Are today’s yuppies trying too hard to market and sell whatever it is they’re required to do? I ask this question because I always encounter the same faces at the street corner handing out colorful brochures, catalogs or flyers of a condominium up for pre-selling; and every day, I’m still asked to accept those flyers despite repeatedly telling them I’m not interested or not in the market.

I once interviewed one of them and was surprised to find out her daily quota for getting people to sign-up and give their full contact information is sixty. It was already past sunset when she approached me and as I began talking to her, you could see the sadness and desperation on her face – she was just shy of 30 contacts. How on earth is she going to meet her quota? “And why do you have a quota?” I asked, knowing that real estate selling is not a daily activity but a plus-and-minus numbers game spread across a month or more. It turns out she receives a monthly compensation on top of a sizeable commission if she closes a contract; somebody can dictate ridiculous quotas anytime and she can’t do anything about that. And why stand at that corner every day, or the mall booth? A friend of mine once told me that out of the corner-street and mall-booth flyering activities he did in a given period, giving away thousands of those back-to-back, sometimes-glossy sales paraphernalia, only three people became hot prospects; no one bought. Go figure!

In a recent “Social Media for the Workplace” training that I conducted, one question that came up involved customer complaints; and in that query, I was asked my opinion if it was better to disable posting on the wall of their Facebook Page for fear that others will read any complaints or nasty remarks. I revved up back to my years of dealing with customer service – the sound and practical principles behind it, not the call center function – and told the audience my most favorite customer service slogan: a complaint is a gift.* A short eulogy about that phrase just started coming out of my head and my mouth, emphasizing that I’d rather have someone tell me what’s wrong than keeping quiet yet stabbing me at the back (so to speak). Don’t dread complaints. Treat them as gifts you have a bigger chance of winning a forever-loyal customer. Customer service is not about the actual complaint. The true meaning of customer service is “a promise to deliver,” whatever it is you need to deliver to your customer, be it an answer, a solution to a problem, information, a replacement product or an additional service.

Recently, I had coffee with my young friend, probably three years in his working life, who started off as a sales rep of a technology company and for the past year has gone into the real estate business. He asked to meet so he could get counsel from me on the many things I do in social media. Our talk turned the other way, outside the intended topic. I hardly touched on social media marketing and networking because I realized from our discussion that my friend missed the primary step in marketing and selling: define your market first.

I was once consulting for an online newsmagazine company, whose general market was the overseas and migrant Filipinos, and that’s precisely where I began my work with them. “Who really is your market?” By that question I expected a long story describing a person, not a statistical narration with marketing graphs and lingos only Mr. Spock can understand. We ended up with a female named Maria and everyone came up with as much detailed information as possible, from the basics of age, marital status, kids, job, birth place and all, to lifestyle routines and habits, including aspirations and dreams. When we finished the detailed narrative, we had a three-page, single-spaced essay about Maria which we immediately relayed to every writer, graphics artist and photographer through a verbal, story-telling manner. What suddenly changed was a more focused effort from everyone to deliver content specific only to the likes and whims of Maria; anyone else reading the content was icing on the cake. In a few months, everyone saw the hits increasing, with RSS subscriptions, Facebook Page likes, and Twitter followers all rising. What we actually wanted besides these everyday web statistics was the amount of comments per story or article to increase, too; and it did! We didn’t need fancy marketing science but just a common sense understanding of what we wanted to achieve.

Going back to my young friend in the real estate business, I asked him what kind of market he was tapping into. He replied, “young families.” I asked why and he quickly quipped that the leisure place he was representing, which is at the outskirts of the city, provided a peaceful and private sanctuary for the parents and the kids to bond. “Say what?” was something I surprisingly silently uttered, being careful not criticize. “You mean to say these parents with kids ages five and seven and who are making ends meet should buy an expensive real estate property in your private leisure place of four hours driving distance so they can go there every weekend to bond?” Uh-oh.

If companies hire fresh graduates to represent them in the real world, isn’t it their unspoken duty to equip these young, new professionals with the wisdom, and not only skills, to know how to market and sell on a practical, real-life scenario? I remember the strategy that SGV and Company, an auditing firm, used when they hired fresh graduates: everyone was contracted to stay with and work for them for a minimum of two years at rock-bottom rates. However, the return of investing two years with SGV were tons upon tons of training that according to a friend of my Dad, only a trickle really leaves the company before the contract ends. After the contract is up, these yuppie accountants and auditors can opt to stay for the small salary and work their way up the partner level, or venture out into the job market and get a higher-paying job. So, for the latter types, they became accountants and analysts of non-accounting firms and companies. But here’s where the opportunity to SGV lies: these young professionals left SGV in high spirits, silently thanking their first alma mater for all the great training they received, in the classroom and out on the field. Guess who they are going to recommend to their new employers when external audits are needed?

If you are heading a sales or marketing department, or a head honcho of a small, mid-sized or large corporation, you need to go down to your ranks today and find out why things are not working the way they’re suppose to be. Chances are, your young professionals who are armed with enthusiasm and passion to start making a dent in the world are not being given ample, practical, common-sense training they should be receiving. The business world around you is full of people who have a decade or two of real-world experiences, both successes and failures, which can provide better counsel than just selling tips and techniques or team building exercises taken out of context of what you really do. A two-hour session from a two-decades-plus business veteran is not expensive but it can already do wonders for creative planning on what-to-do and how-to-do-it, and a half-an-hour, informal session is not a time-waster. Your front liners are bleeding to death, and they need your help now, before it’s too late. Pretty soon, they will realize it isn’t worth it and they’ll jump ship faster than you can spell Mississippi!

Though Sales is a world filled with people in love with making money, your young, eager professionals still have a lot of the idealism in them, wanting to be recognized as a success and, even better, a hero. By the time they get older, the need for making money catches up on the need for recognition; but then, if they started on the right foot, making money would just be a natural result of things.

Think about it!

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* I actually met Janelle Barlow in 1997 when TMI, her company, was asked to conduct its customer service training to the executives of a company I used to work with. After that session, it just made practical sense to preach all around the company that indeed “a complaint is a gift.”

Sources: Janelle Barlow Video | NuWire Investor | philjcking.com

Title photo by goang at Flickr.com

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Are call center training schools really producing candidates for the various small or large call center companies around the country with inadequate skills for promotion? Is the Philippines creating a population akin to factory workers of decades ago hype? Is the call center industry in the verge of imploding because of the increasing cost of training only entry level people, driving the cost of outsourcing in the Philippines higher?

My personal answer to all three questions is yes – many call center agents enter the corporate world without the right skills to succumb not only the graveyard shift but to tackle organizational ponderings. These entry-level employees are just like the thousands of factory workers of the past that did robotic tasks day in, day out. Today, the call center agents are like parrots, mimicking scripts rather than understanding their work and their role. In fact, many call center agents do not even finish college because call center companies started accepting undergraduates years back. Teens and the Yuppies would rather get a paycheck than finish their studies. That’s a sad realization today. At least before, factory workers worked without achieving a college degree simply because they couldn’t afford to pay tuition.

But, let me throw a question that may change the entire call center education landscape. What if there is a technology that could allow training schools more courses to teach besides just the usual lessons on becoming a good call center agent? What if this technology can give colleges and universities the chance to create a call center degree, exactly what the computer revolution of the 60’s and 70’s created multitudes of degrees in computer science starting in the 70’s and the 80’s.

Today, there aren’t enough retirees from the call center industry to provide a big pool of professors capable of teaching the entire process cycle of call center operations. A few managers have resigned because of burn out and you don’t want those kinds of people teaching kids a future career with angst and complains. I believe technology may provide a means to create new and better coursewares beyond the norm of just training a Filipino to be a call center agent. If the schools were given access to a good call center technology, then it can creatively position their students to become graduating professionals capable of providing skills and knowhow beyond the existing entry-level training system and allow call center companies to easily integrate these new human resources into their organizations without having to spend too much on organizational development, post-agent skills and a lot of coaching and mentoring –  just to explain what kind of career the agent can have.

Call center agents of the past

So, rather than stick with the norm and continue producing factory workers for the call center industry, why not start creating call center professionals who will be prepared for a call center career? Not just a job but a real career in the call center. When these new graduates enter the call center company, they already know how it operates because they were taught several hands-on courses on each of the job position in a typical call center organization. Everyone can teach theory but if there is no practical approach to experience the real world, it may not correctly benefit the students. For someone educated in this new way, they may now know exactly what kind of role they want to pursue after being hired as an agent. A few may have decided that in 5 or 10 years from now, they want to manage a specific kind of department. Isn’t this better than exerting a mountain of effort in developing a neophyte call center employee who’s education had nothing to do with the other aspects of the call center organization? Won’t it benefit the companies to lower their cost of training and organizational development because agents already have a general idea and basic hands-on skill to handle other kinds of work past their entry-level agent job?

If you are managing a training institution or a school department that currently provides short courses on how to be a call center agent, and are interested in this technology that can allow you to produce better graduates, contact me and let’s talk about what this technology can do for you and your school.

If you are managing a college or university that’s thinking of incorporating call center courses but do not know how to start it off or what to offer, contact me and let’s talk about how this technology can create a new kind of educational offering to the public.

If you are an entrepreneur geared towards setting up an academic institution but have no idea what kind of call center courses you’d like to offer or begin with, contact me and let’s talk about this technology that can spur your creativity to begin something others have not yet even thought about.

My foreign principals have agreed to provide the academic establishment of the Philippines “FREE” use of their call center solution. This “Corporate Social Responsibility” is not being offered elsewhere – they have agreed to spin it off “first” in the Philippines. The corporate entity is not a fly-by-night organization but a robust and financially stable North American company whose management team are very familiar with the Philippines. Some of them been in the country several times in the past marketing and supporting other call center solutions. This is not like a Microsoft deal where schools are given huge discounts – it is free without any fine print attached to it. The only thing they ask is that schools will use it for call center training to benefit the academic community and the call center industry in the Philippines.

Please note that I am a “Country Representative” of the North American technology company, which means they have no physical and corporate presence in the Philippines other than myself as their sole representative. So, if you ask for my time to meet with you and present the matter of this free technology, I can do so at my availability and convenient location. Rest assured my intention and that of my principals is to propel the Philippines beyond today’s factory worker training style of call center agents and make the country the best location for call center outsourcing in the region, if not the world. To do this, it has to begin with real education. That’s where you come in. That’s your role. So, let’s help each other.

And so, I woke up after just two hours of sleep as I kept tossing and turning on bed trying to get through the day with sunshine and smiles regardless of the problems. After the last discussion about the previous day’s stark mishap, I trekked to Greenhills from Makati City. As a person raised in (Metro) Manila, I’ve always been a “South Boy” and would hardly travel North unless it was at Ortigas Center where the second business district of the metropolitan area is located. At a place where I rarely go, I always keep it in mind to get into the first available parking space and walk to look for the place I intend to go than drive myself insane going in circles trying to find the “best” parking slot.

Who is Randell Tiongson?

I saw Randell’s e-mails months ago by way of a school Yahoo Groups–either LSGH Manos or One La Salle. From there, I e-mailed him about a travel portal project and agreed to met at the Bonifacio High Street in The Fort. I explained my new project and invited him to participate. Randell was informal, quirky, extroverted, extemporaneous, smiling, happy and full of life. From then on, he became part of my Facebook network while keeping tabs on his www.income-tacts.com website which he manages together with other “Registered Financial Planners” in the Philippines. Randell is a public speaker and loves to conduct training sessions, and also writes for a few publications, including the Business Mirror newspaper and Money Sense magazine. Recently, he personally began blogging through www.randelltiongson.com with the help of Carlo Ople, an internet marketing guru who manages www.newmedia.com.ph and consults with corporations wanting to traverse the web but don’t really know how to.

Financial Planning Basics

Randell’s talk on financial planning was geared towards the individual and the family. When he began his presentation, I thought of many friends who should have been at the event to listen to Randell talk, people who were just starting their careers and new mothers and fathers. He repeated the phrase “financial freedom,” reiterating the Filipinos’ need to start getting out of the cultural rut that we’ve been taught, e.g. “When I retire, I expect my children to take care of me,” and become independently secure when retirement does happen. His talk on “credit cards” (the evils of…?) touched on my history as having always depended (and looked for more) credit so that I could buy more stuff I really didn’t need. Randell’s worst-case experience of helping a couple was to find out that the wife had accumulated 13 credit cards and, to Randell’s quip to himself: “I didn’t know there were that many credit card companies in the Philippines!”

Randell Tiongson in his Financial Planning Seminar (1)

Randell touched on many fine points of personal financial planning, including why spouses and families don’t discuss and plan the household’s finance and accounting. I know one family that does that every year but nothing really is implemented as most of the time, it’s the patriarch that dictates what’s going to be done, leaving the other spouse and siblings with nothing but to nod and agree–with eyes rolling up and noses neighing like horses.

Topics about risks, acumen of financial planning and retirement lent an interesting insight, agreeing that many Filipinos tend not to weigh risks and probable earning opportunities. A good formula that Randell shared about retirement is his 20/20 rule: if you are going retire in 20 years from now, you should have started planning for 20 years ago–wow!

The talk ended with a short Q&A session and a raffle of a gift certificate. Randell also gave away copies of back issues of the Money Sense magazine while GBX (the hip shoe brand) gave away T-shirts to everyone who attended. Food was catered by Quick Plate of Randell’s wife, Mia. I networked a bit while eating a hearty plate of sausages and pasta (yummy!), and was introduced to Edwin Ngo, President of 128 Dream Fountain Corporation that carries the GBX brand. I was happy to get inquisitive support from Edwin, Randell and Carlo on my still-in-the-beta-phase travel portal project called “Just Go Philippines.”

Randell Tiongson in his Financial Planning Seminar (2)

In Summary

Many of the things Randell touched on has one way or another crossed my life in theory or practice. However, our cultural weakness is that the typical Filipino is a poor planner and implementer. We plan extravagantly (impossible dream?), spend like the King of Saudi Arabia and die poor or in debt. “Consumer debt,” as Randell also mentioned, is more prevalent than “business debt,” the latter being that we borrow money to create more money.

The North American Filipino Community

I’ve dealt with the Filipino-American and Filipino-Canadian markets through many telemarketing and online projects, besides having lived a few years in Canada and traveling repeatedly in the few U.S. states where the Filipino population is large. I have only met a handful of Filipinos who run their own business; most continue to strive and look for one employment after another. Hardly anyone goes after entrepreneurship. But we love selling bits and pieces and earning, well, bits and pieces, too. I think we call that “paglalako,” similar to our liking for direct selling. Even some Filipino-Chinese have fallen into the “entitlement” trap of our past cultures, that if you study hard, you’ll get a good job, stick to that company forever and retire handsomely. Yeah, right. You think at these trying times the word “handsomely” is still aptly viable?

Ask Randell for Professional Counsel…

…and not just your drinking buddy or your Dad. For those who can afford to cough up a few thousands of Pesos for multiple sessions with Randell so he can help you properly and correctly plan your household or personal finance, especially for the young professionals and new families, I suggest you take the initiative to seek the counsel of someone like Randell so that life in your future and that of your family becomes less painful, more rewarding and simply enjoyable. As my moniker with my company, Workspresso, says: “Work the Way you Want.” That’s how I’ve been aiming to life the remaining decade of my business life–the way I want–of course, with more wealth and more blessings to share.

Kudos, Randell. I do hope there’s a repeat of your free talk so that I will make sure to pull those friends of mine to attend the next time around.