Jannine:

I can see people coming from all over the world. This is interesting. All right. Just give me a moment, and we're gonna get started. Okay.

Welcome everybody, and thank you so much for joining us at today's session, How Logistics Companies are Using Trade Data to Win New Business in 2025. If you work in freight or logistics or in the supply chain industry or manufacturing, you know the grind. When you're in sales or marketing, chasing leads, outdated intelligence, spending so much time prospecting, that's quite challenging and quite time-consuming. So today, what we're gonna do is show you how there's innovative logistics teams that are using trade data to essentially, uncover active importers and exporters, shorten their sales cycles, and build real pipelines that convert, and you're gonna hear exactly how to do that from our panelists. Speaking of which, we have two of them, and they are awesome.

Mike Schneider, is on the sales side. He's a sales manager from MTA Lines who's putting this into action every day. And we have Carolyn Jaynes on our strategic sales team, and I'm gonna give them a moment to introduce themselves, but before I do that, just a few things. I will be popping a link in the chat, so if you stay to the end, you have an opportunity to get a free 20-minute personalized lead list demo. So stay to the end, and you can sign up using that link, and we'll give you a free lead list. We're also gonna share a special offer only for those that are attending the live webinar, so stay tuned. Okay. I wanted to start things off with a poll. So give me a moment. I'm just gonna launch this poll. Just want to see where everyone's at. How are you currently sourcing most of your logistics leads? So if you could take a moment to just answer that. Hmm, I see a lot of you are relying on manual research. A few more of you waiting to answer.

Okay. Here's what you said if you can all see that. Interesting results. Let me close that poll. Yeah, for those of you that are relying on, on, you know, cold lists and so much manual research, I think you're gonna, you're gonna see some really good ideas here that change how you approach this. Just a little housekeeping. I see, many of you have questions. If you could just pop them in the Q&A, we're gonna actually spend 10 minutes at the end answering all the questions you have. So without further ado, I'd love to pass it over to each of our panelists. We'll start with you, Carolyn. Can you share a little bit about your background, your role, and the kinds of customers you work with?

Carolyn: 

Sure. So, good morning, good evening, hello to everyone from around the world who's joined. It's a pleasure to be here. My name is Carolyn Jaynes, and I am the director of strategic sales here at Import Genius. I have been in the trade data industry for over 15 years, and I've had the pleasure of working with all kinds of clients, across a whole variety of industries, from logistics to government clients to banks to manufacturers and retailers. And I've also spent some time working directly in the logistics industry. I spent a few years, working at a freight forwarding firm as well. So very excited to be here with you all today.

Jannine:

Over to you, Mike.

Mike: 

Yeah, I'm, thank you for inviting me to the panel. I'm Mike Schneider. I'm the sales manager at Midwest Transatlantic Lines, MTA. It's a nice, short abbreviated. I've been there for 22 years, quite a long time, all in logistics, all in sales, and I have a, we have a team of six of us that do all the inside sales, the outside business development, quoting, pricing, you know, all the, all the new, new leads and all that. And I always say that if you got something to ship, I, I can move it for you. So I, I deal with a lot of customers, but a lot of it's midsize. We're a midsize company, so…

Jannine: 

Great. Thank you so much. Okay, my first question is actually for you, Carolyn. Based on what you're hearing from our logistics customers, what are some of the biggest sales challenges that you're finding teams are, are facing in the current environment?

Carolyn: 

Sure. You know, I'll kind of bucket this into two things. I think we always hear the usual challenges, which are, how do I find good leads? How do I find the right leads for my business or the area of the business that I'm responsible for? Those are kind of all of the usual challenges, if you will, or some of them. The other thing that is new, or I should say recurring, cyclical, but certainly is a highlight right now, is uncertainty and the ever-shifting landscape, especially with all of the things going on in global trade and tariffs. Not only are logistics companies themselves trying to figure out what to do, their customers are looking to them for answers, and they're also trying to figure out what they're doing. So, there's just a huge amount of uncertainty that people are trying to, to deal with and understand, and still continue to transact and move goods around the world.

Jannine: 

Hmm. Mike, what about yourself? What's the biggest challenge facing MTA lines when it comes to sales at this point?

Mike: 

Sales, is that? Yeah, definitely, that it's a flooded market. Obviously a very competitive market. I think even just the manpower, qualifying leads, doing the cold calling, doing the prospecting and the hunting and all that. I mean, those are, always difficult. And then, you gotta be talking to the decision maker. You know, you, you could do your whole thing and try to sell yourself, sell your company, and how you can help them. And if you're not talking to the decision maker, that's where a lot of time can be wasted as well, that I think, some companies might not realize. You know, you go through that whole thing and, and then you get through the whole thing, and they're like, "Oh, yeah, I gotta talk t- I gotta talk to someone else there. I, I don't make that decision." So, I would say, that's probably it. And, and I, I mean, again, tariffs, everything, yeah, this is very uncertain times, that we are in, so, it... Some people don't wanna make changes just because of the uncertainty. So, it's-

Jannine: 

Yeah.

Mike: 

...it's definitely a, a volatile market right now.

Jannine:

We are hearing that across the board, that's for sure. What, or how does trade data empower, your sales team, and are you able to share, like specific examples of where trade data make, made a difference? And I'm also, I realize I'm packing a lot into this question. But I'm also interested in hearing the difference in, like the quality of leads, that you get using trade data.

Carolyn: 

Yeah.

Mike: 

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I, I think, um, when you're able to, target a specific, whether it's a country, whether it's a certain type of shipment, a certain volume, and now I can target what area it's imported into. When I can actually do that, I've narrowed down exactly how I think I can help that customer. Like in August, we have our rep coming in from Europe. We run a, a dedicated service to the Cleveland area from Europe. He's coming in. We do a sales campaign where we go there, and he comes here. And I can actually find leads that are specific to the country, to the specific area that we're going to be visiting, and I can narrow it down and start making those calls and not random, you know, start, oh, th- this person imports, and I just start calling, and they might have, they might have China, and they still might have China. But at least I can talk about, I've got this gentleman coming in from X country, and I've been able to do that. And then, you know, obviously, you know, the more, the more doors I'm knocking down, you know, we're, we're seeing that. I, I can even filter it from ZIP code, country of origin, and volumes. I mean, so, you know, if I got a customer that might be too much volume, or this is our niche, this is our sweet spot. So it, it's, it's a great approach, using this data, for sure.

Jannine: 

Really targeted.

Mike: 

Yeah.

Jannine: 

And Carolyn, can you share other use cases of how trade data can be used to grow an organization's business?

Carolyn: 

Yeah, absolutely. I think Mike has done a really nice job of explaining, you know, how powerful the data is in tailoring, you know, tailoring it to your needs and really identifying the things that suit your business and your needs. The other thing I'd, I would just highlight is that the data is very timely, and that's one of the powers of the data. And not only can you tailor it to your needs or your customers' needs, or, or what is happening, you can ta- you can tailor this to current events. So, to even walk through a specific example, many folks might remember, last March, a bridge, sorry, a bridge collapsed.

A container ship crashed into the Francis Sackey Bridge in Baltimore and effectively shut down the Port of Baltimore for several days. And, you know, capacity is still significantly reduced there while they rebuild this bridge. To be able to go into a database and actually see who imports goods into the Port of Baltimore, who is going to need help rerouting shipments immediately, and, and, you know, in the near-term to even medium, medium-term because of these challenges. That's something that you can do with this data, and to really show that example in, in live action, we can walk through what you can actually do on the platform. So here, we're looking at our US import data, and we're actually looking at the time period, the, the one year right up to the date of the Baltimore bridge collapse. And we're looking at all of the shipments that came into the Port of Baltimore, by sea. And we see that there are over 200,000 shipments that came in in that timeframe. We are able to see who are those, top shippers by either weight or number of shipments. We can also see on the flip side, who are those, shippers? You know, listed here.

I'm sorry, the consignee's here, so we see those same companies. And then you can run, analytics. So we can ask questions and answer at our fingertips, where do these goods come from? So we see, you know, China, Germany, Vietnam. All of these countries, are well represented, and these are the, essentially the trade lanes and the, the companies and the places that are affected by this, sudden catastrophe. And that can be very useful for, getting quick information and being able to respond to these changes in the market very quickly, because the information is everything to get on those sales and, and get in touch with people and provide them that service. The one other thing I would just like to highlight is not only do you have this information on this list of companies, but we do, also have this company profile, AI generator that not only gives you the information about the shipments but also pulls in a whole bunch of other information, through, through the web and an AI model that tells you about this company's business. So, to Mike's point of really finding the right, finding the right customers and being able to do that deep research, what you can do with a list like this is, select those companies that you want. And you can generate an AI profile, and it will download all of this information as well as information about what industry are they in? Are... Is there current news? What are their main product lines? As well as seeing it in the platform itself. And to just show an example of what that looks like, here's a company profile, for one of our companies that has imported product into Baltimore.

We have this overview, from our AI, giving the founding history, the headquarters location, its core business, many, many details. I won't hover too long because I know this is a lot for people to read. You have the references where those goods come, or that data comes from, and then you have the shipment stats, so you can see what they've actually shipped over time, what countries they work with, what suppliers they work with. And lastly, just in terms of learning more about that company so that when you call them, you know something about your business. Rather than having to go to Google or go somewhere else, you have that all summarized here, and you have, contact information. So you have the titles and the LinkedIn profiles of key people at that business, helping you to streamline, your work and really, again, take quick action with any, with any kind of event that happens that is a sales opportunity for you.

Jannine: 

Wow, I would imagine that would save a tremendous amount of manual research, and just going into calls more informed and knowing your customer or prospect, rather, would be helpful. Okay, I have a question for you, Mike. And I also see some questions popping up in our Q&A, and I just wanted to remind everyone, feel free to drop, drop more questions if you have them, and we'll answer them at the end. Okay, Mike, so how have the trade wars and uncertain landscape affected MTA -

Mike: 

Okay.

Jannine: 

...tariffs?

Mike:

Uh, yeah, it's obviously-

Jannine: 

Right in the thick of it.

Mike: 

Yeah, pretty crazy. You know, since we are more than just a company that moves freight from A to B. We are an extension of all our customers, supply chains. So, we are educators. We, are having to spend a lot of, I would say, extra time, going through all... How the, the landscape has changed with the tariffs. I mean, we could be on a conversation right now, and it could change. We could get off this, and it could be completely changed. So, it has taken a lot of time away from, I would say, the sales department, just because of, you know, we're doing customer care with our current customers and pricing. It has taken away from the hunting and prospecting side of things. So, you know, anytime you have all these uncertainties go on, you know, I'm, I'm meeting more with my customers than ever because of, you know, 232 tariffs, steel, how is it applied? Am I gonna get hit with this tariff? Why are these tariffs coming in on top of each other? Country of origin, you know, and it's just... Again, this is why we're here, but it does take away a little bit from, you know, the side of, hey, let's, let's see who else we can help out there. And we gotta get in touch with those people, to be able to do that. So, yeah, I, I would say that's probably, the biggest thing, you know, the ever-changing landscape. And I know we just came out of COVID and ran into problems with that. It, it... I don't think we've had any relief in the last five years, but, it does seem like it's one thing after another. And, but you just gotta deal with it and, and go from there. Yeah, it's been pretty, pr- pretty crazy.

Jannine: 

And, and Carolyn, I know, you know, we talked about this before that ImportGenius is doing a lot around helping customers stay ahead of these changes, and be competitive at the same time. Like, maybe you can share some of, some of that.

Carolyn: 

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I'll, I'll start by saying ImportGenius, learns from its customers. We really, you know, we love talking with folks like Mike and others to really understand what are the pain points so that we can inform our product development to address those needs. And many of the things that, you just saw in the demo are the result of talking to our customers and, and learning this. And I, I think really the theme on this is the world is changing. We certainly can't predict what is going to happen in terms of current events and politics. But what we can do is make data, turn data into insights with analytical tools using AI to help, reduce the amount of effort that it takes once you have identified that opportunity. You know, can we pull in information that's not only telling you about the shipments of a company? Can we tell you about their business activities, their current news? Can we help you, again, transform a bunch of shipment records into analysis saying, "Oh, this company, you know, imports 30% of its goods from China?" All of those things, we're doing to, to again, try and make your life easier because you guys are all having to respond to whatever changes are happening and whatever things are going on. And we wanna make the intelligence we can derive from that as easy as possible, and really importantly make an intelligence, actionable intelligence rather than just data.

Jannine: 

It's about insights, right? Not just raw data. So my next question is for Mike. What role do technology and external data play at MTA Alliance?

Mike: 

Yeah. Um, so, I might be dating myself. Yeah, I might be dating myself, but, I mean, we used to go into the industrial guides and have to look through, you know, like an encyclopedia of books of importers and exporters. And it really wouldn't tell you that of where they're importing or exporting from, it's just that they import or export. You know, we still do trade shows, and obviously customer referrals are still, still key. But really what I've... with using this electronic external data, I mean, we, and I've been able to, find out exactly what customers that I need that I'm gonna be able to help.

Jannine: 

Mm-hmm.

Mike: 

You know, again, we can't service everyone. We're... you know, everyone can't be our customer, even though I, I think we can. I want 'em to be, but it's just not, it's not feasible. I mean, we have our niches, and I'm able to narrow it down, to really precise, this is where we can serve customers best. And, you know, you have your demographics and, and all of that in our, you know, our, our target markets, so I'm not necessarily spinning my wheels going after a customer that I'm probably not gonna get or that they might only have one shipment and I think they're importing a lot. So I can see, I can, I can pull all that up, volumes, sizes of shipments. You know, we do break bulk, but, you know, this customer might be just a pure grain break bulk carrier or customer, and, you know, that's not something that we get involved in. So I, I can target that and, narrow it down and really not waste my time looking at other leads that might not amount to anything. I mean, you gotta pick and choose where you think you're gonna have the most success, and that's obviously number one, and where I think I can help them the most, because that's... Yes, we, we wanna get customers, but for me, I feel I can help someone. I can help them move their freight. I can help them with their supply chain better and more cost-effective. You know? So that's, that's where I can actually target those accounts.

Jannine: 

And what percentage of your leads are actually coming from trade data?

Mike: 

Yeah. I would say probably a good 70%, of where we're looking at. It's hard to tell obviously, you know, we... I, I... we do have a marketing department. We are active on LinkedIn and, and, and do all of that, of course. That's a little bit harder to narrow down, but, you know, without looking at in- inward with our current customers, but, yeah. I mean, you know, obviously trade shows are also kinda hard. You do a trade show and you're trying to, what are we pulling out of that? Again, you know, go- going into this trade data, I have unlimited qualified leads at my fingertips. And, and why it's qualified is because I'm gonna customize it-

Jannine: 

Right.

Mike: 

...to what, where I think I can have the most success, where I think I can help the- people the most. You know, just, and, and, and out of that 70%, you know, or, or those calls we're making, I might get probably a good 10% maybe a face-to-face or able to give some, um, rates in front of them. Obviously, the sales cycle goes from there and there's a lot more that goes into it. But, you know, you, you wanna get, you wanna get to talking to the right person, you wanna be able to get rates and tell the services. Those are the beginning stages of it. I was at a customer's door last week. I happened to look up. I was, I was done with the call. I looked across the street. I saw an ocean container in the dock. I, I couldn't see the o- the, the container number, which I could have plugged in, but I saw the company name. I went on the app. I was on my phone. I plugged in the company's name. I pulled up how many shipments they did in the last 12 years. I had... Or, I mean, last year, 12 months, I had who their suppliers were, their volumes. I mean, it, it's got bill of lading numbers. I mean, there is a lot of info. Now, I didn't just walk across the street 'cause I had to go to my next call. So I, I marked him down and, you know, I'll, I'll give him a call when, you know, this week. But yeah -

Jannine: 

Yeah, well, that's a fantastic example. Thank you so much for sharing.

Mike: 

Yeah.

Jannine: 

Carolyn, where do you see the biggest opportunities right now for logistics companies to grow? And what would you say separates those who are winning from those who are falling behind from your perspective?

Carolyn: 

Yeah. Well, I think the opportunities are, you know, unique to your own business and, and each of you are probably best suited to uncover where those things are. I, I think the key to really doing that is being able to access timely intelligence, whether that is, again, these current event examples, whether it's driving by a building and seeing a company name and being able to search, you know, down, down to even, we h- we haven't talked so much about this, but, but Mike mentioned repeat business. The best business is repeat business, building those relationships, being able to check in on your customers, seeing what they're doing, being able to call them and say, "Hey, I see you just started, you know, importing goods from Vietnam." These are, again, all, all intelligence t- you know, at your fingertips with trade data and with ImportGenius, that are gonna really empower you to get new sales and continue to build, build those relationships and that repeat business.

Mike: 

Yeah. If I can, yeah, step in just with the, the winning side of it, um, you know, MTA, we, we actually became an ESOP like five years ago. So we're employee-owned. So we've done a lot in the last, years of, you know, trying to improve the work, you know, just our workforce and our, our work space. And, and we've grown. We've, we've, we've opened up a foreign trade zone in Cleveland. So there are things that you can try to look into the future. So we, we started a foreign trade zone in September, obviously not knowing that tariffs were gonna go crazy, crazy in February. Um, so yeah, it was, it was good timing with it. But you know, you, you, you, there's probably three or four forwarders in Cleveland that closed. We actually saw growth. We were trying to hire. We've opened up a warehouse in LA. So there, there are ways that, you know, I, I would say sometimes you have to take a risk if you wanna win. Um, but, you know, just, you know, improving the employees. I mean, o- obviously everyone knows that, you know, if you have happy employees, they're gonna work harder and they're gonna do a better job. I mean, that's, you know, so I, I think if you concentrate on that, then customers will come and you'll have good service.

Jannine: 

Right, right.

Mike: 

So, yeah. So I didn't mean to interrupt, but yeah, it's the winning side of it. Yeah.

Jannine:

Well, that actually brings us to our last question. And this one is for both of you. Maybe I'll start with you, Carolyn. Um, for any logistics leader thinking about investing in trade data on the sales and marketing side, what is your advice for getting the most out of it?

Carolyn: 

You know, I, I think the key thing is actually really simple. I think it's being able to define the problem. You know, Mike just went through a bunch of examples of all kinds of, you know, things that you can do to respond to market conditions. And really, defining the problem you are trying to solve with the data is going to enable you and, you know, whoever you are getting data from to really help you understand how do, how do you turn that data into those insights to solve that problem. You know, whether, whether it's I need a better lead list, whether it's I have a sales team that is organized by region and I need 10 lead lists based on the consignee's, you know, state or city, however you're organized, to, what are the, what are the opportunities? Are th- is there a low-tariff country that you can provide service to? Can you market to those people and capitalize on that opportunity?

Jannine: 

Yeah. Exactly. And, and what, what do you have to add, Mike? What do you... What, what's some of the advice you would give?

Mike: 

I, I mean, o- obviously if you, anything that you're investing in, use it. I mean, you know, that, that's, that's the biggest thing. But, you know, just as the examples I've given, you know, being able to target your specific... You know, you have a target market, whether you're a freight forwarder, whether you're a manufacturer, an importer, you know, there, there's information out there. You can see what your competitors are doing. You can see what the competition is doing. I think for a really good thing for it is that I, I already know going into, we'll say the cold call, I already know most of the person's pain points because I'm already seeing how they're shipping. You know, so obviously I'm trying to sell my niche service that I have or my customer service. I already know. Now, I'll extract that from them, I'll let them tell me their pain points, but, I'm alr- I already, I already know it and I'm already leading, leading those questions to get those answers, almost to let, let him say it out loud as well, you know. So I, I think having that data, you know, I would just suggest, you know, that you, you do, you do have to... There is some time involved in qualifying the leads no matter where you're at. But at least you can organize it and customize it in exactly what you wanna target.

Jannine: 

Yeah.

Mike: 

And y- you just couldn't do that before. You know? That's- I think that's probably the number one thing.

Jannine: 

Yeah. Great response, thank you so much. We have a number of questions in the chat, and so let me start teeing them up for you both. The first one, for Carolyn, let me get this to you. Do we have data of shippers for Canada as a, as a country of origin and final destination? I know we get this question a lot.

Carolyn: 

Yeah, it's a, it's a great question. So the world of, trade data is, has to do with which countries release this data, and for those countries, we have what we call source data. So for in the United States, the US does release data, so we have information specifically for the US. Canada is not a country that releases, customs data. They don't for privacy reasons. However, all hope is not lost. Canada does trade with many other countries around the world, and many of those countries have their data released. So I'll talk about the US specifically for, as an example. The United States and Canada obviously do a lot of trade. A lot of that trade is actually land border trade, and the US import data is seaborne data only. However, any shipments that come into the United States and are unladed at a US port, and still belong to Canada are captured in the data set. And to put some numbers on that, about 30% of all shipment records that come into the Port of Seattle-Tacoma are actually Canadian shipments, destined for Canada, generally, Vancouver and further inland on the, the western, western side of Canada. So that's one way you can get data, and then certainly when you talk about countries like India or Indonesia or Vietnam, they all have significant trade with Canada, and you're able to see that line of trade, between those countries and get information on what does Canada actually send and who are the parties that are engaged in those trades.

Jannine: 

Thank you. I'm seeing a couple questions around the meeting recording, and yes, we will be sharing the meeting recording. That will go out either sometime this week or Monday at the very latest. So, you, you can have that and watch it again and share it with your colleagues. Next question is for Mike. This is quite specific. What is the cost-benefit analysis in dollars for MTA Lading? And you may not have the cost-benefit analysis.

Mike: 

Yeah.

Jannine: 

I think he's saying, "Are 10 Xing your investment."

Mike: 

Yeah.

Jannine: 

And so, you know, at the end of the day, like, are you seeing a good ROI, you know, from investing in trade data?

Mike: 

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, for me, in our, you know, milestones and what we have, are, what we're supposed to be doing on so many calls, I mean, I'm, I'm geared towards, you know, trying to get so many calls, so many, in front of so many people, and then making the quotes and all that. So, I said about 70%, and then I would say we're getting in front of about 10%, and then probably about 1 or 2% of those is where we're actually getting a customer. And, and, and that's just when we do these campaigns. You know, unfortunately, I would say if we could dedic-... So it's not only just investing in PortGenius or your external data information. You have to invest in an employee-

Jannine: 

Mm-hmm.

Mike: 

...that's going to go through all this, and then obviously there's who's gonna make the calls and who's gonna go from there. And so it's all part of the team that we have of six. But I don't have a dedicated person that is just doing that for that. But when I see, when we do the campaigns and we're, and we're focusing on it, you know, I'm, I'm seeing probably a good 2 or 3% on, of actual getting the accounts from when we're making these calls. So, a- and again, sales cycles, you know, I'm, I'm not gonna get into my sales cycle and how long it takes. Sometimes you can walk in the door and get it. Sometimes it takes repeat, calling as well. But yeah, I mean, yeah, to get into the actual rate of r- return, um, but-

Jannine: 

You are seeing a good rate of return.

Mike: 

I'm seeing a good return, and like I said, if you aren't speaking to the right people, and you aren't providing pricing, you're not gonna get any customers besides referrals maybe.

Jannine: 

Yeah.

Mike: 

You know? So, I... A little old school and not necessarily, like the mass emails that go out to 1,000 people. Those are, those are still good. I'm a, you know, I have... We, we need to make phone calls.

Jannine: 

Yeah.

Mike: 

You, you need to make phone calls. You need to get 'em on. I mean, obviously you can reach out on LinkedIn, we, we do that as well. We still will send emails, but getting that phone call and getting in front of that person on the phone is still the best way.

Jannine: 

Absolutely.

Mike: 

And, and having this data is the way to get that, and it's very difficult to get someone on the phone, as we know, with the United States and voicemail and- and not getting any return calls, so.

Jannine: 

Challenges there, I'm sure. Carolyn, how does the bill of lading- lading and container information help when we are making calls to importers and custom brokers?

Carolyn: 

Well, it's, it's the details, the timeliness and the details. So, you know, you have the date that the good came, came into the United States for the US data. You have where it came into, which port it actually, laded in, or unladed in. You have the port that it actually left from. You have the details of what was shipped. So when you're trying to do things like, say, focus on reefer-only shipments coming from, say, China to the United States, you can actually go through and, and look at that and look at the bill of lading and, and have that detail. And the, the last note I'll just make on the bill of lading being helpful and being timely, in the United States, the data is extremely timely. Kind of internationally speaking, data is about 30 to 60 days lag. In the United States, this data is released every single weekday. So the data on our platform is describing shipments that are coming into the United States in the last three to five days. So that, y- you know, it's, it's so current. You could literally have an alert set on a company that you're interested in talking to and you could see they received a shipment into the Port of Richmond, Virginia yesterday, and you could pick up the phone and call them. And that's, that's really part of the, the huge power of, of having trade data and using trade data, particularly in the logistics space.

Jannine: 

Hmm.

Mike: 

If I, if I could just step in as well, I... W- what I'll do is I'll pull the master bill of lading, I'll go to their website, I'll track and see how the transit times were, because then I might have a better option and that's part of my selling tool. If I already know that they're getting 17, 18, 19 days on the water and I see I might have a better option with a different carrier, and I'm seeing that they're using the same carrier all the time. I've got this other carrier that's only 12 days on the water, um, I can, uh, bless you, I can actually go- ... and then that's part of my sale tactic when I'm calling them going, uh, you know, "I might have a faster option that could get your goods here quicker. And right now, New York is very congested and you're going to be in New York, well, let's look at Norfolk." And, you know, so there, there are important ways of having the bill of lading, the master bill of lading number and all that, and obviously container number and, and, and that for tracking reasons.

Carolyn: 

Yeah.

Mike: 

I just thought I'd mention that.

Carolyn: 

Such a good point, Mike. I'm so glad you chimed in there.

Jannine: 

One of the questions, the next question is, how frequently is import/export data updated on Import Genius?

Carolyn: 

I, I think we, we just covered that, but to quickly recap, in the US, the data is updated every single weekday, and it's, all of our data is updated when we receive it. It's updated, within hours of being received and it's, from the, from the viewer's eyes, it's three to five days lag in the US. And on average for the other countries where we have data, it tends to be 30 to 60 days delayed and it's updated monthly.

Jannine: 

Thank you. And does Import Genius provide data integration options with CRMs?

Carolyn: 

Great question. Yes, we do. Um, we've talked a lot about the find and seek yourself, which is a great way to get started, especially if you are... haven't used this data before. But once you do know what you like and you found your right customer, we offer API solutions, we offer bulk data files that allow you to pipe this data right into your CRM, and keep your, you know, keep your sales folks in that CRM system and not having to spend a bunch of time clicking and, and searching all over the internet.

Jannine: 

Thank you. And a question for Mike. What is the best strategy to get in front of a decision maker?

Mike: 

My secrets, oh. My trade secrets.

Carolyn: 

The secret sauce.

Jannine: 

Yeah.

Mike: 

Oh, um. Let's see if I wanna answer this or not. Um, I, I... Yeah, this is a good one. Um, not all customers are happy that, their information is loosely out on the web. Um, it, it, it's just plain and simple. So, I, I don't just come out and say that I got your s- your information off of Import Genius and this is how I'm calling you. Um, I like to, I like to reference that I know that they have shipments coming from a certain supplier. So when I'm, when, when I'm really addressing them, I already have that information, and that's how I'm trying to get in the door, because I've already targeted this specific lane, this specific country, this kind of needs in an area where we know that we can service. And that's kind of where, um, how I target and try to get my foot in the door. Because again, it's very difficult to get through the gatekeeper, which is usually the first person answering the phone, and to get to the right person. Um, you know, again, as I-

Jannine: 

Typically know? Do you typically know who the right person is? Or-

Mike: 

So I, through the LinkedIn, um, information, I'll go through, see if obviously they're still working there, I'll do, I will do a little research on that. Sometimes we will message them through LinkedIn, I've, we've done that as well, just to s- so they keep seeing Midwest Transatlantic Lines. Um, yeah, obviously our marketing department is doing stuff on LinkedIn as well, and we have other, we're sponsoring trade shows and stuff like that. Um, you, you try to get your name out there so that when I do call, maybe they've even heard of us.

Jannine: 

Oh, deep-

Mike: 

Yeah.

Jannine: 

...approach.

Mike: 

Yeah. So but, but again, I'm, I'm-I'm still a believer in- in trying to make the phone call, um. And- and again, we might have sent emails to this p- particular gentleman or, um, lady that is in charge of that. Um, they probably deleted it. So even when I do call, um, they- they still might not recognize MTA. So, um, yeah, I- I am- I am being more specific on why I'm calling and- and the- the data that I have.

Jannine: 

Great. Yeah.

Mike: 

I hope I didn't reveal too many of my secrets.

Carolyn:

If I could- You know, if I could maybe add, um, add to this, and I... You know, Mike, you're- this is kind of exactly what you're describing, but a lot of getting to the decision maker is, um, being helpful and having information and answering your question. No one, no one wants to talk to a salesperson. Everyone wants to talk to someone that can help solve their problem. And the more information you have and the more empowered you are and the person feels like, "Oh, this is a person who understands my business or understands my pain points," then you're gonna talk to someone who can make a decision. Um, and that- that, I feel like, is really key. And Mike, you've- I mean, you've just given us a whole bunch of examples of how exactly you do that. Um.

Mike: 

Maybe too much.

Carolyn: 

Two.

Jannine: 

I got time for one last question, and I realize there's a lot more questions we have, um, so for those, you know, that we weren't able to get to, we'll make sure we do respond to you, um, following this- this webinar. Um, this one is around AI. So how does- how has AI influenced our gathering process, our- to feed your database or feed our database, the ImportGenius database? I guess this is more about our GDS company profiler.

Carolyn: 

Yeah. So I- I mean, um, you know, AI is the big buzzword, and it's, um, it's all the rage right now. But I- I think at the end of the day, um, you know, we- we wanna use all the technology we can in a thoughtful way, and a lot of that comes down to kind of leveraging these tools that are able to, to learn and- and crawl the web and look at- and ingest huge amounts of data to then direct that AI to fetch things that we know are helpful to our customers based on conversations that we have. And, you know, that's really our- that's really our approach with how we would deploy any kind of technology or AI, um, is really in terms of what- again, what problem are we trying to solve for our customers and then what tools are available to us to best address that. I hope that's a helpful answer.

Jannine: 

I think so. Um, this actually... I'm trying to expand my screen here. This actually brings us to the end of the webinar. So, what I wanted to do is just share how you can get in touch with our panelists via email, via LinkedIn. Um, we're all willing to connect with you. I did pop the- the link in the chat if you do wanna book some time and get your free lead list. And if you do end up signing on with ImportGenius, we're going to throw in a free seat. So we're offering a BOGO deal. Uh, buy one, get one seat free. Um.

Mike: 

Again, my- my email is mschneider@mtalines.com.

Jannine: 

Oh. Oh, it's missing. Oh my goodness.

Mike: 

It's missing, yeah.

Jannine: 

Mschneider, following... Exactly.

Mike: 

Yeah, mschneider@mtalines.com.

Jannine: 

Thank you so much for- for noticing that. Awesome. So, feel free to reach out. I wanna thank my wonderful panelists today for making the time, to share your insights with our audience. And thank you, audience, for joining us. We will send out, the recording of today's session, over the next few days. So until next time, I hope you all have a wonderful rest of the day. Bye.

Carolyn: 

Bye.