Episode Transcript
Adam O'Leary (00:01.68)
If you're a business owner struggling to build long-term relationships with your clients, as opposed to having them leave after three to six months, then our guest Dan is about to give you a simple win you can implement today. Dan is the managing partner and CEO at Visual Fizz, a B2B marketing agency focused on industrial and technology companies. Dan has worked on hundreds, if not thousands of campaigns in his professional career.
for companies ranging from smaller startups to Fortune 500 companies. Dan, a big welcome to the show. So excited to have you here.
Dan Salganik (00:38.06)
Yeah, thanks for having having me Adam. I'm pretty excited to have this chat.
Adam O'Leary (00:42.16)
Absolutely. So one of the things that we were just talking about before that we just started recording is the fact that you work with clients for years to come while almost all other agencies are stuck in this realm where at the three month mark or the six months mark their clients decide to up and leave. How the heck are you doing it?
Dan Salganik (01:05.089)
Good question. I think it all starts with level setting at the earliest stages, which is when they're just prospecting and looking for an agency. Visual Fizz is at the time of recording about nine years old. And, you know, that's a long time in agency land. One of the big things that I always tell prospective clients, especially because we work with a lot of older companies or individuals who have had a lot of experiences with different agencies, is that we are not an overnight shop.
We're not here to make them rich overnight. If I knew the secrets of success, I probably would be sitting on a boat somewhere. It's ultimately that, you know, in that prospecting stage towards the end of the call, when I feel it's going to be a good fit, I always tell these partners, if you're looking to make a quick buck, if you're looking to have quick turnaround, if you're finding an agency that you need to prove something right away, we're not the folks for you. There's a bunch of agencies that are going to sell you the dream. We're going to work with them for three to six months. You're going to burn your cash.
And you're going to go probably contact us after that. But what I always tell them is we're here to be with you for a year, two years, three years or longer. And ultimately what that does is that builds a little bit of loyalty and a little bit of understanding that this is not an overnight success. We're growing with them and with many of our clients where we start at a certain size retainer, we're going to grow alongside the organization built on both of our own success.
That's ultimately been one of the big reasons because we level set at the very earliest stage.
Adam O'Leary (02:38.756)
love that. And when you're going ahead and talking, I guess, in these initial stages, one of the big, it's what you're talking about right here, is one of the big promises that a lot of companies will go ahead and over promise. And maybe they deliver, but maybe they don't.
But I guess one question for you is after the let's say if a client comes through once you're onboarding I mean you get the sale and one thing that I've learned is the moment that you make a sale It's almost like the client's trust goes down to zero, right? It's like now it's like okay now you have to prove yourself How are you going through on the onboarding stage really being able to kind of build that trust back up?
Dan Salganik (03:17.486)
Yeah, once somebody gets an invoice, that dream seems a little bit more like reality. And so you have to justify the price, whatever that is. It could be a hundred dollars, could be a hundred thousand dollars, but ultimately they're paying for something, a service. And so what I call this stage is actually the honeymoon stage. It's the first three years of us dating, so to speak. And what I tell my team constantly is that these first, exactly what you said, the first three weeks probably, and then the first three months.
are going to be the most crucial in our relationship. If we have a great steady 90 days, we will probably have at least a year to two years or longer with that client. If it's rocky, if there's not level setting expectations, if there's not a very clear understanding of the standard operation, operating procedures for my project managers and communication standards, that can be lost very quickly. You make a client wait too long, you don't ask the right questions, you don't understand their business, you deliver subpar work.
If that happens at six months, you can communicate back with them and say, listen, this has not been the week for me. If it's happening in those first six weeks, the client's likely going to be starting with a bit of a negative perception. It's almost like going on a, I'll give you one more example, no stop, but it's like going on vacation. I always see it very similar. You go into your Airbnb, you're really excited with a big group of people. You've been talking it up. This is going to change your, you know, your whole trajectory of your, of your vacation. And it's just dirty.
You were sold this beautiful, clean Airbnb and it's dirty. So even if they come and clean it up and sweep it and they do everything for free and they give you a free bottle of wine, you're already not at a five star experience that you kind of wished you had. You're at a four and a half, a four, a three, because it's been kind of squandered in the very first perception of that trip. So I see it very similar to being sold that type of dream.
Adam O'Leary (05:10.543)
I love that. And one question, and as you know, this show is called Simple Wins. So I'm wondering, can you give our listeners a simple win during that six week period that will help them be able to consistently make sure that that trust is being delivered, whether it be a quick win that they can get for their clients or consistent wins or what would you recommend for our listeners?
Dan Salganik (05:34.134)
Yeah, I mean, think the biggest thing is actually, honestly, communication. You can get a lot done in six weeks, I think, but I think the biggest thing is making the client feel like they're not doing more work than they have to because they hired you to do less work and making sure that they feel heard. One of the biggest kind of pivotal points in my own sales career running Visual Fizz has been to listen to what the client needs.
and literally say it back to them with my own thoughts after my own years of experience in the marketing space. And what's that, what that's allowed them to feel is, Hey, this guy actually listens. He's not selling me the dream. He's listening to what I need. So I put that out on my team as well to say, okay, during the onboarding period, and we don't have like a six week aggressive, big agency onboarding period. I'm not a big believer in those. They're very costly. I think you have to, especially with many clients, just learn as much as you can.
very quickly and keep learning and iterating and improving because they're paying all that money for you to learn, but it's just time. And so I think as long as you can communicate and have every step lined up until the campaign is launched, because a lot of things we do in the marketing world do take a long time. SEO, paid search to see results, to a website development, but you can give them nuggets of really great pieces to look at.
something visually better than what they've had. But I think at the end of the day, in those first weeks, it's all about support and communication. It's a customer service business at the end of the day.
Adam O'Leary (07:13.231)
That's amazing and you're bang on the money right there. So I'm so glad that we're talking because our listeners definitely need to be able to hear this. And I know one thing that you do is you work in the manufacturing space. You work with, as we were talking about, boring companies. Okay. So for you working in with these boring types of companies, how are you promoting them? Because they're boring, no?
Dan Salganik (07:38.622)
They're boring only to people who don't utilize them, right? So I actually mentioned that once and they're like, we're not boring, we're exciting. I'm like, well, depends who's asking. But you're right. So we work with a lot of industrial manufacturing, construction and logistics companies. On the other hand, we work with tech and kind of really cool, cutting edge. with what we call the boring companies or the established brands or the age old brands, et cetera.
We're not looking to make them overly exciting. I have a big thing that I've talked about for many years, probably five years now called responsible branding. And what that really means is that we're not taking a 75 year old company built by someone's great, great grandfather and turning it into a startup environment. What we're doing is small stepping stone wins and improvements from a brand perspective, from a marketing perspective, because this was probably, they're one of the last two.
ultimately see that shift in the digital space. And with new leadership, maybe new children stepping in with merger and acquisition, et cetera, there's a need to stay competitive. You know, a lot of these startups and PE backed companies are swallowing competition and companies like family owned businesses, private entities, et cetera, want to stay on top. And so what we're trying to do, especially because many, many of our clients have very long sales cycles anywhere from
number of weeks to number of years. I I talked to somebody as a two to four year sales cycle. You're not really looking to be the most exciting brand. This is a space where you really have to actually innovate and drive good quality sales and proper marketing and stay on top of your customers. Because when you're talking about a one, two, three, four year sales cycle, especially in today's day and age where there's so many shifts in positions and everything.
What we're developing are very sustainable brands that can continue growing as they have been, but achieving their goals more digitally to be present in more areas at the end of the day. So long answer, but we do want to make them more modern, but we don't want to make them so modern that they've stepped away from what they're actually good at.
Adam O'Leary (09:43.258)
So that was interesting. You just talked about long sales cycles, like how your clients have these very long sales cycles. So how are you? So for me, that sounds like sales is doing a lot of the work there, but how is marketing also tying in to really be able to help push those sales cycles through after a year or two?
Dan Salganik (10:02.638)
Great question. Sales is not what it used to be. think a lot of people are finding that out, that sales needs marketing and probably marketing needs sales. I believe they're not oil and water. And so ultimately, one of the big things that I always consider is you're probably not going to cold call someone and close a deal. People still say they do, but it's definitely not like it was 20 years ago.
And so you need brands, even if they're the most utilitarian, commoditized brands out there, concrete and cement and bricks and cranes and things you simply need, people are looking, whether that's from an HR perspective, whether that is from a quality perspective, LinkedIn, even Instagram, places like that, there are opportunities. But when you think about the grand scale of many of these companies, they are rather large and they should be
found in as many places as possible, both physically and digitally. So they are going to conferences and expos and things like that, but they also have to be first in every city that they're ranked. And many times these are nationally focused cities. They have five, 10, 20, 30 locations across the country. They need to be found on social for LinkedIn purposes. They need to be found from paid search so they can beat their other PE backed friends.
And ultimately what that comes down to is the sales cycle starts with marketing. And then ideally when you have a great marketing partner who also understands design and proper conversion rate optimization and physical and print design, then you start sending things like proposals and one-pagers and case studies, et cetera, that are all branded to the website, that lead you to the website through the proper funnels and channels that are all actually tracking your attribution.
And like that is 10 times more sophisticated than a dial in, you know, smile type of approach that people have probably gotten accustomed to if they haven't changed their, their style.
Adam O'Leary (12:06.979)
Dan, you're telling me you're not just cold calling everybody? What's wrong with you?
Dan Salganik (12:10.614)
I've tried cold calling like five times in my life and by the third person I called I said this isn't for me. So no, I wish I could do it. have huge, tell, you know, good salespeople, I tell them, listen, mad respect for what you do. Like I'm not interested, but I let them down easy if they're very polite to me. And I'm like, just keep doing what you're doing. You're great. But like it is, it's such a, it's, is such a hard job. Like people who do it, I have major respect for them. Not for me because.
Adam O'Leary (12:16.185)
Ha
Dan Salganik (12:37.616)
I can't take it. It's too much rejection for one day.
Adam O'Leary (12:39.318)
You
Absolutely, no 100 % and so you were just talking about how everything is linking back to the website so that brings me to I think a something that people will be wondering about is so if everything is linking back to the website I've heard this that The website can be your brand but also I know a lot of people want to send to a landing page, right? So what is the difference in your eyes versus the landing page and the website?
Dan Salganik (13:10.828)
Yeah, that's great question. mean, you you have all these different lines of communication and arms, if you will. And I mean, the website is kind of, you know, the website is where everything lives. It's used from a Google perspective for SEO and now, GEO and LLM and everything. But it's kind of your home base, right? And then what I'll get to your question, I'm going to kind of pivot it, they answer a little bit, but I think email and social media are kind of your communication. It's like your breath.
Right. Because your website's going to kind of be the sales poster, if you will, but you need to speak your brand. And that's where these other ones are to update regularly to, you know, and then landing pages is a great question because I'm actually doing a big project for visual fizz on this right now. And I'm actually not really focused on the website as much as the landing pages. So in this case, what I recommend doing for landing pages, and this is really a big topic about like we use like a HubSpot and build it off site people that onsite. I always like onsite, but that's a
whole different discussion. Landing pages are really defined by a very specific target customer that you want to lead exactly to that place to fulfill a function. So if my target, which is a real campaign I'm building right now, are not only just manufacturers, because I have that on my website, but I'm dealing with machinery and fabrication manufacturing companies or food and beverage manufacturing companies. This is so in depth that it may not have a place for my website.
at least for now, but I'm driving traffic specifically via email, via blogs, via communication channels, paid search, paid social, to that specific landing page to fulfill my one function, which is to have them contact me, call me, and learn about me. And it's very conversion driven versus maybe not as brand heavy, but very much focused on the conversion, on the sale.
Adam O'Leary (15:01.935)
I love that. So Dan, for all of our B2B listeners, where should they go to learn more about you?
Dan Salganik (15:07.97)
I recommend check out our website, visualphys.com, or if there's ever interest in learning more about myself, you can check out my LinkedIn or just shoot me an email at hello at visualphys.com and go to me. yeah, any way that I could be a resource, I always try to be.
Adam O'Leary (15:27.32)
Well, thank you so much, Dan. It was an absolute pleasure to have you on.
Dan Salganik (15:31.298)
Thank you very much, I appreciate it.
Adam O'Leary (15:33.454)
Absolutely signing off for now. Have a wonderful rest of your day and looking forward to seeing you on the next episode of Simple Wins.
