How to Pitch High-Ticket Videos with Dave Lisowski
📝 Table of Contents
📖 Background
Dave Lisowski is the founder of Foxal Media, a video production company based out of Philadelphia. He started out 7 years ago charging just a couple hundred dollars per video project, primarily working with local bands and musicians.
After getting his first sale for more than $800 from a business owner, Dave had a "come to Jesus moment" and realized he should pivot to working with businesses instead of bands.
He went full-time with his video business after graduating college, and has now been running Foxal Media for 5 years. The company has progressed to working with home service businesses as their ideal client niche. Their average project size is $9,000 USD and they don’t take on projects less than $6,000.
Here’s how he did it. 👇
🎯 Results
Went from charging $100-200 per video to +$9,000
His minimum project is $6,000 USD
Transitioned to working with professional B2B clients
Currently focused on home service niche (HVAC, roofing, etc)
Developed a built-in recurring revenue pricing model
🎬 Video Chapters
David goes into a lot more context in our full interview, which you can find here.
00:00 Introduction
13:18 Creating Win-Win Scenarios
19:21 Finding Your Niche (Battleship)
25:20 Make Yourself Impossible to Ignore
38:05 How to Charge More (Pricing Bridge)
52:11 Automating the Customer Journey
54:28 Tools & Resources
01:01:20 Improving Customer Experience
01:12:31 What Didn’t Work
01:12:05 Shiny Object Syndrome
01:20:13 Risks & Pitfalls
01:22:59 Mental Pressure & Burnout
🔑 Key Takeaways
🌉 Build a "bridge" to educate clients on value - Dave uses the analogy of building a bridge to get potential clients from their expectations to understanding the immense value of high-quality video. This includes attracting them, building trust, and providing clarity on the process.
🏗️ Have videos that serve each phase - For attraction, use a brand story video. For trust, use testimonials. For clarity, use an explainer video of your process.
💰 Understand your client's ROI - If your video earns the client 10x the cost, it's an obvious win-win. Calculate their potential ROI from video.
🤝 Focus on long-term relationships - Don't just quote a one-off project. Uncover opportunities for an ongoing relationship with recurring revenue.
🔀 Keep upgrading your networking - In-person networking was hugely valuable starting out, but became less useful over time. Constantly refine your client acquisition strategy.
🧠 Skills Required
High-level sales skills to pitch large, integrated projects
Strong understanding of your ideal client niche(s)
Ability to articulate and demonstrate the ROI of video
Systemizing and automating your sales process, from lead gen to payment
Ongoing optimization of networking and lead generation
🧰 Tools & Equipment
Vimeo for hosting videos
Calendly for automating booking calls
Squarespace for his website & hosting
Better Proposals for quotes and contracts
📝 Process
Selling High-Ticket Videos
Dave uses a metaphor of "bridge building" to get clients to understand the immense value of his high-end video services. He says it's like transporting clients from their "landmass" of limited video knowledge over to his landmass where $5,000+ video projects make perfect sense.
Dave strengthens this bridge by adding "pillars" - attraction videos that showcase his unique business, trust videos like testimonials that provide social proof, and clarity videos that explain his systematic production process. With these pillars upholding the bridge, clients can confidently cross over to Dave's landmass of video value understanding. This enables him to successfully pitch $9,000 projects.
“When it came time with the budget, I was like, yeah, honestly, with all this we’d... we’d probably be looking into like the six figures... because I couldn’t say $100,000. ”
Automated Customer Journey
Dave has built an automated system to take clients through the sales process:
Potential clients find Foxal Media through referral, SEO, or existing network.
They fill out a discovery form on the Squarespace website.
The form automatically books a call using Calendly based on Dave's availability.
After the call, Dave sends a custom proposal using Better Proposals.
The client can electronically sign and pay a deposit right in the proposal.
Dave then onboards the client and starts the project.
“The better your customer experience, the better, the more likely that you’re gonna be able to build a stronger bridge.”
Finding Your Niche is like Battleship
Dave compares finding your ideal niche to playing battleship - you don't know exactly where to aim at first, so you start shooting from the hip and figuring things out through experimentation. Over time, as you get hits and misses, you start honing in closer and closer on what resonates most.
Just like sinking battleships in the game, eventually through this niche experimentation you "sink" the perfect target client avatar and service offering combination for your business. The goal is to limit and focus your efforts (tighten the hose) in order to expand your success in the right direction.
🚫 What Didn’t Work
Cold outreach was a low ROI activity for Dave
Too many new ideas and shiny objects rather than focusing on core offerings
In-person networking worked well in the beginning, but lost effectiveness in the long run
⚠️ Risks & Pitfalls
Pigeon-holing yourself into too narrow of a niche
Pitching services before mindset and operations are ready
Overpromising on project scope before systems are in place
📕 Resources
Burn Your Business Card Academy by Dave Lisowski
The 1-Page Marketing Plan by Allan Dib
$100 Million Dollar Offers by Alex Hormozi
Video Selling Formula by Marcus Rideout
The Content OS by Justin Welsh
Visualize Value by Jack Butcher
⚙️ Summary
If it’s not abundantly clear, I love how Dave thinks - especially how he’s built automated, scaleable systems that build trust with his target audience before he even jumps on a call. Putting in all this effort up front allows him to spend less time chasing clients and more time producing high-impact videos.
You can connect with Dave on LinkedIn and Instagram.
If you’ve enjoyed this framework, let me know here. 🙏
