For current clients, blog readers and podcast listeners, our company has richly and unapologetically documented how we feel about digital marketing, digital advertising, and search engine optimization.
If you are a new small business owner reader and listener to the 321 Biz Development and Real People USA podcasts, you may appreciate this message and introduction to Robert Frantz, owner of Frantz Enterprises.
I need to, first, provide the backdrop for this conversation before I discuss Robert Frantz.
321 Biz Dev and Real People USA have produced over 400 podcast episodes to support small business owners in making sound, profitable decisions in finding new clients. In these podcast episodes and some blog articles, I have not been a good friend to digital advertising.
Why?
To avoid sounding condescending to readers and listeners, my past and current business development experience comes from the traditional selling world. Before digital advertising, business owners connected with potential clients in more personable ways.
Over a 30-year period, from the time I was in my 20's, my experience has been people respond better to personal interactions more than non-personal interactions.
Building rapport using non-digital approaches still work for those who have those skills.
Unfortunately, small business owners like attorneys, CPAs, dentists, plastic surgeons, insurance brokers, and real estate brokers, who sell big-ticket, high price items never learned these non-digital, sales skills in pursuit of their degrees, licenses and certifications.
I classify these licensed, certified practitioners as "white-collar small business owners". "Blue collar" business owners operate mechanic, AC and heating, and plumbing type companies. "No collar" business owners own restaurants, provide hair services, tattoo art services, and provide landscaping and handyman services, just to name a few. These are the common small business owner classifications.
Since most white-collar small business owners did not have the time, the money and/or the desire to learn what 321 Biz Dev refers to as "sales system based business development", the only remaining options white-collar pros have are digital marketing, digital advertising and Google SEO, SEM services. Google, by the way, is making billions of dollars selling their digital services.
Simply put, in my opinion, and even before I met Robert Frantz, white-collar pros are being held as economic hostages by digital companies.
What is a NYC dentist supposed to do to grow his or her practice when there are 25,000 dentists in the five NYC Burroughs? And, dentists are not in business to do mostly teeth cleanings and tooth extractions. Did you know that dentists spend, on average, $1,000, per new patient visit in dentist time, dental hygienist salaries, x-rays expenses and for other supplies BEFORE it is discovered if dental patients can afford to pay or not for intermediate to complex dental treatment?
What about attorneys? Attorneys spend four years in college, 3-4 years in law school, and open law practices with $400,000 in student loan debt before their law practices find their first clients.
The white-collar pro is looking for ways to add new clients and digital strategies pop-up in their emails or, white-collar pros hear radio commercials about how digital advertising may "drive traffic" to their businesses and make their phones "ring off the hook".
As a former Fortune 500 sales manager in Los Angeles and a CEO of consulting firm, I can tell listeners that if it sounds too good to be true, then...
My biggest complaint about marketing, in general, is marketing companies never have to guarantee results. Marketing companies are not doing anything illegal nor unethical when they accept $10,000 from a white-collar attorney, CPA, or dentist pro to promote the law practice, CPA firm or dental clinic.
The traditional marketing company creates radio and tv ads. The marketing company mails print material to consumers' homes. The marketing company has fulfilled the client's order. Now, it's up to the business prospects and consumers to respond to the marketing activities.
With traditional marketing, at least a white-collar pro can see their ads on tv, hear their ads on radio, receive a marketing piece in the mail, and probably receive phone calls about products and services.
At the other side of spectrum of helping white-collar pros find is consulting. The big difference between marketing and consulting is consulting firms solve challenges and remove obstacles to finding new clients.
Digital advertising is a different story...it's a totally different animal. Traditional marketing has a historical 3% response rate for most industries. Digital marketing and advertising, even in 2021, cannot produce a response rate, so say digital industry think-tanks.
About five years ago, a large San Francisco Bay Area digital advertising company shut its door, laying off several hundred people. Please click HERE to read the list of closed San Francisco Bay Area social media companies. San Francisco is the "mecca" of digital advertising and has become the wealthiest region (the most capitalist region in the world) for its dominance in the digital marketing industry.
I have lived in and near the San Francisco Bay Area for the last 25 years under social media influence and hype. To be frank and honest, the only people who have succeeded with digital marketing on a big scale are the CEOs of digital advertising and digital marketing companies.
Big company, digital marketing is not the same as small business digital marketing. Please click HERE to read about how even big, well-known companies fail at digital marketing.
So my question to white-collar pros and other small business owners is: if large corporations are failing with digital advertising and marketing...and they have massive, multi-million dollar budgets to fund digital marketing projects...why should small business owners feel their results will be different?
Now, let's talk about Robert Frantz.
A good friend named Clay, a UC Berkeley grad, an accomplished guitarist, who has played many of the bars and venues I knew from living and working as a DJ in San Francisco, referred me to Robert. Clay and I have known each other for six months since we met at a cool, eclectic coffee shop in Fair Oaks, California, owned by a Romanian family. Pause Coffee is the only coffee shop where the staff stream "MadlLib" music.
Clay gave me Robert's phone number and asked me to call Robert because we might be able to work together. Clay could not provide me any details about Robert's business. But I called anyway because I respect Clay's business knowledge and we share the same world view.
Robert and I spoke and set up a time to meet. But I was still not clear what Robert did. However, I gathered from the short time we spoke that Robert worked with mobile applications.
I have had meetings with mobile app developers and marketers before. I had an appointment with a big mobile app company located in San Francisco, but the meeting did not go well because the CEO could not communicate how customers using the apps would make money and have a good ROI.
All these digital advertising companies want to sell these apps and digital advertising services without any consideration if customers will add clients and make money. I felt the CEO's push for me to sell these services and politely said no.
The following are the three questions I try to find answers in deciding who to partner with or add as a 321 Biz Dev white-collar pro client:
Will the company's products or services do what it is claimed by the business owner?
Will the new client be in a better position after the purchase than he or she was before the purchase?
Does the business owner believe in his or her products or services?
Here is why these questions are important to me and should be important to any white-collar pro business owner.
As a consultant, 321 Biz Dev does not accept payment from any prospect unless we can deliver what we claim.
This is what was so interesting about the time Robert and I spent learning about each other. Before Robert and I began talking, I took a call from a client with whom I was terminating my services. I cancelled an agreement to deliver services where my company's annual payment from this client was about $25,000.
In this economy, most people would not cancel a contract worth $25,000, but I had to because the client was not serious about her business. She was not fulfilling her part of the agreement which would cost me money and time. Robert was impressed that my consulting practice has uncompromising standards.
Robert communicated to me that he believes in digital advertising services in a way that I can work with him to help small business owners across the U.S. and the world.
Frantz Enterprises, Robert's company, offers what I label as "WOW" digital advertising services. This WOW factor is desperately missing in the digital advertising and marketing industry.
What is this WOW factor? WOW means eye-popping advertising that immediately catches the eye and transmits a powerful "like" factor to the brain.
I did not mention that Robert graduated with a Mechanical Engineering degree from a Texas university. I can relate to this. I was studying Applied Physics at UC Berkeley before I switched to Economics.
Robert used the following terminology to explain how he developed his products and services: reverse engineering. As a person with experience with processes, I truly appreciated his understanding and utilization of reverse engineering to create his products and services.
Reverse engineering is defined as starting with a great, finished product and working backwards to the beginning, identifying all the required and corrected steps to create the finished product.
What does this mean for my company, 321 Biz Dev and Frantz Enterprises, working together to meet the needs of small business owners?
There is a formula or a perfect mixture of using sales systems, business development and digital advertising to help small business owners.
Let's look at the two business development extremes to help small business owners:
First, the digital only solution:
A mostly digital solution will not work. Small business owners are spending billions of dollars and getting no to low ROI on their digital advertising investments.
Second, the traditional solution:
The majority of small business owners cannot afford $35,000 to attend formal business development courses only taught by four companies in the U.S. I attended this training paid for by the Fortune 500 company in Los Angeles.
And if the small business paid $35,000 for the training, it would take another 6 to 9 months to move through the learning curve to become proficient. Business owners do not have an additional 1,000 to 1,600 hours to focus solely on business development.
321 Biz Dev offers a six-hour, business development training course to get concepts in business owners' minds. To help with the 6 to 9 month learning curve, 321 Biz Dev performs several key functions to set appointments and trains business owners how to close.
The traditional-digital combination
321 Biz Dev and Frantz Enterprises offer a complete business development program with WOW digital advertising and sales systems training for business owners to close and achieve high closing ratios.
Podcast listeners will have an opportunity to hear from Robert Frantz of Frantz Enterprises in a few days as a 321 Biz Development guest.
I'm sure listeners will enjoy Robert's story and connect with his approach to give small business owners a great digital advertising experience.
Thanks for reading this article and listening to the connected podcast episode.
Rick Nappier, CEO
321 Biz Dev LLC
(726) 999-0999