Standing Out: A Podcast About Sales, Marketing and Leadership
Standing Out is a show created to help individuals and companies improve their sales & marketing outcomes, as well as their leadership development. Each episode we have an expert who has a unique perspective on sales, marketing and/or leadership providing insights from his or her experiences. And we throw in a few laughs from time to time. Be sure to hit Subscribe wherever you listen to our podcasts.
Standing Out: A Podcast About Sales, Marketing and Leadership
Mastering Transportation Software and Sales Leadership with Jeremy Estep
Join us for this episode of Standing Out with Jeremy Estep, where his journey is a masterclass in navigating the logistics industry. Gain valuable insights into the synergy between sales and marketing that can drive your organization’s revenue to new heights. Jeremy outlines a strategic approach to dividing responsibilities among sales, marketing, and customer success teams, emphasizing the critical role of customer retention.
A word about our sponsors:
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.
Hey everybody, welcome back to another episode of Standing Out, a podcast about sales, marketing and leadership. I'm Trey Griggs, your host, so happy to have you with us today. Hey, do us a favor when you get a chance, check us out over at betaconsultinggroupcom. See how we're helping companies really build a true sales engine, shorten that sales cycle and get things moving, especially in this tough market. We'd love to hear from you. Click on the little button on there that says schedule a call with yours truly, tell us your story. We'll help you write yours and truly build messaging that will work for the audience you're trying to reach. Also, if you're listening to us right now on Reads Across America Radio, thanks so much for tuning in. If you're not sure who Reads Across America is, make sure you check them out at readsacrossamericaorg. They're a phenomenal organization helping to really educate the future generations on the past sacrifices that our veterans have made.
Speaker 1:We have some cool events coming up in December. It's going to be here before you know it, so certainly you can sign up for that. You can also sponsor a wreath in that regard. And all of you out there who are truckers if you've got a trucking company or carrier out there, make sure that you look into the Broker Carrier Summit coming up this October 23 through 25 down in Fort Worth, texas. We got free truck parking from our friends over at truckparkingclubcom as well as discounts for carriers Great networking event, one of the most valuable networking events that you're going to find. You're going to be able to find brokers who are going to help you build your business on the lanes that you want to run, really take care of you, provide you with correct information. All of that is going to help you grow as a carrier. So check it out at brokercarriersummitcom. Hopefully we'll see you in Fort Worth in October.
Speaker 1:All right. Also want to give a shout out to our sponsor, spi Logistics. Listen, if you are a freight broker and you're tired of just dealing with having the back office for your business or maybe you're a freight agent and you're not just happy with where you're at check these guys out at successspi3plcom. They've got the technology, the systems, the back office support to help you succeed and they're just great people. So, again, check them out at successspi3plcom to learn more. Let them know. You heard about it right here on Standing Up. All right, let's go ahead and get our guests on the show today. Very excited to have this guy on. This guy has a stellar career in terms of sales and marketing. Can't wait to have him on the show and talk about what he's done in many companies he's been with. So please, welcome to the show from Revenova, the chief revenue officer, jeremy Estep.
Speaker 2:I love this walking song.
Speaker 1:Jeremy, I think this is a throwback. It kind of shows our age a little bit, because I think I was in eighth grade when this came out and I'll never forget it. This is a good one.
Speaker 2:I went to a Cypress Hill concert that the leading act was house of pain. That's how old.
Speaker 1:Oh nice, dude Cypress Hill concert. That must've been dope. I didn't. I didn't start going to concerts till I was later in life but that must've been.
Speaker 2:When was it?
Speaker 1:Was it later in school. It was wild. I wouldn't send my kids to that today that's for sure. Probably a night you'll never forget. We'll just say that We'll leave it with that. Well, thanks so much for joining us. You've had an awesome career. Give everybody just a little introduction to who you are and what you're doing now with Revenova.
Speaker 2:Yeah, my name is Jeremy Estep. I've been in the market since about 2000,. Started my days aging myself as well with a company called Airborne Express. If anybody remembers that business, we had to outsell what we lost on the back end. So that was a nice first experience to really just drive a sales engine. That company got acquired by DHL in 2004, moved me to Atlanta, georgia, where I live today. Three kids later happily married, great place to be. And then from there decided to get into technology with a small company called SMC3, which is kind of the core of the LTL business, right, never heard of these guys. So I went from a small package to LTL, which they own the really they're the Switzerland, right, they own the content for the rating data, the transit data for the LTL market. Loved my time there. But then I got a little itchy, you know, and I got called into a startup working with Andrew Leto and Travis Ryan and 10-4 Systems. That business was sold, you know, two and a half years later to a company called Trimble.
Speaker 2:A small business Buys up a lot of businesses. It's now under his authority today, right, trimble small business buys up a lot of businesses. It's now under his authority today, right. And then from there went to the TMS market, managing rail truckload, ltl, with a company called IntelliTrans, owned by Roper. Roper also owns the DAT, for those of you out there that know that business. So they like to buy software businesses that are heavily profitable and they take the money and keep going, buy new businesses. It's a good Market.
Speaker 2:Um, and then today I find myself at, uh, as chief revenue officer of revanova, also a transportation management software business. We're built off of a Salesforce cloud, which is the newest thing in the industry. I was, you know, kind of reluctant when I started having the conversations coming over here a couple months ago, just because, oh, another light TMS right, there's a lot of those out there in the market. What does that mean? Well, come to find out. Most secure system out there, right, running off of a software, a Salesforce software cloud, newest UI, ux, anytime you need it, never go stale like some of those old TMSs out there, right. And when you talk about developing against it, man, you don't need NET Java developers, these guys that cost $300,000 anymore. This is rapid deployment, 90-day implementations, all your carriers connected. Erp for the brokerage units right, because it's CRM, it's booking loads, paying commissions, full transparency to everybody. There's nothing else like it Trey in the market right now, and that's why I'm here.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I love your career path because it's very much like mine. I mean, I'm kind of itchy as well Been to a lot of places. I actually started at DAT, so I'm very familiar with Roper. Of course, I've been a part of that organization for four years, when I first got into transportation. So love seeing your career journey and just kind of jumping from opportunity to opportunity. Some people like one company and spend their whole career there. Man, that's not me.
Speaker 2:It doesn't sound like that to you at all the excitement of trying new things and jumping around. Well, I would say always. My father-in-law worked at General Motors for 32 years and I was like man. That would be fantastic if I worked for a business for 32 years and grew up in that business. But as the market goes, I feel like us folks in supply chain transportation, especially on the technology side. We're almost like NBA draft picks, right, and if we're open and non-contract, well, we're always looking for the next best innovative thing. If the company I'm with or was with prior, continue to innovate, I wouldn't be here today, right? So that's for the overall market. Is I want to be able to sell and drive penetration with the most innovative technology in our space?
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's a great point too, and I think that's also a generational thing too, because my father-in-law worked for 30 years of Boeing, kind of a similar situation. I think that was much more common in the previous generations, but especially in transportation. As technology continues to evolve and new opportunities come up pretty quickly, even though we're a little antiquated compared to the overall market, it's still new to us, and I totally understand what you're talking about in terms of just making those opportunities to go to what's new and what's really driving what's pushing the market forward from a technology standpoint. Couldn't agree with you more on that. Before we get into that, though, I I have to say I didn't know this about you. You played water polo in college at slippery rock university, is that correct?
Speaker 2:I did. I'm a water polo player. I still play on. My master's team played last night for two hours, so man.
Speaker 1:Okay, so I have to ask about this because I played water polo when I was younger, but it was not the water polo that you're talking about. I played a boy scout camp. The, the pool was like, you know, we could touch the bottom, you know, like it wasn't like real water polo. Man, you're, you're, you're treading water for the whole. That's, that's an unbelievable workout. I gotta, I gotta, think.
Speaker 2:It is. I mean, it's uh, you know, I was a swimmer growing up. Um, here's this cool game. You get to throw a ball into a goal, you get to wrestle with people in the water, right? I'm like, oh, let's do that.
Speaker 1:The wrestling in the water scares me a little bit. Have you ever been under wrestling, a little nervous about getting your breath back?
Speaker 2:Oh, I've come up hacking some water out before sure, yeah, it's part of the game, you know. Hopefully the referees see what's going on, but at the end of the day they're not in the water to break anything up. So I've seen, you know, brawls, people throwing chairs in pools. Like you know, it's gotten a little out of control before.
Speaker 1:The wild water puller crowd.
Speaker 2:Because to me you know I'm not the tallest guy in the world. Anybody that knows me I'm about 5'10", I'm pretty bulky, I've got some strength, but when you're in the water it's the great equalizer and why I love it. Right, put me up against anybody else at an equal playing field and I'm going to beat you every time. Right. Same with the sales thought process. Right, give me a great product and I'm going to outsell everybody else in my competitive market. So that's the way I kind of feel about that, that sport as well.
Speaker 1:I love that and water polo has. I mean, I've seen those guys, they, they, they jump out of the water so high to be able to throw it. Like it's impressive what they can do, uh, with their body weight and moving around in the water Like they do it.
Speaker 2:So I mean I's not going to happen so for me to get a workout it's going to be water polo three days a week and hopefully, if I can get a golf game in there once a week.
Speaker 1:Dude, I'm with you on that. I don't doubt that one bit. I was looking over your resume of some of the places that you've been. I noticed, at least on LinkedIn it says that NTT was one of those places. Maybe they acquired one of the companies that you worked with, I think, or something like that. Are you, by chance, an IndyCar fan?
Speaker 2:I am an IndyCar fan. Yes, oh nice. I don't really have a favorite, but I do love to watch the sport. It's amazing.
Speaker 1:Well my dad was a big IndyCar fan. I saw the NTT. That's why I thought about that. I have a whole shelf of these little die cast cars. My mom buys me the winning IndyCar every year because we go to the race every year. It's kind of something, a little tribute to my dad. But anyways, I saw the NTT. I didn't know if you actually got to go to the races. I kind of wanted to dig in as well, I grew up in California.
Speaker 2:Long Beach was a big one, right. Yeah yeah, mario, right, that was back in and yeah, I went every year. Man, it was wild. Just amazing to see those guys just navigate through those little turns as fast as they were going. Really cool.
Speaker 1:Have you ever been to the Indy 500 on the track? I have not. So bucket list, my friend. Something to do, that's for sure.
Speaker 2:I got to, I get to meet Mario Andretti three years ago. He's short, he's little. Yeah, he's like a equalizer. Right, he's in a awesome car. Let's go.
Speaker 1:That's right, and he also will beat you to a pulp if he can, even his own son. He's passed him and that kind of thing. So well, anyways, let's talk a little bit about sales. I want to dig into that a little bit because you're the chief revenue officer. You're overseeing sales and marketing, and I'm a big believer that sales and marketing have to work together. I think too many organizations value one over the other. A lot of organizations have sales, no marketing. Sometimes, if they do have marketing, they tend to work separately. They don't work together. What's your take on how sales and marketing should work together to really drive revenue for a company?
Speaker 2:That's a great question.
Speaker 2:I've seen it in both categories right, where sales is separate from marketing as well. And now in my role, where I've done this prior is also including sales with marketing. Right, because really marketing is there to support the sales effort. Right, and if I look at my quota for my team, if I look at my history and I've had a playbook for this but if you have a quota, let's say, of a million dollars, how are you going to go ahead and get to that quota? Do you expect your sales team to drive to that quota itself or do you need marketing participation? So the way that I look at it is really in thirds.
Speaker 2:So a third of what the salesperson is doing is they are managing their own destiny. Right, through outreach, through all their sequences, conferences, all the fun stuff, the face of the business. 30, another 30 percent should come from our marketing department. Right, the ones that are going out and setting up these events for us. They're generating leads, they're telling the right stories. Here's what Ravenova is and here's where we're going and here's why you should do business with us.
Speaker 2:And then we've actually implemented a third category which a lot of companies in this market are missing, especially in a SaaS-based environment and that is a customer success group Trey, that is the biggest one and that is my third category. So if you're talking about a million-dollar quota sales marketing but identifying cross-sells, upsells, continuously hooking the customer One of the best sales strategies in all of SaaS business is to maintain your existing business and grow. At 10%. People forget about that right and if you don't have that, you implement something, it then goes off and then the salesperson's getting dragged down with an existing customer or your project team's getting dragged down with an existing customer. So for all those guys out there that run SaaS businesses, if you want to drive green new logo opportunities, let the salespeople run right, drive customer success with ownership of that company and then have marketing wrapped around that to be able to help support that commercial effort moving forward.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's a really solid point, and I remember a lot of the SaaS products that I was a part of and the ones I've heard about in the industry that did a really good job of selling but didn't do a good job of renewing was often because they didn't have customer success. They didn't have implementation that made them successful to hold on to that SaaS product. I just saw that happen quite a bit in a lot of these companies was we got the sale but we didn't actually train them how to use it. We didn't teach them how to use it. We didn't show them how to use it more, sell more. I remember when I was a DAT that was part of my job when I got promoted to key accounts was I got to go work with all the existing accounts and sell them more stuff and those opportunities were awesome because they already loved the brand, they already knew who we were adding data and some analytics to what you were doing and it was really enjoyable to do the cross-selling and those types of things. It's a really great way to look at it.
Speaker 1:Let me ask you another question about this, because I think this is really important. In the market that we're in today. It's a little tight. A lot of people are struggling with revenue and just having funds. How would you encourage companies to think about marketing from a budget standpoint? Because it seems like when the money's tight, that's the first thing they cut. I'm of the opinion that when the market's tight, that's when you want to lean into marketing more and get your brand out there more, but I'd love to hear your perspective on how you would encourage companies to think about their budget, especially in tight markets like this, for marketing.
Speaker 2:Yeah, no, that's a great question as well. So you know, I am a huge fan of outsourcing a lot of our marketing efforts. So I want to have a key core group that kind of manages the calendar, events, what's happening, but I want influencers coming in from all sorts of the business. So I think that's a great way to drive additional content without having to drive over your budget requirements. So I would encourage people to look at some expertise out there, whether it's design, whether it's content, whether it's social marketing or digital marketing or ABM strategies. There are some best in class organizations out there that, as opposed to you hiring a resource, health benefits, all those things Not that I'm not saying that's a benefit and you absolutely need that. But let's start looking out for some of those small businesses out there that are very successful in what they're doing, and that's how we've seen our success continue to grow.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I love that perspective and, again, I think that sometimes, when the market's bad, people tend to pull back on, like marketing or some, maybe sales consulting or some outside help like you're talking about and I think, man, that's the time to really lean in as much as you can, you know, because that's when people are ready to make a change, when the market Well, I mean for me after my first 90 days, you know, building out this continued structure just getting a little better every day, right, that's kind of our philosophy, because we've got a great organization in place, but the only thing that we see spending more money on is marketing and customer success because of all these new customers that are coming on board.
Speaker 2:right, everything else stays the same for our organization moving forward into 2025.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's great to hear. I want to dig back into how you got into sales. Were you always pretty competitive with sales? A natural thing. What tied you in? Did somebody invite you into that, tell you you should do it? You just decided to try it. Did you do door to door? What was your experience getting into sales?
Speaker 2:Yeah, that was pretty, pretty funny. My first experience getting into sales was just out of college. My major was resort management and tourism, with a minor in business administration. So I did an internship at the Breakers Hotel down in Palm Beach, which is the creme de la creme right Right right. Ben Gordon has his show there every year, and all that good stuff.
Speaker 1:50 a night type of thing. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:So I got into that organization saw these types of people that were here, right, and I got instantly into, you know, upselling and selling things, right, just being part of an environment like that. I ended up wanting to get back to California. When I got back to California I was looking for a new role and I got a call from a buddy of mine from high school. That was a stud football player, linebacker went to Purdue just out of control. He's now over at Johnson Johnson leading their marketing division, said Jeremy from a water polo.
Speaker 2:These guys are always looking for sports athletes, right, because athletes, the nice thing about athletics is you work so hard. You get up in the morning, you know, go to practice, go to school, go back to practice, eat dinner, do your homework, do it all again, right, and that's the consistency you really need to be, you know, successful in the sales environment. So I got a call from this guy and said, hey, we have an opening at this Airborne Express company. Never heard of it before, but I think it'd be great. So I interviewed for it and that's how I got right into supply chain transportation. When I talked about out running, we weren't a great organization from an operations perspective.
Speaker 2:You could ship a ground package with us. We would put it on plane and overnight into New York because we didn't have a ground network but people love that Right. So we would outsell what we would lose. And then DHL came in and bought us and that really spun me out to, you know, outrunning, loving the sales atmosphere, but knowing I didn't want to be in freight. Honestly that was, hey, you need to go into the technology side of freight. So that's what really spun me into that side. And then, you know, had a great experience from that organization, learning how to sell and then moving into SMC three, really learning how to be a consultant, which you know through that environment has helped me get to today where you know a great salesperson needs to have two personalities. Number one run around like a chicken with your head cut off on the front end, talk to everybody.
Speaker 2:You know, kissing babies, right, you know that's it and then when you get a deal, you need to be able to turn that into a consultative cell and actually be a subject matter expert.
Speaker 1:Know what you're talking about to challenge the status quo and beat out your competition yeah, I love hearing that and I'm going to assume that you were one of the top sales reps every place you were going. I'm setting this up for a question Were you typically towards the top? I assume you were correct. Always come on. Okay. So here's the question, because I think this is really valuable. A lot of times organizations take the top salesperson and then think that they just should be promoted into leadership. Sounds like you went on a little bit of a journey. You learned a little bit about consulting those types of things. What is the best advice for companies who are looking to potentially promote one of their sales reps to leadership? Is it the top guy, is it someone in the middle? And how do you help somebody really become a leader? Because being a sales leader is way different than being a sales like the top sales producer, at least in my experience. I'd love to hear your perspective on that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, I mean, you have to be able to adapt. I mean, as a salesperson, and if you're in that role, right, you need to be selfish. Right for yourself, because you're trying to drive revenue. Be the leader of that group that you're competing against, right, when you get into a sales manager role, you need to be able to take that and be humble, and your whole goal at that point is to build up successful salespeople underneath you, right? So today, when I get excited, my sales team's all hitting quota. They're loving their jobs. They're just all over the place. They're part of associations, they're the CEO of their territory.
Speaker 2:I say, right. And as they perform, I want to build up under them. So that's the real difference, Right. And if I want to be an individual contributor and sometimes I've thought about it in the past Right, like hey, do I really want to go back there and hold the bag and just drive it? Nice thing is, today I'm involved in just about every deal, which is where I want to be. But I'm involved in every deal specifically to train my team to be better than they are today. Right, to get to that echelon where they do have a decision to make at some point, because not only are they killing it, but now they understand the process and structure helping people below them to be able to get up to that same level.
Speaker 1:I think about it a lot when I think of like NBA basketball teams for example. A lot of times the best coaches in the NBA were not the best players on their team, like Steve Kerr, for example. He was a good player, made some threes, but he wasn't Michael Jordan and Michael Jordan probably wouldn't be a great coach, probably why he never did it. Magic Johnson didn't coach. Larry Bird was okay as the head coach, you know, maybe one of the better ones, but not a lot. You know Phil Jackson average player, great coach. I just think there's a different skillset involved for leading than being the top producer and that's a hard transition to make. How would you advise companies if they want to take somebody who is a great producer, like you were, and transition them into into leadership? What would you advise them? How would you consult them on that?
Speaker 2:I would say, send them to leadership training. I mean, one of the things that I was lucky enough in my career, right, and you look back and say, well, why am I here today? What did I do differently? Well, number one my dad was a Marine, right, I'll just leave that at that, right. So, growing up in that just very disciplined conservativeness, and then also being an athlete, HL 250,000 employees that actually really cared about their leadership teams because they wanted them to succeed into executive leadership teams. So they sent us to training every six months for one week to understand how to become better leaders. So to me, that was lucky, right.
Speaker 2:When you get with a startup or some of these small companies, they may not have the resources to be able to do those things. So I've taken what I've learned from a giant publicly traded organization into companies like SMC3 or 10-4 Systems Startup. Right Now I'm with a great organization in Rebanova who has grown through blood, sweat and tears. I say right, but now with private equity, with Viking as a great partner within Rebanova, we're ready to grow and we're going to grow fast. So that's going to come with more scalability, more accountability of the organization and really more process and structure.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I think that's another area where companies have changed their tune in the last 30, 40 years. I feel like in the eighties there was a lot of leadership development. I think that was a big, big push back then. A lot of companies don't invest in that. They don't see the value in that, or maybe it's just a discretionary spending that they can't afford or something like that. But I I agree with you Like I think leadership training is one of the things that's really missing in a lot of our companies today, and a lot of companies will take that top sales producer, chuck them into the sales leadership seat. Man, that's a. That's a different ballgame. Like you said, they're selfish in one. How do they become really a coach and a teacher and somebody who cares for everybody?
Speaker 2:There are some people out there that I've seen that can evolve to that for sure.
Speaker 2:I mean absolutely right.
Speaker 2:If you see somebody that's got that empathy but a great salesperson or a structure or even, like you said before, an average contributor right, that's still always there doing the status quo but understands the process, the structure right, that's still always there doing the you know status quo but understands the process, the structure right.
Speaker 2:Also, the humbleness that comes with managing people Well, you turn them into a sales leader, right, like a senior salesperson, and part of that means that you're now a mentor. So what I've also done and what I'm planning to do here is, anytime you bring in a new salesperson, I don't want them just reporting to me or my vice president of sales. I want them to have a mentor which is a senior salesperson in the organization, to bring them under the wing and help them kind of navigate that world and as we see them, you know, growing in the business, um, you want them to succeed, right, you want to keep them for a long time and you want you know, you want them to move into different roles that you see beneficial for the organization and that may be a management role in the future.
Speaker 2:So it's coddling them and just making sure they're comfortable and continuously motivating them right to succeed. We talked about job hopping, right, Sales? You probably get more job hoppers than you anywhere, right? Because they come in, they may not understand the process or the structure or be held accountable, and then in six months to a year you're like where are the deals going? Well, I blame the managers for that. Right, you should be able to bring somebody in, train them in the first 90 days, get them up and running into a place that they're successful within six months of the organization, and it's your responsibility to make sure they're successful, Right?
Speaker 1:Yeah, let me ask you about that too as well, because we just had Will Jenkins on. You know he's got journeys doing sales training, especially for freight brokers. When you think about training somebody, what is kind of the ideal situation for training to really get somebody off to a good start? I'm going to preface it with this when I was at DAT, I didn't make one phone call for five weeks because I was training the whole time on the CRM, on the process, listening to calls, doing mock calls with my manager at the time, and I ramped up pretty quick afterwards. And I've been in other organizations where it's kind of like just get started. Here's a list, start calling, you'll figure it out. Where do you sit in that? Do you find yourself somewhere in the middle? What's the best approach for really making sure somebody's ready to go from a sales perspective?
Speaker 2:I like jumping in the fire no-transcript, total, addressable market in that area. Here are all the sequences we already pre-built out for brokerage shipper carrier with fleets. I want you to start prospecting while we're learning, right? Oh, heaven forbid. A week later somebody said I'm interested right now. We're in the game already and that's the best way for somebody to jump in and start learning, because I'm going to be right there holding their hands, our VP of sales, our head of product, whatever we need right, Get us in the door and we are going to swarm that customer with so much love. They're going to want to do business with us, and so that's the market and that's how you get somebody up and running quickly. Right, We've had people start two weeks later, have a deal up and running because of that process, but you've got to have the tools, You've got to have the structure, You've got to have everything set in place. So as you grow, you break up a territory, you move it in, but you still have that all in one place for them.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and that's a good point that you make too, because you of office supplies. So I did not know the industry, I didn't know some of those things, so maybe the additional training was pretty helpful and beneficial at that time. But I can see where, if they've got a little experience getting them in there right away and swarming them and helping them out but certainly not throwing them wolves by themselves actually supporting them as a team is really helpful. So it sounds like you've got that on lockdown, which is awesome to hear, and for those folks that are looking for guys out of school coming in.
Speaker 2:I mean, that's a great way to hire. I know DAT does a lot of that as well. Right, there are a lot of third party trade associations out there, right? So if I sell LTL, guess what? I may want to send somebody to an SMC3 conference for four days to learn about LTL 101 and everything going on. Right, there are ways to get people into this market, to get them trained on the industry, but from a sales focus, sales perspective. All I need is a body understanding that this persona goes into this sequence. Let's get it in there and let's snowball that to 400 a month. So by the end of the year you have 5,000 new contacts that you're marketing to individually from a sales perspective, outside what the rest of our marketing company is doing, and that's going to generate opportunity right away.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I love that and you said that, which is so funny. It kind of reminded me back in the day when I worked there. They didn't want people saying doubt, they wanted to say DAT, and I think they changed their tune on that now.
Speaker 2:But everybody I still call it dollar truck so yeah, dollar truck man.
Speaker 1:That's a great story back in the day. Man, it's just a neat story back from. I can't remember the guy's name, but oh man, oh truck, stop, truck. Oh, what's the name of it? Oh me, what is it? Oh, okay, we'll forget it. We'll get it later, all right. Random question. We got to have a little bit of fun here, jeremy. These are always kind of weird sometimes. We'll see if this is a good question. Today's random question of the day is if you were a dollar bill, which one would you want to be? Oh, year included. Okay, so let's do money amount. What amount of dollar bill? And is there a year that really matters to you on that?
Speaker 2:Wow, that's a very off the cuff question. If I were a dollar bill, which one would I want to be a year included. You know I'd have to start with a 1975 great year that's when I was born, so I'll start with that.
Speaker 2:And if it was a dollar bill, it would have to be a hundred dollar bill for sure, benjamin, that's right, he's got to have a benjamin, you know, floating out there like, even if I have a thousand ones, that benjamin's going over it in my stack, you know so yeah, yeah, yeah, that's, that's a good one.
Speaker 1:Okay, I'm gonna go differently. I'm gonna say 1945 that was the year that my dad was born, who was also in marines, by the way. We have that in common as well um 1945, and I'm gonna say a $2 bill, because that's pretty unique. You don't see those around anymore. Those are definitely like most of our kids especially. They've never even seen a $2 bill. So I'd go $2 bill just to be a little bit different, because I tend to roll that way.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's funny. You say that because I have gone to the bank and got my kids specifically $2 bills just to show them what they look like, do they?
Speaker 1:have them at the bank. I can't believe they got yet.
Speaker 2:You can go to the bank and you can still trade them in. They don't give them out readily, but you can ask for them still.
Speaker 1:Interesting. I didn't even know that I'm going to have to go do that, because I would love just to have one of those. I mean, those things are kind of relics at this point, kind of like pennies. Nobody's using pennies anymore. We used to be able to buy a newspaper with a penny and now can't really do that. All right, what's coming up there for the company and for you as chief revenue officer?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so we have a lot of events coming up. We hope to see everybody out there. I mean, we're going to be at events every two weeks here coming up through the fall. One of the newest things for us is we're implementing a customer advisory board as well. So we're going out to all of our customers, bringing them in to help us continue to drive innovation, you know, within the market. So we're seeing some huge success there and you know we think that we're the last. Like I said before, we're the last TMS anybody ever has to use, right? It's never going to go stale. On UI, it's got the most secure. We don't even sell transactions, like the other TMSs do. We do licenses, so talk about security. We're not aggregating your data and selling it to dad or doing anything else. Right, we want you to own your business and manage it against it, compete with everybody. We want to be in the background helping provide you the best technology you can possibly have. So that's what we're excited about.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I love that you're having a customer advisory board. I think that's genius. Companies just don't think about getting their customers involved in the process and hearing from them and giving them a seat at the table Definitely is a way to stand out, especially as a TMS provider. I don't see a lot of them that are doing that. Some of them have had that, but not a lot of them have done that. I know that DAT and Truckstop had that when I was there and it's just incredibly valuable because you hear from customers who are invested in what you're doing and you being successful, so they can be successful. So kudos to you on that and congratulations on all the success.
Speaker 1:Jeremy, so glad to have you on the show. We have to get you out of here today with your walk-up music because it's just so good. All right, thanks, trey. I appreciate your time today. We'll talk to you soon. All right, everybody, make sure you come back every Tuesday for an episode of Standing Out with great guests like Jeremy.
Speaker 1:Also, make sure, if you are not a part of wreaths across america, that you check them out because they're doing great work. Love for you to sponsor a wreath. Potentially get your team involved with their event that happens every december the second saturday in december to be specific where you can lay wreaths on the tombstones of veterans in the country and take your children with you, take your team with you, whatever such a great experience, so make sure that you check that out at wreaths across americaorg also before we leave today. I got to give you a little tip, so today's sales and marketing tip of the day is this Every sales call or demo should start with questions, not assumptions. Ask great questions, find out what problems your prospect is having, and then you'll know how you can best help them, if you can. Thanks again for watching the show today. Remember, friends, stop standing, still start standing out. We'll see you soon.
