00:00
Hi and welcome to Power of the Network. I'm your host, Tim Locker, Vice President of Broadband here at CBM. This episode, this is a great one. It takes me back almost 16 years. ah Our guest this week is Frank Foster. ah He is one of the Murph Trainers. ah He does a CPSC, a sales training. I took his course back in 2009. uh And so this is great for me to reminisce with Frank and... uh
00:28
talk sales and uh sales professionals. A lot of things have changed over the years, but a lot of it's still the same. So uh join us as we reconnect with Frank.
00:42
Frank, appreciate you so much for joining us today. Happy to have you here. It's been a long time since we've seen each other, but- It's 2009, I think was the last time. Maybe it's at CPMR. Yeah. but no, it's great to have you in the studio and we've had some other folks that work with Murph on in the past and it's great to have you here. So thanks for joining us. Thank you. Happy to be here. I want to start off, I guess,
01:10
Frank Foster & Associates has been around for 30-some years now, ah and you do uh sales coaching, sales training. uh Let's go back 30-some years ago. What got you to be the expert that you are? How did you get to be so accredited, I guess? Well, it's interesting. My background was the food industry. I came up through the consumer packaged goods world. My last real job, the last time I worked for a company, was a company called Penn Incorporated.
01:39
You probably don't know Penn Incorporated out of St. Louis, Missouri, but they may know some of the brands, Old El Paso, Progressive Soups, uh Gains Waffles. Wait a minute, so Old El Paso, are they in St. Louis? ah No. Because they used to have the, the old commercials, they'd get a rope, know, New York City. New York, yeah, that was their marketing campaign. But I was the Canadian Vice President of Sales and Marketing uh for those brands in Canada.
02:08
And we were brokers, so brokers in my world, in the food world, are the same as a manufacturer. have numbers of different lines, it's called food brokers in the food business. And we used to broker network right across Canada. How long did you do that? Oh, I was in the food business for 25, 30 years. 25 years. What drove the transition to the training role?
02:37
I'm going give you real funny answer here. The industry changed. In Canada, there's basically five major buyers, five retailers. they've had such a grip on the industry that it was tough to do anything as an independent or as a small guy. they were beating up the small guys so badly, I said, I'm getting out of here. So you just transitioned. And I had a friend of mine that was in the college system, and I started doing
03:06
continue education courses teaching at night. And I said, oh, I like this. And so I started to expand on that and started my own training company and that's where am today. Okay. Awesome. Awesome. So yeah, it's been like you said, so I went through the CSP program 2009. You were one of the instructors there. uh And I guess define a little bit. the organizations with MIRV, know, define for the listeners, you know, uh
03:36
what the organization is all about and kind of what's behind. Okay, let me give you the two parts. Manufacturers representative of the Education Research Foundation. Murph, that's why I said That's why we're called Murph, it's easier. Murph is uh the training body of uh a parent association, that's a parent association of about 20, 25 other associations. So for example, NEMRA, ERA,
04:04
uh They're all members of uh MERF and they have access to the MERF training. IPA is the for Professional Advancement. IPA is the certification side. They control the certification. So for example, MERF offers two certifications. CPSC, Certified Professional Sales Consultant, and the CPMR, Certified Professional Manufacturer Rep.
04:31
You are both, might say. Yeah, I've taken both. CSP became CPSC, and I'll talk more about that in a minute, and CPMR. uh they offer those programs. CPSC, we offer four or five times a year, sort of around the United States. We have one scheduled for Toronto in April, but that'll be the first time out of the US with the CPSC program. Well, that'll be nice, close to home for you. Close to home, yeah, because I'm out of Toronto. uh
04:58
But we rotate them around. So for example, we're in Atlanta, Denver, we've been Orlando, Costa Mesa, San Diego. we'll rotate those programs around. And CPMR is a one week a year for three years program and based in Austin, Texas. Always in Austin? It is now. It used to be in Tempe and then it was in Indianapolis for a while, but now it's the last number of years it's been in Austin. Okay.
05:26
ah So you do a lot of work with that organization. What is your work through Frank Foster and Associates? Is it different or is it all collaborative with MRF or do you go different directions? What does that look like? I'm going to, again, kind of both. Frank Foster and Associates for the last 30 years has been a sales training company and we've developed programs, delivered programs. My largest client was
05:55
the Canadian Professional Sales Association, CPSA. And CPSA developed the Certified Sales Professional Program, CSP, which you took. And I took that program from CPSA to Murph, and Murph took it over for the United States. four years ago, three or four years ago, uh CPSA closed their doors. They went bankrupt, or they went out of business.
06:23
And the CSP designation went with it. So we created our own designation, Certified Professional Sales Consultant, CPSC, with a gentleman called Paul Watson of Calgary, Alberta, who wrote the program. And he and I were both involved with CPSA back in the day. so the bulk of my training has been through CPSA and now Murph. And Murph is probably, I don't know, 90 % of my business.
06:51
The other 10 % is smaller oh Canadian uh programs that I offer. I'm also involved with the college system in Canada. And I've been a professor at a college in Canada for 25 years or so. What courses do you teach here? Sales and marketing. I was going to guess that, but yeah, perfect. Customer service, so three to three. oh
07:19
Let's go back to 2009 when I was uh in your CSP course. uh The one thing I remember uh other than diligently trying to study the night before the exam. Could I just qualify that? Sure. CPSC is a three-day workshop and then uh a written exam and an oral exam. that's where the stressors come in. That's the stress. They got to do a written and an oral exam.
07:48
And I remember specifically the oral exam. ah And I remember in detail your comments. ah And I'll throw myself under the bus. But I did, I would say, a decent job. ah It was all about, you know, sell me this pen. And so I took the pen and I ah did a good job of asking questions, trying to figure out, you know, what do need the pen for, etc. ah
08:17
and explaining the benefits and all that, but what I failed to do was, you know, let you touch, feel, handle, try the pen out. I didn't give it to you. So that's where I failed. What do you see? What's the most common mistake that you see? I think that people do a data dump. They show up and they say, this pen does this and it does this and does this and does this, does this. Would you like one?
08:44
which is a typical transactional type sales world. um But in today's model, it's not about telling, it's about asking. And they don't ask enough questions. They don't uh try and find out what my needs are. And oftentimes, there's a hidden issue in the buying situation. The buyer doesn't want to tell you everything. They don't want to the kimono and give you everything. They think in a hidden thing. And the same is in our role play. There's a hidden issue that you need to ask the questions to get to.
09:13
Are the questions the trick to unlocking the hidden info? Or sometimes it was just not, can you just not get it? how does that, is there a way to get that hidden info? I think that we say that there's four or five things that you should ask in any sales interview. What's the current situation? What's the desired situation? What's the decision making process? Time and budget constraints? And what are going to be the key performance indicators? What are the things that I'm going to need,
09:43
to be successful. So if you ask those questions, then you usually will get to the meat of the issue. Yeah, I've noticed that even on just a handful of things recently where it seems like we've beat our head up against the wall. Price is always the first objection. We get past that. I feel like we figure out what the needs are, but for some reason, we're just not able to take that last step. And there's always
10:13
something that we've missed. We had an interesting one recently with a uh communication contractor trying to sell him uh Interduct. And uh when it came, it wasn't price, it wasn't availability, uh it was terms. ended up, he had a special deal with this manufacturer of how he could buy and how he could pay, and it helped him.
10:41
with cash flow situation and I mean price had nothing to do with it. But it took us three years I think to finally like figure out what that little nugget is. So I was hoping I could find a little trick of like, okay, how do we get there? Well, I think the desired oh future. Yeah. What do you want to happen? If you had a magic wand, what would you change in a perfect world? What would you want from a supplier? And those are the type of questions that should.
11:09
give you that, shouldn't cover that. But again, there's a hidden thing. Buyers don't want to tell you everything. So he's trying to keep it in the background. Did he want extended terms or special terms because he was financially challenged? ah I don't know so much challenged, but just cash flow, yeah. It was a cash flow situation. So he didn't want you to know that. And there's the issue right there. When you did your due diligence and you did your credit check on him, that might have come up.
11:38
then you can say, I understand that. But a lot of times those particular contractors kind of have to float the bill for the customers and buy all that material and that could be a challenge. And with this particular one, were you using distributor or was it direct sale? Distributor. Distributor. then there's another layer in there that you got to figure out too. um
12:08
A lot of what you do, obviously through Merv, it's developed around a manufacturer's rep type of organization. um What's different about selling as a uh rep versus just a traditional direct sales guy? I've worked with both, let me put it in as simple terms as I can.
12:34
I always say that salespeople are the in the stress sandwich. You've got your customer and you've got your company and you're stuck in the middle. A manufacturer rep has a third layer. It's called the manufacturers or principals, the people that you represent. So not only do you have your company stress, you have your customers stress, but you also have the manufacturer putting stresses on it. And I think that's what's different than a direct captive sales force is they only have two stressors versus a manufacturer rep who might have.
13:04
have more. I know it's a challenge for uh new people that, I mean, still to this day it's kind of hard to describe what a rep does. uh But new people coming into the industry, uh for me specifically, I was selling equipment. uh I would deliver the equipment. I would deliver the invoice. would collect the check and bring it back. uh Where I don't do that now necessarily, uh
13:32
with the added layer of distribution. So I guess what would be the best way to describe that 18 years later? should still know the best way to describe what a rep does. But in your mind, how would you describe that? When people ask me, who are your customers? Who are your clients? I say almost all the clients that Merph works with are multiple line salespeople. They represent more than one company.
13:59
I use your term and that's they have a line card and on that line card might be 10, 15, 20 different companies that they represent. some of them are synergistic, some of those lines work together, some of them are completely independent. It depends on the industry, it depends on the rep, on the manufacturers. But that's the best way to describe it is that they're not just a captive sales force, they're not a one trick pony. got many, many products that they can represent.
14:29
It's interesting that I've learned, like for us, the line card is very synergistic. One thing leads right to the other. And it's interesting how one manufacturer may, they may be the big horse and get you in with one thing, but the other thing might get the horse in there too. They kind of feed off of each other too. And I think it's important for manufacturers to realize that I think, uh
14:57
not necessarily ego, people assume that they're the best and that's why they're getting in there. But there is a lot of back and forth and that synergistic line makes a big difference. One of the things that we work on, particularly in CPSC, is what we call 6x6 or full line selling, is that most salespeople sell the products they like to the customers they like. The hard part is selling the product you don't like to the customers you don't like.
15:25
If I look at your line card, it drives me crazy. I go and work with reps and we get in front of a buyer and the buyer says, didn't know you sold that. Oh, shame on you. If you're not talking full line, look at the opportunities you're mixing. And that's the biggest weakness that I see in the rep world is they fall in love with lines and they sell those lines. you see it from the other side too, from the manufacturer's perspective to the rep, they're like, okay, well.
15:55
you know, Frank does a great job for us. uh Why is everybody else not like Frank? You know, how come his numbers are killing it and they're not? And that's, we talk about that internally. That's one of the biggest things, you know, there's always new lines and new territories and new ways to grow revenue, et cetera. But we talk about that a lot. The best way is to sell everything you have. That's right. Full line selling. What's the trick to getting people out of those old habits and
16:24
leaning on to their weaknesses. If I say to most sales reps, manufacturer reps, who's your biggest, who's your top six customers? mean, Vilfredo Pareto was an Italian economist who discovered that a disproportionate amount of results come from a smaller amount of effort. know it as the 80-20 rule. Yeah. It's probably more like 90-10. Most organizations, 90 % of their business comes from their top six customers.
16:55
I bet you if you went back and looked at your own sales of your organization and your top six customers, will deliver a very, very high disproportionate amount of results. But what we don't realize is what they don't buy. They may be the number one buyer of cable or boxes or something, but they don't buy this, this, this, and this. So if we can make our reps more aware of that, here's what they do buy, but also here's they don't buy.
17:24
you talk about the products they don't buy. Not just the ones they do, we have an opportunity this month on this product and let me give you a sample. Let me send you some information. Let me put you to their website. Let me find out a little bit more about what your needs might be there. We don't do that very well. Yeah. Daniel Lavac with PLP kind of coined the phrase, you know, STP uses a little STP logo, but sell the package.
17:49
And so we repeat that all the time, but it's still a challenge. Everybody's got their comfort level, whether it's a product or where it's a customer. But yeah, getting them out of that shell of the comfort level is probably the biggest challenge. In our program, we do what we call a six by six, top six customers, top six products. The products might change. They change, could be most profitable, could be the most new product.
18:17
product of the day. It doesn't matter. The products change. But the customers pretty much stay consistent. the goal is to fill in the areas that they don't buy. do a matrix and just fill in the holes. It's a great tool. That makes a lot of sense. It shows you definitely what you're missing and it gives you the target. Let's switch gears a little bit towards CPMR. ah I took that. It's a three-year course.
18:47
2016, like that? It was very interesting because at the time, I always like to state this because Marla forced me to go back to college. She'll argue that, but she did. And I'm grateful for that. We've got a great program here at CBM and we help not just employees but also children with tuition. So I'm glad I did. I didn't go to school right after high school. I think I started when I was 40 when I started.
19:17
So, uh but basically the same timeframe while I was going through my college courses, I was also taking CPMR. And so it was interesting to me just to see how much of that I learned in CPMR that reverted back to what I would then follow up with, you know, through my business classes. And to me, it was kind of like a master's program that was just, you know, it's three years, but one week every year.
19:45
Yeah, it was really concentrated, but it was very clear to me how relevant the info was, you know, as I was going through both at the same time. talk a little bit about what the course does, what it offers, what the value to a rep, the value to a manufacturer. Give us a little pitch on that. A CPMR, I think you just used the term, is kind of like the master's degree of how to run a rep firm. And it's designed...
20:15
to give reps and rep wannabe owners, people who are in the succession planning of an organization the skills and information to be a better rep manager. I only did one session, I did the sales session. There are three years, it's 101, 201, and 301. I'm one session in 101.
20:41
There's great material in there, great information, great HR. think you've had Nancy on here before. Yeah, Nancy's great. She's one of my favorites. Nancy's our HR expert. She's wonderful. we have almost everybody that teaches it is either from the rep business, has some rep experience, or they're university or college professor type people who are business people who teach business courses.
21:10
concentrated. It's like a one-year course in a week. And it's not easy. I don't want to fool anybody. Yeah, it's very It's a hard slug.
21:26
CBM is a manufacturer's rep based right here in Kansas City. We've got territory where we cover from Iowa all the way down to Texas. We cover specifically three different market segments, uh utility, commercial industrial, and broadband communications. CBM is structured differently. We're an employee-owned company. We're ran as an ESOP. That allows us to do business differently. We can cross lines of markets. We can put our people where they need to be.
21:55
and really have expertise in the right place. That's what makes a difference for our customers and for our manufacturers. If you think we can help you uh with the product line in the Midwest, look no further than CBM. Find us right here at cbmrep.com.
22:16
What's the benefit to a manufacturer uh to having reps that have gone through this? How we started with this is when I was with the CPS, working with the CPSA, we said, if you were going to hire a salesperson today, what would be the criteria? How would you determine what a good salesperson is? And there really wasn't anything. So we developed the Certified Sales Professional Program to say, here's the criteria that's required to have a good salesperson.
22:45
CPSC is the same concept. so that's sort of the template for the CPSC. CPMR is kind of the same. Sorry, if you went to a manufacturer and you said, have a house full of CPSCs, all of my sales reps have been through the program, that says that they're all certified, they're all know their stuff, they're all sort of top of the level in sales professionalism.
23:14
more certifiably better than others. Same with CPMR. uh CPMR is exactly what that is. The people that have gone through it are prepared to run and succession planning and so on as part of it to take over uh a rep firm. uh it's not just about succession, it's also about business skills that you need to run a better.
23:43
than our organization? That succession planning is a big deal. And I think it's overlooked a lot of times. And for us, being an ESOP, it's kind of built into our plan. yeah, we're a little bit unique in that it's kind of less of a worry. Because let's face it, it's a couple old guys out selling stuff and one of you kicks the bucket, the manufacturer's kind of left.
24:12
trying to figure out what to do. And that happens. So there is risk for those manufacturers. When did you guys become an ESOP? Because that's a fairly new concept. 1988. Oh, that's been a long time. We're edge stuff. When John Marietti retired, that's when he sold the company. ECM of CBM? Okay, got it. Yep. So he sold the company to the ESOP in 88.
24:38
I don't know when ESOP's first started, that's probably pretty do all employees participate from day one? uh Early on there was some company stock issue that was outside of the ESOP. uh Almost all of that has been kind of bought back. We're trying to get to where 100 % of it's owned by the ESOP. There's just a handful of shares left outside of it. uh
25:08
Yeah, so we've changed the rules uh for being eligible for it. So now you're eligible right away because it's kind of a long process. if you had a waiting period, six months or a year, I forget which, but so a person starts, puts in a first year and then, okay, so next year they're eligible to be in the plan. So they go through that whole year and then it's sometime later that spring when they finally actually see.
25:38
the actual benefit of it. uh And so from a new person perspective, it's kind of, it's a long process and you really have to really sell the value of the ESOP. You when you've been here, as long as I have, you see the value of the ESOP, it's pretty clear. But for somebody that's new and you you talk about it, you know, you're waiting, it could be two and a half, three years before they actually see their first, uh you know,
26:07
input to it. we've kind of changed that model. there's still, you know, it's still next spring before you see it, but people are eligible sooner. Yeah. you uh know, we try to try to kind of stay with the times and make those kinds of changes to help the employees. mean, let's say, you know, if you start in November and you work for a month, you know, this year,
26:32
The ESOP contribution is not that much anyway, so it's a percentage of your income. So you're talking about a month, why not get them involved sooner, right? Instead of make them wait another year or so. Yeah, we've tried to stay up with different things like that. And how many CPOs? You have three? Three or four? In the organization? Oh, we've got way more than that. That'd be a good moral question. ah I can think of a half a dozen easily.
27:01
So that's to a manufacturer. That says to the manufacturer, you guys are investing in your company, investing in your employees, both from an ESOP standpoint and from an accreditation and education standpoint. that to a manufacturer, that's a good selling point to why they should use you. What do you think is one of the biggest mistakes or one of the biggest issues, I guess, between a rep and a manufacturer?
27:31
from a reps perspective, what do you think you see as the biggest mistake in handling manufacturers? I think that because of the complexity of a line card, there's the old expression that the noisy wheel gets the grease or whatever, the squeaky wheel gets the grease. so the manufacturer that's bitching the most tends to get the most attention.
27:59
whether right or wrong, okay? But that's reality. And that's a challenge that a manufacturer rep has, is how do I tell this squeaky wheel that unless they are sort of a dominant player in the line card, that there are other companies, that we represent other companies as well. As a manufacturer, a manufacturer, if I've got a captive sales force, that's not an issue because it's more of a product issue than a.
28:27
that a company issue, you're not pushing enough product or this product or that product as opposed to this manufacturer. that's the main difference is that a captive lines manufacturer, captive manufacturer with a captive line uh sales force, they have product issues versus a manufacturer who have company issues. You understand what I mean? I think communication goes a long way. uh
28:56
You know, we've talked about it little bit, but people have their comfort zone and they're good at this and maybe not good at that. you know, this manufacturer's super excited about what this person does here, but this, everybody's kind of got their own little experts. ah But I think we all, you know, from the bottom level to the top, communication, you know, with those manufacturers and with your regionals, et cetera, I think is very important.
29:22
I just finished a program at your facility yesterday. We've just launched a new customer service program, uh Successful Selling Skills. And one of the things that jumped out at me when listening to particularly some of your folks, not just yours, because there was a mixed crowd uh from other companies as well, was ah how much communication is a challenge for them. People getting 20 emails about the same issue.
29:52
and it could be 20 emails for a $100 sale, it could also be $20 for a million dollar sale. And how do you prioritize that? That's one of challenges you said communication is. How do you decide which is the email that should be taken the most seriously or given the most attention? Yeah. What's the answer?
30:15
The answer is, I'm going to use two terms. One is from CPSC, call it Return On Time Invested, ROTI. And the new one from customer services, ROR, return on assets required. Same thing, whichever one's going to give you the biggest return on your time invested, that's where you should prioritize. That doesn't mean ignoring customers. means prioritizing customers. the million dollar sale might have a return on investment of
30:45
I don't pick a number, $500 an hour. The $100 sale may be $100, but it's only an hour and it's done, it's quick. you got to be based on time and sales result in time. yeah. That's kind of always been my philosophy, take care of the customer. got to please the principals. There are customers as well, but the end user,
31:14
What are their expectations? If you were in their situation, how would you want to be treated? What would your expectation be? uh put your own personal issues aside and deal with, take care of them. Do what needs to be done, first and foremost. I'll pick up on a company, May or May I like to say relevant. The point is Amazon. Amazon's done a marvelous job from a customer service standpoint of managing their service experience.
31:44
Recently, I bought a shower pole. Did you put a shower head on? And it didn't fit, it wasn't right. So I just sent it back. Easy to send back. No questions asked, just sent it back. That's pretty good customer service, knowing that I can buy something pain-free and be able to do that.
32:09
That's focusing on the customer's needs and that's exactly what you're saying is we really need to make sure that end consumer, end customer is being satisfied. Yeah. Yeah, the first call I had Monday morning at 7.45 was I had a battery leaking. It's not what you want to wake up and start your Monday with. uh first thing we're doing is we're to go take care of it. What did you do, replace it? uh
32:36
I'm actually doing that tomorrow. But at a direct conversation with the customer, trying to figure out what they expect. Do I have to drop everything right now and run up there? I will. Or what's the situation? It's a point that I stress in both our programs is that we need to ask the magic question more often. The magic question is, when do you need that buy? uh
33:05
when a customer has a request, we jump out, we'll get it done right away. Let's get it done. Well, in fact, maybe they don't need it right away. So when do you need that buy as a question, we need to put into our lexicon of questions more frequently. we had a pretty good one of our gentleman that was in your class yesterday was on the backside. We had all of our inside folks in the class, so we had some other guys covering the phones and it was perfect day for
33:33
things to blow up. one of those deals was a product wasn't going to deliver, the customer needs it today, what can we do? Sometimes it's just a challenge when maybe the factory doesn't deliver on that expectation. And at that point, it's going to get in a tough spot because you're an advocate for the customer, but we've also got to be careful with the manufacturer.
34:03
stress sandwich is that you get not just the customer, but you also get the manufacturer. You can keep them both happy, both sides of that. Yeah. So what keeps you passionate about what you do? There's an old expression is that if you love what you do, you never work a day in your life. And I've been doing it for 30 years. I'm a great believer that if you go back in history, particularly in media, how salespeople
34:30
are portrayed, think of them, I'm going to date myself, but movies like Tin Man or Cadillac Man or Glengarry Glen Ross, which are salespeople and they're kind of slimy and slippery and not very trustworthy. We've done a crappy job as a profession of making our profession professional. To make it become more something that somebody wants to be. Rarely do I hear my students in my college say, I want to be a salespeople person.
35:00
I want to be a doctor, I want to be a lawyer, I want to be an accountant, but nobody ever says I want to be a salesperson. Yet most of us somewhere in our life are. So we've done a really poor job on that. so that drives me from a passion standpoint to raise the professionalism, how salespeople are viewed as to be more professional, hence the certified.
35:25
Sort of like professional. Well, the perception, you know, people throw, you know, like a used car salesman, the impression is that, you know, salesperson's only job is to screw you. Yeah. You know, and... uh There was a study done recently that said, what are the most trusted or mistrust, untrusted, mistrusted uh professions? What do you think number one was? Probably salesperson. Lawyers. Oh, well, there's Number two, politicians. Number three...
35:55
I mean, we up there with politicians and lawyers, come on. mean, that's the problem is that perception. And if you would ask your best customers, do they trust you? The answer is absolutely yes. Yeah. You know, yeah. So why do you think that ever, how did that stereotype start? Where did it all come Well, I think if you go back to the traditional uh transactional type selling, I mean, it was get out there and sell as much as you can, no matter what it takes.
36:25
And there were some ethical issues, but in today's environment, the customer's not stupid. The customer's much more educated than they were a generation ago, because of access to information. In fact, they may be over-educated. The problem with the internet is that people have access to all kinds of stuff that may not be the right stuff. So that's another task that we have as a salesperson,
36:53
preconceived ideas that have been brought on by their access to information. The customer's access. What do you think the biggest change is in the last, well, 30 years since you've been doing this? Technology. We were talking about this yesterday. In my day, we didn't have Back in my day. So if you went to a conference, this is a good example, went to a conference at the break, there were a bank of a
37:22
25 or 30 phones, wall phones, they were all filled with salespeople trying to call the office. Today you can't find a pay phone. There's no pay phone anywhere. And that's one of the biggest challenges is that you're accessible 24-7, anywhere in the world. You used to be able to say, I couldn't get to you because I couldn't find a phone. I couldn't get the phone. That's not there anymore. The technology's made us accessible.
37:50
24-7 all the time. that's a sales challenge. You know, I kind of look at that like we, I feel like maybe that's pulling back a little bit. When the cell phones and all that came on, we were striving to be available all the time. um now I think it's gone too far and I kind of see myself striving to be more attentive and I'll get to that later.
38:19
And not everybody does that, but that's one of my goals, to be present, aware of what's going on, and then you get a text, okay, great, that can wait. And I think that's the point, do fair amount of time management in the workshops. there was a time when we said to your customers, call me anytime. And the bastards do. They call you anytime. But we need to educate our customers. We say, I'm available anytime, but...
38:47
I probably won't get back to you until the next business day. And that's an education thing. We need to educate our customers that although we're available all the time, I've got a life too. You've got a life too. I have uh a friend of mine that's a contractor, does wonderful work. he's very clear about that. even his voicemail message, you can call me, leave a message, I'll get back to you.
39:15
uh You can text me, you can send me an email, uh but I don't need all three. I respond to all of them. I could almost repeat his voicemail verbatim, but that's true. It's managing those expectations and training the customer, if you will. uh I'm going to go off on a bit of a tangent here. I also say that the person that's most in touch with your customer on a day-to-day basis,
39:44
is your inside sales team. They talk to their customers all the time. Yet they're the least trained people, sales trained people in organizations. We need to train them better and we need to get them working with the outside team more efficiently so that the outside person says, I'll tell you what, if you can't reach me, call Mary, Bob, Harry, whatever, inside, because they have more access to the information than I do. Let's speed up the process by going to them.
40:13
So don't call me, call them. And that's an education thing, educating me. What would you say is, what's the difference between customer service and inside sales? The one word is sales. uh Customer service is just that, an administrative position, which services invoices and POs and administrative stuff, versus inside sales, which has to be more sales oriented. They have to be thinking.
40:42
How do I help this outside team? How do I my company sell more? How do I bridge the gap between I'm on a desk inside a business to being a resource for either the outside sales team or the customer themselves? We talked a little bit at dinner last night. I've got a great example. A friend of mine sells dental equipment. And it's high-end expensive stuff, but his inside salesperson literally drives his schedule.
41:11
to the point where he's, I mean, every day he's somewhere closing a deal. It's all he's doing. It's all he's doing. And it's so amazing how effective their system is. I mean, what does it take to get to that point with, you I think A, you got to have the right two individuals working together and understanding that. But I just admire that relationship and how
41:38
efficient that works and how profitable it is frankly. You also have to make sure that inside sales person is trained. That they know their stuff both from an administration where to get information inside but also how to get the information from the customers by asking the right questions. So that's an inside sales skill and then the outside person has to have faith in that inside sales person to trust them.
42:03
We tend to become quite territorial as salespeople. This is mine, it's my customer, it's mine. I don't want you touching it, it's mine, right? I know all about that. Yeah, but it isn't yours. It's the company's, right? It's the company's customer. And so we need to get the outside people and inside people talking and trusting each other more. Yeah. And lately I've seen two just, I think it's an individual basis, you know, from outside person to inside person, but
42:33
people just have different expectations of what they want the inside sales to do, what their expectations are. And it's become very clear to me that we just got to have that conversation. I may need this, but maybe that doesn't work for you and how you want to operate. So they may have a different set of rules. ah So that's one thing we've been kind of working on internally too, I mean, let's just have the conversation. Is this expectation?
43:01
Maybe it's out of line. Maybe that's not the way we're going to do it, right? Or maybe it is. So I think having those conversations with the team is pretty important too. Keeping the inside folks in the loop. Frankly, they should be more in the loop than we are because they're the of They're doing it with the customers all the time. So, awesome. Anything else you want to get off your chest before we let you go? I know we got to get you up to the airport. No, I'm going to try and head home.
43:30
I think KC is, I'm out of Kansas City, I don't think they have TSA, so I think they're privately run there rather than TSA, so they'll have TSA issues. No, it's pretty, they've got the new terminal there, it's pretty easy to get in and out of, so we should be in good shape, but we want to thank you again, appreciate you coming in and trying out the new inside sales training on our folks. Well, think we've learned a lot, I learned a lot, and we learned a lot.
44:00
from your folks and the folks that were there yesterday. And we're going to do some tweaking and it should be ready to go pretty soon. Awesome. Thanks again. It's been great catching up with you. And I was going to maybe have you sell me this pen, but I think we're, I don't want to be shamed. So, but no, it's been great catching up and appreciate you joining us. Well, thank you. Talk to you soon.
44:26
Thanks again, Frank, for joining us. It was great to have you in our office and launch the new sales training for our inside folks. It was great to reminisce and catch up on some of your sales tactics and expertise. So was great to have you and we really appreciate your time with us. Remember, if you need help with a project or looking for representation here in the Midwest, you can find us right here at cbmrep.com. Give us a like, share, comment.
44:55
Let us know what you'd like to see on next episode. Thanks for joining us on Power of the Network. Until next time, we'll see you next time.
