Sales trainer that became a CEO of a call center. The Make Careers Happe...

Sales trainer that became a CEO of a call center. The Make Careers Happen Podcast with Richard Blank. Welcome to Make careers happen. A podcast with the main focus on helping people to find success in their careers. Guiding people to find their professional business journey. Ishaan Haider is a teenage host of the show and is located in Dublin Ireland. Make Careers Happen Episode #2 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. Richard’s journey in the call center space 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. Costa Rica’s Call Center (CCC) is a state of the art BPO telemarketing outsource company located in the capital city of San Jose, Costa Rica. Our main focus has been, and will always be to personally train each and every Central America call center agent so that we may offer the highest quality of outbound and inbound telemarketing solutions and bilingual customer service to small and medium sized international companies, entrepreneurs as well as fortune 500 companies. We encourage you to visit one of our call centers on your next personal vacation or business trip to Central America’s paradise, Costa Rica. While you are here, we would recommend taking an extra day of your trip to visit breathtaking virgin beaches, play golf next to the ocean, try your luck at deep sea fishing, explore tropical jungles, climb volcanos or just relax in natural hot springs. Come and see for yourself why call center outsourcing in Costa Rica is a perfect solution for your growing company and a powerhouse in the BPO industry. https://costaricascallcenter.com/en/outbound-bpo-campaigns/ #RichardBlank #CostaRica #CallCenter #Outsourcing #Telemarketing #BPO #Sales #Entrepreneur #B2B #Business #Podcast #Gamification #CEO #MAKECAREERSHAPPEN Make Careers Happen Podcast. Guiding people to find their professional business journey. Episode #2 https://youtu.be/SbtZsgoWyBM?si=Cd22_5r-D6ewfaJE hmm hello everyone and welcome to Makers happen episode two today we've got an interview with Richard blank the CEO of Costa Rica's call center so first can you tell us a bit about yourself well first thank you so much ishan for having me on the make careers happen podcast I'm very happy to be here today and it is the first time I'm speaking with a host that is located in Dublin Ireland so this is extra special but uh yes I'm currently the CEO of Costa Rica's call center we're celebrating our 14th Year we're a near shore to the United States bilingual call center as you would say a contact center and so my agents here handle inbound calls and make outbound calls and once again I find them to be artists of speech so I'm very impressed with the staff that we have at the center I see so can you tell us about your career your journey it's like what happened along the way one of my favorite questions ishan it actually begins back in 1991 in Northeast Philadelphia when I graduated Abington High School my favorite class was Spanish so instead of my friends that were going to the university to study medicine and law engineering and architecture I decided to double down on a language so I went to the University of Arizona and was a Spanish communication major during college I needed work experience so I was an intern for Telemundo Spanish-speaking television station and I did promotions and public relations post-grad one of the first jobs I landed was with the importers of Corona beer so I could use the Spanish that I learned the sales that I had mastered and I had a great job and when I was 27 years old I was given an opportunity to move to Costa Rica for just a couple months to work at my friend's call center when I came down here and I saw how amazing it was I decided to stay so I worked with my friends for four years I learned the business from the inside and outie Sean I didn't come in as a c-level executive it wasn't about contracts and the finances I saw with the people so I got to see the good and the bad and the happy and the sad of being what it was like to be a call center agent and so when I had my impulse control and some maturity and a little bit of money in my mid-30s I decided to throw my hat in the ring because I believe I discovered ways to enhance the experience for the agent and for also the client I see so so for our third question do you have any advice for the audience I most certainly do and one of the greatest things before you take your first step into being an entrepreneur or a business owner ishan is to focus on the people that work with you if you do not give an abundant amount of empathy and dignity to the people we might not come back or they might not work as hard as you would like for them to do and if nobody comes back to your company you don't have a company so besides getting excited for the title for the money for the big office and all the bells and whistles and rewards that come with starting a company you really need to focus on the people because a lot of them have responsibilities they take care of families and a lot of people depend on them so as long as you give job stability and you put them on a Level Playing Field so they can perform at their best there's no reason why you Sean that you myself or anybody else could grow an amazing company I see so now we'll talk about the radio different topics so for the first topic that we'll discuss is that Conflict Management strategy Conflict Management strategies I think that's very important you my friend at 14 years old you're young and you're still developing right in regards to experiences and maturity but there's no reason why that if you are in a situation you can't act with manners and being polite and also being strategic is not to offend and so for me since we're making and receiving phone calls a lot of the times the people could feel rushed apprehensive they could be annoyed they could be confused and concerned and so when I talking about conflict management it's really about vocabulary and delivery let me give you an excellent example since English is the second language for the Costa Rican agent I'm always encouraging them to expand their vocabulary so we use a thesaurus so we can look at similes so for an example if I'm on the phone with you or even speaking with you ishan instead of saying how may I help you I mean that sounds okay but then again it might offend I prefer to say ishan what can I do to assist you to guide you or even lend lend a hand because you're a friend and so these are the sort of vocabulary that can reduce any sort of ego defense or any sort of rabbit holes whereas I mentioned before people could get offended let me give you another example let's just say we're making a phone call and there could be a baby in the background or a dog barking what I prefer is to use a metoo technique where I let you know how much I like children and how much dogs are amazing and I always do a follow-up question ishan I always ask you for an example what's your dog's name and you'll say fluffy so inadvertently and passive aggressively I'm kind of letting you know it's barking and you know you can almost not hear each other on the calls and then you'll put the dog outside and come back and so instead of asking you to repeat yourself or excuse me what did you say ishan I would be saying more for my clarification for my edification ishan did you say one two three or ABC so once again I'm falling on that sword these are simple little things I can do to reduce any sort of stress or frustration on your end and so when we're talking about Conflict Management it's a lot to do with active listening repeating Sometimes using people's names but you can't use the name too much ishan then it's an Overkill so I believe in pronouns by keeping your attention by saying you're or r and there's also certain trigger words that you could use in a sentence so not everything sounds monotone and you're not speaking either too fast or too slow and pauses could be used strategically for emphasis or allowing somebody like yourself ishan to give me a positive or A negative reinforcement to what I'm talking about so instead of assuming that you agree with everything or that we're on the same page I almost need checkpoints with you ishan just to ensure that all the points that I'm making either a make sense you agree with it or there might be something that you might need to add or to clarify and so my friend any sort of conflict management it's not about me and you fighting or yelling at each other well reducing any sort of miscommunication and we're also being not exceptionally polite where it's uncomfortable but you're just making sure once again you're taking other people's time and feelings and thoughts into consideration does that make any sort of sense yeah it doesn't I actually really like that advice you're going to get in less trouble with your parents if you do things like that by asking mom and dad for your clarification do I need to go to bed at 10 or 12 you know yes um I think that's great advice for it for everyone in the audience what was that again oh so I think that's great advice oh sure sure and it's as I'm saying I'm not going to teach you how to lie that's not what I'm looking to do today Sean I I don't want to compromise your ethics values or morals but you being 14 with your extensive vocabulary and your audience doesn't know the amount of work that you put into this podcast because young man you and I communicated at least a dozen times before this podcast you were locking in the time you wrote any questions following it up with a very professional business email yeah and I just it's just really a teenager because you're it's not like you're acting as an adult but I believe that you take this to make careers happen podcast yeah very seriously so by reaching out to you it doesn't matter your age it matters about how perfectional you are and the fact that at your age at 14 you are creating a successful podcast I like your work I wanted to spend time with you today and share ideas you really say something about your character and what I'm looking to do is to add wind in your sails because young man you speak for your generation you speak for many and I've never had a chance to meet someone from your area of the world before yeah so through this technology it gives you and I a chance once again to work with each other yeah and so I think that's fantastic so hats off to you eShop in the work that you do and I very much look forward to your very bright career you're you're going to be doing some amazing thing you keep this sort of momentum yeah because like because in order to orange hurts someone your idea it's best to show that you actually care oh you definitely do but but I will say this though I don't know who taught you how to write these sort of emails or to have this sort of let's just say business ethics where you communicate with people before the end of business or I have to say something you're in real time you'll return an email within minutes oh yeah and a lot of people instead of waiting and getting frustrated if it's good news or bad news or just a suggestion you are really respecting people's time and so by showing up on time and doing these sort of things you will be considered almost by default much more before other people that just not take that into consideration yeah because um yeah because I think if I have a good response time and overall have a good ethic the person is less likely to be discouraged wouldn't that be considered conflict management and isn't that a ripple effect because if you're late then other things could go bad from that too like a domino effect wouldn't you agree yeah well excellent what other questions do you have so for a second topic we'll discuss it will be the phonetic micro expression readings thank you for bringing that up and ishan once you see it you can't unsee it and after about three weeks of practice it becomes habit when you look at people you're able to gauge their micro expression readings you can tell when someone's smiling frowning what they do with their body language and their spacing and if they're using a self or an object adapter you know in regards to nervousness or or because of excitement but since we're on the phone what happens ishan is that we're losing three of our senses you're losing your taste touch and smell now the scientists say that if you happen to lose one or more of your senses your other ones will increase so I know that your hearing should be at least double to Triple the amount you should be doing some serious active listening but then again ishan you're probably going to make the argument well Richard I can't really see somebody over a phone call well then I'll say well ishan what about metaphysics what about what about image streaming don't tell me that when you read a book that it wasn't better than the movie because of using your imagination so besides doing the active listening you should be expanding your descriptions and your adjectives to people which will then illuminate your points okay so the phonetic micro expression reading Fanatics that's the sound of speech semantics are your word choice but your phonetics fanatic see Sean is broken down into four different sections you have your tone your rate your pitch and duration your tone of voice which you and I both have and this should always be consistent your tone should always be empathetic and confident so you're always showing compassion but backing it up with bravado and confidence Now where's this micro expression reading come from it comes from a mirror Imaging technique mirror Imaging what I want you to do is to match somebody's speed and speaking level every 30 seconds to two minutes because I believe that is the average length of an attention span so if you're on a 10 minute conversation 20 times you could be analyzing someone's rate and Pitch not the words they use or not even the tone but how fast and how loud they go why do we do this ishan well let's just say that you're consistently speaking a certain way but then all of a sudden something you say could have someone speak loud or softer faster or slower that to me is considered a spike or a dip my suggestion for you and your audience is to then ask a tie down or a pin down question there are certain times ishan I could ask you if it makes sense or sounds good these are checkpoints now your tone your rate and your pitch could still be manipulated you've seen people be defiant they've held their ground but ishan if you're really looking to see the true tell sign of somebody if they're being facetious or possibly they might need to clarify it for you again without calling them out for lying my suggestion is to focus on their answering speed because that is something that is subconscious as I mentioned before ishan you and I could easily control our tone how fast we speak and how loud we speak but don't tell me that you can match every time 10 out of 10 your answering speed so that's more of the congruence where the audio is matching the visual on that so that is something that people should be analyzing every 30 seconds to two minutes and so if you do apply these phonetic micro expression reading techniques you will be once again managing that conflict management and clarifying things for people now there is something that I would suggest it's positive escalation it's got nothing to do with microexpression reading but this could assist you in giving you a better read because you need to read somebody and it could be a first time and also once again you don't know these people so who knows if that's exactly their personality but if you could get them in a certain relaxed state where they act more natural then your analysis of them will be more clear let's say hypothetically he's saying that you are calling a company to book something for your podcast you're working with a company if you speak to a gatekeeper before getting transferred to a decision maker you should always once again let them know that you'll be letting the owner of the company know how great they are so when a call gets trans you could let me know that somebody that assisted you to get to me was amazing and we call those positive escalations you should do it verbally and when you do a follow-up email which you're excellent we should be mentioning all the people that assisted you and so when you call that company back eshan and the person answers not only are they going to remember you they're going to thank you so much yeah for saying something defined about them to the owner of the company and so my friend that's only going to add to your momentum and so when you're speaking with people they're not putting up a front they're more natural and that Spike if analysis will be much more um precise yeah yeah that's probably the second piece of great advice you've given thank you all the other advice from the other questions overall you've got the best advice I've seen well you're getting my best yeah and you deserve it you're the Future Leaders Future Leaders you're a leader today yeah and so what we're doing is we're just passing down what was taught to me for my grandparents and parents and giving it to you yep should we move on to the third topic or are you not done yet no we're good to go yes there are third Topic's fine okay so let's see is it that famous oh it's defensive buffer Boomerang technique the famous buffer Boomerang technique from Costa Rica to Ireland awesome yeah the buffer Boomerang technique okay ishan sometimes someone's going to ask you a question like let's just say hypothetically you're calling into a company and someone says what is your name well sometimes they could have a negative tone to it so I think you should always buffer a negative tone you should name drop somebody ishan you should let them know that's an excellent question repeat the question my name is and return it in a positive way Richard blank so for an example you would I would call your company someone answers the phone says make careers happen and I go hey how's my careers happen doing today so usually what I'd like to do is use my anonymity and ask how a company is doing not you directly but then that's when someone would say what is your name ishan that's an excellent question my name is Richard blind so it shows active listening you're doing a name drop you can't say that's an excellent question every time you could say I'm glad you brought that up wonderful we're discussing that there's certain ways to buffer a negative tone name drop bring it back repeat the question and reset the tone of a call in a positive way there's no reason why you can't reset something there shouldn't be any sort of negative escalations where people start screaming yelling and cursing at each other someone might need to learn Their Manners someone might need to be a little more polite even though they may be older than you it doesn't matter there's a very good way young man that you could answer them in a certain polite and diplomatic way to almost teach them a lesson that ishan will answer your question you're not going to yell at me like a teacher in school where they're going to say what's your name Richard blank how old are you no no no you're not in trouble this isn't some sort of uh interrogation lecture somebody needs to respect your space and your time and by buffering a negative tone boomeranging it back repeating their question and showing them the right way to do it don't be surprised that eventually the conversation sways towards your style yeah that's an excellent question that's excellent advice so are you done with the third topic yeah for the buffer Boomerang and as I mentioned before it comes into oh you know you know what let me let me share one more with you like someone will ask my name and I'll do the boomerang and then a lot of the times like you've done today they'll say Richard what do you do and I would say ishan I'm so glad that you brought that up this is exactly what we do and then I would mention them this is what some people do ishan I call it desert pitch it where you just talk for so much there's no Oasis where you can't drink and rest so if you're going to be explaining what make careers happen does or all the different businesses you're involved in in projects you are just don't give me a laundry list Isha presented almost like a dessert tray when you bring each one out describe it and give it a pause to see if there's a reaction to it and what happens is when you give your entire list of everything that make careers happen does you could almost be brave enough to say I'm sure you'd like at least one Richard of course I like at least one out of the ten things you mentioned and then what you do is instead of having it as a horizontal then you take that one answer into a vertical and you start stacking open-ended questions like you've been doing so what do you like about it how do you see using it with your company where do you see it's the savings and so instead of asking yes and no questions once you can anchor in somebody with a topic that they like hold off on mentioning other things move it from a horizontal to a vertical like a skyscraper and just as you do when you do it so well Sean you ask those open-ended questions because I know what I know I'd like to know what you know and if I do that then I can adjust our conversation accordingly yep I want your short questions yeah cool so I'll just so I'll just start asking it any questions I can think of now all right go for it self-drones anything you could change in your career would it be sorry wrong something happened but we'll just continue from the from from where we left off so can you so can you window so if there's anything in your career it could change would it be anything in my career would I would change what would it be what I'd like to do is is have more fast tracking for promotion in my company we only once again promote from within but I'd like well I wish I did before was to delegate more responsibilities for brand new agents that were coming in and be able to test them a lot faster to see their sort of additional skill sets that they have and sort of leadership that they have so it's not like they're going to be doing heavy reports or you know classroom training but if there's somebody there that is excellent for shadowing for coaching assisting me in script writing and doing some role playing then once again I could see that these individuals had been cool to spark and then you just add to that sort of talent and then you kind of would see where things grow from there I see you okay so what is an inspirational quote that has inspired you fortune favors the brave because if you never leave your Castle ishan you'll never slay a dragon if you never do that you never Save The Princess and so it's very important for people to be brave because a lot of the times there'll be some naysayers and great Believers people that will say no and oh but they just don't k-n-o-w enough about your vision quest and where you're going and so I think someone should always hold firm they should go the distance I don't believe in jumping in you know head first into certain brand new Endeavors you should always do your due diligence and you should test things before making huge life and career changes but if you have this intuition figure out these sort of I don't know chills from time to time because you know you're doing the right thing and there's some major anticipation of something good that's about to happen obviously the Stars may become aligned and the wind might be in your sails and so no one ever really told me that this career in Costa Rica was going to happen I kind of just fell into it at 27. but ishan you and I both know that there is these one in a million opportunities that may cross your path and you have to take them because high risks equal High Rewards and there's also once again a safety net I could have always clicked my heels and come home and got a job in the United States and continued my life but there are Destinies for people and by you starting this make careers happen podcasts and reaching out with people all over the world and really making a very good name for yourself there's no reason why that's not going to come back in one shape or another and so I I believe in those certain personal Journeys that we all take and and don't kid yourself it's more of a forced March if you think it's easy then you're sadly mistaken when you really really want something and you know this too you go the distance and you give it your all and when you're off camera and you're out of school and you're not with your friends you're still practicing you're still getting better at your game and it's the one thing I don't think I will ever deter you from your goal yeah and so anybody that has that sort of Drive determination and motivation I cannot help but respect them for it and if there's any way that I can add to that sort of feeling and momentum then then it's my pleasure to assist in them achieving their goals okay so I'll ask um so I'll ask two more questions and we can um and then I guess I'll be done for this episode okay all right so let's see so what's ins so what's one book that has inspired you well my favorite book it's an old book it was written in 1933 by Harvey Allen It's called Anthony adverse it's actually it's 1234 pages so if you're going to read it it's going to take a while but um I read that when I was 21 years old and it took me a little while but I was at a really good period of my life when I was doing that I I spent my junior year abroad ishan so I lived in Europe for a year two semesters and I stayed over Christmas break and so when I was in Spain mastering Spanish I was able to travel over Christmas break as far east as Prague as far south as Corfu Greece at the Pink Palace I went to Amsterdam and Holland and also to Tangier Morocco and when I was sitting on these eurail trains and having at least 55-minute conversations with people from all over the world I realized one thing that a lot of the stuff that we hold dear in the United States and we hold uh such Valor and high esteem really didn't matter when you moved out of the country it was really more of your essence so this book that I was reading of Anthony adverse was a young man that was a dreamer and that traveled the world and and was I guess a classic romantic and believed in himself and really had a lot of coming-of-age moments moments where you beat up a bully or save the kitten from the tree or when you could look at yourself in the mirror and not only be amazed but exceptionally proud of the sort of Courage that got you to where you are that day and so I guess I could relate very much to this young man in the 18th century that was just fighting against his own values and the love of his life he was trying to win and and traveling the world and so to me that really brought a lot of the passion for life I'll share something else too when I was traveling Europe during those two months and during Christmas break a lot of young men and women these youth hostels would say hey Richard let's go to the bars let's go party let's go run to the beach for a minute and and I was going to go and and of course I'm gonna have a good time but ishan I made sure to go to Every Museum to every beautiful building and church and structure that I could see because there's always times to raise your glass and have a good time and you know and enjoy but you're in a certain area of the world where there's so much history and culture and by having an open mind and learning about that all it did my friend was was enrich my life and made me able to be an expatriate from the United States into acclimate and integrate myself in other countries and parts of the world seamlessly because as we both know as tile is universal sharing food is universal being polite is universal and if I could just bring the best of myself wherever I was going I believe that I would be received in the most favorable way I see so should we move on to the final question the final question you son you've done great today in your interview yes what's your final question this is probably going to be an extremely hard question for you so it's gonna be so let's say if you woke up tomorrow okay I like if you had all the experience on the journey you have today but everything that you've built upon in your life was gone how would you go on to rebuilding your life well that that's very simple you could take away everything from me but you're not taking away my essence of who I am as a man and who I am as a person and so a lot of this stuff is as mentioned could be material or financial and if that represents somebody that's fine but then again as you say it could be taken away it could be increased and decreased but if I were able to make it at the stage as Richard I could easily do it again but if it's something as you say my friend that's got taken away from me there's a there's a larger lesson to that to what was taken away it's really what I have and so if one of my chapters in life ishan is getting knocked down then maybe the second chapter of my life would be how I pick myself back up so let's just look at it as physics you're talking about something that was reduced but then again an action creates a reaction possibly in this experience that you stayed could push me back you could actually Propel me forward more than you could ever imagine sir well I guess but yeah but I mean if I had to do something over again I guess I wouldn't be taking any sort of loans out I wouldn't be having any other business partners to put that sort of pressure on me yes and I would be banking on my reputation and referrals for people that I again potentially assist me guide me or give me any sort of wind in my cells to start moving forward again yes so um I guess it's the end of this episode I guess so we'll wrap this up hey Sean I can't thank you enough I I really enjoyed being a guest on make careers happen and thank you very much for taking the time today for you and your audience everyone this is the end of this episode so we'll see you all in the next episode goodbye