Donating blood is a selfless act. It always has been, and until we are able to create something that can be a safe substitute for human blood, the act of donating blood is a crucial call to action that relatively few people actually answer.
Three out of four American citizens will need at least one blood transfusion in their lives, at some point. Out of all the population of the United States, only thirty-six percent of individuals are eligible to donate, and an even smaller percentage actually do donate their blood.
At one of our last blood drives, I decided it was time to make a video of myself donating to show the world how easy it is for someone that is in relatively good health to donate blood. I was well-hydrated and had a good iron-rich meal within four hours of donating. Without further delay, I give to you my only experience on camera donating a whole blood donation at an Incept company blood drive.
So what did you think? If you are already a blood donor then you know how easy it is to give the gift of life in the form of a blood donation. Hopefully if you’ve never donated blood before, this video will inspire you to contribute your first whole blood donation.
You are saving up to three lives, and, at the very least, you are making life conditions better for someone else.
Think about it!
At Incept we believe that positivity trumps negativity in everything. Does that mean we don’t learn from a negative experience? No. But what it does mean is that once we learn, we move on and make it better rather than dwelling on the bad. This message is especially vital to convey effectively with our Conversational Marketing™ Experts (CMEs), since they are at the forefront of speaking with and dealing with the blood donors’ questions or concerns. To be able to help our CMEs stay as knowledgeable and conversational as possible, we coach them! We even train members of management in a specified coaching class that guides completely and thoroughly on how to utilize the Positive Coach Approach so there is always a unified and consistent coaching method, as well.
Let’s take a look at a few bullet points on why taking a Positive Coach Approach with your representatives will ultimately give your organization the advantage of developing self-accountable representatives!
The Positives of Implementing The Positive Coach Approach With Your Representatives
- Positivity is contagious. Do you know someone who can walk into a room and brighten things up? Doesn’t it feel good to be in the midst of a positive group of people? It makes you want to crack a smile yourself or even go as far as to be more considerate to others around you. Here at Incept, when a CME is getting coached, we want to deliver it to them in a positive way. Make your CME relaxed by asking them how their day is going or even joking around a little before going over the coaching session. Start off with the positives you heard. That doesn’t mean you have to sugarcoat it, but try to be sincere! When you focus on the good and create a safe environment to coach in it will also make it easier for the CME to accept responsibility, and they will be more cooperative and accountable when working towards areas that need improvement.
- Positivity before negativity has more meaningful impact. I don’t know about you, but I always am able to be more effective in my work when I leave my weekly meetings on a positive note. The same thing can be said when coaching a Conversational Marketing™ Expert (CME). One method that Incept employs in using the Positive Coach Approach is that when we coach a CME on their calls, we begin with a positive aspect of the calls before touching base with suggested improvements. The reasoning is simple: positivity is stronger than negativity. When the CME knows we heard what they were doing well and not just focusing on areas of weakness, they feel encouraged. It helps them to open up to suggestions on how to improve. Hopefully you are seeing the theme on creating self-accountable representatives with this method!
- Positivity translates into your representative’s calls. One of the first things I learned at Incept was that the donor could most likely distinguish the positivity in my tone simply by if I was smiling or not. When your reps smile, your donors can also hear it. That positivity is encouraged by creating a safe environment with the Positive Coach Approach that directly affects call quality in a good way!
These are just a few reasons why Incept strongly believes in what the Positive Coach Approach can bring to the table. Overall, it creates a safe environment to educate in, gives the representatives you’re working with a feeling of self-accountability and self-worth, and (most importantly) provides your organization with a unified message and method to effectively motivate and transform good reps into great reps. What do you have to lose?
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I think I might have brought this memory up before, but I’ll reminisce again for old time’s sake.
Back in the summer of 2007, I was seventeen years old and looking for a job. It didn’t matter what it was; as long as they didn’t make me cut my shaggy hair, I was game for it. After scouring the local paper and internet ads for a part-time gig, I found it: COUNTRY CLUB HIRING SUMMER HELP. The local bigwig watering hole had some openings!
I was hired in to my hometown’s country club as a grill cook for the pool snack bar. The days were long, the flat iron was hot, and my boombox in the kitchen was loud. I usually threw my long hair up and behind a navy blue bandana, revealing my earrings, and I normally left my collared shirt untucked. As the summer at the pool would continue, I found myself less and less enthralled to go to work when I needed to. I didn’t have much motivation, and I didn’t really like the people who I was serving. I found myself taking occasional golf cart rides on slow days, and experimenting with mixing Slushie flavors together was one of my favorite pastimes. I had no real meaning at that job. Nothing was there to develop me into a worker who wanted to stay when the season was over, and, needless to say, I left after that summer. I always call it my “Caddy Shack” summer.
Three years later, I found myself broke, looking for a job to help pay my bills, and discouraged. While I sat in my local plasma center donating plasma for a small bit of cash, I got a text from a friend who worked for Incept asking why I haven’t called about my application. At that moment, when I had finished my donation and collected my dough, I made a direct trip to the offices of Incept.
When I arrived at Incept and arranged to meet with one of the managers of the HR department, I sat quietly and waited for them. In my head I went over what I wanted to act like and how I wanted to be perceived over and over again until I was summoned. To make a long story short, my on-the-spot interview went well, and I was hired in to Incept a week later as a Conversational Marketing™ Expert (CME).
I’ve been with Incept since May of 2010. Part of the reason I have stayed at Incept is because I feel I have found a sense of legitimacy in what I do. As a Conversational Marketing™ Expert (CME), I have helped save thousands of peoples’ lives in my time on the phones recruiting blood donors. I have developed personal relationships with all of my bosses to a point where I look forward to being able to come to work and joke around a little bit but still keep things productive. No matter what role I have been put into I have always been encouraged to do better and shown what I can do firsthand to improve when I needed to. I haven’t simply been looked at as just another number or someone they are investing in, I’ve also been looked at as a person in my time here.
Part of the reason why Incept continues to grow at rates of 40% per year is simply due to the fact that we instill a sense of meaning into our Conversational Marketing™ Experts (CMEs) right from the start of training. You are not simply flipping burgers. You are not just coming in for another day. You really are making a difference in the world working at Incept. Incept truly educates you about the importance of donating blood, and in an effort to walk the walk that we talk, we host between 4-6 blood drives every single year. Incept truly does an amazing job of instilling the importance of what we do into its employees. Some days that was all it took to get me to work: the simple fact that I knew I was making a difference with my conversations and was part of a company that valued me as a person.
What does your organization do to give meaning to your employees?
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People are all made differently, and I say that in a quite literal manner.
In the past twenty years in the United States of America the adult obesity rate has been steadily climbing. At the time of this writing, one out of every three adults are obese within the country. Projections on the topic look grim as well with scientist, doctors and nutritionist alike speculating that by the year 2030 up to 42% of Americans could fall within the category of being obese. However, there is always a bright side to every situation one encounters. More people are starting to recognize the importance of exercise and the benefits it can bring to their health. More and more folks are starting to take control of their lives by simply being physically active.
How do you exercise?
I love exercising. When I’m not throwing around free weights in my apartment, I’m usually on my road bike taking a trek around downtown Canton and other surrounding communities. Recently, I actually just accomplished my longest bicycle ride ever – 85 miles in one day! Soon I’ll hit the century mark, though. The benefits of trying to become physically fit are well worth all the grunts in the gym, drops of sweat on your brow and any other soreness you might encounter.
The Ways Exercise Affects Your Blood and Cardiovascular System
Since much of the work Incept does is to help blood centers and blood banks recruit blood donors, I thought this might be an interesting topic to dive into.
Our body chemistry is always constantly changing, trying to keep a state of harmonious equilibrium within itself. When you exercise you are putting stress on your body. The human body, being the biologically engineered wonder that it is, will compensate for this stress in numerous different ways. Initially, your body is going to want more oxygen in order to produce energy more efficiently and effectively. When you exercise you are actually helping your body produce more red blood cells that end up carrying more oxygen throughout your bloodstream, to put it in simple terms.
Exercising also can be extremely beneficial for your cardiovascular system. The average resting heart rate is roughly 70 beats per minute. When you exert yourself in your exercises you are also raising your current heart rate depending on the activity. The higher your heart rate, the harder your heart is working to pump blood throughout your body in order to deliver oxygen. This really helps your cardiovascular system get a workout and can lead to benefits such as decreased risk of heart disease and stroke due to your veins expanding and contracting depending on the need for blood in certain areas of your body. This results in a healthy blood pressure. Fascinating, eh?
There are other benefits too, such as your body producing good cholesterol to carry bad cholesterol to the liver to be processed, proceesing blood glucose much more efficiently as energy (and not stored in fat cells), and impacting the way you look and feel. At the end of the day, one should try to make every effort possible to at least get some type of minimal physical activity into their daily routine.
How do you like to exercise? Do you lift weights? Ride a bike? Run? Let us know!
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What is a company, but a large group of like-minded individuals working towards a common goal?
At Incept over the last few months we have formed groups of competitive teams amongst our Conversational Marketing™ Experts (CMEs). In the industry of telecommunications, success is usually something that every firm out there wants to taste immediately through the attainment of high front-end statistics. The sad thing is most of these companies, in wake of their initial achievements, fail to recognize the importance and cost-saving measures of analyzing the whole picture of their client’s goals and available statistics. Sure, your reps might be running above goal, but could they be doing better collectively? Is the idea of creating small, competitive teams of reps a cost-saving and performance-boosting plan for you contact center?
How Creating Teams of Representatives for Your Company Can Lead to Further Success
Have you ever heard of the saying, “If it ain’t broken, don’t fix it”? That might hold true to us at Incept, if one of our core values wasn’t being never satisfied.
I’m a huge fan of Mad Men since I work in the office world. I can’t help but to think of Don Draper when I enter through Incept’s doors. He is a character that is not satisfied with just doing good; he wants the highest level of performance he can get for his advertising firm and will fine-tune the way things are run at his company until that golden level of homeostasis is won.
At Incept we formed teams amongst our Conversational Marketing Experts (CMEs) for a variety of different reasons. Here are a few of those reasons and the benefits that we as a company have reaped from this type of employee management.
- It further solidifies our family like company culture.
One of the biggest things we pride ourselves on at Incept is being a workplace that people truly can form friendships at. We support this notion fully. It is rewarding to win as a company, but to win as a family of friends who happen to work at the same company can taste even sweeter. Our Conversational Marketing™ Experts (CMEs) form relationships with each other creating camaraderie, helpfulness on the floor, self-governing employee accountability, and even a little bit of friendly competition between fellow teams.
- It allows us to focus on individual performance attributes.
So many contact centers think success lies in front-end stats, but in all reality for Incept, we look at the whole picture. We keep track of each Conversational Marketing™ Expert’s (CME’s) personal statistics for their outbound goals, update times between calls, schedule-to-date appointments, and even personal variance. All of these personal stats get taken into account for each team’s success. When these stats are all kept in mind, we are able to effectively see where the CME might need help in a certain area and give them positive reinforcement and education on what they are doing good at and how they can do better. This idea gives the CME personal accountability for their own performance and actions as their success can only further their team’s success. Creating friendly competition is a good thing!
- It places emphasis on goals that are important to our clients that determine our own success.
Our own President, Sam Falletta, has made it personally clear at multiple Employee of the Month meetings within the company that Incept operates with our clients in mind first, then Incept’s goals next, following with the employee. When we take a concept such as creating teams amongst the CMEs and setting those client goals as a precursor to our own success, then we have literally created an employee that understands why we are doing what we are doing and takes those client goals into consideration as their own through their personal performance. It really is that simple.
Does your company have teams of employees striving towards the same goals? What are some more benefits behind this technique of community management?
Lately at Incept, I’ve been having conversations with more and more blood donors about trying to donate platelets.
When it comes to donating blood, sometimes – depending on the donor’s type and if they meet certain qualifications – an apheresis style donation is a lot more beneficial to the receiving blood bank.
When donating the component of the blood known as thrombocytes, better known as platelets, the process is literally the same as doing a red cell donation or a plasma donation. As with any aphaeretic style donation the objective and reasoning behind it all is to collect a specific component of the blood to turn it into multiple transfusable products that wouldn’t have been directly obtainable with just a regular whole blood donation.
At the microscopic level, a platelet looks a lot like tiny, fluffy, white cloves floating around in our blood streams. Whenever your skins gets a nasty cut or scratch your body produces a scab due to platelets forming so that new skin may heal beneath. Perhaps the most obvious function of a platelet cell is to clot when bleeding occurs inside or outside of the body.
One of the biggest reasons why the need for platelets is of constant concern for many blood centers and blood banks is due to the fact that platelets only have a shelf life of five days, unlike whole blood which has a shelf life of three to four weeks. Needless to say, there is little that can be done when it comes to attempting to set up any sort of steady supply. That is just another reason why a blood donor’s help is so frequently needed. Another underlying factor for the consistent need for platelets comes from many more surgeries and procedures taking place in hospitals every day. These procedures can include organ transplants, emergency room surgeries, and especially cancer patients going through chemotherapy and other treatments.
Oftentimes people with blood types of A+, B+, and especially AB+ are suggested to try a platelet donation if they meet their blood bank’s physical requirements. The process can take between one-and-a-half hours to two hours, but most blood banks offer magazines or have televisions going with popular movies to help pass the time. Many donors who meet qualifications find it to be quite comfortable.
In the upcoming summer months, if you have one of the above preferred blood types for donating platelets, what is stopping you from making a donation that can drastically improve someone’s living condition or even save their life?
When I am at work a very common question that I usually am asked on the phones at Incept by prospective blood donors is, “Do I get paid for my blood donation?” I can’t help but to think back to my days of plasma donating every time I hear that question.
Granted, time is money. But when it comes to giving a literal part of yourself, such as a blood component, who is really benefiting when you donate plasma? The fact of the matter is this: while some plasma donations are used to treat hemophiliacs, burn victims, and other certain types of medical conditions, many plasma donations go to research facilities where different types of testing can be done and not always directly to those in need. Once you donate your plasma, you really do not have any control where it goes to or how it is used.
How Donor Loyalty Programs Help You As A Donor And Those In Need
It is always refreshing when I am speaking with a blood donor who has a lifetime donation count of twenty, thirty, or fifty donations! I’ve even talked with a handful of donors that have donated blood their whole lives and have one hundred lifetime donations or more, believe it or not! Many times, these folks do not need to be given an incentive to donate blood, they just understand the importance and the healing power and positivity that a single donation can bring to someone’s life.
But since we are on the topic of being paid for certain types of donations, what better thing to bring up than donor loyalty programs? While you may be a blood donor who isn’t in it for the reward – other than saving a few lives – donor loyalty programs can be a nice way for blood banks and blood centers to give back to their donor base and build gentle encouragement toward continuous giving.
A few non-profit organizations that really hit the mark with their donor loyalty programs are LifeSource and Central Blood Bank with Brighten Life (BL Rewards).
It’s quite simple, actually. You show up and donate and get points per donation! Depending on the type of donation you do, you can get more points to spend in their online store. They have gift cards including Olive Garden, Kohls, The Home Depot, and Mobil Gas, as well as many more to choose. The best thing is even if you do not want to spend those points on yourself, you can donate those points to the Lukemia and Lymphoma Society in the form of $15 and $25 donations!
Many blood banks and blood centers have donor loyalty programs, so take the initiate to see what your local center has to offer you. Above everything else you can rest assured that your blood donation is going directly to those who need it!
What type of donor loyalty program do you participate in?
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Of course, you might already know that at Incept we take pride in recruiting blood donors for several different blood banks and blood centers across the country. In fact, we’re pretty good at it. We take pride in what we do, and we support donating blood and the positive healing power it can have on someone’s life when you donate.
In terms of business and life, actions will always speak louder than words. Where words fail to resonate those actions and their implementations will still be felt. Many Conversational Marketing™ Experts (CMEs) aren’t just saving lives in other states, but right here in their own county and regional area, as well. Incept holds blood drives every quarter of the calendar year here at the company in Canton, Ohio, which result in hundreds of donations that ultimately save many lives.
The beauty behind recognizing something like this is the fact that Incept wants the people it employs to believe in what they do. We encourage our Conversational Marketing™ Experts (CMEs) to donate if they physically can because it also gives them a personal experience that they can relate to with any donor they speak with – definitely an added, albeit indirect psychological bonus if you think about it.
I can’t tell you how many times from my own calls to blood donors that I find it incredibly helpful when I use my own personal experience of donating blood to educate and successfully recruit a donor to donate. Overall, however, the most important thing for me personally is the fact that even if I have had a less than stellar day on the phones, if I have made even just one appointment and that blood donor goes into donate I still made a difference.
Quite simply put, when you practice what you preach and you encourage your employees to do the same, you strengthen the relationship with your employees as well as your customers and clients who will be the ones that really benefit.
How do you encourage your employees to “walk the walk and talk the talk”? What does that phrase mean to you?
Do you like where you work?
What about the reason you work where you do? Do you like why you go into work in the first place? On top of those questions, do you actually enjoy the people you work with? You know, your peers, your bosses and such? Do you like working with them every day?
You might already know a little bit about Incept and how we are continuing to steadily make it known in the blood donor recruitment field why we are able to consistently strengthen the relationship with each blood donor we talk to while representing our multiple clients. A lot of that has to do with the overall environment in which we work.
I love pizza. It is one of my personal favorite “feel good” foods. Did you have a bad day? Eat some pizza. Did your car break down? Eat some pizza. Did your girlfriend break up with you? Eat some pizza. You could be having the worst day of your life, but you’ll never not want to eat a slice of pizza. It just feels good. So picture your favorite pizza to eat. It doesn’t matter if it is one of the big-named 
franchises or your local, beat-up, hole-in-the-wall kind of joint. You know, the one where it looks like mafia members do business deals. Now continue to picture your favorite pie. Remember how it tastes? How the dough is just so fresh -lightly crispy but hearty and just the perfect golden-brown on the bottom. Can you picture the sweetness of the marinara sauce as it introduces itself to your taste buds? And just when you think it couldn’t get any better, your palate gets body slammed by a wave of pepperonis surfing on mozzarella. I love a pizza pie because all the ingredients come together to make up something great.
Before I get too hungry, the whole recipe to our company atmosphere can be broken down into three essential ingredients that come together to create this crispy, but lightly crunchy, cheesy, saucy mess of an awesome metaphorical pizza. I guess in our case you could say the Conversational Marketing™ Experts (CMEs) are the toppings!
Simple Ingredients Towards Making a Positive Work Environment
- Invoke meaning for the job in your employees. Never before coming to Incept did I ever realize the importance of donating blood – I mean, to a point, as I did donate in high school. However, I had nowhere near as much knowledge of donating blood prior to working at Incept! I also have a clear idea of the good that I’m doing while recruiting blood donors. I’m not just flipping burgers or mowing grass or anything like that, but I’m literally making a difference in someone’s life with each blood donor who donates. There truly is meaning in what I do as Conversational Marketing™ Expert (CME) that goes beyond the paycheck. Instilling meaning into an employee’s position can give them drive to naturally want to do well.
- Be open to explain why certain company decisions are made. Our very own president, Sam Falletta, is a man that doesn’t just hide behind closed doors of an office all day. He makes himself available to company employees. He explains the choices he makes for the company and the progress our company makes to everyone during a few of our Employee of the Month meetings, as well as monthly CME meetings. At Incept, we understand why a lot of choices are made because Sam has explained on how our clients come first, followed by our own company goals, and then the company takes care of it’s employees. The beauty of this philosophy is each individual employee puts their best effort towards our clients, which in turn benefits our company ultimately benefiting them as it comes full-circle. The more our clients we represent win, the more Incept and its individual employees win as a team.
- It really is about the people you work with and employ. At Incept, the concept of family comes with high priority. I can say with confidence that I have never worked at a place where I have so many friends in one building. Isn’t that great? I truly think so. We have had employees hold company bake sales for other employees during times of hardship – where whatever the bake sale makes Incept matches to give to that person. Conversational Marketing™ Experts (CMEs) aren’t just competitive, but cooperative, and everyone is friendly to each other and learns from each other for the most part. And truly our upper management at Incept reveal themselves to be real people. They are professional, but at the same time step up to be genuinely real and offer an open door and a listening ear to anything you bring to them. The constructive and family-like atmosphere at Incept truly is what distinguishes our Conversational Marketing™ firm from just another telerecruitment agency and plays a cornerstone role in our growing success within the industry.
So now that you know some steps what are you waiting on to start building a more positive work environment for your company? What are some other ways to build positivity in the workplace? Are you someone reading this looking to join the Incept team for employment around the Canton, Ohio area? Click here!
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At the beginning of the work week, how easy is it to find yourself in that “Office Space” kind of mindset?
Trudging into work with your personal autopilot switch already flipped to “on” is, without a doubt, all too easy of a routine to get into. But think outside the cubical in terms of what you really do on a day-to-day basis. Having a job – or even a career – at its roots is how most of us make a living. However, beyond the paycheck, what do you take away from your occupation?
The reason I say this is because, quite simply, life is too short to have a never-ending case of the Mondays.
At Incept, our Conversational Marketing Experts (CMEs) have a purpose that certainly goes beyond their paychecks. They save lives through conversations, and that fact is reinforced the very moment training starts. In one year’s worth of employment at Incept, a Conversational Marketing Expert (CME) can save more lives than any fireman or policeman will save in their entire careers of service – and I say that with the utmost respect. One whole blood donation has the amazing ability to save the lives of up to three people, or at the very least make the lives of those people better. It really is because of the many meaningful conversations that take place every day at Incept that we are able to accomplish not only our goals for our clients and our own company, but make a real-world difference for an individual in need.
I can’t tell you how many times I’ve called someone, as a Conversational Marketing Expert (CME), and have had a genuinely great conversation with the donor I’m speaking with. The number is simply countless. But why? Because I believe in what I do. I believe in donating blood and the life-changing effects it can bring to someone’s life. I believe in giving our donors the best customer service experience possible. I believe in Incept’s drive and leading ingenuity within our industry. I believe in my fellow coworkers and value my comradeship with them. I believe that even if I only schedule one person to donate on a given day that I have still made the world a better place before I clock out for the night.
Now, granted, every employer is different. Every occupation brings its own challenges to the table, as well, but that doesn’t mean you cannot look for purpose in anything that you do. I implore you to literally take an approach to treat everyone as your customer in whatever it is you do. Remember, no matter what job you have, no matter if it is a Monday or not, search for the meaning and purpose in your job. Chances are you have a bigger purpose than you really think!
What is something meaningful you take away from your occupation?
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