Business Ethics and Realistic Client Expectations.

Brand-Forward Leadership podcast. Episode 7. Filling Your Sales Needs with Costa Rica's Call Center Our 30 to 45-min podcast shares amazing founder stories who reveal the smartest strategies for scaling TODAY. Our audiences are not newbies. They're ready for their next phase of massive growth! Gerry Foster Branding, CEO and Brand-Forward Leadership podcast host, Gerry Foster has been in the strategic branding field for over 30 years. He's helped over 100,000 small businesses in 600 different industries with their branding. He has been podcasting for three years and has been on more than 200 podcast and media guest appearances. Your host, Gerry Foster, talks with Richard Blank of Costa Rica's Call Center. Costa Rica's Call Center is a state of the art BPO Telemarketing outsource company that personally trains call centers across Central America. They are bilingual and professionally trained and they can do the same for your staff. Brand Forward Leadership Podcast has accepted Richard Blank's Balancing Leadership: Personal Habits for Focus If you can't settle on yourself and make yourself balanced and focused, how could you expand and assist others? So what's very important for me is my own me time. I wish I had the discipline to do Eastern meditation, but I don't. But I have other things that I do that enables me to decompress any sort of distraction and stimulation by putting the phone away. There are three things that I do every week that I have to do. I have to wake up every day at 530 and hit the gym. So I'm in there for about two hours. So I feel good about myself and can get my thoughts. I also love washing my convertible car on a Sunday. So I enjoy that as well. And I do pinball marathons. And so when I do these things, it orders my mind to expand and then I can put things in perspective Breaking Down Telemarketing Stereotypes This is so great to have you here because there's a lot of, I think, false information, bad intel, false news, if you want to call it that, about quote unquote telemarketers, that they interrupt our meals, that all they're trying to do is sell something that we don't need or don't want. So kind of put everyone at ease. Let's break down some of those stereotypes that you are not, my friend. Can you talk a little bit about that? Sure, of course. Well, the first thing is since I'm in a position of leverage and I'm a CEO of 150 seat call center, I have the ability to hire, fire, make or break. And I've decided to do the former. And so empathy is very important for me, Jerry, because if nobody shows up, I have no friends and there's no birthday party. So it's very important for me, especially on the first day, is to put in perspective that what they have done by walking into my call center bilingual first bears the mark of higher education. But secondly, it's 10 times harder than what they're about to do. And secondly, since they have invested their youth in English as I have my youth in Spanish, I understand the importance of vocabulary, not just dichos or expressions. I emphasized a thesaurus so they can learn more similes to be able to expand their vocabulary and to be able to be more descriptive and understood. Business Ethics and Realistic Client Expectations I'll give you three answers. The client, the agent, and myself. How does that sound? Okay. Go ahead. I would prefer if the client called me that they'd first judge me on merit, not price. I could recommend 10 places to do at half my price. That's number one. I want them to follow the labor laws because we do things ethically here. And this is the way that I was raised by my grandparents. So there's no wiggle room on something like that. Right. And then I would like for them to have realistic expectations and to go over real metrics, because as much as you want to reverse psychology and motivate me, I'm also an expert in the call center industry. So if you give me certain sort of numbers and metrics and expect me to make 20 calls an hour when there's an average five minute talk time on 12 calls, it's not going to happen. I can't increase time. https://youtu.be/kkOsASOJNMs https://youtu.be/zcjX757dKXA https://youtu.be/uvmXWithJ2U https://youtu.be/tcLLxZ_k7Ic 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/ #GerryFosterBranding #BrandForwardLeadershippodcast #AmsterdamTalkpodcast #RichardBlank #CostaRica #CallCenter #Outsourcing #Telemarketing #BPO #Sales #Entrepreneur #B2B #Business #Podcast #Gamification #CEO

Lessons in Financial Resilience But it's not about the forward motion. What happened in 2010, and this is one of the bad things I did in business, was put all of my eggs in one basket. I went from 90 seats to four. I built it back up, obviously. But this is the one thing I did do. I had enough acorns to last that winter. So I saved more than enough money to weather that storm. I didn't have to beg, borrow, or steal. And I realized that that's part of business, the ups and the downs. And one of them is to be financially stable. So I don't walk the rows yelling at people. If you take the account away, I can't pay my lights. Unexpected Disappointments and a Touch of Humor And so my good friend, if anything or nothing, that's the one part that empathetically does from time to time surprise and disappoint me. I totally get that. I totally get that. I want to switch gears and talk about your clients for a moment because I've been in the branding industry for 30 plus years. I like to tell people I started when Jesus was wearing sandals and dinosaurs were roaming the earth The Invisible Work Behind Success As much as I am impressing you today, I gave you a good show and I'm glad I did. But on the flip side, you have done such great work prior to me being here. And everybody sees it looks easy, right, Jerry? Look at you today. But nobody saw what you've done off camera, all that dedicated practice you did, all the preparation you did in the last 30 years. to get to where you are today. So I applaud that as well, my friend. Thank you so much. You don't make me cry. Please do. Mutual Admiration of Leadership Qualities You got to have a part two one day, Jerry, when you come and visit me. My goodness. I mean, I'm almost breathless here because you have such depth in this capacity of entrepreneurship and leadership. And I just I just, again, want to applaud you and acknowledge you for who you are. And the stand that you are for the people in Costa Rica, I mean, you are such a blessing to that community. They do, Jerry. And I appreciate that. But let me throw a compliment back at you for your brand forward leadership. From Philly to Costa Rica: An Entrepreneurial Journey How does a boy from Philly come to Costa Rica and start a call center? I don't know, but this is what I do know. It was positive reinforcement from this community, from this country, and from the agents that work with me. And so as long as I have this sort of momentum, right, then I can understand what thriving is all about.