Episode 176 · with Joe Ciucci & Tom McCorkle
Joe Ciucci of Duane Morris LLP and real estate agent Tom McCorkle join Nick Constantino on building rapport in sales, career pivots through COVID, and why authenticity is winning again in music and marketing.
The episode
Nick Constantino throws a curveball on this one, in every sense: two guests who did not previously know each other, employment litigator Joe Ciucci of Duane Morris LLP and real estate agent Tom McCorkle, walk in and discover they have plenty in common before the mics are even on. Ciucci moved to Atlanta from Detroit in 1998 after one snowstorm too many, and has spent nineteen-plus years handling employment litigation for the Philadelphia-founded firm. McCorkle's path ran through construction sales, medical devices, and twenty-six years in the beverage business at Coca-Cola and later premium spirits, before he pivoted into real estate about fifteen years ago and went full-time once COVID made a life on the road untenable for a single father.
The through-line of the conversation is rapport as the actual mechanism behind sales, not a script or a tactic. Ciucci argues nobody can be trained into being a salesperson from nothing; what can be trained is finding common ground fast, and that only works if the salesperson has a genuinely varied life to draw on. He frames his own long career the same way: he is not selling a commoditized product, he is solving problems that fall outside his stated scope of work, which is why clients keep calling. McCorkle traces a similar arc in real estate, describing years of technically holding a license while not really knowing what he was doing, until the actual skill, managing a client's expectations and helping them see both the right house and the wrong ones, clicked into place.
COVID reshaped both of their industries in different ways. Ciucci watched event and hospitality clients retool their entire business models overnight with no digital infrastructure to fall back on, while his own legal caseload shifted from routine matters to a wave of COVID-driven employment claims that set new precedent in real time. The conversation closes on music, Ciucci's other life as a charity-show drummer who has shared stages with members of the Zac Brown Band, and a broader read that audiences, tired of over-produced perfection, are pulling back toward smaller, more authentic experiences in food, drink and live performance alike.
“If you are selling solutions to problems, people will always come back. If you are selling widgets, you are commoditizing yourself.”
Joe Ciucci
What to take from it
In their words
“There's no way to build rapport if you don't have diversity in what you like, what you see, what you do.”
Joe Ciucci
“I think it's kind of like ties in with Joe. You've got to do what you love. I love making relationships and improving relationships, and I think that's just kind of morphed into a career.”
Tom McCorkle
“Companies take their top salesperson and want to make them the sales manager. That's not what they want to do, it's not what they excel at, but hey, let's promote here.”
Joe Ciucci
Questions this episode answers
Happy Saturday and welcome to the Marketing Mad Men. I'm throwing a curveball this morning, so I have two gentlemen with me: Joe Ciucci of Duane Morris LLP, an attorney, and Tom McCorkle, a realtor. They didn't know each other, so now they've met. Joe, how are you doing, bud?
I'm doing great this morning. Thanks for having us.
Let's talk about growing up, where you went to school, how you got to where you are now.
Originally from Michigan, my wife and I moved here in January of '98 from the Detroit area. We literally moved because we had a snowstorm in October of 1997 and said there's got to be more to life than shoveling snow in October. I went to law school at the University of Detroit, practiced there for five years, and I've been at Duane Morris, a Philly-based general practice firm, for nineteen-plus years doing employment litigation.
Tom, you're a realtor, but not by trade your whole life. Give us your background.
Quite unlike Joe, I had a very varied background. I always knew I wanted to be in sales of some sort. I got a call out of the blue from Coca-Cola, and I spent almost twenty-six years in the beverage business, soft drinks and then spirits. I started selling real estate about fifteen years ago and knew I wanted to do it, and then COVID hit. I was tired of traveling as a single dad with a special needs son, so I wanted to stay home. I've loved every minute of it since.
When I meet people who start in sales, I know the story is going to be varied. What's your take on what makes someone good at it?
Don't listen when anyone tells you that you don't need a diversity of experience behind you, because you will never succeed. It's about building rapport, and the only way you have rapport with somebody is being well traveled, having diversity in what you like, what you see, what you do. There's no way to build rapport if you don't.
Tom, what's your favorite thing about being a real estate agent now that you've got your feet under you?
Helping people find their dream home, seeing how excited they get when they get a great house. I think what I really excel at is managing those relationships and expectations, and letting them know, look, this is one of the biggest decisions you're going to make, let me help you find the right place and, more importantly, help you weed out the wrong ones.
Joe, I have to imagine there are times in employment law where you saved somebody, and times where you're stuck with a case you can't believe.
Most partnerships and most things are easy to accomplish if people are transparent and speak, but it doesn't happen that way. People are very passive aggressive, they don't want to have the hard conversations. Just rip the Band-Aid off.
Joe, you're also a drummer. Talk about the music upbringing, when you fell in love with it.
My grandfather got me started, he was a prominent big band drummer in the '30s and '40s. I played all the way through college, then didn't play for about twenty years. In 2011 I was told I had kidney cancer, and after the surgery my wife said I needed to get back into playing drums, do something I love for five minutes a day. I bought a kit two days later, started playing in a band with a neighbor, and we've gone on to open for the John Driscoll Hopkins Band. Ninety-nine out of a hundred of our shows are charity shows, and we've probably raised close to half a million dollars, because people can tell your motives are pure when it's authentic.
Let's talk COVID and its impact on both your industries.
A lot of these problems are always treated with emotion, and a lot of times you have to take the emotion out of it, lay out the facts, and look at things objectively rather than subjectively. A dear friend in the events business in San Francisco, his company did wine, meats and cheese, and they pivoted overnight from fully booked to zero events. Being small and dynamic is what let those companies figure it out. The big companies were never going to, the bureaucracy is too great.
Let's talk about concerts. You've toured with real drummers. Talk about how the generations of touring musicians have changed.
Guys in the Zac Brown Band are telling me their old riders used to call for bottles of Jägermeister on stage, and now they don't drink until after the show. It has to be that way now because audiences are expecting a flawless show at these ticket prices, not Janis Joplin missing a note. Now they want polished. They train for months and eat clean. For me it frustrates me a little, because I feel like I'm being served a fake product. I want the flawed music.
Where do you see this all heading, tradition versus the influencer chase?
I think tradition and heritage is going to make a comeback, in food, music and drink. We've gotten so caught up chasing the next hot thing that we've almost gotten bland. I think people are going to want to see an intimate thing with a guy and a guitar on stage again, something smaller, something with the flaws still in it.
Gentlemen, this was a great one. Thank you both for braving the cold and coming in.
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