Lee Kantor: I am doing great. I am so excited to learn what you’re up to. Tell us about Focused Biz. How are you serving folks?

Chris Troka: Of course. Uh, Focus Biz is my marketing agency partnership, where I work with founders and B2C companies to help them attract, nurture, convert and amplify their marketing systems. And this was started for me starting a DJ business 12 years ago. I ended up loving marketing and sales so much. I went back to school to earn a degree, and this was the culmination of those efforts of real life, practical business experience, plus the degree to create this marketing agency.

Lee Kantor: So what was kind of the challenges you were finding that business owners were having when it came to their marketing?

Chris Troka: Of course. So a lot of businesses are great at the skill or expertise within the industry that they’re doing, but not everyone is really cut out for sales or marketing. A lot of people know about tactics. They’ve heard about things, what might be good, but what they’re struggling with is that having a real, consistent strategy on how they can get found and get in front of the right people. So what we focus on is mostly developing high impact relationships, increasing your visibility through press releases, podcasts, anywhere you can be found online. This is how we like to amplify who you are and what you do. So when we combine the strategy, this is supposed to help bring you more organic leads. People can find you online and then get get connected to learn more about you. And then the nurture and convert phase is really about telling people about who you are, what your offer is, making sure that it’s communicated clearly, And then through that, we make sure we reduce friction within the buyer’s journey where people wonder, ah, is this the right person I want to work with? I don’t know how this works. What are the next steps? We try to make that process flow simply and easily for everybody, so that way people can take the next steps. So businesses, you know, they struggle with the overall strategy. They’re doing tactics. But this is how we actually move the needle and get them higher visibility and more clients.

Lee Kantor: Now when you say B2C companies, are you talking about kind of brick and mortar B2C? Are you talking about kind of e-commerce, B2C or both? Great.

Chris Troka: Great question. I can do both. However, most of my focus has been in like the local brick and mortar B2C. So dentists, roofers, plumbers, anyone with a local service or a physical location, those are typically the businesses that our experience matches best.

Lee Kantor: So in those cases and you say relationships, is this relationships with somebody in their neighborhood that maybe doesn’t know about them, and you’re helping them get to know via advertising or marketing.

Chris Troka: Right? And relationships expand beyond just your typical, you know, customer business relationship. This can be high influential people, whether it’s, you know, potential for referrals in the wedding space. As an example, potential referral spaces can be wedding venues. This can be wedding coordinators. So any vendor that you have a chance to work with, that is an opportunity for a referral source. This can expand even beyond to, you know, for example, dentists for them. They have insurance referrals. So if you’re able to collaborate with other local businesses, maybe they don’t support, you know, one, one type of insurance plan. Or maybe you can create a cross referral network source. This is a great way to build those high value relationships. Um, so it starts with, you know, it’s the clients, it’s the customer service, but it expands beyond who can, uh, who else can be, um, a, an influential source, uh, for potential clients. And this can go both ways.

Lee Kantor: So you’re kind of trying to look at their business more holistically rather than saying, oh, you’re a dentist, let’s run ads that say, do teeth whitening. Right.

Chris Troka: Absolutely. And those can be effective. We do utilize paid ads, paid search for some of our marketing tactics. However, when we take a step back and look at the whole picture, we found that we’re able to produce better results when we have a partnership with the business. So that holistic approach, where we’re able to take a step back and look at the entire process and the strategy. Um, because oftentimes we can get more visibility, we can get more leads into your business. But if you’re not following up properly, if you’re not nurturing and converting those people, they’re just leaving money on the table. And that’s, you know, for us, when we’re trying to demonstrate an ROI for their investment, we want to make sure that we’re able to hit as many positive numbers as we can. Uh, so that way we don’t leave anything on the table.

Lee Kantor: Now, what is kind of the pain that these people are having right before they call you and your team, do they? Is it just kind of lack of sales or did they plateau? Is there something happening in their business that’s kind of a trigger for them to go, you know what? I should call Chris and his team.

Chris Troka: Yeah. Of course. Yeah. So it’s it’s usually one of mean, one of two main things. It’s either that they’re struggling so they lack visibility. They don’t have, you know, phone calls or form submissions coming in. So they’re lacking sales and they’re just wondering, okay, what’s missing? Am I in the right industry? Is this the right offer? So they’re struggling with that or they’re struggling with the growth mode. So maybe they’re, they’re doing uh, they’re doing too well in terms of, you know, new clients onboarding. So we’re able to go in and, um, look at their process to help automate and create a better flow for everyone. I see too often a lot of these businesses are doing manual follow ups. They want to make sure that each each point has a, uh, human touch point within it. But unfortunately, um, that creates friction. And there’s a lot of time spent where someone can research solutions from a different competitor, and if they feel like they’re being helped a little more quickly, um, chances are they’re going to unfortunately move with that, uh, that other business. So it’s important to combine both the automation AI robot sort of follow up with the human touch point as well.

Lee Kantor: So how do you, um, help them execute some of that automation? Is it sometimes you have to kind of blow up their CRM system or their marketing automation, or sometimes they don’t even have that right.

Chris Troka: Absolutely. So most often, um, you know, it’s kind of a 5050 mix. Either the business does not know about a CRM or the benefits of it, um, or they’re working with a system that they’re just not sure how to utilize. Other companies maybe have a very robust CRM system. Uh, but they’re just not utilizing it. So what I like to do is we go in and we, we talk about what is the first touch point where someone reaches out to your business, what happens? So they reach out. How long does it take to follow up? What information do you provide to them? What do they need as their next steps? And then we look into the conversion rates and take a look at the at the data and what it’s showing. So with that we’re able to use our past experience and implement that into their business. So that way they can they can take their time, their human time and spend it on more high value tasks. Whereas the automation pieces can pick up a lot of the admin work that, you know, unfortunately there it kind of feels like busywork for them. They’re, you know, it’s important work, but that that type of follow up can definitely be handled with tools and systems.

Lee Kantor: Now when you’re working with folks and you’re explaining all of these possibilities, how do you kind of protect from the overwhelm where, okay, this just seems way too complicated. I just want to, you know, cut someone’s hair. I don’t want to be in the marketing automation business. Do you? Is this something you do for them, or is it have to be something that they do for themselves? That you just teach them how to do it.

Chris Troka: Oh, that is an excellent question. So for us, we like to work alongside the founders and the business owners. So this is a hands on done for you, done with you sort of execution. So this is what businesses really love. They can actually focus on, you know their passion, their industry, what they’re good at. We just don’t want to, you know, bark at them and give orders on here’s what you can do. Because we know they they lack the time as well. And if we’re being honest, it’s much faster for us to just execute it than to try to explain and, you know, have them do it for them. But it’s a difference between the founders and the business owners. You have a lot that love to do it themselves. They’re they’re tech savvy, they’re willing to learn and they’re able to execute at a high level. And then you have those who, you know, they just want the end result for. So for those people, we don’t like to tell them, you know, about the tech that’s behind it or the reasoning why. And you know, we just let them know, here’s the end result we can get for you. We can get you a full, full appointment calendar. Um, increase your sales, uh, within this amount of time frame, and that is usually the message that resonates with them. So it definitely is more of a hands on, done with you execution partnership that we like to work with our businesses.

Lee Kantor: Now, how do you kind of get over maybe some of the skepticism that this seems too good to be true? I’ve been in business a long time. I have never gotten that kind of a response. How do you kind of get them over the perceived risk of of investing time and resources with you and your team?

Chris Troka: Right, absolutely. So anything in business is a risk. We’re all taking calculated risks. We’re trying to, you know, find where can we put our money to get an investment back for us? What’s going to be the best value for us? And I find that the skepticism isn’t so much that it it might be too good to be true, but rather that they’ve worked with other marketing agencies before or have had some done work done with them, but unfortunately they didn’t do anything. And I hear this quite often is, oh yeah, I spent, you know, $5,000 for this package. And yes, they said they were doing this, but I never felt like they were doing anything. It didn’t seem like it moved the needle. Um, so for us, that’s really important is to show what work that we’re following up on, why it’s important to them, and just that they know that it’s working in the background. And that’s when we work alongside the the business owner to make sure that we’re hitting those key performance indicators. We ask them, how many calls did you get? Is it more or less? Um, and that way we can actually demonstrate okay, this is this is where you were and this is where we’re trying to take you and where you are now. So that’s when they start, uh, things start to click for them and they start to understand, okay, this is this is both an investment. I’m seeing the improvement. This is what has worked for other businesses. And I just need to stay true to the course here to follow it through.

Lee Kantor: So what is kind of realistic for most businesses? Um, when you start working with them of course.

Chris Troka: Yeah. So each business can be a little bit different. What we, what we focus heavily on, uh, time, time and time again, the long, you know, the best return on your investment is going to be organic search. So this is where people, you know, real people are searching for solutions to their problems online. And if you can be a contender within their their solution that they’re looking for, this is just a perfect match. Because now you have someone who has a problem, they want it fixed, and now they’re just trying to find out who’s going to be the right fit for me. So the organic search is going to be the highest ROI. But all of the tactics that we put together help, uh, help improve the visibility and the authority all around. So that way you might get, you know, not just from search, you might get, um, some social media referrals that we’ve seen before. Um, for example, the dentist, um, long term, ah, ROI on the first initial visit is a 1.7 ROI. So on average she spends maybe $450 to obtain a new client. And this is, um, all the marketing efforts, um, that we’ve done for her so we can take a, uh, customer acquisition from 450 and she returns $800 per visit.

Chris Troka: Lifetime of that customer is 3 to $5000. So even on the initial visit, she’s she’s in the profit, she’s showing profitable numbers. And over the lifetime of that patient and that client, that is just compounding effects that show, okay, this takes it from a 1.7 ROI to maybe a two, 3 or 5 x back on their money. And that’s just at the initial visit, which is crazy, right? You have to think about all of the referrals that you could get from one individual. We were pretty surprised to find that, uh, the largest majority of the referral sources, uh, was internal referrals. If you have amazing customer service, if you do what you’re saying you’re going to do and you take care of the customer, they will be a promoter for your business and help return that money as well. So that’s how we like to look at the ROI investment and return as far as what we focus on in our on our tactics.

Lee Kantor: So you mentioned referral programs as a tactic. Can you share maybe some best practices when it comes to putting together a referral program. If you’re trying to use, uh, happy customers to help you get next customers.

Chris Troka: Absolutely. So this is a huge leverage point for businesses is utilizing their their current clientele to help promote their business because now now they, uh, become a promoter for you. And this really doesn’t cost you any money. If they have a great experience, they’re going to want to, um, you know, tell people about it. And this can compound itself even more if you put in this referral system, like you mentioned, the referral system should have some sort of tangible benefit to both parties. So it’s going to be the referrer and the referee who is receiving some sort of compensation or benefit. There’s a lot of businesses who will either offer a one time cash promotion. Um, here you can get, you know, money back or cash towards your service. Some, uh, places will offer like a, uh, some sort of raffle or a drawing. So enter your name to, to win a prize. Um, that gets people really excited. But I think that the most effective is is money. People. People love money. They love saving money. So if you’re able to, you know, offer that to both parties, you can provide an incentive for someone to talk about your business. And then the other person receives a benefit for actually using the service.

Lee Kantor: Now, um, you mentioned some other ways to get businesses to buy what you’re selling that maybe, um, ah, I don’t want to say unique, but maybe unique to the new, uh, customer of yours. Is there anything you can share that can help somebody kind of get a client in the short term, or that doesn’t cost a lot of money? Is there anything like low hanging fruit that a business owner listening right now could be doing that could bubble up a client for them without, you know, spending a fortune on ads or even your services?

Chris Troka: Right, right. Absolutely. So the low hanging fruit will depend on what business you’re in and how long you’ve been in business. Typically, the low hanging fruit is going to be any past clients you have. So anyone you can use as a past client to offer some sort of referral promotion, now you have, you know, it’s the cost of an email or a phone call for you to make that conversation with someone and make that offer. And that is a great way to offer that to current clients. You can also look at what is called a database reactivation. So these are all your past leads who were interested but did not purchase. This is a great way for you to offer some sort of special promotion to the past leads. Again, you’ve already either paid for them or they’re in your system. So if you offer a special one time promotion, give them something that they can’t say no to. It sounds amazing. This is exactly what I need. So that’s what people can focus on, is their past leads for database reactivation or current clients to create a referral network. And then from there, honestly, it’s really just up to the business owner’s time, right? We either we either have more time or money. So it’s up to you whether you want to invest your money into that. If you don’t have the money, you typically have the time. So if you’re able to utilize those past clients, uh, your past leads, and then just look for ways to find visibility and make relationships grow. Um, this is again up to you. As you know, you’re only spending time on it. So if you can identify high value people that can be a benefit or resource to your business. Go ahead and start that conversation. Build that relationship and you’ll be surprised how many people are going to go to bat for you and your business and send you referrals. If you’re doing a great job and you build that relationship now.

Lee Kantor: Do you believe that every business has to have some sort of database, whether it’s emails or texts, some way to communicate with people who enter into their, um, funnel or their pipeline?

Chris Troka: 100%. It’s funny, there’s not many things that, you know, I, I go on to a, um, my soapbox to stand up for, but honestly, the, the biggest, uh, driver of growth was simply having a CRM system. A CRM stands for Customer relationship Management. So like you mentioned, this is either a database, maybe it’s a system, maybe you have an Excel spreadsheet. But there has to be one single point of truth where you can find the customer details, their customer journey, any notes or conversations that you have from them. Because this allows you, as you know, for most business owners, they’re um, they’re actually kind of in the day to day work as well. So for them to have, you know, take on that mental workload of trying to remember who did I talk to? What did we talk about? Because you’ll you’ll get to a point in your business where you have too many leads where you couldn’t possibly even remember mentally how many people you worked with or what the conversations were. So that CRM is able, is able to take that mental workload off of you, and then you can provide better service if you can quickly look for the past notes, the conversations, what’s unique about this customer that I need to address that’s really important to them. This can be a huge driver for growth and organization for the business. And anytime you have an outside agency or you want to look at your own numbers, you’re able to see, okay, I had X amount of leads this month. I had X amount of customers this month. And you’re able to back with data. What drivers of growth are in your business now.

Lee Kantor: Is there a story you can share? You mentioned the dentist a little bit, but maybe share the most meaningful for you, a client you had that came to you with a challenge. You don’t have to name the name of the organization, but maybe share their their challenge and how you were able to help them get to maybe a level they couldn’t even imagine that they got to.

Chris Troka: Yeah, absolutely. So I see this with a lot of entrepreneurs and business owners. Maybe they’ve been in business for a certain amount of time where that wasn’t important to them, or they’re doing a low enough volume where they don’t find that as important. So we have had some clients who did not have any idea when we asked them, okay, how many, how many leads do you get per year and how many customers do you get? Well, it’s I don’t know, Maybe it’s about this number. Maybe it’s about that. And, you know, we’re trying to understand it. So when we work together, we realize it is probably just better that we are able to take over some of those systems and build them for them. So one of our clients offers us offers a a divorce service, right. So what they do is they help people, um, they teach them how to handle their own divorce to save money as opposed to going to a lawyer. Right. So there’s a huge product differentiation there. But what we were able to do was replace the forms on their website that automatically logged the customer’s details into our CRM, and that would allow us to follow up and nurture them, uh, short term and long term to build more referrals, clients and relationships. So coming in with the system, the business doesn’t have to necessarily understand it.

Chris Troka: They don’t need to be in there working on it. We set up systems, uh, so that way we just do the work on our end, and then we let them know what to expect on their end instead of them going into, you know, a fancy CRM database, maybe we just send them email updates. We’ll say, hey, this, this, uh, this person reached out and is interested in learning more. This person took the next step. And so we just find ways to work within their current workflow and their process. So that way they don’t feel like, you know, too many things are changing. So once we were able to add that we had we had A2X increase into, uh, you know, people went from a lead into the next step. Uh, I wouldn’t call them a customer yet, but they took the next steps into filling out the information, and it’s quite a long form. So for someone to begin taking that next steps, they’re already invested a lot more, so much more likely for them to convert as a client. So it’s just one example of many where implementing a CRM, some sort of database for tracking and following your client communications has been so important for for growth of the business and backing that with data.

Lee Kantor: Now, you mentioned that your, um, I guess ideal client or ideal client? Uh, fit would be B2C, uh, local in terms of they’re frustrated with being kind of a best kept secret. Is there a size that, uh, you like to work with? Do they have to have a certain amount of sales for this to make sense?

Chris Troka: Sure. Um, so they may not need to have a particular amount of sales already. Typically businesses that are, uh, doing 50 plus. So at least maybe six figures would be great. Um, or a little bit more. The size of the team can either be a solo founder, maybe up to, you know, 10 to 20 employees. We’ve kind of seen a range between those businesses. Um, it’s funny because each business, they kind of evolve at their own pace, uh, in certain ways. So in, in one ways, one business develops and processes systems a little bit more, the other develops, um, their team a little bit more. So to be able to go in and kind of see what they’re looking at already, uh, the right fit client is, uh, customer who their lifetime or I’m sorry, not lifetime value, but their initial visit can be $1,000 plus or lifetime three K to infinity. So it’s really about that benchmark. On as long as your first initial touchpoint you’re you’re selling point is going to be about $1,000. This is a great way for us to be able to test different marketing strategies, find the the best return on investment, and then be able to demonstrate that to the business on what’s best for them.

Lee Kantor: So they don’t need to have $1 million in the bank to get launch with you. You have affordable ways to just kind of get it going, knowing that if it’s 1000 bucks at least, then that’s going to pay for itself down the road.

Chris Troka: Right? Absolutely. And that’s really important is that, you know, you don’t need to have a bunch of money to have to, uh, you know, be able to afford a marketing service. Uh, because honestly, it’s the five figure businesses that turn into the six figure. We’ve turned the six figure into the seven figure. So it’s really about, okay, you know, where you’re starting at. Like you mentioned, maybe they’re the best kept secret. Those are the businesses that we really like because they’re ambitious, they’re eager, they know what they have to offer and they’re willing to fight for it. And when you combine that with their customer service and our strategies, we’re able to just catapult and amplify that business.

Lee Kantor: Good stuff. Well, if somebody wants to learn more, have a more substantive conversation with you or somebody on the team, what’s the website? What’s the best way to connect?

Chris Troka: Of course, anyone can find me online, either searching Chris Trocha Trocha online, or they can go to my website at focus.

Lee Kantor: Com well, Chris, thank you so much for sharing your story today. You’re doing such important work and we appreciate you.

Chris Troka: Of course. Thank you so much, Lee, I appreciate it.

Lee Kantor: All right. This is Lee Kantor. We’ll see you all next time on High Velocity Radio.