Hello my friends and welcome to another exciting episode of Negotiate Anything.
This show is produced by the American Negotiation Institute and, with over 5 million downloads and listeners in over 180 countries listeners just like you have made this the number one negotiation podcast in the world.
Hi.
My name is Kwame Christian, and I am the founder and CEO of the American Negotiation Institute.
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And now, without further ado, let's jump into the interview.
Nick, thanks for joining us today.
Thanks for having me.
Yeah, it's my pleasure.
The tables have turned.
I
I'm not sure.
It's always interesting when you interview somebody and what they're going to come back with.
Exactly.
This is going to be revenge, right?
Just kidding.
But before we get into it, let's tell the listeners about yourself and what you do, and also about the awesome podcast that you have.
Yeah, so my name is Nick Glimsdahl.
I work for a company called VDS.
I'm the Director of Contact Center Solutions there.
Our organization really helps organizations understand what they have today inside that contact center by doing a verifying assess and we call it a full-on assessment.
It could be an hour or it could be five days to truly understand what they're trying to accomplish.
From that, we help them design and implement that solution.
And then we support them from a 24 by 7 support.
And we provide QBRs and customer success along the way.
Fantastic.
And the podcast too.
Oh, yeah.
So the podcast is Press One for Nick.
If you want to hear another really awesome episode, you find Kwame Christian a couple weeks ago.
Really awesome.
Our whole goal is to interview people who want to talk about customer service and customer experience and in some of the best practices and lessons learned.
And I've had people anywhere from a hostage negotiator to somebody who is leading Magic Kingdom at Disney and anywhere in between.
That's fantastic.
Everybody check out that episode and check out the show.
We're going to put a link in the description.
And so hopefully we send some of our peeps your way because you're doing great work with the show.
Appreciate that.
Yeah, no worries.
So listeners.
So you know, typically we have a three-part framework for every one of our episodes, but this one we're going to have more of an open discussion.
And so the business model that Nick and his company have is really, really important. fascinating.
And one of the unique challenges that Nick runs into is that it's one of those situations where it seems too good to be true for the prospect.
And so they're probably people who have been hurt before and they say there's something coming.
I don't know what it is, but there's something coming.
That's why in this episode, we're going to focus on how to overcome suspicion.
When people are not quite sure of where you're coming from, how you can overcome that and then get them to open up and have these difficult conversations.
To start off, for the listeners to get a better understanding, let's give a brief description of the business format we're talking about so the listeners can understand that, and then we'll transition into that potential difficult conversation with the potential clients and And how you work through that too.
Yeah.
So the business model for us is we'll come into an organization, like I said at the beginning, and help them understand their needs.
And that assessment at the very beginning costs nothing.
I will continue that and work through that and design and implement that solution.
And that cost to the customer is nothing.
Nothing.
I will.
After we go through that process and it goes live, typically that salesperson on the manufacturer side kind of washes their hands and says I'm out.
And we stay along with them for that ride for as long as they keep that solution and for potentially future solutions and provide them with 24 by 7 support.
And at some cost or sometimes it costs nothing.
And what I mean by all of that, when it costs nothing, it is not that it's free.
It's that it is the same cost as the manufacturer and sometimes less.
This is really fascinating.
And so listeners, just to clarify here, the manufacturer is a different organization.
It's a different company.
And Nick's company essentially plays the role of a liaison or go-between between the manufacturer and the client.
And so some listeners might be saying, well, so Nick, you're a middleman.
Why would they even want to work with you?
It's all about truly understanding what's best for the organization.
I would say that not all, but some manufacturers tend to try to sell stuff that's not going to be what's best for their organization because they're trying to hit quota.
Their quarterly goal is up and they're trying to push something that's not what's best for their organization.
Sometimes they may or may not stretch of what their expertise is or what their qualifications are inside that contact center solution, maybe what it integrates into
Everybody has had a resume.
You kind of tend to jump a little bit about how cool you are on your resume.
And I think the same is true with the manufacturer.
Our whole goal was to truly understand and pull the curtain back on that manufacturer and just tell the organization the truth and have a bunch of transparency and help guide it from a business perspective, because technology is great.
But if you don't have the right people and you don't have the right process, then the technology is nothing.
It's not going to add any value.
Or on top of that, it's that additional service.
The manufacturer themselves actually can't provide a 24 by 7 support.
They only provide an hourly service.
Absolutely.
Yeah.
And that's the difference.
Because, with the business expertise that you bring and the 24-7 support, the client is satisfied and serviced as needed indefinitely, which is a unique value add that the manufacturer typically doesn't provide.
And then with the manufacturer the way that your business works, without getting into specifics of numbers.
For example, just to keep it simple for the listeners, let's say the technology would cost the client 1000, nick's company would be able to sell, would be able to give it to them four thousand dollars.
But the manufacturer gives it to nick's company at a discounted rate, so that margin is what nick makes, but the customer prices stays the same or sometimes lower, which is great.
And so now that our podcast listeners have a general understanding of your business approach, Now let's go to the conversation.
Because like we said, sounds too good to be true.
They don't fully understand it, but they're skeptical.
How do you have that initial conversation to warm them up and get them open to even discussing this?
Yeah, great question.
I think people are more willing to have a conversation with us when they've had enough pain from the manufacturer.
Because the problem is, is that you only know what you know.
And so if all you know is that the manufacturer is the place to go and that they just look in inside technology, there's magic quadrants with Gartner.
And so you just look at the magic quadrant leaders and you're saying I'm going to pick them because they seem like they're the best.
But it may always not be what's best for the organization.
And so It's not necessarily what we say.
It's maybe the questions that we ask.
Because if you ask thoughtful questions and then you actively listen to what they're saying and maybe what they're not saying, and then follow up on those questions, you're continuing to build trust in that moment.
And then, as you are following up on an email or that next step, or providing without leadership, or providing with information that you don't sell, or making them introductions, you're continuing to build that trust, or at least for me, in that process.
Absolutely.
And of course, I know the listeners aren't going to be surprised about this.
I love the fact that you said you're leading with questions.
I think that's really powerful.
And so, in your experience, what types of questions are you asking?
That lets them know that you're approaching this differently and you're approaching this collaboratively.
Yeah, I mean it could be one of a thousand questions and I kind of based off of that's the easiest answer.
It feels like I'm running for president right now.
I got this political answer, but it really it depends.
But it comes down to what are they trying to achieve from a business objective?
And then what are their customers looking for?
If their customers are looking for chat or email or text or self-service and all they want to do is change their address, how do I do that as a customer?
So taking scenarios around their top 10 pain points and then reverse engineer that.
So what does that look like and how do we fix those top 10 pain points?
That's just step one, like hearing them out.
And then it's step two.
It's let's actually listen to what your employees are saying, because some of them have been on the phone for 20 years or interacting with your employees, your customers.
So let's talk to them and hear what their pain points are.
Because...
The old analogy is a married guy is if mommy ain't happy, nobody happy.
And the same is true with your employees, right?
If your employees are going to provide a bad experience and they're just going to muffle along the whole process and go in from eight to five or nine to five and have a bad experience, your customers are going to feel that experience.
But if you help them design that process and that technology that aligns with the employee's experience and the customer's experience and business objectives, then it's a win-win-win.
Absolutely.
And now, when in the conversation are you sharing how all of this works?
Because I'm sure that is something that comes up pretty frequently.
The what's the catch, the shenanigans thing.
Right.
I would say it could be at the very beginning.
It could be I get an introduction from somebody and they said what I said earlier on how it costs no additional cost to to go with us.
And they say, thanks, Nick.
But what's the catch?
Like it could be right there.
It could be after our assessment.
So we're coming in and we're saying hey, this is what we found after we do our full on assessment between an hour and five days or somewhere in between.
We make those recommendations and those recommendations have the technology behind it, the ROI, etc.
And they say, great, Nick, but what's the catch?
And we're saying listen, we're honest and we want to provide.
Our whole focus, at the end of the day, is to focus on customer lifetime value.
It's not make a sale.
It's to make a sale over and over and over again for 20, 30 years.
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And now, back to the show.
That makes sense.
It makes a lot of sense now that I think about it because, especially when you think about the term, you use customer lifetime value.
As long as they keep on using you, essentially as, from their perspective, a free consultant, then you keep on providing them with solutions.
And as long as you provide them with the right technical solutions, then you're getting paid from the manufacturer, even though the customer doesn't have to pay you anything extra.
You got it.
That's great.
And another thing that you mentioned kind of in passing but I want to focus in on it, is the power of the introduction.
And can you tell us the difference between those conversations where you have an introduction versus when you don't have an introduction?
Yeah, I mean, if our clients... are happy with our service, they're going to tell others.
When they tell others, they don't just say hey, this is Nick, you should do business with him, but they're fired up.
They are like if you don't do business with Nick, you're going to fall in my footsteps of what I did five years ago.
And here's what I did five years ago, and here's what that looks like, and here's how they fixed it.
And you can feel the passion in the voicemail or are in the introduction and the voicemail.
It could be a LinkedIn message.
It could be an email, but you could just, it is not necessarily all caps, but you can feel it.
Right.
And then same with anybody who has interacted with me in the past and they know that they already trust me, and they know that somebody already has a pain point and they we just haven't met yet.
They make that introduction and they're like, Where have you been all my life?
Where have you been all my life?
And the opposite of that is.
The next one is if I send a cold email and I see that somebody's struggling, or let's say, I'm a client or a customer of a phone carrier or a Internet carrier.
I will react to them and say, here's my fix to your solution.
I'm not trying to sell you anything.
I'm just trying to fix it.
And I'll probably get a response, maybe one out of 100 that I send.
But good luck me sending.
If I try to send an email or a cold call maybe one out of 500 I'm going to get a response if I actually hit them on the right day.
Right.
Right.
And I think what we're seeing here is the value of having an ambassador.
When we talk about the ability to overcome suspicion, that's just a natural human psychological state based on the stimulus that they see in front of them.
And sometimes one of the most frustrating and humbling realities of strategy, with negotiation difficult conversations, is the fact that you might not be the person to have the conversation right.
When you think about the strategy, of course you want to think about, you know, the plan to help you win, and then the tactics.
What do you actually want to do?
But you have to ask yourself who.
Not only am I talking to, but also who is the right person to carry that message.
And sometimes if you recognize that the psychological barrier between you and the other person, for whatever reason, is just too deep, if you can have that difficult conversation with somebody in their ecosystem and ask them to be your ambassador and say that you are okay, then it gives you the opportunity that you need to actually have a meaningful conversation.
Yeah, I love that.
And I think the same is true internally.
So if you're only talking to a champion and not a decision maker internally, you have to have that same introduction.
And it's on them to make that introduction.
And anytime that somebody makes an introduction, It's their brand, their personal brand, that they're making that introduction to.
And so it's brand equity that they're saying, hey, it's great that I just talked to you, Nick.
And I think that you're super cool.
And I love the services that you provide, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
Then it's up to them mentally to decide, am I going to make that my brand and push Nick up?
Or am I going to keep him close to my vest until I find more pain?
I think that's really important.
It's really important.
And so listeners, what Nick's saying here is that sometimes you have somebody who's an advocate on the inside right.
So you're champion, you're internal champion.
Yeah, Nick, if it were up to me, I'd pull the trigger.
It's not up to me, right?
So you need to get that person to feel comfortable advocating for you.
And that's sometimes tough because sometimes they might have some trepidation.
Sometimes they want to advocate for you, but they don't know exactly how to do that.
And so, if they're going to take your message and your solution and take it to the actual decision maker, An important part of that conversation you have with your champion is how that message is delivered to the internal decision maker.
Maybe it's you giving them specific wording.
Maybe it's you giving them specific marketing materials.
Or maybe it's you having a negotiation with them, trying to get them to allow you to speak to the person directly, which is another difficult conversation too.
Yeah, I actually did a LinkedIn live event and it was called Real Talk with the C-Suite about CX.
And I had a guy who was a chief customer officer at Oracle for 12 years, a guy who runs customer service and customer experience at Dropbox and a few others across the world.
One guy from South Africa, one guy from the UK, And it was all about getting executive buy-in when it comes to customer experience.
Because when you think of customer experience, everybody thinks about the pixie dust and fairy tales of CX right,
Like, hey, this is so cool.
And this is why we're doing, this is why we're awesome.
And this is how we treat our customers, et cetera, et cetera.
But At the end of the day, it's about data and it's about results.
And so how are you pushing that up?
And that conversation that you push up is a little bit different than the conversation you put across and that you bring down to your peers, to the people that you manage, and then out to your customers.
And so it was a fascinating conversation.
And it all came back down to what they care about, what their business objectives are and what they're measured on.
That's interesting.
Okay, let's go deeper on that.
So what are some of the key points that you got from that conversation?
Yeah, well, a lot of people in customer experience just talk about customer satisfaction score.
They talk about net promoter score.
So would you refer us to your friend or your coworker?
Customer satisfaction is how are we doing one out of 10?
Customer effort, how easy was it to do business with us?
Those are all great, but what does it matter from the people that are above you?
Or your peers.
So let's say that you are a chief customer officer, the head of sales and the chief marketing officer are all measured on a little bit different, but the customer only sees you as one company.
And so what are those pain points that you're listening to as a chief customer officer?
And then how are you putting that message out?
So the executive leadership team cares about their numbers.
They care about if they're a publicly traded company, what does the shareholders care about?
They care about, is this going to increase in value?
And are we keeping our customers, which is actually helpful.
So there was a whole plethora of answers that came out of it.
And it all came back to what was the value of that executive and what did they care about and what did they measured on.
And then they worked backwards to that.
And then a lot of it came down to also was what was the kind of going back to negotiations is.
What is that conversation look like?
And how does that person that you're talking to want to be talked to?
Some people want a 20 person slide deck or 20 slide deck.
And some person says, I want to be able to read it on my iPhone.
That's cool.
That's really interesting.
It's fascinating.
And again, it shows the importance of knowing your audience.
And, at the same time, it also shows your unique outsider advantage, because you were able to take a step back, because you are from the outside and see all right.
So this is your solution, the technical solution that you're doing, that you need, but this is how it impacts the customer experience.
This is how it impacts the media brand representation of the company, all of those things.
I think that's really, really fascinating.
Yeah, it was a lot of fun.
Absolutely.
Well, this interview has been a lot of fun.
I really appreciate you coming on, Nick, and sharing your expertise here.
This was an angle that we haven't taken on the show yet.
So hoping the listeners enjoy it.
But before you go, let the listeners know again about your show, how they can get in touch with you and learn more about what you do.
Yeah, so you can get a hold of me.
Find me on LinkedIn, Nick Glimsdahl.
And I think you should be able to see it in the show notes.
It's just Nick, N-I-C-K, space Glimsdahl, G-L-I-M-S-D-A-H-L.
And then you can go to PressOneForNickcom or find me on LinkedIn or anywhere that podcasts are played.
Fantastic.
Nick, thank you again, my friend.
Really appreciate it.
Thank you for that opportunity.
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