry leaders. I'm your co-host, Kevin Hill, here with Richie Daigle, as always. How are you doing today, Richie?
Speaker 2:Yeah, doing great, doing great. This was episode seven. Yeah, we're moving along Kerry Jablonski, ceo of Trucker Tools, along Carrie Jablonski, ceo of Trucker Tools, really fantastic, individual, super smart. Yeah, I'm always impressed when I'm hearing Carrie talk and just having conversations with her Super approachable, you know, just great person to chat with. Was excited to have her on the show and she had great stories. She delivered. She came through with some really good stuff. Yeah, what were your big takeaways from this one?
Speaker 1:The importance of channel sales right and learning that early, Learning the difference between retail or knocking on each door and then having sellers in line with different channels and different markets to push the product. So I think that was a really big lesson that she learned very early and it's probably one of the keys to her success, as well as working on selling yourself and what to do and what not to do.
Speaker 2:Yep and listening to her talk about the difference between working smarter and not harder. You know, I think everybody in the sales a lot of people in sales are real quick to beat their chest about how hard they grind. You know how hard I work. Oh, I put in 100 hours this week and I made 10,000 cold calls. And I'm a grinder. I'm just a worker when it comes down to it, and part of me when I hear that is like how much of that is necessary, you know, is that the best way? Are you maximizing your impact that way, or is there a better way to where you can grow your impact by leveraging other sources or channels? You know, and Kerry figured that out quite early, earlier than most people probably could guess- you better believe it, she really has.
Speaker 1:And also, another key point that is really interesting is the discussion around questioning your assumptions. Right, once you get to a stalled deal, deal to be able to go back to the drawing board. Take all your assumptions and question them all and try a different tact, because every company is different. Every bureaucracy is different. She goes into detail about that and I think that's a very important uh lesson. You know, put your pride aside, question what you've been doing on this deal and change it if necessary.
Speaker 2:And learn and analyze things after the fact. I mean, you are going to see whether you win or lose a deal. You're going to learn and see way more information and details about that deal after it's done or not done or like closed in some fashion. Then you are in the middle of it period, like you're never going to be able to identify all the levers and variables when you're in the midst of it, and even after the fact you'll see more of them, but probably still not all of them, and so you have to have that humility in place to where you know you never turn off the curiosity faucet, so to speak.
Speaker 1:You're exactly right, and with that said, gopayhawk. So if you're collecting invoices, you're trying to get paid quickly. You need a credit card processing and a payment processing company to help you out. Gopayhawk is that company. You can go to wwwgopayhawkcom, sign up for a demo and kind of see how everything works and claim your $250 credit with GoPayHawk. Tell them that you got it from the last sell and they will set you up with that deal. But without any further ado again, let's get straight to the podcast.
Speaker 2:Let's get into it. So, carrie, I'm embarrassed to ask, but I have to ask what is the right way to pronounce your last name, because people butcher my last name frequently and I want to make sure I hear from you like the correct pronunciation I appreciate you asking that it is pronounced exactly as it's spelt jabonski jabonski got it because I think I butchered your name on a.
Speaker 1:Put that coffee down at a freight race event, even after I asked you. I think I got on camera and still, but burst for whatever.
Speaker 3:I forgive you. We're all good.
Speaker 2:And we're yeah, and so where? Where are you sitting today, carrie, like where? Remind me where you're based out of.
Speaker 3:I'm based out of Chicago, so I I'm at my office here in a bit of a odd phone booth, which is why, if you're watching us, the video might look a little strange, but I'm I'm just in the heart of Chicago right now nice, nice are you always from Chicago?
Speaker 3:or have you moved to different places, or yeah, I have, um, I've been in Chicago for somehow this is, I think, coming up on five years, which is wild that I've been through five Chicago winters and they really have not been as bad as they say they are. And I know everyone said this winter in particular has been really warm. But even the last four were not horrible. But that's probably because I'm from Boston originally, so I'm very used to it and I would take cold temperatures over several feet of snow and fortunately get a lot less snow out here than we do in New England, so it's been easy. But yeah, I've lived. I've actually lived all over. I grew up in New Jersey and then mostly Massachusetts, right outside Boston, and then went to college down in DC, spent some time in DC and then lived abroad, briefly in Jakarta, indonesia, and then for a while in Mexico City before I came to the Midwest. So I've been in Central Time now for seven or eight years and Chicago is currently home.
Speaker 2:All those places sound cold until you got to Indonesia and Mexico City. So how did you deal with that? That had to have been a bit of a shock dealing with that sort of heat in the summertime.
Speaker 3:Yes, indonesia was very, very hot. There is no sugarcoating that. Mexico City is actually at elevation in quite a bit. It's 50% higher than Denver is. It's about a mile and a half of elevation, around 75,000, 8,000 feet. So it can get warm but it's not hot Like. Dc is probably the hottest place I've lived for a long period of time. You know it just gets gross and sticky in the middle of the summer. There Mexico City was pretty, you know, get up to 75-ish, but never significantly higher than that?
Speaker 1:Where were you doing in Mexico City?
Speaker 3:I was working for Uber, so I worked on ride sharing and Uber Eats in Latin America and Mexico City was the home office, so I spent about a year and a half there, working all across the region, but based in Mexico.
Speaker 1:What's different about living abroad?
Speaker 3:Oh, I mean it's such an awesome experience for anyone who has the good fortune to be able to do it. It sounds so obvious and cliche, but it does Just. It expands the way you think about the world and it's like as someone who just lived in america my whole life and had not traveled abroad extensively I it just opens up your eyes to like there are these other massive regions of the world where everything is done differently and handled differently. And, yeah, I just felt like it was like a little piece of my brain was unlocked to realize, oh my God, there is a massive, massive world out there, far beyond just what's going on in America day to day. So kind of that still impacts me today when I think about it From a day to day perspective, though, it is really humbling to feel like you never quite are on the inside. There's always going to be some sort of cultural difference.
Speaker 3:I had wonderful, wonderful, wonderful colleagues in Mexico who were so welcoming. It was a really global crew. It was not just Mexicans, it was all over Latin America and all over the world. So it was really fortunate to have a really diverse group of friends there. But yeah, just, you're just kind of constantly aware that this is not my, my home, and, uh, that can be exhausting after a while do you still travel a fair amount?
Speaker 2:do you still try to travel internationally to kind of scratch that itch, or, yeah, the country yeah, the last time I left the country was in the fall.
Speaker 3:I was down in Chile and in Argentina. Actually, my boyfriend is doing a graduate degree and he was able to spend some time abroad as part of that, so he was in Santiago for an extended period of time. So I went down to visit him and then we went to Argentina over Thanksgiving, which was really awesome. Highly recommend to anyone who's never been. It's beautiful. We're actually there for the presidential election, which is really interesting. Don't have any big international trips on the books this year. Lots of domestic travel. Now. I've been home for the last two weeks, but starting next week I'll be hitting the road every single week of April. So getting ready for that.
Speaker 2:So, speaking of travel, if there's one place that you can go for vacation, like one last vacation, like where are you going? Your favorite destination, either someplace that you've been before, that you want to go back to, or if you just have one more vacation left, where in the world are you going to go?
Speaker 3:That is such a hard question. My mind initially went to Maine. Actually, I grew up in New England. I grew up going to Maine a lot and in the summertime it's so, so beautiful. Uh, I think Maine slogan on their license plates is the way life should be. So probably go up to Lake Sebago and Maine and spend some time on the lake Just enjoying the summertime there.
Speaker 2:And follow up question what is your favorite beverage? Could be alcoholic, non-alcoholic. What?
Speaker 3:what does it?
Speaker 2:like to sip on.
Speaker 3:Oh man, okay, I'll do. I love chocolate milk. What is it? Fair Life chocolate milk. It's so delicious I often crave that. My go-to drink is a hazy IPA, though A good hazy is tough to beat for me.
Speaker 2:Okay, so imagine fast forward into the future. You're done working. You know work is way behind you and you are. What was this lake in Maine? You said Lake Sebago.
Speaker 3:Lake Sebago yeah.
Speaker 2:You were at Lake Sebago. You still have the chocolate mustache, you know, from the chocolate milk that you just finished. You just, you know, forgot to wipe it. But it's been long enough so that the hazy IPA that you have in your hand doesn't feel like it's going to be some weird mix of chocolate milk and hazy IPA.
Speaker 2:But you're sitting here on the side of the lake and work is done. You're retired, you're living life the way it should be in Maine and you're thinking back. You're just having a moment of looking back over the course of your career. What was the last sale, what was the last thing that you ever sold, or what was the last project that you worked on in your professional career before retiring?
Speaker 3:I sold my own company. That's got to be it. I built something and I took it all the way through to a sale. So TBD is exactly what that is going to be. But I would love to be a founder someday, start something and fully see it off on my own.
Speaker 1:I take it as a next chapter in your life. Right, that's down the road and something that you're thinking about eventually.
Speaker 3:Exactly exactly. I'm a long ways away from that right now. I've got my hands full and really loving what we're building with trucker tools. But it's always been a dream of mine to start my own business and sell it. And it could be. It could be big, it could be small, it could be, I think you know, owning a bookstore or something like that. It would be an absolute blast and dream. So TBD exactly what it is, but it's something that I have built with a team of people I really care about.
Speaker 2:Do you always have? I find myself with various ideas that are bouncing around in my brain. From time to time I share some of these ideas with Kevin or with other friends. I'll say do you think this could work? Or like, what are your thoughts on this? And other friends I'll say do you think this could work? Or like what are your thoughts on this? And do you feel the same way. Do you constantly have like little micro ideas that are always like I wonder if this could be something, or I wonder if it's this, and do you criticize? Like what do you do with those ideas? Like what, what do you have to? What does an idea have to do to be something that you would act upon?
Speaker 3:yeah all the time. And then sometimes I realize I've just invented something that already exists. Like I think I invented railroads. The other day when I was like what if, instead of having to drive, you could just put something on a box and it would move on a preset rail, I was like, oh, that is a train, so we already have that. Good thing, we already have that going. So, yes, I do, I do think about that all the time and talk about all the time. Um and uh. The nice thing about at work at least you know, we have the resources to be able to build and move fast at trucker tools, that when it's kind of within the context of freight tech, I'm able to execute really quickly on those things, um, which is really really fulfilling. But I I have them all the time, just kind of walking down the street and talking to friends.
Speaker 1:Do you have an angle or something that would really create excitement? Because we all talk to entrepreneurs every single day in what we do and I find some really great ideas, right, people have some really great ideas. They're executing those, but it's just not in my wheelhouse, right. Nothing that I would want to drop everything and go spend 60 80 hours a week, but you know I have a lot of respect for them, but I have my own little wheelhouse that I'm always looking for something that you know it's like a bug you get bitten by the bug and go all in. Do you have any kind of lanes or things that always pique your interest?
Speaker 3:Yeah, so I mean, obviously, anything in brokerage tech right now is really interesting to me and I'm really interested in particular around how we're evolving. I think there's a lot of SaaS products obviously developed in the brokerage space over the last let's call it five to seven years, but we're really moving into the era of DAS and data products and how data products can be augmented on top of those SaaS products. So that's something I'm thinking a lot about right now at at work itself. Outside of, I mean, I have tons of other interests beyond what. What we're doing at Trevor tools and in freight tech.
Speaker 3:I would love, I love the idea of building something around community for women and empowerment for women. So I think a lot about what are things I could be doing there and how could I support um women with them developing their own careers. Um, I, I really like I would love to start at like a. I live in a neighborhood without a great bagel shop. I would love to start a bagel shop. You know there's there's a lot of like very kind of brass tacks businesses too that I, I, I think I would love to execute out on beyond the realm of like just software right now.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I love that there's certain, like small businesses that are more community oriented, like a breakfast restaurant or a coffee shop or a bookstore or, you know, a bed and breakfast or in some beautiful location or something like that. That are kind of lifestyle businesses, that are kind of attractive as well.
Speaker 3:Exactly, exactly, so, if you think back in time.
Speaker 2:What was the first sale in time? What was the first sale? And this could be you selling an idea or a concept, or it could be selling something as part of a fundraiser when you're in high school or middle school or something. But what is the first idea or item that you ever remember selling?
Speaker 3:Yeah, the actual item that I first ever remember selling is I think it was, it must have been elementary school, not even quite middle school for me, but we would have a wrapping paper fundraiser every year where basically the idea was to raise money for school by selling wrapping paper to your parents and their friends and other people about town. And that is what I remember as my first introduction to like here's how you be commercial and um, um. And the point I really remember is that I think that's how I discovered channel sales, because I remember a bunch of friends would be going door to door trying to say hey you want some wrapping paper, mrs So-and-so, and I had two parents who worked.
Speaker 3:My mom and dad both worked and went into offices by having them sell on my behalf, by bringing in the sheet of paper that we had to take orders on and placing it with some cookies on a conference table in the lunchroom and having them do some of that sales development on my behalf. So I remember being very, very successful with that, and everyone else around town was trying to tap into the same people locally in the neighborhood and I was able to. They worked downtown in the city, so I was able to tap into those networks with people who did not live in the town I grew up in, who were not being inundated by, you know, tens and dozens of middle schoolers to buy wrapping paper, which was an exciting realization for me and still informs how I think about how do you scale and get into new markets.
Speaker 1:It's a very important lesson, isn't it? You know they're going to knock on every door or you're going to get a channel partnerships and channel sales and kind of retail versus wholesale sort of quandary. It's very important, isn't it?
Speaker 3:For sure, for sure. Yeah, it's always nice to unlock something and you're like, oh wow, this is actually a lot easier than I thought it would be, as opposed to me having to put in the sweat equity of going door to door. If I can just put that on someone else who's willing to work on my behalf, hey, I'll take that. Work smart, not hard.
Speaker 2:I love that you figured all this out in elementary school.
Speaker 3:I mean that's, I think I only put it like all together as a framework later in life. Put it like all together as a framework later in life. But uh, I do remember realizing that, oh, I can move really fast if I just get us to someone else, to go to a different place and talk to new people did you?
Speaker 2:did you like file like a report? Afterwards you have to do a project of like here's why, here's how channel sales will help you with wrapping paper sales, and what I learned and did you. I could just just see designing some project in fourth grade of the successfulness of channel sales.
Speaker 3:I was such a nerd growing up and absolutely loved schoolwork and doing well and projects. I don't think I actually had to submit anything, but I can rest assured that I had plenty of other like nice posters uh, that I that I put together for school. I really must put together a good poster after a project, it's so satisfying.
Speaker 2:Did you do the, the, the like, the folding?
Speaker 3:you know what I'm talking about like, the big trifolds, yeah, yeah yeah I mean, I was so into like projects and I remember making a trifold poster in my free time for fun about weather. I must have been like in fourth or fifth grade and, as opposed to doing what normal kids would do on the weekend, I decided to pull together. I don't know, I must have been reading some book about weather. I was like, oh, I'm going to put this into a poster format and I think that is it's really sad to say aloud, but um, unfortunately how I was as a kid and I do think it does translate into how I operate as an adult now and that I I think about a very structured thinker and I like taking big, nebulous ideas and making them very, very palatable and digestible, and that's what those trifle posters did for me excel is probably a really good tool that that you like to use quite a bit, because you can put the numbers down in a structured format.
Speaker 1:You can run any scenario you kind of want to and play around with it.
Speaker 3:You can have my team. Google Sheets is my love language. I love it. I use it constantly. I run the business off of it. It's pretty sad.
Speaker 1:Doesn't everybody?
Speaker 3:Yeah, that's true. Yeah, definitely. When I was at Uber, we were like I don't know $40 million excuse me, $40 billion business. That company was running off of Google Sheets. Still, it's crazy, it is the ultimate tool for business.
Speaker 1:It really is. It really is, um. Going back to sales, uh, so, so there's your first sell, what was kind of your easiest sell that you ever wandered into and thought it was going to be much more complicated than it was maybe not yeah and it just, it's everything just clicked.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I think sometimes, when it comes to selling myself, I've had a bunch of sales where it's been easier than I expected and I don't mean that to come off not without humility. But I think when I think about some job interviews over the years and the amount of the stakes that I felt going into them and then realizing if I'm going to show up really well, if I really truly do just show up as myself and tell stories like from the heart, without trying to make myself seem like I am something I'm not, there have been some that have clicked and gone a lot better than I think I expected them to. So, yeah, when it really comes to selling myself, I think that's because it's a skill I've been working on now for 20, 30 years. I've really been able to just hone that and be able to show up and show up authentically.
Speaker 1:It's essential, isn't it? Yeah, you have to sell yourself before you can sell anything else.
Speaker 3:It's everything, whether it's a client, employer, to anybody right?
Speaker 1:Absolutely, Absolutely. It's one of the hardest things to do, too. It's one of the hardest things to grasp, right how? Do you go about it. I'm not really sure myself. Yeah, kind of fall into it I've spent so much.
Speaker 3:I think it's such an iterative process. I mean, I've been, I've been working on it and in a self-aware kind of like, oh, I'm trying to think about how do I sell myself, what is the value I can bring to a group? Since I was 18 and getting a job in college I've been I've been going through just this constant process of thinking okay, what is my story? How have I gotten to where I am? What were the major inflection points? And now, how do I use that to talk about what value I can bring moving forward? It's something I've been working on for well over 20 years now.
Speaker 1:Yeah, because you do. You have to leave out all the boring parts or the non-essentials, right the least dramatic points, and really hone in on those inflection points.
Speaker 3:Exactly.
Speaker 1:To bite sides. Sound bites almost Exactly exactly.
Speaker 2:Just like a weird contradiction that's with selling yourself, right, because if I walk into a meeting and I'm like Kevin Carrie, let me tell you about how amazing Richie is and this is like Richie is just incredible you won't even believe it. You, I feel like you're both like all right, how quickly can I leave? Like how long do I have to stay? This guy is making my skin crawl. I want to run away. So, like this, this whole idea of selling yourself, the more you do it straightforward, forward, the worse it is. But then you have to be like indirect, you have to be more kind of I don't know objective in how you talk about different milestones and then also more value and other people focused.
Speaker 2:I feel like as authentic and you have to be, authentic about those things as well, in order to come off as authentic. You know, and it's about those things as well, in order to come off as authentic.
Speaker 1:And it's kind of like when you're selling a product and you come in and you just vomit features and benefits. It covers everything. It's the same thing, right? People just tune out because it's too much, they're not interested in it. I think you have to share things that people are interested in and have kind of given you a clue that they're interested in this, or they have a past experience in X and you share your experience with that and make it sound impressive, I suppose. But keep it short and sweet in a lot of respects.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and I think you have to do discovery as well. When you're thinking about how do I sell myself much like when you're selling a software product, for example figuring out, ok, what actually matters to this other person and this all sounds so nefarious when I'm saying it, but it really does just come down to being curious about other people and understanding what their motivations are, why they care, why they're there, and then the more you can figure that out, the more you can tailor your own story to really hit the high points that are there, similar high points, and I think that's also a really effective.
Speaker 1:if you go back to yourself right if you have 10 features right, and we've all been buyers of, of technology or anything right? Maybe I just only care about one thing and I go into something. I don't care what else it does, does it do this and that's where you start, and then you can kind of add on things after that, but that's where and that's discovery right yep, totally, totally it's a.
Speaker 2:There's a little bit of a nuance there, right, if I walk in trying to prove something, it's I'm gonna the conversation that everything's going to go one direction. If I walk in with a curiosity mindset, then the conversation that everything's going to go one direction. If I walk in with a curiosity mindset, then the conversation everything's going to go it's going to have a completely different trajectory. I feel like that's kind of what. What we're getting at and what you might be alluding to a little bit, carrie, is like how do you? You don't necessarily want to prove something, but sometimes, being curious, you're going to prove things naturally along the way, when you're not even trying to just from asking good questions.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and everyone wants to be asked questions about themselves and their experiences. The more you can make someone feel like you care and you're interested, you'll be so much more effective at what you're, whatever you're trying to accomplish so what would kind of go in a different direction?
Speaker 2:The hardest, most difficult, you know, pull your hair out frustrating, emotionally draining sale what was that? What sale kind of was most difficult in all of those ways.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so many come to mind that it's hard to narrow it down to a single one. I think we've had a couple in my time at trucker tools that have been well over a year and a half in the making and I think those, those are the hardest ones because they require so much patience and realize, like you can, you can want to be doing everything in your power to bring something to life and I myself can see, okay, if we just do these five things, get these people on board, like let's just do it, we could do that all, we'd have it all done by friday this week. Why would there not be a reason to sell and realizing, or reason to sign, realizing that, uh, they're very, very real internal politics, that a lot of the customers that we sell to which are freight brokerages, and that those need to be respected and given time to develop, and that the process of getting buy-in is not something that a third party can come in and do, because it's going to destroy trust between the people at the organization. So I can think of one in particular that we sold just a couple of months ago. That was well over an 18-month sale and we just kind of kept running into the same wall of not being able to get our solution, our low-tracking solution, prioritized by the decision maker.
Speaker 3:So what we ended up having to do is find a couple of different champions within the organization who were willing to go to the mat for us and really exert their own power of influence. Even though we had a direct line with the decision maker, nothing we said was ever actually going to make a difference. We really had to equip these people who are at slightly lower levels within the organization to influence up and really use data more than anything to make the business case for what we were trying to do. So I think any sale like that, where it just feels like this is it logically does not make sense to not do this. We're going to save you money, we're going to give you higher levels of service, but you don't want to hear it from me, you've got to hear it from someone else are the most frustrating because, yeah, sometimes you know corporate politics are annoying and silly, but they really do matter in the power, dynamic and culture of organizations and they have to be respected.
Speaker 1:They exist at all places, at all times, with within any corporate or bureaucracy you do, you have to, you have to deal with it and you have to be proactive and creative about it.
Speaker 3:Totally, Totally, and figuring out who can kind of operate on your behalf. I think is is key.
Speaker 1:And it's someone different each each organization. You have to go in and someone different each organization. Yeah, you have to go in and find that.
Speaker 3:Exactly, exactly.
Speaker 2:It's a humbling thing, right to come face-to-face with the reality that you don't know everything about this other company that you've been in conversation with for 18 months. You know, as in sales, we want to control everything and we want to find out our champion, figure out our work back plan, figure out our timelines, figure out the need, quantify the ROI, put everything on paper and say this is a watertight deal. We know all the variables and we have a handle on things. But I think I would argue that we never that's's never a 100%. You know math problem, like there's always going to be an element of unknown, there's always going to be a dimension and it might even that dimension of unknown may even be unknown within that organization. They also may not really know, and that's kind of the unsettling piece for salespeople especially when they come face with that.
Speaker 2:Why? Why is this happening? Why is this dragging what's going on? I think we've got to lean into those issues in that uncomfortable position. There's a lot that can be learned there and that can make or break a deal.
Speaker 3:Definitely, definitely.
Speaker 1:It is. You always have to go back to the drawing board, no matter what project it is, whether it's numbers based or people's based, you know, sales based engineering doesn't really matter. You have to. Always, at some point in the process, when things aren't working or you need to get over a plateau, you need to be very willing to go back to the drawing board and rethink every assumption that you have and play that exercise, because that's the only way through those, those barriers.
Speaker 2:So what's the sale that you are most proud of? May not be the biggest or the smallest or the quickest or the longest or the most arduous, but is there a sale that you're a part of, that you're like, I feel so good about this, whether it was the creativity to get the deal done, or who you were doing business with, or what came after the fact, but whatever, or maybe something different, but what are you most proud of in terms of sales or a specific sale?
Speaker 3:Yeah, I'll go all the way back to college for this one. So I worked at a student run business in college. We were a catering company on campus and we worked with largely academic departments, student groups, professors, you know, symposiums that would happen on campus, selling bagels, coffee, sandwiches, really just anything to make the event, to bring catering to the event. So we had a couple of really big contracts with some university events and my junior year, heading into my senior year, when I was in the leadership position, we were going after our biggest sale ever. It was for new student orientation. It was going to require us to put together something like 4,000 boxed lunches in a very, very short period of time and we were a small team, we were maybe 20 people and again we were like this was all college kids, the inmates ran the asylum, there were no adults in the room here. So convincing academic administrators to trust us with such a big event Orientation is really, when you're making the sale as a university, to say, hey, you made the right choice, you're coming to the right place for the next four years, great job, Welcome aboard. You want to make the right impression. And I think there are parents at this event too, which only raised the stakes even higher. It wasn't just students. So I was really really proud of that sale.
Speaker 3:We made that sale in the spring semester heading out to orientation, which happened sometime in August later that year, because it was by far the most operationally complex deal we'd ever done in catering. Again, this was a small catering operation. So putting together something as complicated as 4000 box breakfasts, we didn't have the space for it, we didn't have the cooler space for it, we didn't have the hands. We had to figure out kind of all of these things on the fly. We had to really sell the dream of what we could do and how, by supporting us and kind of our student run mission. By supporting us and kind of our student run mission, the university was going to be acting in really good faith and kind of living out, practicing what they preach in terms of supporting students and then achieving their dreams. And we're up against real professionals and you know that as a, as a, it feels really really good to be trusted with something that could easily go to someone with so much more legitimacy and credibility to their name.
Speaker 1:So I was really proud of that kind of impassioned sale that we made and the ability that we were able to pull it off. That's always good, right. The ones where you sell the dream and vision. You don't have it figured out yet.
Speaker 3:Exactly.
Speaker 1:But it pushes you to figure it out.
Speaker 3:Exactly, exactly.
Speaker 1:Where did you go to college at?
Speaker 3:I went to Georgetown University in Washington DC. Yeah, very cool yeah, the city school, so there's not a ton of room on campus, so it's hard to find all that space to put together the box breakfast it is Very limited on space there.
Speaker 1:Yeah, Within DC. What's the funniest sale you ever have? You ever had that. You just keep sitting back and laughing whenever you think about it.
Speaker 3:Oh man, I don't know if I have a funniest sale itself More than we have really funny customers and crazy things happen and the characters are pretty hilarious. Man, I don't know if I have a great answer off the top of my head for that.
Speaker 1:I actually care Let me ask you this You've been in different industries, right? We all three have. You've been in different industries, right? We all three have. Do you find that freight brokerage and transportation have per capita, maybe density-wise, the most characters of any industry that you've been in?
Speaker 3:It is not even close, without a doubt, and I think that's in part because you know we all talk about selling service and technology and all these things that brokerages. But brand is such a massive part of it when you're in a pretty commoditized industry like truck brokerage, you have to it's, you know it's. It's much like any brokerage function. You really have to figure out how you stand out. So being a character and building that personal brand for yourself is, of course, you have to back it up, like there's no excuse for actual delivery and service timeliness, having a easier work with tech stack. But I really do think that's why we see a higher percentage of characters in this space, because it's just good business and if you're not doing it, I think you're doing something wrong.
Speaker 2:You're more memorable character.
Speaker 3:Yeah, exactly Exactly, and that's really all that matters. Do you come top of mind, if you're memorable and you give off confidence Like there's? There's truly nothing that you can do to better set yourself up from a personal branding perspective.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, and I agree with that by far. The most characters natural born characters, you know.
Speaker 3:Why do you think that is?
Speaker 1:I think it's for many of the same reasons that you just laid out. You know, you have to be a little bit different. A lot of these characters are entrepreneurs anyway, which is a little bit of a crazy mentality. And yeah, you just have to be a little bit wild and bold to to, to make it as a freight broker. Yeah, yeah, it seems like a lot of people say that freight brokerage found them.
Speaker 2:You know, like I I don't know too many people that when I asked them they're like, yeah, ever since I was in kindergarten I've wanted to be a freight broker. You know, like it's not the the childhood dream of I mean I'm sure there's that person out there and apologies for that person.
Speaker 2:But a lot of people will say that you know, oh, freight brokerage found me and now I'm never leaving. You know, it's like a lot of people just fall into this industry one way or another and they get stuck and I don't know if that's because their characters or because it's like which came first, the chicken or the egg, I guess?
Speaker 3:Yeah, I, I, I definitely think so. I certainly never thought I would be going into freight. And here I am, three years in, and I can absolutely see why that's the case, that once you get in you really don't get out. Because there's I think it's because there's it's such a fragmented industry riddled with so many problems that everyone can see potential to make a difference, to build something themselves, to kind of solve a problem that hasn't been solved yet. So there's just that sort of fragmentation breeds opportunity, from my perspective.
Speaker 1:Yep, it's full of opportunity. There's no reason to leave. It's a very small industry, smaller than you think and once you start meeting everybody, the opportunities just become more available.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, carrie what was the sale that you learned the most from. If you went back and said this sale was such a meaningful and educational experience, what was that sale that was most educational?
Speaker 3:Yeah, I think I almost feel like you learn more from the deals you lose than the deals you win honestly. Yeah, I think I almost feel like you learn more from the deals you lose than the deals you win honestly. So I think, yeah, I could talk about a deal we won, but I really do think the deals that you don't win are the ones where you learn. Ok, here's the gap and here's what we need to do to close a future sale. So I think I've learned a ton.
Speaker 3:Really, back in the early first couple of weeks actually, I had at Trucker Tools this isn't even a sale, but it was that we lost a customer, a really large customer, top 20 brokerage, very tech forward. It was a huge deal, one of our biggest load tracking deals, and I just started at the company. So I had really getting up to speed and I'm like, oh well, this is too bad, I've got to figure out what's going on. So I hopped on a call with one of their senior decision makers and turned out that it was fun to understand. Hey, what happened here? How did you decide to leave us? Why don't we win this renewal? And it was really all about ELT tracking and I'll be completely honest, that was not something that we had really prioritized Back when.
Speaker 3:When I was starting a business, you know we were always mobile first tracking solution.
Speaker 3:And I am so grateful that that happened so early on in my tenure because it was definitely like the kick in the rear end that I needed to say OK, we've got to make moves fast because if we don't, we're not going to exist as a load tracking business in a year or two If we don't solve this massive product gap we have now.
Speaker 3:So we started really doubling down on our ELD team and standing up an entire organization to support onboarding and figure out how do we do this better and different than some of our competitors are doing. Organization to support onboarding and figure out how do we do this better and different than some of our competitors are doing. And you know, three years later, I think we're getting noticed all the time now for what we've built from the ELD world. So I think losing those sort of sales or losing a customer is an absolute punch to the gut because you know how hard you work to bring them on board. But in this case I think it was actually it ended up being good for us because it it led to this whole new development of a whole new part of our product and has totally changed our product strategy. So that's, that's the deal I'd say I learned the most from.
Speaker 1:Going off on that a little bit. You know what's the most important sales lesson or lessons that you learned since becoming CEO. You know things that you didn't realize about sales before that, that you now grasp or that you now hold dear.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I think that sales is. Yes, you know we talked about selling ourselves and showing up well, and the interpersonal nature of it. That is absolutely important. But sales is a really really technical science as well, and appreciating what goes into orchestrating a large deal where you've got five, six, seven stakeholders involved on the customer side, maybe two to three on your own internal side, how important it is to be writing a really really tight process there, and how that can make or break you as an organization, how, when it comes to sales, it's not just about kind of showing up and taking someone out to lunch and really getting their buy-in as, oh, we're buds. That's not what sales is about. Sales is about building an ironclad business case for someone to help them solve a very, very specific problem, and kind of that problem orientation, as opposed to I'm selling this whole feature and this whole product set. Now we are selling a couple of solutions to specific pain points has been a big shift for me when I think about how I sell as a CEO.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's fantastic. I couldn't agree more. I mean, it's the big sales come from specificity. Did I say that? Right, it's got lots of syllables in it, but it's being able to pinpoint an exact ROI and make it real.
Speaker 2:And that comes out of the exact use case. And it's this another kind of contradictory sort of stance where you have, on one hand, it's not personal right, it's not you and your thoughts and opinions, or your customers thoughts and opinions, it's no, there's a problem and this problem needs to be fixed, and either your technology does that or it doesn't like it's one or the other. So there's an impersonable, impersonal aspect to it all. But there's also a personal aspect in that the other side has to have trust that they can believe that what you're saying is true and honest and geared towards solving that problem. So there's this weird kind of dialectical thing happening where it's about you and the trust and them having trust in you, but it's also not about you or them. It's mostly about solving a problem.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and that's what's going to win you. A deal is solving that problem and doing it in a very specific, pointed way. They're only going to be interested in doing that if they trust you. So that's kind of the door opener, but it's not going to close the deal.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think a lot of people gauge salespeople on their likability in a lot of ways or how good they are at getting in front of people. But there's that back half of it that you actually have to fix the problem right, yep. So you have to actually have a good solution. People can go have lunch with you all the time and enjoy themselves, but if you don't have the capabilities to fix that problem, that you don't have the solution. That's where it ends and it's going to end there every single time.
Speaker 3:Exactly, exactly.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So, carrie, where can our listeners find you? How can they get in touch with you? How can they learn more about Trucker Tools? Yeah, what's the best way for people to reach you? How can they get in touch with you? How can they learn more about Trucker?
Speaker 3:Tools. Yeah, what's the best way for people to reach you? Yeah, find me on LinkedIn Kari Jablonski spelled like it sounds and on Twitter as well. Same, my handle is just my name. Or feel free to shoot me an email at kjablonski, at truckertoolscom. Love hearing from folks. Thank you, I had a great time.
Speaker 2:Yeah, thanks for joining, gary. Always a pleasure speaking with you. Every time I'm going to various conferences, you're always one of the people I'm hoping to run into to say hi and catch up if we have time. So pleasure having you on this on the show and thanks again, really enjoy the conversation. We'll have to have you back. I feel like there's more stories that we can dive into. So, yeah, thanks for your time today.
Speaker 3:Thank you both, I really appreciate it.