The Learning Leader Show With Ryan Hawk - 630: Marcus Sheridan - How To Build Trust, Drive Sales, and Earn Endless Customers

Episode Date: April 13, 2025

Go to www.LearningLeader.com for full show notes This is brought to you by Insight Global. If you need to hire 1 person, hire a team of people, or transform your business through Talent or Technical Services, Insight Global's team of 30,000 people around the world have the hustle and grit to deliver. www.InsightGlobal.com/LearningLeader Bio: As an owner of IMPACT, Marcus Sheridan has established one of the country's most successful digital sales and marketing agencies. He is the author of the international best-seller They Ask, You Answer… His new book is called Endless Customers: A Proven System to Build Trust, Drive Sales, and Become the Market Leader. Notes: The 4 Pillars of a Known and Trusted Brand: Say what others won't say Show what others won't show Sell how others won't sell Be More Human than others are willing to be 75% of all buyers prefer a seller-free sales experience. Create great self-service tools to help your buyers make buying decisions. The buyer's journey - They want to know what it will cost. So, tell them. Have a client story for every objection. Collect them. Tell those stories. The story of Steve Sheinkopf and Yale Appliance… ($37m to over $100m). "That means obsessing over their questions, fears, worries, and concerns. Answer every single question honestly and transparently, right there on your website, for everyone to see." "Tackle topics your competitors are afraid to touch. Break the unwritten rules of your industry. When you focus solely on empowering your buyers with the information and experience they crave, something incredible will happen: You'll earn their trust. And when you earn their trust, you earn their business. Do this consistently, and you'll capture the market's attention, transform your company, and see numbers you never imagined." The 5 Components of Endless Customers: The Right Content The Right Website The Right Sales Activity The Rich Technology The Right Culture of Performance Path Finders - Help others come up with solutions. Your favorite mentor didn't tell you the answers, they helped you figure it out on your own (by asking you questions). The #1 thing that will dictate your income is your ability to communicate. As Morgan Housel would say, "Best story wins." It is worth it to work on this skill. The excuse that you don't have enough time is lame and not true. Focus on becoming a better writer and speaker. It's too important not to. Piece of feedback most often given - Say that, but in half the words. Be concise. Be willing to say what others won't. And the idea of going direct. Go Direct – Viral essay written by LuLu Cheng Meservey. Going direct means crafting and telling your own story, without being dependent on intermediaries. Marcus called me by my name (both Hawk and Ryan) a lot during our conversation. It felt natural and flowed well. It worked. This is taught in sales training and can feel manipulative if not done well. Listen to how Marcus used my name enough to make me feel special, but not too much that it felt like a sales tactic to get me to like him. Book title = "I want. I wish." I want Atomic Habits. I wish I had "Endless Customers."

This episode is brought to you by my friends at Insight Global. Insight Global is a staffing and professional services company dedicated to providing amazing people to their clients and taking great care of them. If you need to hire one person, hire a team of people, or transform your business through talent or technical services, Insight Global can get you the people you need and help you develop them to reach their full place. potential. Developing your people can be tough, but having productive employees can be magic. Visit Insightglobal.com slash learning leader. That's Insightglobal.com slash learning leader to learn more. Welcome to The Learning Leader Show. I am your host, Ryan Hawk. Thank you so much for being here. Text Hawk to 666-866 to become part of Mindful. Monday. You, along with tens of thousands of learning leaders from all over the world, will receive

a carefully curated email for me each Monday morning to help you start your week. All right. You'll also receive details about how our book, The Score That Matters, will help you become a more effective leader. Text Hawk to 66866. Now on to the night's featured leader as an owner of Impact. Marcus Sheridan has established one of the most successful digital sales and marketing agencies in the country. He's the author of the international bestseller. They Ask You Answer. And his newest book is called Endless Customers, A Proven System to Build Trust, Drive Sales, and Become the Market Leader. During our conversation we discussed, the four pillars of a known and trusted brand. Then the five components of endless customers. And then at the end we talk

about and throughout the importance of developing your communication and sales skills, regardless of your profession. Ladies and gentlemen, please enjoy my conversation with Marcus Sheridan. So let's start with the story of Steve Scheincoff and Yale Appliance, man. I was fascinated reading about this dude and the work that you guys have done together. Can you tell me about this guy? Steve represents everything a company should be today, everything a leader should be today, everything disruption is supposed to be today. So Steve came to me. It was about a decade or so ago. And he said,

you know, Marcus, I'm doing this content stuff, but I'm just not seeing much growth. You know, traffic lead sales, just kind of stale. Like, we're just not getting the traction that we want. What should we do? So I looked at this stuff and I said, man, the problem is Steve, you're just saying what everybody else is saying. And until you become obsessed with the buyer and what they really want to know and are willing and brave enough to give them what they want, you're not going to do anything extraordinary. And so he said, okay, I'm all in. And so he became obsessed with the buyer. And he called me a few months later, he said, one of the questions I'm getting all the time are my buyers and see Steve, Yale appliance, they sell kitchen appliances in Boston Mass, okay?

So Steve was getting the question a lot, like, so what are the least service most reliable appliance brands that you sell. Super common, right? Because, you know, if you've ever replaced refrigerator, you know it sucks when your refrigerator breaks or really any appliance that you have in your kitchen because you use it every single day. You depend on it so much. And so Steve said, all right, so I've got a dilemma here. I can address this question, but if I openly talk about the lease service brands that we sell, it basically means I'm throwing everybody else under the bus. So, okay, that's a dilemma. Now, here's the thing, Ryan. Do you think, Most business owners, most leaders, would be willing to address that question.

No. No. No. They're not because they're more afraid of offending the vendor, the OEM, the supplier, whomever, than they are of winning the trust of the market, of the customer, of the buyer. And Steve said, the only one I care about is the buyer. And so here's what he did. It started in 2017. It's since become this series that literally.

every appliance brand looks for every year because it has such a huge following. He produced a series of articles and videos that were the least service, most reliable appliance brands of whatever that year was, right? He's done it every year. The first year, the article alone on his website got read 50,000 times a month. Okay. So it got read 600,000 times the first year. And like I said, he's done it every year since then. And this is how he became the thought leader. And here's what's wild. He puts a chart up on the screen that shows you every brand that he sold the previous

year, the total units he sold from each brand, the total service calls he ran for each brand. Therefore, you learn the lease service brand that he sells all the way down to the most service brand that he sells. So like in 2025, the lease service was a. a company called Gaganaw, but the most service, or one of the most, was GE. And so he said it. He said it. He showed it.

He had the data. Now, some of you might say, what do the vendors do? What are you saying to GE? Like, call them and say, dude, what are you doing? You're screwing us. Like, killing me, small. Here's what Steve said. Well, I just posted the data.

The data is the data is the data. And he said, if you would like the data to be better, please send me better price of us. So this is how. you become a literal gatekeeper of truth. This is how you become known as a trusted advisor. This is how you build an extraordinary brand. This is how you get AI to recommend you.

This is how you get humans to recommend you by doing the stuff or saying the stuff, showing the stuff that no one in your space is willing to say or show Steve Schenkov, you are a stud. Okay, so let's take this maybe more broad. let's say it's a B-to-B-type VP of sales at a Fortune 500 company, Marcus, okay? Whether it's SaaS or whatever, it doesn't matter. I'm just curious for that B-to-B-type leader, higher-up leader, how could they, or what could they take from Steve's story

and implement at their place of work where it's not necessarily like appliances for a consumer, but it's a business-to-business-type environment. Okay. So in the new book, In List Customers, I've essentially given this what is a system to become the most known and trusted brand in your market. And for this system, there's four pillars of a known and trusted brand. One of the pillars is to sell in ways others in your space won't sell. Now, you asked me a question about a sales leader and what can they do that is audacious, that's disruptive, that is different.

Let me give you a couple examples from the book, starting with a stat that I think is just extraordinary, and it's very, very telling. And as soon as you hear it, you're like, of course, that makes sense. Today, this came from Gardner, by the way. They sent this to me directly. 75% of all buyers say they would prefer to have a seller-free sales experience. I repeat, 75% of all buyers say they would prefer to have a seller-free sales experience. What does this mean?

It doesn't mean that we hate salespeople. It just means that we do not want to talk to a salesperson until we are good, ready, and comfortable, confident, until we feel like we're not going to make a mistake. And so there's two types of leaders in this world that will hear that stat, that trend line. The first one will say, geez, I hate where the world's headed. I want it to be how it's always been. The second one will say, I'm going to take advantage of that. And that's what you can do with every trend. You can always take advantage of it.

The way you take advantage of it is through what we call in the book. is self-service. And I give five specific types of self-service tools that are just changing the game when it comes to sales and lead conversion and lead opportunities today. Now, one of them, which is really wild, and I think that's just so fascinating, is self-selection tools. Now, the first part of it is not very innovative, but the second part is wildly innovative. So let me explain. So have you ever seen online how there's tools that allow you, to schedule time with a salesperson, right, without having to call the company and say, hey, I'd like to talk to someone in sales. So you can just schedule yourself, which is really

great. And that's people like that. But that end of itself is not extraordinarily innovative. Where it gets extraordinarily innovative is when you add one more layer. And that is this. And we have created these tools for some of our clients. By the way, I've got a company called Impact. It helps organizations do this thing called endless customers, this system. And so we've got a lot of data on this. So a lot of the case studies like Steve Schenkov and others, it's from experiences that we've had with these companies for background. Okay. And so we've had multiple clients where we have allowed them on their scheduler tool where someone goes to scheduled time with a salesperson,

then what pops up next is you see all the salespeople you could choose. So imagine this. Imagine this. Imagine your company and someone says, I want to speak to a sales rep. and then they see a page that gives eight sales reps. They see their faces. They see their bios. They get to read about their bios. They get to see a video where the rep introduces themselves and talks to them. And then they can choose which one of the reps they want to work with.

Now, what's the impact? Well, we've tested this in multiple areas. For example, going back to Steve. With Steve, if you want to schedule time, with one of his sales reps in a showroom, you see all the sales reps that work for, in this case Yale, you see their images, you see their bios, you choose who you want to work with, and then you sync with their calendar. Now, every single time, closing rates double. Double, I mean, double, hawk. And why? Because of sunk cost fallacy. Because the moment you take the

time to essentially research who you're going to work with and you choose that person, because you've invested more time in that choice, now you are literally, psychologically speaking, looking for reasons to work with them. I've done this with property investment companies. I mean, it's like all different types of companies. And you could do it with any organization. Most will say, we can't do that. Oh, no, you can do that, especially with AI.

You could absolutely do that seamlessly. Most won't do that. That's an extraordinarily different way of selling. It's the Uber-like sales experience. Instead of just having a taxi show up, you don't know if it's going to stink, you don't know if it's going to be old, you don't know if the person's going to be nice. Now you feel like you have more control. That's the future of selling.

That's one example. Just one example. You probably have the stats to back up your answer here. Want to go that extra step? I mean, you're creating more of an investment, which then creates the sunk cost fallacy. I guess that. So you're thinking people like- Does everybody want to do it?

No. No. Okay. No. Just like not everybody wants to watch video, but roughly 85% of the world does. So it's one of those things where more and more we have to say, I need to meet the buyer where the buyer is. There's no different than there's a ton of people that don't listen to podcast. But golly day, the ones that do, boy, they are just into it. You know where I actually things would work and wonder if you do it. Buying a car. I would absolutely do this to buy a car. I would much rather see the video. I would see the bio of the person. See maybe even their stuff. that's if that's possible, why not? Why couldn't it be possible, you know? That's the thing, Hawk. Imagine you're going to sell your home. Yeah. You get a referral to a local realtor. You go to the local realtors website. You see they've got seven agents that work for them. But then you can vet the agents. You would all day long choose that U.S. over just being given whoever they

choose for you. And that is the power of choose your own adventure. You remember those books back in the day. But if you can create that sales experience today, that's extraordinary. Can I give you another example of self-service of how you can completely just change the game? So when someone has a problem in the buyer's journey, the first question they have when they start the journey, first question is roughly, what's this going to cost? It's literally the first question. And then they go through that journey, they go down that path, and then they start vetting the companies, and they start learning more, and then they reach out to a few companies, and then the final 20% roughly is what's called the sales process. And then at the end of that sales process,

they have the question one more time. And this time, though, it's exactly what's this going to cost. So we start and finish the buyer's journey with the same question. What's wild is most companies refuse to address the question until they force someone into their sales model, which says, you have to do our demo first, or you have to do this first. It's the antithesis of the golden rule. It makes most people extremely annoyed. And it goes contrary to the first question everybody has, am I in the game or not? Can't even afford this or not.

And so that's why pricing estimators in so many ways are the future of service-based businesses, or tiered-based businesses, like even software, right? So last year, Falk, I started a software company called priceguide.AI. I've got a ton of data on this. And this tool price guide allows companies to build pricing estimators very, very quickly with the help of AI. And what we've seen now with all this data that we have, we've got a ton of it, is that when you have a pricing estimator on your homepage,

and on that estimator, you have this call to action that says, get instant estimate. That's the power phrase. Get instant estimate. What we see every single time when somebody adds this to their site is three to 500% increase in leads. Like immediately, talk immediately. And it addresses the fundamental question that they have. See, people don't need a quote at first. All they want is a sense. What's it going to cost? And if you can address that, and now that I've seen how this works in so many different industries, it's wild, man, it's wild. That's powerful. One last one.

One last one. I look at companies like, let's say HubSpot and all these SaaS companies. And they all have the same type of messaging when it comes to their pricing. They've got this good better best model where they show you the, you know what I'm saying. They show you the three different tiers and they show you how each one has more stuff in it. And then you're like, okay, I don't know what half these. things mean, but I ever, you know, it says every, the most popular is you choose the middle one. So maybe I guess the middle, right? Okay. Is that a great U.X? Come on. What if instead of that,

you had an interactive tool that said, let's say this was HubSpot, it was an interactive tool that said, not sure which level of HubSpot is right for you, answer these unbiased questions and will make a specific recommendation for your case. And then on the site, you answer a series are questions, okay? It's interactive. And at the end of that, it says, based on what you just said, we would recommend this level of HubSpot. Do you know on my swimming pool website? And for those that don't know, I'm an OG swimming pool company that ended up doing lots of other things. But I sold this pool company in Virginia called River Pools. And it became the most traffic swim pool website in the world following this system of endless customers. And we have a tool on the homepage of

our site that addresses the question, do I want a vinyl, a concrete, or a fiberglass swimming pool? Now, here's the thing. We only sell fiberglass haul. Only sell fiberglass. But yet, every single day, we recommend to dozens of people that they don't buy our stuff. You tell me, show me a company out there on their site that is literally recommending, don't buy us, buy that thing instead. they take this interactive quiz and based on what they put in it says here's the type of pool you should get here's the answers you gave here's why this should be the pool for you good luck that's audacious but that's how you become the most known and trusted brand in your market you've got to be willing as we say in these customers to pillar one say what others aren't willing to

Pillar 2, show what others aren't willing to show with video. Pillar 3, sell in a way that others aren't willing to sell. We just gave a bunch of examples of that. And pillar number four, be more human than others in your space are willing to be. Dude, you're also a master telling the story and weaving in the stuff that you are selling. I say this is a compliment, whether it's the AI tools or the pricing stuff or your book. I'm curious, that has to be. be intentional, right? Or is that just the way you think and the way you communicate is that

the stories interweave with the stuff that you actually sell? Yeah, I think, well, first of all, thank you. And I think that is a, it's a very prominent question because if you look at a great sales team, the way I see it is, you get all these fundamental questions that you know are going to come your way. Do you have a client story for every single question that you're going to be asked as a salesperson, as a sales leader? if not you should and so you know I could on every single thing that you're going to ask me I've got so many stories because I'm obsessed with story with storytelling I believe in the power of it I respond to it the world since day one has responded to it's as human as human gets

and it's the great divide going forward is who can be more creative and who can be better storytellers than everyone else and so absolutely when you ask me questions I am thinking what's story has taught me something that would teach this audience that thing. Now, at the same time, can I interweave, yes, can I interweave these critical points into it so that it doesn't come across as a pitch, but it comes across as a natural component of the conversation. That's great communication 101. That's great selling 101. That's great leadership 101. And see, the one thing that you and I have in common, Ryan, is a lot of people know is we both have a unique obsession with the art of effective communication. My next book is actually on this very subject. And it's my deepest

passion, except most people think, oh, he's a sales and marketing guy. And the reason for this is because the through line of my life, if you said, what's the through line of your life, at least professionally speaking, certainly, is how do you communicate in a way that deeply connects with your audience? It's a through line of my life. Now, if you look at that, well, What is marketing? Marketing is when we communicate with the masses in order to connect the brand on a very deep level. What is sales? It's when we communicate with the prospect so as to connect deeply and in this case earn their business. What is leadership? It's when we communicate with our team and such a powerful, extraordinary way with the questions we ask especially that we connect with them

at a deep level and they say, I've never worked for someone like this before, and I couldn't imagine working for anyone else. I travel around speaking. I actually had one yesterday. And sometimes when you go speak, the senior person or the CEO may speak before you if you're within a company, you're not like at a conference or something like that. And sometimes, you know, you go and unfortunately, that person just isn't very good. Yeah, they suck a lot.

Let's be honest. They're not very good a lot because they have most, one percent. of leaders, 1% of leaders have had communication training specific to speaking in front of an audience. Yeah. So that's why sometimes you see one. I remember I went and spoke with a guy named Bert being CEO of Insight Global and Bert's insane. Like he's one of the greatest communicators, not just CEO communicators, just flat out communicators I've ever been around. So that, like such an anomaly, so different than most. But most of the time you go out there and that person gets up there. And sometimes if I develop a report and relationship and I want to be like brutally honest,

I'll say, hey, do you work at, do you work at the speaking thing? Or like, do you work at like reviewing the PowerPoint before it's actually up there? I'll try to be respectful, but I'll be pretty direct. And they'll say, dude, I just don't have time for that. I don't have time for that. And that response blows my mind. What do you think, Marcus, when a leader tells you, dude, I don't have time for that. I have other stuff I have to be worried about when it comes to my business.

How do you respond to that statement? literally every single component of your business and life starts and stops with your ability to effectively communicate it is the root cause of everything that's good and pretty much everything that's bad in your life all right i'm talking about the things that we can control of course right and so i once saw a stat that said the number one factor that dictates average income today has nothing to do with how much education you received or schooling, that is. The number one factor that dictates average income is your ability to communicate. And we've seen this before. You've seen it a lot. Lots of times the most talented people in terms of like intelligence or just

raw skills are not the best in class because of the fact that they're held back by effective communication. But if you can learn to be an extraordinary communicator, your life picks up so much momentum and it's a beautiful thing to see. Let's get practical. Let's say that person is self-aware enough right now and they say, I've been so heads down in the work and the numbers and hitting the goals and whatever excuse you want to make. But they're like, I got to work on this. I got to get better. What are the first things you would advise a mid-level, a senior-level leader to do

to improve their overall both written and verbal communication skill? Yeah, yeah. Really love the question. First thing they can and should do, and you should do this anyway, by the way. Can and should do is number one. You go to your team. individually and say, I'm going to ask you a question. Whatever you say is safe.

I'm going to receive it as a gift. And I'm asking you because I really need your feedback. And that is, if you had to say one area of my communication skills that need improvement, what would you say? Notice it's not, do I have any weaknesses? No, no, no, no. It's if you had to say. By the way, one of the greatest questions in the first questions in the way,

world or discovery is the question, but if you had to say. So oftentimes when you become really effective with the way you communicate, Ryan, your questions get better and better, deeper and deeper. And they cause people to think, naturally, many people, when they're being forced to think about stuff that this isn't right there, they'll say things like, ah, you know, I don't know. You might say to someone, let's just say it's a friend. I'm going to make it very simple. You're with a friend and you're like, hey, where do you want to go to eat tonight? friend says, I don't know, I don't care of it. Whatever you want. It's like, I know, I know. But like, let's say you had to just choose one place. What would it be? And what's wild is now you're going to start to get very specific answers. And when you do this in a leadership, from a leadership perspective, okay, as a manager, as a leader, when you say, but if you had to say, as a salesperson, you know, what you don't want to say, here is this, you say as a salesperson. So, you know, what are some of the biggest struggles that you're having, you know, within your sales department right now? And they say, oh, we're not hitting leads. We're not hitting this. We're not in this. Oh, lots of problems. I mean, you know, there's just tons of

issues out there. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But if you had to say the biggest struggle, what would it be? Then what happens to the person stops? They look up and they say, well, if I was forced to choose one of them. And what that means is when somebody stops and they say something like, well, if I was forced to, if I had to say, what that means is they're having what's called a light bulb or an aha moment. This is now when they're teaching themselves something that they didn't necessarily realize before. The great communicators understand that it's not their goal to tell the audience what they should do, rather it's their goal to ask the perfect question which induces extraordinary self-discovery. Because if you can induce self-discovery, what this means is now the person will own it

because it's theirs. It's not yours. It's theirs. You know what's wild, Ryan, especially when it comes to problem solving, almost every conversation when there's a problem, somebody comes to you with a problem, ends with two words. The words are, you're right. The question is, who's the one saying you're right. So for example, if you came to me as my team member, let's say I was your manager and you came to me and you're like, Marcus, you know, there's this big issue going on and I just don't know what to do. And I knew if I come to you, you give me the answer. Problem is most leaders are just going to say, well, here's exactly what you should do. And I would tell you what you should do and you would say, man, Marcus, I knew you'd have it,

man. You are so right. Man, thank you, dude. You're the best. But you see, if I'm extraordinary as a leader and as a communicator, when you come to me with that problem, I'm going to say, I appreciate you coming to me with that problem. Let's see if we can figure this out together. And then I'd ask you a series of questions. And then at the end,

you would say something like this. You know what? I know exactly what we should do. And I would say, okay, go ahead. What do you think? Well, I think we should do, by the way, they're having the light bulb. They're having the ha.

And as soon as they say that, I'm going to say as a leader, you know what Ryan you're right and that's exactly what I would have said to well done you see that's why every conversation essentially ends in those two words the more you can induce those around you to offer incredible solutions to their own problems the better you become as someone that develops those around you and you become an incredible extraordinary mentor to those that you touch personally and professionally in your life but you have to let go of this earth to be the hero. Yeah, I feel like when I do the exercise of like my favorite bosses, favorite

teachers, favorite mentors in my life, what they really were, were the people who were most curious and interested and cared about me. And they knew that I had to have ownership over the solution or the response, not them. Because if I had ownership, there's a higher likelihood that I will follow through and actually do the thing. And so their job, they view it. I try to do this. I'm sure you try to do this as a mentor now is don't just give. Don't just give the answer, right? Be curious, ask questions, help them come up with the solution and the answer themselves. And I think the same way that could happen in the sales process too. Oh, 100%. We call these people pathfinders. And I actually have, because I'm so passionate

about, I have a company that does what we're talking about right now. It's called the question first group. And our mission is to develop pathfinders. It's literally called. I'm a I love that any like there is your work in business gets weaved into everything but like it's it's it's it works though anyway go ahead sorry yeah it's it's you know these are my like passion areas of my life yeah and so so i just i just in the type that i just like i'm very mission driven and you know i like see these patterns around me and then i start getting interested in them and then i believe this is going to solve problems in the world and our mission is to create um pathfinders all over the world. Now, what is a pathfinder? A pathfinder is someone that is obsessed with asking the perfect

question, or series of questions, to stimulate such thought in the mind of their audience that it creates new paths of thoughts. Because originally, historically speaking, the Pathfinder was the person that would go ahead of the discoverers, literally, like was the first one in, and they would find new uncharted paths or ways that they could, make their journey and they would report back to the discoverer and then that person would go on and do great things in terms of discovery. And so that's why we call them pathfinders. And so when you become an extraordinary leader, you're a pathfinder. Problem is most leaders are, there's these three other essentially communication avatars. First one is the instructor. Most people,

somebody comes to them with a problem. They say, oh yeah, I've been there before. Let me help you out. and they tell them exactly, like, here's a step by step what you should do. Do you understand? Here's what I would do if I was you. And so it's like very helpful in that regard, but they're still telling them exactly what to do. So it's not curious. They're not asking a lot of questions. They're just saying, here's what life has taught me. And it's nice, and it feels very mentory, but the problem is there's not a lot of growth. Now, there's another avatar, if you will, which is the person that doesn't ask questions. And the answer is for personal gain. It's all about them.

We call this person the dictator. They're using control and command just to say, here's exactly what you need to do. And you can actually have somewhat of a successful company with that, but the problem is once you're gone, boom. Everything else just goes with you. You don't develop anybody around you because it's always command control, command control. You're constantly the one coming up with the solutions. There is another persona in terms of the way we communicate. And this person is very good at asking questions, but the way they ask the questions,

essentially manipulates the person to do what they think they should do. This is called the attorney, the lawyer. This person is using manipulative insincerity. They're taking them where they want to go. So even though they're asking these questions, they're not actually helping them grow. And the person, and I've seen CEOs like this, I've seen CEOs sit down with people and this is like a bunch of times. and the person, they ask the person a question, and the person's like, I don't know about that. And then they'll ask a series of questions like, yeah, but have you considered this?

And, you know, what about this? And they're only trying to get them, that person, to do what they think they should be doing. That's not helpful. And it's not coming from a place of truth and love. Now, I'm a little bit off track here because I'm so passionate about this. I'm just like a wild man talking about communication.

But the bottom line is, It's not our job to give the answers. It is our job to ask the perfect questions. And if you do that, you will change lives. Can I ask you one more weird question before we get back to endless customers? Yeah, please. So you've used my name multiple times throughout our conversation, both my last name, which nobody does on this podcast and my first name.

And every time you do it, I fall in love a little bit more. It works on me too. Now, I know they teach you this in sales school. I know sales reps are taught to use the first person, to use the other person's name because it's the most beautiful sound to their ears to hear somebody saying your name. And I know, but when you do it,

I feel like it's natural though, or are you just that good at it? Like I have to bring this up because salespeople use this and I can feel it when it's like icky, when it doesn't feel good. I'm like, ah, this is a tool.

Like this is, they're trying to manipulate me. It's not working. When you do it, though, I'm like, ah, I kind of like this.

He's calling me hawk. I know we have history because we played fantasy football together. for years and and you know we have last name stuff but i think it's worth it to get this out in the open to talk about using people's names when it feels icky versus when it feels good you have a way of noticing nuance and subtleties that others don't notice which is why i think i should come on your podcast like every six months just to just to learn about myself but this is a testament really to you're a very keen observation. And I know it sounds like I'm just heaping praise,

but lots of times when you're on a podcast with someone, they're so focused on what they're going to ask next that they're not fully aware of everything that's happening in that moment. You have this unique ability to actually see it from both lenses, right? It's like, let me stay with him as a host, as someone that is going to ask further questions and dig deeper. But at the same time, I'm going to have this lens of really deep.

deep observation of how is this person communicating? What is the energy that he or she is putting off? What are the nuances that they are doing that are effective, right? So that's, that's, that's super cool. And that's something that we can all do and we all should do. And that's the journey that I've been on for literally, I would say, you know, the better part of 30 years now, as I've been, you know, just obsessed with communication. In terms of the names itself, I am intentional with names. I'm not saying, don't forget to use the name. Don't forget to use the name. But for me, it's very natural to use the person's name, almost like, it's no different than if I was saying, bro or buddy or friend or any of that, right? It's just an energy thing for me.

And everything about interaction and everything about life, so much to me, comes down to energy. energy actually comes before communication. Communication, if you have the right energy that you bring to communication, then you have these incredible experiences with people. You constantly have breakthroughs and you're just like, wow, this was just felt different. There's something about this person, right? And energy of all the things that we teach, that's the hardest one to help someone really understand how to manage it

and how to manifest the right energy and the right moment at the right time, right? But yes, it is intentional, and we do have to train people on it. And it's sad to me when I see a salesperson be 20 minutes on a call and they don't use the person's name. What a disaster that is. Now, one thing that you can get very intentional with is if there's an important moment. I might say, now Ryan, seriously, man? Seriously. Now, right, that's an example of like we are re-centering in the moment. And there's going to be, like, you'll see that often. So one, one example of when you should always use the person's name if you're going to

ask a very serious question. Now, if you're just doing like back to back to back, back questions, no, of course, you're not going to say their name each time. But if it's a serious question, you should be using it because it brings a reverence to the moment. Interesting. Okay. Because I think it's it's delicate though. That line is delicate. Yeah, you can do it wrong. You sometimes people do and I can feel it at times and it doesn't feel good. It feels like a tool is being used to manipulate me. Whereas other people do it where it just feels like it just flows as a part of the way they are. And maybe that's a repetition thing. Maybe that's just them being authentic and genuine. I don't know. Because I like to do. I like to do. I, because I like to do. I,

do it too, but just I just I am mindful of it and try to be careful. I'd never want it to feel like it's inauthentic or it's a tool to manipulate. I want it to be just a natural flowing of how we're conversing as opposed to some salespeople I've talked to where I'm like, God, dude, this is not good. It's such a turnoff because they haven't. They use it too much. Yeah, they use it too much. And it's interesting you say that you're mindful of it. Like for me, I am mindful of the importance of names, but I hadn't thought. thought about the usage of your name at all up until the point where you said, hey, Marcus, I noticed you're doing this.

And I was like, huh, interesting. Yeah, I guess I am rolling back and forth, right? But to me, it's just like, first of all, Hawk is such a baller last name. It's if someone doesn't draw attention to it, that's sad, right? You know, it's like thinking, Hawkeye, Nighthawk. It's just like, I know it's genuine too, because in our group chats with all of the stuff that we went through this past football season, you used my last name. You know, and you had some, said some really nice things about how the season went. And so, like, I just know

that's how you think and that's how you are. So it feels, it feels genuine. I didn't mean to get us off on this tangent. I do think, though, it's an important thing to talk about because it comes up in everyday life with people in all different situations. And so why not, like, get it out there and just talk about it. Okay. I will say this. I got to say one more thing about this. most companies are disaster when it comes to sales training culture and leadership communication culture. And this is because we don't practice it. And the reason why we don't practice it is because practice means we need to do this thing called role plays. We call them real role plays, but a lot of companies don't do them because management doesn't want to put themselves under the microscope and fail in front of their team,

which in and of itself creates a very, very bad culture where people are afraid to fail. Whereas if the leaders lead that charge and show, hey, you know, I'm putting myself out there. I'm going to totally with this at times. Then it's very, very powerful. The issue that we see with salespeople is they spend way more time practicing on potential customers than they do on themselves when it comes to communication. That ain't good. And that's not okay. If you're going to practice communication, don't practice it on the person that could literally be a sale.

practice it on your teammate, but you don't see that. You see leaders that have never given a one-on-one, and they're just thrown into the fire, and they're told, go give a one-on-one. They've not done a role-play one-on-one. They haven't been given any direction on it. That's extremely sad to me. In sports, the best coaches that I played for

made the practices way harder than the games. Nailed it, bro. The prep, all of that was way harder. And I think of one of the first, I didn't work for him, but I was on a team next to his. And I actually would sit in on a strange. A guy named Jeff Weaver. He's still a sales leader to this day, not at Lexus Nexus anymore where I grew up. But Weaver was known for having brutally hard trainings.

And they would go in there. You know what they do? Marcus, what would they do? They would role play. Roll play. Higher time. One person's the prospective customer. The other person is the sales rep for Lexus Nexus.

And he would do it multiple times a week. They would go hard. People would be scared. It would be tough. And you know who was the best team in the building? Who do you think was one even close? Jeff Weaver's team was what it wasn't even. But you know, some people were scared.

They didn't want to go on that team. Oh, I've heard about those trainings. I don't know. Well, if you want to be great, if you want to be the best, you want to make money, if you want to crush your goals, like that's the team you want to go to. So as a manager, I was like, I need to be like that guy. Like I need to have trainings and meetings like that guy. They're tough though.

They're hard for the manager because you got to be giving feedback. You got to put people in uncomfortable situations. But I have always believed this make the practices harder than the games. And then when it's game day, you're good, man. You're almost like this is that. This is walking the park, baby. Yeah. You know, it shocks me, you know, whether it's communication, sales role plays, like whatever

it may be, those practices got to be tough. The amount of similarities we have hog is crazy to me. It's like, this is exactly how I think, and this is what I believe in. Do you know less than 5% of sales teams do at least one role play sales training once a month? Wow. Less than 5%. Wow. The majority of sales teams do not do one role play sales training a year. Yet we spend all these times in sales meetings where we're looking at pipeline and talking about what are some, that we can address some of the issues out there. How can we help this customer out? There's prospect out. And what we really need to do is become more effective with the questions we ask so that they can feel a connection with us that's so deep that they're like, ah, there's something about this company.

I just need to work with them because they understand us better than anyone else. By the way, the ultimate KPI for a salesperson is how many times a week does that salesperson hear? You know what? Nobody's ever asked me that before. that's the KPI. The discovery phase of the sales process, that was a differentiator between the excellent sales professionals

and the average sales professionals as they were genuinely curious. They didn't even necessarily script all the questions because it was based upon them being a great listener. The magic is never in the first question, Ryan. never in the first. It's always in the second, the third, the fourth. We teach a thing called the law of three, which basically just means you'll never get to the core of the issue, the problem, until you've asked at least three questions along the same vein. Yet the majority of our all conversation in the workplace, and even in sales, our surface level conversations. And so until, you know, you say to somebody, so what's the biggest struggle that your

company's having right now? Oh, yeah, well, our biggest struggle, and they give you an answer. Oh yeah, we have people struggle with that all the time. You're not there, bro. You're not there. You're not there until that person is saying, and because of this, here's how I've been affected on an emotional level. Here's how the team has been affected. Now all of a sudden, we're cooking with gas.

There's the connection. You know one of my favorites? It happens in podcasting sometime, but it actually happens in interpersonal relationships or with the coaches on my team when we're having conversations. They will say something that really piques my curiosity. and my follow-up is say more. That's right.

Say more. And then that next response or next follow-up usually is really good. And then that leads to some other sort of follow-up question based upon what they say. But sometimes the say more, I've noticed people are either uncomfortable to do that. My dad's really good at that. But maybe that's why it's helped me be more comfortable doing it. But it feels like it's, it's, it's really can add some depth to a relationship to a conversation with just a say more. Say more.

And then they're like, okay. And then they eventually go. It's great, you know. It's also effective because it's very short. Yeah. Generally speaking, the person that asks the shortest questions has the highest authority in the room. Yeah. It's the same with if you look at, if you have a group of people together, the person that uses people's names,

most generally is the leader of the group, whether it's stated or unstated. It's the same thing. So you can literally, you can watch a group of people that are around each other. Let's say it's six people. Whoever is using names the most, that person generally is the leader of that group. And again, it doesn't need to be by title. It's just by general perception. Energy, really, is what it is. It's energy. It's quite fascinating. There's a lot of examples of that. So, man, We could really, we're going to have to do another pod. I know. We want.

Just on this, man. What more thing is like, when I go on as a guest, okay, on another podcast. So I've probably done a few hundred times over the years. When I don't know what I'm talking about, when I'm answering a question, but I don't really know what I'm talking about. You can hear it in my voice that I'm trying to figure out the answer as I'm talking. And you know what happens when I do that? I talk forever. The answer is so long.

it may be part of it makes sense most of it doesn't and I don't usually land the plane sometimes I do but when I do know what I'm talking about the answer is shorter it's concise it's memorable it's useful it's amazing like I can go back and really self-coaching you're like God I had no idea what I was talking about I tried I tried and I never got there it's amazing like just the length of the answer sometimes is telling that I had no clue what I was talking about. Oh, man, that is so true. This is why the number one like feedback we have to give, again, this is with my communication company.

The number of feedback we have to give to salespeople as leaders is, now say that and half the words. Now say that and half the words. And what will happen is sometimes you'll do it three or four times. So they'll start with a very long statement or question and you'll say, okay, now say that and half the words. Now say that and half the words. Now, say that and have the words.

Now, what you said earlier, though, we've got this technique that we teach called the pushback pivot. It's really, really powerful. You learn this. You'll never get hit with resistance again and be stunned or flinch. And essentially, you take the negative thing that somebody says to you. And like you said earlier, you take one word from what they just said, or the negative words, and then you say, tell me more. So, for example, somebody says to a salesperson, man, I just feel like you guys are so expensive. You say, so expensive?

Tell me more about that. That's it. Someone says to you, that meeting this morning really sucked. All right. It sucked. Tell me more. Now, do you notice how my face is saying, I'm here for it? I'm ready for it. Someone says, someone says to you, I just don't know if you all have the experience that we need. Okay, our experience. Tell me about that. That's it. All right. Your loved one says to you, I'm super frustrated with our conversation this morning. Okay. Frustrated? I'm ready. Now, it's always the same thing. You take the negative thing they said and you focus in on the singular word or words of the phrase.

So, expensive, right? And then you say that, just that word, and then you say, tell me more. The problem is 90 plus percent of salespeople, and I know this based on the amount of sales folks we've worked with over the years. As soon as they hear, well, you guys are more expensive. What do they do? They defend. And then they go on a diatriose. Well, yeah, you know, we are a little bit more, but, you know, have you considered this?

And, you know, look at this and don't forget about this. And you see, they just said you're more expensive, but you have no freaking idea why they said you're more expensive. In fact, they might not even think you're more expensive. They might be testing you. And so the whole key is that you get them to explain. And by doing that, you take back the leadership of the conversation. Not unrighteous authority here, but we're talking like, there needs to be one leader of the

conversation, especially when it comes to sales. And in that sense, when you take it back, it is not in a domineering way, but now you're forcing the person to explain themselves, and now you can actually make progress. Okay. I want to get to the five components of endless customers. We're taking a hard left turn, kind of, but I had this here, and I just wanted to get into it before we run out of time here, dude. Okay? So, um, how about this? The, the, the, the, The five components of endless customers is the end of the book, and it's the system for implementing it. I want to say this, though.

The thing that people have to understand is we are changing when it comes to marketing in ways that are unfathomable right now. And in the future, because let me tell you, Google, Google ain't going to be Google in five years, y'all. All you have to do is go use Google today. And then go use chat chbt and see which one gives you a quicker, better experience. The idea that you can build a house on Google is silly. A house on paid ads is silly.

What you need to build is a known and trusted brand. Enlist customers is a literal system to help you become that known and trusted brand. But again, you've got to be willing to say what others aren't willing to say. Ask yourself now, what are we saying online that none of our competitors are saying, or at least the majority, are afraid to say? What are you showing with video that no one else is willing to show? Are you doing it? How are you selling that no one else is willing to sell? Do you have that scheduling tool that allows them to choose the salesperson that we looked at? And are you being more human than others are willing to be? You know what's crazy to me? We talk in the book about one-to-one video and just the power of video, and it's a major, you know, it's a major component of creating endless customers and building a known brand. But you look at salespeople today.

We've had this thing called electronic mail for roughly 27 years that has been like a major part of society since about 1996, 1997. So salespeople have been sending this thing called electronic mail for 27 years in a text-based format. and most are still doing it exactly like that. And you could send a video where they get to see your face and they get to see your voice and you can actually answer the question better most of the time with a video.

But yet, we still are sending just text-based emails. Now, I'm not saying that every email should be video. I'm not suggesting that. But when you're reaching out to a prospect, when you're reminding them of a meeting, when you're explaining a quote or whatever that thing is, it should be with video. And they should feel like they know your face. And they should feel like they know your voice.

And if they don't, you have failed them as a leader and as a salesperson. And that's what I mean when we talk about being more human than others are willing to be. And so I just had to mention that, Ryan, because that's ultimately what the book is all about. And trust, man, it's not going away. All these platforms are going to go away. Facebook going to go away. Google are going to go away. Chat, GPT, going to go away.

What ain't going to go away? That you're going to have to become known and trusted to have a successful business, period. This reminds me of the recent viral essay I read by Lulu Chang, Masservi. It's called Go Direct. I think it plays exactly in with what you're talking about, Marcus, whereas the bumper sticker of going direct means crafting and telling your own story without being dependent. on intermediary. So she's actually a PR, runs a PR agency.

What she does is really good at helping founders and CEOs and leaders go direct as opposed to the word salad garbage statements you see when someone messes up or something happens. Versus now you got to build trust. You have to be you. You have to be authentic. Right. And people now can really feel it and sense it. when you have outsourced your comms.

And I think the best leaders, the best CEOs, the best people running teams, like even if you're at a big company and you're a mid-level leader, you've got to find your voice. No intermediaries. No, I'm all about using chat GPP and Claude and all of them to help me be a research partner

and maybe a thinking partner, but you can't outsource your thinking. You can't outsource your voice. Your soul. Right. You've got to find your own and use that in order to build that trust, because as you said, everything else is going away. But that authenticity, that trust,

that willingness to go direct, that's where you can differentiate yourself as a leader. And you bring up such a great point because if you looked at the election cycle we just had, right, it was a preview to the future of brand. And a lot of people will push back on this and they're like, no, no, no, no, no, it's about, you know, journalists. No, it's not. It's about long form content and people getting to know you because it's hard to hide over the course of one, two, three hours when you're having a conversation with somebody. It's pretty hard to hide. And so people are going to get to know you. And so the idea, you better believe there's a I mean, it's like a reason why Gavin Newsom suddenly has a long form podcast. There's a definitive

reason because he sees the tea leaves. The writing on the wall is if the world doesn't get a chance to know me on a on a more intimate level they will not trust me and in his case i'll never become president is what he's thinking because he wants to and i'm saying this apolitically it doesn't matter you're going to see both sides next time that are going to be all in on long form podcasts because that's the future of connection now am i saying that you as a company should start long form podcasting today not necessarily but what we are saying is that that you have to find a way for people to sense and know you. And that means putting yourself out there,

get from behind the desk and from behind the camera and get in front of the camera. And no, it doesn't matter that that's not the reason why you got in business. No, it doesn't matter that video's not your thing. Because never in the history of the world has somebody come to your, let's say, website and said, I'd love to see a video on this,

But then they said, but you know, video's not their thing. So I'm going to give them a pass. That's not how it works. That's why you have to start thinking. If you're listening to this, and I'm serious, you have to start thinking like a media company on an individual in a collective level with your organization. Individually, Marcus Sheridan is a media company. Ryan Hawk is a media company. That's what you have established yourself.

This is the greatest thing you have done for people to know you is your podcast. They know you. And now, because I'm out there constantly putting my thoughts to the word, they know me. I'm a media company. And the organizations that are affiliated with me, I'm trying to get them to also think like a media company. Because that is what is going to be required to be successful in a time of AI where we need to send signals out to the world. And we can't just rely on this thing called Google or paid to be our catalyst. for lead generation.

Okay, dude. It's like you're giving a TED talk right in the middle. I love it. Can we talk about the title real quick? Because I think this is really interesting. We talked about this all fair before. The I want, I wish test and how endless customers plays a role in this

I want, I wish test. Man, I'm so glad you asked this because I've been asked a bunch, like, why did you change the title? I love they ask you answer. I'm like,

yeah, you love they ask you answer as a title once you know what they ask you answer means. I learned from more evading a little secret, and it helped me understand why. You see, and I don't say this from an arrogant place, I felt like they asked you answer should have done over a million copies.

I felt like the content was that good. The problem is it only did, and I say only, like it did over 100,000 copies, but it didn't do a million. And the reason why I didn't do a million is because people bought it, based on seeing me speak or referrals. That's the reason why they bought it.

Because they didn't buy it if they walked across it on the shelf. Because if they walk across on the shelf, they're not saying to themselves, I want, I wish. So, Roy Vaden taught me, R-O-R-Y-V-A-D-E-N. Roy Vaden taught me, and I watched him, he's talked about this on Edmight show and a few others, that every great title should pass the I-1-I-Wish test, which means ideally before it, you could say the phrase I want or I wish.

And so I wish I could win friends and influence people. I want a four-hour work week. I wish I had atomic habits, right? But nobody says, I wish they ask, you answer. Because they don't know what that means. You see, the big mistake that authors make oftentimes is that they'll title the thing, the methodology. But you see, the methodology doesn't mean anything to anyone. until they've been taught said methodology.

And so it wasn't a book that you grabbed off the shelf. Endless customers? Oh, I want endless customers. And so hence the name change. So good. The book, again, is called Endless Customers, a proven system to build trust, drive sales, and become the market leader.

We talked about that, but only a little bit of it. And so many other things, I highly recommend people get the book, read it. Whether you own a business or you work within a big, company, it applies. And of course, Marcus wrote it, so it's really well done. Dude, I really appreciate you coming on. Again, I always enjoy our conversations, whether there be a text or now doing it, recording. And I know we're going to continue our dialogue as we both progress, man.

Yeah, absolutely. I appreciate you. And I really meant what I said earlier. You've got a really unique way about you, Ryan, like just in terms of the way you communicate and it just really vibes with me and I know why you've built such a successful podcast. For those that want the book, please go to endless customers.com. It's the best place to get it. Inlesscustomers.com. Connect with me on LinkedIn as well. I'm a pretty rad follow over there. So I'd love to see you and connect with you over there. But, man, walk this was great. Thank you so much. Awesome, dude. I appreciate it, man. It is the end of the podcast club. Thank you for being a member of the end of the podcast club. If you are, send me a note, Ryan at learningleader.com. Let me know what you learned from this great

conversation with Marcus Sheridan. A few takeaways from my notes. The four pillars of a known and trusted brand say what others won't say. Show what others won't show. Sell how others won't sell and be more human than others are willing to be. And then I'm going to drill down for my second note on being willing to say what others want. And this idea of going direct from Lulu Chang, misservi i love the idea of the leaders finding your own unique voice and using it as as lulu says going direct means crafting and telling your own story without being dependent on intermediaries and i think this is what the most effective leaders in the world are really good at which leads me to my third point is the number one thing as marcus told me that will dictate your income is your ability

to communicate. As Morgan Housel said on this podcast, quote, best story wins. It is worth it to work on the skill of becoming an excellent communicator. The excuse that you don't have enough time or there's other more important things is lame and not true. Focus on becoming a better writer and speaker. It's too important not to. Once again, I want to say thank you so much for content. to spread the message and telling a friend or two,

hey, you should listen to this episode of The Learning Leader Show with Marcus Sheridan. I think he'll help you become a more effective leader because you continue to do that. And you also go to Spotify and Apple Podcasts and you subscribe to the show and write a thoughtful review and rate it hopefully five stars. By doing all of that, you are giving me the opportunity to do what I love on a daily basis. And for that, I will forever be grateful. Thank you so much. Talk to you soon.

Can't wait.