The Shark Bite Biz Podcast with David Strausser. A cool tropical contact center with Richard Blank.

The Shark Bite Biz Podcast with David Strausser. A Tropical contact center with Richard Blank Shark Bite Biz, hosted by David Strausser, started as a show on how to navigate to your business during the Covid Pandemic and now focusing on "the 3 G's": personal growth, professional growth, and business growth. This show has hosted many CEO's, VP's, Managers, and Small Business Owners all giving their insight as a subject matter expert in their field. The show has had legendary music producer Jack Douglas, Soledad O'Brien, film director James Cullen Bressack, Recruiter.com and CNBC Contributor Evan Sohn and many more. Strausser is a member of the Forbes Business Development Council. https://youtu.be/Bki9lRhp8VE Are call centers alive or dead after covid with work-from-home going strong. Today's interview may surprise you as Shark Bite Biz's David Strausser chats with Richard Blank of Costa Rica's Call Center. Episode #213 Modern Call Centers. Shark Bite Biz is a podcast dedicated to helping businesses achieve growth in the roaring 20's. In a world full of sharks, learn how to bite first! This vodcast focuses on personal, professional, & business growth during the on-going global pandemic. We focus on bringing some of the top experts and small business owners to the show to tell their stories about how they broke through barriers preventing growth and got their business to the next level. More about the Host: David Strausser is an expert at enabling small businesses to drive growth via the promise of technology. David empowers his customers to digitally transform by automating business processes and maximizing business intelligence. David writes on Forbes as a member of the Forbes Business Development Council and a member of the Harvard Business Review Advisory Council. You can find David's full bio here: https://davidstrausser.com & https://sharkbitebiz.com. David was born and raised in Pottsville, Pennsylvania, the heart of coal country. At a young age David realized that the small city life wasn’t for him. He yearned for something larger and 6 weeks after the September 11th attacks, while barely 18, he decided to pack up and move to a new life. “Viva la Mexico”. David moved to Tijuana, Baja California, Mexico. Why? Simple. He was able to live in Mexico and then work in San Diego, right across the U.S. / Mexico International Border Crossing at the San Ysidro Port of Entry. Since his first job at the age of 14, David has always been enthusiastic about sales. He had worked at places like Foot Locker at the age of 15 and then Sears while a young adult. Just like he wanted more while living in Pottsville, he also felt that the retail life was not for him. Yes, he could do it and excelled at it, often being the top sales representative in his store, but he felt he could achieve bigger and better things. During the economic depression of 2008 – 2010, David found himself searching for answers. He moved to Peru for about a year, where he met his wife, Raquel Strausser. From there David immigrated Raquel to Mexico and they re-established themselves in the Baja Cali Megaregion. Employment was tough and while David could ultimately earn a living that was good enough for living in Mexico, their ultimate goal was to move to San Diego. The current wage environment at that time did not support him being able to make such a move. That’s when David realized that after 10 years of living in Mexico at that point that he had some unique skills. Not only was David fluent in Spanish and had a Mexican legal status as a Residente Permanente (Mexican Legal Permanent Resident), but he had many contacts in business throughout Mexico, Peru, and the rest of Latin America. Instead of taking a position where he would be grossly underpaid for his skillset out of necessity, David went another route. He started the business “Strausser Consulting Services” and began independent consulting. The goal of the company was to assist American companies trying to find growth throughout Latin America with their products and technologies. The start though wasn’t that simple. The very first contract David got was with a Sprint retailer who saw his vast retail experience and hired him as an independent consultant to help turn around 7 of their newly acquired stores in San Diego County. It was a six-month contract but it gave David something solid to run off of if he was successful. Success happened and from there David acquired separate large contracts over a 6 year period. While many of the projects were fixed-term and project based, some of the contracts were long-term. Some of these contracts were with companies like P.I.N.T., Inc., doing business development to help them break into the Mexican market, Kodenshi AUK, a Japanese and Korean semiconductor manufacturer looking to break into Latin America, TAAG Industries, BorderTraffic / LaLineaEnVivo, and BajaBound. This all was the passion of what David does best, help small to medium size business grow. He was creating new channels and opportunities for these businesses that they did not know how to achieve on their own. Interestingly enough, because of the unique border situation with the Baja-Cali megaregion of Tijuana and San Diego David was specializing at one point not just in technology, but border crossing technology. This lead to David developing extensive relationships with the Mexican Government, which led to him being contracted as the “Consejero Binacional” (Binational Advisor) to the Secretary of Tourism for Baja, California, Mexico where he worked in making lives easier for American Tourists while visiting Baja, Mexico with the promise of technology. David assisted trying to modernize the Tourist Visa process online for Americans visiting Mexico and even helped transform the fishing permit license so that Americans can obtain the licenses digitally online. All impressive feats at the time with a government that is notoriously slow in adopting new technology. In fact, David is one of the few non-Latino American citizens with a written letter of recommendation from the Mexican Government. ?During that time also, David realized that there was a huge education gap in Mexico. Latinas, Mexican women specifically, were behind in their knowledge of how technology works. Although with the younger generation it was getting better, at that time if you were 25 or older and female, your understanding of basic technology was little to none. That’s when David and his wife Raquel created a tech blog called TechChicas that was dedicated to helping Latinas around the world understand basic technology that they could access to make their lives easier. The site was a success winning multiple awards including one from Penn State University. That service was sold in 2015 when David took another turn in his career. As successful as he was, the consulting world was a tiring one for David. Not only was he working 40 to 50 hours a week for clients, but he was also working an addition 20+ hours a week just trying to find new projects and bidding on new work. It was relentless and gave David no work / life balance. After 6 long years of sacrificing all his time working to give his family the life he felt they deserved, David finally got offered a position that would give him what he was searching for. David and his family moved to Los Angeles in December of 2015 to start with Vision33, Inc. ? This brings a brand new chapter. Finally, David was able to use his networking skills, business development skills, sales and marketing strategies for one dedicated company. David was new to the ERP (enterprise resource planning) business but he had a thorough understanding of technology due to his degree from Penn State University in Information Sciences & Technologies with a focus on Business. David was able to use innovative techniques to turn a barren region of Los Angeles to a powerhouse for Vision33. Creating millions and millions of dollars a year in revenue that Vision33 never saw from that region previously. He did this because of the way he builds personal relationships with his clients and how he manages a sales cycle. There were very few opportunities David lost. In fact, he became the king of creating his own pipeline by doing creative events like his “Executive Luncheon” that had an anti-luncheon type there where desert was served first and used out of the box type of speakers that brought true value to all the businesses that came to learn how to grow their business and breakthrough the barriers preventing growth. After 4 years, David was given the opportunity to move back home. Vision33 had a new region that needed a General Manager to oversee it and that is the Northeast. Since March of 2018, David has been managing the Northeast from sales, implementations, customer service, everything where he is growing the business at a record pace. Even with the position that David currently has, he still feels that he has more to offer in order to help businesses grow and therefore on July 6, 2020, David launched the business podcast entitled Shark Bite Biz. This podcast is a discussion with subject matter experts and business owners discussing what works and what doesn’t in a global pandemic world. ? Overall, David has had a tough, but fun career. It has always focused around one main topic though. Helping small to midsize businesses grow. There are many ways to do this and David uses his outside the box methodology in order to help his clients achieve that growth. Richard’s vision quest journey is filled with twists and turns. When he was 27 years old, he relocated to Costa Rica to train employees for one of the larger call centers in San Jose. With a mix of motivational public speaking style backed by tactful and appropriate rhetoric, Richard shared his knowledge and trained over 10 000 bilingual telemarketers. Richard Blank has the largest collection of restored American Pinball machines and antique Rockola Jukeboxes in Central America making gamification a strong part of CCC culture.Richard Blank is the Chief Executive Officer for Costa Rica’s Call Center since 2008. Mr. Richard Blank holds a bachelors degree in Communication and Spanish from the University of Arizona and a certificate of language proficiency from the University of Sevilla, Spain. A Keynote speaker for Philadelphia's Abington High School 68th National Honors Society induction ceremony. In addition, inducted into the 2023 Hall of Fame for Business. Giving back to Abington Senior High School is very important to Mr. Blank. As such, he endows a scholarship each year for students that plan on majoring in a world language at the university level. https://costaricascallcenter.com/en/outbound-bpo-campaigns/ #RichardBlank #CostaRica #CallCenter #Outsourcing #Telemarketing #BPO #Sales #Entrepreneur #B2B #Business #Podcast #Leadgeneration #Appointmentsetting #SacrificetoSuccess #Sharkbitebizpodcast Shark bite biz, Richard Blank,Costa Rica's Call Center, Outsourcing, Telemarketing, BPO, Nearshore, Sales, Entrepreneur, B2B, Business,Podcast,Gamification,Leadership,Marketing, Radio, Guest, Money, education, trainer, https://youtu.be/Bki9lRhp8VE from the City of Brotherly Love This is shark bite Biz with David strausser you just arrived to the newest episode of shark bite Biz I'm your Rockstar wab be host David strausser and this is your place to learn how to grow a business during complete Global chaos as always this episode is brought to you by our amazing sponsor and sap Global Platinum partner sedor that's s d o r if your business is ready move off QuickBooks give us a ring help us automate your business process and get your business to the next level again that's sor.com from Mom and Pop to large Enterprise we have a solution for you now let's get back to today's episode are call centers the place of the past or the future let's think about this so who do we have today none other than Richard blank with probably the most unique uh intro I've ever done and shortest as well too so it's pretty cool Richard blank has the largest collection of restored American pinball machines and antique rockola Juke boxes in Central America making gamification a strong part of CCC culture and CCC is Costa Rica call center which is the name of his business so hey without further delay let's bring Richard right on in here business strategy Richard welcome to shark bite Biz you my friend you just became shark bait I'm so happy to be Chum Costa Rican Chum on your show today ah thank you so much for coming on we have a tradition on the show very first question we ask everybody what's your background what do you do for your living how'd you get there what do you like about life what do you think happens after life basically in a nutshell tell us what makes Richard Richard let's give you a Richard Supreme Pizza um from Northeast Philadelphia oh born and raised yeah man and uh decided to make Spanish my major so I built on that momentum at Arizona moved to Costa Rica when I was 27 years old started my business 15 years ago and I'm the CEO of Costa Rica's call center so it's a journey of twists and turns but it was the kind of Vision Quest that I stuck with when I was a young man and decided what to do with my life well that is pretty amazing and you know we do people that watch this show I know some people watch it just not every episode they watch the ones that are more interesting to them which is pretty cool but you know you went Central America I went to uh Northern Central America uh with Mexico but then also Peru as well too um you know and have built myself from scratch from the ground up like being an 18-year-old in Latin America white guy from Cole country Pennsylvania as well too learning Spanish becoming bilingual um you know we have a trational family Mexican Peruvian American uh so it's been pretty crazy it sounds a little bit similar to kind of how you are and uh what you're doing look how many things we have in common and we just started exactly but obviously the second language and open mind being a guest in other countries and being accepted learning to love it and Incorporated in your life you and I have seen that this language skills and being a traveler of the world a nomad opens so many doors and so it's just one of things but it's not for everybody I mean you sometimes have to dip ail in the water travel first a little bit before settling down and you know seeing if it's the right thing for you but I tell you what the the world's an incredible place if you give yourself a chance to explore it and no definitely 100% is so let's just talk that your origin story I mean what motivated you to move to Costa Rica I mean i' personally I've been to a couple places in Central America just got back from Panama a few months ago but um you know I've never been to Costa Rica I've heard it's amazing I heard it's beautiful I hear there are a lot of Americans there not as many as are in Rosarito though uh Rosarita Mexico but I do hear that there are a lot of Americans down there or X as they're called like what motivated you to move down there at the Costa Rica I tell you what you and I both grew up in Pennsylvania I remember those snow days when they didn't call your number from KYW News Radio that wasn't cool Abington it should be 301 I should be calling our name but anyway it was cold it was dreary and you would fantasize about Gilligan's Island or some place that was much more fun and so I knew that if I ever had a one in a million opportunity and get get past my parents' guilt I might take it so I was really setting up for that barn door to be open as you did as well with that second language but no when when you go up in the Northeast it gives you a little bit of grit you have some backbone we're competitive with Athletics and life and and I like growing up there I thought the changing of the seasons and it's a nice culture the colonial homes and the warm cozy fireplaces during you know the fall and the winter can't beat it but the row homes in Philly but we needed to change just to test ourselves and to see if we were one trick pony or if we could accommodate to other different areas and so me being a Spanish major I was able to use that language outside in Tucson Arizona at the University of Arizona all the World a Stage so if you think about it it was much easier for me to do that compared to another sort of major plus David I'll be straight I didn't have the maturity or the grades for IV League or for medicine or law oh same here I didn't go to college till later in life till the Great Recession when I was forced to uh go to college because you know I used to be able to get good jobs when I was younger just because of experience in track record and then during the Great Recession things change they were like yeah we want that but we also want people to college degree and because of that I wasn't able to you know it was hard it's what led me down the path I'm on and where I'm at now because I ended up having to do independent Consulting and stuff like that and it was bringing American companies stuff into Mexico and eventually down to Peru and it it kind of was a blessing in disguise because for all those like you talked about grit having that grit um you know it was gritty for me you know like pulling teeth trying to make things work uh during that time period but I eventually did get out of the rut and now you know once I of the world but I feel like I am starting to ascend to a higher level and it's because I left yeah know I'm not from Philly Philly I live by Philly now but I'm originally from Pottsville the home Yingling and you know that's coold country Pennsylvania which is you know entirely different than if I lived up in Philly who knows maybe I would have never wanted to move but being there I I wanted to just get the heck out well in Costa Rica you meet people from all over the world they're looking for the same thing you and I did maybe to shed some skin or at a later stage in life when you have your maturity you could look at things differently but I tell you what it's unfortunate that you were forced into an education but hopefully some of these people inspired you to do some dedicated practice or some pondering I I feel education's 5050 I I think a teacher can't pull you over into the end zone but they should be good enough to inspire and I've had teachers along the way not just pay it forward but encouraged me to write better to continue my studies in Spanish and Humanities and art and it was nice it wasn't the pressure of having to pass a test cheat in class or hustle my way for a certain grade these teachers knew the score and they would allow you to take a test or write a paper or come to office hours if if you a is what you want then you got to earn it but they wanted to prepare you with your balance bike and so I respected them they really made you earn that grade and if you put in the time you got it but then again it wasn't punishment when they asked you to elaborate or to practice your grammar because it was miscommunication and so you have to respect that person that has so much patience you have to you have to show the dedicated practice to the teacher in order for them to start mastering levels and and going to other levels with you David so hopefully through that sort of univ University education you got that it just wasn't a force March where you just had to get a piece of paper yeah I mean it's crazy because um it it felt like a lot there are some things that I learned but to be honest a lot of it I've already passed through in life like I remember the one marketing class in fact I'm friends with the professor till this day um who's out of Scranton and uh I had to argue with him final exam technically I flunked I'm like dude I've been doing marketing my whole life and the way these questions were written I I went through every single one and I'm like no in the real life this would not work why because of this and because of this yeah it looks good on paper but this isn't how the real world world works you know and I think that was the difference between me being someone that's was out in the work for field since I was 14 then going to college when I was in my late 20s early 30s compared to someone that was fresh out of high school is like I had these real life experiences the compar gads and you know I think he gave me credit for every question except for one of them which he was like no I disagree I still think this is right but I'm like okay you know you gave me 44 other ones so I'll let you go on one but uh let's uh move a little forward start a little bit about you started a company from scratch down in Costa Rica what company did you start and what does it do well February 6th of 2008 I closed my first deal for one seat for Costa Rica's call center we're a Nearshore bilingual dedicated call center that focuses on outbound sales lead generation appointment setting inbound customer support back office support and nonvoice support any type of specific Niche you go for oh we're known for our inbound customer support companies such as Amazon P Intel and Oracle have a very large presence here and the school set the neutral English accent the infrastructure the proxim to the United States the stable government I mean the Ducks were all in a row and when I had the opportunity to come here I was only supposed to be for two months my friend wanted me to come down to teach English at his call center a really good friend of mine from college and as I was mentioning earlier barn door open parents guilt wasn't there and I saw my opportunity and I decided to stay so I learned the business from the inside out not from sea level and I got to see the good and the bad but guess what I did learn this is the real life experience my good friend you were mentioning earlier right I realize that people just want their dignity they don't want to feel Expendable they don't want to feel like robots know somebody's name really sincerely appreciate the work and I said to myself if that's all it takes to be a real Coach like the Bad News Bears I'm going to do this and so uh I realized that by incorporating gamification my pinball machines in my arcade and by personally knowing their names and teaching them soft skills walking rows and breaking bread I might have that sort of Base Foundation that you and I grew up with where you want to come back the next day you don't want to quit the sports team you want to do a little bit extra not just to impress your teacher but to impress yourself because you're you're really into this to win this and so I I I try to be a different boss that they've ever had don't don't fear me how do you try to be different like a different boss because everybody tries to be different I think but the way you emphasized and the way that came out of your mouth it sounds like you have something special there that you're trying to save by different boss sure and these are little checkpoints you need little first downs before touchdowns with people I can't expect them to sign a contract and devote their life for me why don't I asked them to tell me a Coming of Age moment during an interview because you've already qualified and I don't want to see your bells and whistles I want to see in the moment if David asks you an incredible question to know your death are you capable expanding and telling a little bit of something about yourself especially the time my friend when you beat up a bully or saved a kitten let me see if I can give you a cool nickname that day or pick you up on a rainy Tuesday and that's the sort of thing where if I find the right sort of fit no bad habits but someone willing to be coached and to delegate and grow with the company then then I'm finding my dirty dozen I I have 150 I don't have 50,000 so I could be exceptionally selective of the campaigns in the agent so it's it's a luxury but then again when you find the perfect fit you win championships and listen the fact that have people been with me over a decade it's hum especially the fact that you and I are from Pennsylvania we're here in in these type in this world where people Le in two three years you know and that's an average career at a company people stay in for a decade plus I mean that is uh that's rare loyalty these days yes you're in Costa Rica yes the culture is a little bit different but I I think even down there I mean staying with companies for your whole life is still is starting to get a little bit more oldfashioned is it not David let's let's keep going on to what makes me different I'm still on that momentum knowing your name but calling the balls in the strikes come on Pennsylvania boy you know about giving that Northeast guilt I'm going to tell you how it is but I'm not just going to beat you up and twist the knife it's not fair I'm gonna first ask may I make a suggestion so yes David you say yes so then that eliminates any sort of Defense now we're cool and then prior to telling you your tie is not straight I'm going to give you three stories about myself to put an anchor there and to explain how I've experienced that as you're mentioning this maturity and gray hairs that we have over the younger students in your classes so explain to them these sort of passes that you went through and so I can level that playing field you're in my wheelhouse Don't Think You Can Dance this I can run around it five times to Sunday and teach you a nice after school special lesson so why don't we calm down here because maybe your teacher your best friend your mentors drop that ball you're with me now you're with David now and we're going to treat you like a mature adult give you the benefit of the doubt and see what you can really do if you can eliminate any sort of blockage and so you ask what I do differently I can't buy it and I can't spin it but if I can understand exactly who you are and realize that I will give you a straight shot at to the top I find Aces and I find Winners and if you're really young then you're the Squire to the night they're even better then we can really cultivate those skills and so I like uh personally I like younger sales reps because uh not that they're young in their sales experience but they're young in their Erp sales experience with what I do at sedor because then people like my sales rap Jake for example he's has all the sales skills but he's never had a coach or a mentor like me and now we're putting it together and we just won his first deal and it's going to be the first of many this kid not kid I mean he 36 but this you know younger executive is going to end up being an allar within a few years yo here's my virtual high five ah there you go main man on and you know what's cool David you're creating a company culture that's what I was brought in that's that's part of the reason I was brought in it's like and part of the reason why it came because it was like hey what we had wasn't working so I gone and uh come in and uh build what you need to be built and you know do it and you know I've been building that I mean like transparency honesty uh even with things say lead distribution stuff like that I mean you got to remember I've been a sales rep I know how it is like hey why don't my boss do that like and it you know makes me upset in the back of my mind whereas if the boss would have just came out and said hey look just see you guys now I'm giving Jake this lead not Neil this is the reason decision final okay and then maybe two months later but they all know that it comes back it'll be like hey Neil remember I gave that lead that should have been yours to Jake for a specific reason well here's one from uh uh Jake uh that you're getting to take that back because what goes around comes around but I do it in the open so that everybody knows what's going on and there's no Mystique you know it takes that away and I feel that by doing that it allows a more open transparent happier culture because people don't feel like someone's going behind their back trying to stab my man man there will always be Mystique oh there will always be but I limit it a little bit I look at it like this Athletics is the greatest way to gauge Merit if you're the fastest can jump the highest you win and so if you put everybody on a Level Playing Field and give everybody the resources the person that rises to the top everybody else has to understand they won and we do it through very strict quality assurance kpis so I can grade people on soft skills in the 10% wiggle room but 90% of this thing is is cut and dry and there are some people that are just hitting perfect shots that is absolutely absolutely true one thing I have and maybe you do or do not agree with this uh it be interested and find out is I believe okay so me personally I feel like I'm a chameleon okay I feel that and I say that to the sense that I I I can meet your personality I can meet your tone or I can figure out a way that I need to be in order to communicate effectively with the person I'm talking to most of the time now I say most of the time and this is where the question is I feel everybody can't sell somebody there's always one person out there no matter for what reason personality mismatch they just don't like the way your face looks whatever it means you will never be able to sell that person but I I view that's a very rare occasion that's like a 99 out of 100 type Prospect things but when you realize that that's when again because you have to always be you know reviewing and growing what you're doing to get better and learning from your past you realize like hey I'm not going to be able to get through with this person so I'm gonna hand it out to someone that can potentially sell her um what do you think about that whole philosophy that whole Spiel I have going on and hey it's my show if you disagree you can freely disagree we believe that anybody that does sales prospecting and runs the risk of rejection we like to give them romantic deaths I got to write that one down well good we jump clouds David if I could say shark bite Biz podcast before you hang up I get a point if I could name drop you I go David how are you today get another point if you ask me who's this not in a negative tone because you're curious because I said your name so well and I thank you for asking and mentioned my name is Richard blank and then you say who's Richard blank now I got the double double you ask the followup question and guess what we're already 1520 seconds in those are two good long deep breaths so at least it gives me a chance 100 times a day to properly introduce myself prior to pitching because you you get the P to pitch and if you have the luxury to speak to a gatekeeper you give a positive escalation when you get transferred you do it written in verbal and these are the sort of soft skills which will at least put me from a half court to at least a foul shot percentage in regards to pitching of course I'm going to miss a few but I tell you what I built a business on just being very courteous and doing meeting minutes and following through before the end of a business day and being forthright with no surprises the way that I was raised now mind you India and the Philippines offshore they're half my price why do people choose me well if it's on marriage we can do it but if you're asking me to double the production in the same amount of time it's almost impossible there's only so much talk time but I've been able to earn accounts because of that sort of sight unseen trust and people would like to work with this a smaller company that gives you that sort of extended service and so kind of sounds like value to me is what you're talking about if you want it to be you're you're a sales rep imagine being on hold for a long time where is that workforce management you didn't staff properly how about people that don't even have customer service live departments and you have to fill out Omni Channel non-voice forms and wait you're going to elevate to your pop and so it depends on how much you value a client could they give you a referral could you sell them additional services and you know you might retain them or they might even make suggestions on what to do to sell them two scoops of ice cream and so you you take everything into consideration and some people you're mentioning today about business loyalty to companies how they treat their clients well it's not just me being old school it's just my hard earned dollar and and I don't need backflips and people swallowing sword words but my goodness gracious let's let's just have a deal where everyone meets in the middle and I feel comfy and I want to come back but if you happen to remember my name my favorite dessert and you make me feel really comfy on a on a sad day or a day where I'm celebrating and by all means I'm gonna go there for the next 20 years that's great you know I I've gotta say your perspective attitude personality it is it it's Unique I mean to be quite blunt with you and I find it uh kind of like we just used the word Mystique you know like uh it's got this this Vibe this Aura of energy that uh I don't know I kind of find it inspiring in a way with how you're talking about these things and the passion that you are talking about it when you're talking about it it it just you know like I just see it leaking out from all pores of your body it's amazing so I mean I do want to go into though there is one topic before we go in and that was a compliment by the way just so you know that was a good a nice compliment that's why I didn't interrupt you you can keep going my mother's watching this is great I was trying to make you comfy on a on a happy day but I want to talk about one last topic before we do end up wrapping up okay first off you did give some kind of advanced marketing telemarketing strategy ideas of you know couple minutes ago when we were talking today I think it's a little bit of the challenge like I have my sales reps out there prospecting um and they're getting a lot of broken numbers a lot of a lot of people change jobs during the Great resignation during all the layoffs stuff like that uh remote work to where you're not able to reach people directly anymore and you get in uh you you know the name directory hell I guess we'll call it and it it it's made it a little bit more challenging for us to get people on the phone when we do get them on the phone it's usually pretty decent it's a it's a start you know and then we build off from there but it does make it a little bit harder to get people on the phone what's your secret if you can share without the you know spilling your secret sauce all over the place of course I'm going to give the Pennsylvania Secret Sauce oh there you go it's whiz no I'm only kidding you have to offset the lower contact ratio with more of a quality call but then you're going to say Richard how's it a quality call if it's a cold call it's a cold call because of the list it's a quality call because you might be able to put yourself on third base well I want to I want to interrupt you right there because I want to to talk to my specific scenario which I think many people people probably uh are feeling out there with me too like for example we have a list like you're saying which is the cold call list but it is a very very high targeted you know down to the sick codes of businesses uh you know zip codes even every like it's very targeted on what type of people what type of company we're looking for and I think many of our viewers are the same way they're looking for a specific person and they may have that list but their problem is then actually breaking through so sorry for the interruption but maybe that can help with what you were saying the frame it that way it definitely helps because a list like that I could load into a predictive dialer and really you know pound the phones and carpet bum compared to manual dialing but if it's a list like that my suggestion is if you have the luxury of the time just do a little bit of due diligence there are websites in LinkedIn profiles it may assist you with updated in third party information definitely company culture you could complement loading docks second locations in my case my art deco building neon lights and my pinball machines you mentioned that I'm giving you five minutes yours to lose but getting back to that why do we do this because you're speaking to less people but you have better conversations because if I'm looking at a LinkedIn profile mentioned Pennsylvania look at all the things we had in common I mean obvious VI ly even if I was selling a widget that you didn't need we have way too much in common and these two ships are passing T night we'd have to wave and talk for a couple minutes and wish each other well on our similar Journeys and so in this crazy world of circles there are some crisscrosses and if you're going to do this from time to time you put your chin up your chest out and you represent yourself in the company in the best light I get a lot of yeah were good thanks but at least I'm going to say David good morning so even if you hang up on me I'm like the full card as the tarot walking off of the cliff sniffing the roads you have to not go into this with fear they're black and blue from these phone calls and if you get passed around and you speak to Billy in the you know mail room and Kathleen and accounting when you speak to David you mention how great some of these co-workers were and he's going to be like you're the first person to ever see these things and so you need to be a painting stop being a print and if you grind these calls you're going to hate it it becomes a force March but then you just can't go out there as a fool what you need to do is to have structure and discipline but really show active interest in something and live in the now because there will be something you hear in the background someone says something something that's happening that you can anchor and then you pull and as I'm mentioning you get these first downs 30 seconds to two minute checkpoints of confirmation questions tie down questions trans you know you got to have transitional sentences with people just don't there's no straight lines in nature you need to have bridges in between these islands of conversations by asking people if it makes sense oh that's great so this next thing I'd like to discuss and so you're you're dancing kind of like this podcast exactly that's why you do a great podcast David oh thank you so bu but it shouldn't be a chore with people and they shouldn't be checking their watches when they say they don't have time 10 minutes should go by and so you should really take each call that way so don't think of the numbers you could have that one call that could recommend five people so then there's your whole day and so everyone just needs to slow down a bit and if you're trying to connect with people do it the real way you've definitely given me a little bit of a different uh perspective and just listening to you speak about this it has given me some ideas on some things that we may try to implement and change and yeah we mean we've done like the LinkedIn looking up LinkedIn stuff and all of that but I think it's more the approach of how they're doing it is what will ultimately make the difference in our success rates because that's where we are struggling but we're also building it from scratch with our bdr team and stuff like that customade emails customade voicemails it doesn't have to be the whole thing but back in our day there was something called mad lives where you put in an adjective and it can make the sentence funny and so custom make the intro two or three things in the body to Anchor and then a beautiful conclusion to show that you did a due diligence you you don't need to review the whole LinkedIn profile but there are a couple things there that you could mention quickly in the body to let him know that my goodness gracious how much time did he spend reviewing the company very nice so you're asking about voicemails and emails that's where you get your percent percentages of call backs that's where you can net them you're hunting right you're hunting leaving the voicemails hopefully the message in the bottle hits and then if you do do a good email or voicemail that carries it comes back and so it's not the same as your contact ratios before when everyone was picking up but then again maybe you don't want it that way it's better almost filtering to see who calls you back response to the email because that could be their preference of communication compared to voice and so you catch people that would prefer that and so um if you're good at what you do and you're very you have an eye-catcher and you're really good in your subject matter and you get positive escalations don't be surprised if you can match if not exceed those old numbers with less work yeah yeah that's great so since you have spilled so much knowledge to us today I'm going to give you one minute one whole minute to tell us what you love about pinball machines the fact that I can afford them now because go growing up they were so expensive and Ricky schroer had the best arcade and silver spoons and it wasn't fair and so just like Tom Hanks in the movie Big look at his disposable income he got trampolines and all those games in that awesome Loft and so for me I'm an owner of a company but I'm still a kid and I combine the two you gotta have fun got the greatest arcade in Central America 13 pinball machines got an air hockey tables six arcade machines Juke boxes that is awesome hopefully you have arrol Smith on those Juke boxes somewhere oh without a doubt but here's the skinny when I bought them here you figured you would get a cache of Aerosmith but no it's all Central American artists from the 60s and 70s not even labas is in there and so that's crazy so anyways Costa Rica's call center Richard tell us where can people find out more about your company how can people reach out to you thank you David they can buy a first class plane ticket can come visit me in Central America but they also can go visit my Costa Rica's call center Facebook fan page we have close to 118,000 local Costa ricanos give your audience a chance to know the business process Outsourcing industry in Central America what we do but also David when this goes live look at all the new fans that you will have and oh yeah I can't enough a great time today and natural you bring the best out of your guest H thank well it's pretty easy when you have any guest as amazing as you are so Richard thank you so much for coming on I love what you're doing I mean it really comes down to helping businesses grow and how to be a good boss I mean that's how I that that's like the two core messages I got out of today well just like us being in Pennsylvania and the Broad Street Bullies the Flyers took it home in the 70s and so sometimes you got to be a champion even if you're one of the newer teams in the league or a backup quarterback against a legendary seven time super Super Bowl win right exactly and and your audience shouldn't be hard on themselves entrepreneurs they need to start somewhere there's only so many kings they're more princes than Kings out there and so just remember that yep definitely hey Richard thank you so much my friend this has been awesome thank you my friend have a good one you too cheers wow that was an incredible chat with Richard right first you all know the routine if you found this interview helpful if it Sparks some warm and fuzzies do me a favor hit the like button smash that subscribe but also please share us out because you know shark bite Biz is the greatest kept secret in the world of small business share it us out to your friends your family anywhere you can anywhere you dwell on the interweb I'd love to see nothing more than Richard blank and also uh his COA Rica call center out there uh you know trending let's do it now let's get back to the real rock star of the show Richard great hearing the unique enthusiasm that Richard has for call centors and all the advice and expertise that he gave us about how in 2023 postco post work from home call centers still do work and they can be effective but it does seem like it's a little bit harder to be fair that was probably one of my favorite interviews and Richard you are such a unique character I really love you dude awesome stuff again Richard thanks for coming on sharing your expertise and please check out the Costa Rica call center business all the link Down Below in the description question of the day thoughts and call center Dead or Alive leave a comment Down Below on YouTube We're on Spotify do you want to be in the show interviews at SharkBite biz.com we had a little bit of delay we'll be scheduling soon also if you're watching on YouTube please join the channel $3 a month you can become a baby shark and support the channel every dollar in is every dollar that goes out and we want to thank again our sponsor of the show sedor sedor thank you so much if you're a business a small to midsize business even large Enterprise from Mom and Pop large Enterprise and you're running Antiquated software or something like QuickBooks or spreadsheets or God forbid Microsoft Access uh please reach out to sor.com reach out to me directly and we'll get you hooked up with a system that works for your business you all know this by now but I'll say it once again I'm David ster this is shark bite Biz we'll see you all next episode ciao you just experienced shark bite Biz with David strausser please like comment And subscribe to the show to help us spread the word about personal professional and business growth want to be on the show send an email to interviews at SharkBite biz.com a special shout out to our sponsor sap Platinum partner sedor get off QuickBooks and move your business to the next level reach out for more info thanks for listening and see you next time

#Podcast guest appearances. Richard Blank Costa Rica's Call Center

richard blank