Richard Weylman is the Founder of Richard Weylman, Inc., Weylman Consulting Group, and The Weylman Center. He delivers personalized, dynamic, and memorable presentations that educate, inspire, and help audience members elevate business performance. Richard is a keynote speaker inducted into the Professional Speaker Hall of Fame and a consultant and coach inducted into the Customer Experience Hall of Fame for helping organizations and individuals achieve outcomes and measurable results. He is the author of three books, two of which are international bestsellers, including his latest, 100 Proven Ways to Acquire and Keep Clients for Life.
Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn:
[3:05] Richard Weylman shares the secrets to building true customer loyalty
[4:59] Actionable tactics for achieving customer experience excellence
[7:48] The top reasons customers leave and how to prevent it
[11:38] Language strategies that build empathy and improve sales conversations
[27:00] The potential of AI in enhancing the customer service experience and its limitations
[34:26] Richard’s leadership style
In this episode…
In a world where businesses constantly strive for customer loyalty, understanding how to connect with clients truly is more crucial than ever. What are the secrets behind making customers feel valued and ensuring they stay with you for life?
Richard Weylman, an international bestselling author and speaker, offers invaluable insights into these questions. He unveils top business leaders' strategies and mindset for attracting and retaining customers. Richard shares his remarkable story of overcoming early life adversities to become influential in luxury car sales and publishing, inspiring people to focus on what truly matters in customer interactions. He delves into the importance of personalizing connections, utilizing the right language, and how empathy is fundamental to winning and retaining customers.
In this episode of The Customer Wins, Richard Walker interviews Richard Weylman, Founder of Richard Weylman, Inc., about enhancing customer relationships and loyalty. Richard shares the secrets to building true customer loyalty, actionable tactics for achieving customer experience excellence, and language strategies that build empathy and improve sales conversations.
Resources Mentioned in this episode
100 Proven Ways to Acquire and Keep Clients for Life: The Path to Permanent Business Success by Richard Weylman
The Power of Why: Breaking Out in a Competitive Marketplace by Richard Weylman
Guerilla Marketing: Easy and Inexpensive Strategies for Making Big Profits from Your Small Business by Jay Conrad Levinson
"How Psychometrics Can Revolutionize Your Workforce With Jason P. Carroll" on The Customer Wins
"Creating Winning Opportunities in Financial Services With Tom Anderson" on The Customer Wins
"[AI Series] Harnessing AI for Strategic Leadership With Geoff Woods" on The Customer Wins
Quotable Moments:
"The consumer's in love with only two things: the outcome and the experience."
"You can't cut your way to loyalty. Not that you have to spend your way, but you have to focus on the consumer."
"What people want today is kindness, caring, thoughtfulness, and empathy."
"Everybody has a story. Let them tell you a little about their story."
"The consumer wants you to speak with them."
Action Steps:
Focus on human connection: Emphasizing empathy, kindness, and thoughtfulness in customer interactions is crucial.
Personalize communication: This small change can improve customer engagement and demonstrate genuine care, countering the impersonal nature of mass communication.
Utilize tactical touchpoints: Implement simple yet powerful gestures, such as acknowledging anniversaries of client engagements or sending personalized notes.
Adapt conversational techniques: Use questions that open dialogue, like asking about customer passions or the story behind their interests to understand them better and position yourself as a caring professional, rather than just another salesperson looking to close a deal.
Leverage AI for efficiency, not replacement: This strategy maximizes efficiency and ensures the human touch remains central, addressing the balance between technology and personal connection in modern business.
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Episode Transcript:
Intro 0:02
Welcome to The Customer Wins podcast where business leaders discuss their secrets and techniques for helping their customers succeed and in turn grow their business.
Richard Walker 0:16
Hi, I'm Rich Walker, the host of The Customer Wins where I talk to business leaders about how they help their customers win and how their focus on customer experience leads to growth. Some of my past guests have included Jason Carroll of Aptive Index, Tom Anderson of Anasova and Geoff Woods of AI Leadership. Today, I'm speaking with Richard Weylman, international bestselling author and speaker, founder of the Weylman Center and Richard Weylman Inc. And today's episode is brought to you by Quik!, the leader in enterprise forms processing.
When your business relies upon processing forms, don't waste your team's valuable time manually reviewing the forms, instead, get Quik!. Using our Form Xtract API, simply submit your completed forms and get that clean context-rich data that reduces manual reviews to only one out of 1000 submissions. Visit quikforms.com to get started. So before I introduce today's guest, let me give a big thank you to Matthew Connor, a past guest on my show, and the founder of CyberLynx, go check out their website at cyberlynx.com to reduce stress related to managing IT and cyber threats so you can focus on growing your business.
Man, it's such a pleasure to have Richard Weylman with me today, orphaned at age six. Richard lived in 19 foster homes and attended 11 different schools. Rather than becoming a victim of those circumstances, he overcame them, and has had remarkable business success, including as an award winning General Sales Manager of Rolls Royce to heading Sales and Marketing for the ROB Report, the magazine for the luxury lifestyle, from its inception until its record liquidity event. A Hall of Fame inducted keynote speaker, Richard has also been inducted into the customer experience Hall of Fame for his legendary work helping brands engage with their customers and retain them.
He's the author of two international bestsellers, the latest of which The Power of Why: Breaking Out in a Competitive Marketplace, is in seven languages and is also a CEO reads bestseller. His latest book, 100 Proven Ways to Acquire and Keep Clients for Life is the number one new release in marketing and consumer behavior and customer relations. It's available on Amazon or at your favorite bookstore. And finally, he's a Horatio Alger nominee for his philanthropic work on behalf of orphans and widows. Richard, welcome to The Customer Wins.
Richard Weylman 2:39
Rich, what a blessing to be with you. It's a real win for me to be with you and all of the individuals that listen to this podcast. Thank you so much for the invitation.
Richard Walker 2:48
Now I've so been looking forward to this. So for those who haven't heard this podcast before, I talk with business leaders about what they're doing to help their customers win, how they built and deliver a great customer experience, and the challenge is to grow in their own company. Richard, I want to understand what you do a little better. How does your company help people?
Richard Weylman 3:05
Well, we have lots of different venues. One, we do a great deal of consulting to help brands to really identify how they can better the experience that they have with their customers, how they can develop customer loyalty. What are the things they can do? We're not talking about loyalty programs here. We're talking about the nuts and bolts of how you really build a relationship with your customer and prospect base. That's why I wrote the latest book, 100 Proven Ways to Acquire and Keep Clients for Life, based on interviews from customers. Said, what does a company or professional have to do to keep or get your business? But we wrote that down, and then I wrote the book. So that's one area we spent time in as a coach and consulting and coaching.
And of course, I speak all over the world on this topic of really acquiring and keeping clients. How to really bring forth your competitive differential. A lot of people in the marketplace struggle, I think, with understanding. How can we really and look at the name of your podcast Rich, which is, you're thinking about the customer winning. But what does that mean? Well, we often have our view of it, but what our work is as a speaker, as a consultant and a coach. Our focus is on helping you, as a professional, as a business leader, understand what your customers think is a win so you can deliver more of it to the marketplace. Is that helpful?
Richard Walker 4:23
No, I love that. I love that. And I have a lot of things I want to talk about with this first, I just want to point out I read your 100 ways book the proven ways, and it's awesome because it's full of actual tactics to do things that are going to change the customer experience. And one of the things I noticed is that you talk about a lot of experiences and examples in financial services with financial advisors, which means you really know this market that most of my listeners are in. But also I want to kind of get your perspective on this. You talk about things that individuals can do, but also what big companies can do. So who should read this?
Richard Weylman 4:59
Well, essentially. I wrote the book with the thought process that anybody that's in sales, marketing, service, leadership, these are the individuals that could benefit from the book, entrepreneurs, business leaders. I mean, I've gotten dozens of emails from CEO COOs, as well as course, financial advisors and entrepreneurs all over the world about the book, because it to your point. It's really written. It's not just about what to do. And there's a lot to be said for writing a book, and we all want to know what to do, but the reality is, most of us have some sense of what to do. The real issue that people struggle with is, how do I do it? Just like when I do my speaking? It's nice to stand on stage. Here's five strategies to implement and go forward and people leave the room. So those are great. How am I going to do that?
My approach is different. I want to specifically give you tactics that you can utilize to put the strategies in place. So that's why I wrote this book, for essentially anyone in business that really wants to deliver an elevated experience, wants to capture the heart and mind of the we'll call it consumer, and then, most importantly, keep that loyalty on the books. Because the lifetime value Rich, which a lot of people don't talk about, it's central to our business. The lifetime value of a client or a customer, and financial services, or any business, is an incredible computation. And when you add it all up, the little bit you spend on retaining people, when you look at the LTV lifetime value of that relationship, it's an enormous ROI for every advisor, every CEO, et cetera, you can't cut your way to, shall we say, loyalty, not that you have to spend your way, but you have to focus on the consumer and what he or she wants.
Richard Walker 6:45
I love that perspective, Richard, because in my business, we have exceptional loyalty with our customers, and we look at it from the standpoint, if I actually can't solve the problem, or we make some kind of mistake and we lose the customer in the sales process. Let's say that was 100,000 a year. To me, that's a million dollars because I'm keeping my customers for 10 years plus, it's exceptionally valuable. There's another correlation I want to make, and I don't know what your perspective is on The Gorilla Marketing book from the 80s that I read. It was very influential on me, but it was also very tactic driven, right?
And I love that you could do these things and, you know, try to do stuff. But one of the things that really got through my head was you should spend 80 or 90% of your effort on current customers versus trying to acquire new ones, because of what you just said, the lifetime value is so good. So, what I love about your book is you're saying, Here are the ways that you can help improve the customer experience, which is going to then help drive the business growth, because they're going to stay with you and want to do more with you. Is there a particular tactic that you in your 100 that is one of your favorites to talk about?
Richard Weylman 7:48
Well, well, first things first, I think your commentary around the fact that losing that customer is an expensive long term value loss. So, but here's what we do know from our research, that one in three working with Reuters, one in three people will leave a brand or leave an advisor after one bad experience, right? So therein lies sort of a heads up for all of us. It's like, okay, now wait a minute. So the most important thing, I think, in terms of a strategy, is realize what people want, and advisors and others, we tend to fall in love with our products, our platform, our procedures, our plans. We're in love with them, and we should be, because we're doing a phenomenal service for the community. No doubt. The challenge is that consumers in love with only two things, the outcome and the experience. So if you don't deliver the outcome, then I'll probably leave you.
But if you deliver the outcome, but you're rude to my wife, I'm probably going to leave you anyway. I think if you were to ask me what tactic is perhaps one of my favorites, it's really the whole idea of realizing that what people want today is kindness, caring, thoughtfulness and empathy. And just to give you one that I've gotten dozens of emails, just one that I mentioned in one of the chapters on how do you ask tough questions empathetically. Now, most people I talk to if I say, Well, how empathetic are you in your sales process? Oh, well, we're very empathetic, we're quite. Well, give me an example. Well, I tell them I understand and I empathize with it. I said, yeah, but how about if you have to ask a tough question, like, how many times you've been married?
Or, how about we want to ask how much money you don't want to invest with me. Well, I just ask. I just say, if you don't mind me asking, How much money do you want to invest with me? And I said, well, how do you think people respond to that? Well, some people are not comfortable. That's great. I focus group that because I woke up in the middle of the night when I was writing a book, and I thought, how am I going to help people use empathy in their language, because language is really important. And it hit me, I woke up in a night, I thought it's the predicate. The predicate is backwards. The predicate is, if you don't mind me asking, rich, how much money you're gonna invest with me, right? Say, oh my god, if you don't mind me asking, what's he gonna ask me now, so with this, and I wouldn't even get the question out, I would say, folks, we're going to give you the same question two different ways. Tell us. Left button, it's rude. Right button, empathetic. Everybody ready? Here we go. If you don't mind me asking. I said, no, folks, you got to let me get the question.
I mean, we did this four different groups, and we couldn't get past if you don't they. I said, okay, we're going to do this again. We're going to give you a question, but you have got to let me finish the question. If you don't mind me asking how to I said, okay, now I'm going to ask you the same question. How much money do you want to invest with us? If you don't mind me asking? 97% of the people put the button empathetic. So what's the message here? The message is, you can tell me you're kind, thoughtful and empathetic. On the other hand, you can talk a straight that, or you can demonstrate it. If you want to demonstrate it, well then flip the predicate and I mean, it is remarkable the emails I get from people.
Richard Walker 11:24
Oh yeah, I love that one. I do because words matter. Words matter, and how you phrase things and where you bring things to bear with people. So you're right when you say, if you don't mind me asking you are putting up a front in the beginning of I'm gonna steamroll this.
Richard Weylman 11:38
All about me, and they immediately get defensive and other things. How do you sign your emails? I get emails all the time, best, best. What I'm telling you women really, particularly when my interns are convinced, well, they really don't like that, because we hit them. I get people on the phone. Which of these would you select? And as soon as we said best, women said, well, me best. what, best for who best for me, but and even guys said that. So that's the most disliked. The other one is Sincerely yours, too institutional. So we gave him a list of six. You know what the top two war kind regards and warm regards. That's what they love. I mean, how much does that cost to make a change? Let's go right. Another one that people didn't like. You'll see that in the book, and you probably might recall is salespeople and advisors all the time.
I'm just we're coaching, we coach a lot of people, and in the industry, we're very, very blessed and doing a lot of coaching and helping leaders, recruit and lead, guide people, and, of course, a lot of advisors to grow their business and scale it. And it's a blessing to us, but I'm blessed with a great team of coaches, all who have been in the field. But I think the larger point here is that I got an email the other day from a guy said, I'm I just sent an email to people and told him I was going to follow up on the conversation. I said, you know, the problem is, if you called, hi, let me grab a phone here. Hi, I'm just calling to follow up. What does that mean? I'm calling to follow. I got nothing more to offer. I got nothing more to add. I'm just calling to follow up or you send an email. Hi Rich. Richard Weylman, here, I know we spoke last week. I'm just following up see what decision you made. Rich, I just want to tell you this, if you made a decision, you probably would have let me know by now. So it's like, yeah, we have to think about how consumers think and how do consumers think, but we asked them, how do you feel about follow up? Well, why would they say that?
They give us some additional information to make a decision. So what did they do? I began to interview people. You know, we do a lot of branding. We just finished a huge project for a major bank, and we asked their customers, how do you feel about the follow up emails? We hate them. Yeah, they give us a couple of steps they take, or can't they provide a little more information so we can make a decision about the loan. So that dawned on me, wait a minute. Let's not send people. Hi Rich, I'm following up. Say, rich, I've identified two additional steps you might be able to take together with me that we can be able to get your financial life imbalance. Or here's the steps we can take together to help you to get the ROI you're looking for on your 401k, because adults want stamps. Yeah. Is that helpful?
Richard Walker 14:09
Look, Richard, I'm going to admit I've used that. Hey, I'm following up to see where we are that that kind of language, because it's a natural thing to do when you don't know what else to say. But I'll, I'll also admit the times I've sent messages to people that I'm in the process with to say, hey, here's a sample contract for our agreement going forward, so you're ready to talk to procurement, or here's a new document we put together to help your team with understanding what we do.
I get immediate feedback. I get immediate response from the person I'm contacting, because you're right. I gave them something more to even know the conversation. So I would even say it's kind of like this, when you're in a social event and you meet somebody and you say, what do you do? And they say, I'm an accountant. How do you respond to that? How do you respond to that? If they say, I save people an average of 15% of their money every year, my reaction is, how do you do that? I want to know, but just to say you're an accountant doesn't help me. So I think the email is in the same vein of thought there, would you agree or?
Richard Weylman 15:02
Absolutely, right? I don't remember which tactic it is when you're at ownership, right? Yeah, one of the tactics I write about is, how do you handle yourself in a social setting? If somebody asks you, what do you do? Oh, a financial advisor. Well, good, I say, he said, oh, interesting. I need to go find my wife, and he's not even married. He just wants to get as far away from you as possible. The other hand, if I were to ask you so, or you would ask me, So, Richard, what do you do? I said, Well, I love what I do because I'm a financial advisor, and my clients say I help them get their financial life imbalance. And you know what people do? They go, Oh, well, how do you do that? Well, we're at a social event here. We're playing pool. We're playing Go, why don't we have breakfast or lunch one day next week? And after we have a conversation, have a conversation about your business, I like to find out what you do, and I'll tell you a little bit about mine, we can decide if we never need to bring it up again. It's remarkable when you have good transition language and you're not focused.
Well, may I suggest this, the industry of sales. I know it sounds like a weird friend the industry of sales, it's not just a career, it's an industry. The whole sales industry is focused on one thing. What was the deal? Here's the challenge. I'm on a US Institute luxury board. We support over 100 luxury brands around the world, and we have done extraordinary amount of interviews and research with affluent, high net worth, ultra high net worth, etc. You know what? The one thing they hate, they don't want to be closed. Number one thing they want, for those of you listening on this, if you get nothing else out of today and you think, who's this guy and what's he saying? I'll just say what consumers want today. They want to open a relationship. That's what they want to do. So if you want to really engage with them, don't tell them, feel free to call. Tell them feel welcome to call. Be gracious. Yeah, okay. Sign your emails warm regards or kind regards. Don't follow up.
Give them additional steps when something happens in their life. I'll give you an example. I'm in my home in Sarasota today, and there's a donut shop here, right next to the police station. The name of its five oh, donuts. Very nice, and their tagline is arrestingly good donuts. In any case, I bought my first donut there August 4 of 2019. How do I know that? Because every August 4, I get a text from them, congratulations, another successful year as a member of the squad. Okay? Now they now have seven locations. Single mom opened this place. Never been a donut business, but she focuses on building relationships with her customers. They open at 5:30 in the morning. If you're not there by 7:30 don't worry. You're not getting any the line is out the door, and it's not all cops. But here's the more important point, how many of you are sending out, shall we say, some type of notification or some kind of appreciation note to a client.
They buy their first life insurance policy. What was the date of that? Why don't you send them an email or send them a card or send them a text and just say, if you can in your business, just simply say, congratulations, another successful year. I'm just delighted to be able to serve you to get your financial life imbalance. Five years ago, we did our first piece of business together. I'm so blessed to have you as a client. Those are the kinds of things that changed again, just like I have a group we're coaching in Texas.
Richard Walker 17:17
So you're saying the annual invoice doesn't do that?
Richard Weylman 18:33
No, and the newsletter doesn't either, particularly newsletters on how to write a resume to five year old retired individual. He's never all that interested. Personalization humanizes, wins the day. And it's like, I was going to mention in Texas, Mother's Day is coming, and they're like, okay, we're going to send Mother's Day cards. I said, for what we're going to send Mother's Day cards. So why would you do that? Well, it's Mother's Day. I said, it's kind of gone in, but they're going to get it. Thank you. I said, why don't you just pick up your phone and just say, I just want to say to you, it's a blessing to work with you. I want to wish you a Happy Mother's Day, to you, to your family, to everyone in your family, and always feel welcome to reach out.
I am here for you. We really appreciate what you're doing for the community and for your family. They did it. They did a 17 second video, got four and a half million dollars in new assets because they sent it to every woman in their pile. And guess what she did? She sent it to her friends, and then they posted it on Facebook, and people began to call thank you for being so thoughtful for my friend. She said, I should be talking to you.
Richard Walker 19:37
Nice. That is remarkable, too.
Richard Weylman 19:40
I mean, what does that cost? Again, again, look, yeah, what is all of this cost? I mean, other than buying the book, it's about zero.
Richard Walker 19:47
Right. That's why I loved all these tactics. There's so many of them that are just very, very trivial, simple to implement, but have a huge impact on what you're doing. So I want to share with you the one that's actually most impactful to me. Because we live in a world of virtual and zoom calls and video calls, you said, stop saying to a new person, good to meet you or great to meet you. Instead say it's great to see you and we are seeing each other on camera now. That's the one thing. I think the pandemic for the most is we all went on video so we can see each other.
But I got to tell you, the reason this is impactful for me is because in the last week, twice I have met with somebody I had already met, and I didn't realize I'd already met. And I used think it was great to meet you, and they're like, but we met three months ago, or we met last year, and this solves all that saying it's great to see you, whether they're new or somebody I've met before, it has the same effect. They feel this personal connection, like, hey, you see me. This is great. So thank you, Richard, thank you so much for writing that specific one for me.
Richard Weylman 20:53
You're welcome. I'm glad it was helpful for I had a young gal who's getting married to in a very wealthy family, and she happens to be in a financial service business, matter of fact. Anyway, she read the book, she saw the heads, so she was at her engagement party, and big deal up in Greenwich and all that. And her future mother in law knocks on her bedroom door. She was getting ready. And so I just want to come in, Jennifer and say, thank you so much. You're so gracious. You always say, Nice to see you. And our friends are going to love you because they feel like you're one of us. Now, you can put that in any context you want, but she sent me a note. Thanks.
I made points with my mother in law. So, yeah, I mean, I'm not into marriage counseling, but if that helps you. So, and we've all fallen down a flight of stairs, hi. Well, it's nice to meet you. Well, we actually met before, yeah, I mean, it's, it's just this how they remembered we didn't. Yeah, plus, you'll see. When you say, Nice to see you, people go, oh, well, nice to see you too. Exactly right changes. What people realize is what we don't realize. I would say that most people are not very good at starting conversation. So anything you can do to make people feel more relational, more in touch, more central to the conversation, the more relaxed and refined the conversation will be, and that becomes important for us to think about. I mean, revenue, nothing else.
Richard Walker 22:12
Yeah, no, it reminds me of two things. One is, we're opening a relationship, not an account, right? And I think you say that in your book is it's not opening an account and we are opening relationships together, which I find it results in accounts, that it results in sales. That's great. But if we don't like working together, what are we doing here? The other thing is, when we talk about social situations, so I'm going to tell you a funny story. I didn't like saying, hey, what do you do? Especially I lived in Los Angeles, just felt like this transactional thing, what do you do? Oh, what do you do? Oh, okay, go to the next person till I find somebody that does what I care about, whatever. So I started just being flippant and silly because I didn't know what else to say.
So I started asking people, so how many people have you killed today? Now it's a crazy question. It got people laughing until the guy responded with, how'd you know I was a cop, and I went, beat red. And I'm like, okay, this is a terrible question to ask, and I changed it. And my favorite thing to ask people are, tell me about one of your passions, or what is it you're passionate about. And the thing I love about that question is I get one of two sides to the answer. One is either about their business and work, or it's totally personal, and in both cases, they're talking about something they love, and it creates a much more interesting conversation to have, which eventually gets to work and all those other things too.
Richard Weylman 23:29
That's wonderful, because what do you do? I mean, we're like polling the audience, you know when you go to a social series. So what are you doing? What do you do? What do you do? So, that question is wonderful, what are you passionate about and if you're not comfortable with that, and I mentioned this in the book as well, as you know, maybe you're at a social party, a social event of some kind, or maybe for the local library, and you can say, well, how long have you been a member here at the library, or how long have you lived here in Paducah, Kentucky? The point is anything to start a conversation, because most people are not comfortable with it. Now, the flip side is in the sales process, but people love to sit down. And they'll come in and say, Rich Walker and sit down say, okay, Rich, thanks for coming in. How can I help you? Well, listen, Rich has no idea he came in here because he needs to get his financial house in order. He needs to buy an air conditioning his roof is leaking. I don't know if you can help me. How can I help you?
Well, I'm not sure you can. But let me tell you my situation. Instead of that, it's far better to say Rich, so glad you came in today. I'm here to answer any questions you have about getting your roof and your house the way you want it. But before we get to all of that. How long have you been living here in Paducah, Kentucky? Get the conversation going. Here's why. This the big takeaway. Everybody has a story. Let them tell you a little about their story. And what happens is, and I can tell you this from hundreds of interviews, people say, if. An advisor or an individual in sales. Well, let me tell them a little bit about my story. I feel like I'm with somebody that cares about me, and here's the key, I'm in the right place, not about you, but if people feel like they're in the right place, I would suggest to you, they're going to be far more open to opening a relationship and moving along in the process, would you agree
Richard Walker 25:23
100% and that took me years to understand. I had a mentor in my business who would do the small talk, talk about the cigars and the boats and the golfing and the trips and the first 10 minutes and the last 10 minutes of the meeting were those things. And I'm like, why aren't we just getting to the point, let's talk software already? Yeah, but what I've learned is people love to talk about the weather, the location they're in with kids and schools, etc, and it warms everybody up. It means you're real people, and you can have a conversation. So then when you get into not, how can I help you, but what I love to ask is, what prompted you to reach out to us today? What is the challenge you're trying to solve? Yes, really understand what their story is from their perspective, and sit on the side of the table that they're on, understand that the things they're going through, then it just becomes more easy. And I'll share one other thing. It's something that I figured out is truthful to me.
It's not a tactic so much, but it's truthful to me. And I said, look, I view my role here is to help you make a high quality decision, whether that involves me or not. So what is it you're trying to solve for? Let me see if I can help. It makes it so much more fun. Okay, but look, we're going to run out of time, and I haven't this other question I really want to ask you, okay, I have about 100 questions because I want to talk about Rolls Royce. I want to talk about Rob Report, but I'm not going to go there. I'm gonna have to buy you lunch or something, but, but I want to talk about AI, because we talk about these tactics of personalization. And I think you even talk about AI on your book to some degree. But a lot of people are looking at how they can use AI to create personalizations without the human touching it at all. So is that personalized? Does it work?
Richard Weylman 27:00
Well, full disclosure, I've been involved with AI before, really, for anybody called AI, I have a client in Mumbai. We've been down this road for 17 I guess so we've gone through all the shall we call it iterations to now we have AI a couple of things. One is that, and if you're an executive, it's really important for you to realize that personalization and humanization is the connection point. And I say that because a lot of executive I've had several that I've talked to in the last probably two months that said we'd like to put AI into do all of our marketing campaigns, etc. And that's a place to start. The challenge you get in run into is this. You can feed it so that it personalized and humanizes. But the piece that's typically missing with Ai is it uses far too many words to, shall we say, connect with the individual. And so what people do, they read that it's wordy, and they don't really feel a sense of connection.
Also, until we get in, I don't know that we'll get there, until the industry overall takes their CRM and decides it should be a CXM, not customer relation management, but a Customer Experience Manager. Then we plug AI in, and if we start listing, George's daughter is going for cheerleading School in West Virginia in May, an AI can read that and incorporate that in the conversation, we'll say it that way, we're going to still need that human touch personalization and humanization. Now AI is fabulous for helping us get started. It helps us often to frame how a conversation would be appropriate.
But let us not forget, it's kind of like way back in the day when I worked with Apple, way back. Well, let's put it this way. Now I'm going to use a phrase that you never hear anymore, garbage in, garbage out. if you don't, if you don't put the right data in with the right phraseology, and so that you're speaking to them and not at them, Ai tends to speak at them. The consumer wants you to speak with them, right?
Richard Walker 27:53
Yeah, and that is somewhat validating to something I'm working on right now, which is I'm now recording more of my sales conversations and introductions with customers, etc. I'm going to take all those transcripts over time and train the AI model, not only on my voice and how I talk, but what it is we're talking about the kind of questions we're getting from customers, the kind of objections they have. How am I going to use that? Maybe to train other sales people, maybe to be a footprint for marketing materials we put together? I'm not entirely sure yet, but I think that that body of information is going to help us.
Richard Weylman 29:58
Wow, wonderful you brought this up. Because we we're doing testing, taking sales presentations by a professional like yourself, and then we're running it against AI. And how would we change it? It gets far too wordy. It tends to get overly technical. It tends to take a word and get on that word or that concept and try to drive it so it's not to suggest it's bad. It's lacks the resonance with landing on the ear of the we'll say the buyer, just as a vocational phrase. So think about it. That's not to say it's bad. It's just you're going to find when you run that, AI has a hard time accepting that which it is you've said because it wants to modify it based on a model that it is much bigger than you correct. Now we'll get there. Now I'll tell you where it's really working. We've had a amazing success with AI, with our clients in the search area.
Oh my god, if you had a website, you want to search for something you know today, even in well, not so much Google, but to some extent, most websites, if you don't spell it exactly right, you're probably not going to find it. But AI, as long as you get a couple of letters right, it's going to probably figure out where you're headed. And if you've already asked a question, they have a sense of who you are, where you're trying to go, and then they'll start to suggest. So AI to help us with data search, with data enhancement to save time and efficiency. Fabulous customer service. Every customer service center in the world should have it. I mean, look at Amazon. Oh, yeah. Everybody talks about Bezos and, I dogged him, and like he said, everybody talks about that picture of him at the old time computer, sitting there with the window, and people said me, why isn't he looking out the window? Well, I asked him, you know, why he's not? Because he had posted on the wall in front of him, I'm going to build the most customer centered company in the world.
That's what he focused on all day down now, looking out the window of Seattle, right? And he's done a pretty good job. He just spent a lot of money on AI. Everybody thought it was going to be to replace people. No, he put it in customer service, and he put it in shipping to do what, to build efficiency. So if you have a question that customer service are on the chat, AI searches gets the answer, it pops it right to you. Brilliant use of the process, as opposed to, let's have AI make all the sales, because it's not able to personalize and humanize at the level people want. Yeah,
Richard Walker 32:24
Yeah. We just got a AI chat bot in our CRM, which is HubSpot. I use it today for the first time, frankly, to summarize a conversation I'm going to have later today, I said give me a summary of this client. It gave me the summary who they were, the deals we have, the leads, all of it so fast, right? So what it did, it saved me a bunch of time. It didn't change the language of my notes or anything else. It saved me a bunch of time. So, oh, Richard, talking about time. I got to wrap this up. I'm so enjoying talking to you. Um, before I wrap it up and ask my last question, what is the best way for people to find and connect with you.
Richard Weylman 33:03
Oh, just simply go to my website. richardweylman.com, you can go there, and there's the speaking, and there's topics and things I speak about. There's a section for consulting, and you'll get lots of case studies from well, we've worked with NFL teams, of fast food restaurants, financial firms major all over the world. So you'll see all the case studies, and you can get some sense. There's also a coaching section of what we've done there, and some of the feedback from Barbara Corkman just sent me a wonderful feedback, and some of the coaching we've done for her people of Keller Williams so and then I've just put up probably more than, I'll say, 20 little short video vignettes that a couple of minutes. But you can go and look at a variety of topics around elevating experiences.
They're free and they're not tied to YouTube, so you don't have to watch ads and all that crap. Just go, you can enjoy it. Just enjoying showman sales meetings, kind of help yourself, move the needle, if you will, and if I can be of any value or of any help. Do you feel welcome to reach out? I'm here for you.
Richard Walker 34:09
Love it super consistent to who you are, too. All right, my last question, who has had the biggest impact on your leadership style and how you approach your role?
Richard Weylman 34:19
Wow. Okay, I'm going to give you two people. Very quick.
Richard Walker 34:25
Two people is great. Go for it.
Richard Weylman 34:26
I was selling, well, I sold a lot cookware, encyclopedia, cemetery, plus family Bible. So sold those all door to door. Then I was selling industrial laundry supplies door to door. One of our customers had a Mercedes and Volkswagen dealership, and they had a problem with the account. I went there. Name was Mrs. Ehrman, and her and her husband came from Germany in 1949 she was made he was a gardener, saved their money, got a Volkswagen franchise, finally got a Mercedes franchise. In any case, we had a real problem with the account, and my boss said, would you go try to straighten it out, even though it's a uniform division and you're not in that division now. I want you. I think you can connect with her. So she was tough smoke cigars.
German woman, it was amazing, but I get in there, and it was tough, but we got it done. And she said, okay, I'll stay with you. She said, now I'm getting Porsche, Alney franchise. She said, and over there, that building, I'm going to build a building. She said, and you're going to run it for me. And I said, Miss Irma, I don't know anything about selling cars. She said, no. She said, but I can tell that you can really relate to people, because you related to me, and I went to work for her. We built in, and from the day we opened, we were number one worldwide for 18 straight months, little town in East Rochester, New York, that was one. So and then Rolls Royce recruited me to take over a service stop between New York and Chicago, a little town called Palmyra, New York, for the moral religion, was founded 1800 people, and a guy that ran it, he had Chevy, olds, Chrysler, Plymouth, Winnebago, bespoped and Rolls Royce.
And the name of the dealership was Palmyra Motors, the home of the shady deal. It was under a great big shade tree. Long story short, I went to work, and his name was Howard Van Bortle, a legend. He 4000 cars a year. He sold Chevy, oldschreissler, Plymouth, 49 over invoice. It was unbelievable. I got involved in Rolls Royce business. He asked me to be the sales manager there, and got my General Sales Manager license. Long story short, he taught me so much about how to connect with people, how to lead people, how to engage with people, and we built the third largest Rolls Royce dealership network in the world, that little town, that satellite offices in New York and Palm Beach. But he taught me a lot It wasn't about us. It was always about them.
And I think in context with that which it is that you're doing with this podcast, if there was a closing message I would give to people, it's just to remember that you might love your products and your process and your plans, and thank God you too, because that means you're going to go forward with passion. But just remember that the consumer is really in love with the outcome and the experience you give. So focus on them with your kindness, your thoughtfulness, your caring and your empathy, and you'll build delighted advocates and brand ambassadors for you all over your community and maybe all over the world. So thank you Rich. It's been a blessing to be with you.
Richard Walker 34:26
Oh so perfectly. Said, Man, I don't think I could wrap up another episode better than this. All right. So huge, huge thank you to Richard Weylman for being on this episode of The Customer Wins. Go check out Richard's website at richardweylman.com and don't forget to check out Quik! at quikforms.com where we make processing forms easier. I hope you enjoyed this discussion, will click the Like button. Share this with someone and subscribe to our channels for future episodes of The Customer Wins. Richard, thank you so much for joining me today.
Richard Weylman 37:46
My pleasure. Thank you. God bless you.
Outro 37:50
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