Today's Buyer Has Changed: How They Ask, You Answer Became Endless Customers [Endless Customers Podcast Ep. 81]

This transcript has been generated by AI and not checked for accuracy.

Marcus Sheridan
0:00:00
Companies are struggling to get known and found. How do we do it today? You've got to be willing to disrupt. How do you disrupt? Well, the way you disrupt is by doing. What's the best way to disrupt?

Alex Winter
0:00:15
Welcome back to Endless Customers. I'm your host, Alex Winter,

Alex Winter
0:00:17
and today we have a very special guest. He's a keynote speaker, an author, a partner here at Impact, Marcus Sheridan. Welcome back to the show.

Marcus Sheridan
0:00:33
Here we go, it's been a while, so we got a lot of catch up on.

Marcus Sheridan
0:00:36
Let's do it.

Alex Winter
0:00:37
We have a lot to catch up on. There's a lot happening, and the main focus for today's conversation is about Endless Customers, but not the podcast, the new book, Taya 3.0, and I really wanna pick your brain

Alex Winter
0:00:49
because it's your legacy, it's your story, it's your book. I really want to get a first-hand look at what the evolution of They Ask, We Answer and Endless Customers is. So can we start there and then we'll talk more about the book when it comes out and all the juicy details.

Marcus Sheridan
0:01:02
Yeah, I mean, if you think about it, we've seen more change really since November 2022 than we saw in the previous probably 15, 20 years. And that, of course, marks the proliferation of chatGBT, AI, and a very quickly evolving buyer, a changing marketplace. And I mean, when they say that AI

Marcus Sheridan
0:01:30
is the ultimate disruption, it is. I mean, it's just, it's astounding what it's doing. And so as soon as it came out, like immediately people started realizing, and I was talking about this early, like, okay, so we're going to have a proliferation of content. And they ask you answer was really rooted in creating the best content for your space, answering the questions, worries, fears, issues that your buyers had, and going where nobody had gone before with that.

Marcus Sheridan
0:02:04
Now that remains true, but I also recognize that for a lot of people what They Ask, You Answer became was this incredible strategy to get more traffic to your website and to get more leads, trust traffic leads and sales was always like the big four in so many ways of they ask you answer. To a degree, all those are principles that haven't changed at all. But what has changed is now what's going on is Google is having less relevance in the market, Google search, traditional search.

Marcus Sheridan
0:02:45
When I say less relevance, I mean many people are seeing that they're getting less visitors to the website. Why? Because they're getting a direct answer on Google, they're getting a direct answer on chat UBT or on Claude. So that's part of it and of course then there's the the issue of oh man there's all this content out there. How do we still get found? How do we get known? How do we win that trust you know in this market? So all the signals Alex were saying it's time to address these because people kept saying

Marcus Sheridan
0:03:17
what's this mean for the ask answer what does mean for the ask answer what does mean for the answer sure we've been hearing a lot of that lately and so you know I you know have stayed at the forefront what happens whenever there's a big shift a transition a change like this typically what you see in history is the leaders of the previous generation are the slowest to embrace what comes next yeah that's true and this is why you know the blockbusters of the world

Marcus Sheridan
0:03:41
are a part of history books, because they did want to replace previous business models. And one thing that I've always been committed to was evolution, because I've been obsessed with the way buyers think and behave, and how we as businesses can meet that.

Marcus Sheridan
0:03:58
And so instead of being like a lot of SEO companies that have said, I don't really think AI is going to affect SEO, and I don't think it's gonna ultimately have a big impact on your business. Like, come on, stop being intellectually dishonest. Stop protecting your business,

Marcus Sheridan
0:04:18
and start evolving. And so now, instead of being like Kodak, like in my situation, I see what's ahead. Kodak saw what was ahead and had the digital print. They essentially invented digital print. They just didn't do anything with it

Marcus Sheridan
0:04:35
because they were making too much money on film. So instead of me saying, okay, I'm gonna hold onto this, everything that has been they ask you answer, let's evolve it, but let's call it something different, which is another story that I guess we could probably tell

Marcus Sheridan
0:04:53
if you'd like to hear it.

Alex Winter
0:04:54
I would love to hear that. I'm sure our audience would love to hear that too.

Marcus Sheridan
0:04:57
Yes. Well, what's interesting about They Ask, You Answer is it has sold more every year since it's been out, which it came out in 2017. Then a revised version came out essentially 2020. But each year it keeps selling more.

Marcus Sheridan
0:05:13
It's a referral-based book. What that means is somebody reads it and says, my goodness, this book's awesome, it seems so obvious to me, why are we not doing it this way? And then they refer it to a friend.

Alex Winter
0:05:25
It's a great read, too, not to interrupt, but it's an easy read, it's relatable, and I felt that when I read it the first time. It was like the light bulb went off.

Marcus Sheridan
0:05:34
I think that happens when a lot of people read it. The issue though is I learned well after the fact from my friend Rory Vaden who wrote Take the Stairs. He said there's a perfect test that you can follow for a great title to a book. Oh interesting. And you can use this test for books, you can use it for like webinars, you can use it for almost anything, and it's the I want, I wish test. And essentially what it means is, in a perfect world,

Marcus Sheridan
0:06:06
you can say I want or I wish before the title of the thing. So, for example, I wish I could have a four hour work week. I want atomic habits. I want to win friends and influence people. See, they pass this I want, I wish test.

Marcus Sheridan
0:06:26
Nobody says, I wish they ask you answer. I want they ask you answer. Because with they ask you answer, what I did is I called it that because I was simplifying in a very just clear way the how, which was obsess over what the buyer's asking,

Marcus Sheridan
0:06:47
fearing, searching, etc. Be willing to address it online, answer it online. It's great in terms of having a light bulb come on and somebody saying, ah, that's the how. But the problem is people don't buy the how. They buy the payoff of the how.

Marcus Sheridan
0:07:06
That's when I knew it had to change. What we came up with was endless customers. It's interesting too, every time somebody hears the title name, they're like, oh gosh, that's awesome. I'm like, yeah, it is awesome, it's great. So that has been the big shift with the title, and now the book is shifting in terms of before

Marcus Sheridan
0:07:27
it was very much rooted in the Riverpool story, my story, my story arc. Although that's still there, now it's very much a model that someone can follow, which that's what we want to do. A model, a system, a system whereby, if you think about EOS, right? So there's this book called Traction.

Alex Winter
0:07:53
Love Traction. Such a great...

Marcus Sheridan
0:07:55
Which has really just changed hundreds of thousands of companies.

Alex Winter
0:07:59
It's huge, yeah. It's international.

Marcus Sheridan
0:08:01
It's massive. And they have now coaches all over the world, but the system is called EOS, Entrepreneur Operating System. So we essentially said, we need to create the EOS for sales and marketing. Because if you look at EOS, if you look at traction, what it doesn't really do well is it doesn't give you a really clear system and frameworks for your marketing.

Alex Winter
0:08:33
Yeah, it's more of like the examples and creating that buying and that like demand because you want to, at least when I read it, I was like I want to do what these guys are doing.

Marcus Sheridan
0:08:41
Yeah, I mean it's like, it's like well everybody has a problem getting things done with their business and so you know they gave you a very, very clear system of leadership and of meetings and of how to tackle issues and something that, you know, we're not taught in school, right? And so that was great. So we said, could we do that for sales and marketing? And I feel like we have, for the most part, accomplished that for today's buyer.

Marcus Sheridan
0:09:08
And that's the key because the buyer today isn't what the buyer of yesterday was. And so we needed to create something that was evergreen, that was principle-driven. Now when I say evergreen, I think the book has at least five years on it. At least five years. Now that might not sound like a lot, but when you're writing a marketing book today, to make it worthy of attention for five years, it's extremely difficult.

Marcus Sheridan
0:09:34
I mean, there's books, most books written on AI are irrelevant after six months. A lot of them have not gone to print because of the fact that they were irrelevant by the time they were ready to be published in the market. And so we need to change that. And so that's what's beauty, that's the beauty behind endless customers. Now you've got a proven system, not a bunch of theory, that you can follow and immediately apply to your business

Marcus Sheridan
0:10:03
so as to attract way more leads, more customers, and become that most known and trusted brand, which that's what everybody needs to be today with what's happening in the market.

Alex Winter
0:10:16
Yeah, we know building trust is essential. That's what this is really all about. And the delivery method may change with technology and with the world evolving, but the fundamentals are the same. So how does that play into the process?

Alex Winter
0:10:27
Or like how does that play into how people can apply this to their business?

Marcus Sheridan
0:10:31
Well, I'm a huge believer in building our business around principles because principles don't die. So the promise is, okay, if you follow this system, you'll become the most known and trusted brand in your market, wherever that market is.

Marcus Sheridan
0:10:54
Now, this means it's gonna apply to B2B, B2C, local, national, domestic, international. And why is that so important? For people out there that, like this is the first time hearing this, why should that be at the forefront

Alex Winter
0:11:09
of what they need to achieve?

Marcus Sheridan
0:11:14
Because when you read business books, oftentimes they're niche specific in the strategies that they're recommending to you. And so, I mean, look, can you imagine some of these massive corporations having some of these sales pages that you see some of these internet marketers saying, hey, this is the way to build your business. It's like, no, man, you can't do that.

Marcus Sheridan
0:11:40
So we want to create something that, you know, whether you're a local landscaper or whether you're a massive SaaS company,

Marcus Sheridan
0:11:48
it's got legs.

Marcus Sheridan
0:11:50
And it doesn't just have legs today. Because you gotta become known, you gotta become trusted in your market. The known part is getting harder. And it's getting harder because of the proliferation of AI, because of all the noise that's in the market.

Marcus Sheridan
0:12:06
Right, so many people are doing it now. We have a lot of content, and it's just getting very difficult for people to stand out. So that's the one side, just like this, how do I rise above the noise? You can't just throw money at it

Marcus Sheridan
0:12:22
and expect that to work anymore. Right, that used to work, but that's not the case anymore. No question, it used to work. I mean, if you had enough ad spend, you could just dominate the market that way. Getting very hard to do that.

Marcus Sheridan
0:12:40
So people are going, you know, broke really fast by just throwing money at the problem. You actually have to have strategy behind it today. So that's the known side. You look at the trusted side. Well, we've got a trust deficit in the market and you're seeing

Marcus Sheridan
0:12:55
what was working before, people just aren't falling for that stuff anymore. So people are slower to convert now, they're slower to fill out that form, they're slower to call for quote, you know stuff that just annoys people. And so we've got to be willing to meet buyers where they are. This book is very rooted in meeting the buyer where they are, where you are. I mean if you read Endless Customers you can be like, yep I wish that they would do that for me. I would appreciate that. I would want that. And of course it's very much rooted

Marcus Sheridan
0:13:28
in that golden rule of sales and marketing. Treat them as you yourself would want to be treated. So that's why because it's that goal of become the most known and trusted brand in your market, well that's why it's got legs and it will last at least five years. I mean there's going to be principles of this book if you read it in 20-30 years, it's going to be extremely relevant just like they ask you answer, still going to be extremely relevant because I come from a place of principles. Now we had to, once that was established,

Marcus Sheridan
0:14:03
we had to give a very clear system to follow. And essentially, without going too far into it, and we'll cover this in more detail in another podcast, is within the book you have what's called the four pillars of a known and trusted brand. And so, what are those four pillars?

Alex Winter
0:14:25
The four pillars.

Marcus Sheridan
0:14:25
The four pillars are, number one, you've got to be willing to say, online especially, what others in your space aren't willing to say. Sounds simple, but as soon as you see it, you're like, gosh, we're not talking about those things. Now that's very much rooted in, if you've read They Ask, You Answer, that's very much rooted in They Ask, You Answer.

Marcus Sheridan
0:14:46
Number two, we've got to be willing to show what others in our space aren't willing to show through video. You've been hearing me talk about the importance of video for over a decade. As long as I've known you. Yeah, and without a doubt. It's only growing in importance and so we're really looking and leaning into the evolution of that. Number three, you've got to be willing to sell in a way that others aren't willing to sell. Many companies like to think they have

Marcus Sheridan
0:15:18
what would be a unique sales process. They do not. They don't stand out. And so we've got this almost like inflated sense of unique sales process. It is an epidemic with sales organizations. Not okay. And then the

Marcus Sheridan
0:15:42
fourth pillar is you've got to be more human than those in your space are willing to be. Because what we're seeing with AI and with technology is that if you're not careful you can lose that soul, that human edge of your business. So So how do you use tech? How do you use AI and be more human than ever? So you gotta be willing to say,

Marcus Sheridan
0:16:08
you gotta be willing to show, you gotta be willing to sell, and you gotta be more human than anybody in your space is willing to be. Now, if you do all these things, you are essentially disrupting your industry.

Marcus Sheridan
0:16:22
And that's one word that you're gonna see a lot in those customers. Because to get found, to be known, found, trusted today, you cannot follow the rules you've been given. Especially as a marketer. You have got to be willing to clear a different path.

Marcus Sheridan
0:16:49
You can't do it the way it's always been done, right? And so what this means is, we have to say, alright, I'm gonna have the courage, because it does require courage, that even though our company's never done the thing before, and you'll read about all the different ways

Marcus Sheridan
0:17:08
to break rules in your industry in the book. Even though nobody's ever done these things before, we're going to be willing to do them because we see the payoff. And the discomfort of being stagnant and no change is way greater than the discomfort of going on this new frontier that we've never been on. In fact, nobody in our industry has ever really done before.

Marcus Sheridan
0:17:40
The most easy example of this that you will see in the book is going to ask a natural like question, right?

Alex Winter
0:17:47
Yeah.

Marcus Sheridan
0:17:48
Would be the proliferation of pricing estimators on websites. I am pretty much positive that within the next five years, over 90% of all service-based businesses and many non-service, but over 90% of service-based businesses will be forced to have some type of pricing estimator on their website. Now if you look back at They Ask, You Answer, what we really did is we taught people how to discuss cost and price online. Well the next evolution of that, and that's one of the reasons why the book is They Ask

Marcus Sheridan
0:18:27
You to Answer 3.0, is we're going from just talking about it to really showing it and to now displaying it while giving them control over it.

Alex Winter
0:18:38
Right. It's an interactive way for-

Marcus Sheridan
0:18:40
Very interactive. Yeah. And what that leads to is a higher sense of resonance sunk costs with the prospect because the prospect has essentially Designed their own project now that they have because they have been engaged with through let's say a tool on your website and They've gotten a price range. They feel fulfilled. They feel

Marcus Sheridan
0:19:07
Satiated they say gosh, it's so nice that somebody was willing to give me what I wanted, they trust you more, and then they reach out to you. There's a whole bunch of these examples in the book. That's just one minor example of what we refer to as self-service in this new seller-free economy that we're seeing.

Marcus Sheridan
0:19:27
And so these are just, like, this is one of many ways that we now teach in the book as to how you can disrupt your space. But I'm really pushing the envelope on disruption. Just one other point to this. Most companies don't realize they have disruptive IP with intellectual property within what

Marcus Sheridan
0:19:50
they're already doing as an organization. So in the book, I really show you ways how you can identify your IP. What is that thing that you're already doing that the market doesn't realize? They just don't know. Or they just take for granted. And you learn how to talk about that and show it in such a way that it drives a literal stake in the ground and creates a new niche, a new standard, a new norm, a new rule in an industry. And everybody says, where did that come from?

Marcus Sheridan
0:20:30
How'd that happen? It was because you drew attention to this thing that you always have done, but because you drew such great attention to it, it's now become the standard in your space, right? And it's no different than I give an example of,

Marcus Sheridan
0:20:45
in the book, when I was a pool guy, all fiberglass pools, when I started my business, the way they were built is you would dig a hole and once you dug the hole, you would set the pool shell on a sand base. You'd backfill all the way around it with sand

Marcus Sheridan
0:21:04
and then you'd pour your concrete patio around that. Well, anybody with half a brain knows that sand has a problem. Over time, it's gonna settle. This is why 2,000 years ago a book said don't build your house on sand. And so when we saw this we were like like this is in the

Marcus Sheridan
0:21:23
year 2000 early 2000s I'm like this is this is crazy why are these pools built being built on sand? And so we we openly talked about like aggressively through text through video etc we created new standards for the way pools, fiberglass pools, should be installed. And in this case we said they should go on essentially what is stone, gravel. Because gravel goes down, it's already compacted essentially. And so you don't have the same issues that you have with sand. So this became a standard

Marcus Sheridan
0:21:53
within the entire industry. So what was before, everybody built their pools on sand, today pretty much everybody builds their pool on stone. And that's because we drove our stake in the ground. We changed an entire industry. This is what's possible for anybody that's listening to this right now.

Marcus Sheridan
0:22:12
But they can't just take for granted the thing they're already doing. Curse of knowledge affects a lot of people. They're like, I've always done this way. Yeah, but this is IP. This is something that is a unique differentiator.

Alex Winter
0:22:24
Now I like it, because for me, disruption sometimes can be, it's a big word It's like when you say I'm gonna disrupt my industry sometimes it can be a little intimidating But I love it It's figuring out your differentiator figuring out the one thing that you do that's your unique selling proposition to the marketplace

Marcus Sheridan
0:22:39
And then just really leaning into it and letting people know what's up. Yeah and doing it unapologetically Yeah, that's why you know the truth is Alex a Lot of people, they know inherently they should do many of these things that they're going to read about in Endless Customers, but they're just going to say, gosh, I just don't know if I can take what comes after that, like the attacks from the competition or the negative comments online or the finger pointing or whatever it is.

Marcus Sheridan
0:23:11
Meanwhile, the one that is willing to be brave, because I always say the rule breakers become the rule makers and the previous leaders become the rule followers.

Alex Winter
0:23:21
That's a fact.

Marcus Sheridan
0:23:22
And that's just the history of business. We've seen it over and over again. And so Endless Customer shows you how you can constantly evolve. And the other thing about the book that's important is we spent more time explaining, okay, if you want to implement this system within your organization, how do you do it?

Marcus Sheridan
0:23:41
What does your team look like? How does your team need to evolve?

Alex Winter
0:23:45
The actual implementation of it and how you can...

Marcus Sheridan
0:23:47
Right.

Marcus Sheridan
0:23:48
And what's AI's role. Right. And it's important too to note that I really talk about how to maintain that human edge while using AI. We want you to use AI. In fact, you have to use it if you're gonna maintain relevancy

Marcus Sheridan
0:24:04
because it allows you to do things you never previously could do. So you don't want to wait for all your competitors to be using it and you're like, geez, how are they so much more efficient and how have they cut their costs

Marcus Sheridan
0:24:14
and how have they increased their productivity and their creativity and all these things.

Alex Winter
0:24:19
Like things and even the perception in the marketplace for end users, if I see a company that's not using AI, I think that they're antiquated. Yeah, that's exactly right. And that may not be true, but that's the perception that it gives, so you have to be thinking about that.

Marcus Sheridan
0:24:31
It's really important. Yeah, so what's great about the book is we really give you the whole roadmap, the journey to go on so that you can follow it because systems are meant to be followed. So too often business books are theoretical

Marcus Sheridan
0:24:50
and they sound nice, but as soon as you read them, you're like, how exactly do I do this? So if you get endless customers, you're gonna say, okay, I've got a plan, I've got a process, I know what to do, I know what the journey looks like, I know what my team should look like,

Marcus Sheridan
0:25:05
and now I just have to do it.

Alex Winter
0:25:06
It's gotta work the plan.

Marcus Sheridan
0:25:07
Yeah, I just gotta work the plan. Just like EOS with traction, right? And so that's the promise behind the book, and if you do it, you're gonna become the most known and trusted brand in your market. That's the promise.

Marcus Sheridan
0:25:18
And if you become the most known and trusted brand in your market, that's why you're gonna have that endless flow of leads, and ultimately customers and sales, and scale your business at the rate that you wanna scale it because now you've got leverage

Marcus Sheridan
0:25:31
and you can make those choices and you're not being forced to do things you don't wanna do because you're in a position of pain.

Alex Winter
0:25:38
Absolutely, absolutely. I love hearing it directly from you, it's just so cool. And I'm behind the scenes, I get to work on all the marketing and the promo for the book, so I feel like I have like an interesting perspective on it, but to hear this, it's just opening my eyes even more to how exciting

Alex Winter
0:25:55
this really is, and business owners should be pumped. And when does this come out? Like when are we gonna be able to get our hands on it? Where do we go to, like give us a little bit of that too.

Marcus Sheridan
0:26:03
You can pre-order it now. It's at endlesscustomers.com. I hope you do pre-order it to support myself, to support our team at Impact, and really to support the movement of better business, of more honest, more transparent business, business built upon the foundation of trust, which I think is a beautiful thing to be behind. And so you're supporting that when you buy

Marcus Sheridan
0:26:29
in this customers and please tell your friends about it. Even if you've read They Asked Me The Answer many times, you're gonna pick up this book and I would say probably 30 to 40% is what you've seen before, but there's all this new stuff and you're just gonna be like wow, I wasn't doing that like I should have been doing it

Marcus Sheridan
0:26:49
and now I've got all these new things that I'm seeing. I'm seeing this differently. I'm looking ahead. The one thing that I do pretty well, Alex, is I see around turns pretty well when it comes to the market, buyers,

Marcus Sheridan
0:27:03
and how we're evolving.

Marcus Sheridan
0:27:04
You do have a lot of foresight.

Marcus Sheridan
0:27:05
Yeah, I don't necessarily see 20 years ahead because I don't think anybody can at this point. But in terms of really what's happening right now that you should be doing and over the next year or two, I'm pretty tapped into that, and I've been right on a whole lot of things

Marcus Sheridan
0:27:18
over the last decade. And the companies that have followed it have really crushed. And I want you to crush too, because I went from a place of financial pain and stress to financial prosperity, which gave me back my time as a business owner,

Marcus Sheridan
0:27:33
which gave me an incredible life with my wife, Nikki, my four children, my grandson. This is what, it's like this whole journey for me has been. And so that's what's rewarding to me when people follow They Ask, You Answer

Marcus Sheridan
0:27:49
and I hear some of these stories of going from pain to peace. And now I know that's gonna be the case with Endless Customers, especially because it's so process-oriented, right? And now we've got this system that we can follow.

Marcus Sheridan
0:28:05
It's very, very exciting. I'm expecting big things, and I really appreciate everyone's support along the way. We appreciate you,

Alex Winter
0:28:12
and for sharing all your knowledge and experiences. So thank you for being on the show, and for getting us pumped. I don't know, I hope everyone's as excited as I am about the book coming out. And make sure you go to endlesscustomers.com,

Alex Winter
0:28:21
pre-order the book. Marcus, thanks for being on the show. Yeah. All right. For everybody out there watching and listening, this is Endless Customers. We'll see you on the next episode.

Alex Winter
0:28:38
you you you