We have been about Customer Engagement since 1982…no kidding.  And, it took this long for PACE to be formed.  Okay…Rome wasn’t built in a day but the PACE organization seems to be.  IT IS GREAT.  P.A.C.E. stands for  Professional Association for Customer Engagement.  Let me toot their horn!  It is soooooo good to have ATA realize our name didn’t do us justice or invite all the INBOUND CALL CENTERS to come and play with us.

The LAMA Technique is all about Customer Engagement and Customer Dialogue and the Customer Interaction Equation!  Now we have a huge and wonderful association to go along with it.  We have been members for years and years.  Now, Sally and I feel like they are saying it like it is:  ALL About the Customer, INBOUND or OUTBOUND.

Let’s engage the Customer in a Conversation that is all about THEM. That way we will truly meet our Call Center Calling to serve the customer in the best possible way based on “what THEY want.”  HOO RAY for HOLLYWOOD Florida…the place where we all came together.  Thank you P.A.C.E.  for making our dreams come true.

Our Three Party Promise is next.  Sally created a new training…It’s a HIT! Yummy.  Go to our FB page, The Positive Coach Approach and  LIKE US and see all the photos from the Convention that gave us a new PACE…upward and forward!  Later…..Try to keep up….This is a new PACE for all of us.  ~Judy

EXECS WORK HARD for their CHARITY!

I started training about 25 years ago and was too scared to say I wanted to coach every single person I trained.  I was new, I wanted to get jobs and not charge too much.  It was about 10 years before I built Call Center Coaching into the program where it always should have been anyway.  Every time I would teach an agent new ways, offer new solutions to old problems, they loved it when I demonstrated it in the classroom. But most of all they like to see me do it right on the telephone.  Most people felt that I made it look easy.  Maybe I did.  Let’s face it, I did this every day in a different place with a new product.  It was routine for me to teach and make up responses from customers.

Those responses became features and benefits and the way of handling objections became. Feel-Felt-Found.  My objective was to make learning simple.  What I discovered is that just because there is a simple plan does not mean everyone can execute the plan easily.

Now coaching is part of our training.  No one can deny that the results are much better when you first train and then coach.  It is the same in every endeavor that is skillful.  Sports are an illustration of that.  If you simply tell a person on a baseball team to swing the bat it doesn’t mean they will get a hit.  They may hit a foul ball and into the stands, they may hit it into the dirt or right at the pitcher.  What makes major league players first class is the coaching they receive.

Our call centers need big league coaching to match the first class training efforts.  This isn’t an option any more.  The people hired to do the job may not have experience or they may feel intimidated during training.  Certainly in some companies where the education of every representative is very time consuming and packed with computer  knowledge, product knowledge, sales training, customer service handling, call handling transfers and quality call requirements it is very difficult for the average person to absorb all of that before going on the telephone.

My advice these days is a little different from other trainers.  I think if I had all the time in the world, I would do the following. The best possible practice would be to teach and train your agents in this order.

1. Teach About The Product, Services And Catalogues, Etc.
2. Profile Your Customer And Teach About The Type Of Customer Who Buys Your Products Or Services.
3. Demonstrate And Teach Computer Use And Technical Items
4. After the Agent Has Been Working On Phones For About 3 Weeks
   • Sales Training – Soft Skills
5. Coach Each Agent For An Hour A Week First 4 Weeks.
6. Coach Each Agent 30 Minutes A Week Forever
7. Monitor Three Calls A Month For Legal And Compliance Issues
8. Meet On Quality Review Of Monitored Calls Once A Month
9. Set Goals On Everything With A Timeline
10. Review Goals And Set New Ones Each Coaching Session

Judy McKee

I am so interested to see if the public or at least my clients and past clients will jump all over this chance to get training from me for the next year.  I love to sell but I still haven’t mastered this internet marketing with Social Networking etc. but I know that when I train, people love it and they GET IT!

I first learned to sell in Real Estate, then I became the manager and I hated ‘managing’ so when the chance to train others came up, I did it reluctantly at first.  WOW! I really liked telling people what to do. My success was so sharable. It was funny at first because I didn’t know what I did, I just did it.  My personal success is based on integrity and that means everything has all of its parts.  I based everything on what works and what doesn’t work! (I made lists everyday) I was a success in getting listings and selling property so I could back up my ideas with facts.  Watching those trainees take my advice and using it to make their own sales soar did my heart good.  This was exciting and profitable for all of us.

My Motto was and still is:

“Never make the Customer “feel” wrong or stupid.”

I liked it so much, I made a career out of it. Thanks to people like Nadji Terani, (who gave me first chance to talk to people at the National level) the ATA, (American Teleservices Association) and people like Tim Searcy, Past-President of ATA, Darci Maenpa and Toastmasters, Lark Will originally with Earthlink, Aaron Taylor of e-Harmony and MyLife,  and many others who believed in me, I was able to begin a life time of training, coaching and consulting.

Now Sally Cordova, (my daughter) does most of the hard work. She took the business in a whole new direction with The Positive Coach Approach.  She is becoming internationally successful and making new strides in the business that I never even dreamed of…I just remind her, “I taught you everything you know” What else would a mother say? She took what I knew and added her own ideas started to FLY! She travels now and I stay home to hustle the next gig.

Well, now I am not on the road anymore except for short keynote speeches at conventions.  But, that doesn’t mean I don’t want to share my training ideas and the LAMA© Technique with everyone who wants to communicate better in their own business.  The great thing is that our training also works at home.  I always tell my class that this stuff isn’t just for business — it’s for life.  It’s just that companies don’t pay me to teach Life Skills and Personal Relationship Courses.  They just pay for training that makes them money.

So, here goes. Learn the LAMA© Technique and apply it to your sales, customer service SHUSH…..and at home. Attend all three different sessions on the third Friday of the month.  If you can’t make it one day….no worries, you can catch it on-demand.  I will record all the sessions. Go-to-Webinar does it for me.

I hope you watch the short video and come to this course.  The video tells you all you need to know to make this decision.  Of course you can always call me; I will talk your ear off.  I promise you a wonderful year of results and a healthy training experience that will build your business no matter what your business is, oh yeah and have fun with me on this journey for 2012.  I just bought a UKULELE!  I know 3 chords already.  I told you this was stream of consciousness…. See you at the Training on March 16th! ~Judy

Judy McKee

Hi GANG! My Blog should be called, “if you think you’re so smart, you’ve got another think coming!” Is that too long?
ONLINE TRAINING comes to life!!! Well, the LAMA MAMA rides AGAIN!

Okay all you Bloggers, Sales People, Trainers and Supervisors, I love you and have finally been talked into putting my training online! I know, I don’t how this will work but you are invited to participate.
The training starts in March and I am hustling to get ten companies on board to see if this will be a huge success. I’m scared, too. Tag National suggested it about a year and a half ago but I guess I just couldn’t’ get behind it since I can’t see your beautiful faces. I have finally “caved” when I heard a small business lose a customer while I was waiting for service the other day. Small businesses just don’t have access to the type of training we provide for these big top 100 companies. Still, I think they are the backbone of our country.

February, I will be hard at work during the month creating training programs for them on line for practically no money at all. It will be like a small phone bill or something like that, and sooooo affordable.

The trick is getting the word out. You can help me there. Please let your friends that have a small business or your chamber of commerce members know. They can have one of the best training courses and learn how to make money, save money, build their businesses with the LAMA Technique and me who will be training them. I will put up the ad soon. American Express and Discover Card and E-harmony took this course…your small business or consulting firm or small call center can have it too.

I’m writing ads of love and sending them out to the screaming public… Don’t say DELETE me….we have to build our own economy and help the small business grow.

Wal-Mart…can’t do it all even though they think they can.

I hope the small store owners listen and show up. It gives me a chance to pretend I am in front of the room and it will teach them how to make their customers stay for life! I still do what they do every day, SELL, Offer Customer Relationship, Customer Service and use my phone to do it. Here we go! READY SET GO!

That’s it for today but I will be writing more. Any questions? Write to me so I can use your questions in my program.
~Judy

You belong in this course yourself if you:
• Are you still asking questions that the customer can’t say “NO” to….Please give them a break! That’s NOT working.
• Do you still say “How are ya doin?’ to a perfect stranger and think it’s building rapport? It’s NOT Working.

We can talk and we can talk and we can talk. We can make rules. We can announce expectations; we can even hire the people who match the profile…if that is so? Why is there still a problem? Whenever we do anything to push our beliefs down the throat of an agent, we just said: “We know you don’t get it.” That’s why we work so hard to push it on to you.

How about working on what’s inside and making sure it’s a Call Center world that works for everybody.
The Customer, the Manager, the Leadership, the Agents ALL have to agree that whatever we do we do for the good of all with no one left out. What will it take for us to get it? Check out “Man in the mirror.” (MJ’s song) “If you want to make the world a better place…take a look at yourself and make a change.” Look in the mirror and ask questions…don’t worry about answers. Everybody is crazy for answers but the questions are all wrong. What to do to make them get it? What form? What test? What motto? What mission statement? What training? What incentives? Until we look into the mirror and ask ourselves the serious questions…Could I ever believe in them? Could I ever WOW them? Could I ever understand why they want this job in the first place? Could I forgive them for choosing this gig? What am I thinking? My mother once said to me: “Judy, if you think you are so smart, you’ve got another think coming.” I sure hope so; I am working on thinking newly…How about you?

Don’t look at solutions….figure out how to get out of this vicious circle? I think there is only one way out…Change YOUR mind! Okay…I’ll get off the soapbox now and go look into the mirror.

Then there are games that push you toward results. They are funny, too. I want results but I want them now as well. Later never works for me. Then they even have games that let you win a trip to Hawaii if you are the raffle winner. WHAT? I don’t want the raffle ticket, I want the bungalow on the sandy shore, listening to the waves all night.

Then there are the TEAM games, boy, oh, boy, did I NOT fit in or what? I just didn’t want to play any game that was predicated upon someone else getting their number of sales or customer service stats… I am not a team player that way, do I need a shrink? Is there something wrong with me that I don’t like to play on the team? I want to WIN but Joe over there is not pulling his weight. Do I have to pull his weight as well as mine or I am Not A GOOD PERSON, A TEAM PLAYER?

Over the years, I have learned that Motivation is a Science because different people are motivated by different things. I don’t want a pink Cadillac or a massage, I don’t want a raffle ticket for the I-Pad, I want the I-Pad. I don’t want a trip to Hawaii, I want to take my “honey” first class on a cruise to the Bahamas. I don’t want a dollar for every time I get a YES…I want to be in front of the room addressing the entire company about how I made it this far and what I did with the MONEY I earned. I want to be acknowledged for how smart and right I am. Period!