As Founder and CEO of Mattson Enterprise, Inc. Glenn oversees an elite team of practice development consultants who provide solutions to agency leaders and salespeople facing the challenges of achieving extraordinary success in highly competitive and overcrowded markets. Glenn is an extremely sought after keynote speaker, a gifted and respected platform trainer, coach, advisor and author. He stated, “My business is helping my clients transform their business into a more efficient, productive and profitable one” Glenn’s background is that he helps his clients build a successful business comes from successfully building and selling his first business while he was still an undergraduate student. Glenn was so effective at generating new revenues for his business that it dominated the marketplace and was later sold for a multiple of annual revenues. After college, Glenn joined the Sandler Training organization. His early career was nothing to brag about. He made mistakes. Some costly. But, using the same systems he uses with his clients today, he became the #1 Sandler associate both nationally and internationally. His personal success was a difficult, deliberate, and demanding journey. One of Glenn’s philosophy is, “I believe once you are crystal clear on WHY you want something, finding HOW to do it won’t be far behind. Being successful isn’t difficult. Thinking and acting successful, IS!”
Question
- Tell us a little bit about yourself and your journey
- How do you believe that customer experience supports efficiency and productivity, give some examples of why customer experience is important?
- As a customer, how do you feel about customer experience?
- As part of Sandler Training, could you share with us a little bit about the customer experience section that focuses on customer service and what that program is about?
- How do you change the mindset of persons who believe unless you are in customer service, customer service doesn’t apply to them?
Highlights
- Glenn Mattson stated that like most people if you were asked how they are on a personal level, he thinks the great balance is the golden rule which is to do unto others as you want to be done unto you and that usually in the last 40 years has been a really good rule for him among others, so the golden rule is an important one for them and it does help traumatically making sure you’re doing the right ethical thing and instead of thinking what’s right for you, if you’re in their shoe, what’s right them and that always works. He stated that the flip side is that he was asked about what really makes a difference in his life, one of it is among other things is literally having a very clear picture of what you’re trying to build and with that very clear picture is being incredible motivated to the actions not the results but the actions you need to have to achieve those results and unfortunately in this day and age everyone wants everything quickly and time needs to be apart of the success. He stated that one of the greatest things were patience and grit and long-term dedication to doing the daily behaviors.
- Glenn Mattson stated that if you look at the pure numbers, 80% of the people that don’t go back to rebuy is because of a bad experience, so when we look at it, your experience is what you dictates repeatable sales. Your marketing and selling will get you the first one, your selling and everything will get you the second and third but your client experience is really a true testament on your second, your third, your forth, the ease of the sale afterwards is the direct proportion, so if you look at it, 80% that decide not to go back, decide not to buy again is due to poor experience. Glenn stated that we spend so much time and energy trying to get in front of the right people and then we forget about how to keep them and unfortunately that’s just as important as finding them.
- Glenn stated that the way he looks at it is depending on what your expectations are because experience is historically for most is that they didn’t get what they expected and for more times than not you have to ask yourself what are you explaining, what are you conveying, what’s the message you’re giving, what kind of experience can they have. There are plenty out there that are very inexpensive products that tell you that you’re going to buy it cheap but you’re not going to get a great customer experience, meaning that you’re saving on all fronts, so others that have more value, they have the ability of heighten level of experience so they feel that the money they are investing is worth it. When people spend a premium or spend a dollar amount and they don’t get the service they are looking for, that is the number one reason people leave, they expected A but they got B.
Glenn Mattson stated that we all have experience bad customer service. He stated that most people want attention, we want value, we want to have respect in a lot of ways, we want resolutions when something goes wrong, we want you to fix it but we also want to make sure that you follow up. When he looks at his own experiences with service, everyone makes mistakes and that’s understandable, it how you handle the mistakes that are critical. Glenn shared an experience he had, there was service issue that he had with a client where he was the customer and someone was going through it and instead of just flat out saying, “we made a mistake, I apologize, this was what he can do to fix it” it was more of the questions they were asking was trying to make it seem like he made a mistake and what was happening is that they were reducing his level of respect, so more times than not, that’s usually what gets us is that respect, that integrity, it’s the “I did what you told me to do and it didn’t work” “I got that, I understand it, let’s just fix it, let’s not try to figure out why, I’m the one to blame when it came out this way” that piece was probably the one that left the biggest taste in his mouth which is they didn’t accept responsibility.
- Glenn stated that when we take a look at efficiency and effectiveness which means that they have some type of process in place and within that process, the sequential steps but also there is competencies and skills in that part of it, once they have that done, how you get better at it, it becomes efficiencies and effectiveness in terms of results, so when they look at what they call their customer care program, it’s not just external customers, it’s also how do you do treating your internal customers, how you do treating your staff because your staff is a direct portion to you, to your client base. He stated that it’s interesting when he has conversations with people and they talk about what a successful mindset is, a successful mindset is someone who takes responsibility or accountability or ownership, people don’t realize that 87% of your staff learns how to deal with clients, how to deal with each other and how to deal with stress based on how their boss does it, they are one person above them. So when they look at customer care, they have a 12 module program that they run people through and a lot of it has to deal with understanding a couple of things, one is what is the backdrop of what’s happening, do you really have the skills, the patience, listen, questioning skills, are you getting emotionally involved, are you getting defensive because if that happens, you cannot be a successful customer service person. They look at what do you need and then they turn around and say, “now let’s take a look at the process itself, how do you create the right attitude, how do you develop trust really quickly, how do you take control, how do you have ownership of the situation and what are the best ways to follow up and if there is, how do you identify opportunities for potential future sales.
- Glenn Mattson agreed that people think that customer service is a title and not necessarily a culture or an attitude. He shared that Harvard University did a study that will tell you that the majority of companies will fail in achieving their goals is because the individuals don’t understand one of two things; one is what is the direction of the company, what are the rules. The other is they don’t know how to tie their personal into the company, so when you talk about sales people, sales people desperately needs customer service and so does IT, that’s usually one of the biggest areas that people have issues with. Once you realize that everyone’s role is to maximize or heighten the client experience. He shared an example, down in Florida, at a resort in Tampa and the person who owns it is well known for his artwork inside and it has to do with the oceans. He is at the resort and is there for 4 days with his daughter, his wife and his son, he’s at an essence lost in looking for where to find the tennis courts, simple easy, piece of cake. Walking down 7:00 am in the morning and he asked a woman who is clearly leaving one building to go to another for something else, she’s kind of moving fast, he said, “I don’t mean to bug you but can you point me in the direction to where to the tennis courts are?” she said, “absolutely, are you running late for a lesson?” and he said, “yes I am” and she said, “follow me then” she walked him right to the tennis courts versus telling him where to go and as they talked, she asked him all about his family, they talked about why he was down there, what is experience was, she has been apart of that hotel for 25 years. The hotel was a nice place but what he’ll remember about it and why he would recommend people to go there is because of the feeling he got from her. That was the home run, the mere fact that a woman who has been there for awhile, who had no interest in helping him find something, could have just pointed in the direction and just said, “it’s over there, keep moving until you find it” but she walked him over and they had a great conversation, he had a connection to the hotel now through a person and it made his experience.
Yanique shared that she had a similar experience when she went to a hotel for an All You Can Eat Pizza Night, it was extremely disorganized because they had a book launch before and they didn’t advice the persons who where coming for the All You Can Eat Pizza Night that they was a launch before and so these events were merged together and so those persons who didn’t know of the launch came famish and completely ready to engage in pizza and the waitress they got, she was extremely courteous, friendly, she really came down to there level, spoke with them candidly. It felt like she was a friend at the end of the evening, she knew her name. She told her if she came back to the hotel, she would definitely come back and deal with her again, it really boils down to the feeling, the connection she gave to them, she’s not sure if everyone at the location had the same experience but she certainly left feeling much better than she when she just arrived.
Glenn stated that most people want to be better but most have never been trained on how to be better.
Yanique agreed and stated that she had an experience in a supermarket and her girlfriend was there with her and she was by the fruits and vegetable section and there was a young man packing out sweet peppers in the fridge, he referred to her in a very informal term, she can’t recall what he said and she said to him, “you really shouldn’t refer to your customers like that, you should say to them excuse me miss or sir or madam” and he said to her, “no one has ever told me that before” what was extremely a BFO (Blinding Flash of the Obvious) to her was that how can you have someone working in your organization, even if they are just packing things in an area in the supermarket and you have not even brief them on how it is that are to interact with your customers because you can’t just hire people and put them to work.
Glenn Mattson shared that most unfortunately don’t realize who might touch a customer, one of the first things they do in one of their modules is who is the front line, receptionist, sales, billing, accounting, technical people, installers, drivers, warehouse people, anyone who has any interaction with a client at any level and for most they realize that, why would you train a driver for instance that delivers things on customer care. The reality is that they have some of the best ears and eyes that others don’t have, so who is really that person, how do we effectively communicate, how do we effectively understand our clients or customers and then you get into one the best questioning techniques because customer service is not about information you give, it’s about the information you can obtain, you need to understand what’s going on in the world to provide good customer service. Customer service is not talking; customer service is exceptionally great ears and being very good at asking questions so you can get to the root of the problem. You add the attitude piece to it, which is a lot of time when you deal with customer service issues, people aren’t the happiest all the time, so how do you deal with difficult people, how do you make sure that you don’t get emotionally involved, how do you make sure that we don’t get stuck in the emotional game, meaning that when they do something or say something, we take it personal, we get defensive, our brain shuts down, we panic, we start doing self talk to ourselves, we forget everything they say, for some people they block out and when they hang up the telephone, everything that we’re suppose to say, should have said, could have said pops in their head. So it’s not a problem of not knowing, the problem was in the heat of the battle you panicked so mentally you left the battle and after you have the chance to regain your composure, all the techniques came to you.
- Glenn shared that what he finds is that most of us is that our goals create motivation, motivation creates a sense of ownership which is responsibility because when we do goals, one of the things that he found for years is that everyone may say that they have a goals program and 80% of the people walking planet earth have no goals whatsoever. Sixteen percent of the people that are walking planet earth have an idea of what they want, less than 4% actually have goals, have them written down and less than 1% look at them but where the numbers get crazy, is the people that are at 16% who just have an idea of what they want in life, they are 10 times more effective than those who don’t have any idea and the people that have the goals written, they are 3 times more effective than those who just have a concept, now they translate it into action now this is the staggering thing about motivation, people who have goals, they look at them every week and they do their plan, they earn 9 times more than those who don’t. When you look at motivation, it is what are you really trying to build, are what are you willing to give up to get it. They are very clear on what they trying to do, they are trying to maximize the client experience, and they are reducing the cost to sale. How do they give their clients what they want the fastest, easiest, most productive, most effective way possible? They are never sitting on their roles, they are never sitting back saying, “we did really good that year” the question always become is how do they get better and they do it more efficiently, more effective. He is and he has to be a pure representation of what they trying to get their clients to do.
- Glenn stated that there are about 3 apps that he couldn’t live without, it’s one of their own, it’s an app that he uses for managing his behavior, it’s called an Arbs a behaviour and Accountability app, once you have your plan and your action steps it tracks it everyday, you can’t hide from it, he finds it fantastic. The two other apps that he uses, one is because he travels, it’s called Flight Tracker and he finds it very effective. The third app that he thinks is phenomenal, it has transformed itself, it use to be a service where they read emails to you way back before we had cellphones, it’s called Copytalk, Copytalk transformed itself into a dictation service, so every time he’s on the phone with someone, it could be a prospecting call, it could be a client call, it could be a service call, it could be a training meeting, anyone. He could do a Copytalk and it transfer his memory from his head to his mouth and they transfer it from his mouth to typed, so at the end of the day he’ll get 10 or 15 or 20 emails from Copytalk on all his summaries of everything he did that day. For instance he says to someone during a quick call, “that sounds like a good idea, let me send you that slide” or “that’s great let me put that book into the mail for you” if he hangs up and jump right into another call, that goes to his to do list and those to do list get big fast, it works best for him for follow ups, for efficiency and effectiveness, it’s not relaying on his memory. When he Copytalk he tells people on his staff, “I need you to do this or can you do that or make sure that gets to so and so”, so now they have a memory jogger too and it gets transferred to the to do list. They have found it to be the best ways to internally communicate within the team on where they are with progress and statues.
- Glenn Mattson shared that he has a couple books that has had the biggest impact and one is The Formula for Success by Napoleon Hill, the other one that he found to be quite useful but it’s his background but he’s a big proponent of Eric Berne, he is a psychologist that transformed or created something called Transactional Analysis in Psychotherapy and it’s a theory that says all of us have 3 different egos states in us, so child, adult and a parent and we have to speak with them independently. So if someone comes to us very angry in a customer situation, that’s their 4 year old inside of them that is angry, so you need to hear the 4 year old but you need to fix the adult, because it’s the adult one that’s going to tell everyone about it, if you try to fix the adult without talking to the child, you’ll never get to the true emotional bonding part. The book is powerful and understanding human nature. The third book that is fantastic is a Sandler book, You Can’t Teach a Kid to Ride a Bike at a Seminar: The Sandler Sales Institute’s 7-Steps System for Successful Selling it is basically saying that if you do really want to expand, if you do really want to get great at your profession, you’re not going to figure this thing out at a one day seminar, so it does take time and energy. He had a lot of problems when he just started, a lot of head trash, a lot anxiety, a lot of fears, a lot of issues with people thinking he was a sales person versus an account rep or a service person, but what he found is that once he started working on his beliefs, his fears, his anxiety, his scripts and then understanding how to put plans together, understanding that the majority of people don’t in the world do that and those who do are really more successful than he was so why would he buck the system, so he just became a product of his own process and it worked.
- Glenn shared that one of the things that they are doing right now is spending a lot of time and energy into distant learning. That’s helping individuals all around the world learn versus just having him present face to face, so one of the exciting things is how they can really maximize technology today and how they can help more people around the country versus only helping those he can get face to face or get time to go to conventions.
- Glenn shared that listeners can find him at –
- Glenn shared the quote that inspires him in times of adversity is “Today I will do what others won’t, so tomorrow I can do what others want but can’t.” In other words, do what most won’t do to have a life that most want. Glenn stated that for persons listening or starting a business or thinking about starting a business, one of the beautiful thing about business is that you can start, you just need to do your due diligence, find out about your product, find out about your plan, find out about your finances, do as much diligence as you can and do the best you can to take you and have you number 3, your clients number 1, your staff number 2 and you’re number 3 or 4. If you remember that it makes building a business a little easier.
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