Build & Balance welcomes to the show today Richard Blank from Costa Rica...

The BUILD & BALANCE Show with Richard Blank. A call center sales training expert in Costa Rica. BUILD & BALANCE Show dedicated to serving salespeople with 0 - 5 years of experience; and anyone who wants to improve their public speaking skills. Michael Neuendorff has been in sales and marketing for more than 20 years and knows what it's like to start out in sales. It's not easy! This is why Michael Neuendorff post videos that help you to get the basics down and also understand various success secrets that can catapult you to the front of the group faster than it would take on your own. In this video, Michael Neuendorff talks with Richard Blank a successful call center owner and sales trainer, located in beautiful Costa Rica! In this video, Richard shares many tips on cold calling and how to become successful with cold calling. If you have more questions, be sure to leave a comment on this video! Check time stamps below for interview questions. Interview Questions 00:00 intro 01:56 Why did you open a call center in Costa Rica? 05:36 Why are cold calls better than cold emails? 08:18 What is a good percentage of answered cold calls? 10:54 Tips for cold calling? 23:10 How do you develop new salespeople? 27:26 When should a business consider using a call center? https://youtu.be/BDAGoHBahBo?si=IvrJ4MNZswK7AG3u https://youtu.be/NxtvkG1i-b8?si=zPlcuisU6FoqS0NQ https://youtu.be/ezLE7wUVXAU?si=K0yRYeG4MUkU161I https://youtu.be/XXh55ob8QoA?si=Lt7EKqAofvCuD_Zo 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, entered into the 2023 Hall of Fame for Business along side other famous alumni. Paying it forward 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 #Gamification #CEO #smallbusinesschronicles #successfulquitterspodcast #Saranunezbee Richard Blank,Costa Rica's Call Center, Outsourcing, Telemarketing, BPO, Nearshore, Sales, Entrepreneur, B2B, Business,Podcast,Gamification,Leadership,Marketing, Radio, Guest, Money, education, trainer, Enhancing Cold Calling Strategy If all they're doing is speaking to these people like four times out of 100 phone calls, it's really an oasis in a desert. My opinion is, why don't you hang out for a while? Instead of doing an average five-minute phone call, why don't you stretch it to 15 minutes? Because you're probably a little cold and you need to warm up and somebody's there. These are two ships passing in the night. I would take advantage of that. If you need to throw your list in a predictive dollars, you can speak to at least three more people. But that's not the point. The point is, if you're doing these phone calls, I think you should slow down a little bit more and just take advantage of that. More people are doing omni-channel non-voice support, as you were mentioning, filling out forms, doing checks. One of my clients has the same challenge. They're getting the 4%. So instead of doing 150 phone calls a day, they reduced it to about 115. So as I mentioned before, they can find out a recent promotion or some sort of company culture. So when they're leaving their voicemail or they're sending that email template, it's really custom made. And I've seen that, yes, phone call area, contact conversion ratio dropped a little bit, but then here's your advantage. Let's say you make another phone call back to these people. You're mentioning cold emails. Not anymore, Michael. Now it's a warm email because I've sent it. I could be following up on it, even if they haven't read it. But I might ask and I'm sure you like something from the email to at least try to anchor in there. But you could be doing a second, third or fourth touch approach to a client. Realize this is their protocol. But I do believe that by doing a little bit of due diligence research and seeing the one thing that the person loves the most and just mentioning it with them, it will give you a lot more mileage when you're speaking with the people. Using Phonetic Cues in Calls and then you can actually really read these people. Why do I do this? Because if somebody is doing a spike or a dip, in regards to their phonetics, then that means that there is a tie down question or a pin down question or a confirmation question that might happen. You're reacting in a certain way. So I might be saying, Michael, sounds good, right? Or makes sense, right, Michael? Or hypothetically, since people are working from home, you might have dogs or children or distractions in the background. My suggestion for your audience, Michael, is inadvertently and passive-aggressively let them know the Me Too technique, that you love dogs, which is really letting you know they're barking. But don't just say that. What the real salesperson or the attentive listener does is they ask the follow-up question. Dog's barking. She loves dogs. I love dogs. It's killing the call, but it's not that. But then I say, what's the dog's name? Her name is Fluffy. Great. I can wait till, you know, Fluffy can go outside for a minute. And so once that calms down, you go back a step, but you leap forward three. The Balance of Practice and Authenticity I hope that I shared plenty with your audience today because there's so much more I could share, but there's only so much time. But I believe that I shared with you my best, where it would give somebody such great foundation training where, Michael, all they do is just dedicated practice. If they just do things when the cameras are off and no one's around and they just practice their kicks, punches and painting their guitar, they're gonna be amazing artists of speech. But the one thing is when they're too well rehearsed and they're too commercialized, they're not raw anymore. They lose that sort of spark and character that they first started off this journey with. And that's pretty much my final thoughts on that.