THEY ASK, YOU ANSWER
A REVOLUTIONARY APPROACH TO
INBOUND SALES,
CONTENT MARKETING,
AND TODAY’S DIGITAL CONSUMER
FOREWORD BY KRISTA KOTRLA.
MARCUS SHERIDAN
This book is printed on acid-free paper.
Copyright © 2017 by Marcus Sheridan. All rights reserved
Published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, New Jersey
Published simultaneously in Canada
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data:
Names: Sheridan, Marcus, author.
Title: They ask you answer : a revolutionary approach to inbound sales,
content marketing, and today’s digital consumer / Marcus Sheridan;
foreword by Krista Kotrla.
Description: Hoboken : Wiley, 2017. | Includes index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2016042783| ISBN 9781119312970 (hardback)
Subjects: LCSH: Marketing. | Sales promotion. | BISAC: BUSINESS & ECONOMICS /
Marketing / General.
Classification: LCC HF5415 .S44124 2017 | DDC 658.8–dc23 LC record available at
https://lccn.loc.gov/2016042783
Cover design: Paul McCarthy
Cover image: © Alex Belomlinsky/Getty Images, Inc.
Contents
Foreword
PART I A Very Different Way of Looking at Business, Marketing, and Trust Chapter 1 The Fall How I Became a “Pool Guy”
2001–2008: The False Economy
2008: The Wheels Start to Fall Off
Chapter 2 A Massive Buying Shift and the Blur between Sales and Marketing
Chapter 3 This Book Won’t Work for You If . . .
Chapter 4 The Discovery of They Ask, You Answer
Chapter 5 “They Ask, You Answer” Defined
Chapter 6 Brainstorming the Questions You Are Asked Every Day Putting It Into Action
Chapter 7 The Ostrich Marketing Strategy
Chapter 8 The CarMax Effect The Beginnings of CarMax and a New Way to Sell
Putting It Into Action
Chapter 9 The Discovery of the Big 5
Chapter 10 Content Subject 1 Pricing and Costs: Why We Must Talk about Money 1. Every Solution Is Different
2. Our Competitors Will Find Out What We Charge
3. We’ll Scare Customers Away
Chapter 11 How One Article about Money Generated More Than $3,000,000 in Sales Putting It Into Action
Chapter 12 Case Study 1 High-End B2B Technology Company Generates More Than $8,000,000 in Additional Revenue About Segue Technologies
The Snowball Begins
Segue Technology’s Astounding Growth
Improving the System to Produce Content
Chapter 13 Content Subject 2 Problems: How to Turn Weaknesses into Strengths
Chapter 14 Addressing the Elephant in the Room
Chapter 15 How Talking about Our Problems Generated More Than $500,000 in Revenue Putting It Into Action
Chapter 16 Case Study 2 An Equipment Financing Company Becomes a Digital David and Conquers the Industry Goliaths About Smarter Finance USA
Smarter Finance USA Embraces They Ask, You Answer
Smarter Finance USA Focuses on Educating Small Business Owners Searching for Equipment Loans Online
Smarter Finance USA’s Educational Content Pays Off in a Big Way
Chapter 17 Content Subject 3 Versus and Comparisons The Results
Putting It Into Action
Chapter 18 The Critical Need for Unbiased Content Disarmament: The Quickest Way to Build Trust
Chapter 19 Content Subjects 4 and 5 Reviews and Best in Class Putting It Into Action
Chapter 20 Using Reviews to Establish Yourself as an Expert
Chapter 21 The Impact of Discussing the Competition Putting It Into Action
Chapter 22 Case Study 3 Small Retail Appliance Store Dominates Online and Makes Millions About Yale Appliance
A CEO Becomes the Head of Business Development
Yale Appliance Tackles the Tougher Questions
Yale Appliance’s Success with Inbound Marketing
Chapter 23 The Competition The Bad Fits
The Customer
Chapter 24 How They Ask, You Answer Saved River Pools and Spas
PART II The Impact of They Ask, You Answer on Sales Teams Chapter 25 How Great Content Is a Total Game-Changer for Sales Teams Seven Major Benefits of Sales Teams Embracing They Ask, You Answer
Chapter 26 A Dramatic Discovery
Chapter 27 Assignment Selling An Example of Assignment Selling in Action
The Special Rights of the Teacher
What Homework Can Tell Us about the Prospect
Chapter 28 How One Remarkable Couple Changed My Perspective on the Power of Content to Sell
Chapter 29 Content Never Sleeps
Chapter 30 Using Assignment Selling to Avoid Common Sales Pitfalls
Chapter 31 Using Assignment Selling to Determine Compatibility
Chapter 32 Case Study 4 How a Start-Up Company in the Health Care Space Became the Thought Leaders of an Entirely New Industry Phase 1: Uniting the Marketing and Sales Silos
Phases 2 and 3: Live Webinars and Events
Success and Plans for the Future
PART III Implementation and Making It Culture Chapter 33 The Power of Insourcing and Using Your Team to Create Incredible Content
Chapter 34 How Block Imaging Embraced a Culture of Insourcing The Silos Must Be Eliminated
Understanding the What, How, and Why
Chapter 35 Starting Off They Ask, You Answer with a Bang Company Workshops Principle 1: Consumer Expectations Have Changed
Principle 2: The Way Google and Other Search Engines Work
Principle 3: The Way Consumers Search and the Big
5
Principle 4: Group Brainstorm of Content Ideas
Principle 5: The Impact Content Can Have on the Sales Process and Closing Rates
Principle 6: The Reason Why Everyone’s Voice, Talents, and Knowledge Are Critical for Success
Principle 7: The Editorial Guidelines Going Forward
Principle 8: A Look into the Future
Chapter 36 The Content Manager Qualities, Hiring, and More Someone Must Own It
Duties of a Content Manager (per Week)
Choosing the Right Leader of Your Content Marketing Efforts
Ten Essential Qualities of Great Content Marketing Managers
Why a Trained Journalist May Be a Perfect Match for Your Content Marketing Needs
How Do You Ensure the Candidate Is a Match for the Organization And Brand?
Chapter 37 On the Importance of Tools Measuring Return on Investment, the Power of HubSpot, and More 1. The Continuous Ability to Measure ROI of Your Digital Marketing Efforts
2. The Ability to Track Lead Behavior and Use This Advanced Intelligence throughout the Sales Process
3. The Ability to Track SEO
4. The Ability to Test Your Website
PART IV Your Questions Answered Chapter 38 How Do I Find More Time to Make This Work within My Organization? Every Single E-mail You Ever Send Out That Answers a Question Very Well May Be a Blog Post
Start Talking to Yourself Out Loud—a Lot
Participate in Blogathons or Videoathons with Employees
Get a Content Manager . . . Yesterday
Insourcing Is Huge
Learn How Each Employee Best Communicates, and Then Run with It
Turn On the Camera and Hit “Record”
Stop Doing the Thing That Does Not Bring the Greatest Returns
Is It about Time, or Is There Something Else Really Going On Here?
Chapter 39 Just How Important Is Video to Inbound and Content Marketing? How Does It Relate to They Ask, You Answer? Everyone Is a Media Company
If They Can’t See It, It Doesn’t Exist
We Must Show It
Chapter 40 How Long Will It Take They Ask, You Answer to Work? Doing Content Marketing the “Right” Way
Five Stages of Content Marketing Success
Chapter 41 Is Content Marketing and They Ask, You Answer Just a Fad? What Exactly Is Content Marketing?
Chapter 42 How Can I Keep My Team Engaged in the Content Production Process? Ten Ways to Keep Your Employees Motivated to Participate in Content Marketing
Chapter 43 “I’ve Been Told If We’re Not Adding Anything New to the Conversation, Then We Shouldn’t Be Talking about It”
Chapter 44 A Revolutionary Marketing Strategy
Index
EULA
List of Illustrations
Chapter 11 Figure 11.1 How Much Does a Fiberglass Pool Cost? Web article, 2009
Chapter 23 Figure 23.1 The Triangle of Influence
Figure 23.2 The Actual Customer
Foreword
I’m just a construction worker, but when I had a plan and we were working together, we could build a skyscraper. Now you’re Master Builders, just imagine what could happen if you did that. You could save the universe.
—Emmet Brickowoski, The Lego Movie
Back in 2010 I discovered something surprising. It turns out that it’s possible for an average person to save a struggling business and inspire a major culture change throughout an organization. This book is about how.
How is that possible if you’re not the CEO? How do you do it if you work remotely, like more than 1,000 miles away from headquarters? What if you are the youngest person on the management team? And a woman just returning from maternity leave? Do you have to mandate it or is it possible to inspire that sort of change?
How does an average person cut budgets, bring in more sales, shorten the buying cycle, increase profits, get other people to market for you, improve employee engagement, and dramatically grow the business with a simple four-word strategy? Impossible, you say. Or is it?
What if I told you that it is very possible because that’s exactly what happened.
Let me share with you a little bit about my journey.
The truth is I couldn’t have accomplished any of those things without the help of the ideas, stories, and strategies shared throughout this book with Marcus Sheridan as my guide. Here’s how it began. . . .
It started with an urgent problem. Sales were down. Way down. So much so that the company was shrinking. Budgets were dramatically cut, product lines were being abandoned, and team members who were dear friends were let go. It was devastating.
On top of that, the industry as we knew it was changing and buyers were increasingly more difficult to reach. E-mails weren’t getting through. Trade shows had half the number of attendees. Mailers weren’t bringing in any calls. And don’t even get me started on fax blasting (can you even believe there was an era when that worked?). To top it all off, somehow even the smallest of our competitors were showing up higher in online search rankings.
Where had all the buyers gone? How were we going to grow with all this stacked against us?
And who was I to think that I could do anything about it?
At that time, I was the marketing manager at Block Imaging, a B2B that buys, sells, and refurbishes used medical imaging equipment; everything from MRI and CT scanners to digital X-ray equipment. Pretty unique niche, right?
It bothered me that we were a worldwide business and yet only 5 percent of our sales were attributed to online inquiries. This became the single statistic that I set out to change immediately.
This focus led me to discover a concept commonly referred to as “inbound” or “content” marketing. I was quickly convinced that this was the answer to our most urgent problem. So we signed up for the software and it was going to be a game changer. Marketing automation and blogging were going to change everything, right?
I was wrong.
We needed more than just software. We needed information worth sharing. And we needed a lot of it.
So I set out to connect with people in other departments to collect information worth posting and sharing. How hard could that be?
As enthusiastic as everyone was, here’s the gist of how most of those conversations went: “Krista, this all sounds very exciting and I cannot wait to see what you do with it. Because I’m in sales, I’m going to go back to selling now. Good luck with your marketing thingy.”
New hurdle. Buy-in.
I spent the next six months trying to get buy-in and participation. I gave presentations, offered workshops, invited senior sales leaders to attend social selling conferences with me, unveiled scary statistics as often as I could. Even after all of that effort, the best traction I could get was about two blog posts a month. And I was sad. Sad because I knew the information we were posting was more brand-centric than customer-centric. Sad because it was taking so much effort to produce sub-par content. Sad because we were running out of time to do this half-assed.
So that’s when I made the call. It was the call that would change everything.
I needed reinforcements and knew just the person for the challenge.
Marcus Sheridan had been on this exact same journey of saving a struggling small business with inbound marketing. Even better, he had figured out the most simple and compelling strategy imaginable that resulted in millions of dollars in sales: They Ask, You Answer. His story and examples were just what the Block Imaging team needed to hear. And they needed to hear it from him directly.
It was one of the most important phone calls in my life.
“Marcus, you don’t know me or my company yet but you’re my guy. I need you to come help me convince the entire Block Imaging team that going all in with inbound is urgent, important, and that with their participation, it is going to be the very best thing that ever happened to our business.”
As a result, we began co-designing a two-day workshop to teach, inspire, and j
ump-start a new culture of inbound companywide. Everyone from sales, engineering, leadership, human resources, administration, project management, and general counsel and the entire accounting team were there.
Did it work?
Without a doubt. What I had just spent the entire previous year trying to rally people around, Marcus accomplished companywide in less than six hours.
He simplified the complex.
Everyone understood.
Everyone bought in.
That day marked a new era for our little organization. We now saw ourselves as teachers, and understood that if we just listened well, and were willing to answer, things would turn around.
We left that two-day event with 700 blog ideas and inspired content generators in every department. More important, we had a unified team with a clear plan for writing a better future, both for the organization and for ourselves. Sharing information and empowering buyers became embedded in our culture.
As a result, we have gone from 5 percent of sales attributed to Web leads to 40 percent of sales from Web leads. In those first two years alone, we could directly tie more than $9 million in sales to inbound website leads.
It feels like we’ve been given a second chance at life.
We are able to serve more people in our industry than ever before with less stress. We have more time and energy for our families and friends. We have fun instead of fear and frustration. We have hope instead of helplessness. We are proactive instead of reactive. We have a mission instead of a position.
They Ask You Answer Page 1
