How a Selling Professional Builds Trust: Bill Rice

Wes Schaeffer (00:01.24)
Bill Rice, fellow True Blue 92. Welcome to the sales podcast, man. How the heck are you?

Bill Rice (00:07.113)
I'm doing awesome and I can't believe how small this world is as we said.

Wes Schaeffer (00:12.942)
Man, years ago I had a '93 grad on and I've had, I don't know, Waldo Waldman, was, I don't know, late 80s. But 90, I get this email, like, Bill Rice, what, what? Goodness gracious. And now, so here you are, you're in Michigan, but you're doing damn near the same thing I'm doing.

Bill Rice (00:25.287)
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Crazy song.

Bill Rice (00:36.775)
Yeah, very similar in a lot of ways.

Wes Schaeffer (00:38.252)
Design and grow inbound lead generation strategy. you just copying me? mean, you've followed me around since 1988, mean, when you gonna do your own thing,

Bill Rice (00:46.601)
Yeah. Hey, man, when you know when you got a great in front of you, just follow, follow, right?

Wes Schaeffer (00:52.769)
Hahaha

So what do you know you work in with CRM's you working with with platforms? Do you have your own what's going on?

Bill Rice (01:03.207)
Yeah. So yeah, there's just a couple of things we have actually going on. So I run a couple of different agencies. Our primary focus is actually lead generation for sales teams. And so that kind of puts us on the marketing side.

Wes Schaeffer (01:17.847)
so you're just screen scraping and AI and handing it over to some dude in Pakistan to just do cold email. Just, just cut to the chase, man.

Bill Rice (01:24.093)
We're not, we're not, yeah, we're not. Yeah, it's, I mean, it is a lot of content. I mean, there's lots of things changing around AI and content and some of the things we do. Ours is a little bit different on the B2Bs. So we work on both. On the Kaleidiko side, we're doing business and consumer. So we're generating leads for financial services companies, insurance, and again, those are consumers. And we're doing a lot of CRM stuff to help them kind of follow up and nurture those.

on the Bill Rice strategy group, we're doing B2B and on that side, as you know, a little bit of a different format where traditionally it's cold outreach, a lot of things you talked about. We flipped the script a little bit coming from the consumer side. We got really good at generating inbound leads, which are, you know, sales always loves that on the B2B side. we

We do some of the outreach to but we do a lot of those inbound leads a lot of that's around content. AI is starting to reshape that. But yeah, within in the sort of the CRM world, we're doing a lot of support there. Because that's that's kind of the heartbeat of a sales organization. And then we've also gotten involved in some of the early on, people are just sort of tired of hearing of AI. But the other things that we're working with some some groups

specifically focused on predictive AI inside of the sales operation. So once you've got these leads, like figuring out the right time to follow up, the right type of content to deliver, and the ones, you know, again, this AI stuff's getting so good, predicting like what's going to actually close is becoming more and more accessible. And so that's some exciting technology with some of the companies we're working with are starting to

to embed that predictive AI inside of those operations and most specifically the CRM itself.

Wes Schaeffer (03:22.382)
Yeah, it's, it's noisy, man. It feels like it's noisier than ever. Um, I know a lot of people, one guy, there's this battle going on in LinkedIn right now. You know, one guy says, Hey, cold calling, know, just get better, do the work and here's how to be affected. And the other guy's like, I do cold calling and it's just the first touch. And it's more about long-term drip and nurturing and

Bill Rice (03:27.933)
Yeah.

Wes Schaeffer (03:52.086)
And I mean, I mean, hundreds of comments on this one, this guy did a book review of this, this dude that's very good at cold calling and, the guy criticizing it does cold calling, but he says he's in it for the long haul. It's just the first touch. And then others are like, it's, know, cause predictive or intent doesn't work because once, as soon as there's intent, everybody's on it. Now you're just part of the noise and it's like, okay. So what works now? Smoke signals, you know, but this guy admitted.

Bill Rice (04:18.609)
Yeah. Yeah.

Wes Schaeffer (04:22.06)
He works in a very bougie, very bespoke, you know, a handful of clients, founders, very, you know, cause he's talking 12, 16, 18, 36 months, right? In this, in this thing. I'm like, the average sales person, you know, this whole BDR, SDR, AE world, he doesn't have 36 months to make his number. He's got to make his number this quarter. You know? So it's like, maybe you should have led with that caveat of

Bill Rice (04:45.522)
Right.

Wes Schaeffer (04:50.786)
So I don't know, is everybody just full of crap?

Bill Rice (04:52.553)
Yeah, no, I mean, I think it's a good point. And one of the illustrations I like to bring up is like, it really fundamentally is all the same thing, right? You you know, kind of the the Ada framework or whichever one you like the best, you, kind of got to get out in the market, you got to make people aware, you know, you got to get their interest up, right? And then you got to get them into that mode of making a decision. And, and so that framework all exists. Like, when I first got in the game, as I got out of the military,

kind of moved over to the commercial side of things. You know, we were putting advertisements in the newspaper and driving, if you can believe this, driving traffic from the newspaper to the like the early internet websites, right? But what were we doing? We're putting an offer in the newspaper. We're getting them all excited about it. And then we were moving them to wherever we wanted to have the conversation. In our case, we're trying to get a lead for a salesperson. So the mechanisms are the same. We still as fundamentally as salespeople,

know, need to have some sort of, of lead or person that we think is the right person. Right. And then we need to have a conversation with them. And then we need to get them excited. We need to understand their pain points and everything and get them excited about a solution and then get them to sign a contract. So fundamentally the workflow is the same. What you use to, as the world changes, like, okay, well, people stopped reading the newspapers. So what do we do? We moved to Google, right? And we started paying for search ads and stuff like that.

Same things happen to now, right? People are maybe using Google a little less and they're using AI or maybe it's smarter to leverage some AI to figure out like who that you could cold call would have the highest probability of picking up that phone or surrounding them and giving them enough information with some other channels, maybe popping into their LinkedIn, showing your little face that you took a look at them.

then having them look at your profile, see that you're having some conversations on LinkedIn and then maybe send them an email or maybe then make that phone call. And they're like, yeah, I do remember seeing Wes's face on my LinkedIn profile. I did take a quick look. Hey, this phone call, maybe I'll answer because it looked like Wes was doing some stuff that I was interested in. So, you know, I hate to kind of get in these, these religious conversations about like what works and what doesn't it's really more about figuring out like

Bill Rice (07:13.927)
what works for your organization, your marketplace, then leveraging all this noisy stuff around you, to, make it more productive or make you more effective at what you're doing. But at the end of the day, for most of us, you gotta make a call and you gotta have a conversation still in order to get somebody to, to write a check to you.

Wes Schaeffer (07:36.44)
Looks like the military, right? You need air superiority, but you need some grunts. So they got to drive in there and secure the place, huh?

Bill Rice (07:44.817)
Yeah, well, you can't. Yeah, you can't hold territory with air power. We figured that out real quick after the first go for right. mean, you can you can cause a lot of pain and you can change minds. But if you want to hold ground, you know, you're to have to get your buddies from the army to go in there and the Navy to, you know, to hold.

Wes Schaeffer (08:02.659)
Build a couple of McDonald's, Subway, you know.

Bill Rice (08:05.481)
we used to always say eighties was the first on the ground right i mean so

Wes Schaeffer (08:11.234)
man, well I discovered, know, I started, I was taking my shirt off in ads and people started paying me to put my shirt back on. So it's kind of like only dads, kind of only fans, but just like, just, had this side income, like keep your shirt on please. Like people pay me like every month. I'm like, what are they trying to say? But anyway, yeah, I mean, so it works. I mean, I get that mailbox money. man. Yeah, it is, it is crazy.

Bill Rice (08:18.025)
There you go. Right.

Bill Rice (08:25.737)
You just gotta have the right ICP, right?

Wes Schaeffer (08:40.782)
What works for calling today? I'm a fan of calling. It just seems harder than ever. You know, to get good information, to enrich it, you know, do it affordably, then try to drip on them. You know, I'm running across this. I have a couple of pre-built campaigns that I pushed into people's CRMs, into their market automation tools.

but if I put you into a drip sequence where I call you email, you reach out on social media, maybe I do a direct mail piece, call you again, email you that email is technically a cold email. Right. Even if I do a one-off, like,

Bill Rice (09:21.181)
Yeah. Yeah.

Wes Schaeffer (09:27.928)
HubSpot, know, on a one-off email, it actually routes through your own G Suite or Outlook. And it's fine for me as an individual doing my own stuff. But if I've got even five reps and they're hitting the phones hard, if they just do 50 emails times five, right? There's two 50. Maybe there's doing a hundred. There's 500 coming same email coming out, you know,

Does that work? They get dinged, you know, but then a HubSpot or a diffusion software or whatever that they won't email to a cold list. What's the work around?

Bill Rice (10:07.433)
Yeah, yeah, for sure. I'm a big fan, you know. So one of the things I always tell clients and folks is I like systems to work leads and people to work people. Right. So have conversations. So there are ways and I think it's important to leverage all these different systems and tools. And some of the things you mentioned can turn a cold call or a cold email into something warm.

but you have to get a little more sophisticated and then this is where automation can leverage your things like HubSpot and then you work with KEEP and Fusionsoft and stuff like that. For me, and then I think you also need, I'm a big fan of knowing how the technology works to some degree so you can leverage some points. So one of my favorite things to do on the B to C side is as a lead comes inbound, so usually that's an inquiry, right, that we generate.

is immediately go out with a text message and then an email that says, got your information. So it's a confirmation, right? And B2B when we're generating, that's B2C, but B2B too, if you get an inbound lead triggering.

Wes Schaeffer (11:13.792)
And yeah, so that's B to C.

Wes Schaeffer (11:20.28)
Do people give up their cell phone numbers?

Bill Rice (11:22.897)
Yeah, absolutely. In fact, most of the numbers you get now are cell phone numbers. This is one of the things that's really, and I'll talk about B2B here in a second, but this is what's really tormenting B2B because particularly with remote, now this is changing a little bit. People are moving back to the office, but people don't have office numbers anymore, right? They have their cell phone, right? And so if you go into something like Apollo or rocket reach or any the Zoom info, most of the office numbers are invalid.

Wes Schaeffer (11:40.279)
Right.

Bill Rice (11:52.433)
cell phones, maybe not accessible. So a lot of those things are not connecting. So this is why I do like to do email and text message. You know, if those are available, because the other thing about knowing the technology is one, it goes through this lock screen notifications up here. Plus if you send those first and then you make a phone call, chances are because it was on the lock screen that people took a look at it and opened up their phone. So then the phone

when you make that phone call instead of saying unknown or spam likely it's like you see this come up occasionally likely Wes right and so then you're like I know who that is and I'll pick up the phone so that's one little trick on the b2b side again warming those calls and those emails up with LinkedIn is kind of my favorite thing because the beauty of LinkedIn is people can check you out they see your face you can pop up

on them and we're all we're all curious about who's looking at us right so we're always looking at like who's visited us so that's a really effective way you can come in there with a message and a connection request that makes sense you can start the conversation on LinkedIn that's believe it or not really effective as long as you in my estimation you're transparent like I'll go in there and I'll say hey I'm Bill Rice run a strategy company we do a lot

to help b2b companies generate inbound leads, right? It would be interesting or would it be interesting if we connected, right? So many people try to kind of go up with the sneak attack and nobody likes that. And everybody, as soon as you kind of like, Hey, I noticed you went to the Air Force Academy or whatever you're like, yeah, well, I know there's a sales.

Wes Schaeffer (13:37.048)
My next door neighbor's best friend's dad also almost got in. You know, I mean, like, what, what?

Bill Rice (13:41.521)
Yeah, right. Exactly. Yeah. Do you know what's behind that? So so be a little transparent with that. And then again, the phone call and the email. Fact of the matter is even in b2b, like, I agree with you, like the phone is really tough. So generally, I'll save a phone call until I've had a couple interactions digitally. Because I think people like to have control of that conversation and be prepared for it.

And then occasionally, I like to use phone call almost as a surprise. It's like, I've talked to this person a couple of times and West is calling me like that creates a whole different sort of conversation. So to make the phone work better, I like to kind of start with the digital channels and start to warm that up, build, you know, build up a little bit of comfort level, be transparent as to what I think I have for you. And then I think the other thing that's that's kind of

Wes Schaeffer (14:21.282)
Mm-hmm.

Bill Rice (14:39.303)
really important about that or to remember a lot of times salespeople were shy about this, but believe it or not, frequency builds trust. So the more they see your name, particularly if it's in different places, they're going to be more responsive, assuming that again, you've got your ICP right, it fits and they've got a true problem that you can solve. know, some of those other elements have to be there, but yeah, just, just creating more frequency, creating more saturation.

in front of their eyeballs, always is gonna get you a better response when you go down to the actual contact phase.

Wes Schaeffer (15:16.236)
What are people opting in to receive? Cause some are saying, you know, PDFs are dead though. The, the white, white paper, the free report, the long, you know, guys, those are dead. I'm like, okay, everything's dead then. mean, they opt in for a video. Do you get them to a membership sites? I mean, what are they, what are they choosing to opt in for?

Bill Rice (15:31.229)
Yeah.

Bill Rice (15:38.353)
Yeah. I mean, we love content for sure. I'm of a different opinion. You know, people are like freer than ever with their email because they know they can sort it and you know, Gmail's got all kinds of nice things to bucket them off and everything. So I feel like an email is really easy to get, especially if there's some opportunity for some quality behind there, you know, a white paper or something that's going to solve a problem or whatever.

so gated content still unquestionably works. but the other thing that, that I think works really well is, is ungated content. And then inside of that content saying, Hey, I can help you with this, right? I'm going to give you a lot of value first, right? I'm going to give you the solution. I'm going to tell you how it works. I'm going try to build some confidence in that. And then, by the way, I can either tell you more about this or I can do it for you. and that,

to capture, and this is a lot of the technique we use to capture a discovery call is pretty simple. I mean, it's still, you know, two or 3 % of total traffic and people that visit that. But once that person kind of fills that out and we usually the way we actually captured is not kind of the traditional form, giving your name and your email, which just feels like you're, running headfirst into a sales pitch. What we like to do is a survey style form. So we're asking them one question at a time.

And we're moving them through it. And they kind of feel like they're, I think a couple of things happen like mentally in that moment is one, they feel, they feel like they're getting closer to their solution because they're answering questions that make sense. and at the same time, as they're kind of moving through that, I think they're getting some sense that you have credibility cause you're asking the right questions. And I'm not just talking about, you know, firmographic stuff, like don't, you know, how many

How many sales reps do you have or how many you know, not not how much revenue do you make? Not all that but some questions about the problem, right? And all of a sudden they're like, Hey, like, he gave me like five problems that I could be solving. And like those make sense in my role, right? So doing some work up front to really understand your ideal customer profile, the problems that they face and the solutions they're looking for, and then build a survey to kind of figure out which one of those they're looking for.

Bill Rice (17:57.801)
It also does great things on the back end. Once it gets in your CRM, you do all kinds of sophisticated things to figure out where they go and whether or not they're going to convert and whether or not they fit and all those kinds of things. So I really love those surveys. And those are really, you know, really effective. Obviously the classic white paper and lead magnets, I still believe in those. But it's amazing how many people just kind of come through and tell you what the problem is, right? Especially if it's acute enough.

Wes Schaeffer (18:26.998)
Yeah, do you have them opt in at the end or in the beginning of the survey?

Bill Rice (18:31.143)
Yeah. At the end. Yeah. Any sort of anything that looks like a registration, ask for name and email upfront. and our testing experiences, the brick wall. So, so you want to, you want to build again, a lot of this psychological, right? This is my Intel background. This is where, the thread connects, right? You got to, you got to give them something upfront that makes them feel like, that there's something of value there or you understand them or whatever. And then on that last page, which is the, you know, the contact information,

They'll give you that all day because you've already built the trust. And that's the other reason I like the survey style form because you get like three or four questions and you it's amazing how like the mind shifts versus just say, give me your, name and email right up front. And then I'm going to ask you some questions or then I'm going to give you something. So

Wes Schaeffer (19:11.502)
You do?

Wes Schaeffer (19:16.91)
Yeah. Do you, I've turned off free emails. I may turn them back on. don't know, but it's like, and obviously in a B2B setting, like I want to know who the hell you are. You know, cause I've got one of my top lead generators for 12, 15 years is a survey around CRMs. And, um, so, but like things.

And I guess it depends on your own reputation. Like I've been fine, you know, but all the Yahoo and Microsoft and Outlook, mean, using Infusionsoft, I've had some problems in the past, with their deliverability, but I don't know, things seem to have gotten better and mine seems okay. But on using HubSpots, I got, turned off free, you know, obviously I'm getting fewer opt-ins, but now I'm getting real people. I can look them up on LinkedIn, connect with them easier.

Bill Rice (20:03.421)
Yeah. Yeah.

Bill Rice (20:12.029)
Yeah.

Wes Schaeffer (20:13.464)
So do you accept the free?

Bill Rice (20:16.039)
Yeah. mean, it, it, it depends a little bit who you are. Like if you're targeting small businesses, right, right. You personally, and, and my scenario, no, I expect you to have like the customer that I want to engage with these to have the sophistication of having a business level account. And as they're looking for information should have the professionalism to like want that to come into their business account.

Wes Schaeffer (20:22.006)
I'm the sales whisperer. That's what.

Bill Rice (20:43.805)
versus the free account. I think that's absolutely the right move for this scenario. But there are, you know, scenarios where you're serving small businesses or, you know, like classic ones are like accountants that solve, you know, problems for small business owners or something like that. You see some of those small business owners that still live in their, their Gmail. we work a little bit in the mortgage, you know, in the mortgage industry, especially in the BTC.

mortgage brokers that hate this, but they still put like super duper mortgage broker 123 and

Wes Schaeffer (21:17.902)
I know my son's in real estate does well. He's got a Gmail and a very good friend of mine, very successful attorney. He's 10 years older. I mean, he's in his mid sixties. He's got a Yahoo account.

Bill Rice (21:22.386)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Bill Rice (21:31.037)
Yeah, you'll see some of that. I think some of that.

Wes Schaeffer (21:32.652)
I built this website for him. He has a domain. It's like he doesn't use it.

Bill Rice (21:36.393)
I don't get it. So to your, I guess the short answer to your point for most of us, yeah, I would absolutely turn off free. And there's some other characteristics that you want to turn off. mean, I'm a big believer in filtering upfront to some degree, right? mean, you, ideally you're generating enough demand that you can be a little choosy because there's nothing that sucks worse than getting on a discovery call for an hour with guy that wants to, know, guy or gal that wants to pick your brain.

that's never been opened. my gosh. Yeah. For sure. I just got a guy just, just poke the bear. He posted something about how the blue angels are the, are the best. yeah. Yeah. So I, so I, I, I posted a bunch of, Thunderbird pictures.

Wes Schaeffer (22:07.566)
Or like they went to Navy. Like, I'm not talking to that dude. No way.

Wes Schaeffer (22:22.328)
Whatever.

All I say is my four years, we won the commander in chief's trophy. So you know what? least I did what I could. All right. I mean, can't judge us on the last several years.

Bill Rice (22:33.353)
fact. As I know, I don't know what's going on. It's kind of frustrating. We saw, I remember, well, you know, this too, like our instructors, the Navy instructors, for whatever reason, after the Navy game, they would switch, um, switch to their, their all black uniforms. And we used to always tell them it's like, Oh, this is your morning phase, right? And then always whatever that switch over time was, but always the same time. We're like, yeah, once again, you're in, in morning. So

Wes Schaeffer (22:52.674)
they'd be mourning,

Wes Schaeffer (23:01.452)
That's funny. man, I mean, it's probably the fall, you know, the whole can't wear white after Labor Day, whatever. mean that.

Bill Rice (23:08.816)
Yeah. Well, you know, maybe guys are a little more sensitive, so they they hold true to that.

Wes Schaeffer (23:12.974)
man. Well, how are you getting people to engage, to get these surveys and stuff? Cause I'm, I'm spooling up for the first time really ever, paid ads. and I look at my own buying habit, how I engage most of the stuff. I'm seeing ads on social media and like, looks interesting. I'll follow, get the report.

Bill Rice (23:29.521)
Yeah. Yeah.

Wes Schaeffer (23:42.316)
buy something. I I can't think the last time I've gone to somebody's blog and just consumed.

Bill Rice (23:42.505)
Yeah.

Bill Rice (23:49.863)
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, the moneymakers for us right now in B2B is LinkedIn. So do what we call connection campaigns is is again, to scale that you used to usually have a partner or you have somebody that's kind of doing the manual work at some point that'll probably get more sophisticated. But I do still believe in having a partner who's who's doing those connection campaigns and that outreach.

Again, that's fine.

Wes Schaeffer (24:20.514)
What does that mean? It's like a VA, like connecting for you?

Bill Rice (24:23.889)
Yeah, yeah, you do. Yeah. A virtual assistant. I've actually got a group that that are a little more sophisticated. So they're all sales guys. And they've done this, you know, kind of created this as their their business. And so they're an outreach agency. You get them in your email, a million of them. So it's really hard to sort through them. But that's that is effective. The problem with that is scale because you have to use I mean, LinkedIn is still built around the individual.

so I'm a big fan of the kind of the sales team of one concept. and you, probably know this, you're, probably this for that. I am from, my agencies or whatever. You can be really effective. You can do millions of dollars of sales, as an individual sales rep, you know, or agent, if you know how to kind of use these. So, so I like connection campaigns. it does a couple of things and enlarges the network and increases visibility on LinkedIn. it creates.

Hard and fast connections, which some of those turned into two meetings or, or some subsequent stuff. LinkedIn as a channel to like, that's where I try to deliver value first. videos, super popular, LinkedIn has, has leaned into video. so if you have the capability to do short form video, now you can even do that. Yep. Yeah, totally. Everything in LinkedIn.

Wes Schaeffer (25:39.886)
Are you doing native uploaded there like versus embed YouTube or something?

Bill Rice (25:47.201)
and this is what makes it probably what makes it a good channel that marketers like me haven't ruined yet, but at the same time, it also makes it harder to scale is in LinkedIn. Almost everything has to be done native. They really ratchet down their API. If you put in external links and YouTube, they suppress its reach. So you do have to do native. That's where a VA really works well. you know, as an individual contributor, you know, VAs aren't that expensive.

Like I'm a big fan of, of even if I had to, and I do in my case, but if you had to invest in them yourself, like I would do that, right? Cause they can give you some scale. the other thing that's really effective, if you're not, using some chat GPT or perplexity or Gemini, like you got to get on the train because there's nothing like one of my favorite hacks for salespeople.

And this isn't necessarily inbound demand, but as far as conversion rate, if you want something that's going to 10 extra conversion rate, come off of a discovery call, go to your chat, GBD, do an immediate follow up email with that and deliver it in a few minutes versus, shit, it's the end of the week. I got to do my follow ups. can't remember what the hell I talked about, you know? So taking those transcripts and having AI kind of work through that and give you an instant follow up.

people still love, kind of the, responsiveness of a salesperson, right? If so, so the, the moments that really work well is inbound leads or conversations that you get the faster you respond, the higher your probability of eventually closing the, the responsiveness you have to inbound questions or followups again, significantly increases the probability of that converting followups.

I can't tell you how many, if you go into most sales operations and most sales organizations and you look at the amount of hanging followups that right there will tell you the success of that operation because there are so many deals that wander away because you know, bill never followed up with me. So I went to my, you know, second and third option, who was responsive. because at the end of the day, a lot of times we're delivering somewhat comparable solutions.

Wes Schaeffer (28:05.56)
Damn.

Bill Rice (28:09.809)
So it's really about your responsiveness and your sense of urgency and solving that person's problem that wins the day. So, so that's, I'm big fan of, of that kind of stuff and AI that's where AI can, even if you're not a sophisticated user of it, just, you know, pay for a $20 chat GPT account and start getting it to work alongside of you, bring a VA and to be able to scale you and be able to, know, at end of the day, sales is still a large numbers game.

So anything that allows you to do high quality at scale is going to increase your paycheck

Wes Schaeffer (28:46.38)
Yeah. Clearly you're not a fan of Terminator, man. Look, Skynet. I'm not, no way, man. AI? Nope. I'm pen and paper, dude. It's no, faxes. Faxes are where it's at. Skynet can't read a fax. I tried explaining that to my kids the other day, man. I like, I got into sales. There was still such a thing as fax broadcast.

Bill Rice (28:51.03)
You

Bill Rice (29:00.657)
Yeah, because you'll be the only one that drops on the floor if they can find the fax machine, right?

Bill Rice (29:15.878)
yeah, for sure. Yeah. Probably thermal paper just curling up at the bottom.

Wes Schaeffer (29:17.185)
Late 90s.

Wes Schaeffer (29:21.608)
Yep, curling up and falling under. They will never know that.

Bill Rice (29:24.263)
Yeah. Yeah, exactly. But my favorite story about my kids not understanding things, and this was several, several years ago when they were littler, my, my boy loves popcorn. And so, in some conversation, totally unassociated with popcorn, I had mentioned that we didn't have microwaves growing up. And he looked at me with the craziest quizzical look and said, how did you cook popcorn? He was

It was magical.

Wes Schaeffer (29:54.998)
We had the first microwave in my neighborhood. my cousins would come over like, what? And we'd play with that. Then we put, I don't know how we didn't burn the house down, man. We put all kinds of crap in that thing. Sparking like no battle. what?

Bill Rice (30:02.761)
yeah. I remember.

I remember my mom going to a microwave cooking class, which is like, come on. mean, what are we doing?

Wes Schaeffer (30:13.354)
man. Well, we had frozen TV dinners, man. But you know, the old latchkey kids, right? I mean, we let ourselves in. Dad's working out of town and construction. Mom's got a job.

Bill Rice (30:19.517)
Yup. Yup.

Bill Rice (30:24.701)
Yep. Yep. Yeah. it's, yeah, it's funny. And now it's just changing even faster. It's like, it's crazy. Like what's going on now with, like you said, AI and stuff. mean, it's

Wes Schaeffer (30:36.878)
I my kids like I would drive from Houston back to the Academy, you know, with a paper map, right? No satellite, no cell phones. They're like paper, like a pirate, you know, navigating off a paper. Like, good old AAA, man. They flip that thing over and highlight your map.

Bill Rice (30:49.446)
Yeah

Yeah. the triptych. Yeah.

Wes Schaeffer (30:58.446)
I got a ticket. Somebody was asking online the other day like are these you know speed tracked by aircraft real and I was like the one time man, I took some road from like Lubbock up on Eastern Colorado. So I just I didn't want to take the 25 I just like I'm gonna change it up and it was a straight shot two-lane road wide open and I was hauling ass man. Like there's nobody out there and I'm coming up to a little town.

Bill Rice (31:10.45)
Yep.

Wes Schaeffer (31:27.918)
So I slowed down and there's some kind of state trooper or whatever sheriff over on the side of the road. I pass and he lights me up. I'm like, I am not speeding. Like what is going on? So again, we've got an aircraft, you know, clock to you. I'm like, I was going that fast. I'm like, couldn't even argue, man. Like, damn, this is like 90, 91, you know, like airplanes are really tracking a little Nissan truck hauling ass through Southeast Colorado.

Bill Rice (31:45.637)
Yeah, right, Yeah.

Yeah.

Wes Schaeffer (31:57.613)
Why?

Bill Rice (31:58.441)
Yeah, that's where you saw them was where they wide open spaces where they couldn't get coverage. But yeah, why they cared. I don't know, like, candor. Yeah.

Wes Schaeffer (32:08.086)
Hmm. But yeah, my kids are like, what? My daughter literally texted me last week. She's in San Diego. She's just an hour away. My check engine light just came on. Is it OK? You know, she was getting home at night. Is it OK? I get in the morning, pick my friend up, then go check. I'm like, it's probably just oil change. Like you can drive your car. It's not smoking.

Bill Rice (32:25.895)
Right, right. Right, right. Right, right. Probably your mission stuff isn't working anymore, you're spitting smoke in the air.

Wes Schaeffer (32:34.382)
It's like, you'll be okay. my gosh. Yeah, man. I think there's something too. Like putting pen to paper, you know, to learn math, even though we have calculators. Like you got to engage with humans somehow to understand how to leverage these digital tools. You know, because like that AI people don't understand. It's great content. It's great.

Bill Rice (32:52.189)
Yeah. Yeah.

Bill Rice (32:57.896)
Yeah.

Wes Schaeffer (33:04.245)
It's a great alternative to staring at a blank screen and a blinking cursor, but you gotta spruce it up, you know? And if you don't know how to communicate with a human face to face, I think people, they're always gonna struggle. So it's fine with me, let them use these tools. Cause I feel like I stand out being a human.

Bill Rice (33:12.691)
Yeah.

Bill Rice (33:21.801)
Yeah. and I think that's, I think that's, and that's, that's certainly the, the winners and losers that are going to get sorted out here because I think, it commoditizes a lot of execution. It commoditizes or, or, or increases productivity in a lot of ways, but the people that are winning with these tools are the people who are creative and understand human emotion and can take these tools and can.

to me more effective to allow me to scale, but they still have the creativity. and that's, is what I do worry about. Like, know, you see how we were, we were a universal studios, several months back and, we just down there and we're like, Hey, let's just kind of don't have anything to do. So we popped in there. my daughter's a little bit older. We're walking around and,

Wes Schaeffer (33:56.259)
Yep.

Bill Rice (34:21.641)
We were shocked kids in strollers in a theme park, looking at an iPad. And so, so my fear is, you know, from a very young age, we're just feeding content like to your point, like we, know, even now, like I use paper and pen, you know, there's, don't like think through anything we do. Yeah. We don't, we don't write anything down. We don't sit in silence and

Wes Schaeffer (34:28.555)
Yeah.

Wes Schaeffer (34:49.422)
Big Bunks.

Bill Rice (34:50.181)
And yeah, and just start to think through things anymore. We're just so used to getting fed and those people, you know, I don't know who's a matrix fan, but those are the people that become batteries, right? For the system. But the creative people will ultimately win because they'll be creative and smart enough to leverage and scale things. So yeah, we're in a we're in a weird time. But creativity and curiosity.

Wes Schaeffer (35:01.997)
Yeah.

Wes Schaeffer (35:08.216)
Yeah.

Wes Schaeffer (35:13.614)
Yeah.

Well, everybody's the other so amped up. Like I've got seven kids, right? And my youngest is 11. And last week, my wife was running some errands or whatever and she was home and she came in the office and she was petting the dog and she wanted to do something. go, no, you're not like we have a timer on the iPad. Right. And, I wouldn't set the timer and she, she laid there on my floor for two hours asleep. She fell asleep.

If had an eye patch, she'd have been awake and amped up. But mean, obviously, she was tired. Go rest. It's OK to be bored sometimes. Let the mind wander. Let the mind rest.

Bill Rice (35:49.415)
Yep. Totally.

It is, yep.

Bill Rice (35:58.808)
Yeah. Yeah, for sure. And I think it's going to get harder and harder to do. one thing, you know, I talked to a lot of people about AI because we are using a lot of stuff and we're building some companies and things, you know, to leverage some of that stuff. But one thing that I do kind of talk about a lot around, you know, AI and that sort of stuff is a lot of times people

have this need, once they get this productivity and all of a sudden they can do things faster, they feel this compulsion to do more faster. And what I keep telling everybody, even people in my organization is like, yes, use chat GBT, make it save you time. But with that extra time, and this is particularly with sales organizations, I think sales organizations should be running those transcripts through chat GBT.

getting summarizations, getting feedback on the calls, and then the sales directors who for years have not had time to sit down one-on-one and do coaching sessions. Use that extra time after you've run your sales reports through chat GPT and saved three hours of trying to figure that stuff out and go have a conversation with a rep that's having trouble or have some time to do some role playing with one of your top producers or have a conversation with a top producer and figure out what's working with them.

and then communicate to that to the other. So use that extra time to, to have more face to face person time. That's why I tell everybody all the time. You heard me. I let off with it. Let systems work leads because that's data right now. And then people interact with people. Right? So figure out systems to get people on your schedule, figure out systems to make sure your phone call goes through, figure out systems to be able to like have that.

Holy cow moment because you sent somebody something in the mail and they opened it and it was awful, right? Like so, so yep, totally. So I think that's what we need to use the productivity for that stuff. Those are the people that are going to win because like you said early on in this conversation, like the noise, the noise, the noise, the noise.

Wes Schaeffer (37:56.492)
Yeah. Yeah. Dude, you want to cut through the noise? Send something physical. Postcard. What?

Bill Rice (38:16.851)
cut through with silence cut through with difference you know do something different do something unexpected like those are the people that are winning

Wes Schaeffer (38:25.074)
so I talking about ads. you, is that viable for most? You know, are you seeing a shift or are more people going to that? Are they less effective? Like what's, what's your take on ads?

Bill Rice (38:38.811)
Yeah, a lot of like a lot of this stuff. It's a little bit context dependent on the consumer side. B2C ads are still our fastest way to revenue, right? So that that works really well. Consumers are very receptive to ads on the B2B side. I think in certain context, it can be effective, but generally on the B2B side, more of the organic again, LinkedIn.

organic content that then ranks through search engines. And now what we're doing is it's not really search engines because a lot of particularly in B2B and our type of sales, people are looking for full solutions. So what I see people going to now is they're going to chat GPT. They're going to Gemini. They're going to these AI things to get a more complete conversation about the problem they're trying to solve, especially in that solution discovery sort of phase.

Wes Schaeffer (39:27.15)
Yeah.

Bill Rice (39:36.137)
And so being able to have you or your content as an expert start to show up in the large language models and chat GPT and stuff like that is Kind of what we're we're spending a lot of our attention on in the B2B is figuring out how to get that content into those channels And that's that's a little bit of a trick some of the old SEO, you know things still work honestly If you could hold the quality high

Wes Schaeffer (39:54.466)
Yeah.

Bill Rice (40:05.267)
Quantity is working now because these these large language models are like starving for information So if you can take this is what we're doing with a lot of companies is you can take testimonials reviews case studies That's proprietary data essentially inside of your organization that the large language models can't get from just scraping the internet So if I can write or create content with some of that infused in it these large language models

like suck that up and then all of a sudden in somebody saying like, do I make my sales operation, you know, convert more or produce more revenue? It's like a really big question. If you you're going to get crap from that from a Google search, but if you put that in chat, GPT, you get a really nuanced response. And if you ask it to source the materials, you know, West Schaefer might pop up into that a couple of times because you've got a particular piece of content that has a real world example.

has a real client testimonial for credibility and has an actual case study. And that piece of content that you put on your blog, again, some of the old school stuff starting to work again, gets sucked in there and you show up in that sort of, that big picture sort of conversation with an LLM. So again, that's a really simplistic example, but, and then if you're just, again, depending on the scale, just having, you know,

just having a lot of good conversations and sharing some of that same nuanced content and LinkedIn and LinkedIn is it's a channel that's been asleep for a really long time. So that you can get a lot of reach just as an individual posting on LinkedIn. You'll be shocked at how quick you'll grow an audience of people following you not even connecting but following you. So I think LinkedIn is in a very early stage of its

growth. So if you're B2B, start to light up your profile and it gives you for salespeople. It's kind of like it gives you the follower base or the audience base that becomes the modern road at Rolodex. Right. So if you change positions or you change what you're doing or you change what you're selling and you announce that in LinkedIn, this is one of my favorite things that I see work all the time. If I change what I'm delivering and the solution that audience that maybe I wasn't right for before.

Bill Rice (42:22.385)
I make a change and I'm selling some slightly different. Some of those people are like, Hey, I trust Wes. I've been watching this stuff for the last year or six months. So again, it's organic. It's not scalable. It's not going to fill your commission check, but man building up that base so that when you do change, you can, you have an audience to get that pipeline sort of started with, just announcing that change and what you're doing and the new solution. You'll find people come out of the woodwork that you didn't fit with before, but now you do.

So that's another.

Wes Schaeffer (42:53.998)
Well, I'm using this interview. I'm like, Hey man, if bill's full, call me. Cause like, I know this guy and my phone's already, just, I just did a press release. got bill coming on and already I'm full for the year. So it's, should have connected with you a long time ago, man. Why, why have you been hiding from me all this time?

Bill Rice (43:00.882)
you

Bill Rice (43:08.989)
Hey, it's magic. I tell you what, we're all in our little, we think we got a lot of reach until we don't, you

Wes Schaeffer (43:20.056)
Dude, it's so funny, right? was, I forget somebody recently, but they're not in this space. I'm like, do you know this guy? Like this super popular things like Gary Vaynerchuk or something. Nope. Never heard of him. Like, what? You know, like there's just, but it's the same thing. Like I'm watching, you know, American Idol with my daughter and my wife. They went two weeks ago. some kids from her school were going. So she wanted to go and it was free. Like you can go to American Idol for free. My wife's like, what? So it's, you know, 90 minutes and

Bill Rice (43:32.265)
Yeah.

Wes Schaeffer (43:49.262)
to drive there for us. And you know, got to make a day out of it because you got to get there super early and you know, they make it come in hours before the show starts and blah, blah, blah. But, they went, you know, and was a lot of fun. but there are these, these people are coming in to help with the show. like, who's that? You know, they're giving me, that's like the number one album of the nation. And I like, never heard that. So, I mean, there's so many niches, you know, you can just dominate and, um, it's gotta be consistent.

Bill Rice (44:08.755)
Yeah, yeah.

Yeah.

Bill Rice (44:16.391)
Yeah, I think we forget. I think we forget that too. Like, I mean, to your point of like, even knowing what, like you and I are doing or whatever. So one thing, whenever I've kind of like hit a dip, one of my favorite things to do. and then this kind of came to a realization that all salespeople should be aware of whenever I've hit a dip. One of the first thing I'll do is I'll pull up 15 to 20 people that I know, and I'll just tell them like, Hey, this is what I'm doing.

and if you know anybody, you know, I'd love, you know, for your help getting me a referral and invariably one or two of those people are like, well, I need that. So the lesson learned from that that I learned very early and I do all the time is your best friends have no idea what you do. Right. And your network and the people in your CRM probably have long since forgot what the heck you do. So occasionally just reaching out and reminding people.

this is what I do. And this is how I solve problems. And this is the type of problems that I solve. If you know anybody like this, I'd love to hear from you always pulls out a deal or two. So people just people I mean, we're all focused in on our own world and what we do and what we're what's important to us. And we forget our friends and what they do. So don't feel shy about like reminding people of like, Hey, dude, I sell real estate. really? Well, I've been looking for a place in Florida.

You know, it's like, so yeah, that's the little things.

Wes Schaeffer (45:46.733)
Crazy, huh?

It really is. Well, cool, man. So you mentioned a couple of websites. Where should people go? Do want them to hit you up on LinkedIn? Do you want them to go to one of your websites?

Bill Rice (46:00.519)
Yeah. Yeah, for sure. So, depending on what you're interested in, if you're interested in just like stuff that we've talked about and the things that I'm seeing on the horizon and the things that can improve, I've been a big fan of the executive brief. like just having sort of a summarized trend. So my executive brief.com is my newsletter. if you're interested in what I do, Bill Rice strategy.com is a great place to find me. and if you've got just a question, super easy to find on LinkedIn and I'm

Wes Schaeffer (46:19.477)
Nice.

Bill Rice (46:28.637)
very responsive. not shy of my direct messages and connection requests. So as long as you're trying.

Wes Schaeffer (46:35.096)
Dude, I sent you a request like three years ago. Don't pull that on me. You were blocking me. man, I can't let that stand.

Bill Rice (46:42.993)
Well, well, you know, classmates sometimes, you know, you kind of got to sort through them.

Wes Schaeffer (46:45.838)
There's some. Woo! I digress. Don't get me on that tangent. my gosh. All right. Well, I'm going to grab all those URLs. They'll be in the show notes. They'll be underneath the episode, wherever you're listening to. So just scroll down and click. Well, cool, man. I don't know if I'll get to Michigan anytime soon, but if you come to Southern California, look a brother up.

Bill Rice (46:49.961)
Exactly,

Bill Rice (47:11.987)
Yep, I would. I would love to. We always try to get out of. We'll wait till the wintertime, but I always get out of the cold. I'm always there at some point. So we'll we'll definitely.

Wes Schaeffer (47:17.836)
Yeah.

Wes Schaeffer (47:22.552)
Kentucky to Ohio. Man, that's...or into Michigan. That's rough, Kentucky gets kind of cold,

Bill Rice (47:26.66)
Yeah, yep. It is. Yeah, we get a little ice and stuff, but yeah, I don't know. I don't know how I got this far north, you know, the pecan pie is not as good. It's a lot of a lot of downsides. There's not a lot of waffle houses up here, so, you know, I'm a little fish out of water.

Wes Schaeffer (47:43.854)
Dude, there's no Waffle House out here. My wife though, she makes me grits. So it's like, all right. And she's got my mom's, she's got my mom's gumbo recipe, jambalaya recipe. So.

Bill Rice (47:50.791)
Okay.

Bill Rice (47:56.681)
Okay, the real question though is, my wife got it wrong, syrup or butter on your grits?

Wes Schaeffer (48:04.558)
Dude, that's a Midwest thing. Did you know Tony Micah?

Bill Rice (48:09.353)
the name sounds familiar, but I don't think I-

Wes Schaeffer (48:10.798)
He was a, we were freshmen classmates, fourth degree, and he's from Iowa and he put sugar on his grits. I about slapped him. I'm like, it's butter, salt and pepper, man. That's it. You don't put, don't put no sweet stuff on there and don't give me no like malto meal or whatever. That stuff is nasty. Grits. Let's watch my cousin Vinny. What's a grit?

Bill Rice (48:17.523)
Whoa.

Bill Rice (48:22.669)
Yeah, all right you answered it right

Bill Rice (48:30.569)
yeah, yep. My wife throws syrup on it. I'm like, what are you doing? That goes on your waffle. There's a reason you have waffles and grip.

Wes Schaeffer (48:42.057)
Yes. Oh, dude. Yeah. I love butter. am. I don't know. A year or so ago, maybe two years now, I went more meat. It's so funny. Like I had slightly high cholesterol, not crazy. And I started doing my own research. You know, I get a VA physical every year and it was was inching up and they're like, you know,

Bill Rice (48:49.745)
life.

Wes Schaeffer (49:09.588)
Eat less meat, eat more greens. So I went like damn near all carnivore, you know, five eggs plus sausage for breakfast, you know, fruit, like no breads. found I had that gluten issue, cut out breads, feel great. My cholesterol dropped and they're like, keep doing what you're doing. I didn't tell them anything. I'm not going to fight that fight. I'm like butter, bacon.

Bill Rice (49:30.601)
I'm telling you, I'm with you. My grandfather was a farmer and I was like, there's a reason farmers live forever because they eat just regular food that your body has to do the hard work to process. It all works. It's just so don't.

Wes Schaeffer (49:48.546)
Maybe I should start smoking like Marlboro Reds.

Bill Rice (49:51.847)
Yeah, don't don't get me started there. I might have a cigar or two. So I am from Kentucky. So we still got a little tobacco.

Wes Schaeffer (49:57.792)
I like regards. Yeah. Never been a smoker, but I mean like our parents and grandparents, especially, know, golly, they were just tough.

Bill Rice (50:06.289)
Yeah, my grandfather smoked Dutch masters till the day he died and, you know, he lived a good old life. But, yeah, but the most thing is just, yeah, let your body process, you know, back off the Twinkies and the Doritos and, you know, do a little, little hard work. Anything you got to cook. It's usually a good,

Wes Schaeffer (50:25.239)
I do like some Oreos. Hey Oreos are vegan. That's when I knew this whole thing was bullsh** man. Oreos are legit vegan.

Bill Rice (50:27.933)
Hahaha

Well, my biggest weakness is a chocolate chip cookie, so I don't know if it's vegan, but I'll

Wes Schaeffer (50:40.418)
Dude, I'll eat some sugar. I'll eat ice cream. But I just, I got to cut back on the cookies and cake. ice cream's legit. All right, man. Fellow TrueBlue92, Bill Rice, all the way from what, Monroe? Monroe, Michigan?

Bill Rice (50:48.041)
I'm with you.

Yep. Monroe, Michigan is where we're at right now out in the country a little bit. So. Yep, I'm down here. I'm like the last last spot, you know, I guess on the camera. It's down here, but I'm the last last spot before Ohio. So. Always, always a pleasure.

Wes Schaeffer (50:57.396)
All right, you gotta do the mitten like you're like over here.

Wes Schaeffer (51:05.39)
Do you like to wave? Cool man, it great catching up with you. Hey, go sell something.

Bill Rice (51:16.187)
I'm gonna I'm going to I got a sales call right after this believe it or not. All right. Take care of us.

Wes Schaeffer (51:19.96)
Get on it. See you.