They Ask You Answer

Today, on average, 70 percent of the buying decision is made before a prospect talks to the company.

Regardless of company or culture, we have found there are three reasons businesses justify not discussing this subject on their website:
“Every solution is different. Our prices vary.”
“If we discuss pricing on our website, our competitors will find out what we charge.”
“If we show what we charge, we’ll scare customers away.”

To crystallize this point, imagine you’re taking a friend to dinner tonight and you all have decided to try a restaurant you’ve never been to. Before going, if you’re like most people, you’re going to research two main things before you walk through their front doors: online reviews (like Yelp) and the restaurant’s website.
In this case, the main reason you want to go to their website that you want to look at their menu.
Well, what happens if you go to the menu and you find that it lists items but not prices? What do you do?

fact, if you think about how you buy things, and how much research you do when you’re serious about what you’re buying, you’ll see that you are likely grossly underestimating people’s willingness to become comfortable with their buying decisions through the power of great, helpful information.

Because I am able to distill the facts into simple-to-understand words that pool shoppers find helpful, they naturally think I am one of the foremost authorities in the world.
Someone once told me, “It’s dumb not to dumb it down.”
At the time, I had no idea how right they were.
Since that moment, I’ve seen again and again how, when it comes to great marketing and communication, the moment a business or brand tries to sound smart is generally the moment they start to look stupid.
But when you don’t try to sound smart, and instead look to have communion with your listener, that’s when the magic happens. For me, this is my singular goal and obsession as a professional speaker, marketer, and communicator.
My point to you is this: Think like a teacher. Obsess not just over their questions, but the way you answer them. It will make all the difference.

your products and services start at $50,000, and that person has a true budget of $20,000, do you think he is magically going to come up with an extra $30,000 for your products and/or services?
In most cases, the answer is no. Instead of scaring the person, you’re going to educate him, which brings relief and saves time for all parties involved.
What we are talking about here is being honest enough to allow—that’s right, allow—the prospective customer to discover on their own that they are a bad fit for you.

for themselves.
Why not? The reason is twofold:
They’re thinking like business owners, not teachers. Teachers see the world differently. That’s just a fact.
They come from a scarcity mentality and don’t believe there’s room on top for everybody.
In my case, I wasn’t afraid my competitors would use the They Ask, You Answer principles; I was afraid they wouldn’t use them.
So I taught the entire swimming pool industry. I wanted to help these companies despite the fact that they were competing for some of my very own customers. As far as I was concerned, truth is truth, and it wasn’t mine to keep.
Furthermore, to me at least, it was just a matter of common sense. And in this case, common sense told me that giving people what they want, as honestly and transparently as possible, was the best way to do business, regardless of its supposed ramifications

I was to advertise saying “Shop at Yale because we have a sale” by buying an audience of 500,000, how many people in that audience are actually in the market to buy something? And of those people, how many are actually listening and not changing the channel or fast-forwarding? You’re paying 500 grand for twenty people . . . maybe. Where’s the ROI on that? It’s not measurable. Inbound, assuming you use the right tools, is measurable, and we’re going to stick with what works, and what we can measure.
And boy has it worked for Sheinkopf. In early 2016, Steve opened a second retail location near Boston, and he did it without any additional advertising.
Simply by obsessing over customer questions, and being willing to answer them better than anyone else in their space, they’ve climbed to the top of their industry.

There’s a difference between me telling you I’m great, and somebody reading something and saying, “Wow, that was great.

reality, no one wants to hear (from you) that you’re awesome. Rather, what consumers want is to look at your works, judge them, and then make their own decisions on just how great a company really is.
Now, you tell me. If you were a swimming pool shopper and read those first two paragraphs, what would your impression of the company be? Do they sound believable? Honest? In fact, could you go so far as to assume they might just be experts?
If you’re like most people, you answered affirmatively to all three questions. Without the company needing to state it, you now feel like they are experts and thought leaders—all because they’ve shown you they’re willing to answer a question, honestly and transparently, that no one else in their space is.
This goes back to what we talked about with disarmament, and this is the essence of content marketing: