TAG – Face-To-Face Sales Organization Hired By Large Telecom, Energy, And Office Supply Giants

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Below is our recent interview with Jaime Hepp, President of TAG:

Q: Could you provide our readers with a brief introduction to TAG?

A: TAG is face-to-face sales organization hired by large telecom, energy, and office supply giants. Our clients spend an enormous amount of money on TV, radio, digital marketing, etc to acquire and retain customers. Our niche is very simple: Give us a portion of that advertising budget, and we’ll turn it in to new and retained customers with our well trained, sharp, ambitious, college educated team of young professionals. Human to human contact has become somewhat of a lost art, and as years go by, it seems like our niche is more and more in demand by the Fortune 500 companies.

Q: Can you give us some insight as to the volume of customers that your company can produce for your clients?

A: We have been in business for over 20 years. Every year, we acquire hundreds of thousands of new customers for our clients which translates in to billions of dollars of lifetime value for our clients. It’s really quite remarkable. When I stumbled in to this 20 years ago, I would not have imagined such success.

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Q: Why do you think that is? How are you so successful?

A: As stated in the first question, it seems like face-to-face interaction has become a lost art. Everyone’s tuned in to something digitally. Yet we all crave the human interaction. If I moved in to a new city and wanted to find a nice restaurant to eat at, what would be the most influential means of getting me to try a restaurant. A commercial? An email? A direct mail piece? Or a referral from a person that I can trust?

Q: Wow. That’s impressive. We have seen you and your company win countless awards like “Top 10 Best Places to Work in LA and Orange County” and “Top 101 Best and Brightest Companies to Work for in the United States”. What’s your secret?

A: I know it sounds cliche, but the answer is the people working here. Step one foot in to our business and you’ll see. I believe that we have the best of the best young professionals working here than anywhere in the country. I think Google would argue that they are the best – but they are attracting mostly engineers to their company. We want the most sociable, friendly, entrepreneurial graduates from all over the country.

Q: Why do so many people want to work with you, Jaime?

A: A couple of reasons. First, everyone is expected to move up and move up quickly. We don’t want stagnation. We don’t want our people content in their current role. Everyone is challenged to grow personally and professionally.mI read a quote from Tony Robbins on Twitter a couple of weeks ago: “People are not lazy. They simply have goals that do not inspire them. “I believe that to be a true statement. We desire an inspired team. The second reason we attract very talented people is the unique business model we have. Our people have an opportunity to move up in to a position where they can be in charge and they can have equity in the business. I think of it as “intrepreneurs” or “inside entrepreneurs”. That’s what attracted me 20 years ago.

Q: We also see that your company is involved with many philanthropic ventures like raising money for Operation Smile and the Boys and Girls Club. How has this become a part of your company culture?

A: Years ago, I read Stephen Covey’s book “The 8th Habit”. He wrote about the most admired companies in the future will be companies that meet all 4 human needs for its employees: Mental, Physical, Social/Emotional, and Spiritual. He said that today, most companies only fulfill one of these needs – the physical need. Money. Putting a roof over your head. Putting food in your belly. And the other needs are typically not met. That really made me think. What could we do to meet the other three human needs for our people. Physical – we play basketball together on a weekly basis and offer a free gym membership to all employees. Check. Social/Emotional – we meet up every Wednesday as an office (offices around the country) for our “Team Night” where we eat at local restaurants and just hang out. Spiritual – that one was a little trickier to figure out. We focused on “service” to fulfill that need. Service that we couldn’t get paid for. Volunteering, helping out people that wouldn’t expect it. Helping out non-profit organizations has become one of the most fulfilling roles of working with TAG.

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Q: What can we expect from TAG in the future?

A: It’s time for us to work with tech companies. We’ve made a great run with the big telecoms – now we want the biggest companies in Silicon Valley. We now have Salesforce as our CRM platform, and we can communicate with customers face-to-face, over the phone, and digitally. We want to become the biggest and best customer acquisition and retention company in the world. We want these companies to outsource that entire piece of business to us. Wish us luck.