They Ask You Answer

by Marcus Sheridan

  That e-mail might as well be called a “Please-don’t-break-up-with-me” letter because it essentially sounds like we’re saying:

  Dear Mr./Mrs. Jones, do you still love me? Yes or no? I sure hope you circled yes!

  Almost everyone writes that type of e-mail when a prospect goes silent after receiving a proposal or quote. But it’s completely ineffective.

  It’s at moments like this when it’s easy to see the incredible power of assignment selling. Using the principles of assignment selling, your e-mail would consist of the following:

  Hello, Mr./Mrs. Jones. We met a few days ago and I gave you a proposal. During our meeting, you mentioned a couple of questions and concerns you had. In order to further help you with these concerns, I’ve attached to this e-mail a video and an article that specifically address each. Please take a moment to give each a look, as I know they’ll help you with this important decision. And tomorrow, I’ll give you a call so we can discuss. Sincerely, Salesperson.

  When we meet someone in a sales situation and give them our pitch or proposal, we generally believe we have properly addressed their concerns, and in the moment, we may have. But often, those same concerns will resurface after the prospect has some time to reflect upon our sales conversation or proposal.

  So, instead of writing a “Please-don’t-break-up-with-me” e-mail, writing an e-mail like the second one has two major benefits:

  It will remind your prospect that they actually have nothing to worry about. You are offering the best solution to their problem. It reaffirms your expertise related to their particular concern.

  It will force your prospect to respond in one of two ways:

  They may respond with a simple “Thank you, this is great! It is exactly what I needed.” When they respond in this manner, it is a clear sign that they are interested and things are looking very positive in terms of your ability to do business with that individual.

  Conversely, they may respond by telling you they are not interested, and you are not a good fit for them. Knowing that you are going to contact them to ask about the homework you have now given them forces them to tell you the truth. As we’ve already discussed in this book: Time is your greatest asset in business and in life, and a candid answer like “I’m not interested” or “Actually, we’ve decided to go a different direction” saves you precious time.

  You may be thinking right now that your business could not apply assignment selling to its sales process. I am here to tell you this is absolutely not the case.

  In fact, each of the most successful clients we have worked with here at the Sales Lion, whether smaller companies or larger brands, have adopted this principle of using content in their sales process. Sure, it changes based on their product, service, buyer, sales cycle, and other factors, but the principle of using education to sell does not change.

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  Using Assignment Selling to Determine Compatibility

  To give you a simple example close to home: Here at our digital sales and marketing agency, the Sales Lion, we also utilize an assignment selling process with our prospects. And keep in mind, our clients are other businesses, not consumers.

  Because we get a very high number of leads coming into our system, we need to make sure that we’re working with good fits and not bad fits. We want to make sure we’re dealing with informed and educated clients versus those who really have no clue as to what we are and the services we provide—people who haven’t done any research whatsoever.

  In our case at the Sales Lion, we have a two hundred-page e-book entitled Inbound and Content Marketing Made Easy. Any prospect or company who approaches us through our site must read this e-book before they can have a conversation with me.

  You may be wondering how we introduce this e-book to the prospect. Well, the prospect generally contacts us through a form on our website and says, “I would love to set up a phone consultation.”

  We then respond with an e-mail that looks something like this:

  Hello, Mr./Mrs. Jones. Thank you so much for contacting us here at the Sales Lion. In your contact form, you requested a phone consultation with us. We certainly look forward to that conversation. But, in order to make it the most productive conversation for both parties, and in order to help you get the most out of the experience, we have attached an e-book for you to read before we speak. This e-book is the core of all our philosophy here at the Sales Lion. If you read this and feel good about what you see herein, you will know that we are a good fit for you as well as your needs. By the same token, if you read this and it does not align with your philosophies, you will also know if we are a bad fit for your current needs. Once you have completed the e-book, please respond to this e-mail so that we can set up a time to have our conversation. And, if you have already read the e-book, please just let me know and we will get that call set up right away. Sincerely, Marcus.

  Let’s talk about a couple of things you just read in that e-mail that make it unique:

  You will notice how the communication is based upon the principle that if the prospect does certain things, they will have a better experience. This is much more effective than saying, “Hey, Mr./Mrs. Jones, I really don’t know if you’re worth my time. In order to tell whether you are, please read this.”

  The second principle that you will notice from that e-mail is the principle of disarmament, which we discussed in chapter 18. Here is how we have used disarmament with our prospect: We have come right out and admitted that there is a chance that we will not be a good fit for them.

  We have allowed the prospect to feel like they are in charge of identifying whether we are a good fit or not. But in reality, we are identifying whether they are a good fit for us.

  We have allowed them to feel like they are in total control of their buying decision. The most successful salespeople in the world understand that one of the great keys to sales is helping the prospect feel like they are the ones making the buying decision. As human beings, we want to feel like we are in charge of our destiny and that nobody is telling us what to do.

  Now, you may be thinking, Marcus, there is no way somebody is going to read two hundred pages of an e-book before your initial conversation!

  I’m here to tell you that, once again, that is simply not the case. The only ones who are not willing to do this are the ones who are a bad fit for our company.

  Look at it like this: If somebody reads two hundred pages of my words, my thoughts, my teachings, and my philosophy on sales and marketing, and then they come to me for a quote or proposal, they are unlikely to be also getting a bunch of other quotes because of a lack of confidence in me and my company.

  The fact is, after reading two hundred pages of my teachings and philosophy, they either love me or hate me.

  If they hate me, that’s fine. We skip the phone conversation, acknowledge that it’s a bad fit, and save each other time.

  If they love me, it means I will have a much shorter sales cycle and a much more productive conversation with the prospect.

  As you might imagine, the exact same thing is true with this book. There will be people who read this book and absolutely hate it. That’s not a problem.

  There will be another set who read it, want to apply its principles to their businesses (or vendors, conference, and the like) and contact me to discuss.

  Assuredly, the sales cycle for those calls will not be very long. The work has already been done.

  I have just given you two examples. One applies when you are selling a product and the other applies when you are selling a service.

  I reiterate that we’ve worked with companies of all shapes and size that have made this work for them in their own way. A few key principles remain consistent, namely:

  Every e-mail sent out by your company’s sales team is a teaching opportunity. So, stop sending out e-mails—especially e-mails of the sales variety—that do not include content that teaches the prospect or customer. It simply doesn’t make sense.

  As
you can see, your salespeople are the ones who are using the content in their sales process. If you are going to implement assignment selling and use content in your company’s sales process, the salespeople need to be informed and aware of the content that is being produced. In the following chapter, I talk about this very point and the incredible need for sales and marketing departments to become completely aligned into one unit, without silos.

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  Case Study 4

  How a Start-Up Company in the Health Care Space Became the Thought Leaders of an Entirely New Industry

  Many of the digital marketing success stories we’ve heard over the years have come from companies who got into it for very similar reasons: They wanted their voices to be heard above the clamorous din emitting from others in their industry. Many of these companies had to figure out a way to carve themselves a slice of the existing marketplace, and they used the principles of inbound marketing and They Ask, You Answer to do it.

  Health Catalyst is unique in that it came into an industry that was still in its infancy—healthcare analytics. Started in 2010, Health Catalyst is a data warehousing, analytics, and outcomes improvement company that provides infrastructure that health care organizations (hospitals) can use to identify waste in their practices, allowing them to improve patient care and lower their overall costs.

  In its new space, Health Catalyst quickly found that nobody was answering industry questions online. Despite that, some massive competitor brands were also entering the space, no one was yet known as the thought leader of healthcare analytics.

  Because of this, no real information existed online for interested searchers. Health Catalyst recognized there was a huge informational void in their industry, and they set out to fill it. Unlike with other businesses, Health Catalyst didn’t have to fight to get their voice heard, because there were no other voices. Rather than push their way onto the stage, Health Catalyst was able to build the stage.

  Paul Horstmeier, Health Catalyst senior vice president and former Hewlett-Packard vice president, was brought on board in 2012 when the company was ready to scale its sales and marketing efforts. Most of Health Catalyst’s marketing up until that point had been through word-of-mouth referrals and press releases. Horstmeier was asked to start a marketing campaign nearly from scratch. Because he was a little rusty in heading a marketing department, Horstmeier started researching how companies were doing quality marketing.

  I decided I needed to get up to speed with what was the latest and greatest in marketing. I started reading and looking at the concept of content marketing. I don’t remember how, but I came across Marcus Sheridan’s book, Inbound and Content Marketing Made Easy, and his philosophy (They Ask, You Answer) fit with what I already believed, so we had him come out for a workshop a few months later.

  The base principles of They Ask, You Answer harmonized with Horstmeier’s own philosophy of creating a culture in his industry based on educating the marketplace, rather than building a brand that simply sold a product and services.

  I thought traditional marketing was dead. Most of the data that I had done in my research confirmed it. Only about 30 percent of people actually trust brands. So for the most part, you have to start from the perspective that nobody trusts what you’re saying.

  Paul Horstmeier had no trouble convincing his partners that the direction Health Catalyst needed to move in was to focus on properly educating the marketplace. Before the initial workshop even kicked off, Health Catalyst already had top-to-bottom buy-in, a clear direction they wanted to take the company, and a new marketing team ready to carry out their new vision.

  We were advocating something that was very new to the healthcare industry. We knew we needed to educate the market. When Marcus showed up and discussed his principles, it already fit into a paradigm that we believed. Doing the workshop with Marcus was the starting point of formally kicking off the process.

  Phase 1: Uniting the Marketing and Sales Silos

  Health Catalyst’s first move was to implement the They Ask, You Answer methodology and draft up a list of the most common questions customers and clients ask. To get their list, the marketing team went to the sales team for answers. Horstmeier noticed that the senior sales teams were being pulled in multiple directions: as they were traveling to meet clients and potential prospects to explain their services. Horstmeier also noticed that the senior sales team were already the experts in the field and could better manage their efforts as part of the content production initiative.

  It was pretty easy for me to say, “We’re going to create a marketing engine, and it’s going to be all about education, and if you participate, it will relieve you of travel and reduce the demand on you. Because I’m going to create two ways, one via publishing and the other via webinars, to get your content out to thousands of people instead of tens of people.”

  It was so easy to catch the vision. We were fortunate in that the subject matter experts that we had on our team were the subject matter experts nationally. We were in a new market and we were already the thought leaders, and we were already in demand.

  For their first phase of content marketing, Horstmeier and his marketing crew leveraged the knowledge of their sales team to write compelling articles. However, after a few months of utilizing the sales experts and doing their own independent research, the marketing team surpassed the sales team as the thought leaders and relied less heavily on sales for content ideas.

  Health Catalyst began to churn out three pieces of content each week, and in an industry nearly devoid of information, getting to the top of the first page on searches came pretty easily for the company.

  We have about seventy-seven strategic keyword phrases that we target, and we own almost all of them. We have three segments of keywords. In our first segment, we have 95 percent of our words at the number 1 spot. In our two other segments we’re at 50 percent. We have 100 percent of all the words on the first page of Google search engine results, with 50 percent of our words at the top position.

  Another reason Health Catalyst’s efforts have been so amazing is the way they have broken down the barrier between sales and marketing so that everyone is on board with the production and distribution of content. And it’s not just that their sales team uses their content, but the way they do it. Says Horstmeier:

  Our content team has grown. I have a core team, and I have a separate team that just writes “case studies.” The sales team particularly uses the case studies. I’ve also created a tool on our website called “My Folder.” This tool allows anyone (but the sales team uses it the most) to go onto our website, sort through whatever articles, case studies, or information they’re looking for to give to a client and put those things in the “My Folder” tool. The salesperson can then send any file they add to the folder to a client. An automatic e-mail is generated saying, “Hey, George, thank you very much for the meeting that we had. You asked for more info on XYZ. I’ve identified the three most important pieces of content I’d like you to read. Take a look and let me know what you think.”

  Phases 2 and 3: Live Webinars and Events

  Producing regular content on their site was working very well for Health Catalyst but they still knew there was more they could be doing to educate the marketplace. Educating clients was extremely important to Health Catalyst. One the one hand, having all the information helped their sales team get new clients. On the other hand, Health Catalyst’s product is pretty technical, and adequately getting their clients to purchase and use the product required making sure the people using it were using it correctly.

  For phase 2 of Health Catalyst’s marketing strategy they began to implement regular live webinars for their clients, prospects, and anybody interested to attend their training sessions. All the webinars are free, and many have been recorded, and topics a person may be interested in are always available. Says Horstmeier:

  What’s pretty interesting about webinars is that everyone told us that in the health care industry the
only way webinars would work is if we were featuring clients and not ourselves. But I knew that we had the thought leaders within our company. So we had a meeting and decided that our webinars would have a “content marketing mind-set,” in which it would be all about educating and teaching. We didn’t want to mention our company name much, if at all, because we try to teach principles and broaden the appeal of what we do.

  Health Catalyst’s education-over-promotion approach to webinars has paid off in a remarkable way with an average sign-up for webinars between 600 and 700 people and as many as 1,200 people attending a single session.

  In phase 3, Health Catalyst’s created an industry event. One of the concerns that Horstmeier had about doing events was that, as a vendor and not a third party, hosting an event might come off as too promotional and not enough about educating the marketplace. Horstmeier agreed to host a healthcare analytics summit under one very strict guideline: to make sure it’s an educational summit and not a Health Catalyst vendor event.

  The only mention during the whole summit of Health Catalyst was a small logo that said “powered by Health Catalyst.” Unless you were really looking, you’d miss it. We were so committed to making it an analytics event and not a sponsored event that we asked everyone at the very end to vote if they thought it was a vendor event or an analytics event. Ninety-four percent of the people voted that we had kept our promise of making it about analytics and not Health Catalyst.

  The transparency of their motives and their pledge to cultivate a culture instead of building a brand has made them the trusted thought leaders in their space. When Health Catalyst hosted its first analytics summit, the expected attendance was between 100 to 250, and 620 people showed. Their second annual summit surpassed expectations once again.