Chris Collins Unleashed: Episode 6 - How To Compete and Win In Today’s Market

Welcome to Chris Collins Unleashed.

All you have to do is listen.

Welcome to Chris Collins Unleashed. I hope you're having a great day today. We have an exciting show for you. We are going to talk about your advantage in the marketplace and how you find fight the big boys and end up coming out on top, literally. David and Goliath.

How you doing, G Man, I'm doing great.

Selling.

No, I think it's true. It's definitely true.

Take them down.

So the thing that blows us away constantly, we're always talking about is how in today's market and we. And we have a video that we did and we'll put a link in this about this a long time ago, but it just seems to get worse, is customer service sucks everywhere.

Yeah.

And every. The thing with customer service that nobody thinks about or realizes is I don't care what it is that you're selling, there's a chance that it's a commodity and somebody else can sell it for less.

Yeah.

And so what happens with businesses is they end up having terrible or presenting terrible customer service. They have no relationship with their customer. So then it comes down to price. And your advantage in the marketplace is the experience and the customer service that you offer. And customer service and experience never really come down to the commodity. They come down with your. To your connection with the customer. And so I'll give you an example. I go out and buy a book at the local Barnes and Noble, who's been downsizing for I don't know how many years now? Five years.

Been a while.

Every industry.

There's some of those left. There's a book. Tell me where it's at.

There's a few.

It's like a museum.

They, you know, oh, Amazon killed us or whatever. It's funny. Amazon's opening bricks and mortar. They're opening.

Yeah. They're going the other way, right? Yeah.

Because they. They're killing everybody. And so the funny thing is, is literally you get better customer service from Amazon because you get a thank you email. When you write something in a Barnes and Noble, you wait in line. They, like, make you feel like you're a dick because you don't have the Barnes and Noble club.

Yeah, right, Right.

And so there's that whole awkwardness. And so. No, there's a Barnes and Noble here in Glendale.

And it's.

It's a. It's a total show when you go in there. It's terrible. And it's always like, I mean, the people have good intentions, but they don't care. They're not asking you how your day is.

Yeah.

And if they do, they don't care. They're not genuine. They're not like, oh, wow, this book's great. Or, you know, it's not like the. I'll tell you a place you go. So we're just. We're talking about books, and then we can talk about bars or. Or other customer service.

But I got. I got for you, too. I just. It just jumped into my head. So.

Okay, file that.

This is a fresh one.

Powell's Books in Portland, Oregon. You go in there, and everybody that works there seems to be super into books. And you show up at the cashier with your books. And I've never got out of pals. Whenever I go to Portland, I never get out of there with less than, like, a box of books. In fact, last time we were there, right, Lucas, I had to buy a suitcase just for all the books I bought. Do you remember that?

Yeah.

I had to buy a whole suitcase just for. I got all these old Bukowski. And then I got. Who's the guy that wrote the Psycho Cybernetics? There are a bunch of his early books in there that were used that I'd never seen before, never even heard. And I bought a ton of books. But you go up to the cashier there, and they're like, oh, wow, this is a great book. Oh, I wanted to read this book. And then they start talking to you. They ask you where you're from, and it creates a whole conversation, but it's never really about. The book is about them genuinely showing interest in what you're doing and the activities that you're doing. The book is a commodity. I can go on Amazon and buy the book.

Right, right.

So that's the difference, is it? When it comes down to price, you're going to lose every time because somebody's going to be bigger. They're going to have more money. They can. They can wait you out. They can play poker longer than you can.

Right, Right.

So the thing that you have in the market is customer service. And it seems like the younger generation, the millennials, get less customer service and are more. Their. Their experience of relationships is their thumbs on a phone.

Right. It's Facebook. Let me text you my customer service. Right.

And so there needs to be a real effort in today's day and age to spend time and take phones away. If I had a retail business, I wouldn't let anybody have their phones. You go to the Apple Store, you're not allowed to carry your phone on the floor.

Right.

When you're working, but you go into even Nordstrom's, people are texting on their phone.

Yeah.

And you're like, I thought Nordstrom's customer service, you're texting on your phone. Like, pay attention to me. But they're not asking you. Like, that thing where they can't wait to get back and text somebody else is the time that they can spend asking you where you're from, what you do. You know, how many kids you have? Dogs. Right. I mean, that's where. That's where it's lacking. What's the story that you follow?

Seems. It seems simple. I mean, that's. We were talking about earlier. Just seems like it's such a simple thing to do. And, you know, I. On Sunday, I think it was Sunday, I bought my wife this basket for her bike so she could put little Romy in my little designer golden doodle she wants to put on the back of her bike. Meanwhile, he won't stand in the thing. But that's a story for another day. But I bought her this basket and I bought her this rack for the back of her bike. But the basket wasn't meant to fit on that rack. So I had to find a way to modify it. Right. I had to rig it.

This is right up your alley.

Right up my alley. So the kids and I were out running around at lunch on Sunday, and I said, oh, you know what? We're right next to the hardware store. Let me jump over here. And so in Venice, there's a small true value hardware store. Like, old school, like, corner hardware store, you know, and which I love. I love hardware stores. And it's one of my favorite places to be in. So anyway, so I go in there, and.

They had probably three customers in there and three employees. So there was a customer on every employee.

And the customer service is still terrible.

It was one to one. They were winning. Go on a date. The odds were in their favor. Yeah. So I mean, I just remember, like, there was such a great hardware store back in my old town. And you'd go in there and they'd be like, well, tell me what you're working on. And be like, well, I don't know. It's hard. No, no, explain it to me. And they would walk you through, walk you over there. They find they'd give you ideas you hadn't thought of. But this place, like, they have an opportunity so close to me, too. There's a Home Depot, and the Home Depot's more organized. They got more stuff. And even though the customer service isn't as good. It's cheaper, it's easier to get in and out of. You know, it's like this true value. The parking's terrible. It's a tiny little place. But, you know, I love that place. And I would just wish that they took some interest in their customers that came in there and, like, just. They. I think I'm like, I need a clamp. I'm trying to do this, I'm trying to do that. And he goes, yeah, I don't. I don't know. I don't think you're gonna be able to do that. Okay. Basically, like, get out of here, kid.

I ended up finding stuff and I got out of there. But, yeah, I was just. I was walking out, just going, this is like. For him to compete against the big. The big, you know, big box warehouses, the big companies like Home Depot and Lowe's and these places that are moving in. For him to stay relevant, to compete, he has to up his game.

But he's sitting in a room going, oh, I can't compete with Home Depot. They're too big.

Exactly.

And it's not that at all.

How do I compete with Amazon?

Service sucks. And you have no relationship with your customers.

Exactly.

None. You're boring and you don't like people and you're hiring people that don't like people.

And so now I'm faced with, you know, so then the next time you come up to bat, right, you're like, okay, I need something from the hardware store. Well, I can get it tomorrow from Amazon. Is it worth me waiting? Right, and it probably is, because there's no benefit to me driving up there.

Sometimes Amazon, same day here, sometimes.

I know sometimes.

How are you going to compete with that?

Yeah, so I got to drive across town, I got to find a place to park, I got to walk in and get ignored, and I'm not going to get. So what's the difference between that and me clicking a few buttons and not having to go through the mind loss of driving over there? Or it's easier for me to get to Home Depot. Huge parking lot. You know, they got the self check. I can get in and out, swipe my card, I'm gone in 10 seconds, you know, so that's. It's like his option needs to be that when I go there, I know his name, he knows my name, he knows what. He helps me figure out what I'm looking for. Like, if he provides, just ask me, you know, if he got to know me a little bit. I would go in there all the time. Like, I'd be in there all the time. I always need stuff.

Yeah, you're the ideal customer for.

I am. I'm always buying little widgets, gadgets and stuff like that. I. I love that stuff. And so, yeah, for. I'm his ideal client and he just doesn't know anything about me. Doesn't. Not only that, doesn't really care, too.

And he probably doesn't collect your info. No, he's not. He's not reaching out to you in any significant way, email or anything else either.

No, no, no, nothing at all. Which is. It's sad to me. It's. It is sad because he has a.

Shot, you know, so the, the thing with, with customer service is. And we could go on and on about terrible customer service, and I have more theories, but the thing that I would want to teach you about customer service that helps you is there's three types of employees. There's engineer type employees, and this is in every business. There's the engineer type of employee, which, like in a. In a restaurant would be the cook, and a car dealership would be the mechanics.

Right.

But usually those in a doctor's office would be the doctor, but usually those are very knowledgeable people, but they're more introverted.

Sure.

And you don't really, for all purposes, you know what, I'm talking to customers most of the time right now. You can be a great chef and have no people skills. And you're okay, you'll be great.

The tomatoes. Not going to talk back.

Yeah, you're talking with your food. Then there's salespeople. That's the second category of employees most businesses have. And a salesperson could be a cashier at a Starbucks, but it also could be a salesperson. Right. So the waiter is kind of a salesperson. And then the third person is just support and customer service. So you answer the phone, you're the hostess, maybe you're a cashier in a coffee shop that kind of goes. It's a blend. But you're interfacing with customers, and customer service is kind of what you do. And so most of the time what businesses do is they don't have a good system for keeping the engineers and telling in the beginning when they're interviewing, what the difference is. And so the best tool that I know of to make sure that you're hiring happy people that like people, because it's hard sometimes to tell in an interview that you're hiring people that like people is to do group interviews.

Oh, yeah.

So anybody who is support do a group interview. And the way that a group interview works is you interview like 12 people at the same time, all in the room. And the people who like people and chat people up and are happy and smile all the time stick out.

Yeah.

And the people that are introverts, they. They like close up. And so the best strategy is the group interview for customer service.

Yeah, no doubt.

Because you can tell those, like, happy love people want to make everybody in the room comfortable. You can see them from. I could sit in a group interview and. And be like, have earplugs in and just watch.

Yeah.

And you can tell they radiate.

It was reminding you. Just reminded me of a group interview I did one time. And I think there was 10 people in the room and there was a couple of. A couple of people at the end of the table that were like, that. They were just open and laughing and talking. Who are you? Hey, I'm this guy, you know? And then they were introducing themselves around. There's one poor soul on the side of the table that was in a complete flop sweat. Like, just complet. I could have felt so bad. Just sweat coming down and. And, you know, you go around the room and you talk to everybody. And I got to this person and they were just like, I thought they were gonna have a nervous breakdown on the spot. Not customer service.

They stick out. Right. And so the. The best way to up your customer services during the hiring process and to hire people that care about people that want to chat people up.

Right.

And the only way you can really tell is get them in a room with a bunch of people. You can't tell one on one, Right?

Yeah.

One on one, they. They might change. But if they can't radiate and shine in a group interview, they're not going to be good under pressure. When the phone's ringing and somebody's standing in front of them and they got somebody who wants to return something, they'll fold. But in a group interview, you can kind of tell, like, who. Who rises up when there's a lot of people around.

Yeah, yeah, exactly.

And so it's all in the hiring and then, you know, having business cards. And when you go around and you get good customer service from a waiter or from somebody somewhere, you know, calling them in for an interview, too. But the best indicator of future performance is past performance. So if somebody connected with you and chatted you up, there's certain things. Like there's. There's a couple people. I buy my clothes from. And I won't go anywhere else. I feel like I'm cheating on them.

Right. Right. Yeah.

There's somebody that I buy all my concert tickets from, and if I bought them from anybody else, even though I can find them cheaper on StubHub or whatever, I feel like I'm cheating on them. And I'm looking for a chance to talk to that person. Like, I'm looking for them to give me, you know, the tips of what's coming. And you know what? Sometimes they can get you backstage. They do different things and throw an added value, but it's a relationship. And that person who I buy a concert ticket from sends me a Christmas gift, sends me handwritten cards all the time. And think about it. He's not sitting around. He's busy. He's not sitting around complaining that StubHub's killing his business because he has a personal relationship that he constantly cultivates. And if I call him and I'm like, like, hey, I want to go see Tom Petty at the Hollywood bowl, which is coming up, by the way. And we should go.

Oh, yeah, we should go.

He says nothing about Tom Petty because he knows I can go on StubHub and find tickets to Tom Petty at the Hollywood Bowl. He's like, how are the dogs?

Right?

How's Missy? What have you been up to? What trips have you d. Taken? You know, if. And also, too, when you go to any event that he gives you tickets for, he calls and follows up the next week. How was it? He'll send you a text. How was it? Was it good? Was everything okay? And so you feel like. You're literally feel like you're cheating on him. If I bought tickets from somebody else. And that's how you want your customers to feel. You can beat Amazon if your customers feel like they're cheating on you.

Yeah.

When they're going to Amazon.

Right.

But you can't. If it's. If it's the same and they're indifferent, you're gonna lose every time.

Yeah. Yeah. And that's the thing I think about, like, with Starbucks. So Starbucks has. They. They do it right probably 95% of the time, I think when you go in there, they got great customer service, and they. They're very. Everybody back there is very happy. And they're a giant company, but they. They've figured out that they need to connect with people on a very deep level. And a lot of. I like little local coffee houses, too. I like to find a little one off place that does something a Little different. And they're good at it, but most of the time they treat you bad. They're. They're bitter. It's just not fun place to hang out, you know? And so while the coffee might be good, it just doesn't feel good to be in there. Well, I found a place in Venice, this place called Minati's. And I've been going in there on Saturday morning. So I'll get up early Saturday morning, I'll go down there, get coffee for me and the wife, and come back.

Do you walk around your magic carpet?

I drive my magic skateboard down there. My electric skateboard. That's a death trap, but, yeah. So they're asking me about my board, and they know me by name now, and they talk to me about what I've been up to, and they know what I drink and they.

Which for guys like me and you, is rare, right? Because your beautiful wife, Katya, and. And Missy, for me, they. We could go to a city, right? Like, let's say we go to Ohio, Columbus, Ohio. And you and I are working, and we go to the same Starbucks every morning for a week while we're working there. Nobody will ever know our name.

Yep.

They go. They know their name the second day, right? Oh, Missy. Let me get. When we were. When we were in Medford, there was a Starbucks in the building there where I was. Where I was speaking. In the second day that Missy comes in, they're like, oh, you know, and they had something for tequila, My bulldog, the little pup, whipped cream thing. And they just know, like, yeah. And you and I could. We can go through life and like, we're just vanilla and we fill in. So when they do know our name, it's like, oh, wow. Like, it feels good.

Feels great. And they're making an effort because they know that, you know, I'm not. You know, I'm just blending in with the background and moving on to the outside. So that, yeah, they're making the effort. And it does. It makes me feel great. And you were talking about cheating, and so I didn't go this weekend because I was just busy doing stuff. I couldn't make it over there, and I thought about stopping at Pete's, and I didn't.

It's funny, I didn't really dawn on me until now, but I thought, no, I didn't go to Minati's. I shouldn't. You know, I went to Pete's crossover. It's funny.

But, I mean, I love Pete's coffee too. Nothing against Pete's but it's just. It's funny. That experience definitely, like, that's my weekend thing. That's if I'm gonna go buy coffee, that's where I'm gonna go get it from. They won my business. There's no doubt. There's no doubt.

So customer service, I think, just to kind of recap, it starts at the top. It starts with the leader of the company exuding that, making a big deal out of customers, being right, always being happy. Then the second thing is you hire people with personality for customer service, and then you constantly train and work on them to get them to, you know, exude customer service and to connect on something different than the commodity. It's not the widget you're selling, not the coffee you're selling. It's the relationship that you have with your customers that makes you different. It makes it impossible for Amazon or somebody else to come in and compete with you. So cultivate that relationship. And it's about their kids, their work, their life. It's never about the commodity. Yeah, you got to connect on a different level. We have a video about that where I tell this story about going to a vet for my bulldog about customer service. It's called pet the dog. And we'll put the link in this for you and watch it and have everybody watch it. That is interacting with customers because the message is strong about connecting on a deeper level. But that's your advantage. That's how you kill Goliath. When you're David and you're little is that grassroots thing. And a lot of people small think big. They want to think big, but really, customer service is small. It's one person at a time and connecting with them one at a time. It's grassroots.

Exactly. Yeah. And again, you know, you're there face to face with them, and it's just a small step over, you know, there's a fine line, I think, between doing it the wrong way and doing it the right way. Gaining customers for life and, you know, getting them to be kind of ambivalous about whether or not they want to come there.

It does. Your secret weapon is if you can hire people that are curious and like people that want to talk. They wonder about people.

Right.

Because they'll ask the right questions. Good. So awesome. That's good stuff for you. Take that to heart, and I hope everybody has a great week, and we'll see you on the next Unleashed.

Thank you.