INBOUND 2016: Marcus Sheridan "How To Turn Your Sales Teams into Raving Fans for Inbound"

Do you feel good this morning? You already know this is going to be a good session, don't you? Yeah, yeah. So do I. So do I. You are the good people, the not as hungover people here at Inbound. We're going to have a fun time today. So I give different talks. Some talks are super happy and I like to be happy all the time, but some talks are a little bit more serious. This is going to be a little bit more serious. I hope we still laugh, though. Right, Right. Okay. So the question is, why does Inbound fail? Go ahead. Anybody Lazy? I like, I like. Now, Sean, are you a business owner? Are you a salesperson? Are you a marketer? What are you? Business owners? I'm a business owner. I like it when a business owner says laziness because you know, it's cutting to the chase, brother. Now, by the way, we're going to talk about the whole key to this session, by the way. Those that are coming in, welcome to the best session of Inbound. Welcome, welcome. Okay, so the fact that Sean is a CEO and he is in this room with his team means that they are going to do special things in this space. You're fired up. They're fired up. I mean, they're fired up. They're fired up. Okay. Why else? Keep going, Buy in. Little bit of an issue, my man. Lot of bit. Right? We're going to talk about that a lot. We're going to talk about that a lot. Anybody else got one? Data. Yeah, the data. Not paying attention to the data, not understanding the data, not using the right tools. This is good. This is good. Lots of reasons why it fails. Lots of reasons why it fails. We're going to talk about one in particular today. And this one stems from. For six years now, I've been talking at inbound, used to be hug I think is what we called it at first. And you know what's interesting? The number one email that I've received, number one over six years is. Is not from business owners like Sean saying, marcus, we're in trouble. We need more traffic. Lead sales. That's number two. Believe it or not, that's number two. Number one. Can anybody guess what it is? Anybody want to make a guess? Number one email. Okay. Yeah. So this is good. This is good. So number one is represented by this gal right here who's amazing, an amazing hubspotter. Her name is Krista Cottrola. She's a good follow on Twitter, by the way. She called me about five years ago and she said, marcus, I believe in this thing called Inbound. I believe in all this stuff you've been talking about. They ask, you answer. I believe in all that stuff. I want us to be the Wikipedia of what we do. Now, what block imaging does is they sell refurbished medical imaging equipment. So they'll take an old MRI machine that's been put out to pasture, they'll refurb it, and they'll sell it to a health organization that can't necessarily afford a new one because a new MRI machine cost $2 million. Good job, Sean Farrell. Very well done, sir. $2 million. And so she said, marcus, I believe in this, but the problem is I'm not a subject matter expert. I'm sure none of you have ever felt that way. She said, and I go to my sales team and I say to them, I want to produce this content. Let's do these articles. Let's do this, let's do that. And of course, what did they tell her? What did they tell her? Yeah, yeah. You said it. You said it. I don't have the time. And in life, when somebody tells you they don't have the time, what are they really trying to tell you without actually telling you? That's right. I don't value the thing, folks, it is never about time. If you, as a marketer, raise your hand. I need a really quick poll because I want to get a good sense for the room. I'm gonna do just a few short polls today. If you are prominently, if you consider yourself essentially marketing department, if you fall under the marketing department, raise your hand if you're in the room. Okay. Raise your hand. Okay, so that's probably about 90% of the room. 90% of the room. So here's the thing, folks. If you are hearing from your team that they don't have the time. It has nothing to do with time. Is we have failed to communicate the thing. They don't get it. Because, trust me, if inbound's a culture in your organization, your sales team truly understands the thing. Oh, they get it. They get it. And they want to play because they understand the impact it's going to have on their bottom line. But the problem is that we have, as a whole, have not communicated the thing. So I already asked for marketers in the room. We know Sean up here is a CEO. Raise your hand if you are a president, CEO, business owner of your organization. Raise your hand. Okay, so then we've got. Then we've got about 10% of the room. 10% of the room. Raise your hand. One more. Raise your hand. If you are primarily on the sales team, okay, 10% of the room. What's wrong with the picture? So we just did 80. 10. 10 is what we just saw. What's wrong with the picture? Anybody? Go, my man, what's wrong? We got to have more owners. That's right. And they gotta be here. Because here's the problem. This is what happens at Inbound every single year. And all these events. You come here as a marketer, you get fired up, you get all these ideas you want to implement. You go back to the team, you go back to the sales manager, you go back to the business owner, you tell them about your ideas, and what do they say? They just rain on your stinking parade. And you're so frustrated. You're so frustrated. Because the reality is this. You can be a prophet to the world, but nobody listens to you. In your own town, you might be the best marketer in the world, but if you have not got them here, they don't understand the thing. Do you realize it is more important that your sales team is in this room right now than you? More important, the CEOs that have brought their sales team like Amelia over here, who is handling all the massages at the event. So that's pretty awesome, because massage does make me happy. Right? Right. Her sales team is here. This is the vision. And then we got to do whatever it takes. We got to do whatever it takes. And of course, the real reason why this is happening is because of this thing that is killing organizations around the globe. Now, one more poll. I want you to raise your hand if you feel like. And be honest, because we're all friends. We're friends. Raise your hand if you feel like you have at least somewhat of a silo issue within your organization. Raise your hand. Be honest. Now look around the room. You all are not alone. You're not alone. What's the problem of silos? Anybody? Go. What's the problem with silos? Come on. Okay, Working twice as much. Because oftentimes we're doing the same thing twice, and nobody knows what everybody's doing. Oh, we both produce the same ebook. Isn't that great? Or you produce the E book in the marketing department, and the sales team says, we don't even sell this anymore. Crazy stuff happens all the time. What else is the problem? Silos, anybody? Frustration. Why? Stephanie Castevens, by the way, amazing. Follow on Twitter. An amazing hubspotter with how many certifications? Nine certifications. Give her a big round of applause. That's impressive. I have 0.9. That was good. Okay, so thank you. Well, frustration for recreating content, wasting time and just being frustrated with each other because you're not communicating. That's right. We're not communicating. We're recreating content. We're the hamster spinning the wheel. Fact of the matter is this, folks. Silos devastate organizations. And the most successful companies right now are the ones that are merging sales and marketing departments. The ones that are calling them revenue departments, whatever that thing is. But I'm telling you this. If you're having sales meetings and your marketing team, at least one person is not there. We got a problem. We got a problem. This is the obsession. This is the obsession. So this is what we got to fix. So what we're going to talk about today is eight ways you can eliminate these silos. Eight ways. Now, at the sales line, my company, we do. We don't do a lot of things well necessarily. I think there's a lot of agencies. We don't necessarily do a lot of things well. We do a couple things really, really well. And I think the one thing that we might do better than anybody in the world is get buy in for this thing we call inbound from the entire team. This has been my obsession for six years. Six years. Ever since Krista, our friend from block imaging said, I need your help. I am so frustrated. And by the way, we're going to finish off with Krista. We're going to finish off with Kristen. Krista, you know what, I got a thought for a second. Krista's company is a B2B company. Raise your hand if you're B2B. Raise your hand if you're b2B. Now the reason why I have to say she's a B2B company is if I don't show a B2B example in my presentation, what does everybody that owns a B2B company say to themselves? Deep dark in their mind, what do they say? That wasn't useful. You're so good. What's your name? Jackie. I like you, Jackie, because you're being honest. You're being honest. That wasn't useful because we're a B2B organization. We're a service based business. You see, we have a very customized solution. You know, I was recently giving a talk at Content Marketing World. A workshop had all types of examples in it. And at the end of these workshops you get feedback, right? You get these and people fill out forms. And so I get a feedback form and the person on the form says, not a Bad session. But I felt like this was just all about B to C. Okay, okay, sure. Next person, I kid you not. What do you think they said? No. Next person says, not a bad session, but I feel like this was all about B2B. What the heck? Fact of the matter is, you see what you want to see, you get out of this, what you want to get out of it. The most successful companies that come here and individuals that come to inbound never sit there in that seat and say, I don't see how this applies. The question is, is it possible that it applies to me? B2B. B2C. Big, small, local, national B2G, as they say in Virginia, where I'm from business to government, we all think we're different. 100% of the world think you're different. I respect that you're different. But in reality, the reason why people buy from you, the reason why they buy from me when I was a pool guy, when I became a sales and marketing guy, is because they trusted me for some reason more than anybody else. The business, we're all in the business. The thing that ties all of us together is we're in the business of trust. And if you really want your team to catch the vision, they got to see this as well. That's your job. Your job is to bring them to that vision that you have as the marketer, because you got it. You got it. And you marketers don't take this the wrong way, but you don't need to be here because you got it. But your leadership team, your sales team, they need to be here. They need to be here. So let's talk about it. Number one, a unified vision. When it comes to success with getting buy in across your organization, everybody must have the same vision. They see it the way you see it. This is essential. If I came to you, and I just want you to think about this for a second. If I came to your sales department right now and I said, what is the vision, Andrew, of inbound for your organization? Would everybody essentially tell me the same thing? Now, don't answer. Right. But that's the thing you have to ask yourself. Now, I want you to consider next week doing an office or organizational poll, and I want you to specifically ask that question to your team and make sure that they write it down and you get back and you compare the answers. It's going to be profound. It's going to be profound. Ask them what their vision is. Because now what we've got to do is we've got to get Everybody on the same page. And essentially we've got to get everybody saying, okay, we got to think like this. It ain't about my department, because my department has never solved anything. And it's about us, our organization, our team. We need to do this together. We have a struggle here. We have content deficiency. We have video deficiency. We have closing rate deficiencies. But it's we. It's not the sales department. It's not the marketing department. It's a we always, you know, words matter. They matter a lot. And the way you talk, especially as a marketer, if everything is we based and you can bring it in, as in an us conversation in your organization, you're going to start to see a shift. And it sounds so simple. No, I don't know if that's going to make a difference. Marcus. It will make a difference. I promise you that. And in conjunction with getting that vision, this one is profound. Now, another quick poll, and this one's important. Come on in, Come on in. It's good times. It's Laura Fitton. Everybody say hi. Laura Fitton. Good. Now she's at Pistachio. How she got that handle on Twitter, I don't know. I don't know, but she got it. She's like number three on Twitter. Okay, so workshop. Let's talk about a workshop live poll. I need your help on this. Everybody participate, because this is where we get honest with each other. By show of hands, how many of you, when you started the inbound process, you got your sales leadership and marketing team together and you had some type of workshop that kicked it off by show of hands. Hi. And be honest. Now, look around the room. What percentage is that, would y' all say? Roughly 10 to 15%. 10 to 15%. Now, do you recall when, some of you recall when Simon Sinek came here a couple years ago? Right? We've all heard about Simon Sinek for the most part at this point. And Simon says you like that? Simon says. Simon says that if they don't understand three things, it will not become a culture. What are the three things they've got to understand? That's right. Listen, if they can't understand the what, the how and the why, if they can't define that. So you say to your team in this poll, when you go back next week, what is the vision that we share? Why are we doing inbound? That's the first question. And then you have three lines after that and you say very simply, what is inbound marketing? Get the definitions from the team. You'll learn A lot. Number two, how are we going to do this successfully, individually and collectively? How are we going to do this successfully? And then number three, ask them, why is this important from a collective perspective, but also from an individual perspective, why is it important that you are part of this? This is the stuff we don't do. I'm telling you, for all the successful, we have had some of the, you know, we had the swimming pool story for a long time and the river pool story became famous. And then I started teaching this to companies, started the sales line. And a lot of people said to me as I spoke, well, that might have worked for you as a pool guy, but I don't think that would work in our organization. Of course, a lot of them are B2B's, a lot of B2C's, all that stuff. And so what we did is we set out on a quest to develop case studies from different organizations all over the world. And we've had some amazing case studies that have been featured in Inc. Entrepreneur magazine, et cetera. And we've had failures. And the number one factor that dictates whether it's success or failure with the client starts with the buy in from the top. If the CEO, president, leadership team gets it, doesn't mean they're producing blog content, but it means they get the vision. They're willing to spend time, effortless resources if they get it. And if they started with a unified visionary workshop, those are the two major elements of massive success. If you've never had this with your team, I would urge you to go back and schedule it. It is that important. Will you do that for me? Anybody? Just say yes to make me feel good. Good. I love you. I love you. I love you all. So here's the idea. At the end of that workshop, you want your sales team to say one thing. Dang. Buyers have changed. And if we don't change, we are screwed. If your sales team doesn't realize the buyer has changed, none of this inbound stuff matters. They must say this. All of your sales team must constantly be thinking about, my goodness, the buyer has changed. My goodness, the buyer has changed. My goodness. 70% of the buying decision is made before they call me, before they contact me, before I'm even involved in the conversation. That's what we got to do. And if they aren't saying that right now, there's a good chance that they, and I'm just going to be honest, are overvaluing their influence on the sale. Because if they are undervaluing you and overvaluing themselves in terms of the sales department. Well, then we have an issue. They must realize that the marketing department is huge and has major, major impact on them. Number three. Number three. A singular focus. Again. Aligns itself with the first two. Aligns itself with the first two. And this is the final question that you should have on that poll that you send out to your team next week, and that is this. What is our inbound marketing mission statement? By a show of hands. By a show of hands, how many of you have an inbound marketing mission statement that your entire team knows? You didn't hear? I'll ask again. It's okay. It's okay. By a show of hands, how many of you have an inbound marketing mission statement that your entire team knows? And see? Then we wonder why we get resistance. What, how and what, Douglas? Why? Why? You got to build a foundation before you build a house. Content is the roof. It's the last part, gang. The foundation is what we're talking about today. And if the house is built on sand, washed away. You with me? Like, yeah, this guy's right. I told you it was going to be a little bit intense, right? And it's intense because here's what I know. There are marketers in this room right now that are frustrated with their job. There are people in this room right now, and this is a hard pill, that want to leave the company. And the reason why you want to leave the company is because you feel what, handcuffed. You are an artist. You create. And when an artist is not given the full paintbrush and the full palette, what happens to the artist? What happens? They get so frustrated. What happens if a stallion is put into a fence and not allowed to run? What happens? Two things. Two things. What happens, my man? It goes crazy and eventually dies. True. Or it jumps the fence. It jumps the fence. There are people in this room. Jared, are you here? My man, Jared, stand up for a second. Now, Jared, recently, he was a long time. You were a marketer, right? Just like many of us in the room now, you went and you went on your own. The biggest reason why you went on their own. Tell everybody. The biggest reason sales didn't buy in. He felt like he was alone on an island and he jump the fence. I have talked to so many stallions over the years. As soon as I met him, I knew he was a stallion. And see, sometimes they. I'm just honest with people. I say, look, either you're going to do what it takes to get the buy in from the team or you're going to jump the fence soon. But once the seed is planted of frustration, it doesn't go away. It doesn't go away. It doesn't stop. It continues to grow. Some of you are saying, my goodness, how's this guy in my soul right now? It's because you're not alone. You're not alone. Everybody give him a round of applause, by the way, for being a stallion. I hate to tell you, Jared, but a couple people are going to approach you afterwards and they're going to ask you a few questions. Okay? So here's an example of a mission statement that's simple. You got to keep it simple, right? Simplicity is key. That's why I don't ever use big words. I don't know big words, but I don't use big words either because it doesn't help the conversation. So if you want to have a mission statement, it might be like this. We're going to be the best teachers in the world. Isn't that simple? You see, no CEO has ever woke up and said, we're going to be the best inbound marketers in the world. That's not what they say in the morning. It's not what drives them. No sales team is ever going to say, yes, I'm going to be ultimate inbound sales guy or gal. But they will say, do we help solve people's problems better than anybody else in the world? Do you see what I'm saying? When people have a question, do they think of us? Do they know we are the place to come to get that answer? It's the simple phrases that make things stick in the organization. And then your job all of a sudden becomes so much better, so much easier. Number four. Number four. This is such a big deal. Insourcing. Insourcing. Insourcing is the process of using your existing subject matter experts to produce content. I am amazed at how little this is actually done. Brian Fanzo is in the house. You know Brian Fanzo, if you are not following him, he is literally, when it comes to live video and just tools in general, he is one of the best follows for me right now in the world because I learn something from him every day. If you get a chance to go to his sessions, Brian Fanzo, F A N Z O. He's a great, great guy and I really mean that. Okay, what the heck was I talking about? Okay, so we're talking about using your team. Why do we pay employees to communicate all day long, but then we don't make sure they are part of the marketing efforts of the content production efforts. So if I come to your team, especially your sales team, I should have a conversation with them that sounds something like this. So do you work with the marketing department to help them produce content? Salesperson says to me, of course we do. And I say to them, well, how often is that? And they have an immediate answer. Well, how it works in our company is we're required to spend one hour a month with at least someone in the marketing department so that we can share ideas, give content, be on video, whatever that thing is. Am I making sense? Am I making sense? Insourcing is a huge deal, but you know, you can't just say you have to do this before you give them the why. That's why everything. What you're seeing today is a chain with a set of links. The links, assuming each one is strong, they all work. But if you allow one to be weak, the whole chain falls apart. And that's why some of you will say, I believe in all this, but we're gonna skip the workshop. Good luck. I've tried that. I know how that goes. I know how it goes. I don't know why it's so important. It's just a major part of the chain. Major part of the chain. You know, we don't take on a client at the sales line unless they have a workshop. They have to agree to it. And do you know what? The sales team is required to be in the room. I don't care if the marketing team's there. Because it's a sales conversation inbound. Is it a sales conversation or is it a marketing conversation? That sounds nice, but is this a sales or marketing conversation? See, you're so unsure of what to say. Isn't that interesting? You're so unsure of what to say. And because you're unsure of what to say, you have problems getting buy in. Look, folks, if you want to get buy in on an idea in your organization, you call it sales. And if you want to get the hold, you call it marketing. Yeah. You know, you're like, dang, he's right. He's right. HubSpot. You know, one of the biggest messaging mistakes that HubSpot and all these marketing automation companies did early on is they called it marketing automation. That was a huge mistake. Now, the cool thing is they have been incredibly progressive in fixing the problem, haven't they? And that's why so much has been invested in the sales side. They realize HubSpot is a sales tool. This is a sales conversation. When you have a workshop Everything is directed towards your sales team. And this is how you get to buy in. Because they realize it's about them, it's about revenue. For the longest time, marketing has been viewed as an expense. Sales has been viewed as revenue. And thus that is why it needs to be a sales conversation. We can't change everything in one day, but we can change the way that we talk about the thing that's insourcing. Number five, number five. We've got to have you notice on the screen there's a bunch of hats. Do you know why there's a bunch of hats? Because we all wear a bunch of hats. Raise your hand if you feel. And let's be honest, because we're really tight. I want you to, by show of hands, how many of you feel like you might be wearing too many hats within your organization right now? Look at that, look at that. The ones that didn't raise their hands, they're unemployed. They're unemployed now. Sometimes giving a speech, people come up to me afterwards and say, marcus, I believe in this. I want to make it a culture. You know, I've got this one person on staff and you know, he or she is really good. I think they would make for a great content manager. And I say, well, what else do they do? Start going down the list. I say, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. They don't need another hat. This is not for the person that is working 40 hours and you're trying to get another 10 out of them. Because this is a full time job. We must have somebody that wakes up in the morning within the organization and that says, how are we going to be the best teachers in the world today? How are we going to do that? And because they own it. It's their baby, it's their obsession, it's their thing. And their enthusiasm is contagious. And they're the ones that are constantly organizing the sales team, meeting with them, having the conversations with them, grabbing the videographer, which you should also have, so that we can produce content that's more effective, more efficient, that's getting better results. That's what it's all about. That's what it's all about. So not only do you need the content manager, but somebody on your sales team must be also viewed as the advocate, as the advocate. So you've got an advocate on both sides, that they're constantly talking, that they are in unison, that they are sharing the same vision. Because if you want to quickly eliminate silos, you get leaders from two departments that become best friends. And they're constantly in conversation. So I would ask you, do you right now have an inbound sales advocate? If you don't get one in your organization, make it a defined role within the company. Do you have a content manager? If you don't have one, make it a defined role within the company. Some. You should hire somebody for that. Because for the ones that do that alone, they're amazing. They're changing the game. You see it again and again. We make it required when we work with clients that they have a content manager. And I, I'm being honest when I say this. I would guess within the next year we're going to tell all of our clients, unless you also have a full time videographer, we're not going to play. We're not going to play. When we work with an organization, our goal is within the first six months, 50% of the content they're producing should be video within the first six months. I know. Within the next two years, two years from today, I will be telling everybody, if 80% of your content isn't video or visually based, and that could include VR, by the way, which it will, then we have a problem. We've got to make this shift. That's why right now the videographer and the content manager are dramatically more important than you bring in. Bringing in one or two or three salespeople dramatically more because they will do the job of six or seven. They will, because they will shorten the sales cycle. They will shorten the funnel so very, very much. Make it happen. Make it happen. All right. And by the way, if you want to, like, look at what a content manager, how they think, other than, I'm obsessed with this teacher, this is the statement that a content manager should be saying. Like, if I go to your content manager, I say, what is your goal other than being the best teacher in the world? They should say, my goal is to make my sales team look like geniuses. Right, Steph? Because if you make your sales team look like geniuses, what happens? You look like a genius. It is not our job to try to be the star. If we try to make everybody else in the organization become a star, then all of a sudden everything changes. They love us, we become more valuable. And you get that thing that you want called a raise because you become indispensable. Are you indispensable right now? Are you? I would challenge you to become indispensable, but you become indispensable by making everybody else look amazing. Right? Make them look amazing, you know, at the sales line, we have a requirement with our employees, and we're a marketing agency. I have a brand, and they are required to also build their brand while they work with us. They're required to because I believe our job as leaders for you CEOs is to make everybody on your team feel special, to build their own platform. And what's funny is sometimes we say, well, if we do that, then we're going to lose them. No, you won't. You won't lose them, because if you build their platform, they. They will be more tied to you than they've ever been. Who cares if the headhunter comes? They're tied to you. Embrace them. Embrace them. Are you with me? Say yes. Yes. Okay, cool. I'm glad we all agree now. Number six. Number six, Content should be viewed as your greatest sales tool. If I went to your sales organization right now, would they say, content is my greatest sales tool? If they don't, we have a problem. If I went to your sales team right now and I said, on average, how many pages of your website do you think a potential customer would be willing to read? What do you think they would say? I know what they would say. What do you think they would say? What do you think they would say? Come on. They may not have even looked at it. She says, you mean we have a website? Yeah, we really do. You know, the average that a sales team says, because we've done so many sales trainings on this. One to two. They value your department at one to two. That's less than two minutes of my life as a prospect. Visiting, vetting, doing that one to two. Baloney, baloney. But we've allowed them to. To think this way because we haven't laid the foundation. Quick story. Some of you heard me tell this story. I love this story because it changed my life, and it's changed the life of many organizations. Many of you know I'm a pool guy. Not really. Today I'm just a silent partner with river pools, but I own a swimming pool company. It's the most traffic swimming pool company in the world. All because we embrace this thing called they Ask youk Answer Inbound. Right? And so at the beginning of 2013, I was looking at a couple different groups of people on my website. Both of them had filled out that magical form on HubSpot and said, I want to get a quote. And so one of these groups ended up not buying. The other group ended up buying. So I said to myself, what is the difference between the ones that did not buy versus the ones that Bought. And of course I was diving into my glorious HubSpot analytics and I was looking and then all of a sudden I kept noticing the number 30 appearing underneath the group that had bought. What do you think that number 30 represented? Anybody know? Pages viewed. And this is what we found out. This to me was like discovering America, right? What we found out was if somebody read a prospect, read 30 or more pages of the website before the initial sales appointment, they would buy 80% of the time. If they did not, the closing rates went down to 25%. What was happening over the course of those 30 pages? What was happening? We're teaching, educating. Which led to the trust, which led to them falling in love. Look, you got to look at every piece of content you produce. Text, video, audio, whatever it is, live stream. Every piece of content they consume for you is another date that you're going on. And if you go on enough dates with somebody, Douglas, what's going to happen? You might get married. You might get married. Now, some of you were thinking that, shame on you, Shame on you. No horn dogs or Douglas, you might break up. And that's good, right? Because at least you didn't waste any more time with a bad fit. Now, if you knew, let's say in your organization, your sales team, if your sales team knew that all they had to do was get a prospect to read 30 pieces of content before that initial sales appointment, they would buy 80% of the time. What do you think they would do differently? What do you think you would do differently? Anybody? What would you do differently? Yeah, my man says more content. That's good. Because if your website's 15 pages, you can't say, hey, could you read my website twice? You can't do that. You can't do that. Can't do that. Alright, can't do that. Doesn't work. Doesn't work. So you've got to have more content. It better be about them, their questions, their issues, their concerns, their fears, their worries. But also, also, and this is the part that everybody forgets, people say to me all the time, how long does it take for content for inbound, for video, for this, for that to work? It can work tomorrow. The video that my main fans is producing right now, it can work this second for the viewer. Somebody that's seeing this right now might say, that guy is money and I want to bring him to my event. That's real time sales. You see, you must not see your initial victories with content being things like SEO being things like likes on freaking Facebook. The initial victories Come the second it's produced, your sales team grabs it and says, I will integrate this Tyler, into the sales process. Now, this is the video that I've been needing because I'm tired of answering the same. 80% of all questions are the same questions in that first sales call. And so now we have a video that addresses them before I even meet with the prospect. How much time is this going to save me as a sales guy or gal? Woohoo. More time with my family. That's what it's about, right? As marketers, you have the ability to give people more time with their family. Brother, that's a big deal. That's a big deal. You can do that. But you've got to teach them. You've got to teach them. Now, because we started integrating content so much in the sales process at river pools, some really cool things started to happen because whenever anybody would call, we would do whatever it took to make sure they were using the content. And so by the time we got there, things had magically changed. Now, the story I'm about to tell you, some of you heard, but this is a real story. This is a lead sheet. Now, this is what HubSpot lead sheets used to look like. Honestly, I don't know why they changed them because they were so cool back then. And this shows, well, what the lead sheet or what the lead did. Now this is a real person. His name is William Grizzard. He's real. Don't Google him because that'll be weird for all of us. Right? Right. So Bill Grizzard, we're going to call him Bill Grizzard now. Bill Grizzard, he did an organic search one time. It says he was using Yahoo, which in and of itself is really odd. You know what I'm saying? I mean, it's really weird. You can already tell this guy's got a couple of issues. Right? Right. He searches cost of fiberglass pool. And then something really interesting happened next. What does that say? Total page views. How many pages did he read next? 375 pages. What is wrong with Bill Grizzard? What's wrong with this guy? So he said he's got too much time on his hands. That's right. He must be retired. Maybe he's a competitor. Maybe he's a stalker. Maybe he has obsessive swimming pool disorder. Who knows? You know what I mean? It's weird. We can all agree it's weird behavior, right? Weird behavior. Story doesn't stop. Story doesn't stop. Same night, get another lead sheet. That Email is supposed to be erased. You're not supposed to see that, so don't act like you see it right now. Now, same night we get a lead from Joanie Grizzard. Turns out Bill has a wife named Joanie. Same night. Yeah. Decision maker. You're right, Dion. You figured out your role. Good. He has understood his role in life and accepted it. Embraced it. You are good, sir. You're good. You're good. That's why you're happy. That's why you're happy. He's got a ring on. He's happy. Look at him. Smile. Smile. Okay, so. So look at what she did. She did an organic search. She was got a first identified Yahoo family in America, folks. And she searches Richmond, Virginia. Pools reads 149 pages of the website. What do you think that sales appointment was like? Oh, I need a prop. He's got a piece of paper. I'm gonna use your book, my man. I walk in the house, this, when I was still a pool guy, like five years ago. I walked in the house. Bill Grizzard is standing there with a spreadsheet in his hands. You're thinking he's got to be an engineer, maybe he's an accountant. All right, you're getting there. Spreadsheet in his hands, it's got the pull. He is getting every option and accessory he's getting with the pool. And all he needed for me was one little thing, which was the price. And I walked out of the house 45 minutes later with a signed contract, a $5,000 deposit. And as I drove away, I started to laugh because I realized something. How much selling had I done that day? What percentage of the buying process was done? Yeah, 99.999. And my only job was do not screw this up, pool guy. Turns out Bill Grizzard is not a freak. Bill Grizzard is a surgeon and a very successful one. He's also a consumer that wants to be comfortable with his buying decisions. I realized that day that content, assuming it's honest and transparent, it's the greatest sales pool in the world. Never stops, never sleeps, never asks for a commission. It just goes and goes and goes. And if your sales team uses it, it will change their life. When the economy was amazing and I was a pool guy in 2007 and it was easy to sell pools that year. I personally sold 75 pools. And to sell 75 pools, the average of which appointment was about three hours, I had to go on about 230 sales appointments that year. The average sales appointment Was about two hours from my house. Do the math. Do the math in your head. You see my whole life that year, right? Fast forward to 2013, this year. By this point, I'm out of the game. You know, I'm going around giving talks to cool people like you. And we have another salesperson who's arguably not nearly as polished. And that year sold 95 swimming pools. 95. Guess how many sales appointments he went on? 120. 120. Now, who was happier, me in 2007 or him in 2013? Oh, he was much happier. Who had more time with his family, him or me? He did. He did. By the way, if your sales team heard that story just now, how would they feel? That story that I just said to them just now, how would they feel? Do you think they would want to use content in the sales process more? Do you think they would get it more? You see, what I just did for you was a bit that we do a segment that we do in workshops, and we do it for sales teams so they can see the impact that it has on them because we want them to say, oh, my goodness. Oh, my goodness. You see, I could share that same type of story with multiple industries. I just chose my own personal one. But we've done this again and again. I had a B2B organization call me six months ago, a client of ours whose average sales cycle when we started was 18 months. Their average deal is 3 to 5 million dollars. They sell to hospitals, a service, and he calls me up freaking out because he said, marcus, you would not believe it. We just closed a deal for $3 million, and it took us six months. See, they would have sworn that it took 18 months when you started for a hospital to make a decision. But it turns out that hospitals are vetting their vendors online before they actually buy. This is what's possible for you. So can you help your sales team catch this vision better in terms of the value of the content? Yes or no? Can you do it? Yes or no? And that is the goal. That's my challenge to you. How much time we got? Oh, we got to stop. Okay. All right. So I'm going to stop right there, and I'm going to finish off with the two other points. This is what we talked about today. You need to make it required. You need to make it required. This is not an option. I'm going to close with this story of Krista Now, Krista, if you recall, she said, I'm so frustrated. Right? I'm so frustrated. Well, we went out there and we taught a workshop. This is what happened to them. They started this. We had this workshop in 2011. This is where they went from there. Today, they're the most trafficked company in the refurbished medical imaging space. They dominate the industry. And here is a direct quote from Krista. Because of insourcing, in other words, using our employees to produce this content and content marketing, we can account for at least 20 million in sales we otherwise never would have gotten. Now, do you think they're having a question on their team about roi, about value? And the last thing I want to share with you is an email that she sent to me. And this was six months ago. Six months ago. And this is what it said. And this is profound. I'm going to stand for this one because, you know, read along with me. Remember a. A sales team member sent this to her. She forwarded it to me. She says, guys, you all may be sick of hearing these stories, but I still get a kick out of it. I just had a conference call with a pain management center in Arkansas. Come to find out, before I even spoke, the purchaser had printed off several of my blogs to bring to her board meeting and enabled her to answer questions on company models, comparison models, budgets, what equipment they needed, et cetera. She had read and seen so much of our content, she said she couldn't wait to talk to me. She told me who my competitors were and how much they were quoting. Even when I told her we would likely charge more, she said, but I trust you guys. I'd rather work with you. I realize they don't all line up like this, but when our funnel is working at its best, it is so, so sweet. I'm sure I could still find a way to screw up the deal, but the point is, I couldn't be better set up to succeed. The effort to produce the content is worth it. Thank you to the stellar efforts of the marketing team for. For truly setting us apart. So my final question for you is, when was the last time your marketing department received an email like that from sales? This is the challenge. Do whatever it takes to get on one page. One vision. Make them look like geniuses. Because if you don't, the stallion will jump the fence. My name is Marcus Sheridan. Thank you very much.