In this episode of "The Conversion Show" podcast, Erik Christiansen welcomes guests John Gillie, Founder & CEO of TruckTractorTrailer.com (TTT), and Allan Anastacio, Head of Sales & Sales Operations at TTT. From traditional to digital, John and Allan take us into the world of conversion marketing within the trucking industry. They discuss the unique challenges and opportunities in modernizing the trucking industry by providing a digital marketplace for buying and selling trucks, along with various services like financing and insurance.

Erik, John, and Allan discuss:

• Modernizing the trucking industry to keep up with industry standards and meet customer expectations.
• Buyer-seller imbalance: attracting and retaining buyers and converting visitors to customers.
• The right tools and partnerships are crucial for their growth.
• Refining their website's user experience.
• Continuous improvement and adaptation are key to navigating a rapidly changing market and achieving long-term success. 

Host: Erik Christiansen, CEO of Justuno

Guest: John Gillie, Founder & CEO of TruckTractorTrailer.com

Guest: Allan Anastacio, Head of Sales & Sales Operations at TruckTractorTrailer.com

Transcript:

Erik 00:00:51

Welcome to the Conversion Show. Today we have our special guest, John Gill, along with him, his counterpart Allan Anastacio, who heads up sales operations, everything which we'll get into today because we'd love to find out how our retailers operate behind the walls. but special guest, because we have a guest, you know, customer here with hands-on experience.

Erik 00:01:18

And so in the retail world, truck, tractor trailer.com, hop on LinkedIn. You can find, both John and Allan on there and check out their backgrounds. But, welcome to the show, gentlemen.

John 00:01:31

Thank you. Eric.

Erik 00:01:33

So we are just wrapping about this industry of truck tractor trailer. and how to engage you are with your own audience. and customers, leveraging your email list 250,000 is share out, not just sale stuff, but more of your podcast and content. today, looking at what you are, what campaigns you're currently running, which is a lot of engagement with your visitors.

Erik 00:02:08

Allan, you mentioned earlier what brought you to Justuno? I'd love to hear a little bit more again of, you know what Initially you were hoping to achieve and most importantly, where are we today? but what goals and focus are you to working on to grow your business?

Allan 00:02:28

Yeah. that's a great question. Eric. And, you know, I think it's really important for, us to really, understand our platform, and understand really what our goal is on there. Well, we are a SaaS-based e-commerce platform, a marketplace for buyers and sellers. but we call ourselves more of a community.

Allan 00:02:50

and, you know, our main goal is really to connect those buyers and sellers, but, you know, as you were talking about, with that before, how there's a lot of new technology out in the marketplace. There's a lot of technology on it. There's a lot of data that you can, you know, you can you can put IoT, you know, you can get your data, you know, kind of, other data that's critical to running a fleet operation.

Allan 00:03:15

so there's a lot of tech out there, but I think there's one thing that has been missing, for the better part of trucking, the trucking industry is. And everyone know that, buying and selling a truck, it's still very archaic. And it and and and that's something in terms of the shift. we're heading towards an, you know, we have to give, you know, some credit, you know, due to some factors, just like the pandemic.

Allan 00:03:42

Right? You know, to be able to really kind of increase the adoption, of these because in automotive, it's pretty, you know, it's pretty common, you know, for us to go online through a channel to, website, it and buy, you know, 5 to $30,000, used car or new car but in the trucking industry, equipment a little bit more.

Allan 00:04:05

complex, right? In terms of, you know, the, the not only the value but also, certain operations in terms of the specification. so it was always, hey, I'm going to go to a dealership, you know, that my dealership I've been using for the past 30 years. and it's always face-to-face. Now, because how businesses run and then the shortage, you know, our platform really, help create that community where a buyer can come on to their understand they are within, a platform that provides them everything from the ability to finance, get it insured, get it inspected, paid for and delivered, wherever

Allan 00:04:45

they are. and for us, you know, for us to really, have those conversion happen, right, you know, on to type. it was all about how are we going to engage, the early adopter, you know, to be comfortable, to make offers on to our site or search our site.

Allan 00:05:08

Especially of course we were a new startup, right? And, you know, something like, trucktractortrailer.com is really at the forefront of pushing this type of equipment sales between buyers and sellers, all in one place, if that makes sense. So, you know it's all about wanting that initial let's start engaging our audience.

Allan 00:05:38

Let's start, you know, engaging and pushing them to the right sources, and kind of actions that we'd like for them to accomplish. in terms of understanding kind of what TTT  is. Fast forward to the day. You know we've had the web for, you know, a handful of years now.

Allan 00:06:01

So we've gotten and built, you know, that audience that thought it was mentioning, now, a lot of that is really refining our campaigns and adjusting to our different types of buyers, audiences. And also I've done, we have a lot of different new products featured on our platform, such as job, so our audience base is growing.

Allan 00:06:23

So that type of conversion engagement also needs to grow. So I hope that kind of gives you a little bit of, you know, clarity.

Erik 00:06:36

I have some great notes here.

John 00:06:40

Can I just, piggyback off on what Allan was saying?

Erik 00:06:43

Yeah. John.

John 00:06:44

We founded this in late 16, 2016. Took me about two years to raise money, build the product and, more importantly, than just build a product, but we took our time to build a platform and a product people wanted to use and then also wanted to use to help solve their problems, either on the south side by side.

John 00:07:12

And once we started to get close on a minimuml viable product, then we had to test that product. So what we learned is that it took quite a long time to crack the code on driving traffic into the product we built to properly test and validate, where we are today. here we are in, you know, 20, 24.

John 00:07:37

You know, we're moving really from startup mode to just scaling a rapid. We'll four time sales this year over the prior year. And we plan to 4x again next year and probably two and a half times x revenue in 25 to 26. So we're in scale mode right now. and as we got things right on the product, whether it's buy, sell or jobs or news, you know, now it's about conversion.

John 00:08:11

And this is where Justuno comes in and in our utilization of your service. Allan is correct. Allan brought it in four years ago. He said, listen, we have to have this. We have to have your service. Quite frankly, we didn't do a very good job utilizing it. but now that we're in scale mode, now that we have the traffic coming in, you know, we had to top grade our services and our partnerships to be able to really, engage those new visitors, those new registered users.

John 00:08:40

So, also to just to clarify what Allan was saying, he's right. Consumer trucking is about seven years behind consumer auto. Right? Consumer auto is about seven years ahead of commercial trucking, not only in, technology as far as clean fuels and, you know, automation. Our, you know, automated driving, autonomous, and also the conversion to electric or hydrogen or, any other clean, fuels.

John 00:09:15

but really in the buying and selling of, of used assets. So we, to be inspired by, the market, all we have to do simply is look at what carbon is doing.

Erik 00:09:27

And I've written Carvana down twice in my notes here.

John 00:09:30

Yeah. So. And people, people right away analogize and put us in the Carvana bucket, which is very flattering. we are the exception really, I think to Carvana, the number one that's consumer auto. but if you're listening, you know, Ernie Garcia, if you want to pay $100 million for us, I would crack that deal today.

John 00:09:53

and Ernie Garcia, junior and senior are both the founders and CEO.