Breaking Stereotypes as a Leader

Your First Thousand Clients Podcast by author Mitch Russo. Harnessing Effective Communication interview With Richard Blank About “Your First Thousand Clients” – the business podcast for aspiring business owners & entrepreneurs Imagine having hundreds of highly successful business owners, business coaches, and business strategy consultants sharing their wisdom with you to help your company make it to the next level. That should be the goal when considering the best business podcasts to subscribe to, and that’s what we have achieved with “Your First Thousand Clients”. From Employee To Employer And Leader. Communication is key in every business, especially when done over the phone. If you are looking for ways to improve your communication skills and lock in those pitches, this is the podcast for you. In this episode, Richard Blank, CEO of Costa Rica's Call Center, runs through the process of prospecting and how you can build your vocabulary, actively listen, use the right tone of voice, and match the pitch and mood of your client. And their importance in making sure that you don't just have a productive and meaningful interaction but that your client walks away satisfied with your service and the company as a whole. He also shares insights on creating a culture that allows your team to build relationships, empowerment and drive ownership. Tune and learn how to identify telesigns that tell you the right time to ask your confirmation question and lock in that sale for the first 1000 clients and beyond. Imagine having hundreds of highly successful business owners sharing their wisdom with you to help your company make it to the next level. Avoid the traps and pitfalls, grab little-know strategies and find some much-needed inspiration. Recently syndicated with the C-Suite Network, the show is now an iTunes Top 200 podcast. We’re always on the lookout for brilliant, successful business owners, business coaches, leadership coaches, and business/marketing consultants who can help our audience grow or start their company. On Your First Thousand Clients, we are looking ONLY for experienced CEOs, business leaders, successful entrepreneurs who are highly appreciated by the audience. You are making a contribution to the world with your interview, you are helping others. Business Owners of every kind will want to hear from some of the leading marketing, sales, growth and management experts in the world right here on Your First Thousand Clients! The show that gets you to YOUR first thousand clients and beyond! Avoiding Overused Communication Techniques in Sales Now, I will say that there's elements of it that I wouldn't use. Like if someone constantly repeats my name or constantly tells me what a great question I'm asking, I get a little annoyed by that. It makes me feel as if they're gaming me. Does that make sense? Absolutely. Absolutely. Now, I wouldn't say that's an excellent question. I'm giving you a template of what to use. You can't say it every time. And I couldn't agree with you more in regards to a name drop. I think that the pronoun of saying you is just as powerful. So I would suggest a five to one name drop. Do the name drop when you're doing a tie down question. But the rest of the time, I would be saying you or are just for the emphasis and bringing you back in, telling you that something's a great question. As I say before, it would sound repetitive. I'm glad you brought that up. Breaking Stereotypes as a Leader Well, you mentioned earlier about feeding families. And since I'm not as large as your 300, see some half of that, 150. But you know that each time you give someone stability, they are able to sustain their family. Now, in Costa Rica, there's multi-generational families. So there might be individuals taking care of their grandparents. And so what I am trying to do is to improve on self-reliance and self-confidence so I can be the last boss these individuals have. I can break the stereotype of being a boss that's looking to fire you. Now, mind you this, when you're an owner of a company and you do know this, Mitch, that you have leverage, you could hire or fire, make or break somebody. You and I always chose the former. And so to me, it's very important, once again, in this delicate stage of people's lives to put wind in their sails, to let them know that hard work does breed success. https://youtu.be/6Dw932wbj1M?si=2J3KFyFvbzHvNqil https://youtu.be/mJaQEVWrVNE https://youtu.be/t8tQnYy_0w4

MItch Russo: In 1985, I entered the software business as the founder of Timeslips Corp (sold to Sage Plc) after creating the largest network of Certified Consultants in the software industry. After selling my company, I then ran Sage Plc in the US as the COO, with over 300 staff. Independently wealthy at the age of 42, I wanted to give back to other entrepreneurs. I got involved in the VC community, first as an advisor to startups and then as the CEO of the largest furniture shopping site early in 2000, FurnitureFan.com. As a CEO Advisor to several companies at the same time, I participated in many different business types, solving many diverse types of problems in sales organizations, marketing, technology, systems and HR. I later became interested in options trading and mentored with a floor trader at The Chicago Board of Options Exchange. I made it through the 2008 stock market crash unscathed while helping Chet Holmes build his now-legendary coach and training business. That lead to a 3-way partnership between myself, Tony Robbins and Chet Holmes. From NFL stars to world-class keynote speakers, I help smart, successful people create their next level business vision and scale their revenue through proven strategies and systems. I served as the President of Business Breakthroughs Int’l for 5 years (a Tony Robbins and Chet Holmes company) and consulted with dozens of thought leaders: Partnering with Tony Robbins & Chet Holmes as CEO of Business Breakthroughs, Int’l I wasn’t always the CEO/President of Tony Robbins and Chet Holmes Business Breakthroughs joint venture, I started at the bottom, part-time helping recruit salespeople for Chet. As part of that assignment, I built the recruitment division for Chet and tripled his sales force. I used his basic tools and systematized them, using policies & procedures along with my innovative software processes to improve results. I built that into a $1M division for the company in the first year. Later, as I discovered how to leverage our client relationships by getting deeper into their businesses, I created a new Client Services division that increased repeat sales by 700%. We also mastered the art of radio marketing and selling, driving over 3000 leads a week from radio alone with a conversion rate of up to 19%. Through our partnership, we took company revenue from $3M to $25M+ in just 4 years with a 300-person all-virtual team. Yes, I ran a $25M+ business from a spare bedroom I converted into a home office. I learned so much from Chet before he died in August of 2012, that prepared me for my work today. When Chet passed, I decided to move on. Later, as 2013 came to a close, I went on to write my Amazon #1 Best Seller: The Invisible Organization, which is a detailed blueprint explaining step-by-step how to transform a traditional physical infrastructure into a virtual powerhouse of a company. And then turn that organization into a marketing superpower. Since then, I have been involved in several exciting projects, including a partnership with Kevin Harrington. Now, my greatest passion is helping CEOs get extreme leverage by building independent “tribes” of Certified Consultants. Certification builds loyalty with your best clients and deeply engages them through a powerful, integrated community while driving massive profits year after year. I also help companies leverage their radio presence to drive qualified leads. You can read more about that here. I’ve helped hundreds of coaches build a profitable practice through my Master Class and through private client engagements. Craft Your Next Level Business Vision This is the Business Reset that will change everything. In just 7 weeks, we’ll design your future together. You’ll see every possibility (some you’ve never seen before), then we’ll systematically create your optimum strategy. Imagine having the clarity and direction you need to express your true purpose while earning more. Build a World-Class Sales Team Most companies don’t realize the power of a well-run, perfectly designed sales hiring process, effective sales team management, powerful scripts and incentive-based pay plans. Let’s prevent the mistakes most companies make and move forward rapidly with a world-class team ready to close unprecedented sales! Design and Build Your Association How do you monetize larger groups that seemingly won’t buy anything? Create an Association that serves thousands! We’ll discover the key pain point in your group, design a solution and create a compelling offer to build a powerful, profitable association, which makes you money and engages your audience! Create Your Certification Program Using the system I outline in my #1 bestselling book, Power Tribes, I work with you to mobilize your best clients and fans. Together we’ll design a heart-centered selling system and new recurring revenue streams by building a certification program with members who pay you for the privilege of selling your products and services. Support You Through One on One Coaching Work one on one with a seasoned executive coach with over 30 years of experience helping entrepreneurs and companies scale their business. Just take a look at my testimonials below for a glimpse of what’s possible for you. For larger organizations, I spot weak areas in your systems and organization and work with you to fix them rapidly. Power Tribes Book “How Certification Can Explode Your Business” Do you have a product or service that causes transformation in others? Can you teach someone to do that same transformation and get the same result as you? If so, you can build a Power Tribe. Imagine a heart-centered group of raving fans paying you every year to close your sales, support your customers/clients and create new recurring revenue streams for you. Power Tribes provides you with a practical blueprint to start profiting from certification today. The Invisible Organization How Ingenious CEO’s are Creating Thriving Virtual Companies Published in 2015, The Invisible Organization is the ultimate blueprint on preparing a company to operate virtually. From sales, marketing, and customer service to engineering, tech and more, learn how to do it, the tools you need and the software to get you there. This book documents my own experience building the Business Breakthroughs International experience and shows you how to achieve domination of your market in a step-by-step fashion. Richard Blank, Costa Rica's Call Center, Outsourcing, Telemarketing Call Centre, BPO, Nearshore Contact Center, Sales, Entrepreneur, B2B, Business, Podcast, Gamification,Leadership, Marketing, CX, Guest, Money, B2C education, BPO trainer,call centre, contact centre, contact center 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. 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. Hired bassist Garry Gary Beers of INXS. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ieGjN5H4xPQ 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/ #YourFirstThousandClientsPodcast #MitchRusso #RichardBlank #CostaRica #CallCenter #Outsourcing #Telemarketing #BPO #Sales #Entrepreneur #B2B #Business #Podcast #Gamification #CEO Building a Culture of Shared Empathy That's unbelievable. And that's fantastic. We share a lot of common philosophies. When I build my power tribes for clients, the very first thing we do is we focus on building the culture before we even bring in a single person. So I have a culture system that I've developed over the years. And a lot of it is, like you said, it's based on empathy. But in my world, it's based on shared empathy. In other words, it's not just empathy flowing down from the top. It's creating a bubble of empathy in the entire community. And when everybody is in agreement as to what the values of that community are, very few people violate those values. So we provide guides and guide posts, if you will, to make sure that people stay within the scope of the community. And when they somehow don't, the community will self-correct. The community doesn't. will take care of whatever disobedience or issues that come up with an individual, not because they're trying to act like the company, it's because they are preserving the value of what collectively they have built and are now a part of. Sounds like you've done many of the same things. And so that's incredibly valuable. Building a Call Center from Scratch So when I worked at my friend's call center, I was there for four years. I learned retention, customer support, sales, affiliate management, human resources, and accounting. I learned everything minus the C-level, okay? So I learned the business from the inside and out...by sitting amongst thousands of mid-20 Costa Ricans...and it hit me. I realized there are ways to enhance the experience for the agent and for the client. Since we're friends, Mitch, I will be forthright with you. It took me into my mid-30s to have impulse control, maturity, and enough money saved. I felt that I was ready to throw my hat in the ring and to start this call center business. And I did. I started with one seat in 50 hours...And once you grew to a couple dozen agents, it made sense to rent space. From Arcade Nostalgia to Collector Passion Mitch, didn't you used to go to the arcades in the 70s and 80s? Wasn't that the place to be? Absolutely. Your $5 had to last a whole Saturday. And so I loved it growing up. It was a wonderful culture during the 70s and 80s. The machines, the cabinets, everything was beautiful. And so when I came down here, hobby turned into an obsession. I have a huge call center, so I have the space. In Costa Rica, it's almost treasure hunting. People just, one man's trash is another man's treasure. So if they want to call it trash, call me Oscar the Grouch. The Perfect Phone Call: Elevating Conversations And I was very intrigued by this concept of when you started talking to me, I think before we switched on the recorder, you talked about the perfect phone call. You talked about what would it take to get on the phone with somebody where you do not break rapport, but instead elevate the conversation to the next level. Could you talk a little bit about that? Because that's very, very interesting to me. Well, absolutely. And it's very important to put into perspective that the agents need to feel comfortable making that call, regardless of what the vertical is. And so we're very selective, Mitch, of the campaigns that come in here. Besides fulfilling your needs, I have to fill the agent's needs. And we're in a very strict Catholic country. So I must ensure that their ethics and values and morals are not compromised and they can go home and tell their family what they do for a living. Exchanging Ideas Over Money I wish I did, but actually I'm not selling a thing today. I don't have a book or a seminar. I just want to extend my friendship. Okay. And as Confucius says, instead of exchanging money, I'd rather just exchange ideas. Great. And if my ideas today can assist somebody to find their balance and center, if they want to make more money or just have better relationships, then Mitch, you and I won. And we did exactly what we both set out to do today. Solving Problems as an Entrepreneur So I started looking for a way to eliminate that work with software. And I tried many, many systems and none of them worked for me. The reason they didn't work for me is because they were very complex. I didn't have time to watch hours of videos. They were very expensive. I didn't want to spend $60, $80, or $100 a month or more on something just to help me manage my business. And then finally, I did things that no other software did that had made me very successful. And I wanted my software to mirror that too. Nothing ever showed up that would help me. So I did what I think all good entrepreneurs should do. When you find a problem, solve it.