Transcript:

Marcus Sheridan: 0:00

What folks have to understand is there’s a very big difference between an influencer and a key person of influence.

Brad Powell: 0:07

Welcome to the Standout Business Show, where it’s all about making a bigger difference by showing up differently. My guest today, marcus Sheridan. He doesn’t just talk about this, he’s actually lived it.

Marcus Sheridan: 0:19

We know for a fact that people resonate with people much more than they resonate with brands. So what is the one thing that we have in common as businesses? We’re all in the business of trust.

Brad Powell: 0:29

How important is it for me to really have a personal brand and really have my personal face out there?

Marcus Sheridan: 0:34

Today, it’s becoming everything. It’s the singular battle that we’re all going to wage for now, until the end of time.

Brad Powell: 0:41

Today we are diving into the one marketing skill that most expert businesses are still ignoring. It’s showing up in a way that others won’t. So you become the most known and trusted brand in your field, because Marcus built one of the fastest growing swimming pool companies in America by doing what no one else was willing to do. It included turning his camera on, and then he answered every question his customers were asking, especially the ones that his competitors were ignoring. He’s the author of they Ask you Answer, a book that has changed the way thousands of businesses think about content marketing, and now he’s got a new book. It’s called Endless Customers content marketing. And now he’s got a new book. It’s called Endless Customers, and it shows how any expert can become a video-first brand without being a full-time influencer. So stay with us, because today we are going deep on how to stand out, build trust and become a market leader in a video-first world. And with that let’s start the show. All right, marcus, welcome to the show.

Marcus Sheridan: 1:49

That’s some good music, man, and that was a great intro too, by the way. I love how you two said we’re going to show you how to make a difference by being different. And, boy, man, that is such a big deal right now, so there’s not much for us to talk about, brad.

Brad Powell: 2:06

Absolutely. Yeah, well, okay. So there’s a lot of places that we could start. I’ve been listening to your book. Right at the beginning, you said this one thing that really jumped out at me, which was the one thing all businesses have in common, is that we’re all in a battle for winning trust. So let’s start right there. What is such a big deal about building trust, especially right now?

Marcus Sheridan: 2:33

There’s a few different answers to this. One of the biggest is and this is having now done probably about 700 events with audiences around the world, spoken to so many companies every person and every audience and every company fundamentally wants to feel different. They want to feel special, they want to feel unique, and so when they hear a new teaching, they hear a new principle. It’s just like no different. Today, as people are listening to this, there’s a tendency for us as humans to say, yeah, but my situation is different, this doesn’t apply to me, and that’s very problematic, right? And so what is the one thing that we have in common as businesses? Well, the one thing that we have in common for all in the business of trust, and that is the singular battle that we’re all going to wage for now, until the end of time, as long as we have a thing called a business.

Marcus Sheridan: 3:20

What’s interesting is, a lot of folks right now are confused as to where they should put their focus and where they should be from a platform perspective, and what’s the best strategy, and, like all these things, it can be very overwhelming right now. So you have to come back to center and you say, all right, well, what is absolutely going to matter to our business in five years, in 10 years, in 20 years? Well, are we a known and trusted brand? Period? Full stop, because I can tell you this Google is probably not going to matter to your business in seven years. I don’t think it is at all. There’s going to be totally something different going on there, folks. That’s a totally different game. So trust is evergreen, never going away. It is a principle. Trust is evergreen, never going away. It is a principle. And if you latch your strategies and your focus around these eternal principles that’s what principle is then you’re going to be built to last and that’s a good thing, yeah right.

Brad Powell: 4:19

Well, right now, it seems like there’s a huge concern and it’s what everybody’s talking about in terms of the advent and the absolute explosion of artificial intelligence. And when we think about competition and when we’re talking about content marketing, it’s like, oh no, it was bad enough when you couldn’t outthink Google, you couldn’t come up with more information that Google, like the internet, has Now there’s all kinds of things that we’re not going to be able to keep up with. So when you think about that and a lot of this is in this new book that you have. But you know, I want to build trust in my brand. I want to build trust in how people perceive what we do and what we’re about, want to build trust in how people perceive what we do and what we’re about, and there’s this just proliferation of stuff that’s it’s more than a tsunami that I’m up against. So what are the principles that people want to be hanging on to when it comes to that kind of challenge?

Marcus Sheridan: 5:21

Well, there’s a few things going on here. If you look at, for the better part of 20-ish years as businesses, we’ve really had to win over two entities the buyer, and that’s always going to be the case, that’s never going to change. So they’ve got to recommend us. But the other entity that had to recommend us was Google. Now, the way that Google recommended us was through one of really two ways. Number one through paid ads. We could give it a bunch of money and they would quote, recommend us. Or two, we could earn the media by producing great content. Part of that was SEO, Part of that was content marketing. But fundamentally, that’s how we won Google. That’s how they recommended us.

Marcus Sheridan: 6:06

But now suddenly we have to be recommended by a third entity, and this one is much harder than Google, because you can’t just throw money at it and you can’t just come up with necessarily a traditional SEO strategy and expect that you’ll start to show up on that first page where there’s 10 other results, because now we’ve got AI and oh, by the way, as it is, 60% of all searches on Google don’t even end in a click anyway don’t go to the blue link anymore. So being ranked number one on Google doesn’t mean squat, totally. I mean it just doesn’t mean almost anything now. It used to be that you get 80% of the clicks if you’re ranked number one. Now you’re lucky if you get less than 20%. So that’s just where we are today and that’s going to continue.

Marcus Sheridan: 6:53

Now, what does this mean? What it means is we have to produce enough trust signals so that each one of these entities recommends us. So there’s human trust signals, there’s search engine traditional trust signals and there’s AI trust signals, and there’s a lot of overlap, and then there’s some nuanced differences. But for you to be viable from a lead generation standpoint in five years, you better be recommended by AI. There will be just billions and billions of dollars thrown at this strategy of how can I be recommended by AI, and I can tell you the way you’re going to do it is by becoming a more known and trusted brand.

Marcus Sheridan: 7:49

But there are specific trust signals that AI uses. In fact, I’m coming out with a piece of software that is dedicated purely to this, to help businesses to understand exactly where they stand with AI trust signals. And when you look at these trust signals, we could go down a list, but a lot of them are similar to what we have talked about in the past. For example, do you have incredibly helpful content on your website. Are you willing to discuss those things online not just your website, by the way, online text, video, audio that others in your space aren’t willing to discuss this is a perfect example of it. Let me give you an incredible example of just a general trust signal across the board on video. You’ll appreciate this, Brad. By the way, Brad, have you ever bought a house before? Have you ever researched homes online?

Brad Powell: 8:46

I have yes, absolutely.

Marcus Sheridan: 8:48

Here’s the funny thing about researching homes online. If you’ve researched homes online, you’ve probably done some type of virtual walkthrough before, where either the person walked you through or you did just like this. You could see each room and it was virtual. Okay, Whenever a real estate agent does that, well, here’s what you see. Let me show you this house today. Let me show you why this house is wonderful. That’s it. That’s all you got Right. What would happen if, instead of that, the real estate agent start off by saying I’m so excited to show you this house. Now, before I show you all that’s wonderful about this house, let’s start with anything that might be a potential negative or a flaw. Think about that Now, Brad. How many times have you seen anybody create a video like that?

Brad Powell: 9:36

Not once.

Marcus Sheridan: 9:36

Well, in a similar industry I recently bought, I was looking for a travel van, a 12-seater, because I wanted it for our local youth group to be able to take to different activities.

Marcus Sheridan: 9:47

So I’m like all right, I’m going to find this thing, and I live in Virginia and I saw a company, a used car company in Wisconsin that had the van that I liked. I’m like, oh, I want to check out this van A long ways away, I’m not going to Wisconsin to test drive this bad boy. Now I watched this video that the owner had created, just a simple video, did it with his phone, but here’s what was so amazing. At the start of the video, brad, he says all right, before I show you this travel van and everything you’re probably going to like about it, let me start with the dinks, the scratches and anything that you would want to know as a buyer. And I said whoa, whoa, whoa. I am leaning in right. And because of that, what happened? I bought that dang van, essentially sight unseen. Yes, video seen, but I hadn’t touched it. And you know it was a $70,000 van.

Marcus Sheridan: 10:44

So the point, the point of it is that principle that I just described is a major trust signal. Trust signal that makes someone say they’re not like everybody else. That’s exactly what I wanted. I can’t believe they would real. They were willing to show me that. You see, these are all things that you have to be doing, that you have to be producing If you want to be loved by humans and if you want to be loved, in this case, of course, by AI. And there’s a whole bunch of other trust signals, but that’s a perfect example of one that I recently saw.

Brad Powell: 11:15

It’s a great segue, because what you’re talking about there is this guy is willing to share the things that most people aren’t Like. Most people actually literally try to hide. Yes, which is the very first of the four pillars that you have outlined in your book and this whole new system of how do you build trust and how do you become a trusted brand. So why don’t you walk us through those four pillars so that you cover that material?

Marcus Sheridan: 11:43

That’s right. So in Endless Customers, you can read about the four pillars of a known and trusted brand, and what’s great about Endless Customers is it’s really designed as a system that you could follow if your goal is to become that most known and trusted brand within your market, wherever your market is, regardless of industry. Again, b2b, b2c product service doesn’t really matter. So what are the four pillars? Number one you got to be willing to say online what others in your space aren’t willing to say. And so a quick audit on this if I said to you what are you talking about online that your competitors are not talking about right now, do you have an answer? If you don’t have an answer, it means you’re really probably not standing out and you’re not leaning into the things that they want to know. We could talk more about that in a minute.

Marcus Sheridan: 12:26

Number two pillar you got to be willing to show a video what others aren’t willing to show, exactly like the example I just mentioned. Number three you got to be willing to sell in a way others in your space aren’t willing to sell. So are you selling in a way others aren’t willing to sell? And finally, number four you’ve got to be willing to to be more human than others in your space are willing to be. They need to see your face, they need to hear your voice, they need to feel like they know you, your people, before they reach out to you. That’s what they want. Now, if I asked you, as you’re listening to this, can you honestly say that we’re talking about showing with video, selling and being more human than the majority of our competitors right now, and we’re doing it consistently? Could you say that? I can tell you that 99% of the audiences I poll say no. I can’t say that. It means opportunity when it comes to being more human and personalizing your brand.

Brad Powell: 13:37

I mean, this is another thing that a lot of business owners and it seems like the bigger they get, the more they feel this way is that, well, I don’t need a personal brand, I need to talk about the business, and it seems like these days, that’s completely going in the wrong direction, that more and more people are not wanting to interact with a corporate thing that has no soul and that they really want to know, like, who’s behind this company and who are the people here and what are they like? What’s the culture? So talk about that a little bit from the point of view of people. Getting to the place of and this is something that I deal with all the time in terms of clients that I work with, this is a big question they have is like well, how important is it for me to really have a personal brand and really have my personal face out.

Marcus Sheridan: 14:25

There it is Today. It’s becoming everything. I mean, look at it like this. And, by the way, one of the best books that was ever written on this and it was actually written early on, a little bit ahead of its time was Daniel Priestley’s Key Person of Influence Really wonderful book on this subject.

Marcus Sheridan: 14:46

And I think a lot of times, a lot of these business owners that you work with, brad, because I know the type of client you work with they’re sitting there thinking, well, I don’t want to be like an influencer. What folks have to understand is there’s a very big difference between an influencer and a key person of influence. Now, what is the difference? The influencer says, hey, look at me. The key person of influence says, hey, look at this and this is how it can help you. Do you see the difference?

Marcus Sheridan: 15:20

And so if I said to any CEO or any business leader would you like to be? Could you see the value of becoming a key person of influence? The answer is absolutely. And besides that, we know for a fact that people resonate with people much more than they resonate with brands. Case in point how many brands do you obsessively follow on your social media platforms and how many people behind said brands do you obsessively follow on these platforms? And it’s not even close. Another example if I said to anyone for the most part, whether you’re on social media or not, have you ever heard of Kylie Jenner? Most would say absolutely. If I said what’s the name of her company, most would say I mean, there’s certainly people that would know, but most the majority would say I don’t know the name of her company. And that’s because they’re more interested in Kylie, because she has created this incredible brand.

Marcus Sheridan: 16:26

There’s a reason why all these Hollywood actors have started to become stakeholders, proprietors in companies Because they realize that they can use that influence to build businesses. There’s a reason why I have a business starting problem because I can, with my own personal brand, say oh, wow, I can create a domino effect that comes off of the brand. So this is why I have a tool like Price Guide. Software helps companies build pricing estimators quickly and easily. All right, incredible tool. It’s gotten a lot of traction because I have a brand.

Marcus Sheridan: 17:07

People trust me. That’s a subject that I talk about. I never dreamt that I would be a SaaS company owner, but I am. Because of that personal brand, because I’ve been putting myself out there for a long time and people are like that’s Marcus he calls it for, like he is for, like it is. Not everybody loves me, all right. Some people dislike me, but as a whole I’ve got a lot of trust in the marketplace. But what people you know? If I post a video on any of my company websites, the video flops. If I post it on my own pages, the same video it pops.

Marcus Sheridan: 17:46

People want to follow people.

Brad Powell: 17:50

Yeah, it’s that simple.

Marcus Sheridan: 17:56

You know what’s really interesting about this too. One other thing, brad Like I said, I got a business starting problem. I have a company called Speechless Sport Fishing and it has a very popular YouTube channel. It’s called Saltwater Fishing University. When I started this channel a couple of years ago because I love to fish and so I’m like I might as well use this as a business expense if I’m going to spend all this money on fuel. So I’ve got this channel and I thought the key to make the channel huge would be to show us catching a lot of fish, right? No, turns out, what people are most interested in is our journey to create this business and the struggles we have with a charter business and a commercial fishing business. That’s what viewers want. They want to see us flop.

Brad Powell: 18:49

Yeah, yeah, as human as it gets. You see what I’m saying. It’s like I caught a thousand pounds too, and I was like, eh, but you know also, it was like, hey, we’re losing money because of these problems and everybody’s like, ah, I’m all in Tons of views.

Marcus Sheridan: 19:05

See the difference. It’s wild man.

Brad Powell: 19:07

Yeah, it is. That’s really interesting, it’s fascinating, that’s cool. Well, I wanted to talk a little bit about the selling part, the selling pillar, and we actually have a question from Fannie where she says what would be an example of selling in a way that others won’t?

Marcus Sheridan: 19:24

Fannie, you’re a baller, I can already tell. One of the powerful stats that Gartner shared with me not too long ago was 75% of all buyers today say they would prefer to have a seller-free sales experience. So this number’s growing on the daily. It means that we don’t necessarily hate salespeople. We just don’t want to talk to them until we’re good, ready, confident, comfortable and we feel like we’re not going to make a mistake, that we’re not going to get ripped off. And so how can you take advantage of this trend as a business? Because it doesn’t help to say, oh, I wish sales were the way it always was before. No, take advantage of the trend, folks. How do you take advantage of it? Through self-service, giving buyers more control.

Marcus Sheridan: 20:03

What’s the key to self-service Self-service tools? On your website there’s five self-service tools that we talk about in Endless Customers. So there’s self-pricing tools. I’ll talk about that in a second. There’s self-selection tools, which essentially give a, which is a. I think I said that one recommendation. There’s self-assessment tools, which give a score. There’s self-configuration tools that allow someone to build something and design it. And then there’s self-scheduling tools, which allow someone to schedule and essentially also choose their salesperson, which is a very powerful phenomenon that we’ve tested out. By the way, now, self-pricing, this is the most powerful for businesses, not even close. By the way, now, self-pricing, this is the most powerful for businesses, not even close.

Marcus Sheridan: 20:52

The number one question a buyer has when they enter the buyer’s journey. First question they have is, roughly how much is this going to cost? First question that’s the gateway of the buyer’s journey. And then they go through said journey and at the end, the final question when they’re talking to a salesperson is almost the same as the first, which is exactly how much does this cost? So you start, you stop with the same as the first, which is exactly how much does this cost. So you start, you stop with the same question, essentially.

Marcus Sheridan: 21:12

So a pricing estimator on your website is phenomenal. I built a, like I said, a software called priceguideai allows companies to very inexpensively, for less than $200 a year, but a pricing estimator uh, customized on your site and it helps. Ai will help you build it. What’s wild about this is what we’ve seen, rob, it’s a no brainer. Three to 500% more leads when you have a pricing estimator on your website. Three to 500% more leads. So if you’re getting five leads a week now, you’re gonna get 15 a week simply because you’re willing again to say show and sell. This is all three of the estimator in ways that others in your space are not.

Brad Powell: 21:46

Yeah, yeah. Well, that kind of transparency is super, super helpful and definitely is what people want to know. You know, it’s like the top of mind question is like okay, what’s this going to cost me?

Marcus Sheridan: 22:00

And you don’t have to give exact. That’s the thing that this is where everybody’s like misinterprets. It’s like you don’t have to give exact prices. You’re not even giving a quote. You’re giving an estimated range, so it’ll, it’s very safe.

Marcus Sheridan: 22:16

But in the process of doing that, if you build a good estimator, essentially you’re you also educate the person along the way, because they’re being asked questions and the questions have elements that you can learn more, which allows them to figure out. Oh okay, so that’s what that means. And they’re asking me if I want this option. I don’t know what that is, but now I can learn about it. I can watch a video about it, and so it’s literally like you’re talking to a salesperson, but they’re doing it on their terms, which is what people love, brad. This is what everybody wants. And so, instead of like putting your fingers, like gripping so tightly onto the buyer, if you just release it a little bit and say, listen, I’m going to treat them as I would want to be treated, give them more control. You remember those choose your own adventure books that we read back in the day, brad, I mean when we were young.

Marcus Sheridan: 23:00

They were cool man and like you would die. But then you’d go back to the previous page and you like make a different choice, and then you would win right or whatever. It’s the same way man.

Marcus Sheridan: 23:08

Those books were cool and effective because they give you a sense of control. And what’s powerful is, the more someone interacts with you through these types of interactive tools, these self-service tools, the more sunk cost fallacy increases, which means they feel more invested, which means they’re actually trying to find a reason to work with you because they spent more time with you.

Brad Powell: 23:30

Yeah, all right. Well, there’s one more thing I’d like to talk about, which is also in the sales process, but combining humanizing your brand with selling in ways that are at least uncommon and in ways other people aren’t, and that’s using video as part of the sales process, and I’ve seen some very creative ways that people do this, just simply from just what you’re talking about, like getting to choose who you want to talk to. Well, you could definitely have that available for people where they’re getting to know your whole team of salespeople.

Marcus Sheridan: 24:08

Yeah, here’s what we’ve seen. We’ve built tools that are scheduling tools, so in other words, a lot of folks on their website have a scheduled time to talk with one of our engineers or designers or essentially all salespeople, right? So what we’ve seen is, if you allow them to do that, but then you bring them to a page and on that page you allow them to see the different salespeople they can work with, and then they can see, maybe read a bio, a video, actually watch a video, see the image. This is really powerful because now the person will choose their salesperson. And here’s what the data says. We’ve got the data. It’s really wild that when you do this, average closing rate is double, and so if you choose your own salesperson versus being given a salesperson, closing rate doubles. That’s wild and that’s the power of putting that video next to the salesperson. And now again, now they feel like they know their voice, they know their face. Their voice, they know their face, they trust them before the first meeting, which is should be like the requisite for anybody that is trying to sell better, sell, uh, differently, and I mean, by the way.

Marcus Sheridan: 25:17

Then there’s other things, like just doing sales proposals as a video instead of as a pdf or something like that. I mean so much better, because then you control how they learn about it. I mean, everybody has had someone misinterpret a proposal before or skim over it and miss something. It just drives you crazy, whereas a video is a much, much better, cleaner experience so you can explain your value prop, so you know that’s an example of doing it. And then, of course, after the sale, you know the customer should get some type of video as to like what’s next and maybe a thank you video from the owner of the company, right, which is it’s like a little thing like that doesn’t require anything, it’s created one time. You know what I mean. You send it out to every customer that buys Like, oh, that’s so thoughtful. Nobody does that.

Brad Powell: 26:07

Yeah, you know, the best after the sale example I’ve heard about is this guy in Omaha, nebraska, who I think is a window installer and the way what he does. He got an app that was designed for coaching golfers and the way he uses it. He has this whole. All his people do this, but when they’re working on a property every day at 2 PM they make a little video. And the video what it does is like it’s meant for like pointing out your stroke and you can draw on it and point arrows and say things. And so he makes a one minute video saying to the client hey, we’re working on your house. This is what we’ve done today. We got this window installed, but this one hasn’t come in yet. And dah, dah, dah, dah, whatever. It is just so that when you have somebody working on your house and you’re at your office, you always got this question of like, well, what are they up?

Marcus Sheridan: 26:59

to. Is it going to go? Is it?

Brad Powell: 27:00

going okay, and when will it be done? And so these progress reports. What happened as a result of what this guy does is that the people who are getting these videos share them. They’ll go oh look, you know like I’m doing this thing on my house, look what’s happening here. And so other people go. Well, who is that? And he’s getting a ton of referral business just from making these simple one minute videos on a daily basis for all of his best clients.

Marcus Sheridan: 27:28

That’s what you call a no brainer. Beautiful beautiful UX. I guarantee he’s got more reviews than any of us competitors like 5X.

Brad Powell: 27:38

Yeah, I’m sure he does.

Marcus Sheridan: 27:40

How about trust signals? Let’s go.

Brad Powell: 27:44

Yeah, it was good, all right. Well, we are right at the end of our time today. Before we go, you have an event coming up next month which I’m going to, so tell us a little bit about that.

Marcus Sheridan: 27:56

Yeah, for all those folks that are huge fans of they Ask you, answer and Impact Live, me and my company, my Endless Customers company we do an event. It’s called Impact Live, the Endless Customers Company. We do an event. It’s called Impact Live, the Endless Customers Conference, and all those folks that are either interested in or already on that Endless Customers journey that they ask you as a journey. It’s for them and you know, 250 people or so, something like that and it’s just me sharing with you everything that I’m seeing in my team.

Marcus Sheridan: 28:34

But the whole idea for this is I want you to stay ahead of the game and I want you to see like very practical stuff, and it’s the only event where I get to give hours worth of what I’m seeing and you get to see it from me directly, and so it’s a really special event. I hope to see some of you all there and ain’t going to be a waste of your time, and I’m going to show a lot of things with AI this year, of course, because that’s developing quickly and I’m fighting to be one of those folks that can help others take advantage of this really unique special opportunity with artificial intelligence.

Brad Powell: 29:12

Yeah, all right. So if people want to reach out or grab a copy of your book or any of that stuff, what’s the best way for them to do that?

Marcus Sheridan: 29:19

Yeah yeah, you can go to endlesscustomerscom. Please leave a review Makes such a big difference if you do that, and it’s a great trust signal. By the way, you can find me at marcussheridancom if you ever need a speaker for your event. It’s what I do, really full-time, other than write stuff on LinkedIn half the time. And follow me on LinkedIn, make sure we’re connected there. That’s a great place. I’m a pretty dang good follow. You can see about Impact Live at our website impactpluscom.

Brad Powell: 29:51

All right, cool Well, marcus. Thanks again. So much for coming on today.

Marcus Sheridan: 29:54

This has really been terrific. My pleasure. Thanks, Brad.

Brad Powell: 29:57

And for those of you listening at the end, next week we are diving into how relatability beats perfection, and I’m also going to be breaking down my relatability framework that expert brands like Mel Robbins and Dr Becky are using to earn attention and build trust. So thanks again for tuning in to the Stand-Up Business Show and remember to keep making a bigger difference by showing up differently. And until next time, so long.