Video - Marcus Sheridan on They Ask, You Answer
VIDEO: 40:04 mins
AUTHOR: Robert Craven and Marcus Sheridan
In this GYDA Talks, Robert talks to Marcus Sheridan. Marcus is a highly sought-after international keynote speaker known for his unique ability to excite, engage and motivate live audiences with his simple, yet powerful transformational business approach. Marcus has been dubbed a “Web Marketing Guru” by the New York Times and in 2017 Forbes names Marcus one of 20 “Speakers You Don’t Want to Miss.” Not one to be limited to the stage, Marcus is most often found walking through the crowd, calling audience members by name, and bringing them into his presentation.
As author of the content marketing guidebook, “They Ask, you Answer,” Marcus has not only inspired thousands to achieve their potential but has given them the tools they need to get there. Mashable rated his book the “#1 Marketing Book” to read in 2017. Forbes listed it as one of “11 Marketing Books Every CMO Should Read.” Marcus has been featured in the New York Times, Inc., The Globe and Mail, Content Marketing Institute, Social Media Examiner, and more. He has inspired thousands of audiences and helped millions of people from all over the world to achieve their own success with his “They Ask, You Answer” philosophy.
Robert and Marcus discuss:
The Backstory to They Ask, You Answer
Why should marketing agencies follow the system?
Why don’t they?
Who does it well?
What will agencies look like in 2-3 years time – how will they respond to the vast change all around?
If you were an agency thinking of adopting TAYA principles what would you do?
How to differentiate yourself from other TAYA agencies
Transcription:
Robert Craven 00:07
Hello, and welcome to the GYDA talk, go digital agency talks. And I am absolutely delighted to have with me as my guest today Marcus Sheridan. Now Marcus wrote not one but two books that I keep throwing at people in this one, yeah, they asked you to answer. I keep telling people do it, do it, do it, do it. And as I was just saying to mark if people nod their heads, but they don't do it, especially agency folks. And the other book that I've got is the visual sale, which kind of goes together. And yeah. Welcome, Marcus.
Marcus Sheridan 00:39
Robert, pleasure to be here. I think we're gonna have a great conversation today. And hopefully, we'll say something valuable to your audience as well.
Robert Craven 00:46
Good. So let's just go straight in. For those who haven't read the book. Could you just give us the quick backstory to how you ended up didn't start as a digital marketing agency person, how you ended up with they asked you to answer?
Marcus Sheridan 01:02
Well, I started a swing pool company out of university with a couple of friends in 2001. And, you know, we struggled to grow the business, but we were slowly growing it up until 2008, when the market crashed. And that was when I thought we were going to lose the business. And we were in really bad shape. And it was during this time that I started to learn a lot more just about the internet, and also how I myself use the internet, right? And started reading all these fancy phrases like inbound marketing, content marketing, all that stuff. And when I heard in my simple pull guy, mine was, you know, Marcus, if you just obsess over your customers questions, you might save your business. He's got to be willing to address those questions on your website through text and video. So I said, Well, shoot, I can do that. So I started this philosophy at the time, we called it they ask you to answer four simple words, and we just say, Hey, we're gonna be the best teachers in the world, when it comes to what we sold, which was fibreglass swimming pools. And to make a long story short. We went on to become the most trafficked swimming pool website in the world. And we got so much success from that, that I started to write about it. And as I wrote about it online on a personal blog, I started having these conferences to Hey, Marcus, can you share that, that strategy and that story at our conference, and then I started having company say, we teach us how to do that. And that led to starting an agency and having a full time speaking career, and today, I still own the swimming pool company. But we went on to become the fastest growing manufacturer of fibreglass pools in the US as well, we have franchisees all over North America. And it's been an amazing ride. But they ask you to answer is become a movement, a framework for many companies, many businesses 1000s, actually, now around the world, the book is an extremely well, it's got two versions. And it just keeps on growing. And it's pretty cool. You know, it's easy to launch a book and get sales for the first six months, it's hard to launch a book that gets sales after the first few years. And that's exactly what's happened. Because it works. The philosophy is evergreen is not going to stop working. And that's why I'm always happy to talk about it.
Robert Craven 03:20
So if you've got evidence or hard numbers to kind of validate it works, because I mean, I talk a lot about that they ask you to answer. And people nod their head sagely. And they have five questions, we'll come to that interview in a minute and content and being teachers and they nod their head sagely. And then you look at their website six months later, and there it is not a video about an approach. So have you got evidence? Have you got case studies, examples of agencies that you think do it really well?
Marcus Sheridan 03:53
Well, you know, this is one of those things where, first of all, from a business standpoint, we've got a tonne of case studies. From an agency standpoint, you know, my personal agency impact, which is the URL is impact plus.com. We have done this with, you know, a tonne of success. And I've not found an industry that's the exception to these principles, because they're rooted in truth. And the, you know, the one of the issues, though, Robert, is lots of times when we talk about something work. We have to ask, well, what's the reference by which you're framing the question, right? Because if you're saying, does it work from an SEO standpoint? That's one question. Does it work from a customer experience standpoint? That's a different question. Does it work from a website user experience standpoint, or from a higher conversion standpoint, or from a shortening your sales cycle standpoint, right? I mean, there's all these things that could dictate whether or not a quote, it works. But I can tell you without equivocation, that we have the data on way, way too many companies. Now, if you said I'm an inbound marketing agency, Marcus, I'm going to try to do it. They asked me to answer for my agency, is it going to be as successful as it was for your pool company? Probably not. And the reason why I say that is because we were in an industry where there was very little people thinking like this, right? There is in the book, I call it a content saturation index ESI. And there wasn't a lot of content in the swimming pool industry. Now, what's true, though, is if you go around Europe, still, when it comes to a lot of the markets there, it's still pretty green when it comes to agencies really aggressively answering the questions their customers have. And they think that just because they have a blog, they're doing the asked me answer, and it's not the same thing. It's clearly not the same thing.
Robert Craven 06:21
I think you're absolutely right. I think intuitively people get it. But intuitively, it's kind of much easier to follow the pack. Most agencies look at all the other agencies Oh, yeah, it says we, the websites are all identical. We have these people, we weren't really, we are really interested this, are we deliver value for money, and then there'll be a picture of them either climbing a tree or pulling a rope.
Marcus Sheridan 06:48
It's extremely dull. You know, one of the things that I love to tell agencies, which they have a hard time with, is, and this is something that everybody listening to this right now 99% of them haven't done. And that is, you should have a section that talks about, you're not a good fit for on your website. So in other words, all agencies, if they're being honest, would say, yep, we're not a good fit for either this type of customer or this type of service. Yet, how often do they definitively clearly distinctly state that on their website in their messaging? And that doesn't make any sense? It doesn't make any sense at all. It's no different than, you know, if you understand what they ask you answer is it's really three things more anything else. It's number one, the obsession with the questions, worries, fears, issues, concerns that buyers have, right, it's number one, an obsession, keyword with questions, worries, fears, issues, concerns, questions by ourself. Number two, it's the willingness to teach buyers, customers in the way they want to be taught. In other words, you know, if they say I want to see it on video, we can't say, well, video is not my thing. That's BS. It's what we tell our clients, we tell them to get over themselves, and agencies have to give over get over themselves as well. And then finally, number three, are we willing to sell it the way buyers want to buy it? This is a really interesting one, Robert, because we're evolving, especially post COVID, in terms of how we want to buy stuff. And we're all getting used to almost like that SAS model of being able to see it understand what it comes with, understand what the call it monthly cost is upfront, and then making a phone call, and then possibly engaging that particular company. You don't see that in the agency world. We're still not talking about prices in the agency world, which is utterly ridiculous. And, you know, someone should be ashamed if they're not discussing cost and price on their website. Because it just means they don't really care about the questions their buyers are asking. And they're gonna refuse to address it, and they're gonna ignore it. And they're gonna wait until they ask, that is pretty prehistoric thinking.
Robert Craven 09:18
So you don't think it's just a British kind of thing, which is, we don't like to talk about price because that might embarrass people. Whereas those people over the other side of the pond, you know, they're so ballsy and so salesy there.
Marcus Sheridan 09:33
Literally, it's utterly ridiculous to blame culture on being honest and transparent, because that's not a cultural thing. And I've got plenty of clients that are in the UK. You know, I've spoken personally in Scotland six times, you know, and it's like, I know that market and I know markets all over the world. And the beauty behind the markets is there's this thing called human psychology, which is the same behind each one of them. You can't go to any market to a consumer or buyer today and say would you prefer not to learn about pricing and cost before you engage in company? And have anyone tell you Yeah, I would totally prefer that? I love being blind. Going into the buying process. I love ignorance. Ignorance is bliss. I like being aloof. I love being shell shocked when I talk to an agency about their pricing. It makes me feel good. This is ridiculous thinking. Because if you look at what businesses say, they justify why they don't talk about things like cost and price for three main reasons. First reason is we say, well, every job is different. Our services are customised, which, if you think about that, that's even more reason why you should be talking about okay, what are the factors that drive it up? What are the factors that keeps costs down? Why are some agencies so expensive? Why are some agencies so cheap? Where do you fall as an agency? So this whole, it depends. That's the easiest and most important one to address. Now, sometimes agencies will say things like, well, we tend to be more expensive. But if we're more expensive, we just might scare them away. This is, again, completely against science. It's anti science, it's anti psychology. Because what we all the studies have shown and anybody with any common sense knows, it's not when they're willing to really teach us and explain us that we get scared. It's when they aren't willing to even talk about it. We're seeds of doubt are planted, and we start to get annoyed or frustrated. We opt out we don't contact them, etc. It doesn't change across the board services products, b2b, b2c business to government, I don't care, same game, right? Third reason why we don't like to talk about costs and prices and say things like, well, our competitors might, you know, steal our secret advantages, which again, is really stupid, because I can tell you right now, and I've seen this in Europe, and I've seen this in the US agency, people go from agency to agency. And so there ain't no secrets out there. This is not Coca Cola. There's no secret syrup. And so once we accept that, I like to take it back to the golden rule, Robert, which is, well, if I was the buyer, in this moment, the decision maker, would I like to know these things? Would I appreciate it, if somebody explained them to me? Yes. Yes. You can't argue with the golden rule here. Now, you can say, Well, I'm just not willing to follow the golden rule as an agency. Well, that's fine. I respect you for that. But let's not lie to ourselves and say, well, that's not necessarily what I would want. Or that's not what my customers would want. Because we all know, it's obvious what they would want honesty and transparency on the front end.
Robert Craven 13:23
What I find fascinating about it is that it's an iceberg, which is kind of presented as a kind of a sales approach. But actually, the way I see it's far more of a cultural approach. We're moving from being the precious experts who know everything come to us, and we'll tell you how much it's going to cost, eventually, to actually, if we shared and we taught people trust teachers, people love teachers. Think how our relationship with our plants retract. And that I think, is for me, it's a real kind of aha.
Marcus Sheridan 14:01
So when you say culture, this is a big deal. What you just said here, Robert, because to me, I think cultural in principle based are very aligned, right? And so this is a principle based conversation, which is why I don't necessarily want to go up to somebody, right from the get go and say, you know, you really should be talking about costs and pricing your website, or you should be talking about their fears, you should be talking about some of the negative questions or asking or you should be doing comparisons with competitors. So I was like, I don't want to come out and say that, here's what I want to say to somebody. And this is how I start general conversations with business owners. I'll say something like this is trust relative, is it important to your business? They'll say yes, it's trust. Is trust going to be fundamental to your business. 10 years from now? Yes. 20 years from now? Yes. Do you want to become the most trusted voice in your space? If you had a choice? Would you rather be the most trusted voice? Yes, of course. Would you like to eliminate people's fears, worries, issues, concerns if you had a choice? Yes. Would you like to shorten sales cycles? Yes. Okay. Now let's talk. Because these are the things when you are honest and transparent rules of life, by the way, right? When you're honest and transparent, people pick up on that so fast online, we've got this BS metre, we've all grown very efficiently as we have used the internet now, really over the course of what is about 25 years, many of us have been learning how to use the internet. And the internet has been getting better as we go with AI, but for 25 years we've been practising, how to learn online. And we sense things about people about companies. We know when they're giving us bull, we know when they're honest. And we also know that very few are very honest with us. Which is why, you know, I talked about this on LinkedIn yesterday. By the way, if you're listening this right now, if you're not follow me on LinkedIn, you should be because I'm a good thing follow on LinkedIn. And when there are certain things that everybody should be doing, that immediately induces trust right? One of which, as we said earlier, is that we should say very clearly who were not a good fit for describe our bad, fit non fit, not in a snarky way, not in an ugly way. But our non fit customer. That's one that any single one of us can do, we should also honestly and transparently recommend alternatives, like potential competitors, to our prospects openly and transparently. So we might not be a good fit for you. But here's an example of who would be a good fit. Here's why. That's absolutely something we should be doing. Most companies aren't doing that, we should be talking about price up front and centre, we should let them know front and centre. Hey, I want to be so honest, and frank with you, that if at any point, we're not a good fit, I'm just gonna let you know. That's a beautiful message. People respect that man. They love that. And this is why, you know, it's like one of those things. People inherently, when they read and ask the answer, they know it's true. Now, they might not do it, but inherently everybody knows it's true. That, yes, honesty and transparency and becoming that voice of trust, it matters. It's important. And it's not something that we can just say, No, that doesn't apply to my business. Now, there might be fundamental techniques to how it's applied. That could possibly change or vary from business to business or industry to industry. But the fundamentals here do not change.
Robert Craven 18:02
But what you're saying and sense if I'm picking this up correctly, is yes, the book, especially if they asked you answer gives you a handbook pretty much. And also if last, go to impact. And there's more stuff than you've ever seen on one subject and all the different factions and angles, from every different angle. It's all there, and all the help you support. But actually, it's about getting your agency in the right mindset. So this is never gonna work. If you're saying we're going to do they ask you to answer, but we're not going to share we're going to do that. But and we're going to be bitchy and nasty about the competition, is it you're not saying that what we're saying is about Everyone says open, honest and transparent, but you're actually saying, Just do it. And then people will be able to respond to it.
Marcus Sheridan 19:02
Yeah, and let's look at an example of this. Because again, people will tell me yeah, we're doing it. I'm like, No, you're not. You're not doing it. So let's look at HubSpot for example. There's a lot of agencies out there that are HubSpot partners. Okay. Well if you're a HubSpot partner, you should openly talk about who HubSpot is not a good fit for on your website. You should talk about some of the drawbacks to HubSpot. Where's HubSpot strong? Where's HubSpot weak. Like these are things that you should be willing to talk about. Because if you're are then I'm like, I respect this company immediately. Like, boom, I respect you. Because you have my best interests at heart. You're not just schlepping. You're not just like, just you haven't sold your soul to HubSpot. Because you clearly recognise what it is and what it isn't. Right and so all these is just like if somebody came to me and said, Well, is there an example of where they ask you answer does it work Marcus I'm gonna say, Sure there's examples where you wouldn't necessarily apply some of the principles. If I'm a restaurant, and I don't need to become the Wikipedia of food, right? I'm not going to be that. Now, I want to be the Wikipedia pulls if I'm poor company, right? If I'm an attorney, I want to be the Wikipedia of that particular field, that particular space. You know, if I make particular widgets, I want to be the Wikipedia of that widget. But if I'm a restaurant, I'm going to embrace things like video and showing the story behind my food better than anybody in my space does. That's an example of a restaurant embracing, they asked me to answer, but it's different. I am willing to say that. I'm willing to tell people all the time, no, I'm not a good fit for you. No, you're not ready for they ask you an answer. Just like if an agency tells more than 50% of the companies that come to them. Yep. You should be doing this. Yep, we're a good fit. They're lying. They're absolutely lying. They might not be lying to the prospect, they're probably lying to themselves. There is no way under the stars in the sky that you are really the best option for more than 50% of the prospects that come to you. I'm not hit No. And in fact, we come right out. We tell people this right up front, and it releases this. This, you know, this climactic sales process that so many have, right?
Robert Craven 21:41
How do you get around the fact that we've got, I mean, I guess we're back to the culture thing, which is, we've got targets to hit, we've got numbers to hit, we've got quotes, we've got if we don't hit this, then the cash flow, then the FD we need numbers, we need customers and we need them fast, especially after COVID. So there is a pressure to deliver results. And in some senses, I guess you're saying this is like a long game, that slow down and what you want will be with you.
Marcus Sheridan 22:16
I'm not saying that, Robert, because here's the psychology that you have to understand, by me saying that I become such a rich authority. And so very different. That the ones who I am a good fit for are just outrageously attracted to me and my business. So that's the difference.
Robert Craven 22:48
So you're saying that by filtering out the people who you don't want to work with, you get the really good fit. And because you have a really good fit, they're going to be more loyal, more trustworthy, and they're going to be more tolerant of you. But they're also going to become your ambassadors.
Marcus Sheridan 23:07
All those things. Yes. But it's more than that you see, when people sometimes misinterpret filtering out, filtering out is a mutual process. Somebody approached a company. And I've dealt with some pretty big companies, that every single person listening to this has, is familiar with huge brands, multi billion dollar brands. When we talk on a call, I am vetting them as much as they're vetting me. And I will openly say this. Today, we're going to vet each other. You need to find out if I'm a good fit for you. At the same time, I need to find out if you're a good fit for me. At any point. If it appears we're not a good fit. Can we agree that we'll let each other know? Yes. Now, guess how many agencies have that type of conversation at the beginning, Robert? Very few.
Robert Craven 24:13
I think lots of people say ...
Marcus Sheridan 24:15
No way. They do not say it like that. They do not say that in a frank way. Here's what they say. They get on a call and they tell me about your goals. Tell me about your revenue, expectations. What are we looking at over the next five years? They do not start the conversation by saying, Hey, we may not be the right fit for you. This is the purpose of this call. We're going to be more honest with you than any agency has ever been with you. Now, that's not the conversations that I'm seeing and I'm telling you, we have a partner programme. I have agencies that are constantly coming to me talking to me about this stuff. I hear the initial conversations that they have, because I'm like a mentor to many of them. It's not happening in space. That's not the type of honesty and transparency we have. Because we're so worried about cash flow, Robert, because we're so worried about the numbers. We grovel over every lead that comes in. And it sounds very bland. And because of that, what often happens is that the potential client has all the authority in the relationship, you start, you come out the gate. And before you've even written your first contract, you've got problems with scope creep, you've got problems with them asking for more and more, because they feel like they're the total authority in the conversation. And that you're just the agency, you're not a true partner. Now, listen, I know there's exceptions to this, that there are, there's somebody listening, this right now is getting so mad at what I'm saying. And they're saying, Marcus, you are a fool of it. Guys, there are exceptions. But if we're being extremely honest with ourselves, this is the great minority of the agency world. What I'm saying here, this type of transparency, frankness and honesty, radical candour is very rare.
Robert Craven 26:19
I'm 100% with you. I've run a series of programmes with sales directors on selling, and it's blown my mind that people still insist on talking in a foreign language, and try almost deliberately trying to fool clients in order to try and just acquire them and win them. And I find that amazing. So if you are advising an agency, which was just setting off on the, they asked you answer kind of Rutan Road, apart from obviously buying book and reading the book, and inwardly digesting it, what do you think in your kind of the big sort of things that they need to get to understand to be able to deliver on?
Marcus Sheridan 27:05
Well, look, I mean, if you read the book, so much starts with the Big Five, those five main subjects that every buyer wants to know, regardless of industry, they want to understand costs, they want to understand the problems and the negatives. They want to understand comparisons, because they love to compare, they want to understand reviews, they want to understand what the best is, right? So these are the questions that buyers research. These are the very bottom of the funnel based questions. These are not fluffy questions. These are questions that your sales team is getting all the time. These are questions that people are searching for that no they're looking for an agency are asking all the time, right. And so, you know, depending on what we're talking about here, that when it comes to costs, it's not just what an agency costs. There's a lot of things here, right, we've got, you know, we've got content on how much HubSpot costs, we explain it and we try to explain it better than HubSpot does. Again. So any product or software we sell, we're trying to talk about that we have different types of offerings. So we might have workshops, we might have training, or we might have different coatings, we try to explain that. And when it comes to problems, problems is one where, you know, they usually are like those types of questions are like, so what happens if it's a negative? Or is it true that somebody told me that? Right? So this could be one of the biggest problems or negatives or drawbacks to a tool like HubSpot? What are the biggest drawbacks to inbound marketing? Let's just call that or, you know, you could even say something like, you know, do you know what happens when your Facebook campaigns don't actually work? Like nobody wants to dress that just like, you don't ever see an attorney talking on their website about what happens if you lose your case, which is totally ridiculous, because they lose cases all the time. Right. And that's what I mean by problem comparisons. This could be comparing your type of agency versus other types of agencies, your types of methods versus other types of methods, the software that you recommend, like the HubSpot versus , market owes, you know, whatever new thing is out there, and there's a gazillion of them. It's like, those are the comparisons that people are asking about all the time. And you know, when it comes to reviews, yeah, you should be reviewing your own products that you offer, you should be talking about reviews of other companies as well. And you can read about that more in the book. Best is one of those things where people love to search for the best. They might say the best marketing agencies for when the form could be the type of business could be for schools, could be for hospitals, and they're looking for their particular field there, their industry and the best agencies that work they're in. And then we talked about best tools for best marketing automation tools for best CRM tools for and then once again, it could be their particular need, their particular Whatever that thing is. And the point of it is, though, if we produce this content, we can't stop there. Because the hook, what makes this work so well is when the sales team is helping produce it, they should be part of the editorial calendar, right? Like the production of the editorial calendar, they should see what contents come up. And they should say, yep, every single one of these I'm dealing with all the time, we're constantly hearing these questions. And then they should be integrating them into their sales process very, very intentionally. In the book, that's called assignment, selling assignment selling is so stupidly powerful. It's no different Robert, then, if somebody hasn't read, they ask you to answer, I'm not going to sit and have a conversation with them. Like Me personally, people ask me all the time, you know, I don't care if it's, you know, I don't care if Disney came to me and said, Hey, Marcus, do you wanna have a conversation? I'll say, I'd love to, you got to read they asked me answer first. Now, if they haven't read, they ask you to answer, I'm not gonna have a conversation with them. Because I'm gonna be spinning my wheels when we talk. The point of having a conversation with me, is for us to now say, okay, you've read it, what do you feel like you should do? And then we can start the vetting process accordingly. But if I'm trying to convince them on the first phone call, that they should be talking about cost and price, or be they should be honest, they should be transparent. I'm wasting my time, and I'm wasting theirs, and everybody loses.
Robert Craven 31:33
I love it. I mean, it's kind of a full cycle. And talking to you just confirms everything I felt, and feel about the book and how agencies are behaving. So what next for markers? I mean, they asked you answering for some time now, is it more of the same or have you got other products?
Marcus Sheridan 31:57
Here's what I'm interested in is what, you know, people think I'm a sales and marketing guy, that's fine. But really what I am is somebody that's obsessed with clean communication. That's what I do with communication between humans in all of its different forms. Sometimes we call that sales conversations. Sometimes we call that marketing messaging. Sometimes we call that leadership communication or management skills. So my future is, I'll be writing a lot more communication books. But I'll continue to talk about sales and marketing, because the principles they're in their eternal, they're evergreen, right? It's so wonderful. And in some ways, this is disadvantageous to me, because I'm not a one trick pony. And it's in some ways harder to build a brand, if you're known for many things. But I'm just too passionate about too many things. And because I'm passionate about communication, and I'm pretty good at it, well, then, I'm going to talk about it, I'm going to teach the world about it. And you know, in time, it could manifest in a different way. But you can be guaranteed it's going to have something to do with communication, it just might be called something like marketing, or video, or whatever that thing is.
Robert Craven 33:27
So like yourself, I've written a number of books, and I do find that some books are 90% have a previous book, because you're taking ideas on and moving on. In some senses, they ask if it is kind of the original, the Marcus Bible, if that makes sense to call it.
Marcus Sheridan 33:51
100%. But I see my life going in a direction, where I will help people reach not just professional fulfilment, but personal fulfilment, as well. And it's a big edge that I have. If anybody ever watches me on stage, they're like, this guy speaks totally different than anybody I've ever seen. And it's not a brag, it's just a different style. Some people love it. Some people might not like it as much. But many people want to know, how do you pull it off? How do you do that? How do you talk to the audience real time, and it never blows up in your face. And so that's a skill, right? And all that just has to do with transformative communication. And if you can't transform lives with your communication, you're gonna live such a rich, fulfilled life, and it's one that never goes away. And so that's where I plan on spending a lot of time as the future rolls on, man. So I'm just so passionate for these things. And that's why it's fun to get on your podcast, Robert, and talk to agency owners. Where it's a bloodbath out there right now. And let me say this too. It is not easy. Being an agency owner, post COVID. This is a difficult time. It is the struggle is real. And I am not my agency is not immune to that at all. And so, although I see many things black and white in terms of how I might say them, it doesn't necessarily mean that my agency is living on a bed of roses, and everything is just hunky dory. Because it's not and we're in the fight. And we're in the battle every day, like all your listeners are as well.
Robert Craven 35:48
Yeah, I think the question of what an agency will look like in two, three years time It's fascinating, because there's just so much change.
Marcus Sheridan 35:58
Well, let me say one thing that this is important. I don't think the future of agencies is services. I just don't believe that. Yeah, I believe strongly that the future of agencies is much more of a consulting coaching, consultative model as a whole. And anybody that is in services, can see how it's being commoditized can also see how easy how hard it is better stated, to truly form a deep, deep bond with that company, outside of their marketing department, the most successful agencies moving forward are going to be dramatically more valuable to the leadership and sales team than they are to the marketing team within that organisation. And for the agencies that are listening to this, that don't have a deep relationship with the CEO of the company that they're working with the leadership team that they're working with, with the sales manager they're working with, there's a good chance that at some point, you're going to get replaced, and you're not even going to know why you're not going to know how it happened. And that's how we have to start thinking as agencies were a deal, a digital sales and marketing agency. We're not a marketing agency. And it's important, I think, to have this conversation.
Robert Craven 37:30
Totally agree with you. 100%. So we're about to run out of time. Final words of wisdom from Marcus are there other any one liners or little pearls of wisdom you'd like to share with people that you may.
Marcus Sheridan 37:44
A couple little ones that have changed my life. Number one, it's dumb not to dumb it down. It's not our goal to sound smart. As agencies. It's our goal to be understood. And if we stop trying to sound so freaking smart, when we're on video, when we're writing that article, and instead, just speak in simple Frank terms. It's amazing how refreshing that is. So as you're hearing this, remember, it's dumb not to dumb it down. And last one I'll say is, if you try to be a jack of all trades, you will end up being a master of none. You can't do it, my friends, I 've fallen into that trap many, many times, you're dramatically better off being a master of one. And so what are you the Master of If you can't answer that question, then you may need to rethink your business model.
Robert Craven 38:41
What a place to finish, thank you so much, Marcus for just being wonderful being everything we thought you were going to be. Thank you for sharing your passion and your enthusiasm for what is, to my mind. A blindingly obvious but some reason taken on board concept that every agency should be looking at and a big thank you from me for being a really great guest. Thank you very much indeed.
Marcus Sheridan 39:08
My pleasure.