Brandon Steiner
CEO at The Steiner Agency
Website Address: www.brandonsteiner.com
About The Steiner Agency:
Brandon Steiner has been a salesman for over 50 years. From turning his paper route into a certifiable business, to changing the face of memorabilia, he’s spent almost his entire life perfecting the ideals of customer service. With an unparalleled understanding of the service industry, he has now set his sights on educating the next generation of exceptional salespeople.
What was the biggest obstacle you had to overcome in your business?
Initially, being taken seriously.
What makes your company unique?
There is no one doing what I am doing with my team.
What is a tip for success that you would provide someone in your same industry?
Be consistent, think outside of the box, and keep the faith.
The biggest change in marketing that I see coming in the next 5 years is?
The long-lasting effects of COVID. The second wave of COVID will change marketing techniques drastically, for both the buyer and the seller.
How did your collectibles business, Collectible Exchange, get started?
It was actually a sign of a little bit of desperation and a little bit of luck. I was doing all these appearances. I wasn’t making that much money, and I saw this, I think I was doing something with American Express and Roger Staubach, and I saw this client running down the hallway with all these items he wanted Roger to sign and they were the wrong items. They weren’t good photos, they were kind of bootleg footballs, and I said, “I can get you real helmets. I can get you the real stuff, and this will be really cool for them to be signed.” And they said to me, “You can charge me whatever you want. I love this stuff.” And I bought them a whole bunch of stuff on the next appearance, and then going forward I would always bring stuff as I booked that player to bring different items to get signed.
So, if I did something with Hank Aaron, we’d get some bats signed and he’d send those out to clients. Or a pair of Muhammad Ali boxing gloves. You know, “We’re going to knock this thing out of the park. We’ve got the greatest ad campaign imaginable,” or we’d just have a pitcher sign it, “Hope you’re looking forward to our pitch next week,” and you’d send it out for a pitch. So the collectible thing, which obviously I’m more well known for, was really just a corporate B2B play to expand business, get a meeting, a leave behind, or a gifting item.
How have things changed over the past five to six months?
Well, what’s really complicated about this marketplace is that there are a lot of companies and industries that are just completely wiped out. There’s nowhere to run, there’s nowhere to hide, there’s zero. And in the same breath, there’s a whole bunch of companies that have never done better, companies that are booming and having record sales and record years. I don’t remember a time when there’s such a split where people had so little and then there were some companies that had so much.
What I tell people is first of all, if you haven’t got your tech game together and you haven’t gone out socially, you’d better get some training. I think it’s a great time to kind of relaunch and become even more higher-level technology-driven. But I tell people, you’ve gotta fish where the fish are. There are a lot of companies that do well. Don’t look at all the companies that are struggling in the industry. Focus on the companies that are booming: CBS, Domino’s Pizza, etc. A lot of big supermarket chains are doing phenomenal. I mean, there are businesses that are booming, and there are needs that people have even in this environment, and you got to just kind of slide over and move to those kinds of things.
People putting stuff up on my website, Collectible Exchange, we quadrupled the number of items that are on our site from four months ago to now because people are just cleaning their basements. They want to sell a lot of their stuff. At the same time, people are going to buy stuff. So that particular part of the business is doing much better than I ever thought it was going to be. I had no idea that the virus would have a positive effect.
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