Jesse Miller has been in the heavy duty truck business since 2009, starting as a fresh-out-of-high-school kid at a Freightliner dealership. He's seen the industry shift from scrambling to meet demand during the allocation years to the current moment where truck sales reps need to remember how to actually sell again. In a conversation with Voze co-founder Cade Krueger, Miller talks about what's happening now: truck salespeople coming off four years of relationship maintenance instead of hard selling, parts teams crushed by volume increases, and an entire industry where small follow-through failures compound into lost customers faster than most dealers realize. Miller's take? The dealerships that recognize follow-through as a fixable process problem (not just another thing to grind through) are the ones that win consistently.
Watch here - 7 min
For the last four or five years, truck sales reps weren't really selling, they were managing allocation. Dealerships wanted to sell a thousand trucks but could only get 600 from manufacturers. Sales guys maintained relationships and delivered trucks customers desperately needed. With conditions changing, reps need to become salespeople again and find new customers, follow a sales process, and close sales against competition. Some haven't done real prospecting in years. What's that transition look like?
While truck sales flattened, parts volume ramped up hard. Parts teams saw interactions increase, pace increase, stress increase. Everyone started to expand to expand to other makes and models. The cycle times are brutal, with eight, ten, twelve customer interactions a day (plus phone calls, texts, emails). In that environment, speed is everything. Both speed of internal communication within your teams, but most importantly the speed you get back to a customer. Because when you and a competitor are both selling the same drum at the same price, whoever gets the answer back first gets the PO. The next guy gets an apology.
Consistency in follow-up is fundamental. Miller frames it as a trust equation that compounds in both directions. Drop the ball once, you might get one opportunity next month instead of two. Drop it three times? The customer won't even give you a shot, even if you've got the best deal. But nail it consistently? Two opportunities become four, then eight. But the challenge to good follow-up is volume and lack of process, like taking too much at once or thinking you'll see someone in 60 days (then not seeing them for six months). Or sticking with pen-and-paper when a newer rep with a better process is beating you on response time.
Miller sees two different challenges. On the parts side, it's helping people organize their day, communicate well, and support the sales function instead of just saying "go grind, hit your number." On the truck side, it's pushing reps to break old habits from the allocation era—get back on the road, check in with customers they haven't needed to contact in years, do the sales-driven activities they've gotten rusty at. Both sides need the same thing, which is managers who improve the process instead of hoping harder work produces different results.
Cade Krueger: I'm here today with Jesse Miller, the Voze expert when it comes to heavy duty truck and transportation. Thank you for joining us today, Jesse.
Jesse Miller: Yeah, absolutely.
Cade Krueger: Came all the way in from Wisconsin. I'd love to hear a little bit more about your experience. How did you start?
Jesse Miller: I started kind of as a struggling college student trying to find my way. I got an opportunity with a Freightliner dealership as a fresh-outta-highschool kid. And I kinda really never looked back. So I've been in trucking industry since 2009.
Cade Krueger: What have you seen from a sales rep behavior standpoint over these last several years?
Jesse Miller: It kind of depends on the role and like the organization. ‘Cause there's truck sales and there's part sales and there's leasing sales. So there's different roles and there's different needs.
Cade Krueger: Yeah.
Jesse Miller: I think the part sales volume never slowed down at all. It anything, it increased and over the last five or six years, truck sales teams maybe kind of fell into a lull because there was a thing called “allocation” where dealerships are only allocated a certain number of trucks. They wanted to sell a thousand, they could only get 600 from the manufacturer. So instead of actively selling, those sales guys were just kind of relationship maintaining.
Cade Krueger: Mm-hmm <affirmative>.
Jesse Miller: They were managing that customer, but they weren't really selling hard in the last four or five years. So I think that's gonna be a big adjustment coming out of that allocation era, which is kind of still ongoing.
Cade Krueger: Yeah.
Jesse Miller: And in a lot of cases, so our truck sales guys are actually gonna—they're gonna have to find customers that they really haven't had. Some of 'em have never been a salesman for four years. They've never really actually had to find a customer to sell a truck to, in some cases.
Cade Krueger: Yeah.
Jesse Miller: So now they're gonna have to become a salesman, follow a sales process, improve their process, find new customers, and sell a truck—versus just deliver a truck that a customer desperately needed.
Cade Krueger: Right.
Jesse Miller: So I think on the other side of that is the parts sales guys—where volume ramped up and increased, interactions increased. Pace increased, and a lot more stress was put on the parts team to perform, to get parts delivered, to increase sales to other makes and models, and find opportunity to grow the business there. 'Cause truck sales were relatively flat.
Cade Krueger: So what does that mean from a manager standpoint then? How does their job change or evolve with this idea of like, before, is a lot more order taking. And now it's, “I need you out prospecting.” Like how do they go get that done?
Jesse Miller: From the fixed op side, I think it's really helping guys organize their day and helping them communicate well, follow through on what they're doing. I think that's one of the things that managers could maybe do better in—is trying to support the sales functions or improve the sales process of their parts teams instead of just letting 'em go out there and grind. “I got another month, I got another number to hit.” How are they gonna hit it? Did we improve anything? Are we just doing the same stuff hoping for a different result?
Jesse Miller: So I think that's on the parts side. And then on the truck side, I think it's really pushing on those sales guys. If you have trucks to sell, if you wanna find new customers, you gotta break your old habit.
Cade Krueger: Yeah.
Jesse Miller: You gotta go out on the road. You gotta make sure you're checking back with customers that you typically haven't had to. So I think it's all those sales-driven activities. And making sure the guys are doing them. 'Cause they're coming off a time where they really haven't had to.
Cade Krueger: You talked about follow up—talk a little bit more about that and the impact that you saw.
Jesse Miller: Doing what you say you're gonna do. If a customer says he wants a price on a pallet of drums, or he needs to know what the availability is on a turbo—ASAP to get that done in the most efficient, timely manner is what brings that customer to you, essentially.
Cade Krueger: Yeah. I mean, it feels like speed is such a differentiator in the heavy duty truck industry.
Jesse Miller: Yeah. And I think it's more essential on the part side, 'cause those cycles are very quick. They're seeing eight, ten, twelve customers a day. They're taking phone calls and text messages and emails, and those guys want those answers.
Cade Krueger: Yeah.
Jesse Miller: A drum is gonna be relatively the same price no matter if you buy it from X dealer or Y dealer.
Cade Krueger: Right.
Jesse Miller: A drum is gonna be relatively the same price no matter if you buy it from X dealer or Y dealer. It's who has maybe a better product or the better answer, the faster answer, right?
Cade Krueger: Right.
Jesse Miller: If we’re both selling the same drum at the same price—”Hey, I got you the price first—here's the PO.” The next guy walks in and said, “Oh, I just ordered them from X dealer. Sorry about that.” So that's happened a million times to me, right? And then the truck side, I think just “consistency”. I think that's where a lot of sales people need help and development.
Cade Krueger: Why do you think they struggle with some of those things so much?
Jesse Miller: I mean, I think it's partially the volume. Like they're taking a lot of stuff at one time. Or they're just not familiar with it and they're thinking, “oh, it's a slow cycle. I'm obviously gonna see this guy in the next 60 days.” But then they don't really have a plan for it, and then they don't see him for half a year.
Cade Krueger: Right.
Jesse Miller: And on the parts side, it's like what, what am I gonna do when you understand what a Cat and Cummins engine is, what a series 60 injector is. But you've never sold a part or you're new to selling parts—or even if you've been doing it for 10 or 15 years, there's a new guy that's got a better process that gets back to that customer quicker than the standard pen-and-paper that you've been using forever. Right?
Cade Krueger: Right, yeah. It feels like a lot of this is just these paper cuts over time.
Jesse Miller: Yeah.
Cade Krueger: Oh, he dropped the ball on that specific order.
Jesse Miller: Yeah. And it's compounding, right?
Cade Krueger: Yeah.
Jesse Miller: I always told my guys, if a guy gives you two opportunities this month and you don't get back to him on one, how many is he gonna give you next month? It's gonna be one maybe.
Cade Krueger: Yeah.
Jesse Miller: If he gives you two opportunities this month and you knock him outta the park—you were the guy, next month it's four. Next month it's eight.
Cade Krueger: Right.
Jesse Miller: But it can go the other way. Even when you're giving them the best deal in the world, he's like, “I don't even trust you. I don't know if it's gonna be—don't even—I'll just stick with what I've got.”
Cade Krueger: Yeah. You don’t know, right, what you're gonna get.
Jesse Miller: You haven't come through for me three times in a row, I'm not gonna deal with it. It is just like paper cuts. Like if you don't perform your status diminishes.
Cade Krueger: Yeah. It's like the—what's the saying? It is, uh, “credibility equals trust over time.”
Jesse Miller: Yeah.
Cade Krueger: And it's that same thing like you're putting those deposits in and earning that person's trust with a little simple thing by following through or circling back and communicating internally. Get that answer to them quickly at a time when they need it the most or they're going through a painful moment.
Cade Krueger: It's gotta be a huge competitive advantage for these guys.
Jesse Miller: Yeah. If you do it well then like, you're just like, you got it down, you got your process down. Like you'll go out there and win all day long if you've got it down. So the good dealerships recognize that it's an issue that can be addressed either with improving a process or bringing in a tool and training the team to use the tool effectively. And then realizing that by improving that process, we're gonna sell more stuff.
Cade Krueger: Yeah.
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