Heavy Duty Truck Interview: Myles Brill

When follow-through breaks and managers can't see it
Lessons from a decade of experience 

Myles Brill has spent 10 years in heavy duty truck watching the same problems play out: sales reps dropping follow-through because their days are too hectic, managers trying to coach without seeing the full context of what's happening, and data that shows sales dropping off but can't explain why. In a conversation with Voze co-founder Cade Krueger, Brill talks about the operational breakdowns that cost dealerships business, and why managers stay stuck guessing instead of knowing. But those gaps—the "franticness," lack of visibility and time, and incomplete data—cost dealerships a lot. 

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Key takeaways

When franticness showed what matters - 1 min

When COVID hit, parts disappeared and customers were calling about $270,000 trucks sitting broken with no ETA. Staff got burned out from the constant negativity, and that's when things got dangerous: "The franticness of it, people would overlook ways to actually get the guy's truck back on the road. They'd overlook solutions for it and at times that franticness could put someone out of business." That's when Brill's team realized what they were actually dealing with: "It's not just someone calling and yelling about a part not being available, but it's someone who's terrified for their family and their livelihood."

From scarcity to saturation - 1 min

But with COVID and allocation eras ended, dealerships ended up holding excess inventory. Sales teams either burned out or got comfortable during the years when any truck on the lot was already sold. Now the problem is different: "One of the biggest challenges that we see is being hungry for that business again and proactively trying to create the business instead of waiting for it to come in." COVID also blew up all-makes competition—when proprietary parts went unavailable, everyone started selling into other verticals. Now dealerships compete with independent shops and online vendors that didn't exist before, while trying to get sales teams to learn thousands of new parts they never had to know.

How follow-through falls apart - 1 min

Brill describes a typical day: driving four or five hours in the van, constantly on the phone, calling in orders, getting orders, talking to delivery drivers about wrong parts—"it's like trying to have four conversations at once. So stuff slips through the cracks all the time." The result? Customer calls saying the sales guy quoted something, got a PO, then completely forgot about it. The customer had to go somewhere else. But the news isn't all bad, says Brill: "Follow-through is probably one of the largest very easy focuses for people to change because a lot of it's habit based."

The manager's visibility problem - 1 min

Managers need to know what's happening in the field to coach effectively, but the traditional approach wastes time. Brill's advice: "Finding a way to have transparency into what their team is doing without making it get in the way of what they're doing. Because without knowing every conversation or without knowing what kind of things my reps are struggling with, it's impossible to train." Spending entire days riding along doesn't solve it—you're on the road for ten hours but only talking to customers for two or three. Meanwhile, everything else that needs doing goes out the window.

Data without context - 3 min

Brill would track sales history, and sometimes catch key changes: "Oh, they used to buy this from us and in the last two months they haven't bought anything and my guys didn't even know about it." But here's the problem: "I had no way of knowing why it happened. You could always see the data that said, 'I lost sales on this product line', but knowing why it happened was very, very difficult." Worse, even getting that level of insight took forever, and sharing it with the team meant pulling everyone off the streets once or twice a month for an hour-long meeting—and for data that was already stale. "If it's a month later and I'm supposed to keep track of which customers I'm struggling with, which product lines I'm struggling with . . . chances are that gets really watered down."

Full transcript

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Cade Krueger: I’m here with Myles Brill. You were  in the industry for quite some time. What do you think people misunderstand about the heavy duty truck industry?

Myles Brill: The diversity. You have variable ops sales, you have sales of units, you have all the sales that keep those units going, like fuel and tires and safety equipment. The other side of it too, I think is it's much more difficult than people think. Whether you're in a dealership setting, you're only getting calls from people when they're breaking down their livelihoods at stake, their parts on back order and they can't get their truck going, they can't get paid. They're stuck on the side of the road. 

Myles Brill:  So there's a lot of reactive transactional business, but there's also a lot of very, very fast paced, very, very articulated ways to do business as well. But ultimately it's teams of hundreds of people that are all working together very frantically at times to keep things going.

Cade Krueger: What was a hard lesson that you learned while working in this industry?

Myles Brill: The big one externally was, when COVID hit, we couldn't get parts for anything and working in a dealership at the time, it was very, very frustrating when people would call and say, “Hey, I just bought this $270,000 truck. I'm paying thousands of dollars a week on it, and it's broken down with no ETA because you can't get the part.”

Myles Brill: What would happen was, we were getting so many calls like that and our staff were getting so burned out, and so it's just negativity all day and the franticness of it, people would overlook ways to actually get the guy's truck back on the road.

Myles Brill: And they'd overlook solutions for it and at times that franticness could put someone out of business. So that was really, really difficult and I think when we all kind realized how much what we do matters, and it's not just someone calling and yelling about a part not being available, but it's someone who's terrified for their family and their livelihood and their dog and whatever else they're supporting, that's when we realized we have to thrive in the franticness and we have to work together.

Myles Brill: You know, I think one of the biggest gaps that we've been seeing is excessive inventory of units. When COVID hit, every dealership was on allocation. If they had a truck on the lot, it was sold. Now the supply has caught up, the demand has gone down, and a lot of people are sitting on trucks that they can't sell and their sales team either burned out during COVID or their sales team got used to how things were, and now one of the biggest challenges that we see is being hungry for that business again and proactively trying to create the business instead of waiting for it to come in. It’s a huge struggle.

Myles Brill: I think there's a lack of prospecting. I think there's also a lack of urgency and follow up because they used to be able to have conversations with someone and if you wanted to buy a truck from me, for instance, you weren't getting a truck anywhere else if I had one. So if you called me and I was just kind of doing what I wanted to do and didn't call you back when I said I was going to, you would call me back and now you're just going somewhere else.

Cade Krueger: What have you seen change then in the attitude of sales leaders management because of that? Because of the need to be more proactive and with all the competition that's going on in the industry?

Myles Brill: Yeah, I think one of the biggest mentality shifts is they're starting to drive habits more. They're starting to try to drive mentalities more instead of just, this is a product that I need you to sell.So they're focusing on the sales science a little bit differently. The other side of it too is they're focusing a lot more on just diversifying. What COVID did was it created so much competition from everyone because no one could sell their proprietary parts anymore. They weren't available, and they all started seeing that they needed to start selling into other verticals and other industries. So for instance, all-makes sales—dealerships are now competing with independent repair shops and they're competing with online vendors that didn't even exist before, and the market is incredibly saturated. So not only are they trying to get their sales team to sell thousands more of different parts that they didn't know existed, they're also trying to get them to proactively think about them and target the right customers with them, and have the right focuses to open the door into those sales.

Cade Krueger: Talk a little bit about follow through and that consistency—along the same lines with this, right? Why do salespeople struggle so much with follow-through?

Myles Brill: Their day is just so hectic. They're stopping in, they're driving for four or five hours in the van, they're on the phone constantly. When they're in the van, they're calling orders in, they're getting orders in, they're talking to their delivery driver about how they delivered the wrong parts—and then they just get sidetracked. I mean, it's like trying to have four conversations at once. So stuff slips through the cracks all the time. 

Myles Brill: Follow-through is probably one of the largest very easy focuses for people to change because a lot of it's habit based. A lot of it allows you to stop chasing after all those loose ends that slip through the cracks because people forgot to follow through, especially from a manager standpoint. I used to get so many phone calls from customers that were like, “Hey, your sales guy stopped in here and quoted this and completely forgot about it. I ordered it, I gave him a PO, now it's not here, and I had to go somewhere else.”

Cade Krueger: That’s frustrating.

Myles Brill: It's very frustrating and it takes you away from proactively growing sales.

Cade Krueger: What recommendation would you give to managers on how to prioritize and maximize their time (that's very limited) in order to get the biggest bang for their buck?

Myles Brill: I would say for them it's finding a way to have transparency into what their team is doing without making it get in the way of what they're doing. Because without knowing every conversation or without knowing what kind of things my reps are struggling with or their reps are struggling with, it's impossible to train. And what we see so often is the only way to get in front of the sales rep and to train the sales rep is spending an entire day with them.

Cade Krueger: And you can't do that with every rep every day, it’s impossible.

Myles Brill: You can't do it with every rep. And if you do find a way to do it, your time on everything else that you have to do goes out the window. You waste so much time behind the windshield, you can't—you're on the road with them for ten hours and you're only talking to customers for two, three?

Cade Krueger: Yeah, it’s wild. It's really hard.

Cade Krueger: How do you then, as a manager (from your personal experience) how would you track data and information and analyze it to make decisions? And then what challenges did you face with tracking and analyzing information?

Myles Brill: So I would track it—I would track a lot of our sales history at a customer, both on monthly and quarterly basises, sometimes yearly. A lot of it is focusing on particular product lines that I know were successful at other fleets and were not successful at this one or focusing on which lines dropped off, and so a lot of it is—

Cade Krueger:  Are you saying “dropped off” for a particular customer or overall with we're just selling less of X?

Myles Brill: Yeah, both. So I would look at it, sometimes I'd look at it from a rep standpoint. Sometimes I'd look at it from a vendor or a class of parts standpoint. And then other times I'd look at a particular customer and see, oh, they used to buy this from us and in the last two months they haven't bought anything and my guys didn’t even know about it.

Myles Brill: The biggest struggle that I'll say I had with that, was I had no way of knowing why it happened. You could always see the data that said, “I lost sales on this product line”, but knowing why it happened was very, very difficult. 

Myles Brill: it's hard to have insights into what your competition's doing. It's hard to have insights into what your rep is talking about. There are times where a rep thinks that they're selling a ton of parts to a customer and they're not even selling 'em to, they have so much going on. So knowing the context of it and knowing the habit that created the lost sale was always a very large struggle.

Cade Krueger: Yeah, it's going to be rough. And then trying to drill down into that information when you already have limited time, like we talked about, it just creates this compounding issue again for the manager, where it's difficult—when they're just looking to get to—”just give me the carrots, the things that matter that I can go act on.” And it's hard.

Myles Brill: And speaking of time with it, the other difficulty with it, it took so much time to do it. It was such a diverse report. I had to dive into different—sometimes I would dive into focuses of different product lines we were trying to push, and then I could only do it once or twice a month. We'd have a big meeting, we'd have to take everyone off the streets, we'd have to take everyone away from their customers and talk about it for an hour every month. And as you know, I forget a lot of stuff after a week—and if it’s a month later and I'm supposed to keep track of which customers I'm struggling with, which product lines I'm struggling with, if I look at data and I'm supposed to tell my sales reps what they're struggling with—chances are that gets really watered down. So not only is it hard to find the time, it's hard to bring the value back into it because it's so limited as well.

Cade Krueger: That's awesome. Miles, thank you. Really appreciate you taking some time to chat with me.