Katie [00:00:02]:
Welcome to the AEC Marketing for Principles podcast. This show is designed as a conversation between sales and marketing principals to address trends, challenges and best practices that are driving growth for professional service firms. Through our collection of discussions with subject matter experts, industry legends and leaders, we aim to share thoughts and practical tips with our listeners and that you can use for growing your AEC brands. Hosted by me, Katie Cash, Senior Vice President at smartigies, the AEC growth consulting firm that’s been developing smart business strategies for design and construction firms since 2008. Hi, everyone. Welcome back to another episode of AEC Marketing for Principals. This is your host here, Katie Cash. And if you are a principal, a marketer, or a seller doer in our lovely industry of aec, you know, competition is stiffer than ever today.
Katie [00:00:58]:
Shortlists are becoming harder and harder to make, interviews are becoming harder to close, and clients want more information earlier. And most teams, I hate to say it, but they’re still playing by the old rules when it comes to how they pursue work and still chasing that relationship. So today I’m excited to have Marcus Sheridan with us. He is one of the most trusted voices in what I refer to as sales and marketing alignment. And his books, they Ask youk Answer and some of his more recent work has really started bringing up voices around sales and marketing and how to build a more modern framework for building credibility, how you earn trust, and how you can actually utilize content. Yes, folks, you can utilize content to drive more action. So, Marcus, I’m so excited to have you. Let’s jump in and see where this conversation goes.
Marcus Sheridan [00:01:47]:
Katie, I think we’re gonna have a great conversation and my commitment is that somebody listening to this is going to have some takeaways because that’s what it’s all about, right?
Katie [00:01:56]:
That is what it’s all about. So let’s start high level. Let’s unpack what it means to sell trust in today’s very skeptic society where, you know, in our world of ac, relationships matter more than ever. I’m sure that’s something you see across the B2B space. But how can firms sell trust in a. What’s becoming more and more of a digital first scenario?
Marcus Sheridan [00:02:19]:
Yeah, you know, I think oftentimes we, we think about digital and we think that runs contrary to human first and it doesn’t have to.
Katie [00:02:29]:
I think it’s separate.
Marcus Sheridan [00:02:30]:
Yeah, yeah, they can absolutely coincide and there’s many, many different ways to do that. But we have to say, you know, they can, they can run the same direction on the same road. Together. And I think that’s really the most successful firms in the future are going to be, hey, we’re very digital. Yes, we’re, we’re always going to first, but we’re very, very digitally inclined. Now, if you look at the world today, just generally speaking, we got a lot of change that is happening. We do have a trust deficit as a whole in society. Everything from, you know, we don’t know what brands to believe, we don’t know what politicians to believe, we don’t know what media is to believe.
Marcus Sheridan [00:03:11]:
Right. So there’s always, it’s like all this doubt that exists and those persons or brands or organizations that are willing to, to say that which others aren’t saying and show what others aren’t showing in a way that makes their audience just stop and say, wait, did they just do that? Like, whoa, where did that come from? And that’s what you should be inducing with your core customer, your buyer today. If you’re not doing something from a creative perspective, especially with your content like we’re going to talk about, that makes them stop, makes them flinch, makes them say, whoa, wait a second, then you’re probably not doing it right.
Katie [00:03:51]:
Yeah. And I think, you know, you mentioned there’s a lot of trust deficit in our society as a whole, but there’s also in the world of design and construction, there’s a lot of just uncertainty around things that used to be big decision drivers. You know, I’m trying to pick my contractor and who’s going to be able to deliver on my schedule because I need to build dorms and, you know, the students are coming and I’ve got to have somewhere to place them. So a lot of concern around schedule certainty, a lot of concerns around cost certainty because the budget is what it is and we’re not sure about material availability and what the impacts of the tariffs are going to have on my budget. So do I trust you? You know, Mr. Architect, Mr. Engineer, that you can design to my budget so I can get the most out of it. And yeah, be bold in your content and addressing that head on.
Katie [00:04:39]:
You know, I coach a lot of teams in an interview scenario where it’s the last moment, it’s at the bottom of the funnel. They’re presenting in front of the decision makers and they’re really trying to convey, hey, you can trust me, you can trust that I’ve got a vision. I hear you. I’m going to listen. It’s going to be a nice process, but we’re going to get you in your building on Time. And that’s kind of a little bit too late, don’t you think, to start selling it? I think there’s lots of opportunity upstream to start planning that flag and different ways that you can start establishing.
Marcus Sheridan [00:05:12]:
Yeah, I mean, it’s no different than the farmer that, you know, needs a huge harvest and, you know, plants the seed and thinking, okay, I’ve got two weeks for the harvest. It’s like, unfortunately, that’s contrary to the law of the harvest. It doesn’t work that way. And, you know, the other issue we see, and I know you’ve seen this with your clients, Katie, there’s. We tend to be in this. In the space of, like, where they’re really busy with work or we’re really busy trying to generate work. And that pendulum can swing back and forth. And the idea is that you’re creating an endless stream of potential customers, leads, et cetera.
Marcus Sheridan [00:05:48]:
But again, to do that and to become that known and trusted voice. And that’s why I wrote they Ask youk Answer and now Endless Customers, the most recent version of the Ask youk Answer is because I think everyone is looking for a formula that will help them to become a more known and trusted brand. Because what I know won’t change in the coming years as a business, I know for a fact that your ability to become more known and more trusted in your market is going to be absolutely paramount to your success. Now, what we don’t know is we don’t know what’s going to happen with all these digital platforms. We don’t know what’s going to happen with Google. They may or may not exist in 10 years. Certainly as we know it, they probably won’t exist. And we don’t know what’s going to happen to, you know, even the Internet.
Marcus Sheridan [00:06:39]:
We don’t even know what’s going to happen with cell phones. And if we’re going to be using cell phones like we are today, in 10 years. Right. It’s just like a lot of things that are changing and way people are getting information, the way they’re vetting companies and the way they’re vetting businesses. So what you have to do is you got to say, okay, I need to focus on principles, principles that are timeless, that I know are going to be around 10 years, 20 years, 30 years. Well, that goes to. You got to be known, you got to be trusted. If you’re going to be trusted, you really got to do.
Marcus Sheridan [00:07:10]:
I would espouse four things. This is really what I talk about in Endless Customers is number one, you got to be willing to say online what others in your space aren’t willing to say. Yeah, and that’s a whole. That’s a whole can of worms that we can open up there. Number two, very similar. Number one, you got to be willing to show what others in your space aren’t willing to show, especially with video. Number three, you gotta be willing to sell in a way others aren’t willing to sell. And then number four, you have to be more human than others are willing to be.
Marcus Sheridan [00:07:42]:
So those are the big four of a known and trusted brand. And I could tell you if we were doing a poll of your audience right now, Katie, and there’s a hundred of them in the room, let’s say, hypothetically, and I looked at all of them and I said, can you honestly say that online especially, you’re saying you’re showing, you’re selling and you’re being more human in a way that 95% of your competitors are not, and you’re doing it consistently? Most would say, no, I can’t say that I’m doing that.
Katie [00:08:12]:
Yeah, yeah. I mean, I think if you. And I mean, we do it every day at my agency. You know, we’re auditing clients, doing some competitive analysis, and nine times out of 10, whoever they have us audit them against those other six or 10 firms, you could just change the names around the websites because they all say the exact same thing. For what it’s worth, our industry, for whatever reason, we like to think that our digital footprint is our own ability to build monuments to ourselves. It’s the we show. We do this. We’re great.
Katie [00:08:45]:
Look at me, look at me. Look at my great portfolio. And I do think that there’s, you know, reasons to have that on there, for validation, for credibility. But to your point, there is an extreme opportunity to humanize it. There’s ample opportunity for you to carve out a place and start talking about things in a different way, from a different framework, sharing information that might routinely be shared only in the boardroom, but you can put it online now.
Marcus Sheridan [00:09:15]:
Well, this whole idea of you have to let go of being the hero of your own story is incredibly sound, important advice. And to your point, too, if you look at most websites, look at most homepages, there’s a simple test that you can do, Katie, and I’m sure you do something like this with your clients. But anyways, it’s. Listening to this right now. You can do this. And it’ll probably make you a little bit sick to your stomach, but that’s a good thing because it’s costing you money. And that is I want you to go to your homepage right now and count the number of times you use we, our pronouns, versus the number of times you use you your pronouns. Because ideally, if you really understand what resonates on a psychological perspective with buyers is when you’re using you, your language.
Marcus Sheridan [00:10:08]:
And by the way, that should be 80% of the of let’s call it the pronouns on your homepage should be you, your based. But most companies, 80% is we our based. I’m talking about myself, I’m talking about why we’re awesome. I’m talking about what we do. And because of that just doesn’t have the same resonance with the reader, with the viewer, the visitor. And they don’t say things like, I don’t know what it is about this company. They just get me, they understand me, just feel something special about them. Right? That is what they should be saying, thinking, feeling.
Marcus Sheridan [00:10:43]:
But unless you learn to change who’s the hero of the story, it’s going to be difficult to do that. Obviously, the best book for that is Story Brand by Donald Miller. I don’t care what you sell, I don’t care how B2B you think you are. That’s a great system. Number one book bought with the ask, you answer, slash enlist customers is story brand. For that reason, I think our little.
Katie [00:11:02]:
World of design and construction, you know, it is very relationship driven. We do know that trust is the number one emotion that these decision makers are buying professional services from. And we know that these buyers at the end of the day don’t want to be sold to like they still want to be the buyer, they want to be informed, they want to be viewed and valued as the client. But we’re seeing more and more behavior change where even five years ago we were a very late adopter industry. But the last five years we see an uptick in firms that are utilizing content marketing and getting, you know, social media marketing and alignment, thought leadership and those other pieces trying to switch the pendulum, right where we’re talking about you and we’re talking about, you know, we’re leveraging all that we know because this is a consulting based industry. We know what our clients ask, they ask us, we get paid to answer it. So I feel like of any other industry out there, the design and construction space is in a great position to become a teacher and an author and a credible voice of providing helpful, educational, informative content that makes a prospect go from not really understanding things to being A very well educated buyer that can tell the difference between an A player and a B player that is now in a position to make an educated decision to find a partner that’s going to better align with what they’re looking for and that’s going to be a better partnership all the way around. So let’s, let’s go into that can of worms you mentioned earlier.
Katie [00:12:35]:
Let’s talk a little bit about your philosophy of, hey, have you taken a moment? Have you written down all those questions that your clients ask you? Have you used it as a roadmap for content generation? Let’s talk a little bit about that.
Marcus Sheridan [00:12:50]:
Yeah. So if you look at first two core pillars of a known and trusted brand, it has to do with saying and showing what others aren’t willing to say and show and what we have found. We’ve got a lot of data on this. When someone is researching something and they want to buy something, they want to hire someone, there’s essentially five subjects that they research over and over again. And if you’re listening to this, you’ve been doing this for probably 20 years or as long as you’ve been using the Internet and nobody taught you this, but it’s just the habits that you have developed over the course of this time. So these five subjects are known as the big five. And they are as follows. Number one is as buyers, consumers, we want to understand cost, price, budget, et cetera.
Marcus Sheridan [00:13:33]:
When you get a sense for that, and if we don’t get a sense for that, it’s very hard for us to move forward. Number two, we want to understand negative slash problems. What could go wrong? How could this blow up in my face, this decision? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Number three, we want to know how does this thing compare to this other thing or this other company or this other method that I’m also considering? Number four, we want to know reviews. We’re obsessed with reviews. Think about reviews. We want to know the good, the bad and the ugly, not just the good. And finally, number five, we want to know the best of the best, the most, the top.
Marcus Sheridan [00:14:05]:
I mean, just think about how many times you’ve gone online and searched best. Plus another phrase, right? It just happens. Yeah, just all the time. So these are the big five cost problems, comparisons, reviews. Best. Buyers are obsessed with them. They research them all the time. Businesses don’t like to talk about them, they don’t like to show them.
Marcus Sheridan [00:14:24]:
And because of that, we have a paradox of wants. So the company that’s willing to lean into those and actually talk about Those things, they’re the ones that are becoming the voice of trust within their space.
Katie [00:14:37]:
Yeah, yeah, I think that’s, that’s really sage advice. As an industry, we like to think that we are all so different, better and special. But at the end of the day, most everybody in the space is selling the same thing. When you get to the shortlist standpoint, this happened here recently in Georgia. We have a very prominent business school here for one of the universities that needed to be renovated. It’s $20 million project, so kind of middle of the road value. And there were 27 design firms that submitted on that proposal. No telling how many of them had kind of worked behind the scenes.
Katie [00:15:15]:
Right. Building relationships, doing the intel. We know for sure them had done the planning behind it. So you could assume that they were the incumbent, had the most information at hand, but only three of them made it to the short list to, you know, present their ideas and, and get in the room. But still, at that time, do you think that they’re answering the big five in that interview? Yeah, I think that would be obvious. No, we still shy away from it. We want the client to ask us. Right.
Katie [00:15:42]:
And why is that? When we’re on the other side, we want it to come to us.
Marcus Sheridan [00:15:47]:
Yeah, that’s. It’s really interesting. There’s like this, you know, it’s the difference between scarcity versus abundant mentality. You know, someone feels like, well, if I discuss numbers at all, like price, let’s just look at the first one. This is the one that’s the most controversial. And people get most bent out of shape about it. They immediately think, you don’t understand my business, you don’t understand my industry, you don’t understand my buyer. There’s no way we can discuss this online.
Katie [00:16:12]:
Right.
Marcus Sheridan [00:16:13]:
And what we have found, fundamentally that’s false. And it actually costs you a lot, a lot of revenue. That would, that would shock you. Because every buyer, when they enter the buyer’s journey and they have a need, a problem, the first question they have is always the same question, roughly, what’s this going to cost us? It’s the first question everybody has. Now, the problem with businesses is they’re stuck on this idea that, oh, I need to give them my exact numbers. You don’t have to give them your exact numbers. What you have to be willing to do, though, is you have to be willing to discuss what drives cost in an industry.
Katie [00:16:51]:
For sure. Yeah.
Marcus Sheridan [00:16:52]:
Let’s say you’re a design firm and I came to you and I said, can you help me understand the factors that would drive the cost of a project up, could you explain that? You’d say, yes, of course. If I said, can you help me understand the factors that would drive the cost of a design project down? You’d say, yes, of course. If I said to you, you know what, you gave me a quote and I got some other quotes. Some of you are more expensive, some of you are less expensive, can you help me understand why there’s a delta in the industry? You’d say, yes, of course. And if I said to you, how many times have you had to address those questions? You’d say, many times, Marcus. And that’s what’s so sad, is you’re waiting for people to ask you these things and by that point many of them you’ve already lost. And so instead of doing that, you flip it on his head. And again, I mean, I’ve just done this enough times in enough industries.
Marcus Sheridan [00:17:39]:
Look, I was the first swimming pool company in the world that discuss cost and price online. First one, and we’ve tracked the revenue back to it, the articles and videos that we’ve done on that. It is extraordinary. Way into the millions, many, many millions of dollars have come from us discussing openly the cost of swimming pools online, which nobody had done. Now, we didn’t give price lists. No. And I don’t espouse price lists, but I espouse great education addressing that fundamental question, roughly, what’s this going to cost me? Following the golden rule, giving them what you yourself would want and understanding that you don’t have to back yourself in a corner to create tremendous value. And furthermore, when you don’t educate and when the buyer is ignorant, what actually happens is called commoditization.
Marcus Sheridan [00:18:33]:
If I talk to anybody that’s listening to this right now and I said to them, have you seen some commoditization within your space? They’d say yes immediately. And that purely happens when businesses allow ignorance to exist in the marketplace. Because here’s why. If you receive, let’s say, two general plans or two general quotes or whatever proposals and you don’t really understand the difference between the two. But you see, there’s two numbers. If you are ignorant and you don’t know the difference between value here, you’re going to choose the lowest one every single time. And that’s a sad thing about a lot of folks that are in bid based industries are like, well, everything just comes down to price. So you’re saying to me, if you’re the lowest bid, but they don’t trust you at all.
Marcus Sheridan [00:19:22]:
Are they still going to go with you? Well, maybe not. No, no. You said it was all about the bid, right? So if it’s all about the bid, well, it, trust me, is nothing. And that’s just not true. I’ve never seen somebody say, yeah, they would still buy from us if they didn’t trust us, even though we were the lowest bid. No, that’s not how it works. I’ve also asked many companies, have you ever won a bid but you were higher priced? Well, yes. Okay, how’d that happen? Where’d that come from? What they feel towards you more so than they felt towards the others that were the lower cost providers? Well, they trusted us more.
Marcus Sheridan [00:19:59]:
They believed in us more. Okay, why? Same conversation, same game here. Right? So again, just like if you’re sending out RFEs, if you’re like responding to them, if you respond to them like everybody else, you’re probably going to get the results that everybody else gets, which is very, very mediocre. But if you dare to be different, then all of a sudden you make waves, you get people’s attention. It’s like, wow, this is a very different company. They weren’t on my radar, but they’re on my radar right now because. Did you look? What did you see what they did with their response? Nobody’s ever done this to us before. This is wild.
Marcus Sheridan [00:20:35]:
Yeah. Let me give you the most silly, ridiculous example ever.
Katie [00:20:38]:
Okay?
Marcus Sheridan [00:20:39]:
When my son was 20 years old, he had to move to the big city to get a job. He’s an electrician. He had heard from a couple of his friends that it was somewhat hard to get a job as an electrician with some of these bigger electrical contracting firms. And I said, your friends are wrong. We’ll get you a job today if you want a job today. He’s like, well, how do I get a job today? I said, what you do is you send a personalized video to the owner of the company and you explain to that person why you want a job, what you know about their company, how you think you’d be a fit. He found the company that he wanted, he created a personalized video, he sent it out to them. He got a job call that day from the owner of the company.
Marcus Sheridan [00:21:19]:
And of course, what do you think? The owner said, Katie, he says, nobody has ever sent me a video before as part of their job application. Now somebody listening to this right now sadly is saying, but that’s different. That person’s closed minded and they’re not going to have extraordinary success in their life. And I’m not afraid to say that because it’s true. And inherently they also know that it’s true. But there’s also another person that listened to what I just said and said, you know what, I see the application there. We have to dare to be different, to get people’s attention and to get noticed in a very, very noisy world where it’s too easy to become commoditized.
Katie [00:21:59]:
I want to circle back to two things that you just made me think about. One is this idea of adding some transparency and some conversation around the whole cost thing. And everybody listening here, architects, engineers, contractors, you know, consultants, you have ample resources that can inspire content around this topic. If you just look at your past portfolio, you could talk intelligently about, you know, from a cost component standpoint, what the average component pricing is, whatever facility type that you design or build. And you could use your past 10, 15, 20 projects as the baseline and talk intelligently around that, and your audience would find great value in it. You could also talk about the greatest areas for cost savings that might be more appealing to people that are really concerned about budget adherence or where they might be able to do things. If you’re a designer, you might talk about value based design and how you work with clients to determine areas of their facility that they put a great piece of pride in, that they want to maybe spend a little bit more on those finishes. And that would tell you what are areas of the project that you need to be more frugal with.
Katie [00:23:12]:
Like, there’s lots of ways that organizations in our space, I think, can have conversation, can create content.
Marcus Sheridan [00:23:19]:
If I was an architecture, let’s say, and I did a lot of commercial work, right, I would create an extensive article, a robust video as well, that had the title of, you know, something like, how much does it cost to hire a commercial architect in 2025? Okay, that’s an example of it. Now, what we see, even though I’m not an architect, I understand how most industries work, and how most industries work is there’s generally three to four levels within the industry of anything. So you might say within the commercial architecture space, there’s three different levels or tiers, and you might call them value, middle of the road, high end, whatever you want to call it. But there’s roughly three tiers, maybe there’s a fourth tier of ultra high end, whatever it is. But usually that’s how it works in most industries. And then what you can do is you can say, okay, if you’re looking to hire an architectural firm in 2025 for your commercial project. And you’re wondering, okay, what’s this roughly going to cost me? First, let’s start with a fundamental question. Okay, what type of firm do you want to work with? In this industry, there’s generally roughly four tiers of firms.
Marcus Sheridan [00:24:34]:
You describe each one, talk about what they do, talk about what they don’t do, talk about roug, roughly where they might fall from a. Just a general pricing, budgetary perspective. Just very rough, big, rangy stuff. And now all of a sudden, the person’s like, okay, all right, so I understand, but you haven’t talked about yourself yet. You’ve taught about the industry.
Katie [00:24:53]:
Right.
Marcus Sheridan [00:24:53]:
And you’re really teaching the person how to shop. And somebody might say shop, but we don’t use that phrase in this space. It’s always shopping. We’re shopping all the time. Okay? It doesn’t matter what it is. Okay? We’re always researching.
Katie [00:25:05]:
If you’re buying, you’re shopping.
Marcus Sheridan [00:25:06]:
That’s what we’re doing. That’s what we’re doing. And so that’s what’s happening here. And by doing that, then you’re able to say, okay, now here at XYZ Firm, here’s the tier roughly, that we tend to fall in. Here’s the reason why we chose to do this. Here’s some general information about our firm. Point is, though, when you talk about cost and price, 80% of that content should be about the industry. 20% should be about you.
Marcus Sheridan [00:25:31]:
Because now you’re educating them, and they’re like, okay, I understand. And then they’re able to say things at the end like, all right, so I see there’s these different tiers. Some of them don’t and do this one thing, but I really want them to do that thing. So I better choose a firm that does that, because I wouldn’t even consider a firm that didn’t do that. Of course we would want to do that. And yes, it’s. I know we’d spend 10% more for that, but it’d be dumb not to do that because we’d be putting ourselves in a bad position at that point. Yeah, this is how we can communicate it.
Marcus Sheridan [00:25:57]:
Now, again, I know that I’m ignorant about your industry, but I’m not ignorant about how to talk about this stuff. I’m not ignorant about the way people buy, understand exactly how people buy. I’m very, very good at it. And so I also know that if you want to stand out, you can’t do it like everybody else. Let me give you another Example, Katie, what we have seen for service based businesses that there’s a mega trend that is self service. And you said earlier we don’t necessarily want to talk to salespeople. 75% of all B2B buyers say they would prefer to have a seller free sales experience.
Katie [00:26:28]:
Oh yeah.
Marcus Sheridan [00:26:29]:
So I didn’t make up the number. Right. This is Gartner. What does this mean? What it means is we just don’t want to talk to a salesperson until we feel like we’re good and ready. And when are we good and ready? Well, we’re good and ready when we feel informed, confident, comfortable and we’re not going to get burned, we’re not going to make a mistake. And the way that you can do this, especially online, is by offering interactive tools that give people answers, recommendations, et cetera, that previously they would have had to have gotten by talking to a human. Now somebody might say, well a minute ago you said you got to be more human. Yeah.
Marcus Sheridan [00:27:01]:
One thing that’s very, very human is following the golden rule, in my opinion. And that’s treating people as you yourself would want to be treated to offer a great user experience while they’re vetting you before you’ve met them. So that way when you do meet them, they say things like, I’ve been listening to you a long time and now that I’ve met you, I feel like I already knew you. I know you don’t know me, Katie, but I feel like I’ve known you forever. Right. This is what people say to you because you’ve got a pod, people listen to it. You develop a relationship really, really early in the game. So when it comes to self service, one of the things that we know works extraordinarily well for service based businesses is pricing estimator tools where basically you put a tool on your site that allows someone to answer a series of general questions, right? And after that they get a general estimate.
Marcus Sheridan [00:27:49]:
It’s a range right now. It’s not a quote, it’s not a proposal. It just is addressing that fundamental question, roughly what’s this going to cost? Now I’ve got some crazy data on this because I believed in this so much that last year I created a software on this called PriceGuide AI and Price Guide allows companies of all different types to quickly and easily put pricing estimators on their site. Here’s what we see over and over again, that when someone does this, they get 3 to 500% more leads than they did before they had an estimator on their site. And usually people, especially in industries, let’s say like architecture, are just shocked. Like, wow, I’m amazed that you just, you were the only one that I found that would do this. But here’s what’s really, really crazy. Nobody wants to hear this, Katie.
Marcus Sheridan [00:28:34]:
And I’m going to speak way ahead for a second, but I’m going to do it anyway because it’s for the better good of everyone’s listening. There’s going to come a time, I’m getting five to seven years, where your potential clients are going to go to AI and they’re going to say to their AI agent, hey, listen, here’s what we want for our project. I want you to go online, I want you to vet as many companies as you can, and I want you to come back with the most specific information that you can. Preferably. I want you to come back with some general price ranges for a project like we’ve just described to you that we’re interested in. And then the AI is going to go, and they’re going to be the shopper.
Katie [00:29:10]:
Yeah.
Marcus Sheridan [00:29:10]:
They’re going to be the researcher. And guess what they’re going to focus in on. They’re going to do their research and they’re going to come back to their owner, to their client, you know, to the KD or to the Marcus, and they’re going to say, all right, I visited 300 different firms websites. Out of those, I found 15 of them were actually giving us information that was valuable. The other 285 were just saying, reach out to discuss your project. Of those 15, four of them had pricing estimators. I was able to get a general price from those four. I’ve included them here with a complete workup on their companies.
Marcus Sheridan [00:29:47]:
Now people listening to this right now are saying, I don’t think it’s going to work like that. Okay, sure, I’ll play that game. One of us is going to be right. And I’m not looking here to prove to be right all the time. But I can tell you that is where the world is headed. It’s no different than I remember. I was with a bunch of boating manufacturers. Like, I don’t know, it was 10 years ago, Katie.
Marcus Sheridan [00:30:08]:
And I said, every one of you all is going to have a build and price your boat tool on your manufacturing website in the future. And they tried laughing me out of the room. These are manufacturers of boats. Today, roughly 60% of manufacturers have a build and price boat tool on their website. They’re all going to eventually have it. Those that don’t have it, are probably building it. This is just where it goes. It’s no different than the person that’s buying houses sight unseen.
Marcus Sheridan [00:30:33]:
How’s that happen? That was so unrealistic 20 years ago. Today it happens all the time, right? So the world is changing, and buyer expectation, buyer behavior is changing. And this is very, very true in the B2B space, even though those that are in B2B believe so dang much that the rules don’t apply to them.
Katie [00:30:51]:
Oh, I know. Yeah. We think that we’re very different and special. And you know us in design and construction, we can come up with every exception to the rule to tell you, oh, yeah, for us, we’re really good at that. And I know I pick on my engineers and y’ all know I love you. My engineers that listen, but y’ all more than anybody else want to make sure anything you publish will stand up in the court of law. And I think what we’re talking about here is you want to be thoughtful. You want to always consider your customer as your customer.
Katie [00:31:21]:
And you know who your customer is. That’s the beauty of B2B. We know who our customers are. Right? We’re not trying to sell to everybody. We know exactly who they are. We know their job titles. We know what their job responsibilities look like. We understand the funding cycle, and we know all the things about them.
Katie [00:31:38]:
And you know what questions they have, and you know how you can make their lives easier and you know how you can help them become a smarter partner of someone that you want to work with that doesn’t just aggravate you every day for the two year or five year project that you’re going to be working on. And I loved what I read in one of your books, Marcus, was this idea around, you know, the power of content and the actual need to have somewhat of a balance of quality and quantity of content. Because I think one piece that I read was talking about there was this determining factor on whether or not particular prospects actually convert into buying. And it was once they hit this threshold of consuming X amount of content, I was shocked that it was so much. But when you think about someone in their buyer’s journey going from, hey, I think I might need to build a new school, or hey, do I need to expand my jail, or would it be better if I demoed it and built a new one, or should I put in another distribution center? You know, design and construction touches every physical industry, so there’s facilities and projects out the wazoo, but having content that speaks to Every question they may have in that thought process that they’re going to have on their own. Right. Where you don’t have to take them to lunch, you don’t have to wine and dine them, you don’t have to golf them, but allow them the convenience of being on their phone at their kids soccer match, working and figuring out how to answer their problems.
Marcus Sheridan [00:33:13]:
That’s right. Without forcing them to go through, jump through additional hoops. We hate friction. I mean, lots of times the companies are the most innovative are the ones that are just reducing friction the most during the buyer’s journey. So part of that friction is, can I get the information that I want immediately, accessibly.
Katie [00:33:39]:
Yeah.
Marcus Sheridan [00:33:39]:
Or do I have to beg for it? Do I have to set up a phone call to get it to have to do these preliminary things talking to a human, or can I get them by watching a video of yours on your site and whatever that thing is? And that’s why it is so sad to me that I just see, I see folks. And the killer of all this, I know we’ve mentioned it a couple times, but the killer is the company that says, these things don’t apply to me. And these are just principles that we’re talking about. We’re not talking about anything groundbreaking. But the issue is, person hears it immediately says, yeah, that wouldn’t work for us. That wouldn’t work in our industry. That wouldn’t work for our buyer, our customer. And that’s why they’re not innovating.
Marcus Sheridan [00:34:25]:
That’s why they’re not really standing out. The rule breakers become the rule makers. I know that history has taught us that you know it too. And so I’d ask you, if you’re listening to this, especially from a content perspective like Katie’s been talking about here, it’s like, what rules are you breaking? What things are you talking about are you showing that nobody else is talking about or showing Another really silly example. If I went to any firm that’s listening to this right now and I said, is your firm a good fit for every potential customer? They would say, well, no, we’re not a good fit for everybody. I say, okay, do you explicitly state on your website right now who you are not a good fit for? I guarantee you 0% do that. 0%. What’s wild is the moment.
Marcus Sheridan [00:35:15]:
And we’ve done this with a lot of companies. The moment you’re willing to say what you’re not is the moment you become dramatically more attractive to those who you are a good fit for.
Katie [00:35:24]:
Yeah, yeah. Yeah, well, and I just look at it from an opportunity cost standpoint. Like in design and construction, you know, we don’t have dedicated sales folks most of the time. We’ve got seller doers. They would much rather do the billable work. Nobody wants to respond to cold calls. And especially I don’t want to go have lunch or dinner with someone thinking that this is going to be great to come out the other side going, I hope he never calls me. He’s going to be terrible to work with.
Katie [00:35:48]:
They’re going to be a terrible client. Like, go ahead and put it out there. Hey, we’re not great. If, you know XYZ or we’re best suited for projects like X or whatever, you know, put it out there. Save yourself the headache and the waste of time.
Marcus Sheridan [00:36:02]:
Let me give you an example of this. Once again, focus on the principle, not the actual example. So I have a manufacturing company. We manufacture fiberglass pools. We know that fiberglass pools are not a good fit for everybody. We have a tool that is completely unbiased on our site. It asks you 10 questions. It answers one fundamental question though, which is what type of pool and ground pool should I get concrete, fiberglass or vinyl? Every single day, Katie, people will go through that experience.
Marcus Sheridan [00:36:33]:
They’ll answer the questions and they’ll get recommendations that say things like, based on your answers, you should get a concrete pool. And then we explain why again based on their answers. Now, this tool didn’t cost very much to build. I mean, it’s like maybe 10,000 bucks, something like that. But it’s so powerful because it induces an outrageous amount of trust. How many other manufacturers are saying to this person, you know what? Fiberglass is not a good fit for you. Go with concrete instead. Go with vinyl instead.
Marcus Sheridan [00:36:59]:
Nobody’s saying that. We’re saying that. And this is how we are dominating because of the fact that we’re willing to say and show and what others are willing to say and show.
Katie [00:37:11]:
Well, yeah, and I mean I, I’ve seen a few, just a few examples in our industry of some firms that have done similar things. You know, I’ve seen where they’ve done like an asphalt, concrete and paver comparison.
Marcus Sheridan [00:37:23]:
Smart.
Katie [00:37:24]:
And it’s like, short term, this is what you can expect. Long term, this is what you can. I’ve seen comparison guides on delivery methods. So should you hard bid, should you do CM at risk as you do design, build. I’ve seen like, is modular construction right for you? You know, construction firm, author and produce.
Marcus Sheridan [00:37:42]:
That the whole key to those though is you got to do them unbiased.
Katie [00:37:46]:
Yes.
Marcus Sheridan [00:37:46]:
Right. It’s like if you do them, but the whole purpose is to slant them towards an outcome that is ideal for you and not in the best interest of them, well then don’t do it because then it’s nefarious. But if the goal truly is to have to make the best recommendation or give the best answer for the user, for the customer, the prospect, well then, man, you can just make waves and people will say, I just can’t believe they said that. That’s the flinch we were talking about when we started, Katie. That’s the flinch that makes someone say this. This company ain’t like everybody else.
Katie [00:38:21]:
Yeah. And you establish that initial piece of trust, they can ask you a harder question and they just teed you up for it and you can answer and they’re like, okay, yeah, I get it. I’m buying what he’s saying. That’s it, that’s this, that’s it. Marcus, this has been great conversation. I really appreciate you pushing with passion during the conversation to help encourage our AEC listeners to think a little bit differently, to embrace transparency, to find ways to show up before the sell to think, what are those non negotiable items? Let’s, let’s bring them up, let’s address it. For any of our listeners that are kind of hearing this for the first time, what is the best first step you think they should take coming out of the.
Marcus Sheridan [00:39:00]:
I think you should read the book, enlist customers. I think it’s going to have a big impact on you. It was a USA Today bestseller and there’s a reason for that. I think you’re really going to get some value from it. Connect with me on LinkedIn. If you’re listening to this Marcus Sheridan on LinkedIn, I’m a pretty dang good follow over there and I put my best stuff as soon as I think it. That’s the lab of thoughts.
Katie [00:39:19]:
That’s where it goes.
Marcus Sheridan [00:39:20]:
Yeah, right there.
Katie [00:39:21]:
Right. And I would echo that. I do follow what you share on social and I really do appreciate your thoughtfulness in your articles and what you’re posting. So thank you so much for coming on. If you haven’t already grabbed the book, we are going to link it in our show notes to make it really easy because in the world of design and construction, we are all about having customers for life. So why would you not want endless customers? So everyone, until next time, keep up with your smart marketing and we’ll see you back next time. AEC Marketing for Principals is presented by Smartigies, the AEC growth consulting firm that has been developing smart business strategies for design and construction firms since 2008. The show is hosted by me, Katie Cash, Senior VP at smartigies.
Katie [00:40:09]:
I would love to hear from you. If you have a question, a guest request, or a topic request for a future episode, send an email or a voice memo to podcastmartigies.com and if you’re looking for past episodes, be sure to visit our podcast [email protected] podcast. We hope you’ll tell your friends and colleagues about our show, and be sure to subscribe so you don’t miss out on future episodes. Thanks for listening.
