Empower Your Shipping Business with Prospecting Sales Leads for Shipping

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what should you say when you're making cold calls is there a magic script that gets everyone to say yes we get asked these questions every week from our listeners and in this video we'll give you an approach that you can use on a consistent basis to close more customers [Music] i'm benjamin kowalski with freight 360 where we provide the latest transportation sales tips and training videos to help you reach your goals faster if you're new here make sure you go ahead and hit the subscribe button below to be notified when we drop our weekly videos and all of the links and details will be found in the description box below for more free content please be sure to check out our website freight360.net to access our entire library what makes our industry unique is that almost every customer or shipper operates by their own best practices they have unique standard operating procedures and different ways that every one of them distributes or tenders they're freight and that's the half of it literally the other half is how each shipper determines their procurement steps and all that is just a fancy way of saying that each company makes its decisions to work with brokers based on their own policies while all of this provides for a lot of different opportunities it also creates a unique challenge if all of the shippers make decisions differently how can you use one script to influence all of them and that's all a cold call is right it's the process of reaching out to somebody we've never spoken to with the goal of influencing their decision to work with us we're not convincing debating or manipulating them we are simply trying to engage them establish trust and then locate an opportunity or issue they have that we can provide the solution for so rather than giving you specific words for you to read i'll take you through the structure of the call and what you should be achieving in each step first know what's in it for them as in why do they care think about when you're cold called right when somebody rings you out of the blue if somebody doesn't get to the point quickly and engage you what happens right you hang up that's exactly what so many people do wrong they begin their calls by announcing who they are who they work for and why they're the greatest things since sliced bread and then they expect the person forced to listen to this little song and dance to be so impressed that they stop what they're doing and just send over a bunch of business or there's the approach of hey this is ben from acme brokerage i was just calling to see if we could discuss the possibility of us working together imagine if you got this call would you stop what you're doing so that a salesperson could have a conversation about selling you something or possibly convincing you to work with them probably not right okay so what does work then well having an approach and an intention before you pick up the phone it could be that you deliver loads to their location it could be that you have drivers legitimately looking for back calls from one of your other customers it may be that you specialize in their specific commodity niche like maybe heavy equipment or building materials it could even be that your brokerage only works with companies in their industry and possibly their competitors already use you it doesn't necessarily matter what it is that you lead with as long as it answers this important question what's in it for them right why are they still on the phone but where do we go from here now that we have their attention we better deliver on what we led with right my go-to is leading with you know we've got trucks delivering into your area weekly and i'd like to discuss if we may be a fit to work together from there i'll pivot to asking about a few specific lanes that i've prepared before the call these are just my best guesses at lanes i believe they're likely to be running for example hey you know we've got more than a handful of drivers interested in heading back north out of your facility and rather than having them continue to work the load boards for back hauls we thought it could be a win-win-win for you our drivers and actually our other customers i mean you know this the less our drivers are loading at new facilities every week the less they have to worry about the tension and unpredictable loading docks you know we've heard from some other drivers you've really got your operations button up and are pretty efficient over there how has it been finding capacity for your northbound lanes we always want to follow up each statement with a question so that we can engage the other person in further conversation a great tip to remember is that god gave you two ears and one mouth use them proportionately listen twice as much as you're talking rapport is established mostly when the other person is talking and we are actively listening the key word here is actively to not only what's being said but how it's being said the tone of voice the rate of speech you'll want to mirror that tone and rate of speech with your own for instance in the new york area folks tend to speak faster louder and more abruptly because they value time and efficiency so respect that by picking up your pace and tone in the south you'll have a little slower rate of speech typically now clearly these are generalities and each human is different sometimes one person can be different from one day to the next right that's why your secret weapon really is to listen and not just listening so that you're waiting for your turn to speak but really listening to all of the information they're giving you stand up and smile your voice will also change based on your mood and posture it's the very reason i'm standing when i do the youtube videos because one of the best ways to get some pep into your own voice is to stand up when you're making dials it will immediately add energy to your voice remember this motion creates emotion walk around do some jumping jacks before you're gonna make some calls get that blood flowing nobody wants to do business with eeyore from winnie the pooh another tip right smiling it also changes your tone of voice have you ever wanted to work with somebody that's miserable neither do your prospects so put a small mirror above your phone and remind yourself to smile before making those calls lastly make sure you have a prepared list of questions to ask as the conversation progresses here's a list of a few to get you started now these questions fall under the category of operational questions and if you find these helpful make sure you leave a comment below and we can do a follow-up with a more comprehensive list in a future video can you tell me a little bit about how your shipping is organized how many full truckloads do you ship on an average week any ltl how about during your busy season by the way when is your busy season do you currently use outside carriers do you ever use brokers currently do you have any of your own trucks could you tell me about some of the carriers you're currently using how long have you been working with them now what all of these questions have in common is that they are all open-ended questions meaning that they cannot be answered by a simple yes or no and that's important because we don't want to ask close-ended questions because we don't want to give them an opportunity to say no and we want them to talk as much as possible so we can learn as much as possible from each exchange so remember when you're preparing your list of questions now all of these tips and structures will help you organize your thoughts and execute much better calls but make sure you don't forget the most important aspect of calling anyone for business asking for it no one is going to come out and just hand you the business right we need to close them by asking if they have anything right now anything on their desk we could cover or work on it's not only the most important it's also the one most rookies forget so put another reminder above that mirror that reminds you who to ask for the business for more on this topic check out our course freight broker basics and our group coaching program and remember whether you believe you can or believe you can't you're right