5 Key Factors in Building Trust With Your Customers From Marcus Sheridan

0:00The happiest day of the life of a business is not when you figure out who you are, but rather it's when you figure out what you're not. Because the moment you know what you're not, you stop saying yes to those that you shouldn't have said yes to. Michael Sheridan, the author of They Ask, You Answer. He's listed as one of the 20 speakers you don't want to miss. Four simple pillars of disruption. Talk about, show, sell, be more human. You do those things right there, that's disruption one-on-one. First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, and then, like Elon and so many others have done, you win.

0:32And Michael Sheridan is going to blow your mind here on the Big Success Podcast. Hi, buddy. Let's chat disruption. People talk about it. How do you view disruption in business today? Yeah, few do it. I think it's essential, especially because one of the big challenges today is to become known. And getting known is getting harder. Because for the last 25 years, the easiest way to get known was through Google and search. and you can't build your house on Google today like you did for 25 years. And you've got to do more and you've got to be more. And the thing about disruption is a lot of people know they should do it, but inherently they don't know how.

1:14So let me just give you some like very clear ways that you can absolutely disrupt. Number one, you got to be willing to talk about or say what others in your space aren't willing to say. And think about all the messaging that you do as a company. how much of that messaging is pretty much everybody else also saying in your space versus how much of it is everyone saying wow I can't believe they said that okay that's disruption that's number one number two you got to be willing to show what others aren't willing to show specifically through video because that's when you can really break out the secret sauce a lot of companies think they got secret sauce when in reality all they've got is thousand island dressing and everybody knows it right and so if they just let go of this idea that we have a secret sauce and they show it Now we've got magic.

1:56That's disruption when most people won't show a thing. Number three, are you selling in a way that nobody is willing to sell in your space? Lots of different examples of that. And then number four, are you being more human in the way you present yourself than anyone in your space? Four simple pillars of disruption. Talk about or say, show, sell, be more human. When you do those things right there, that's disruption one-on-one. Most aren't willing to do it. Yeah. I want to talk about three and four. Okay. Okay. Once someone taught me the definition of disruption was being able to, or the way to do disruption was sell it for less and make more profit.

2:39You know, like the Apple, they went from selling a full album to a single song, but they made more profit. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Let's dive into the thought of number four, being more human out there in the marketplace. It's kind of scary to do that sort of thing. You have to put yourself out there. The problem is what we know now is that as the impact of Google goes down, it means things like the importance of YouTube go up, social media goes up, which is why we're busy doing this. I mean, right now, you're being more human, you and I, than a lot of people necessarily in our space. You're putting ourselves out there.

3:19We're taking the time to do it. We're making a potential connection with the audience. You know, the whole idea is that they feel like they know us, yet we've never met them before. That's an example of being more human. The problem that brands have, though, is tell me one brand that just gets you really jazzed up when it comes to social media. Most people can't name one because there's very few. But if I said to you, how many people that own brands do you follow? Oh, yeah, I follow Elon Musk. Oh, yeah, I follow Tim Cook. It's like these people, they have millions of more followers than their massive company that everybody uses.

3:54Why is this? Because people are attracted to people. And because we're attracted to people, we're drawn to that. So you have all these companies that have all these, like, let's say social media pages, but it's a company page. And they're wondering, like, why has it got no legs? It gots no legs because it really isn't a human behind the brand. And Elon is a number one example of saying things that no one else is willing to say. Yeah, I mean, he's the ultimate disruptor. But if you look at, he's always been a disruptor because he takes things that are happening in the industry. And he says, well, why could we not do that?

4:27So, for example, he was the first in the automotive space to say, we're going to go direct to consumer, right? And when he did that, and there's a pattern that happens after disruption. It's a classic phrase. You've probably heard it before. So when you disrupt, what happens at first, everyone ignores you. They don't pay attention. But once they notice you, they laugh at you. So that's the second thing. They laugh at you. After they're done laughing at you, what happens in the process of them laughing at you, they start to look around and say, oh, my goodness, the market is responding, and the market likes what this person has just done or what they've suggested or how they're doing their business.

5:03And so after they've ignored you and then after they laughed at you, now they fight you. And this is what's happened with every major industry where it's been flipped on its head. There's always this period of fight, pushback. Uber, every taxi company in every jurisdiction fought back. Airbnb, everybody in the hospitality space was fighting back. But at first they were ignored, then they were laughed at, and then they were fought. All the automotive manufacturers fought Elon on this. But you know what's interesting is the marketplace always wins. Eventually, the marketplace wins. And then finally, they just repeat what we said, okay?

5:42First they ignore you. Then they laugh at you. Then they fight you. And then, like Elon and so many others have done, you win. You win. And that's the pattern. Most people aren't willing to step up to that plate, though, Brad, because you're right. It means that if your brand wants to really stand out today, you have to be willing for people to not agree with you or to call you out or to say, oh, you look silly on camera or I don't like that guy or whatever it is. And so you can say to yourself, am I more concerned with putting off a few people or am I more concerned with building a known, trusted brand with my ideal buyer?

6:23and me, I always, always am going to choose. I want to be known and I want to be trusted and I'm going to let go of those that are not a good fit and I'm okay with that. Yeah, that's an interesting one of being okay with some people not wanting to do business with you. Hard for a lot of people to do. Happiest day in the life of a business is not when you figure out who you are and I think you very much know this, but rather it's when you figure out what you're not because the moment you know what you're not, you stop saying yes to those that you shouldn't have said yes to. Everybody that started a company and you've done this, I've done this, early on when we're just desperate to get going and we need the cash, we say yes to a lot of things, a lot of things that are really outside of our zone of genius, outside of our scope.

7:02And because of that, we end up waking up in the morning and hating the thing and like, well, why did I take that money? Right. And so when you really know I am not that, I say no to that. Then you are such a happier entrepreneur and business owner because you're staying in that zone of genius or that strength area. And that's a beautiful place to be. And it's replicatable and you know your price point and you can charge more for it and all those wonderful aspects of a great business. So number three is selling in a way others aren't willing to sell. We live here, well, I live here in Vegas. Zappos is a perfect example of just changing the way people buy things.

7:45How can other businesses learn from that? What can they do? How can they change it up? Well, you know, if you think about selling, there's always friction points in every sales process. And so what you want to do is you want to look at your entire sales process or really what is a buyer's journey, especially because they're in control these days. And you say, what's every point in this journey where they could get frustrated? It could get slowed down. So let me give you a perfect example. So, if you talk to any buyer consumer in the world and you said to them, would you prefer that a company would be willing to put a pricing estimator on their website so that you could at least get a price range, especially if you input some variables and you said, okay, here's what I'm looking for, and then you got an estimate.

8:32Would you prefer that or prefer just to reach out and talk to a salesperson? 100 % of people are going to say, I'd rather do a pricing estimator first. Now, if you look at almost 100 % of businesses, especially let's say B2B service-based businesses or whatever you want to call yourself, how many of those folks have a pricing estimator on your website? You don't have one. And you don't have one because you're making all these reasons as to why. I have a company I started. It's basically called Price Guide. And it's the simplest tool on the Internet right now for you to immediately build within 30 minutes, have a working pricing estimator on your website.

9:10So I've got all this data now for people that have implemented this tool on their website. And what we see over and over again is that if you put a pricing estimator tool on your website, again, you're not giving the exact price, you're giving a price range, okay? It's very safe, it's very helpful to the person, and they're inputting the variables, they're saying, yes, I want this, no, I don't want that, okay? So it's almost like you're building their price. What's crazy is we see a three to five X every time on lead flow, SQLs, every single time. Yet most won't do it because they'll make up reasons as to why you can't do it.

9:39I talked to an insurance company recently like, man, I don't think I could ever have a pricing estimator. I said, really interesting. So tell me, if I asked you right now, could you give me a sense for what my rate would be? Could you do that? He said, well, I had to ask you some questions. I said, what are those questions? He repeated five questions. I said, those are the questions on your pricing estimator. Now go. That's it. But we overcomplicate this stuff. That's one of the easiest ways to sell in ways that others don't sell. This brings me to a bigger point, which is in the market today, there's a stat, a trend Gartner came out with that said 75 % of all buyers say they would prefer to have a seller-free sales experience.

10:18Now, what does this mean? Well, I don't think it means we hate salespeople. It just means that we don't want to talk to a salesperson until we are good and ready. And so if a company looks at that trend, they've got two choices. You can say, ah, I hate the way we're headed into the future. There's going to be no salespeople. Or you can say, is it possible to embrace this trend? Is it possible to benefit from this seller-free economy? 100 % possible. And the way you do this is through self-service. Self-service tools that traditionally would have made a prospect talk to a human. What can you do today to allow someone to not be forced to talk to a human first, to eliminate the friction point?

10:58Let me give you another killer example. This is a test that I've been doing with a bunch of clients, and now I've been talking about it, and businesses are like, dude, that's crazy. Did you know, did you know that if you allow a prospect to choose the salesperson they're working with, closing rates double every single time? So let me give you an example. So on the website, I can pick from Bob Marys. Yes. Yes. So, and I've done this now with multiple companies. It's wild. So let me give an example. I've got a financial advisor that's in New Zealand. And what he's done, I said, this is going to work.

11:34He said, let's give it a try. And so he has all of his financial advisors on one page. He has their image. He has their bio, et cetera. And so you have options. You can choose to be given whoever they decide. Okay. So you can choose no one. or you can choose your advisor. As soon as they implemented that, the closing rates went doubled. Boom. Just like that. I've got a retailer in Boston, Massachusetts. He's got a self-scheduling, self-selection tool on his website. You can schedule when you come into the store and you schedule who you talk to. So you're scheduling your salesperson. Here's what's wild.

12:15Because he's such a data freak like me he found that the average sale was literally double in terms of if you just came into the showroom and they gave you a salesperson or if you called and said hey i want to come into the showroom and once again they gave you a salesperson versus if you set the salesperson yourself double the amount across the board an extraordinary number in every business almost there is the ability to customize, but most have never thought about it before because it's just next person up in the queue. All right. That's how you sell as no one has ever sold before. Yeah. It's crazy the way that the world shifts and the product doesn't have to shift.

13:00The way you deliver doesn't have to shift. But we noticed when I wrote the book, Pulling Profits Out of a Hat, that a scaling business, one of the fundamentals to it is removal of sales people from the sales process. Perfectly fine, yes. Now, one of the things that you and I have discussed, and I learned a lot of this from you, is we've literally created videos that answer not every single customer question. Dang, probably 90 % of them sort of thing. Yeah, like our goal has to be three words. Remove all doubt. That's what great companies, great marketers, great salespeople do. Remove all doubt.

13:43And you don't wait for the doubt to manifest. You get in front of the doubt. Just look at the estimator tool. The number one question people have when it comes to pricing isn't really like, what's the exact price? They really just want to know, am I even in the game? Yeah. Is it even possible for me to consider this thing, whatever this thing is. We just assume that everybody knows. And so as soon as they're able to do that, they're able to say, oh, well, now I understand. That's when you remove all doubt. And as you eliminate friction, it leads to dramatically more trust. But if there's any doubt, then suddenly, let me give you the like silliest example of doubt in the history of the world.

14:27You ever been on a shopping cart page where you're getting ready to buy something online, You have your credit card out. But then on that page, there's a little coupon code. You ever seen that? In that moment, as soon as you see the coupon code and you don't have the coupon code, something crazy happens. And what happens for over 50 % of all people is suddenly they start looking for the coupon code. And here's what gets really crazy. The majority of those people, if they can't find the code, guess what happens? They don't buy. They don't buy. And it's because the second they put that little coupon code there and the person didn't have it, they planted a seed of doubt.

15:06Yeah, I know from my own personal experience that I'll then hit the Capital One thing and it'll go and find me 10 coupon codes and run them all through. Then it says you've got the best price. Okay, I've removed all doubt because I use an outside supplier to tell me I have the right brackets. You could afford any of those. And a second ago, you had your credit card out. The other thing I do is I wait for three days. Because I know in the next three days, they're going to send me an email with a 20 % off coupon to get me hooked into this dang thing. Remember all that. That's why coupon codes hurt conversion rates.

15:44Anything that induces friction in the buying process. And there's so many ways to innovate. And to your point, we think innovation means that I have to change my product or my service. No. usually the highest rate of innovation occurs within sales and marketing. And if you find those opportunities, you can completely change the game. And if you look at so many of these industries that are just blown up, it's because they changed something about the sales process. Amazon invented nothing. They've invented nothing. But they changed that buyer's journey. And because of that, they're an incredibly innovative company.

16:22Yeah. So I want to touch on two things then. First, when someone wants to get 70 % of the way through the sale, 80 % of the way through the sale themselves, what are the top three or four things someone can do to help a customer get through the buyer's journey without talking to someone? Yeah, so we know with every single, and to your point, the average buyer is 80 % through the buyer's journey before they reach out to a company, which means you as a business, you better win that 80%. Otherwise, they're not coming to you. And so what do they want to know? Well, there's five fundamental things that every buyer researches.

17:00We've seen this over and over again. The data is empirical. And in fact, if I said to you or anybody that's listening to this right now, what is one thing that you always research before you reach out to a company? Most people would say price. Most people would say reviews. Okay, so those are two of these, what we call, what I call in my book, They Ask You Answer, the big five. Okay, there's three more. So you've got cost. The second one is what we just call problems. Problems really means fears, issues, concerns, worries. And here's what's really interesting, Brad. When we get serious about buying something, we stop thinking about all the benefits and we start saying, what could go wrong?

17:35That's the fear. How could this blow up in my face? And so a lot of companies are really afraid to address that because there is some type of drawback or drawbacks to pretty much every product and service in the world. Now, if you ignore those, you're not going to be very successful. But if you lean into them, you can actually turn them to your advantage, openly discussing them. But again, the greatest way in life to resolve a concern is to address it before it becomes a concern. So you're removing the doubt before it gets there. So that's problems number two. So you've got costs, you've got problems.

18:01Number three is comparisons. We love to compare online. You love to compare online. We all compare online. Most companies don't want to compare online because they don't want to talk about the other option. That's assuming that the person's ignorant. They're not dumb because they have this thing called the Internet, and they have this thing called ChatGPT, and they can get the dang answer. And the moment you start to approach your buyer as an intelligent human being that has all these incredible tools at their fingertips, maybe just maybe you'll say, you know, it's more important that they learn from me than that they get this information from somebody else.

18:32Because it is just not acceptable in my book as an entrepreneur and as a business owner, that somebody would get their answers from someone else. I know it's going to happen with AI, but even AI, I want AI learning from me as well. So that's the third one comparisons the fourth one is reviews the thing about reviews brad is people don't just want the good reviews they want the good the bad and the ugly in fact after you've seen a good couple of reviews you always go to the one stars because you want to see how the stuff hit the fan and what went wrong and so you've got to be as a company you've got to talk about both sides of the coin and then finally the fifth one that you always research before you reach out to a company is the best best most top think about how many times you've gone online you search best plus another phrase, prolific.

19:12Those are the big five. Cost problems, comparisons, reviews, best. And what's wild is they run the economy of search. This is what people want to know. Businesses don't want to talk about them. And this is why they lose the 80 percent and they don't win the trust and they don't become known because they're not willing to say what others in their space aren't willing to say. And they say, well, I'm going to wait until they ask me the sales process. And by that point, you've lost the majority. And that's how you lose. the interesting one about the reviews one of our restaurants we get customers at least two three a week that cover it and say i came in for the way you handle the one star reviews like how do you write back to them all that sort of stuff it's a lot of fun uh next thing i want to touch on um reducing friction by making smaller steps like for us in our franchise business we allow someone to just fill in a five tick box form rather than a questionnaire or a big survey, a full application.

20:08We start them with a smaller steps. What are you seeing in that trend of making it smaller? Yeah. So everybody's really funny about time and they've been burned. They've been burned multiple times online. And so let me give you an example of a really classic one. filling out forms online. People are afraid to fill out forms. All of us are. And when I say afraid, I mean there's certain like doubts, worries, concerns. Again, we got to remove all doubt. So there's four major fears that people have when they're filling out a form online. Number one is are you going to call me to death? Number two, are you going to spam me to death?

20:44Number three is what are you going to do with my information? And number four is, so if I fill out this form, what's going to happen exactly? Okay, so those are the four major fears. So let me give you an example of how you can overcome that very easily. You can put a video next to the form that's on that get a quote or contact us page or whatever that is for you. And that video has a title above it that says see exactly what's going to happen if you fill out this form. So that's the title of the video you put on the page. And then in the video, you literally explain to them, hey, I know you're sitting there right now and you're debating, should I fill out this form?

21:15What are you going to do with my information? Well, we're going to explain that to you right now. And what we've seen is if people do this, they get on average an 80 % or more lift of people that will fill out their forms simply because they address this. But that's a very little thing. But what you're focused in on is, once again, it's like friction, doubt, fear. How do you remove these things from the process? You've got to become obsessed with it as a business owner. The business owners that are not innovative when it comes to sales and marketing, they just don't think like their buyer. But the ones that do, they are doing extraordinary things when it comes to innovation.

21:50just really, really tapped into exactly what they would want. And the one thing, too, I would say about this is people say, how do you keep up with marketing trends and just general sales trends? The easiest way to do this is to become very self-aware. How are you changing online? Are you starting to use AI? When you search something, how do you search? What are the words that you use? What makes you click on something? What makes you watch something? What are the signals that are moving you to action? Most people just like, without even thinking about it, they move through their day digitally speaking, and they never question, why did I do that?

22:29But if you question why you did what you did, why did you take that action? Suddenly you can say, son of a gun, we're not doing that as an organization. And you can really start to get innovative that way. Yeah. I feel like watching, I watch my kids and how they buy things or want to buy things. Helps me buy good shares as well. But in going to this, you've mentioned AI a few times. Obviously, AI is changing Google's response and the algorithm shifted. Literally, AI has rewritten Google's algorithm. They've never done three algorithm releases in a short period. Now we have three algorithm releases.

23:09How is AI, first of all, going to impact the search, that whole side of marketing? You cannot build your house on Google any longer. And, you know, frankly, like with my swimming pool company back in the day, we had the most traffic swimming pool website in the world, and we still probably do. But I couldn't do that if I was starting the business today and think I'm going to reach such extraordinary heights. You've got to do more. And so the pendulum is swinging. You have to put less weight on Google search to carry you, and even potentially Google ads. because what I know is that Google is a platform.

23:46And if there's one thing that's certain about platforms is platforms come and then they go. That's how it works. So it's not a forever thing. We had it for a couple of decades, but in four or five years, you're gonna be like, where did it all go? And we're already seeing a lot right now. If you think about the goal for Google since day one, and now the goal for these AI platforms is I, the platform, want to give to the customer the best, most specific, relevant answer to their question, to their query, as quickly as possible. And so, if you continue on that trend, it allows you to see, okay, is the way Google works today, is that going to be the best, most specific, relevant answer as quickly as possible?

24:28No, it's not. No, it's not. And so, it's not a long-term viable business model. Doesn't mean it wasn't great. It just means it's not the future. And the companies that accept this are going to be much more successful. And so you have to say, all right, I today am in a battle of signals to two parties. The first party is to my buyer, to my consumer. I need to send enough signals and I need to be on enough platforms to where they find me. The average buyer, HubSpot has said this, needs five to seven touches or signals with your organization. So maybe they saw you on this note. short that we're doing right now or maybe they saw you on a long-form video maybe they saw you in the podcast whatever thing was these are all different signals and so you've got to make sure that you're sending out enough signals to the marketplace but there's another major group where you have to send signals and that's ai because when ai really started to come out and it's been out for a long time but in terms of in earnest you know november 2022 we used it mainly as a creation tool.

25:36But now it's becoming faster even than I thought, a recommendation tool. That's when it really starts to hurt your traffic. And that's when you're not getting as much recommendation from something like Google, and you're getting more recommendation from AI. So AI is determining your destiny. So what does that mean? You have to send enough signals to AI that says, this is a company worthy of recommending. And what we've seen time and time again already, because so many of the companies I work with have been doing, following They Ask, You Answer, like you, producing content, producing the video, producing that podcast, answering all these questions.