[Fully Managed] Bob Bentz Ep. 92 – Podcast Highlights and Transcript

Shannon: Hello, everyone, and welcome to the Fully Managed by Penji Podcast, the podcast where we discuss marketing and business tips to help assist you on your business journey. I’m your host, Shannon, Penji’s partnership coordinator, and I’m joined here today with very special guest, Bob Bentz from PurpleGator.

Thank you so much for coming on with me today. I really appreciate it.

Bob: Awesome. Looking forward to it, Shannon. Thank you so much. And I love the PurpleGator in the background. I know I said this in our call before, but it’s absolutely fantastic and it’s a great mascot to have.

The Origins of PurpleGator

Shannon: Absolutely. So, could you start by saying a little about how this business started, kind of how you got involved. And also I would love to know more about the mascot, like where that came from and all the story behind that. That would be great.

Bob: Okay. Well, Shannon, I became an entrepreneur while still in my twenties and started a telecom company. That company is now 35 years old and was very successful and still functions today. We grew it from a startup with no outside funding to $62.2 million in annual sales and offices in five countries. So a great success story.

Unfortunately, what happened over the years is this darn thing called the internet came along. And because of that internet thing, what we used to get like 16 cents for, I can get an eighth of a penny today. So based on that, around 2018, I had to pivot a little bit to continue to live the lifestyle I had grown accustomed to and started the marketing agency PurpleGator.

Now you asked about PurpleGator, which is something that almost everybody asks about. And if you remember back to the year 2002, there was a phenomena in the United States called downloadable ringtones. And back then, when your phone rang, when your mobile phone rang, it was the same for everybody. And then we started to customize our ring tones so that your favorite song could play when you got a call from your girlfriend or your mom or whoever it is. You could customize your phone with its own unique ringtones.

I started two brands online that were selling ringtones, and the third brand was going to be called PurpleGator. But in 2006, four years after the start of that business, I ended up selling it to a publicly traded company in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, and never needed the domain. So the domain just sat in my GoDaddy account for 12 years until I had a reason to bring it live. And hence, PurpleGator is a marketing agency today.

Shannon: That’s beautiful. I love the mention of the ringtones. I actually, I have not heard the mention of ringtones in so long. I remember my mom having one that was the most annoying, and I remember it going off in church a couple times where it was, I don’t know if you, it’s just a sheer little dude going, “Raven riff,” and he’s just yelling “ring.” And that’s the ringtone.

Bob: Most of the ringtones, when it first started, were hip hop. So our biggest sellers were 50 Cent and Beyonce back in the early two thousands. It really evolved over the years from someone who sounded originally like a person playing the piano with one finger, “bu.” Eventually you got the actual, what we called master tones, which was the actual singing of the song by the artist.

Shannon: Well, that does sound very early two thousands. You mentioned 2002. I was two during 2002, which is incredible. I do remember my sister and my mom’s flip phones though, however, and they had some pretty good ringtones.

Agency Growth Strategy

Shannon: So can you tell us, you briefly mentioned the growth of your agency, but could you kind of talk about different things that led to that growth? Like what maybe if it was just happenstance or things that you actively did that you think contributed greatly to it.

Bob: For sure. Well, we started in earnest in 2018 while running the telecom company as well. So most employees worked on both ends. And we got off to a great start. I got a 650 store national retail store chain, and also a Fortune 500 company that was in the real estate industry. So we got off to a really good start in those first two years.

And then in 2020, the pandemic hit. And I literally lost 60% of our business overnight. Within a week everyone had paused almost entirely. And at the time, I said, okay, how am I gonna make it through this? I mean, this is unprecedented. No one had ever been through a pandemic like this before.

So we decided that we would pivot. The thought was, well, with everyone getting sick in an aging population, nursing was gonna be in greater demand than ever. And nurses have always been in big demands. But I figured it was gonna be a greater demand than ever. And we would recruit nurses for hospitals and we did okay with recruiting nurses for hospitals, but we soon found that nurses were not really in the business to make an extra thought. They were in it more so to give back to the community and that kind of thing. And so getting them to jump from hospital A to hospital B was a little more difficult.

But while doing the ringtones, we got referred to somebody else who needed truck drivers actually at O’Reilly Auto Parts. And we started recruiting for truck drivers. And that has actually become a big niche of ours at this point. We have recruited truck drivers, not only for O’Reilly Auto Parts, but also for AutoZone, Papa John’s Pizza and Federal Express, to name a few.

So that recruitment business really got us through the pandemic. We didn’t grow during that time, but at least we stayed afloat. And then as soon as the vaccines came out, we found brands started spending money again. And not only that, during that two year period, I concentrated a lot more on lead generation so that we could generate more inbound leads for the company. And we had some great conversations that didn’t do a whole lot during the pandemic, but again, as soon as the vaccines came out, they started spending money.

That led us to where we are today. And over the past year we’ve been very honored to be members of the Inc. 5,000, the 1,496 fastest growing company in North America, the Philly 100 where we were named the 11th fastest growing company in the Philadelphia Metro and also Financial Times, which named us the 123rd fastest growing company in North America.

The Importance of Finding a Niche

Shannon: That is an incredible growth story. I don’t even hear a lot like that often. That is absolutely unfathomable.

So you mentioned about niching. Do you think it’s something that’s important for agencies to do or do you think sometimes it’s not necessary? Because it’s something I think that comes up in agency discussions a lot, whether that’s a good strategy to do when you’re either starting an agency or you’re trying to kind of grow your agency in a specific direction. Do you think that’s something that’s important or do you think that it depends?

Bob: I think niching is important, but it’s not the end all. So I fall somewhere in the middle of that discussion. The great thing about niching is, if you gather some expertise in a particular industry, you can go get a non-competitive company in another geographic area or one that just doesn’t compete with the customer that you already have. And it definitely helps you get in the door because you have that experience.

Now, I don’t think any or most agencies anyway wake up one day and say, “Hey, I’m gonna go into truck driver recruitment.” You kind of get lucky and fall into it and you have some success. And then, when you have success in any niche, whether that’s aesthetics, retailers, which is another niche of ours, whether it’s truck driver recruitment, you need to exploit that because you’ve had success. And that’ll be a door opener for other clients.

Shannon: I definitely would resonate with that. I think that it depends on the agency for sure, but I think that if you find something that you’re good at, then you should definitely continue to do it and run with it. I just talked to someone the other day whose niche is plumbing and I had never seen an agency that was one so niched down, like having a very particular thing, whereas a lot of people will have an industry, like an entire umbrella of things.

But that was, and it’s been working for him. I mean, I have not heard of another agency that specifically does plumbing, so I think that when you also have such a specific niche that no one else does, and that’s something that you specialize in, you cannot only guarantee that you are the best because other people aren’t doing it. So even if he is not the best, he’s the only person that people hear about. So I think that’s also something that’s important is people will trust you and you kind of get credibility from having a niche that no one else does as well.

Bob: Agreed.

Client Acquisition Strategy

Shannon: So what is your strategy for gaining clients? And you said that you kind of focused on lead generation during a time where you needed them the most, but now in your current cycle, how do you, what’s the strategy that you use to obtain clients?

Bob: I think maybe what we do differently than most agencies is we pick up the phone and call people. I get hammered day after day from people hitting me up on LinkedIn with a series of five messages or emails and that kind of thing. And especially younger salespeople are, I call it, “heavy phone.” They’re afraid to pick up the phone and get rejected.

And I liken it to baseball. In baseball you’re gonna fail as a hitter more times than you’re gonna succeed. So if your batting average is 300, that means you’re gonna fail seven times out of 10. But every time you fail, you get that much closer to getting a hit. So I like to look at it that way, is you’re gonna fail more times than you’re gonna succeed. But I think people appreciate people who pick up the phone now and call them.

Shannon: I agree. I really liked the personal touch that agencies add to their work and their outreach specifically because I think people are more inclined to answer. I think that they feel more cared about. And I think that it’s just a way to show that you are a human and there’s not a robot calling you or there’s not a robot messaging you.

I think that the biggest problem with LinkedIn outreach specifically that you mentioned is that there’s a lot of bots on LinkedIn. There’s a lot of people selling you things. There’s a lot of people that if someone’s reaching out to you, they almost 100% want something from you. And that’s what outreach is. I mean, you do want something from them. But I think that being more personal about it, people are more inclined to wanna use your service and wanna trust you. And LinkedIn is not the Cryos plus.

It really does work for some people and I understand that, but even I don’t even know. We sometimes do outreach on LinkedIn and it’s the least successful in comparison to just email outreach too.

I think that what you said about numbers is something that’s really important because the more outreach that you make, like even if your success rate is like two to 5%, if you send out 500 emails a week, that’s still two to 5% of 500, which is still enough. And so I think that’s something I definitely agree with everything that you’re saying. I think that you want your agency to stand out. So personalization is something that’s really important and calls I don’t hear a lot anymore. So that is definitely unique. But I’m happy that you’re sticking with it.

Bob: Think about this. The number one thing that you want as a client is someone who’s gonna work hard for you, right? Because every, you don’t know when you hire a new agency if they’re any good or not. But the reason people leave agencies is ’cause they don’t feel loved anymore. They don’t feel like they’re important anymore.

Well, who are you more likely to feel is gonna work hard for you? Someone who called you five times, or someone who sent you a chain of five different messages on LinkedIn? It should be a no brainer.

Shannon: It definitely… I don’t know. It really, you know, sometimes it’s creepy when someone calls you five times. I remember going on a first date and then someone called me five times, two days later, and I was like, too much.

Bob: Well, we’re not talking dating here today.

Shannon: My boss feels like everything translates to dating. Marketing is a segue to dating and gives you lectures all the time. It’s very fun.

But yeah, no, I understand. It’s definitely different and someone calling you five times, if they’re trying to offer you a service is completely different than some of them might just be creepy, so I definitely…

Handling Unhappy Clients

Shannon: So you have a customer. And say they are unhappy with, and we hope that this never happens, you know? Say that they’re unhappy with the work that you’re doing for them. Say that objectively you’re doing great work, but they’re not happy with the end result. What do you do in that situation?

Bob: Change course. I tell our staff every week and they get tired of me saying this, you need to get better every week, every month. One of the great things about mobile and digital is the amount of data that we acquire. It’s not like buying a billboard and then trying to determine how effective that billboard is, ’cause you have no feedback from a billboard, right?

But when it comes to mobile and digital marketing, you get feedback. You get a report card every day. There’s many different KPIs that you need to adjust both on an interim level and on an ultimate level. So in almost every case, the ultimate KPI is what? It’s sales, right?

So many agencies go into their monthly review meetings and talk about the wonderful click-through rate that they get and that kind of thing. The customer couldn’t care less what the click through rate is. They only care that their sales didn’t go up since they hired you.

So I think if we look at the data and we make strategic decisions based on that data, then we can pivot with some knowledge that we’re just not coming up with a new plan. We’re coming up with a new plan that’s based on data.

And I find all the time when I interview someone for a new job on the production team and they tell me they wanna be in this business because they’re highly creative. That’s wonderful that you’re creative. We need creative people. And then my next question is, are you any good at math? And what they say to me, “Oh, no, I really hate math.” They’re not a fit. They’re not gonna be able to analyze the data and improve for my clients. And you gotta be creative and mathematical, and that’s kind of a brain that not everyone has, but without both, it’s gonna be tough for you to be successful in this industry.

Shannon: Do you think that people have the potential to pair up? You get one person that’s good at math and one creative and you partner them together?

Bob: I guess if you have a enough company, if you’re a Madison Avenue size agency, yes, that probably works. There’s probably specialists that work only on the data side. But if you have less than 50 people in your agency, I think everyone needs to wear many hats.

Shannon: Agencies, definitely smaller agencies specifically are definitely wearers of many hats. Everyone in there is doing a lot of different jobs and I think that that’s still something that it’s kind of nice. I think sometimes it makes you a better agency overall because everyone that is at least there when you grow, everyone that’s been there from the beginning knows the ins and the outs of all parts of it, which I think is the bright side about growing from the start, from being a startup is the fact that you get experience in all different sectors that you maybe didn’t have experience in previously.

And then maybe you mess up a little bit, but you learn a lot from that and I think that working in a business that’s growing is a learning experience, and I think that’s really important.

Bob: For sure. When you start out, everybody does everything. You have a new task, you bring it up at the meeting when you only have five, six people and say, okay, who can handle this? Because everyone needs to do everything. But when you graduate to the point where we are like 23 people, okay, not big, but not small either. When you get to that point, then you’re at the point where you have specialists.

And people always say to me, “Okay, hey, why would I hire you as an agency and pay you $5,000 a month to do my work when I could just hire someone to do that?” And I always tell them, you absolutely can hire someone to do that. But if they’re working on Pay Per Click and SEO and web development and everything else, they’re probably only spending two to three hours a week on each of those things.

When you come to an agency, you have someone doing Pay Per Click who’s doing it 40 plus hours per week, so they get pretty good at it. And you’re never gonna get that good at it doing it two hours.

Shannon: Yes, exactly. I think that that’s what Penji is supposed to do. I mean, like you can have, a lot of the people that use us have one in-house graphic designer and that person can only handle so much, and that’s like just being human. But our services are able to provide that. And there’s multiple people working on it at a time. We have like a quick turnaround rate. And that’s, you know, an agency is quite literally that we’re supposed to be able to require a service that maybe would be really difficult for one person to do. It’s supposed to be much more efficient and that’s what we strive to be good at.

Client Communication

Shannon: So, we talked about customers, you talked about, you know, if there’s problems. What about, how do you communicate with customers throughout the process? This is something that I think is so crucial for a good client experience, so I was wondering how you go about that.

Bob: I believe in keeping the account managers as the face of the company to the client. Yes, the production people do join in. But I want the production people centered on improving the SEO rankings and making the changes to the website and analyzing the pay per click statistics.

So everything funnels through the account manager and those are the people that have the greatest relationship with the clients. So I believe in investing in those folks. And we’re big enough to have those specialists, but small enough that you can pick up the phone and call the president of the company or the COO anytime.

Shannon: So you don’t wanna be the face of the company?

Bob: Oh, I am the company. I mean, I’m the one who was employee number one and I’ll be employee number last.

Shannon: You don’t want the PurpleGator to be the face of the company?

Bob: Well, you know, he might be cuter than me and everything, but his me.

Shannon: That’s good. That’s good. You should, you should be confident in your work and be proud of it. It’s very important. The gator didn’t do much. He just sat there and was a really good mascot.

Generating Referrals

Shannon: So communicating, we got that down. So this is, this is all a segue. We’re leading through the customer process. So what is your strategy for then? Okay, so referrals really important in our business, of course. How do you kind of guarantee that you’re gonna get that?

Bob: Referrals are things that even the most polished salespeople don’t do enough asking for. We always are so happy to get the client and we don’t want to offend the client and ask them, but of course, it’s much easier to close a deal with a referral than someone you cold called or you got a lead from online.

So yeah, it’s definitely something that you need to do a better job of. And I myself need to do a better job of it as well. So that’s an important part of what we do.

I always make sure that if someone refers someone to me, that they get a nice handwritten letter, whether we close them or not. So I’m old school. I’ll put a stamp on an envelope and send it to ’em and thank them. And they may even get a gift in the mail sometimes.

Shannon: That’s really sweet actually. I’ve actually talked to a couple agencies that do like personalization like that, and I really admire that because it shows even if you’re growing or you’re even a larger agency, that you still care about that attention to detail and making sure that all your clients are cared for.

And I think that’s not only more likely to get you a referral or get you a good review, but it’s also, it leaves a good taste in a client’s mouth, which I think is always important for just morale in the company. And then also just for how they speak of you, even if they’re not referring you to someone else or doing it for that specific reason. But the fact that they are, they just have nice things to say and it’s always good to have nice things to say.

Bob: And you need to get out and meet people personally. Sooner or later, no matter who we are, no matter how good we are, you’re gonna goof up or you’re gonna have a campaign that isn’t as successful as the previous ones. And if you have that personal relationship with the clients, if you’ve played golf with them, gone out and had lunch with ’em, they’re a lot less likely to fire you. Then it be a personal relationship. They know you.

I find a lot of younger agencies today don’t go out and meet their clients. And I think that’s a mistake. You gotta go out and shake hands and have lunch.

Shannon: The amount of people that I end up in contact with through different outreach measures with this company that I find out have met my bosses and been out with them. It’s so funny. He could think, I don’t know that they have a previous connection and then I finally, they’re like, “oh yeah, I met them.”

And I think that’s incredible. Like it’s nice to find out that they’re doing that because I know I knew that they were doing it relatively, but to find out through customers that they recognize them and they’re happy to be involved in different things and stuff. I love hearing that.

Bob: Especially since the pandemic, we’re more chained to our homes. We work hybrid, some of us don’t ever go into an office. And it is so rewarding when you go out and meet people. And it’s a great change too. ’cause I’m working outta my home most days, as is most people in our company. And boy, sometimes at night I’m like, I gotta go somewhere. I don’t even know, but I’m going somewhere.

Shannon: At the end of work every day, like I need to go on a walk. Sometimes I’ll just take a stroll around the neighborhood. Like, I need to get out of a desk chair, even if I’m just cooking. Just need to leave the house.

Building Client Relationships

Shannon: So what’s your favorite thing to do with clients then? If you go out with them?

Bob: I don’t know that it really matters what you do with ’em. I think the thing you do the most is go have a drink after work or have lunch together. And when you do that, it uncovers other opportunities that you wouldn’t have otherwise known, because people start small talk and you learn that maybe they volunteer for a nonprofit and that nonprofit needs some marketing help. Or maybe they own some vacation homes that they rent out or something like that, and you find out other opportunities that you wouldn’t find out in your normal monthly meetings because they let their guard down and they start to talk about different things like that.

So whether you’re going out to lunch with ’em or playing 18 holes with ’em, one thing about golf, I’ll tell you, if you’ve played golf with someone, you will know them the rest of your life. You’ll learn a lot about them. That five hour golf out there is a lot of standing around.

And I really encourage women to play more golf ’cause it’s a big disadvantage for women in business and especially in sales when they don’t participate. Because there’s so many company outings and functions and fundraisers that if they don’t golf, they don’t participate. So I really encourage women that are in sales and marketing to take up the sport.

Shannon: What if I’m awful at golf?

Bob: Go to the driving range and practice because most of the golf outings that you do are scrambles, which means that you just take the best shot of the four. So the fact that you hit it into the woods won’t make a big difference.

Shannon: Interesting. Okay. That’s important to note. I know both my dad and my stepdad play golf and they’re both awful and I hope they don’t see this, but they do it all the time for business related matters. And for sure, you know, I guess it doesn’t matter that they’re awful, as long as they’re playing and they’re talking.

Well, a great note to end on is golf. I think that’s, you know, take time to talk to your customers. I think that’s a really great note to end on, actually, not golf itself, but being able to make your customers have a personal experience with you and I think that they’ll all really appreciate that. So yeah, thank you for that advice.

Conclusion

Bob: You’re welcome.

Shannon: And thank you so much for coming on today. I really appreciate it, and I think I learned a lot, and that’s always the goal for me too. And I hope that the audience will learn just as much as I have.

Bob: Well, thank you Shannon. And if I can put in a small plug for myself at this, I’ve written a book called “Relevance Raises Response.” It was written originally in 2016 and the new edition, the second edition is out now. And you can purchase that on Amazon if you want. And it’s all about the world of mobile marketing.

Shannon: Thank you. I appreciate that. Maybe I’ll take a look. But thank you so much and everyone at home, don’t forget to like and subscribe to see more professionals like Bob on the show. Really appreciate you watching.

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