The Sheri Kaye Hoff Show. How to improve your communication skills on the phone with Richard Blank.

For living joyfully and successfully in your life and work. Get More Freedom, Happiness, and Success with Sheri Kaye Hoff. Sheri is a Business and Life Coach. She is the author of transformational books and a near-death survivor. Sheri uses a coaching approach that is transformational, intuitive, mindset-driven, vision driven, spiritual, and action-oriented. She lives in beautiful Colorado and is married (for over 25 years) with three children, three step-children, and four grandchildren. Sheri is an animal lover, a travel lover, a wine lover, and a fun lover. Learn more about Sales, leadership, strong corporate culture, telemarketing outsourcing, and becoming successful in conflict management strategies with clients with CEO Richard Blank. With a mix of motivational public speaking styles backed by tactful and appropriate rhetoric, Richard shared his knowledge and trained over 10 000 bilingual telemarketers and became CEO of Costa Rica Call Center in 2008. It doesn’t matter what size business you have or the type of business you have. You can always improve your communication skills. Listen to my super fun and educational interview with Richard. https://youtu.be/F-Edg_WtBYg The Sheri Kaye Hoff Show for Living Joyfully in your Biz and Life. Create More Freedom, Happiness, and Success. Sheri is a business coach, consultant, mindset mastery expert, and personal development, expert. She is a best-selling author of transformational books and a near-death survivor. She is a noted radio show guest, keynote speaker, and workshop leader. Sheri uses a coaching approach that is action-oriented, intuitive, inspiring, and energy-boosting. She lives in beautiful Colorado and is married (for over 25 years) with three children, three step-children, and four grandchildren. Sheri loves inspiring happiness, family dinners, dancing, football, golf, wine, the beach, and the mountains. You can also listen to the podcast by saying “Alexa, play the Sheri Kaye Hoff Show” This podcast is syndicated globally including your favorite podcast player and is available on youtube Sheri Kaye Hoff, is a Transformational Business Coach known for inspiring, intuition, vision, and massive action, and being a catalyst for personal and business growth, joy, and profits in a way that is fun, relaxing, and fulfilling. She uses both spiritual and practical techniques to obliterate blocks and create transformational change. Sheri is a business, leadership, happiness, and inner game expert. She has overcome nearly dying and has made it her life mission to share the keys to happiness and success. Get More Freedom, Happiness, and Success with Sheri Kaye Hoff. Sheri is a business coach, consultant, mindset mastery expert, and personal development expert. She is a best-selling author of transformational books and a near-death survivor. She is a noted radio show guest, keynote speaker, and workshop leader. Sheri uses a coaching approach that is action-oriented, intuitive, inspiring, and energy-boosting. She lives in beautiful Colorado and is married (for over 25 years) with three children, three step-children, and 3 grandchildren. Sheri loves inspiring happiness, family dinners, dancing, football, golf, wine, the beach, and the mountains. Are you a coach, consultant, professional, or heart-centered entrepreneur/small business owner? Discover a clear path to creating the business and lifestyle you want. Relax into scaling your business doing what you love. Create more happiness, freedom, and success every day. Measure your success not just by more profits, but by the amount of ease, flow, and joy you experience each day in your business. Meet Sheri : Known for transformation and being a catalyst for business growth and profits in a way that is fun, relaxing, and fulfilling, Sheri inspires people to do the work they love and make money. Her clients have a passion for making a difference and making a profit. She is an author of multiple books including: You Can Heal: Lessons from Nearly Dying, Daily Miracles and Inner Peace; Relax Into Inspired Action; Keys to Living Joyfully; Be the Inspiration: 7 Ways to Inspire Your World, and more. Her books are available internationally and her podcast is syndicated globally (on apple podcasts, Spotify, google podcasts, iheart radio, and more). Sheri helps business owners and professionals to relax into attracting more income and to relax into success. She uses both spiritual and practical techniques to obliterate blocks and create dramatic change, and she offers customized one on one coaching, group programs, and her signature mastermind programs. She has a Bachelor of Science degree in Business, a Master of Arts in Organizational Management, and a Doctorate in Holistic Life Coaching. She has an avid interest in metaphysics and is a certified group coaching leader. She has created coach certification programs for personal coaching, business coaching, and spiritual coaching. As a business leadership and inner game expert, Sheri created training programs, organizational change management programs for small businesses, and corporate training and development programs. She writes extensively on spiritual practices and how they can be applied to business and life. Sheri has taught business classes at the collegiate level, including organizational change management, human resource management, ethics, marketing, and others. A near-death survivor/thriver, Sheri experienced miracle healing. Sheri lost her brother to suicide and experienced setbacks and tragedies that could have stopped her in her tracks, but she made it her life mission to discover the keys to happiness and success and then share them with the world. She began her coaching company in 2007 after a diverse career including: being an exercise instructor in her early career, to direct sales, to management, training, then higher education. She grew up influenced by her mother, an English major, and her father, an Education Director. Training and development were household values. She is proof positive that you can combine multiple skills and talents and keep growing and changing. She launched her company because that is the way she felt she could make the biggest difference. She coached hundreds of people over the years and thousands have been impacted by her programs. Her mantra is: Relax into Inspired Action Fun facts: Sheri figure skated as a pre-teen and teen. At one time she thought she wanted to join the Ice Capades. During her first year of college, she wanted to be an archeologist. She also published over 30 poems and a fiction short story. Married to her best friend for over 25 years, she has three grown-up kiddos and three-step kiddos and is a step-grandmother. She lives in beautiful Colorado. Sheri loves traveling (remote island beaches are her favorite- among her many adventures, she has encountered a shark while kayaking and snorkeled in a 660-foot deep blue hole ). She loves golfing with family, friends, and clients. Reading a book a day has been a life-long habit. Family Sunday dinners are a cherished tradition and regular evenings out with her gal pals. Her mottos: Be Free, Be Happy. Be the Inspiration. Boldly pursue a life of meaning and passion. 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 #TheSheriKayeHoffShow The Sheri Kaye Hoff Show , 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/F-Edg_WtBYg s-h-e-r-i-k-a-y-e-h-o-f-f.com for more podcast episodes or you can say Alexa play the Sherry K Hoff show this podcast is syndicated globally and you can listen anywhere where you're listening to your other podcasts some examples are Apple Google pod link Podcast Addict Spotify and many more foreign [Music] from the Sherry K hop show and I would love to welcome you here today and I have a surprising guest we're going to kind of Step Off The Path and bring in someone who um is it's just kind of a new and juicy topic here on the show and so I'd like to introduce you to Richard blank and he is an expert in call centers an expert in Soft Cell personal sock skills with people and so we are just going to have a beautiful conversation and he is in Costa Rica a beautiful place I haven't been there but I have friends who have houses there so I'm sure I'm going to visit soon maybe we'll have a margarita together or something like that sounds like fun right I'm great poor Avida thank you so much Sarah for having me on your show it's very nice to meet your audience and to spend some very very nice quality time with you today yeah so you bring to US 27 years of experience and you are a CEO and uh you know we're going to talk a little bit about leadership we're going to talk about uh selling skills which sometimes small business owners uh resist the idea or they get nervous about those kinds of conversations with people and they start focusing on you know is this person going to say yes or no before they're even in the conversation so I just would love for you to open up with you know what is it what is that sales conversation and how can it be a positive experience for the person doing it and the person on the other end too it's one of my favorite questions the first thing I address Sherry is fear it's a morbid anticipation of something that hasn't happened yet you have my permission to be afraid of spiders and needles and other things like that but uh something mental I think you and I are much stronger so that's number one number two is I don't really see myself as a Salesman I see myself as an educator because Terry you and I just don't force anybody's hand they choose to listen to us so from an educated point of view we make a decision so it's our responsibility to be properly prepared to know our rebuttals to know the answers but also to show some empathy on these phone calls I I believe that when someone is too well rehearsed and they know their lines too much they become a print they lose their painting status they become commercialized they'll grind out the numbers and make their calls that day and get their metrics but they won't be an ace they won't have that sort of empathetic connection that you have with people I'll give you an example one of the simple things people do is never ask a follow-up question to something if somebody mentions they have a dog you say that's great I love it but what's the dog's name these are certain things that can ground you and have conversations about normal things that just doesn't have to be in about appointment or sale and so I think if you just start calls off that way more of a centered approach on how you were raised with manners and being polite but also being generally interested in what the other person is doing your conversations might last a little bit longer but you'll have more conversions as well so don't rush to make your 100 phone calls that day Sherry I'd rather you make 60 phone calls that day and every phone call we spend a couple more minutes talking about good things in life and what about in some businesses you know it might be more like you know six phone calls depending on you know the the type of package people are selling you know if you're selling like a ten thousand dollar coaching package you're probably talking to more you know high quality leads um and so you're not looking at like that volume of you know 100 calls or 60 calls I think I think some of my clients would have a heart attack I was thinking about that number but but um but I love I love your point about that you know that um you know it's about engagement so you know when we before we jumped on here we talked a little bit about the spiritual side of business and you are kind of a rebel in that you know you you pursued your dream maybe in spite of people who were a little bit resistant or didn't understand and so talk a little bit about what it's like to have a dream and maybe have the people around you not understand that dream first is you gotta know if you have a dream because when you're growing up a lot of people will offer you very strong opinions and expect you to follow them or they might even give your career or your future it could be predestined could already have it planned out for you so when all of my friends in high school back in Northeast Philadelphia at Abington they were going to Ivy League they were studying medicine and law architecture engineering and other degrees I had no idea what I wanted to do and that scared me a little bit not in the sense that I couldn't do something it's the fact that all these people had their lives planned out the next 20 years and here I am at 18 wondering what to do this is what I did know that my favorite class in high school was Spanish also recess but you can't major in that school majored I majored in Spanish at the University of Arizona and I minored in recess it's Arizona I also chose to be a communication major and just like you Sherry you're an incredible public speaker so I decided to study that I also majored in rhetoric you know you want to make sure that you give a proper delivery and your message is clear and a special sauce I decided to study micro expression reading so I could Master body language and see if I can get some positive reinforcement with those with whom I'm speaking and so these are the sort of things that assisted me in my early 20s to become a little bit more uh more balanced and impulse control because there were certain things I would react to and other things I realized that it's just the way that people are communicating and if I had the time to be able to break things down explain my way and and really as I say before show active listening skills to the other people letting them know that that's an excellent question repeating back the question that they asked you and boomeranging back with some plus two smile here's a very good way you can readjust tones of conversation and move them forward and that's what it is Sherry we just need checkpoints we just got to make sure every couple minutes that everything's cool and we can continue if not then maybe it's for my clarification I might need to ask something and these are the sort of soft skills that can reduce any sort of conflict management and can enhance any sort of experience with people because you're not being offensive you're just being a little bit assertive and you're making sure that you're showing empathy towards this conversation and it won't ruin your scent it won't ruin your Zen and your balance your Juju you're you know in in my opinion I I get to a certain point in a conversation where my clients will start saying my name and it's not in the introduction or the conclusion when we're confirming this it's we made that sort of anchor in the middle of the call and that's when I can loosen my tie sit back have a sip of coffee and let Mr Jones tell me certain things and I I know everything's going to be okay so instead of distracting yourself with the end result which will come you should be focusing on the now and where you are in this exact moment because it can take a second for the world or the conversation to change and so if somebody can be in that sort of mindset and there are other techniques for that which you have definitely shown us on your videos I prefer breathing techniques I prefer using pronouns and name drops so at least I can bring people back into conversations and those are the sort of things that I those are the sort of things Sherry that all these years and the ten thousands of phone calls I've heard that the action created a positive reaction with the clients and so we realized we cracked certain codes in regards to interpersonal communication hmm I love that and don't you think that the success it really in anything starts with the heart so when you're truly loving your product loving the service that you offer and loving other people like um before I get on a call with someone I just concentrate on sending like waves of love to them and also reminding myself that it's not about me at all it's all about them and and you know I'm in the place of truly caring not pretending to care but truly caring about the person that I'm talking to and so you know what are your thoughts on that kind of style and how you know is there somebody who um you know like I I tell people you know if you don't like people you shouldn't own a business because a business is about people you know and and so if you don't like people you don't like talking to people you need to do some kind of research in a lab or something and that's fine there are people like that but maybe speak to that a little bit I want to First address the last thing that you had mentioned in regards to your personality and sending love you're building up of energy I think you can show them on the first three seconds of any call I love using anonymity but I can't do it for an entire conversation that's kind of shady but if the first thing I'm going to say is not how are you or my name is Richard I would like to say Sherry you know or the name of your company and ask how the company is doing today why because it can get a gatekeeper or the business owner out of this Zone that you say where they don't want to speak with people but if somebody calls with sunshine or says the name of your company better than you do and asks how the company's doing it's just an excellent way to show Sherry it's an excellent first impression it's right out of the gate it's like a James Bond movie the first couple minutes amazing amazing here she goes here she goes and she has momentum and so I think that's important so at least you can showcase yourself prior to any sort of other introductions and it can reduce that you get some points for that now in regards to an environment it's the environment that this individual takes it's everybody has the same gym the same football field the same office environment it depends on the coaches the supervisors and the leaders I myself Sharon since I grew up in the 80s and I love the show Silver Spoons I wanted my own arcade so I have pinball machines I got Pac-Man I got a ski machine and air hockey table so unlike other bosses to answer your question I made a work play environment so instead of the agents going outside for a smoke or to sit on their phone looking at things or just in the corner eating by themselves individuals from other departments get a chance to hang out together and they can keep their skills sharp they can give themselves some steam to be ready to go or they can let off some steam you know if they had a tough phone call and Sherry I've even seen people fall in love by the Pac-Man machine [Laughter] and so happy is as happy does and I have a very happy home here it's a serious environment but I dress for it I know everybody's name Sherry from the moment they walk in and they go wow you're the first boss that ever knew my name and I go first that's a shame and I go unfortunately it might be the last one that ever dies but while you're with me while we're crusando Caminos when we're crossing past and walking together I'm gonna make sure that you get better I'm going to I'm going to increase your self-reliance Sherry it's important for me to improve your self-confidence and by doing so will increase your vocabulary by using a thesaurus because English is their second language so instead of using words like help which really is not in our vocabulary you and I use words like guide lend a hand things like that because it's the same message Sherry but it's such a different delivery I always believe you can gain points on delivery and so we reduce any sort of miscommunication or any sort of offense as as you said prior to this call today it's all about being confident and being empathetic you you keep going around compassion compassion well I have compassion for myself because I could earn a living many different ways no one ever told me how to start a call center so this was a Vision Quest that I had when I was 18 so I was on I'm still on this spiritual journey but really if you do not care about the people that work with you because you know they have to feed families and they have large responsibilities and you could mold them and the proper leadership is by example I just don't write checks for them I can get on the phone anytime and assist a client or close a deal I could do what you see in the movies if that's what you want to see but this is not a boiler room environment these are professionals here we have Amazon and HP and Intel and Oracle in Costa Rica so the scalability and the quality of these bilingual agents with their infrastructure is incredible we can compete and so they have options I have more of a natural attrition Sherry than than a forced attrition people will leave me because their boyfriend or girlfriend works at another Center where the scheduling because of school or sometimes is money but very rarely if not never someone will be walking out of this door saying I'm quitting today because Richard blank to face me on the floor because he he was too aggressive during training he um he didn't care and so that's how I as a man can look in the mirror and hold my head up high and look at myself because I can respect myself because I'm feeding 150 families a month and that was what my goal is Success my friend sharing is is built on one million thank yous and the fact that I'm a guest in this country speaking their language I've been embraced and so I know I'm in the right environment because I get costius I get these chills I get these six senses I can taste it that I'm doing the right thing and that's why I believe we're on this call today you you take your show very seriously and I got vetted just like all your other guests but I think both you and I had the same goal that we were hoping that we had things in common so we could connect and I passed that test and that's why I I'm extremely grateful to be on this podcast with you today show because you were so good you caught my attention it was really good that I could sit through not only one episode but I've been watched for a little while my supervisors are and I did and then I wrote you and this is where we are today so if anybody wants to learn a lesson about relationship building and energy connecting this is a 3 000 mile connection that we did here and it was done in in just a couple weeks and that's what makes the world beautiful sharing oh I love I love that I mean I just well and thank you and thank you for being here today so you know and I could talk to you for eight hours maybe we need to have like an eight hour marathon sometime or go to Sedona together I don't know but but I I want to go back to something that you started to talk about and that was micro expression and studying micro expression and what is that and how can people who you know just maybe in a job that they have or their small business how can they pay attention to micro expression to improve communication improve results we can look at a two-way Sherry and and it is a wonderful topic once you see it you can't unsee it most people refer to micro expression reading when you're reading the face or body language from haptics touch proxemic spacings facial expressions blinking object and self-adapters there's so many categories you can observe I believe I I stand behind this that the purest form of expression reading is through phonetics so it's literally sight unseen it's the purest form because you could mask everything else follow me quick here this will go in some easy steps I'll do it in about one minute I'm going to run through this thing Fanatics is done in four different ways you have your tone rate pitch and your duration we discussed earlier that the tone represents your emotion it should be empathetic and confident that's the consistent variable I could care less what the tone of the client is I just want to make sure it's positive you and I need to stay focused on the rate and the pitch how fast and how loud somebody speaks it may seem like common sense but when you analyze it for 30 second to two minute intervals regardless of the semantic regardless of the word choice of the rhetoric purely sound do it in a foreign language so you can really practice it let's get back to English you are paying attention to how they Spike or how they dip within 30 seconds after you've done a couple minutes worth of reading because you see a consistent pattern when this happens in my personal opinion it's a perfect time for the client to ask a tie down pin down or a confirmation question just it's a checkpoint Sherry does this make sense sounds good right Sherry for my clarification ABC or one two three one two three thank you just because there might be adjustments could that be manipulated yes that's why I believe the ultimate tellsan and that's why the police and interrogators use this they use the answering speed I can always mask a tone I can yell at you I can pause and not answer but my reactions to you is pretty much your ID you can't control that that's you that's your inner Persona and so I believe that if you use that as an insurance policy from your Spike or your dip rate and Pitch with an answering speed and you study that every 30 seconds to two minutes you have a controlled conversation to see if you need to interject and ask a follow-up or you could possibly rake certain questions by saying I'm sure you like at least one since you have me on the phone are there any questions you may have these are certain sort of strategic questions you could ask these people in case you are not sure and so after about three weeks it becomes habit you can still do this while you're doing your job it's just something that's subconscious but once you start paying attention to that like if somebody has a tick and starts scratching it's a tell us on that he's got a good hand in cards you can see that Helen Keller was a genius this individual taught us many mediums of communication and in my environment Sherry we are losing three of our senses we can't taste touch or smell imagine when you have all five senses how that experience like eating a pizza or even giving childbirth is some of the most incredible experiences and you're an amazing mother don't tell me that's not one of the top five and so we're eliminating three of our senses here for the experience so I believe that our hearing should be expanded but not only the seeing you can't see the people but don't tell me that books aren't better than the movies there's a theory called image streaming where you can give yourself better descriptions when you're explaining it to the people and so these are the sort of skills where people just slow down and calm down and take every 30 seconds to two minutes as an individual round of a fight for your own personal adjustment to their style but still keeping them on a positive tone you could have beautiful 10 minute conversations are you over analyzing people well yeah I am because I studied to do it and sometimes subconsciously people can be lazy when they're eating or when they're doing things and especially when they're speaking and so I believe that these are things where I'm not manipulating this or knowing when people are lying but I'm obviously going to be confirming things with people to ensure that we're still on the same level and this doesn't have to be done in business this can be done with budding friendships or with strangers or when you're in the restaurant and patient and these are the sort of things that you can just practice everywhere and anywhere and so dedicated practice which you and I do constantly when we're not on camera that what prepares us for when we are on camera and on the phone so if these people can practice these skills by themselves they're going to be phenomenal when it's time yeah and so well there's so much there but what I'm really what I what I'm hearing is the focus is not on ourselves and the conversation it's on the other person and so you know having that you know what you know total focus on the person like when I'm when I'm in a coaching call with someone it's like my entire world becomes that person and and it's a deliberate focus and it's very powerful because how many times has anyone ever been the total focus of someone else and and you know I think I I can remember I was talking to well one of my podcasts guests Janet Nestor she's a gorgeous energy healer and we were talking about business and she said to me you know Sherry the greatest gift you give to people is your presence and I actually hadn't even thought about it like quite like that before but it's the truth and and so if you look at a conversation with someone that this is me being fully present with someone else so so I just think um you're just a remarkable person and and so much fun so if if people were to take away you know um one or two really big things from this conversation what would you want them to take away the first thing and once again thank you for having me here and that is my first thing I am so grateful to not only spend time with you but to share ideas with your audience and you and your audience energy attracted me so just think of how powerful you guys are so that's for you and your audience yeah the second thing is I have twists and turns and I've had ups and downs but the one thing I've done is I've been very true to myself and the most important thing is that I love the language that I knew that speaking a second language would open doors for me and it would make an amazing first impression for somebody because it shows out of structure and discipline but I I took the time to show good faith and to make it easier for others and so I believe that that's why my woo way my philosophy of least resistance has made things very easy for me because I've I've taken a Renaissance romantic poet sort of Lifestyle I had no idea where this was going to go still have no idea but I do know where I am today and today I'm with Sherry and I'm having a wonderful day and if you're going to get those two things out of it just get the fact out of that I'm a much better person after being on this podcast ah thank you so much thank you so much and thank you to all of our listeners all over the world so it's really kind of good morning good afternoon good evening depending on where you are and um please let me know what your thoughts are on Richard's conversation I would love to hear from you take care everyone have a wonderful rest of your day talk to you soon bye-bye