[009] How To Avoid Fraud in your Leads, with Rich Kahn from Anura

Jason: [00:00:00] Hey, what’s going on? Everybody. Jason cutter here with another episode of the scalable call center sales podcast. And in this conversation, I’m going to speak with someone who’s got a different approach. Regarding the call center environment, different for me. Anyway, explain as we get into the conversation, what was so interesting and revolutionary about the stuff that he does today joining me is rich Khan from Anura solutions LLC.

[00:00:27] And so rich started, Anura for the simple fact that there was a lot of ad fraud. In the business and there, he was wanted a solution and then designed and created a solution from the technical side to improve performance by exposing bots, malware, human fraud, all these things. And this is all coming on the track record of success he had with other companies and things that he’s done and awards that he’s won.

[00:00:55] And really where this comes into play is anyone who knows me, knows that I’m all about performance-based leads. It’s about buying data, buying, marketing, buying leads something to feed to your sales machine. And what I didn’t realize is how much fraud is out there in the place in the marketplace.

[00:01:12] And Rich’s here to talk to me and talk to us about that. Rich, welcome to the scalable call center sales podcast.

[00:01:19] Rich: [00:01:19] Thanks for having me out today.

[00:01:22]Jason: [00:01:22] I mentioned a little bit in the intro. It’s very interesting. I actually came to find out about your company believe it or not a few years ago, I didn’t even know this thing existed.

[00:01:34] I didn’t even know there was fraud detection and don’t tell anyone. But I didn’t even realize there was fraud in the lead generation process. For years, I just figured, Hey, if you buy a lead and you buy data and that’s Bob Smith and Bob Smith info, then it must be Bob Smith who filled out that lead.

[00:01:55]And then I realized I had one of your team members and enlightened me to it. And I went, oh my gosh, I didn’t know. This was a thing.

[00:02:03] Rich: [00:02:03] Yep. Look at it this way. Like we deal heavily in the lead space because again, leads are perfect for performance-based marketing. So when, and I asked this all the time, every time I talked to somebody who does lead generation, oh, I don’t have, I don’t have any fraud.

[00:02:19] And I go, how do you know? Because they have to fill out a form and I don’t pay someone to fill out that form. So someone fills out a form. I know it’s real. I pick up and make a phone call. So great. Do you ever come across, when you call somebody on the phone and they say, I never filled out your form.

[00:02:34] Oh, it happens all the time. I’m like, that’s fraud. And we find out pretty much on average, around 25% of the time. And I, they try to explain like, why is it happening? I said look at it this way. Let’s say you driving impressions, programmatically that ultimately going to lead down to generating that form.

[00:02:50] So yeah, you’re not paying for the form, but you’re paying for the impression. So the fraudster drives a lot of impressions, but they know if they drive a lot of impressions, And no clicks. Somebody is going to shut them off, whether it’s programmatically or you, some marketing manager to shut them off. So they generate and falsify clicks, there’s click fraud.

[00:03:08]So now they’re generating clicks that are fraudulent just to make the campaign look good, but any good marketing person that’s managing a campaign down to performance knows if it doesn’t come down the path and do it’s action. And in this case, fill out the lead, they’re going to shut down that source and of course, shut the gravy train off for the fraud.

[00:03:27] So they ultimately know so many trends, so many impressions has to lead to so many clicks. And so many clicks has to lead to a filled in form. They’ll come in. Typically what they’re doing to get around all the systems that are out there is uses a human fraud forms. You can license them around the globe for nine bucks an hour.

[00:03:41] They’re cheap. And what they’ll do is they’ll come, they’ll follow it up. Correct. That you designed for them. They’ll fill out the form using some information that they got somewhere, which you know, all the information out there is public nowadays. They’ll get the information, put the information in and they’ll fill out the form and I’ll put Jason’s information into the system.

[00:03:59] And most, mostly generators will check behind the scenes. After the form is submitted. Does Jason’s email address and phone number match? What we will. We see in the backend databases, they do great. We have a valid lead. They pass it off. Somebody picks up, makes a phone call and Jason says I never filled out.

[00:04:15] And you’re right. So they use human front farms for a couple of reasons. One, the bot detection that’s out there is not going to catch them. And number two, a lot of people like capture. So I’ll throw up a capture puzzle, which, 30% of the time, the average human fails, but they’ll throw those capture forms up, which again, the human on the other side is going to pass that.

[00:04:34] So everything looks and feels legit or, the old original one checked. If you’re not a robot. And he’s not a robot, right? So all this stuff passes through except the fact that now some client picked up and made a phone call to Jason, who didn’t give him express permission to call them, which means you now just broke TCPA company.

[00:04:54] Which is something that everybody’s trying to avoid because the lawsuits of flying like crazy, in fact, I’m actually going to compliance Palooza in Vegas now this month. So I’ll be out there just, as in the audience. And then I’ve got a couple of people out there that I know, and a few of the lawyers that are going to be out there, she just have some fun just to finally get out of town.

[00:05:11] But outside of that, so if you think about it, you broke TCP a company. If you make enough calls and you’re a big enough brand, you’re going to have enough people concerned with where you got their information. So you got brand reputation issue. It takes longer to call people that aren’t expecting your call.

[00:05:26] So you’re gonna spend more money in your call center resources to get the person who did fill out the form and then which is never going to convert. And then finally you paid marketing to drive that all that traffic that led to that. So you’re hurting yourself in a variety of ways and putting yourself at a legal risk, all because fraud got past you and you weren’t aware of.

[00:05:50]Jason: [00:05:50] And as you’re telling that story, and it’s similar to what I heard from someone on your team about two and a half years ago now my instant thought is I’m reflecting back as a sales leader and I’ve always been in charge of sales and marketing when I’ve been in organizations and thinking about how many times salespeople weren’t converting.

[00:06:12] The leads they were given and where I would talk to them and say, Hey, what’s going on? What happened? Oh, that was Bob Smith. But he said he never filled out a form. And my response generally was maybe you came across as a telemarketer and triggered him to not want to admit that he filled out the form, but we know that was Bob Smith because we have his information.

[00:06:32] And generally my thought was, okay, you’re weak. Or you just come across salesy and it’s your fault because that’s not a thing. And I will say, I feel slightly. Reflecting back. Have you

[00:06:45] Rich: [00:06:45] ever heard anybody? Because that’s good.

[00:06:47] Jason: [00:06:47] I never fired anybody and said, Hey, get up and pack your stuff and walk out right now.

[00:06:52]There was, I basically just I’ll tell you, honestly, I just always assumed for years that it was to them and they were not good at sales. That’s what was coming. Okay.

[00:07:02] Rich: [00:07:02] And that’s a big problem because it’s, you have a situation like that, but like I said, there’s lots of other situations that arise because of that.

[00:07:10] And maybe you’re buying traffic from a given source and all of a sudden you’re getting more and more of those and you’re just banging your head, trying to. I got the lead. How is this not, and at the end of the day, you’re just paying for, so we talk to clients all the time about this kind of stuff.

[00:07:24] And then I had a very interesting one that you and I have not spoke about before that I’d like to share with you guys because it’s, these fraudsters are now taking it to the next level. In fact, I think I have a Forbes article coming out probably next month or two. That’ll talk about this. So you guys get the sneak peek.

[00:07:40]Essentially what happened is they came to us and said there were fetishes. Billion dollar company, big company, big brand. And they said, we found four. Now we scanned thousands of leads for them. We found four leads that we believe to be are bad that are, I’m sorry, that you believe were bad and you marked as fraudulent yet.

[00:07:59]They were payable. They were actual real leads and I go, okay. Talk to me. What’s a real lead to you. So we went into the details. They actually had somebody to listen to the phone calls. They listened to the phone. And they said, yeah, I’m calling you and calling Jason because of the form you filled out.

[00:08:13] And he goes, okay, went through the pitch. Sounds good. Set me up with your rep. Did the transfer to the client? Cause it was a warm transfer to the client got on the phone and did his pitch. I said, that’s great. And he goes, and actually we’ve caught a few others like that. How could you guys be so wrong?

[00:08:30] You’ll let you claim no false positives. I go, okay first off, let me look at those and find out what’s going on. So I pull the data together behind the scenes and I go, okay, this is interesting. It looks like it’s coming out of, Minnesota, I guess police work. The leads were coming out of Minnesota whenever, based on IP address and everything else.

[00:08:46] But our analytics clearly told us it was coming out of India. And I said, there’s no way this device was in the U S at the time this call was. So we started digging a little further and I said, I think I know what’s going on. And I was right. What’s happening is so instead of just grabbing Jason’s information, because it’s cheap and it’s free on the internet, I can find her information, through zoom in for any of these other, these vendors that are dirt cheap, pop your information in, they went, they were taken one step better and they bought aged leads.

[00:09:20] So 60, 90 day old leads that Jason, you did fill out a form. Not today. But three months ago. So you let’s say you were in the market for a mortgage, so you might have done all your stuff. And just for whatever reason, never purchased, they took this name 90 days later, put it in the form they call you.

[00:09:37] And you’re like, yeah, I do remember filling out a form. It wasn’t yesterday, it was months ago, but everybody knows in the space, if you’re buying age data, those value, the value of those leads are so small because either they’re, you’re dealing with people that are non-buyers or they’re just a low convert.

[00:09:53] So I said, do me a favor, take a look at the leads that came through that we marked as bad. Okay. Compared to the leads that we’ve marked as good. What is your norm and their normal closing ratio there in the insurance space? So the normal closing ratio is about 15%. I think off the top of my head, I think their particular process is about 15%, which is basically from the time they handle a lead over to a client to a policy is written.

[00:10:18] So the call 15%, the ones we marked bad had less than 1% conversion rate. So I said, so now it’s happening. I know I’m right. I know it wasn’t the person whose information was there, but excuse me, you’re paying a premium dollar to have a lead generated today. That was really an age late. That was probably important.

[00:10:40] Petty’s of a dollar. He went back, did a lot of research and came back and he goes impressive. You’re right, because they’re taking it to the next level now, because they know if you call it the lead, they sat to fill out a form. That’s a telltale sign. They’re starting to pick up on that. So fraudsters now want to be one step.

[00:10:57] How do you say, okay, fine. I’m just going to spend pennies on the dollar by age leads and pop them in there. And you’ll never know the difference

[00:11:05] Jason: [00:11:05] that the data is your friend. So they’re doing, they’re filling out the forms in order to drive and create those leads using the age data.

[00:11:13] So hopefully it goes through that is really wild. Then what’s the solution for this, obviously there’s the solution that you’ve built. And what your company does. And, but I guess mostly where does this kind of fraud detection fit in the process? Because I’ll tell you when I first heard about this and whenever I think about it, I think of the fact that our marketers really gonna want this in between them and.

[00:11:37] The buyer of the leads or the data, because it’s going to basically kill off, let’s call it 30% of their revenue.

[00:11:48]Rich: [00:11:48] Yes and no. So whenever I talk to a company, I always tell them, look, first thing we want to do is get a benchmark, because like I said, if you’re like everybody else, 25% of your traffic is fraudulent and you’re a large company, small company, it doesn’t matter.

[00:12:03] Really. If I should have 25% of antibodies, any company’s revenue, it’s going to. In some cases it could be devastating. So the first thing we do is get a benchmark on where you are today. So let’s say we’re at 25%. So using our analytics, the step is to identify where the bad traffic is coming from. So you can start to reduce.

[00:12:24] Like work with the sources, tell them where it’s coming from. So you can start to reduce the fraud while going after the guys that have good traffic and asking them to send you more traffic. So that you’re increasing, that the idea is to maintain or increase your overall traffic volume. Cause that’s how you get paid while reducing the fraud so that the ROI of those campaigns start to go up without affecting your bottom line.

[00:12:48] Jason: [00:12:48] Got it. So that makes the most sense because when you put it that way, if I’m a marketer publisher or whatever, I’m the one that’s on the selling side of the transaction with this leads and data, then I’m getting it from some other source. Or I want to know what’s clean. And valuable so that I’m selling it, which would then make my customers happy us assuming an abundance and unlimited, or nearly unlimited supply of things being fed to me.

[00:13:17]Where I can choose and I can, high-grade where I’m getting it from. So I’m selling what’s best. And then, there’s the best chance possible for my clients who are buying from me to get a good ROI, which means they’re happy. And then I’m happy.

[00:13:33]Rich: [00:13:33] What happens when the client’s ROI goes up?

[00:13:36] Jason: [00:13:36] They hopefully they buy more. Hopefully they appreciate it. And no matter what, they’re not going anywhere,

[00:13:42] Rich: [00:13:42] right. Demand goes up and then everybody makes more money except for the fraudsters. And that’s okay.

[00:13:47] Jason: [00:13:47] Yeah. I would say that’s totally okay. How challenging is it from your perspective, having done this for a long time with your business and just in the space in general, to get somebody to admit that they might have a problem.

[00:14:03] That’s the first step right. Of the 12 steps is

[00:14:06] Rich: [00:14:06] admitting you have a problem, actually, it’s not no. That it’s all easier than that. It’s hard to get somebody to admit they have a problem. It’s easier to get to see if they have a problem. So a lot of times we want to go in and do a benchmark. We do a free trial, like every other company does to see how much fraud do you have, because once you peek under the carpet and what’s there now, you got to do something about it.

[00:14:30] So it’s a lot easier for somebody to say, wow, I just found 25% fraud. What do you want to do about it? The average person wants to do something about it. They don’t believe they have fraud and they’re not going to admit to have fraud, but as soon as you can actually show them, and that’s what I always tell them, Hey, we like this up in funding.

[00:14:46] You have no fraud. First off, you’ll be the first, but if there’s no fraud there, then at least, you know what you’re doing works. It’s peace of mind. But if we find something, then we can at least come up with a game plan to solve it for you guys. Because again, if you have a sizable amount of fraud and you eliminate.

[00:15:02] Your client’s demand is going to grow and your, you as a company will grow. So this is what we’re all about is helping our clients grow through the analytics of fraud.

[00:15:11]Jason: [00:15:11] And I love that approach. I was actually just making a note because I think that’s so valuable where it’s not, I have to convince you that you have a problem.

[00:15:21] Let’s see if you have a problem and let’s use the data, your data to show. If you have an issue and if so, what that means, but it’s not me telling you. It’s not me trying to sell you. It’s not me trying to convince you like a snake oil salesman that you have this problem. And I have this perfect, let’s just see. And I know for me, I do that a lot with companies because a lot of times they don’t want to be told they have an issue with their sales team or they need better training or whatnot. But we just look at the data. Maybe you have an issue or where is there some issues we can look at?

[00:15:54] So I love that approach. So beyond the human, like getting that decision made. Where does the technical piece, like the technology piece come in and what are the challenges like if there’s a call center listening to this and they go, this sounds great. Rich. I’m sure we’d love to put something in place, but I don’t have an it team or a tech team or the staff to manage this.

[00:16:17] I’m already struggling with my CRM and my dialer and my data. And it’s a mess.

[00:16:23] Rich: [00:16:23] Yeah. A lot of times we’re actually building for integration. Cause again, We’re in a weird space, right? Our decision makers are the marketing guys. They’re the ones who are trying to optimize a building, but yet the technology has to be installed by somebody theoretically technical.

[00:16:42]And you always have that clash, right? Because what ends up happening a lot of the times is we find in companies. People will run. Like the marketing guys will run to the CTO and say, Hey, we got a problem with fraud solid and then walk away. And the guy’s I’m already up to my neck and stuff. I have no time for this.

[00:17:00] So they’ll look for a solution like us to help make their life easier. Then the integration is easy because I’m dealing with somebody who knows code, but for the other type of people where I’m dealing with marketing, we’re trying to make the integration as simple as possible. In fact, we’ve built a Google tag manager plugin.

[00:17:16] We’ve got a WordPress plugin. We’ve got these plugins. You don’t have to mess with code. You just pop a couple, switches and pop in your, your key that we give you and you’re up and running. So it’s as simple as that. And if you really wanted to deploy the code on your site, you can deploy it using any type of tag manager or any type of just copy and paste.

[00:17:36] If they can do Google analytics, they can do us to say situation.

[00:17:41] Jason: [00:17:41] Got it. And. I love that because I’ve been a part of so many organizations where there’s either some tech team or not enough, and the thought or idea of constant. Of bringing in another solution that requires some kind of integration a who’s going to do it.

[00:18:02] And then B I’ve also seen many times where you add one more piece of tech to the house of cards. That’s cobbled together. And then, it breaks something over here. So it’s good to know that, there’s some easy solutions. It’s not like this pain, this developer.

[00:18:18]Rich: [00:18:18] You brought up a good point.

[00:18:19] We actually just did a case study with one of our clients. Who’ve been with us like three years in sh insurance vertical again. Just because it’s a big vertical. So insurance is one of the biggest hurdles because almost everybody needs insurance. And as it being with those big ones, when you talk about.

[00:18:33] Mortgage refinances are not, everybody’s got a mortgage, so then it reduces the pool, but again, insurance big place. Anyway. So we did the did a case study with them. So we’re actually the first case study. We’re going to have actually a video part of it and everything else. And the owners, the guys who started the company are all developers did it all like me.

[00:18:50]They know how to write code and stuff like that. And they go, they started to try the process themselves. And quickly realized that just did not have the time because of trying to grow a business. You trying to focus on a business and fraud is not something that you can do. Part-time in a business.

[00:19:05] It’s something that you got to focus and dedicate resources to a lot of resources to focusing on it. And one of the things they also recognize, which was Knight was that no matter how good a solution, they were able to put together in house to be able to focus on what they do, they were only able to see there.

[00:19:21] When they type into a company like us, or however it works, they get to see all the client’s data. Like they get to benefit from all that data that’s being pushed in and that makes life easier for them. Like anything, when you’re trying to figure out patterns and recognize new levels of fraud, the more data you have, the better it is.

[00:19:37] And. Getting together with a company like us. That’s that? That’s a big benefit. So we’re looking forward to pushing out this press release. It’s we haven’t done one in probably about a year. Just haven’t gotten round to it. Haven’t had the resources to do it now. We do. So hopefully we’ll be doing those more regularly.

[00:19:54]Jason: [00:19:54] And that’s always that debate when it comes to solutions, is it the buy or build, do you buy something or pay someone to do it, or they already have that solution or do you build it? In-house do you have the resources and the expertise? Which I think is interesting. So let’s shift just a bit.

[00:20:13] Because here you are right with tons of experience, but you’re in this interesting spot where data leads are coming through, and then there’s your solution. That’s looking for fraud and pushing through the best, most valuable stuff forward. That’s the most real and authentic. In that space. You also get to see the perspective of a lot of companies, which is why I wanted you to come on.

[00:20:37] You’re not just to enlighten people about this whole fraud subject, but because literally you have insights through your watching your customers who are buying performance-based marketing and then doing something with it, they’re all selling with that. What is it that you see? As the biggest challenge not just pandemic related, but just say sales in general related, like where do you see companies struggling and, or succeeding on the sales side?

[00:21:07]In business right now.

[00:21:10] Rich: [00:21:10] Okay. So on the sales side, some of the biggest areas that I see, and it depends on the business, right? If you’re a B2B. Versus B2C very different models. Inbound is always going to be a solid method of sales and marketing. It’s when you can’t scale that fast enough to grow the business, which we all hit that spot very quickly is, cause that inbound strategy just takes time and a outbound strategy so that you can light up and scale up.

[00:21:36] So if you’re doing an outbound strategy there are lots of tools in the space and calling dialing plat platforms that people can use. What they’re struggling with is it takes a lot more phone calls today to get somebody on the phone that is because COVID hit. A lot of people were working remote and a lot of companies have adopted that philosophy moving forward.

[00:21:54] So now when you’re calling the office line, there’s nobody behind the desk. And not everybody gives out their cell phones. So if you’re doing, let’s say if you used to call a hundred people and get a handful of people to talk to you, now you call a hundred people. Maybe you get one person. So they’re struggling on that side and just like us, we do, we used to do a lot of outs.

[00:22:10] We still do a lot of outbound just because people don’t know there’s an issue. We have to bring the message to them. We do a phenomenal job inbound, but it’s never enough to really sustain and grow the company at the levels that we’re trying to do it at. That’s one area that I hear everybody’s struggling with.

[00:22:26] And I also hear big and small companies, the same thing as they’re struggling with attracting new. They’re trying to out there to hire new people. You still got people that are, that are able to collect the unemployment. Why not take the summer off, before it ends and enjoy the, heck if I could sit home and relax, why wouldn’t I, but I’m a business person.

[00:22:44] I’m a workaholic. So here I am at the office, we’ve been at the office since June of last year.

[00:22:51]Jason: [00:22:51] Okay. And then what about like trends that you’re seeing, or if you have any insight or hear anything from your clients, just in what they’re doing on the sales, like sales processes, anything different, any consumer buying behavior?

[00:23:07] Again, I know it’s not directly related to what you do or what you provide, but you also have. W insight and window into a lot of different businesses.

[00:23:17] Rich: [00:23:17] We see a lot of different verticals and when would COVID hit, we were concerned about how it was gonna affect our business. And we had a phenomenal year, so it didn’t affect us, but.

[00:23:28] In that aspect, we did see different verticals kick up the verticals kicked down. So like some of the ones that really took off okay, vacationing, tanked, everybody did very few people were vacation and there were still a few. But so if you were in that industry, you were hurting. But then the home improvement industry took off like a rocket.

[00:23:46]It just everybody’s like, all right if I can’t vacation and I’m stuck at home at Bell’s, we’ll fix this thing, that’s been bothering me or, add a pool on or add an extension. I might as well invest in my home if I can’t do my normal stuff. So those are the only two things that I really saw from our perspective, because a lot of our clients are very generic in nature.

[00:24:05] So they’ll deal a lot of different verticals. A lot of them are publicly traded so that they have different areas of the industry that they cover. Actually we did see some some increase in moving. Some of our moving clients started seeing. Up to now and still seeing that. But I don’t really have a lot of insights of the vertical specific because a lot of us are generic gaming.

[00:24:27] Actually, we have some big AB clients. They took off like crazy because they had more people are at home, and especially when the winter hits let’s jump on the computer to start gaming or it’s too hot outside let’s gave or. It’s perfect weather outside let’s game. It doesn’t matter. It’s always an excuse to go gaming.

[00:24:42] So we saw that industry take off a lot, which was great. But yeah, that’s a general stuff that we saw. It really was vertical dependent. A lot of what we saw, we didn’t see additional struggles. Cause most of our players are buying paid marketing, whether it’s through tier one search and social they’re buying see affiliate based marketing, they’re buying programmatic based marketing.

[00:25:04]All that kind of stuff. It’s it seemed pretty stable from the clients that we discussed, either stable or growing, just because we saw an increase in growth and usage of our network. So it just assumes that more people being stuck at home, more people spending time online. So in general, we saw that.

[00:25:21] Of course, that was the death of, thousands of restaurants across the country was almost a death of the buffet, which I love, unfortunately actually one of our local restaurants opened a buffet and I’m like, I’m a buffet, man, but I, yeah, I’ll give it a shot, but yes, that’s pretty much what we saw.

[00:25:42] Jason: [00:25:42] So you mentioned it earlier, TCPA violations, which is the legal side of calling, not calling, having permission, having consent and all the various rules and laws that in that, and then everything else compliance wise with that, plus what you do, plus what in the industry. What do you see as the near future kind of trends?

[00:26:08] Or important things that call center owners and leaders should be mindful of. Let’s say, through the rest of 2021 going into 20, 22,

[00:26:18] Rich: [00:26:18] it’s literally a compliancy. It seems like the biggest term on part of the Leeds council board. And we’re actually changing our name, but it’s all because again, it’s not just about leads, it’s really about compliancing and all aspects of compliancy.

[00:26:32] So when you’re. The consumer protection act is really getting more broad stroke than it needs to be. It’s there is there with an intent to protect people from getting, spammed on it and called in and harassed. Basically it’s really the term. But at the end of the day, businesses find different ways of doing business.

[00:26:50]Again, it’s, it comes down to every time they stroke let’s do, ringless, voicemail drops. Let’s do, text messaging. Let’s try all these really crazy things that are just pushing the envelope. And then government comes in and says we’re going to stop this from a stock, just a slash and things.

[00:27:05] And if you breach those, there’s some hefty fines behind the scenes, like with TCPA at it’s like anywhere from 500 to 1500 per phone call. No. So if they walk into a call center and they’ve got a hundred seat call center, that potential fund is huge, so it’s about keeping, it’s about being compliant.

[00:27:25]Yeah. If any of your listeners haven’t heard of leads, council go to lead the count leads, council.org. It’s a great resource on compliancy and what the changing laws are doing like that. It’s just it’s a good blog that you can go to and pick up a lot of information. But there are, like I said it’s, what I see from my seat is probably the compliancy is going to be the most, cause it’s the most unsexy part of the business, but it’s, it could be the most devastating.

[00:27:52] It’s not followed so

[00:27:56] Jason: [00:27:56] well. And I think that’s super important. I know a lot of companies, they know they should do that. But they just either don’t know how to start or don’t want to invest the money. I’ve also seen other companies who just outwardly would rather put money aside for the fines and fees than to be proactive and do things the proper way within the rules.

[00:28:17]You mentioned Leeds council, which is a great resource. I joined earlier this year and actually just completed as of the, when we’re recording this early July. Record finished the or went through all four cities of the industry impact event, which was really cool. Great to meet lots of people.

[00:28:33] And I did, and it was it was a fun event and obviously compliance was a lot of it. Marketing was a bunch of it being pretty much the only sales guy there. Which, marrying that compliance side with, how do you be compliant and how do you do things the right way?

[00:28:48]And then how do you scale? Was it was definitely good. And can’t promote that along with you, the leads council initiatives, just to keep everyone safe and then also represent people. I think that’s one of the things too, is there’s a lot of people in the call center industry, people who are hopefully listening to this.

[00:29:05] Everyone feels like they’re on their own and they’re not represented well, it’s the government versus everybody. And so there’s some people out there who are trying to fix that. So it’s not just what happened with the government versus Facebook. And then, Facebook has the money to fight it, but most others don’t.

[00:29:23] Rich: [00:29:23] Sure. Yeah. I was actually supposed to be at those events myself. And unfortunately we had people starting those two weeks and I was trying to make one of them and I just couldn’t make it happen.

[00:29:33] Jason: [00:29:33] I know, definitely missed you. I expected you to be there. I thought that would have been awesome. It was a good opportunity to meet people in person that only met online.

[00:29:42]I think compliance, I obviously agree, compliance and be huge, especially with there’s lots of states, depending on again, when people are listening to this there’s states like Florida that are enacting their own, referred to as a mini TCPA rules, there’s all kinds of things in place that, companies should really.

[00:29:58] Aware of it’s just going to get more and more difficult and more painful if you’re not compliant. What do you see as the, you seeing any trends or any thinking that you have on the radar as far as technology, either like on the lead generation side or on the sales tech stack side that you see coming up emerging anytime soon?

[00:30:21]Rich: [00:30:21] I’ve been, I probably spent the last quarter focusing on sales. Sales technologies, to help us accelerate our growth. And there’ve been some very different interests, interesting ones they’ve got some of the ones out there that do crowd dialing where they’ll have, six or seven people dialing for whatever your reps.

[00:30:37] So this way they could get through that, get somebody on the phone faster. I saw that as something that looked good, but. I don’t know with COVID hitting and people still not at the office. It’s w it doesn’t work as good as I think it used to. I’ve seen some tactics where, you know, a lot of more inbound stuff, inbound tactics instead of doing the chat bots or moving to a live chat environment, I’ve seen that starting to surface a little bit, because again, the live chats seem to have a higher conversion rate than anything else you could put on your site.

[00:31:08] Of course. How do you staff a live chat? Group for, 24 7, so again, a lot of them will do overseas and they’ll have very basic training. So there’s some, those are some of the basic technologies that I’m seeing when it comes to the sales side when it comes to the The lead side. It really is.

[00:31:27] There’s a lot of stuff coming out about compliancy and it’s like ADA compliancy know TCPA, compliancy, DNC, compliancy, like all these different things that are coming out to help you with compliance and. It’s one of those things you just don’t want to look at or think about, but at the end of the day, you have no choice.

[00:31:46] It’s something you have to deal with otherwise, be dealt with, on your behalf for you. Other than that, I haven’t really seen too many other things popping up. Caught my attention.

[00:31:55] Jason: [00:31:55] Yeah. And you mentioned the ADA compliance. I hadn’t really heard much about that until those industry impact events and Jason McKee was at all of those events talking about it and really.

[00:32:08] Helping people understand the impact, both from a legal and a fine standpoint, right? If you’re not ADA compliant on your websites, but really what that means from visual to audio, to images, to, usability even without, being able to see somebody navigating with mouse and keyboard. And really, again, not just from a compliance fine negative penalty side, but from.

[00:32:32] Opening up your website so that you can have more traffic, which leads to more leads and more conversion, more clients, more revenue. A lot of times I think people look at this compliance conversation, which you’re a part of is a negative and it’s just going to hurt business, but when it’s done and when you look at it with the right perspective, it can help business because then you’re opening up to the right people.

[00:32:55] If you will, instead of. Shooting yourself in the foot sometimes with the wrong people. Like you mentioned. It’s

[00:33:02] Rich: [00:33:02] like anything else in the world of a business. What you’re trying to focus on is growing revenues and reducing risk and liabilities, right? So compliancy is trying to reduce risk of liabilities and you try to increase your sales.

[00:33:15] So you try to do that balance so you can grow the company. And unfortunately, it’s just one of those things where There are a lot of lawyers out there. They’re always looking for the next prey and they will take the law bed a little bit to make it fit their case, their voice, or what they’re looking for.

[00:33:33] So if you could protect yourself ahead of time, that’s probably your best solution getting dragged into court. They always say the lawyers or the other, was that ever with that. So it’s one of those situations where you want to avoid that as much as you can.

[00:33:48] Jason: [00:33:48] So final question for you on your side.

[00:33:52] So you’ve grown your business. You have a bunch of people now. And part of the company you’ve been through many ventures in the past and grown and scaled. What would you attribute your success to with building successful companies and on the team side, what’s your,

[00:34:13] Rich: [00:34:13] what’s your secret? So I’ve had a lot of companies over the years, all with varying degrees of success.

[00:34:21]I was 20 years old. I started up a company three months later. I had a $60 million deal on the table, went to close on it on April 28th, 2010, April 14th, the.com bubble burst. So I’ve seen that pie in the sky happened, get everything all together and then just lose it all. So I’ve seen that happen over and over that.

[00:34:40] I think what is kept us focused is the fact that so far every company that I brought on has been booted. So you pay attention to you’re forced to learn how to pay attention to every dollar, even in the companies that were making a ton of money and money was really an issue. I still just from being trained like that year after year focused on carefully, where I invest every dollar because.

[00:35:07] Today you haven’t, maybe tomorrow, you don’t, and you want to make sure that you’re investing it where it makes the most sense. So that mindset has definitely helped a team. Atmosphere is always been through trying to have you right down to the office. I, you can’t tell by my office, but if we’re in a commercial building and we built the inside line, So we got wood moldings, not the rubber stuff.

[00:35:28] We’ve got wood doors, not the metal doors. We built that. We’ve got a lounge, we’ve got a 50 style kitchen, all that stuff, leads to comradery and keeping people together. So we celebrate birthdays together, to go to summer, we’ll cut. We’ll take everyone back to my house and go swimming for, in the afternoon, you’ll have a little barbecue once, once a month, every six weeks maybe go bowling during the winter or fine, exhibit ax, throwing something new, that’s popping up and he throw some axes around.

[00:35:53]That’s not an HR nightmare. But there’s all these things that you do to try to keep people together. But it’s a catch 22 because when it comes time to let somebody go and you have that close to the crew, it’s tough, you gotta be the boss and you gotta do the job. And if they’re not doing their job, it’s time to let them go.

[00:36:11] And that’s the hard.

[00:36:13] Jason: [00:36:13] Yeah, I think it’s important to build that culture, support that culture. And then what I have learned, and I’ve also seen is, if you’re at the top and or you have to make those decisions is to be one step removed from the culture, support it and let them nurture. But then also be careful that you’re not the one partying with the employees and then the next day having to make tough decisions.

[00:36:38]Yeah, that’s great. I that’s

[00:36:40] Rich: [00:36:40] easier said than done. It’s

[00:36:42] Jason: [00:36:42] super easy. Your said than done because it’s tough because you just want to be, really what it comes down to is most of the time I know for myself just want to work with people that I enjoy. And then if I enjoy it, I want to hang out with them and work as a team.

[00:36:56] It’s tough when somebody has to get voted off the island. If it’s just not a good fit. It’s a different conversation. So I know you guys have a lot of resources and I know that the best thing for people to do, if they’re interested in finding out more about you or Nora is to go to a noura.io.

[00:37:13] It’s a N U R a.io. I know that I’ve looked at the site and you’ve told me there’s literally just hundreds. Of resources on there, videos white papers, blogs, eBooks, all kinds of stuff. That there’s just an overwhelming amount of things that people want to look at. What’s out there. What might be true for them, what you’ve seen in the industry.

[00:37:39]Where else can people reach out to you if they have questions, if they’re curious about it, or if they just want to see that back to that question, if they have an issue. In their data,

[00:37:50] Rich: [00:37:50] they can reach me at rich, out of dorn.io. They can catch me on LinkedIn. That’s I usually post on a daily basis.

[00:37:56] Something, whether it’s a quick video or a poll or, Picture of the barbecue going on or something crazy just to see what, what generates the most interest in the, on I’ve got, I’m probably conducted about 16 or 17,000 people on LinkedIn. So it’s nice to see certain things, varnish, very few views and interactions, and then others are just like off the chart, so it’s neat to see what raises the interest versus what doesn’t. But LinkedIn or email is easiest way to catch up.

[00:38:25] Jason: [00:38:25] And I would say that since we’ve connected on LinkedIn a while ago and then in the last few months, especially I have really feel like I’ve gotten to know you based on your LinkedIn posts, that aren’t just all business the personal stuff, which is awesome and fun.

[00:38:39] Well, rich, I appreciate you being on here. As Rob Seaver, head of leads, council would say you scare because you care, which is his big motto. Hopefully people are scared the right amount of regarding the front of their data so that they can do it so they can win and help their teams win. But I appreciate you coming on here and sharing all this info with everybody and spending some time with us.

[00:39:01] Rich: [00:39:01] I appreciate the time. Thanks a lot.