Build a List, Pick Up the Phone: Key Takeaways from Our Sales Webinar

On Thursday, November 5, Brian Li (co-founder and CEO, Revenue Vessel) joined Trenton Chen (co-founder and CEO, GoFreight) to answer one question: if you’re a forwarder with a small sales team (or none at all) how do you start winning new customers?

Brian joined Flexport straight out of college. He moved shipments and did data entry, then went on to build much of Flexport’s outbound sales motion, which he estimates generated about 90% of the company’s revenue. Today, Revenue Vessel helps freight forwarders, customs brokers and other logistics companies with sales.

Short on time? Here’s what mattered.

Outbound is just reaching out. You still have to do it.

Outbound sales means sending an email, making a phone call or sending a LinkedIn message to someone who doesn’t know you yet. Brian’s view is blunt: if referrals and inbound leads aren’t keeping you busy, there’s no other way to grow. Cold email and calling are harder than they used to be, but they still work if you put in the effort.

When a rep was struggling at Flexport, managers checked activity first. The expectation was 50 dials a day (today it’s closer to 100). The struggling rep was usually making about 10.

The channels also feed each other. Before a trade show, Flexport’s inside sales team went through the attendee list by territory and called prospects to book meetings ahead of time. Webinars worked the same way.

The hard part is the list, not the call

Calling takes an hour or two of your day. Whether that time counts depends on having enough people to call. “If you don’t have a list of 50 people, you’re not serious about doing cold calls,” Brian said. If 50 feels like a lot, start with 20. The point is to build the habit.

When Brian started Revenue Vessel, he built a list of 50 companies every evening and scheduled the next day’s emails before bed.

Build your first list in an afternoon

• Pick who you serve best. Spend 10 minutes on this, not a week. Name the industries your operations team handles well, such as apparel or e-commerce. Then name the person you’ll call: usually a logistics or supply chain manager, or the owner at a smaller company.
• Start broad. Filter by industry, revenue and location. Brian’s example: apparel companies in California with under $50 million in revenue. At this stage, volume matters more than quality.
• Use a cheap tool you can pay for monthly. Brian started with Apollo. Save annual contracts until you've proven out that the process works.
• Get 100 companies and one contact at each, with a phone number. Expect it to take an hour or two.
• Fix the list as you learn. Some numbers will be wrong, and some meetings won’t be a fit. Maybe a prospect produces in Mexico and you don’t offer cross-border. That’s when you tighten the filters or pay for better data.

The warmest list is already in your system

Brian called this an underrated play: past customers. Go into your freight management system, find the shippers who last quoted or shipped with you years ago, and call them. They already know who you are, so you skip the hardest part of a cold call. Trenton suggested an easy opener: remind them when you last shipped for them, then ask what they need now.

Use email to warm people up

If you can pick only one channel, pick the phone. In Brian’s experience, about 70% of Flexport’s meetings were set over the phone. Here’s his rough math:

• Phone: out of 100 calls, expect 5 to 10 people to pick up. A top rep turns about 1 in 5 of those into a meeting.
• Email: out of 100 emails, expect 20–30% to be opened and maybe one positive reply, if the email is good. A 1% reply rate is elite today.

Use them together. Send the emails, see who opened them, and call those people first. They’ll recognize your name. Brian calls mobile numbers rather than going through the front desk.

Write the emails yourself. Keep them under 100 words, with one clear reason your service fits the shipper. Don’t use AI for this. Inboxes are full of AI-written email, and thinking hard about the message is what gets replies.

The four parts of a cold call

Brian scores every new rep’s calls on these four parts. By the end of their first week, he wants each part at 8 out of 10 or better.

1. Earn the next 30 seconds. Say your name and company slowly and clearly. Admit you’re calling out of the blue and ask, “Do you have 30 seconds?” Most people say yes.
2. Pitch in one sentence, then ask a question. Say who you help and how, matched to their industry, for example: “We help apparel companies cut lead times.” Then ask how they handle freight today and whether anything is giving them trouble.
3. Have your answers to objections ready. “We’re fine.” “You’re too expensive.” “What’s your pricing?” Know your lines before you dial.
4. Book the meeting on the call. Don’t settle for “send me an email.” Offer a specific time: “I have my calendar open. Does 10am Pacific on November 11 work?” If they still want an email, ask what’s top of mind so you can tailor it. Their answer, maybe a problem with a supplier in India, is your hook.

Skip the prep and you might still set a meeting, but there’s a good chance the prospect won’t show up.

Do it by hand before you automate

Brian’s reason for doing everything manually is that it shows you what works. If you send 10,000 automated emails and get zero replies, you can’t tell whether the list, the subject line or the message was the problem. When you work by hand, you can change one thing at a time. Trenton’s rule of thumb: if few people open your emails, fix the subject line. If people open but don’t reply, fix the message.

Then keep going. When Brian’s calendar filled up, he stopped prospecting, and his pipeline dried up. Outreach isn’t a project you finish.

Don’t wait until everything looks polished, either. Brian sent his first Revenue Vessel emails before the company even had a website. One prospect said it looked like something his mom would write. People replied anyway, because the email was about their job.

“Getting started is an art, scaling is a science,” Brian said. Once outreach works by hand, tools can take over parts of it: AI to build lists, software to send email sequences, and power dialers that call several numbers at once.

When is it working well enough to hire?

Brian’s test: hire when outreach brings in enough business to pay a salary. Even then, expect to break even or lose money at first. Freight accounts take time to close, and shipments ramp up slowly after that. For a benchmark, a full-time inside sales rep at Flexport set about 10 meetings a month.

From the Q&A

• How long do you keep calling a lead before moving on? Call every day, and try calling twice in a row. Brian usually moves on after about five calls over five days, or tries another contact at the same company. Some reps keep going for three weeks. Stop when a fresh list would be a better use of your time.
• Do you use the same approach on every call? Mostly. Keep one script and change only the line where you introduce your company, so it fits the prospect’s industry.
• How do you prepare for the first meeting? Don’t open with “send me your rates.” Research their business and supply chain. Come in knowing the challenges they likely face, such as opening a new factory in India, and bring examples of how you’ve helped similar shippers. Brian said reps lose these meetings for two reasons: they don’t know their own company’s services well enough, and they don’t line up rates from their partner at origin before the meeting.

Your first week

1. Write down the shippers you serve best and who you’ll call there (10 minutes).
2. Pull 100 companies and one contact at each.
3. Write one email by hand, under 100 words.
4. Send it, and call the people who opened it first.
5. Pull a list of past customers from your own system and call them, too.
6. Keep notes on what you change and what happens.

Trenton has invited Brian back to cover the next stage: hiring, measuring and coaching a sales team.

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