Marcus Sheridan - They Ask You Answer: A Revolutionary Approach to Inbound Sales, Content Marketing, and Todays Digital Consumer

MARCUS SHERIDAN

This book is printed on acid-free paper.

Copyright 2017 by Marcus Sheridan. All rights reserved

Published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, New Jersey

Published simultaneously in Canada

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning, or otherwise, except as permitted under Section 107 or 108 of the 1976 United States Copyright Act, without either the prior written permission of the Publisher, or authorization through payment of the appropriate per-copy fee to the Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Danvers, MA 01923 (978) 750-8400, fax (978) 646-8600, or on the web at www.copyright.com. Requests to the Publisher for permission should be addressed to the Permissions Department, John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 111 River Street, Hoboken, NJ 07030, (201) 748-6011, fax (201) 748-6008, or online at www.wiley.com/go/permissions.

Limit of Liability/Disclaimer of Warranty: While the publisher and author have used their best efforts in preparing this book, they make no representations or warranties with the respect to the accuracy or completeness of the contents of this book and specifically disclaim any implied warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose. No warranty may be created or extended by sales representatives or written sales materials. The advice and strategies contained herein may not be suitable for your situation. You should consult with a professional where appropriate. Neither the publisher nor the author shall be liable for damages arising herefrom.

For general information about our other products and services, please contact our Customer Care Department within the United States at (800) 762-2974, outside the United States at (317) 572-3993 or fax (317) 572-4002.

Wiley publishes in a variety of print and electronic formats and by print-on-demand. Some material included with standard print versions of this book may not be included in e-books or in print-on-demand. If this book refers to media such as a CD or DVD that is not included in the version you purchased, you may download this material at http://booksupport.wiley.com. For more information about Wiley products, visit www.wiley.com.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data:

Names: Sheridan, Marcus, author.

Title: They ask you answer : a revolutionary approach to inbound sales,

content marketing, and todays digital consumer / Marcus Sheridan;

foreword by Krista Kotrla.

Description: Hoboken : Wiley, 2017. | Includes index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2016042783| ISBN 9781119312970 (hardback)

Subjects: LCSH: Marketing. | Sales promotion. | BISAC: BUSINESS & ECONOMICS /

Marketing / General.

Classification: LCC HF5415 .S44124 2017 | DDC 658.8dc23 LC record available at
https://lccn.loc.gov/2016042783

Cover design: Paul McCarthy
Cover image: Alex Belomlinsky/Getty Images, Inc.

Im just a construction worker, but when I had a plan and we were working together, we could build a skyscraper. Now youre Master Builders, just imagine what could happen if you did that. You could save the universe.

Emmet Brickowoski, The Lego Movie

Back in 2010 I discovered something surprising. It turns out that its possible for an average person to save a struggling business and inspire a major culture change throughout an organization. This book is about how.

How is that possible if youre not the CEO? How do you do it if you work remotely, like more than 1,000 miles away from headquarters? What if you are the youngest person on the management team? And a woman just returning from maternity leave? Do you have to mandate it or is it possible to inspire that sort of change?

How does an average person cut budgets, bring in more sales, shorten the buying cycle, increase profits, get other people to market for you, improve employee engagement, and dramatically grow the business with a simple four-word strategy? Impossible, you say. Or is it?

What if I told you that it is very possible because thats exactly what happened.

Let me share with you a little bit about my journey.

The truth is I couldnt have accomplished any of those things without the help of the ideas, stories, and strategies shared throughout this book with Marcus Sheridan as my guide. Heres how it began....

It started with an urgent problem. Sales were down. Way down. So much so that the company was shrinking. Budgets were dramatically cut, product lines were being abandoned, and team members who were dear friends were let go. It was devastating.

On top of that, the industry as we knew it was changing and buyers were increasingly more difficult to reach. E-mails werent getting through. Trade shows had half the number of attendees. Mailers werent bringing in any calls. And dont even get me started on fax blasting (can you even believe there was an era when that worked?). To top it all off, somehow even the smallest of our competitors were showing up higher in online search rankings.

Where had all the buyers gone? How were we going to grow with all this stacked against us?

And who was I to think that I could do anything about it?

At that time, I was the marketing manager at Block Imaging, a B2B that buys, sells, and refurbishes used medical imaging equipment; everything from MRI and CT scanners to digital X-ray equipment. Pretty unique niche, right?

It bothered me that we were a worldwide business and yet only 5 percent of our sales were attributed to online inquiries. This became the single statistic that I set out to change immediately.

This focus led me to discover a concept commonly referred to as inbound or content marketing. I was quickly convinced that this was the answer to our most urgent problem. So we signed up for the software and it was going to be a game changer. Marketing automation and blogging were going to change everything, right?

I was wrong.

We needed more than just software. We needed information worth sharing. And we needed a lot of it.

So I set out to connect with people in other departments to collect information worth posting and sharing. How hard could that be?

As enthusiastic as everyone was, heres the gist of how most of those conversations went: Krista, this all sounds very exciting and I cannot wait to see what you do with it. Because Im in sales, Im going to go back to selling now. Good luck with your marketing thingy.

New hurdle. Buy-in.

I spent the next six months trying to get buy-in and participation. I gave presentations, offered workshops, invited senior sales leaders to attend social selling conferences with me, unveiled scary statistics as often as I could. Even after all of that effort, the best traction I could get was about two blog posts a month. And I was sad. Sad because I knew the information we were posting was more brand-centric than customer-centric. Sad because it was taking so much effort to produce sub-par content. Sad because we were running out of time to do this half-assed.

So thats when I made the call. It was the call that would change everything.