Accelerating WorkHound Week 6

4 min readJul 20, 2015

Connecting with investors, radio interview and learning from friends in the industry

Quick Overview

At WorkHound, we’re tackling a big issue in the trucking industry: the 97% driver turnover rate. We’re building a platform to allow drivers to share feedback with their companies. Companies then receive the aggregated feedback to improve the driver experience.

This is our weekly post highlighting our learnings and actions each week in the Straight Shot accelerator out of Omaha.

Other Updates:
Week 1 Update // Week 2 Update // Week 3 Update //
Week 4 Update // Week 5 Update

Halfway Day & connecting with investors

This week at Straight Shot we had our “Halfway Day” where we met with 8 different investment groups in 15 minute increments. It was a rapid-fire way to discover what investors look for in a prospective portfolio company and helped us determine which ones we could learn from.

One thing that Andrew and I want in any partner is someone we can build a great relationship with. Several of the groups we met will serve as great mentors over the next six weeks, helping us with things such as sales, product tips and introductions. It’s a great way to work closely with smart groups like this with little risk.

Another benefit was quickly refining our pitch as we met with the various groups. We started with one approach and steadily evolved throughout the meetings. By the end, we had a versatile pitch that could cater to the interests of different backgrounds.

These meetings set us with a clearer idea of what things investors care about (revenue, MVP, clear ROI for investors) and which groups are most aligned with us.

Pro Tip

We were introduced to this funding calculator by SmartAsset, which overviews how much dilution occurs in current and future funding rounds. It’s a great exercise to work through to determine the pros and cons of taking investment.

On SiriusXM talking driver turnover

We got a huge win this week being featured as a guest on SiriusXM’s Road Dog Radio. The host, Mark Willis has been running “Road Dog Trucking News” for a few years and now has an average audience of 1 million listeners. Mark invited me on to speak about the driver turnover issues in the trucking industry. The American Trucking Associations recently announced a dip in the industry’s turnover, yet no one is 100% sure why. I shared my thoughts on the issue, using a combination of insights from the data WorkHound has collected, interviews with drivers, industry research and interviews with execs at trucking companies.

The shifts in this rate were caused by a number of factors, with companies continuing to pay drivers better, but there were also intangibles to treat drivers better. My argument was that companies needed to do more to reduce misunderstandings.

When drivers called in to the show, they complained of a number of things. One theme was poor communication between the company and drivers. Drivers were afraid to share honest feedback with carriers because they didn’t want to burn bridges with the company (especially if they were sharing in an exit interview).

Others raved about their carriers. Some companies went out of their way to “make drivers feel more human”. Creating internal systems where a driver’s picture, background and family details appear when they call in. Little things like this go a long way to keeping drivers engaged.

Overall, this was a great momentum builder for us!

Learning from friends in the industry

Over the past few weeks I’ve connected with other companies selling into the trucking industry to learn a few things:

-How are they getting connected to their prospects?

-How do they identify the decision maker?

-How do they determine pricing?

-How do they close their deals?

Some of the biggest eye openers for me was that for some of the companies I interacted with, 70% of their sales came from cold calls. The funnels and tactics set up to master cold calls in trucking are extensive and quite brilliant. The cold call definitely isn’t dead in the trucking industry.

Another eye opener is that a number of deals are still getting closed face-to-face. It isn’t always the case, but this approach shifted their sales process significantly, as prospects get mapped out by territory instead of by other characteristics.

A big sales generator for these groups was industry trade shows. Despite the high cost to secure a booth, the networking for possible leads and learning what executives are looking for is invaluable.

Continuing to build indirect relationships like this within the industry is extremely beneficial. I’ve learned a ton from folks that have been at it for years. It’s always helpful to have brothers and sisters in the struggle!