Selling BPO at every growth stage with Aaron Fischer (CRO, OfficePartners360) | E37

In this episode of ‪What Worked, Tyler interviews Aaron Fischer, Chief Revenue Officer at OfficePartners360. Aaron shares stories from his years in the BPO industry, including his time working with Tyler at TaskUs.

Aaron talks about :

• Competing for business against industry giants
• How relationship building can turn short-term RFP losses into long-term wins
• Bringing his years of sales experience to the C-suite for the first time

We'd love for you to connect with us:

• Mike Wu
• Tyler Rachal
• Aaron Fischer

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Transcript

Tyler Rachal
Oh man, we got a good one here. A good one because this is a this is a friend. I would say that and I think we're friends at this point, good friends, known this guy for years. Happy to welcome to the What Worked audience, Aaron Fisher from OP 360. Aaron, I am always butchering people's introductions. So rather than me attempting to talk about your history, would you mind giving kind of a quick introduction? Who the heck are you? What do you do at OP 360? I heard you're still cleaning the floors there, I believe. So hopefully they've let you do something else. But yeah, who are you? What do you do? And then also what did you do before OP 360? The semi-concise version.

Aaron Fischer
Yeah, you got it. Thanks, Tyler. And absolutely. Friends first, then coworkers, and now podcast mates. 

Tyler Rachal
That's right, buddies.

Aaron Fischer
Buddies. Really appreciate it. Yeah, I'm the current co-owner and Chief Revenue Officer for Office Partners 360. We are a mid-size, high-growth business process outsource organization, just like where you and I came from, TaskUs. Think of us right now as about the size when I started with TaskUs in 2017, about the same size then so you kind of get a feel for where we're at on the spectrum there. But my whole career, 31 years, in outsourced call centers. Back in the day, if you could fog a mirror and get to Omaha, Nebraska, you got hired as an account manager for $22,000 a year, and you were doing outbound telemarketing. We were calling our parents in the middle of dinner, selling them insurance and telco products, 

But fast forward. So a great 10 years at Sitel was their pre-IPO and saw it go public, went to Sykes. It was publicly traded, but suffering a little bit and saw it grow to over a billion. And then you and I had the opportunity to meet in 2017 at TaskUs and saw that grow from about 113 million to 550 million. And we took it public in 2021. You were smart, you got out of the BPO.

Tyler Rachal
You're a glutton for punishment.

Aaron Fischer
I hit my head on something, stayed in, and here I am kind of recreating the plan basically within OP 360. So great to be here.

Tyler Rachal
Yeah, definitely. Well, warm welcome. And as I like to do, I like to gas up all my guests. My guess is, Aaron and I were talking about this before the recording started, I was like, who will actually listen to this episode? And it's probably a good amount of people that we know mutually in BPO, former TaskUs colleagues, and maybe some former colleagues of yours from Sykes and Sitel and just people you know in the  industry. And then of course our families, our wives. Actually, I don't know if Christine has listened to a single episode, a full one. I don't blame her. She's probably sick of hearing my voice. But yeah, but what I will say though, is here's what I've always found super impressive about Aaron. I met Aaron when I was at TaskUs. And I was at TaskUs a little bit earlier than him. So I was there for the true, as I like to call them, the dilapidated bungalow days when we had that office, which I can confirm, I still live in the area, that original office has been bulldozed to the ground. And it is a parking lot as it should be, it was not safe for occupancy. 

Yeah, so I was there a little bit earlier and the interesting thing was over the years at TaskUs, as we would grow, we would try to attract better sales talent, right? I was homegrown, knew nothing about BPO, knew nothing really about sales and we were always trying to get those people that were like your classic, kind of blue chip veterans, people coming from tele performance or T tech or whatever, right? And I was kind of like the token interview guy. I was the culture check. It was like I got put on almost every interview, things that I had no right in talking to like who was going to be our CIO or CTO. I was like, I barely can operate email. What am I going to ask? But they'd put me on all these interviews because they were like, we want to get a sense of what you think about this person for culture.

And I met sales bro after sales bro, who are kind of like call center veterans, BPO veterans. And they were the worst. They were the worst. They were just these people that I was like, did the fun just get sucked out of your body a long time ago? And then I met Aaron, who immediately, the things that jumped out to me about Aaron was just his sincerity, in an industry that I kind of felt like that was lacking and definitely salespeople. And then what I, what I really loved and I watched and I watched him do it at TaskUs and I watched him now do it at OP 360. He has the chops. He's really committed himself to learning, learning about, the customer stories, learning about the technical aspects of the service, just enough. You've really learned, you talk the talk, you walk the walk, but you're able to apply that to the companies you're in, as in like kind of put your own spin on how that is reflected in their own brand, their own story. And I think that's super impressive. Just as someone, I felt like I was probably quite territorial about TaskUs. I had been there for forever. I was protective. I'd seen salespeople come in and really not do that job. And Aaron and I hit it off instantly because of his sincerity. And he was a dude that was going to do the work.

So that's me gassing you up, man. If in case nobody else does it for you, I'll do it for you. You are a rock star within an industry of people that are, I don't know, Interesting is what I'll put it. But yeah, I don't know if you can even say anything to that. Can you say anything to that? I just I just pumped your tires, dude.

Aaron Fischer
Well, a couple of things. One is thank you, thank you very much. And absolutely right. It goes both ways. It was important for me when I made that transition out of big box BPO, Sykes, and really potentially taking a chance with a smaller upstart company like Taskus, really kind of the startup to the startups. I had a little bit of that aging Omaha salesperson to a certain degree, hair was getting a little grayer than it was darker. So I get it. I interviewed the same, there is a stereotype of Omaha-based sales individuals that if you look at their LinkedIn, they've been at every BPO for about 18 months. And that tells you because they go there, they're hired on first impressions, aren't able to culturally align, do the hard work, close business and make friends within the company and they're moved on. So, I can tell you after it was getting pretty serious with TaskUs in that final interview when I showed up, unfortunately in a suit coat in the concrete bunker of the Santa Monica airport. I couldn't get that suit coat off quick enough because everybody in that office looked like they just got done surfing on Santa Monica Pier area. 

Tyler Rachal
Yeah, because we did.

Aaron Fischer
Yeah, exactly. So no, it was great. It was really good for me because it allowed me to bring a lot of that history from the two big box VPOs. But at the same time, I was self aware, working with you and Martin and the team, of like, Hey, you know, just because you came from the industry, there's something special here at TaskUs at the time and making sure that I open my ears and shut my mouth more than most salespeople generally do.

Tyler Rachal
You're good at that. You are really good at that. I wish I had more of that. But then again, I have to host this show. I was chuckling a moment ago because you mentioned coming from that background and being open to change. One of the things that made me really chuckle was over the years when TaskUs would bring on some sort of veterans in whatever role. I remember the big one was just having to use a MacBook. I watched so many people take their company issued MacBook and then like three days later, they'd be like, I can't use this thing. So I felt like you were open. You're open to change. 

I do want to take this, to take this moment and kind of, do a little segue here. So when you joined TaskUs, we were just starting to compete, compete in highly competitive RFPs. And I'm not even saying win, I'm going to say sometimes win.One of the things that I thought about when, we talked about you coming on the show that I thought the audience could benefit from is, you, I always felt like, we're really good at running an RFP from a vendor side. It's a two-part question. One is kind of like your general approach to RFPs. When you think about what are the things that you get right in an RFP where you think a lot of people kind of maybe have missteps? And then I also am curious about how do you view competing in RFPs when you are very much the challenger, you're definitely David versus Goliath.

Aaron Fischer
Absolutely. No, I appreciate the question. I always approach, regardless of the company, but specifically with a small company like TaskUs at the time and where OP360 is now on the growth curve is, you know, is the RFP warm or cold? And warm meaning have I had the opportunity and the initiative and the luck to build a relationship with one, two or three individuals within that company well prior to the RFP coming out? That's considered warm and there's various levels of warm, but you know, I'll take it as a win if there is some sort of open communication in the building of a start of a relationship prior to an RFP versus cold. And cold meaning you get invited because you've got a reputation, the company has a reputation, procurement has to have X number of people participate in an RFP.It's cold, but there isn't really an open line of communication prior to the shutdown of the RFP opportunity. That doesn't mean one or other is better. So how we've looked at it is if it's warm, obviously the win percentages is going to be much higher on the first time. But many of the largest deals I've won in my career have been the second and third time. I've lost them the first time. I lost at the second RFP, but through relationship tenacity and a better match of their problems and my solution, we'll win the opportunity. 

So starting with the warm, absolutely, it's figuring out early on, what are they trying to accomplish? Are they having to go out to RFP because procurement says it's every three years and they've got to look at a price comparison? Are they truly looking for a replacement to an existing BPO? Are they looking to expand or contract? And so we go through that lens on the warm.

On the cold is I have to decide if that's a company that I know I'm not going to probably win on the first RFP, but is that a company that I feel we can add value to and that we quite frankly want to win their work? And I'll get into soul crushing clients in a little bit, but we've got to decide that's a brand that we believe we're aligned well with culturally and we believe we have a solution ultimately to some of their problems. But because there isn't a previous relationship, I still have to respond to that RFP. And I've got to act like I'm going to win it from top to bottom, knowing it's probably less than a 5% win because there just isn't that early on relationship prior. But when they go back to RFP number two and three, now we're a known entity. Now we've built a relationship. They've appreciated our response. They like our authenticity. You know, they're willing to put us further into the RFP process the second and third time. So I'll just stop there. Does that kind of make sense when we get a warm and cold?

Tyler Rachal
No, it totally tracks. And I do want to say that I want to stress a couple of points you made there. When I think about a lot of our audience, we work with a lot of B2B SaaS companies and so they're upstarts and a lot of times they're breaking into these companies, they're winning over individuals or they're selling a couple of licenses, right? But down the road, they want to be an enterprise provider. And so they're going to have to eventually compete in this hyper competitive world. And I think you totally nailed something that took me a while to learn, which is just sort of like taking a quick second to understand the landscape of the RFP. You touched on a couple of things that I think are huge. What are the incentives? That's one big one that I always ask myself cause you should at least know if you're being brought in just to squeeze the current vendor on price, you got to know that. It could be that, Hey, this is just a glorified opportunity to meet one of the decision makers and ultimately kind of start to network within the org. There were so many times, as you were chatting about, that literally I reflected back on some relationships that started in that exact thing. Google was notorious for it. When we were at TaskUs, we would get this Google email. It would come from a nameless thing, it would be from essentially a bot. And it would say, here's a Google RFI, fill this out. No person attached to it. I think they would tell you the line of business you'd have to do like the NDA. And then you would just deposit your spreadsheet. They'd be like, do not send us a deck. Do not send us a video. You would deposit your spreadsheet, your CSV file into some portal. And you would have like, no idea that like, if you've been selected, we will call you. And those opportunities, it's crazy. We had a ton of those that we lost at TaskUs, but it started relationships with different people. I can remember, I know you've gotten to know Mark McCursure over the years, he was at several different places, Tammy Kearns, who I don't know if you ever met her, but she was at Google Express. And then she's now the voice of the customer at Amazon.

So yeah, these people that I don't know how else I would have crossed paths with them. And that took me a while to learn that because I used to live and die by like I have to win or otherwise it's all lost. And to your point, it's kind of the beginning of the relationship. So that's a spot on it's definitely tracking. I guess the follow-up there is kind of like, how do you see it, when you're at an Office Partners 360 or you're at a TaskUs at that moment in time, it is very hard to win those deals. I'm curious about two parts of it. One is how do you manage expectations and communications internally? So you think about your fellow co-founders and co-owners, how do you avoid kind of over-promising and under-delivering and getting them on board with that longer vision? And then I'll ask the follow-up after you're done.

Aaron Fischer
No, that's great. And I'll go back one right before I just sent an example on an RFP and a relationship. A previous client of mine that was at indeed at TaskUs had gone off to Yeti and had the relationship. She had to go to an RFP. She knew Office Partners 360, OP360. She knew our footprint, our language capabilities, our experience. She knew full well that we weren't going to win this first RFP with Yeti because there wasn't a solution match. That was it. But she said, you know what, I'm going to use you and your company and I know the response that you're going to develop on behalf of Yeti to show my coworkers that there are other geographical locations that Yeti should be thinking about from a service standpoint. And even though you're not going to win this, you're now going to be in our system. You're going to start to be introduced to certain people within the organization because down the road, every client's strategy changes a little bit. And when it does, and their solution strategy changes and matches my delivery strategy, there's going to be more opportunity. So that's going to happen in the future. And so that's an example where you have to look at the time and investment into the relationship, into the RFP, into the client or the prospect company as somebody you really want to work with. But you've got to do it in a way that you know it may not be first time, second time, or even the third time. So that just kind of gives a little bit of a color on how we've been successful on managing big RFPs, which take a lot of work and lot of effort and tax the organization. But there is a much bigger and a smarter kind of overall goal and outline in order to do that.

Tyler Rachal
Totally. And you just pointed out real quick, a very, very nuanced sales thing that I will for, for anyone who is listening, that it's like some Jedi stuff. It's a skill that I think the best salespeople have, which is understanding the role that you play in helping someone further their own personal agenda at that company. So I found that that's happened many times where I will get into a room with someone. Up until that point, it's been fill out this form, we think you guys are interesting, whatever, whatever. And then in the room, they'll tell you, if you ask the right questions, they will tell you what they're trying to do. And though sometimes they're like, listen, I just got here. I've been here for four months. I cannot come in and just rip out this vendor, but I hate this vendor. And here's why I think that they're not a good fit. They're antiquated. They're really restrictive. They price us in a very weird way. Their talent isn't very good, whatever it might be. They'll explain the lay of the land. They'll say, but so-and-so at the company still, they brought in this vendor. This is their vendor. So I can't come in and just rip them out. So what I need, just like you pointed out, I need you to show the rest of the team what's possible and then we can start to build from there. So that's just a really, really cool nuance sales thing that I wanted to point out.

Aaron Fischer
No, I appreciate that. And again, kind of to your second part of that question or kind of leading me up was that, yes, we are the challenger. We are David to the Goliath. And so the only way to actually kind of overcome that is trust. And that's very overly used word. But again, it starts with a relationship, trust because once we start having open dialogue with the decision makers to a brand that they care about their customer interactions as that's the pinnacle of their company and organization. They believe that their interaction with their customer is their company, not their product, not their service, not their marketing, not their great TV ads. It is truly that interaction. And so what I have to instill quickly is that OP360 is, and this is kind of an unofficial tagline, is that we're big enough to deliver, but we're small enough to care. And I'll say that one more time, big enough to deliver, small enough to care. So what do we mean big enough to deliver? That means we're a full managed service BPO. We have all of the certifications. You know, in the bane of our existence as we were growing our companies, do you have SOC 2? Yeah, do you have ISO? 

Tyler Rachal
Box checking, yep.

Aaron Fischer
Yeah, you have to have that. It is table stakes, but it is extremely expensive, complicated and not a lot of fun for a growth BPO to get that. So check the boxes on that. You're big enough to deliver. Second part of big enough to deliver is that you're diverse enough from a geographical standpoint, as well as experience to instill that trust that you can handle their interactions successfully. But at end of the day, I'm business against Goliaths, you the big ones, you said them at the beginning, the Teleperformance and the Concentrix and the Foundever, because I can instill to my day-to-day contact that we're small if we care. We care about every agent, queue, contact, email, phone call, because that client is so important to the success of my company, I can't lose that. I can't drop the ball anywhere along the way. And that professional desperation of how important that client is helps us win business because they know they're not so big that they're not gonna get that same support, response, relationship, and drive within the bigger BPO's.

Tyler Rachal
No, that's awesome. And that, totally tracks, right? It's something that back when I was selling BPO services, definitely I would lean on that too, because, especially you more so than me, you've been at those big companies and you understand how the inner workings are. And it's just the reality is if you're making, if you're making $25 million a year from one line of business, from AT&T, why are you going to pick up that call in the middle of the night for the million dollar a year account, the $2 million. It's just one, you'd be silly to not prioritize the other. Nobody would question that math, right? 

No, that's so helpful. So switching gears here a little bit, I did get to see, really cool transformation that you were a part of with Office Partners 360. I can remember the day when you contacted me about the job. You were like, dude, I'm back in the saddle, I'm super excited. And it was just really cool to see because honestly, I probably have a unique viewpoint, cause I feel like I was one of your first calls. I knew exactly what the business was, what you effectively kind of inherited is probably not the right word, but you inherited it. And I know what you turned it into. And I'm not just saying it was just you. I know there's a lot of other people. I'm so curious. If you look back on your background, you were at these big BPO's that did grow really big and IPO and all that sort of jazz, TaskUs included. TaskUs was like your challenger BPO that you joined, the new kids on the block type vibe. Going into your first experience being C-suite, I really am curious what did you bring from those past experiences that you were like, this is going to be the blueprint for us. But then also what were the unexpected sort of humbling moments of that? Because it's not easy what you did. And so I'm just so curious what you learned, what you thought you were going into, and what you learned along the way.

Aaron Fischer
No, that's great. I appreciate that. I get asked just because of the history and the tenure I have in this industry and have made a lot of great friends, lifelong friends. In fact, probably one of my top five best friends was my very first client when I was at Sitel and he was at Bell South. I was 22. He was 24. We were both managing massive multimillion dollar budgets going, what the heck? And so I get asked this kind of question and what I start with is it was almost easier for me to make sure I didn't bring in all the mistakes that I made previously or all of the challenges that were pushed upon me and my team and the organization. Don't bring that forward to OP360. Not to start on the negative, but that was kind of like immediately saying, okay, what was successful and what was not successful to help grow a BPO organization? And if you can really pinpoint what those processes were, the bureaucracies, the challenges, if they're not really needed, don't bring them through to a new company where when Tim brought me in at OP360, a couple of clients, single digit million dollar revenue and said, okay, let's turn this into something that's much larger and can actually add a lot of value and grow a lot of employees and create a lot of goodwill within the markets that we deliver in.

The things that I wanted to make sure I didn't bring through was I saw so many layers of bureaucracy get layered on in the US between my client and their customers and my frontline agents. You and I started at TaskUs, it was a pretty flat organization, but over time, the big people feel somewhat obligated for some apparent reason to add layer after layer and remove that customer contact and that agent for so far apart that there isn't a cultural alignment or assimilation. There isn't more clear communication. And I was wanting to make sure that I never brought multiple, what I call, CYA approvals in any relationship between a prospect, the sales individual, and the company. It slows everything down. Everybody feels like you need it, whether you're publicly traded or not, and you don't. You can run a really good, full managed service BPO without having all of that layers of overhead in the CYA that goes along with that. 

The second, and it sounds a little professional egotistical, but no soul crushing clients. There are enough great companies that care about their customers and their brand and my agents that are aligned so well that I don't have to go after big telco, big banks, big insurance. Yes, they push a lot of revenue, but they generally are incredibly low priced, low gross market. And they just burn out an organization. They burn out their partners. And so I had been a part and grew some of those in my past. And I just said, we can be very successful, hit all of our growth metrics, both from a revenue and a profitability and an expansion without going down the path of soul crushing clients. And so that was kind of number two.

Tyler Rachal
Totally.

Aaron Fischer
The third thing is, as companies grow, they tend to believe that putting massive internal competition and pressure on their stars is going to up-level the company and have it do better. And that's not the case. It's hard enough, all of our jobs, to do it successfully. We've got work-life balance. You know, we're working on ourselves, we're working on our company, we're working on our families. I don't need and we didn't need any more internal competition in order to lift everybody up and support that. So that was kind of the three pillars of what I didn't want to.

What I wanted to bring, and you'll appreciate this video in sales, a really simple commission plan. 

Tyler Rachal
Yeah, hold on. That's not allowed.

Aaron Fischer
The more layers and levels you have to figure out, the less successful you are as a sales organization.

Tyler Rachal
Yeah. Yeah. You're giving me literally indigestion as I'm just thinking about it. Yeah. It's hilarious. I think my initial comp plan for TaskUs was written in Crayon and then it was by the last one, it was like, sign over the naming rights for your first born and here, take a quick polygraph. It was, wow. And what's crazy is I'd hear from people, I mentioned we would bring in these BPO vets from sales to interview and I remember I got so scared off anytime I wasn't getting hit up by recruiters. But anytime I did from a big BPO, I got so scared off based on my interviews with these people, where they would tell me about closing deals that were grossing for the company, like $50 million and making $0 in commission because of these gotchas basically. It was like, hey, you didn't hit gross margin,and it's like, I didn't hit it? I closed the deal. You told me this price is okay. And now the operating team isn't able to operate at that margin. So I'm making zero bucks. Like this is crazy.

Aaron Fischer
Again, you know, keep it simple stupid principle. I had kind of a whiteboard at OP360. It was a good business. It was profitable, so it allowed me to invest in the company and the organizational structure in order to scale it. And so bringing in a small, but very strategic sales team. I was very conscientious of making sure that I brought different of the three salespeople, different backgrounds, different skill sets, because I knew as a small company, we all had to help each other out. I didn't need three of the same. I didn't need this certain quote unquote, know, BPO sales killer out there, hunter. I needed people that could help support pricing and workforce management and systems and IT and tools. And so I consciously went out and the three individuals all have their strength and all have their opportunities, but they're not identical. And because I didn't create that internal sales competition for leads and for opportunities and for relationships, that everybody had their nice swim lanes, they've helped each other out. And they have individually been more successful in closing deals and making commission and growing their money and their revenue. At the same time, they've helped the company because there isn't a negativity, there isn't a fear that if you take this piece of the pie, I'm gonna lose this piece of the pie, the pie continues to grow with the company. 

And then I knew I had to lay in, I learned a lot of this from TaskUs, I give them a lot of credit, you have to have a good event strategy, because you've got to build a brand awareness, you've got to get a good copy strategy, because you have to be there and show up and be successful. Then we layered in, implementation with excellence. We layered in client services that isn't just a firefighting position, but true value add and help grow those clients and those companies business based upon smart business decisions. Layering in a sales ops and really being able to have great bid writers and RFP responders, creative design artists that really make the material look sharp. We've got a whole research team to be able to research the company, the employees, their customer base   and go back and look at their last eight to 10 financial statements and make sure what is that as a prospect in the company, what's important to them. And so I had the good fortune of a successful company that brought me in to go design and do that a little bit differently, taking on everything that I learned being in best practices, but also the things that didn't work and the mistakes that I saw these big bucks make and don't pull those forward. And so it was a good balance between the two.

Tyler Rachal
That's incredible. And I saw that play out. I was always super impressed because you talked about kind of the vision and what I thought was really great is you got ownership to really step up. They did their part. They really invested. I saw you build out of your team. Obviously I love your sales team. Of course, shout out Josh Nutter, one of the best in the business, but not too much of a shout out. We don't want him to get poached. yeah, Nutter's incredible.

That's all the stuff that kind of worked right. But what didn't work? What was a surprise to you? Was there anything that kind of took longer than you expected, sort of missteps? And I guess a friend to friend question here with nobody listening, did you ever have kind of imposter syndrome? Cause that's something that people commonly have, right? You go into a boardroom, you pitch to the owners like we're going to do, we're going to get them and we're going to start winning and we're going to blow this thing up. And then it's like, you leave the room and you're like, can I do it? Can I really do it? Did that happen to you at all?

Aaron Fischer
Absolutely. And I think a little bit of imposter syndrome is very healthy, right? Because if you go in feeling like you are the smartest person in the room, you're not, and you're going to get beat down and you're going to get blown away. You should stretch yourself to go in and say, hey, this is my vision. This is what I think the market wants. This is where I think we can win opportunities and create really healthy employees and like I said, we do a lot in the markets that we serve, and give back to the community, which a lot of good BPO's do, which is phenomenal, just because we're dealing in countries that are evolving and growing. But absolutely, I mean, you know, this was my first C-suite opportunity. And so, the partners in the room are like, well, okay, you've been doing this for 27 years, what should we do now? And so luckily, I had a little bit of the time, I had the budget. And I was able to, like I said, bring mistakes and best practices forward and explain why I thought it was important. And we grew the company and we grew from two clients to 54 clients and got a diversification in industries and in revenue that allows us to be healthy and continue to invest in the company that invests in our clients. 

But some of the things that surprised me, one it took me a little longer than I thought to build out the organization structure and the team. At the same time, you're trying to grow and sell, but you've got to design and process and implement. That took me by surprise. It probably took me 18 to 24 months and I thought it was going to take six months. I definitely miscalculated.

Tyler Rachal
You're being a player/coach, hard to do both.

Aaron Fischer 
Absolutely. Absolutely. And then when you are a salesperson and it's when you have, and I think you've kind of taught me this, a lot of the tools in the toolkit, right, where you had multiple geographies, multiple languages and multiple industries you served. There wasn't a lot of new prospects that you couldn't give examples for or meet their geographical footprint need or be able to say, hey, I've got like clients and here's what I've done for them that I can do for you prospect. Coming to a small BPO, we were one center in Cebu. So we had one country, one center with really kind of two industries. And it took a little longer and a lot of hard work in order to diversify the company into two different geographies, multiple languages, and then winning that first client in that industry. We don't have a background in. It takes a lot of that trust, but then you build that upon that, right? It's like, we started the TaskUs, I was kind of brought in to be financial services and fintech. Well, we didn't have that. 

But four years later, look at the fintech organization that that company has helped support and grown. And so, you know, that was humbling on going to a much smaller footprint, a little less referenceable clients, a few less industries. And how do you still show up and say, you've got to trust me. Again, I'm big enough to deliver, but I'm small enough to care while you're growing the company and really kind of growing the backbone of the organization to be a full managed service provider.

Tyler Rachal
Yeah. Breaking into other verticals is something that I think is, it's totally dismissed how hard it actually is. 

Aaron Fischer
Nobody wants to be first.

Tyler Rachal
No, and you know the joke that I used to always make a TaskUs I would talk about the single grain of truth. I would be like, as long as we've got a single grain of truth, it's like, have you done customer service? Sure. We've done something that's kind of customer, like we talk to the customers. I remember that we'd get an RFP for phone support. And we'd be like, we're dead in the water. We don't have phones. I remember, I won that deal, and I'll just say it now, hopefully not violating thing, but that ridiculous deal, that I was pursuing, it was, it helped the, the longest deal ever in Salesforce for Task us history 

Aaron Fischer
Beach Body? We use it today. We got a couple of beach bodies in our CRM, but we use that today.

Tyler Rachal
There you go. So Beach Body, worked on that. I think the day count when it was all done, I want to say it was somewhere around 900 days or something like that. It was crazy. It was definitely at least two and a half years, three years of pursuing. Then we win the thing and there are a whole bunch of other issues, but they were like, all right, so let's talk about stuff that you knew, but I definitely didn't knew they're talking about connecting like an actual cable or whatever it is like, telecom or whatever it is. And they're like, yeah, so just let us know like how we connect and like who we should talk to about connecting. I was like, sure, sure thing. Let me just, can I put you on hold real quick? Like, Hey, do we have a way of doing this? Oh, we just have to run a cable across the ocean. No big deal. we got that. Yeah.

Aaron Fischer
Yeah, we can get that T1 dropped across the ocean and get that exactly.

Tyler Rachal
Anyway, that's incredible. But yeah, that all makes a lot of sense. What are you gonna say?

Aaron Fischer
No, think, one, you said that spurred it on as like the success of whether it's an RFP, a proactive proposal, long-term relationship. My success with new opportunities and new clients is purely for the fact that I built and I tried to, and my team does incredible internal relationships with the people that have to do all the hard work. Sales gets the glory, sales gets the money, but we also get fired when we don't hit our numbers. So there's a little bit of a double edged sword there, but the most successful BPO sales individuals that I have come across and that I built my career on is like said, the selling internally 60, 70 % of the time, whether it's C suite  to the agent level or that in order to build, like I said, that internal trust because you're going to ask them to work harder than you are once you get this client in-house. And they've got to believe that you're pricing it successfully, that you've asked the hard questions. And at the end of the day, are you gonna stand up for your internal employees more than you're gonna stand up for the client at times? And I know that's hard to say and hard to think, but that's true. And you have to have that ability to say, you know what, I'm gonna protect my employees because not all clients are fun and not all of them are fair and not all of them are legit. But the ability to do that, and I think that's what, you know, success taught me at Sitel and Sykes and how to build that with a lot of bureaucracy, took it over to TaskUs with you with a new booming company where we were hiring new people within the company left and right, you had to build those relationships and they're going to actually go service the client. Same thing, rinse and repeat at OP360. 

And so they know, my organization knows that if myself and my team brings on a new client that we get it. We've asked those hard questions. We've done it the right way. And it's not just a close in, drop, and we run off because with small enough team, we have to be very aware of that. And so to me, that has been my success in sales because I'm not the technology person. I'm not the workforce management. I'm not really great on some of these big giant spreadsheets, but the willingness to make sure that my company is gonna step up for me and deliver based upon the fact that they believe I have their best interests at heart is how you win a lot of good business within this market.

Tyler Rachal
Yeah. And I think that again, that's like another nuanced thing that you're pointing out that I will stress is I would call them kind of character revealing events. And there's two big ones that come to mind. One is the classic, someone on your team, there's some sort of moment and every service company does this, right? It's like client gets unhappy. So somebody's heads gotta come off, right? We got, we got to chop somebody's head.

And as the salesperson, it's very character revealing to me is like, what do you do? What do you show to the client in that moment? Are you going to defend your people? Now you don't have to defend something that is truly a mistake. You can own the mistake, but to me, it's the easy route to throw somebody under the bus. And the thing is that person will, I have a lot of people that I've worked with at TaskUs over the years and they're now well onto the other things, but we have, have these relationships. And it's because I just, never, and they did the same thing for me, I never took the bait. And the other big one too, it's the same thing internally is that, you know, all too well now you're in this chair, but when there's someone who is the head of sales or the C-suite, right? What's the classic thing a salesperson does, they say, the head of sales says, Hey, I'm, you know, it's pipeline report. What's going on with this deal? Like what's going on? It's I'm hearing, we're having trouble with implementation or whatever it is. And there are many, many a salespeople who will happily say, yeah, so-and-so they're standing in the way they're doing whatever. And what happens is inevitably that person gets steamrolled by the executive, right? The classic thing is the VP of sales comes in and says to operations, I can't believe like this person, what are they doing? Blah, blah. And to me, like that stuff is like short term satisfaction. You get the satisfaction of a obstacle being removed, but man, you're not playing a good long-term game because that person, you'll never have their trust ever again. And so that's kind of like a fork in the road that I think so many salespeople hit and I get it. When it comes to trying to get a deal done, trying to cover your own ass. It's like very, very easy, low hanging fruit.

Aaron Fischer
Yeah, but they say it's so short term and and and at the end of the day, an organization will eat their own. And if sales person does that one too many times, you're not going to get the attention, focus, and output that you're going to need from the company that's behind you. And so, again, no soul crushing clients to, like you said, stepping up and protecting your organization. But at the same time, one of my best practices of building those relationships internally is teach them, pump them up and put them in front of the prospects. They're incredibly talented, whether it's recruiting, to training, to quality assurance, to reporting, put them in front of the prospect. That does two things. The prospect realizes, okay, I'm not just talking to the salesperson. There's something more than just the salesperson, even though I kind of like them. 

But two is they're getting in meeting the organization they're going to work with. And there's nothing more enlightening to see somebody might be head of quality assurance, been a little bit of camera shy, but you pull out their strength, their superpowers and help coach and practice with them. And you put them in a full on, final oral presentation and they nail it. You win these deals because of all of those little successes of those individuals having the passion of what they do in their department. It comes across naturally and that prospect goes, this company is authentic. This salesperson is a pretty good quarterback. They're not hiding anything. They're not stepping in the way of their organization. And they're showing me the team that I'm going to ultimately have to work with. Yeah, there are going be mistakes. There's going to be problems, going be issues. But you know what? I trust this company. And when things go wrong, they're going to be there. And when things go right, they're going to be right there with me to grow.

Tyler Rachal
Yeah, no, that's a, that's such a great point. I'm thinking now back finally to when TaskUs opened in San Antonio and we had, I think like a two or three team members, teammates that were actually working for customers. We basically had nothing. We had a small room and I can distinctly remember, we love giving shout outs here on What Worked, I'll give a shout out to Brandy Andrews. I worked with the entire team and the entire team was awesome, but Brandy just sticks out because, I went to San Antonio. I was going to be doing my first prospective client site visit down there and met with the entire team. And it was just so cool seeing Brandy, classic example. She knew her craft. She was incredible when it came to training, understood it, passionate about it, knew her stuff, had never been in, put in the position of pitching to win business. And there was this great kind of moment where it was like, Hey, I can learn a lot from you, which I did. And she, I think, learned a lot from me in terms of how to structure one of those. A great site visit is like a symphony. As the salesperson that's owning the opportunity, you are the conductor, you're not playing the music you are, you are bringing everyone in and you want it's like, cue the horns, I want everyone to sound crispy to sound what I want you to be your best self. And I'm here to pump you up. Yeah, that totally resonates.

Aaron Fischer
Yeah, one line is, and you'll remember, chateau ridiculous, Jean.

Tyler Rachal
Yes, Jean the chemist, wasn't she a background in like, bio, you know, something organic chemistry or something like that?

Aaron Fischer
Sharp, bright, to the point, there was no BS. Having her trust me and I trust her, but when I set her up within that orchestra of that site visit, when she played her part, which was really, it's her personal role and how she conducts business was so powerful, but you had to know how to draw that out and how to deliver that on behalf of the prospect where you're at in that sales cycle and where you're at in that site visit.

Tyler Rachal
Totally. Yeah, without a doubt, man, something that you and I probably have experience with that I think is just such a weird niche thing in the world of BPO is that I have been a part of some incredible site visits, but I'm sure you have been a part of some nightmares too. There was one where the prospect wanted to talk to, I don't know, felt like everyone in the building. He wanted one on one time with every agent. It was like a nine hour site visit. And we had to share a van on the way back from Pompanga, now we're getting really inside baseball for anybody who knows BPO Pompanga to Manila. But we had to deal with that EDSA traffic two ways, right? And the entire time, this is just a unique thing to BPO, I felt like I can't fall asleep like around the guy, right? Isn't that kind of weird? You're in the van with these people and you're like, but to make conversation for four and a half, five hours with someone you pay. It's crazy. This is like fear factor type stuff. It's worse than tarantulas.

Aaron Fischer 
Exactly, two quick site visit stories at previous companies. So I got to say that, previous companies. Walking the prospect in between call center floors by a bathroom, and there's this huge bang, bam, almost like a bomb went off in the bathroom. All of a sudden, an agent comes out, and we're like, what happened? He goes, I was sitting up on the counter clipping my toenails, and the whole counter fell off the wall on the bathroom floor, right in the middle of the prospects walking through. I'm just like, okay, one, you broke the bathroom, two, you're clipping your toenails. I'm like, just grossed out. True story.

Tyler Rachal
Yeah and you’re like anyway, about KPIs.

Aaron Fischer
Exactly. Second, walking through the production floor. This is back when security was becoming more and more important, going through certain security protocols to get on the production floor. We're walking by and she was a brand new client, but it was her first site visit, walking her through her dedicated floor space. And there was an agent leaning back on the phone and just doing a butterfly knife, how they can spin their butterfly knife. After I spent 30 minutes describing the physical security of this amazing new call center.

Tyler Rachal
Yeah, you're like, listen, we got a clean desk policy. You're not even getting a pencil into this place. Meanwhile, someone's like, you know, doing knife tricks. That's mad.

Aaron Fischer
Right on her program. And I'm just like, yeah. So I mean, I've had multiple petrifying site visit stories. But hey, humans are human, that happens. And our product is humans and so it's going to happen.

Tyler Rachal
That's it. It's like people, they are incredible. They're wonderful. They're also capable of just about anything. That's so funny. Well, listen, this has been an awesome conversation. I know we were going to maybe wax philosophically about the future of work, which probably nobody wants to hear. Hopefully for the 10 people that are going to listen to this, but they will listen to every word cause they know us personally, hopefully this has been entertaining.

Aaron, this has been so awesome having you on. It took way too long, dude. I'm seriously impressed by everything you've done. The last question I do like to ask is if there are people out there that want to get in touch with you, we've had guests on here that are investors in companies or advisors, or they do speaking gigs or whatever it might be. What type of stuff do you want people to reach out to you for? And what's the best way for them to get in touch with you?

Aaron Fischer
Yeah, no surprise, outsourced CX, outsourced customer care, multi-channel. But I think the litmus test for both myself and the future prospects that might be listening to this is you're going to have to care as much about your customer as I care about my agent. Those have to be on the same plane. You can't have an imbalance of that. And so if you're going to care for my agent as much as you care about your customer, we're going to do great business together. We're going to grow. We're going to make some mistakes. But we're ultimately going to increase the value of your organization. You're going to help me grow. And I think that's just incredibly important in this business. Anybody can reach me at Aaron at op360.com. I mean, that's the easiest way. If there's one thing I learned is shortening those email addresses. I came on, it was a fischer at office partners 360.com. And it took me about four hours into my first day to change that to  Aaron at op360.com. 

Tyler Rachal
Good first choice. That's awesome. And I will say, I do gas you guys up. I had the unique thing of, I was at TaskUs, then before I started Hireframe, I had a short stint where I was doing BPO brokerage. And so it was interesting, especially that stint that I had in BPO brokerage. I really learned about the full landscape. When I was at TaskUs. I had some idea about who our primary competitors were, but I really didn't know the big companies, how they worked. And I got this unique viewpoint when I was a broker because I was effectively the one running a lot of these RFPs. So I saw everybody's responses. I saw everybody's pricing. And what I always say about you guys, when I'm talking to someone who could be a potential customer is exactly what you said. Sometimes it's about catching someone, catching a vendor at the right time and place in their history, because there's this kind of in-between stage.

When they're so small, they really just can't do much for you because they just, as your business grows, you will outgrow them. But once they get too big, there's very little that they can do for you as a true partner. All they are built to do those large BPOs, they are just built to run every single account like it's its own P and L. And it's about making it as big as possible and as profitable as possible. Little accounts really just don't make a lot of financial sense to them. And you'll feel that in the relationship, but you guys are at this sweet in-between stage because of your size, but your capabilities. Like you said, you are in multiple different service delivery locations, and you cover different languages and you guys have now diversified in terms of your industries, right? But there will come a day, especially if OP360 sells to a big company or whatever it is where you guys get gigantic, there will come a day where you just become honestly, I say this respectfully, just like everybody else. And that's kind of the nature of it. It's hard not to, right? I'm sure the same criticism has been laid on TaskUs, which I obviously am still very fond of that business. But that's the nature of it. They're a gigantic corporation now. It was awesome having you on. You are a legend, especially to me. And, and I'm very excited, on this adventure, I'm so keen to see what happens with Office Partners 360. And I'm also keen to see what you do afterwards. So Aaron Fischer, you're the man. Thank you for joining us.

Aaron Fischer
Thanks, Tyler, appreciate it. And again, friends first, now business partners, and who knows where our future will go together. I appreciate it.

Tyler Rachal
Yeah, it's just a recorded call between friends. It's going to get put on LinkedIn and every other major media platform that we can put it on. So that's it. Just friends talking. Now we should talk about the dirt. No, I'm just kidding. All right, everybody. Thanks for tuning in. We'll see you on the next one. And again, as always, if you're listening to this and you're a friend of Aaron's and you have no idea who I am or what What Worked is I would ask that if you think you would be a good guest for the show or if there's someone that you know would be a good guest for the show, I'm always down for a conversation. So thank you so much. we'll catch you guys on the next one.