The Home Service Expert Podcast - How To Boost Your Closing Rate From 25% To 80% With Assignment Selling

Episode Date: April 3, 2020

Marcus Sheridan is the founder and president of one of the country’s most successful digital sales and marketing agencies, The Sales Lion, which just merged with IMPACT in 2018. A keynote speaker who delivers talks and inspirational speeches worldwide, Marcus was named one of 20 “Speakers You Don’t Want to Miss” by Forbes in 2017. He is also the author of the hit book “They Ask, You Answer,” Mashable’s “#1 Marketing Book” to read in 2017, and one of Forbes’ “11 Marketing Books Every CMO Should Read.” In this episode, we talked about content marketing, SEO, marketing strategy...

oftentimes the content is reflective of where they are in the buying cycle. So there's this stupid myth going around that the attention spans of humans is going down. It's actually not true whatsoever. We're not goldfish. What's happening is we're less patient than we've ever been. At the same time, we're potentially more loyal than we've ever been. So for example, there's certain websites that people that are listening to this right now, they go to every day. Why? Because you feel like they'll get you what you want.

They'll give it to you quickly. And that's why you go back there again and again. And so you have to look at it like, okay, if somebody's just thinking about your product or service, maybe they only want to watch a quick 90-second video or read an article. But if they're having a sales appointment tomorrow and you're going out to their house and you're going to ask them for a check, well, there's a very good chance they'd be more than willing to spend 20, 30 minutes of their time on a piece of content so as to ensure they don't screw up, right? Because now we're talking serious, serious stuff. And so I would say the key isn't so much the vehicle by which you deliver it, right?

The key is the value proposition by which you explain it. where each week, Tommy chats with world-class entrepreneurs and experts in various fields, like marketing, sales, hiring, and leadership, to find out what's really behind their success in business. Now, your host, the home service millionaire, Tommy Mello. Hey guys, I just wanted to let you know that I had my buddy Marcus Sheridan come on the podcast and the book he wrote, They Ask, You Answer, is absolutely phenomenal. You're going to get so much out of this podcast. If you're anything to do with leadership or sales or marketing or communication, this podcast is for you. I'm telling you, it gives gold nugget after gold nugget on how to set the sale up correctly,

how to give them the information they need before you get there, how to be at an 80% closing ratio on new prospects that are gonna be shopping you. This is pure gold and you need, you absolutely need to listen to this podcast. I'm telling you, I'm sending it to my whole staff. This is absolutely amazing. Marcus killed it on here and I hope you get a ton out of it as well.

Thanks. Welcome back to the Home Service Expert. My name is Tommy Mello and today I have Marcus Sheridan on the line. Let me give you a little bit about his background. He's an expert in sales, inbound marketing, content marketing, social media marketing, public speaking, and marketing strategies. Marcus shared International Incorporated, keynote speaker from 2018 till now. He's the impact owner and partner since 2018 till now, and the sales line founder and president since 2009 till now. He's named by Forbes as one of 20 speakers you don't want to miss in 2017. Dubbed a web marketing guru by the New York Times and featured in Inc., The Globe, and Mail, Forbes, and more.

Author of They Ask, You Answer, Masterful number one marketing book of 2017, and number one on Forbes. 11 marketing books every CMO should read. He has presented over 250 sales, marketing, and communication workshops worldwide. And today he's on the podcast. Marcus, very excited to have you on today. Thrilled to be here, Tommy. I think we're going to have a great conversation. Hopefully say something your audience can get something out of as well. I think so. So you've done it all, it sounds like. You wrote a book, keynote speaker, marketing genius. Why don't you go ahead and just let me know a little bit about your journey and what you're focused on today? Yeah, so my quick story is I started a swimming pool company with a couple buddies, essentially out of college.

And didn't know that I wanted to be a pool guy growing up, but they had started this little retail store and they said, hey, Marcus, do you want to run the store while we install pools out in the field? And I said, yeah, I'll do that until I figure out what I'm going to do with my career. And a few months later, they said, would you be a third partner? So I became a third partner. And so that was 2001. And things were going okay up until the market collapsed in 2008. And I really thought we were going to lose the business. I was going to file bankruptcy. I was going to lose my home, all that stuff. And so that was when I really started to learn about the'd say, simple pool guy mind was, you know, Marcus, if you just obsess over your customers' questions and you're willing to address them honestly and transparently on your website through text and video, then you might save your business.

And so I said, like, shoot, I can do that, right? So we called it They Ask, You Answer. And to make a long story really short, became what is essentially the wikipedia of pools and we developed the most traffic swing pool website in the world so my my fiberglass pool company my install company became one of the largest builders of pools in the u.s and then we became a manufacturer of fiberglass pool shells now we have dealers all over the country little river pools and spas franchisees everywhere and i was writing about what I was doing and that grew a consulting business, which became an agency and I started speaking. And so river pools is still there, still doing great, but I've got a great business partner over there that runs it. My agency is there,

but I spend most of my time on doing keynotes and workshops. And it's a really amazing thing because you meet so many people in so many different places and you can help a lot of people at scale too, which is pretty nice. I love it. So you've really spent a lot of time with a lot of different types of businesses. You know, this is all about home service. Pools hits that right on the nail. So I've always heard, it's kind of like figure out the FAQs, the top 10 questions your customers ask, hits that right on the nail. So I've always heard, it's kind of like figure out the FAQs, the top 10 questions your customers ask, whether that's a lawyer, how to start a non-disclosure agreement or start up a LLC, whatever that looks like. So is that basically, you come up with 10 FAQs and build a video answering those questions, get them on YouTube and Google, have people start

viewing them, get them reviewed. What's the best way to just start the process? The best way that I recommend that you start the process, because if you're in any type of sales environment, which most people listening to this are, you're asked all the time questions by your prospects, by homeowners. And so I would challenge you to sit down and just write every single one of them down. And any questions somebody could have about that thing that you sell, just write it down. And you really want to start with the ones that most people aren't willing to address. In the book, they ask, you answer. We call those the big five. And there's basically five subjects in every industry.

And this is prolific in home improvement, service-based businesses too. But there's five subjects that buyers are obsessed with understanding before they will engage the company. In other words, before they'll even call the company, they want to understand these five things. What they want to know is, number one, roughly how much is this going to cost? They want to understand cost, rates, pricing, things like that. Number two, they want to understand what are the negatives with the purchase. In other words, how could this blow up in my face? What could go wrong? What are the drawbacks? Number three, they want to know, how does it compare to that other thing

that I'm also looking at? So it might be that product. How does it compare to the other product or that company? How does it compare to that other company I'm looking at? But we love to compare as buyers, right? Number four, we want to know what is everybody saying about it. So what are the reviews that people are saying, good, bad, and ugly? And then number five, we want to know what is everybody saying about it so what are the reviews that people are saying good bad and ugly and then number five we want to know what the best it is right so whatever the thing is that we're looking at we want to know you know what is the best xyz company in uh long island new york right so that's an example of it so this is prolific and what's crazy is buyers ask these questions all the time, but businesses, especially on the front end, they don't like to talk about it on their website. And because of that, they are greatly hindering their ability to generate trust on the front end and also move people through the funnel faster as well. So, you know, there's a book I read a long time ago called Piranha Marketing by Joe Polish.

Are you familiar with Joe? Absolutely. Yeah. So he said they were these old, you know, I don't know if they still work. I'm sure they do. But if you want to know more, call into this number and we'll tell you a bunch about our services and why. What to look out for. Sounds a little bit like your process. It's not the exact same, obviously. So

those still work given some FAQs over the phone and saying, be careful for people that tell you lowest price guaranteed and licensed and whatnot. Or is that kind of the same concept or is that completely different? I don't think it's completely different. It just comes down to, we've heard a million times, we buy from those we know, like, and trust. Well, what's going to make them trust us? We'll make them trust us if we're willing to tell them and teach them things that nobody else is willing to tell them and teach them. And so let me give you an example of this. I've worked a lot with a company that really owns now the metal roofing industry. They start off as just a very small manufacturer called Sheffield Metals.

And Sheffield Metals sells to contractors that install metal roofs, right? And homeowners also are researching metal roofs all the time, ultimately through them. They produced a video based on my recommendation two years ago. And the video was, it's a question they get almost every single day, what are the biggest problems with a metal roof? But no manufacturers in that space had produced a piece on that. Why? I mean, everybody's asking about it. People want to know. I mean, if you're serious about a metal roof, you absolutely want to know how could this go wrong? What are going to be the drawbacks, right? So they did it. That one video has 234,000 views to date. Just what are the problems with the metal roof? And they're dominating

the industry now because they're willing to talk about that which other people are not willing to talk about. So part of it is producing the content, but the other part is how you integrate it into the sales process, right? And so let me give you a quick sense for something I discovered in, I guess it was 2014 that really changed the way that we sold. You know, I sold in the home and oftentimes the appointments were not great. Sometimes they were, but sometimes they weren't. So I was looking at my website and I was looking at everybody that had filled out a form and said, I want to get a quote. And so I compared the ones that had versus had not bought a pull. I said, what is the difference? What is behaviorally, when they're on our site,

what do they do differently, the ones that buy versus the ones that do not? And what we found was that if somebody read 30 or more pages of our website before the initial sales appointment, they would buy 80% of the time. Now, if they didn't, the closing rates were around 25%. So you go from a 25% to an 80% closing rate simply because they had consumed essentially 30 pieces of our content. So it's like, my gosh, all I got to do is get someone to consume 30 pieces of our content for the initial sales appointment, and they'll buy 80% of the time. So that's what we started to do in our sales process. Now, in the book, I call it assignment

selling, but it's the process of leveraging the content you produced so as to push people down the funnel faster or even out of the funnel faster. So it might sound, let's just be hypothetical for a second, Tommy. Let's say that you were the homeowner, and you'd called me up and said, hey, Marcus, checking out your website, could you come out to my house this Friday and give me a quote for a pool? So knowing how this 30 was such a pivotal number for us and our customers, this is how I would handle that conversation.

This is what we evolved into. And I've actually since taught this to literally now hundreds and hundreds of organizations. And the principle applies across the board, which is using information in the sales process to move people along the funnel faster works if you do it the right way. So it might sound like this.

You call me up, you say that. And I say, sure, Tommy, I'd love to come out to your house, but you're getting ready to spend a lot of money. And if you're going to spend a lot of money, I know you don't want to make any mistakes. So as to make sure you don't make any mistakes, I'm going to make sure that you're really well-educated. So this is what we're going to do. As we're talking on the phone right now, I'm going to send you two things that you're going to love. First, I'm going to send you is a link to a video. This video is great because it's going to show you the pool showing up to your house, going in the ground, patio going around to clean up afterwards. And this way, when I come out to your house on Friday, you're not going to say, so

Marcus, what does this process look like? You're already going to know. By the way, that saves me about 30 minutes on the appointment so far, just having them do that. Now, the second thing I'm going to send you is a buying guide. It's going to answer all these questions about pools, these nitty gritty questions that you have that nobody's bothered to address. Like, should I get a heater with my pool? What's the best type of heater? Should it be solar? Should it be electric? Should it be gas? Should it heat and cool the water? Should I get a cover? What's the best type of cover? Should it be mesh? Should it be solid? Should it be solar? So all these little questions it's going to address. It's about 30 pages, so it's a little bit long. But I promise it's going to be well worth your time.

Will you take the time to review those things before our appointment on Friday? And the thing about it is 90% of the time, the prospect is going to say, yeah, sure, sure. And if they do the homework, you now know that A, they're very serious, and B, they're very, very likely going to buy. And you're going to stop getting those redundant questions that you just can't stand when you go into the home or when you meet with the prospect. You're like, how do they not know this? For years, I would hear those questions. I'm like, how do they not know this? Well, the reason why they didn't know is because I allowed them to live in a state of ignorance. Oh my God. I love this. I'm taking a lot of notes right now. And I actually have your book.

I bought it on Audible and I was just looking at it because I started going through it and I didn't get all the way through, but I'm like the typical ADD. Anyway, so this is awesome. So you send them the information. So tell me the best way to deliver the content. Is it email? Is it video text messages? Is it PDFs? What's the best way you found? Oftentimes, the content is reflective of where they are in the buying cycle. So there's this stupid myth going around that the attention spans of humans is going down. It's actually not true whatsoever. We're not goldfish. What's happening is we're less patient than we've ever been. At the same time, we're potentially more loyal than we've ever been. So for example, there's certain websites that people that are listening to this right now,

they go to every day. Why? Because you feel like they'll get you what you want, they'll give it to you quickly, and that's why you go back there again and again. And so you have to look at it like, okay, if somebody's just thinking about your product or service, maybe they only want to watch a quick 90-second video or read an article. But if they're having a sales appointment tomorrow, and you're going out to their house, and you're going to ask them for a check, well, there's a very good chance they'd be more than willing to spend 20, 30 minutes of their time on a piece of content so as to ensure they don't screw up, right? Because now we're talking serious, serious stuff. And so I would say the key isn't so much the vehicle by which you deliver it, right?

The key is the value proposition by which you explain it. So let me, how about this? How about I paraphrase to you the wrong way that people do that thing that I just did, assignment selling? See, what a lot of companies would do or a lot of salespeople would do is, you know, you say to me, hey, Mark, you can come out to my house on Friday? Give me a quote for a pool. And I say, yeah, sure thing. I'd love to do that, Tommy. And oh, by the way, I'm going to send you this buying guide. I'm going to send you a video as well. So check those out if you can. But otherwise,

really looking forward to seeing you on Friday. That's terrible. That is terrible. You got no commitment, and you certainly didn't explain the value proposition to the homeowner in that context. guide that made you say, oh, I better read that because I'm feeding all these things. Should I get a heater with my pool? What's the best type of heater? All these questions you probably don't even know yet. Because I'm presenting to you these questions quickly that you don't even know, you're saying to yourself, I don't want to screw this up, which causes you to actually want to do the homework. That's the delivery. That's the value proposition. The other side to that is, if you notice, I was very clear about the commitment at the end. I didn't say it'd be great if you could give it a look. That is noncommittal.

But I said, will you take the time to review those things before our appointment on Friday? It's crazy to me, man. I meet with salespeople a lot, and the commitments that they get before the calls just aren't strong enough. And what happens is, because they're not strong enough, you don't go into the actual sales call, sales appointment, with the authority that you should have. You have to keep in mind that if the homeowner or if the prospect sees you as a teacher, sees you as the one that's given them all the information thus far.

Now you're the trusted authority. And not only that, he or she who teaches has dramatically more rights than he or she who does not teach. So you're able to do things. You're able to say things the non-teacher simply isn't able to do or say. That's why I'm able to say to you, will you take the time to do those things before appointment on a Friday? Because I took the time to produce it all. Now you feel obligated to absolutely say yes, and you're going to do it in most cases. You're going to do it because I pitched it to you the right way, and that's key. But if you force me at gunpoint to say, which would you suggest, Marcus? I would say video. Okay. So I consider myself, I wouldn't say quite an expert, but I love marketing and I love sales.

Those are my two favorites. And one of the things, I have a whole sales process because I don't believe that salespeople are made. I mean, I'm sorry. I don't believe that they're born. I believe that they're made over time. And if you follow a process, it's every time. I believe in systems. So if everybody says, well, I treat everybody completely different. I understand if you ask somebody a question and there's a different response of how to react to that, you should get 80% of it onto a system or a standard operating procedure. So one of the things I try to do is get invited into their house. After I've done my analysis of the garage or the pool or the metal roof or whatever that looks like is, I want to be one of the only guys that's sitting,

playing with their dogs, sitting at their kitchen table. Now, obviously, it's a big deal that they've studied your company and they've done the research of what they ask you to answer. But help me understand what other things. I'm in the home. I'm asking very good questions. And most of the time when I ask a question, I'm shaking my head yes. Of course, you want your pool to be safe, don't you?

And I'm shaking my head yes. And I'm getting them to kind of the body language. And we consider ourselves NLP. There's asking the right questions. There's making sure that they feel comfortable with the payment, which is when you sell financing, which I'm sure you're very familiar with at the big ticket items of a new pool. One of the things that I just talked to a guy recently about is he says,

listen, a 9.999 interest rate over 10 years sucks, doesn't it? But let me ask you this, Marcus, if I was to say, listen, you've got this new roof, it's $34,000, but you know interest rates right now. You're lucky to get a credit card at 22.2%. I mean, I've seen a couple out there for 19%, but we worked out a deal with Wells Fargo, and you're going to love this, Marcus. I could get you qualified for 9.99%. This brings your payments down to $432. Nothing more. It's over the course of 10 years. But all of a sudden, that 9.999 sounds really good, doesn't it? In comparison to 22% credit cards? Yeah, it's all the perspective, right? Versus 22%, it certainly sounds a lot less.

I think the key to anything like that is that we've set up already beforehand that they are or are not going to finance, right? And I think this is the mistake that a lot of salespeople make, is that they don't have a great sense for financing on the front end. Because there's a certain percent of people that if you bring up financing, they actually get annoyed because they're like, no, I'm not financing this. Then there's another group of people that

if you bring up financing, they're not going to give you the whole truth because they're embarrassed of the potential answer, right? And so you have to make people feel safe when you're having the financing conversation. And I always recommend that you do it before the sales appointment because otherwise there's a very good chance you don't know the money that you're actually playing with here. Nobody knows, right? So this is also why the book talks a lot about, and they ask you to talk a lot about being honest about setting expectations on price, which people appreciate, and talking about financing, which people appreciate. But the way to set it up that I found is when you're talking to somebody about financing, I might say something like this on the initial phone call.

Now, before we jump off, Tommy, I want to talk to you about your plans for paying for your new roof. Now, what we find is that there's a certain percentage of people that we meet with that they're just going to write a check for, right? So they're good there. There's another percentage of people that are going to finance it, but they're going to finance it through their own means. In other words, they already know who they want to finance it with. And then there's another group of people, they want to finance it and they're looking for us to help them with the financing. So of those three things, where do you feel like you fall? So essentially what I've done in that moment is I have given you permission and the feeling of safety to say whatever you want because you're not alone in whatever you say right now. I've essentially said, people do these things. So no matter what you say right now, it's okay to say it. Whereas lots of

times, there's literally people where you'll say, so were you planning on financing this? That because they don't want to sound embarrassed, they don't want to be embarrassed, excuse me, they will say, well, we're not sure yet. If they are not sure yet, that means they're financing. But they just said that because they didn't feel safe giving you the frank answer. But if you set them up with the three options, now they're going to say, okay, there's people like me that he's dealt with before. I'm not afraid to tell him exactly what the correct or right answer is in this context. So there's a couple of things.

One's a question and one's kind of a thought. Number one, the thought I'll say first is what I tend to do. I learned this a long time ago. There's 40 people that do financing. There's the people that just don't have any money. They're dead broke. There's other people that have money, but they want to keep the money and that there's a better thing for them to spend in the near future. They want to keep the cash. And I forget the third type, but the fourth type is

people that are just smart. They know a dollar today is worth less a dollar from now in the future. So if you got same as cash financing, typically I'll say, you know, Marcus, if you're anything like me, you know how money works. And I bought a garage door recently and I put it on Green Sky Financing because they gave me 12 months, same as cash. And it's a simple monthly payment. I had it paid out within a year and it was a no brainer. And now they're like, oh, this guy did it. And he's smart with cash. And it sounds like he saves his money. He listens to Dave Ramsey, whatever that sounds like. But the question I have is when you bring up financing on the sales call, they tend to ask, well, how much is it going to be anyway? Now, there's a price sensitivity question, and this goes into setting that job up properly

and really making sure that you're setting up your sales staff for success. So talk to me a little bit about that. Well, I'm not old school in this at all. In fact, I've been at the forefront of pricing conversations with whether it was manufacturers or whether it was home improvement companies or retailers. The idea that people won't want to know pricing and are okay with living in a state of ignorance until you come into the home is becoming quickly obsolete. You see, we want to have a sense for pricing before we engage a company. Even before they come into the home, we at least want to have a sense for pricing. And if we're not willing to talk about that on the front end, especially like on our website

as an organization, well, then there's a very good chance that we're going to have issues. And let me give an example of this. So for years, when I would go into homes and present a price to somebody with respect to a swimming pool, at the end, I might hear something like this. The average price, let's say, was $45,000, $50,000 at the time. Geez, half the time, I would hear somebody say in response, wow, geez, this is so much more than we thought. We thought it was going to be $20,000, $25,000. That's the thing. People actually believe still to this day that most pools are between $20,000 and $30,000, and I am close to that.

Averaging ground pool is definitely not $20-some thousand. And I would always get really, really frustrated because I would think to myself, how do they not know this? I came to the point, though, I recognized, well, they didn't know it because I had allowed them to live in a state of ignorance. In other words, buyers and certainly leads are as good or as bad as the messaging that brings them there. So if somebody consistently has crappy sales appointments

where they're outrageously unqualified or aloof or lacking knowledge, it's because we have allowed that to happen during the qualifying phase, during the marketing side or the sales qualifying side, right? We have allowed that to occur. And so, although I don't think that it's your job to necessarily, especially when it comes to a variable service, like let's say home improvement, I don't think it's one's job to give them specific numbers. I do think it's absolutely our job to openly talk about money and to give them a sense for what they might spend. Because the problem is this, if we do not, because we do not,

oftentimes we'll never get the call in the first place. The lead will never come. It's one of the biggest issues. So if I have a choice, if I go to three roofing contractors' websites, one of them is willing to say to me, you know what, our average job is somewhere between $17,000 and $35,000. Now, what dictates that are all the following factors. And this is what might be a $17,000 job, and here's an example of a $30,000 job. Now, of course, jobs can go a lot higher than that, but at least that gives you a 30,000 job. Now, of course, jobs can go a lot higher than that, but at least that gives you a sense for our average. Contractor A gives me that. Contractor B doesn't mention it whatsoever. Maybe they don't say anything at all. What about the jackass that's

the price leader? He's doing it for peace because his business makes no money, but he's making $100,000 a year. And he's got 1099 contractors and he's not open weekends and he goes out of town, the business shuts down. But he's still the guy all over the freaking, you know, these people, the guys on the coupon saying I'll do it for half the price you got ripped off. Yeah. So it's our job to educate the marketplace on the good, the bad, and the ugly, right? And so if you're a prolific teacher on the front end, on the digital side, you don't shy away from saying, you know what, there's actually contractors out there that will advertise, you know, XYZ for $10,000, but let's actually analyze what that entails. And then when you explain, generally speaking, what that means is, you might say, you know, 100% of a sub work.

Generally, it means that you don't have insured contractors at your home, which means you have XYZ liabilities. And you go down the list and you say, now, listen, if you're okay with that, well, then I would recommend that you use that type of contractor. We decided early on that we weren't going to be that type of contractor. We decided here are the things that we committed to. And what that meant is we couldn't be that other company. It also meant that we were going to, instead of being $10,000 per job,

we're going to be on average $20,000 per job. But because we made that decision, here is the type of person that now likes to work with us. Now, the key to all this is that you just say it in an unbiased way. In other words, I don't think it's our job as salespeople to say, you know what, you're an idiot if you work with somebody that is uninsured. I think it's our job to say, here's your choices. You can work with somebody that's uninsured. And with that, here's the liabilities that you would have. And here's probably what you're going to save. Your other option is to go this route. And here's what you're going to spend. And here's

the security that you get with it. Now, of these two, which would you prefer? It's their job to tell us what they would prefer. Because the fact is, there's always going to be the ones that are sheer price leaders or price centric in terms of the way they make buying decisions. But that's actually a much lower percentage than most people realize. Because even if somebody is the cheapest, the high majority of the cases, if you don't trust them, you're not going to go with the cheapest one. We're going to make dumb decisions sometimes, but for the most part, the market is going to go who they trust the most that is giving them the best value, those two things together. And we openly talk about,

we're definitely not going to be the cheapest pool guy ever, ever. And we teach why some swimming pool companies are so cheap, and we teach what makes them more expensive. That allows us to be more selective with who we want to work with and also gives you a higher margin to work with. Because once you start moving away from the price shopper and of course moving towards the the value security trust shopper your margins always always go up well yeah that you know there's an old question they ask is who's the largest company in town whether it's i don't care hr group thing who's the most expensive it's always the same company because you could choose you've heard you want it done fast on your

timeline. You want it done correctly with a good warranty or you want it done cheap. And you can only pick two out of the three because you can't be the best quality by far. You can't get out there the same day and you can't be the cheapest or stay in business because a lot of people care how long have you been in business or you stay in a business. And I think that's really, really important. So you educate the people up front. Now tell me, I want to jump into marketing a little bit, but let's talk a little bit more about where else you see a lot of sales calls fail. I look at how long my guys spend on the job. I look at how much report did they build? How much education did they give the client? How many questions did they ask? Because half the time

we're presenting something that someone, I've heard a lot of my customers say, the guy didn't even show me what I wanted to see. It's like he had in his head what he thought was right. Like he owned my home. There's so much to talk about here. My most favorite question to ask sales teams is, do you consider yourself good at asking questions?

And nine out of 10 say, yeah, yeah, I'm good at it. And then when you actually test them on their ability to ask questions, they are some of the worst offenders, worst offenders. Fact is most salespeople don't think in terms of questions. They think in terms of answers and what do I want to say next. And so if you're world-class at asking questions, you're just at a different level. But frankly speaking, one out of, I would say, probably 50 salespeople I meet, I would consider highly, highly skilled at asking questions, especially outside of the script. It's one thing to have a set of questions in a script. That doesn't make you special, right?

That just means that you can recite something. But it's not the question that matters. It's the next question, right? Because that means that you heard what they said, you were actively listening, and you have the ability to ask it to go beyond the surface level answer to get to the deeper answer, right? Perfect case in point. Typical salesperson. Homeowner will say

to a salesperson, yeah, so do you do it this way? And salesperson says, oh yeah, we do it that way. Yeah, we've been doing it that way for 10 years. Why do you ask that? That's the right question. That's exactly right. It's like, that's a stupid response, right? And so that's just one example of so many that we never want to assume that somebody actually even knows why they're asking a question. We certainly never want to assume that somebody really even knows what they want or what they need. As you all know, as I know, more often than not, they've come to the wrong conclusion on what they need. As you well know, as I know, more often than not, they've come to the wrong conclusion on what they need, what they really need in terms of their particular job, their particular solution. Another thing that I see a lot of people not doing, which is such a

simple thing to do, is when it comes to building rapport, one of the keys to rapport is that the homeowner can see some of themselves in us, the sales professional. And at this point, with social, you've got a million and one ways that you can get to know the homeowner before you walk into their house. So a lot of people have a public LinkedIn. Some people have a public Facebook. And most people have a public LinkedIn. Some people have a public Facebook. And most people have a public Twitter. And so these are the types of things that before you go into the home, you should vet that family socially on social media. Because if you can see, okay, it's clear they got four kids, they like to play baseball. Then I might bring up early in the sales process the fact that I also have four kids. And I'm not going to say, oh, by the way, I was checking out your social media page to see if

you have four kids. I'm not going to say that, but I'm going to make that inference of something to do with family, something to do with the fact that I have four kids. And they're going to say, wow, we've got four kids too, right? Therein lies that trust component. So there's all these ways to get to know people before you come into the home. If you're spending a high percentage of your time building relationships of trust on the front end, I think once you get into the home, I think you've probably missed

significant opportunities before that where you could have already started that game early on. You're throwing gold nuggets everywhere here, but that I love. I go on Zillow. I find out how long they lived in the home when they moved in the home, how much the home was worth, how many garage doors are, you know, in your case, do they have a pool? Is it an underground pool, above ground pool? The more I can know about this house, even this credit score, I wonder how many

credit cards they have. If they got 15 credit cards, they're going to do financing if you sell it right. And I love the idea that there's an old story that I used to tell. It's been years. But this guy walks into this Best Buy and he says, I'm looking for the top computer. I'm a data scientist. I need something with a fast processor. They go through it. And the guy goes to the best, most expensive computer.

And he goes, I'll take it. But let me ask you this. Does it have the latest version of Windows, Windows 10? The guy goes, absolutely. That's all we carry in the store, the latest version. He goes, I'll take it. But let me ask you this. Does it have the latest version of Windows, Windows 10? The guy goes, absolutely. That's all we carry in the store, the latest version. He goes, I hate Windows 10. Forget this computer. I'm out of here. The point is, that's the exact same story. You blow off customers because they say, listen, does this have the humidifier in it? Oh, my last one had a humidifier in it, the AC unit, and that caused problems. Every six months, they had a guy out here because it was leaking water. I don't want that unit. I'm not even sure I trust you anymore. So I think you're right. What we used to teach,

and it's been years, like I said, but one of the things I did here at my company is if you asked me a question, I'd have to return a question. Tell me, what's your favorite sports team? Let me ask you, what sport are you talking about? Well, it depends on the situation. There's a lot of golfers I like. It depends, driving. Let me ask you this, who do you like? But it's really hard.

You really got to get good at it. It's hard to really sound good at it. How do you ask that? The problem is when you tell somebody that questions is the key and you want to see the world in the form of a question, you want to teach in the form of a question, they automatically say, well, that's going to sound cheesy or it's going to sound manipulative. The fact is, if you do these things right, they are the opposite of that. They seem more natural than anything could possibly be.

Because if the person can discover the truth for themselves, then it's just a complete and total game changer, right? And so I actually spend a lot of my time teaching communication because I believe in it so much. I speak a lot, but this issue of not asking the right question and then not being able to ask deeper questions, not getting beyond the surface, is the reason why many managers, certainly many salespeople, fail to develop unique relationships of trust. And one other thing I'll say about this. If a salesperson is really, really elite at this, here's the litmus test.

How often does a potential or existing customer tell you the following? I don't know why I'm telling you this right now, but I just feel like I can trust you enough to tell you this. If you're not hearing that statement on a consistent basis, it means you're not elite. You're not elite. Interesting. You know, one of the things I have a lot happen is I have people that will tell me very deep things and get emotional very quickly. I'll meet somebody and five minutes later, they're in tears. I'm not trying to get them to tears, but it's the way that I'm asking them questions that is a very incisive style that is done with love and respect. But it cuts to the core and it forces them to learn things about themselves that they had never considered.

Let's say somebody was listening to this that was a sales manager. They said, well, what's the limits test of a sales manager? Limits test of a sales manager is this. How often in your one-on-ones or when you're talking to one of your team members, do they say the following? You know what? Now that you mentioned it, here's my issue or here's my problem or now I realize what I need to do. Here's what I need to do. Because in that moment, when they do that, they have just discovered a truth for themselves. Most sales managers just tell their team exactly what they need to do. And then that, in terms of growth, leads to nothing. It doesn't lead to growth. It just learns to them coming back to the sales manager the next time to ask the very same question. Yeah. I think that coming up with when they find the truth, and I think there's also something to be said when you're in a team, if you're a team leader, like I get meetings all the time, I know the answer that I'm looking for.

So one of the questions, like I said, this has been a while, but we used to mess up a lot of sizes of garage doors. We wouldn't take the measure out. Some of us just assume we get so good, we skip a step, but we didn't measure because it's a standard 16 by 7. So one of the things I said is, gosh, I'm up in front of 25 people. And I said, you know, we've really been getting a lot of mistakes. And I know you don't get commissioned or your sales numbers get ruined when this happens. Does anybody here have any ideas how we can make sure and prove to the door ordering team that we've got the right size? And someone finally raised their hand and said,

I guess we can take a picture of the measurements, like have the tape out and just take a picture with the iPad and take another picture for the height. And that way you would know the radius and everything. And I said, Oh my gosh, that's awesome. Does anybody else think that'll work? And you're absolutely, I think you hit the nail on the head is when they come to the realization of what they want. And then this sounds, I don't want to sound bad,

but I believe people buy more on fear, uncertainty, and doubt. You've heard of fear, uncertainty, and doubt. They buy because they're scared more because of the good of the... So if you said these rollers are going to be nice and quiet, they're going to be super, they're self-lubricated, they're super quiet. I say, okay, that's cool, but I don't really care. It's a grocery. It makes noise. But if I said, this is going to make the door safe. You want your door to be safe, don't you? What happens with these other rollers is they crack and they get brittle in the heat. And if that happens, the reason they call them rollers is because when they're rolling

is when it breaks. And then unfortunately, all heck breaks loose. And I need two guys to get the door down. It's a pretty severe repair if the door doesn't get ruined in the process. Which one sounds more compelling to you? Yeah. So how do you use that without being manipulative because with great power comes great responsibility great responsibility and that's what we're teaching in your teaching i should say is just there's a good book influenced by robert cianini and he's like please don't use these these things i'm going to teach you the five laws that he teaches reciprocity and

everything else he teaches how to get to yes and i I know there's certain people that use those evil, but tell me a little bit about that. Well, that's the thing. When you become elite, you can persuade and you can influence at a greater level. When I say elite, elite at communication, right? So that's why for me, I think one of the big keys is that you always have to have this willingness about you when you communicate with somebody that you don't have a dog in the fight. What I mean by that is if I'm presenting to a homeowner the options, literally it's my job to say, so here's your

options, okay? Let's say I just sell fiberglass pools, which is true, right? That's what our company does. So if I say, so here's the thing. People ask me all the time, Marcus, tell me why should I choose fiberglass over concrete? Well, the truth is you shouldn't always choose fiberglass over concrete. In fact, there are times when concrete is a better option. And so what I want to help you do right now is I want to help you understand the pros and the cons of each. And as we do this and we take an honest and transparent look at each, my sense is you're going to have a great feel for which is the best fit for you. How's that sound? A person, just from what I said in the first 10 seconds, is going to lean in and say, holy crap, this guy's not like anybody else I've talked to. Because I came right out and said, there's a good chance that fiberglass might not be a good fit for you, which is true. Sometimes concrete is the better option. That's also true. Nobody's told them that yet. And so, because I'm willing to say that when nobody else

is, instead of leaning back and folding their arms in that defensive position, they've now leaned in and they're listening in a way of, my goodness, this guy has my best interests at heart. I think that's what it's all about. But you have to be honest enough to be willing to walk away. Because if the person came back to me at the end of that and said, okay, so you said that fiberglass doesn't get longer than 40 feet. And I absolutely, positively know that I want a pool that's 50 feet or more because I want to do laps and I have to have at least 50 feet to do laps. I said, well, great. Glad you know that. We definitely don't have one that's going to meet that. So if that is a requisite for you, then fiberglass isn't the best fit. I'm going to walk away. I'm not going to go blink.

I don't care. Could I sell it? Maybe. Could I convince them maybe that 40 feet is long enough? I could, but ultimately that's going to hurt everybody. So I'm not going to go there. So communication is a huge skill that I think all of us could be better at because you've got verbal, nonverbal. And I believe that about 96% lives in the subconscious.

And that's why branding works. That's why when someone sees your billboard or hears your radio ad or your jingle, and you can bring them back to that somehow on Google, that jingle of like, there's a company called Ghetto and it's hard to spell, but it'll keep you cool. He's all over the place and his click-through rate went through the roof. So the communication of the subconscious is super important when branding. I want to kind of transition into the communication when it comes to marketing and how you use that in the home to sell. There's a lot there. We're unpacking a lot of stuff in this short podcast. And I'd love to get you back on because I think I could talk to you for days.

But from my perspective in marketing, I'm a big fan of direct response. There's a good book called No BS About Direct Response Marketing. And I'm a big fan of maxing out your direct response before you're going to brand. Number one, you got to be on the top of Google because people go to Google when they need something.

And if they recognize your brand, you're going to get a high click-through rate. You can pay less on pay-per-click or your organic is going to shoot through the roof, the click-through rate, the time on page, all that stuff. So let's just talk about your methodology and the best money spent in marketing. If I was to give you $20,000, what would you recommend doing to really get your brand and marketing dollars to work for you? Unfortunately, obviously, the would you recommend doing to really get your brand and marketing dollars to work for you? Unfortunately, obviously, the answer to that is going to vary from organization to organization. But I will say that when I was getting ready to go over that bankruptcy edge in 2009, and I decided to embrace that philosophy of the ask, answer, what I did is I brainstormed those

questions like we talked about earlier and wrote them all down. And then wrote one article a night, every night for almost two straight years, put on my website. Sometimes it was a video, but article and video. And that's how we became the Wikipedia of our space. But let me give you an example of something that people probably never consider doing that this type of stuff that I did all the time. So keep in mind, the philosophy was they ask, you answer. So I mean, if anybody asked me the question, I was first thinking, have I addressed this already on my website?

If not, I'm going to make sure to because I don't like people living in ignorance. I got to make sure that they know and they know it from me. So one night I was in Richmond, Virginia. And after meeting with this couple for like two and a half hours, giving them a quote, they said, essentially, Marcus, we like you. We think we want to get this pull from you, but if we don't get this pull from you, is there anybody else

that you might recommend? And I thought to myself, geez, I hate this question, right? Because it meant they were probably not going to buy from me that night, and I ended up not closing the deal. So I had this long drive home, and I thought, well, they asked the question, who else would I recommend in Richmond, Virginia, essentially. So I said, all right, well, I'm going to play ball here and I'm going to talk about it online. So I wrote an article online that was, who are the best pool builders in Richmond, Virginia, reviews slash ratings. Okay. Who are the best pool builders in Richmond, Virginia, reviews slash ratings. And I came up with a list of five of the best pool builders in Richmond, Virginia, reviews slash ratings. And I came up with a list of five of the best pool builders in Richmond, Virginia. These were my five biggest competitors. I actually listed them out and I talked about each company. Now, this sounds kind of crazy

to most people when they look at a service level. But first off, today, if you go online and you search anything to do with best pool builders in Richmond, Virginia, that's one of the first pieces of content you're going to see. So now I'm going to drive into my site and when they're in my site, now they're in my house, I'm already winning the game, right? But what's also cool about that, Tommy, is like today, if you went online, you typed in reviews, Playmore Pools, Richmond, Virginia. So Playmore Pools, P-L-A-M-O-R, Playmore Pools is my biggest competitor in Richmond. And so they were one of the people I listed on that particular article, right? So if you go online, you search reviews Playmore

Pools, Richmond, Virginia, which is a very common search of my competitor. I'm generally speaking, the first or second result that you're going to see. So to give you an example of this, I had a lady come to me a few years ago and she said, Mark, it's the craziest thing happened. I was really close to signing a contract with Playmore Pools. But before I decided to sign that contract, I decided to go online and research their company. And as I was researching their company, I stumbled across this article that you guys had written.

I said, my goodness, these guys are so honest. I should probably call them too. Of course, it happened because otherwise I wouldn't be telling the story, right? She ended up buying the pool from us. But she was so, so blown away by our outrageous transparency that that's why she called us. Now, it used to be that consumer ignorance was a viable sales and marketing strategy. In other words, hoping that they were in the dark, well, that could help us because they might not find out the answer to that other technology, that other company, that other discount. But see, today,

buyers aren't dumb. They might start off in a dumb place, but they're going to get informed if they want to be informed. Every buyer can be informed today. And so because our mindset is buyers aren't dumb, we say, okay, if they can find it, they better find it from us. If they can research my competitors, why not research them on my site? Why not learn about my competitors on my site? And what's crazy is that one article that I just mentioned to you, that's generated about a quarter of a million dollars in business for my company. And once again, people might say, yeah, but I just, I'm so, it's just like, I feel like you've now

introduced them to the competition. They can find the competition any second they want to. And so this is the philosophy. This is why it works so well. This is how you become the voice of trust in your space. This is how you establish yourself

as the premier expert. This is how we became the largest builder of fiberglass pools in the United States. Simple things like that. So I've done that a little bit. And there's a lot of SEO parts. Talk to me about search engine optimization. Talk to me about content that's not written for SEO, but for eyeballs, for just staying on page with videos that matter

and talk to me about keyword density. I don't know how much you spend with searches and optimization, but talk to me about the things that matter. Well, I think good SEO is a result of everything that I've been talking about, right? Because a whole bunch of companies that have embraced this philosophy of they ask, you answer, and the big five I talked

about earlier, they literally, their traffic is mind-boggling, mind-boggling. And so if you think about what Google's goal is, Google's goal is to give you the best, most specific, relevant answer to your question as quickly as possible. And the specific is, I think, really the key word there, right? If I had written an article in 2009, how much does a pool cost? It probably would have cost me millions, millions. But I wrote an article, how much does a fiberglass pool cost? No swimming pool company in the world had addressed that question on their website. I was very thorough. It was a very meaty piece of content. And since that time, it's generated well over $7 million in sales for the company that I can definitively track back to that article.

How much does a fiberglass pool cost? And so you don't want to overthink SEO. I think a lot of people do. You want to say it the way that they would say it and the way that they would search it. Don't do it snarky. Let me give you an example I'm talking about. Here's an example of a really stupid title

of a blog post or an article on your website. Five things about swimming pools you didn't know. Stupid, because I've never searched, nor have you ever searched, things about pools I don't know. Remember, Google's goal, best, most specific, relevant answer to your question, right? And so if somebody's asked you the question, that means they've searched it. And so take that thing the way that they're asking it make that the title of the post now the other thing that people mess up is they oftentimes don't give enough meat to the answer and sometimes you have freaking people that are recommending that everything is short online and again that's not true it's not what serious buyers want. It's definitely not what search engines want either.

So the average number one ranked page in search engine results when somebody searches something on Google and you land on the front page is above a thousand words. So this is why when I'm working with a company and they're answering a question, how much does it cost to redo your roof?

Something that simple. It should be, in most cases, a thousand words or more if you're going to explain it the right way. You want to give them the meat. You want to give them the potatoes. You want to explain it very well. Don't waste words, but you want to give it to them well. And so that's the extent of it.

I don't sweat keyword density very much at all because I find that even if you looked at, let's say, keyword density, that is a short-term answer to a long-term problem, just like link building was a short-term answer to a long-term problem. The long-term problem is, how do I give the best, most specific, relevant answer to the question? And Google says, well, I need signals. But over time, they get smarter and smarter and smarter. And so what is working one minute won't work the next. The only thing that is truly built to last is that you're saying, okay, I'm going to think exactly like the buyer. I'm going to say it as they're saying it.

I'm going to write about it in a way that they feel fulfilled and satiated and pleased when I'm done. That's the only SEO technique that has lasted now in as good today as it was 10 years ago. The majority of the others have completely either evolved or been just blown up because they're no longer relevant. I have a garage door website that sells parts. And a long time ago, I found another site that was selling it. So I put a video out, the first one, how to replace your garage door springs. And then I got a link to buy them. And I've been paying myself six figures a year since this came out and was drop shipped. It's 2013. It's got 1.6 million views. And it's pretty crazy what happens when you're able to give people answers. So I'm a good testament to everything you're saying. And

I think there's got to be not only compelling information and content, but videos. Ideally, yes. Absolutely. Engage the audience. Show them some funny stuff. Show them. I'm not a big fan of showing accidents or anything, but if it's compelling, it's engaging, it has people going to the next page. And Google looks at this stuff and their algorithm, not them, it's not a guy in a seat that's back there in Silicon Valley, but their algorithm says, wait a minute. They click on this. The person stays on this page. They click to the next one. They watch the full video. This is good stuff. We need to start showing this at the top because their goal is simply to give

the user the best free content possible. So guys like me could pay at the top when someone clicks on that because they load the page up with ads now, just like Yelp. They had a bad second quarter last year. So they decided instead of three sponsored ads ads they're going to do 10 sponsored ads and it disgusts me what some of these companies do but there's so much here so i want to ask you a few more kind of closing questions and i really really appreciate you coming on you were really referred highly to me to read the book and i went through the first few chapters and i just i've got a ton out of this podcast. I ask the same questions here every time. What three books, so they ask, you answer. It's on Audible.

You got the hard book. What other books do you recommend? And it could be fiction. It could be anything you recommend about life or just you got a lot out of it. Yeah, to me, just maybe a couple oldie but goodies. I think maybe the greatest ever is How to Win Friends and Influence People. I think that book is just beautiful. It was Dale Carnegie was really the godfather of personal development. And the best salespeople and the best business leaders, they never stop developing themselves, right? So I would say that's one that I like to refer back to often. I would say that The Coaching Habit is a good one on asking better questions, right?

That's a really good one. I would say that Utility, Y-O-U-T-I-L-I-T-Y, Utility by Jay Baer, another really strong book about how to become that voice in your space. Really, really good book. Awesome. And then if someone wants to get a hold of you, what's the best source or... Yeah, well, I'll just give them my email address

if anybody ever wants to ask me a question directly. It's Marcus at MarcusSheridan.com. That's S-H-E-R-I-D-A-N.com. I'm at the sales lion, L-I-O-N, on the Twitters. But you can find me mainly on LinkedIn. I mean, that's where I play. And so if you're listening to this, if you do use LinkedIn, I'm very, very active there, usually two videos a week. And I really try to make that my playground for giving as much value as possible. And if you can tell the audience one last thing, one last gold nugget, one thing to think about, one thing to change, one thing to just pray about, I don't know what it is, but I'll give you the

floor to kind of close us out. I'm sure you've heard this before, gang, but I always go back to the greatest quote that I've ever heard was from my mentor. He didn't know me, but I feel like I know him, which is Jim Rohn, R-O-H-N. If you don't know Jim Rohn, please go to YouTube, look him up, listen to his stuff. But he said, we've got to learn to work harder on ourselves than we do on our job. And when we do that, when we really, really become obsessed with our own personal development, the job just naturally grows, compounds our skills and our abilities and the opportunities that come with it. But that phrase, we must learn to work harder on ourselves than we do on our jobs. It's really the best I've ever heard. So make sure you,

if you haven't listened to Jim for a while, go back and listen to him again. And if you've never listened to him, my goodness, just go start swimming in his content. He's one of the best. Before there was anything like a Tony Robbins, there was Jim Rohn. All right. Well, I've listened to some of Jim, but I'm going to go refresh my stuff. And I really, really appreciate you coming on.

There's so many gold nuggets. I'm sure you're going to get a lot of people to reach out to you because of this. And I can't thank you enough for coming on today. My pleasure, Tommy. Thanks so much, bud. Thanks, Marcus. Hey, I just wanted to take a quick minute and thank you for listening to the podcast.

You know, most people don't understand this, but the way that the podcast has grown is when people subscribe and they leave a review. So if you would please, please, please, Wyatt's top of mind, take a quick minute to subscribe and leave a quick review. It'll help me out so much. If you just took a little bit of time right now, I can't tell you

enough how much I appreciate the listeners and the feedback. And also when you subscribe, what I'm going to do is let you know the next guest coming on the podcast. And I'll let you email me anything you want me to ask that next person coming on. All the pros I have on here. I want your feedback. I want you to subscribe so you can start giving me the questions you want me to ask and help us grow together. Also, I'm giving away my book for free now. All you got to do is go to homeservicemillionaire.com forward slash podcast. You got to cover the shipping and handling, but I'm giving the material out for free. It's 200 pages. It's a hardcover book, homeservicemillionaire.com forward slash podcast. I appreciate each and every one of the listeners and thank you for making this

Home Service Expert podcast a success. I hope you're having a great day and thanks again.