In his book “They Ask, You Answer,” Marcus Sheridan discusses the methodology he believes brings success to businesses. Marcus discusses how hard this can be for many businesses as customers often have questions surrounding competition or alternative options they are looking into. 

To use an analogy that may help, let’s look at the housing market. A realtor’s job is to sell you a house. But let’s say you also own some land that you could build on. You want to discuss the options of building vs buying with your realtor, but your realtor keeps steering you towards buying, without discussing the comparison of building much. Would you look for another realtor? Talk to a different expert in the industry? 

Now picture you’re the realtor. Your customer is looking at different options to find a new home, options they don’t need your help with. In your mind, you feel like steering them towards buying would work because it’s how you’ll get to work with them. But by ignoring their alternative option, you’ve lost some of their trust.

Your customer has all the information they need at their fingertips. The internet is a massive source of all the information they could want. The addition of AI through sources like ChatGPT has also opened the doors for your customers to get informative answers even faster. 

As the client, you can go to Google or ChatGPT and ask “Should I buy or build a home in [city/state]?” and you can input more information and have a conversation with AI to figure out what the average age of homes for sale is in your area, how much the average home in your square footage range is, how much per square foot it costs to build a home, and much more. Google can also bring up articles from trusted sources such as Zillow, Realtor, various financial institutions, and home builders. You can read different articles written by actual industry experts from builders to realtors to loan officers. 

As the Realtor (or the business leader), you need to understand that your customers already have access to this information. But, they have come to you with their questions. They trust you and have questions they want to hear your opinion on because they value your thoughts. If you take that seriously and address their questions directly by pointing them to a builder contact in the area or talking about what you know of the market for both home buying and building in your area, they are more likely to take you seriously. Even if they end up building a home, they may still use you as their selling realtor or they may be inclined to refer someone else to you because you’ve proven yourself trustworthy and reliable.

You’ve proven that you’re invested in their best interest, not just the money they will give you.

The whole “They Ask, You Answer” methodology is based around practices like this. Many customers may come to your website looking for details that answer their questions before they make a decision to engage further. Read on and ask yourself if you’re answering the key 5 questions your customers have before moving forward. 

What is the cost?

Your customers want to know the cost of your product or service. It’s so easy to find businesses that list their prices online. So if you’re not listing your prices, your customer might go elsewhere so they know the costs ahead of time. 

Let’s say though that you’re a custom business and you pricing really depends on exactly what your customer needs and expects. Cybersecurity companies may quote hourly based on incident-response needs, or a manufacturing company might quote based on the type of material being manufactured and how many the customer needs. These pricing instances require an interaction between you and the customer. The key here is to ensure that you make it as easy as possible to contact you and say what they need and are looking for. 

What are the problems?

What are the problems with the product or service you provide? Are there instances where it would be best to use something different, even if it means your company is not the best fit?

 A friend of mine was having a pool built in their backyard and were looking into in-ground vinyl lined pools, as they installed one at their last house and liked it. However, their pool company was honest with them and sent them to another company because they were building their pool in a sloped backyard that they didn’t recommend putting a retaining wall on for drainage purposes. 

So in my friend’s case, they went looking for a vinyl lined pool and ended up building a concrete pool since the concrete pool is better suited to be built half buried and half exposed, acting as its own retaining wall. They had a huge amount of respect for their pool company and still go back to them for their regular water maintenance needs and extra pool supplies. The initial pool company didn’t win the big job, but did win a long-term customer.

How does it compare?

How does the thing you’re selling compare to what other people sell? Your customer is already looking at how what you provide compares to other offerings. They likely found you doing their own research. It’s not a surprise that there are other alternatives for them to look at. To be a more trustworthy provider, you should address that head-on and show how your offering compares. What are the strengths and drawbacks? What sets you apart? 

This information should be clear and easy to find on your site. At Murphy Marketing, we usually like to write a portion of this into the homepage, then expand on it if needed within “services” subpages. 

“Best of” lists

List-based headlines are very popular. Consider writing a blog about the “best of…” in your area and discussing alternative providers and their reviews and comparisons or even complimentary providers to your service. 

If you’re a hardscapes company and prefer to land the big jobs, create a list of local landscape providers that do smaller projects like mowing, weeding, and spring cleanup. You may be able to trade customers back and forth as they search for other  things and stumble upon you as well.

Reviews

Don’t forget to include your client reviews, testimonials, and/or case studies on your site. Not only can you integrate these on pages such as your homepage, About page, and Services pages, it might be best practice in your industry to have an “Our Work” page where you have links to case studies for various projects or to write testimonial based blogs with your client. These are effective and simple ways to gain the trust of your leads quickly. 

It’s also very handy to have a page you can link to when leads inevitably ask to see examples of your work. It’ll save you or the sales team time! 

So go through your website, think about these questions and consider if your site guides your customer through those questions, if they aren’t easy to find, the customer might leave before even engaging with you directly. 

Second, ask yourself if your site has curb appeal. Is the user experience good? Is it nice to look at, modern, and easy to navigate? Not sure? You can check out our guide to see if your site has Curb Appeal.

Don’t have time to address the problems you find? Book a call with me to see how our team can help.