0:16

Matt Heinz: All right. Welcome everybody to another episode of Sales Pipeline Radio.

0:19

I'm your host, Matt Heinz. So excited to have so many of you here.

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So excited for our guests and conversations here.

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I wish you could have been in the virtual green room just a

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few, just a couple minutes ago. Marcus is already on fire, so I can't wait to release him to you all.

0:33

But thank you to those of you that are watching and listening live

0:36

today in the middle of your work week, in the middle of your workday

0:38

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0:43

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0:46

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0:49

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0:52

So thank you so much for doing those. If you are watching and listening on demand thank you

0:56

for subscribing and downloading. Almost a quarter million people have downloaded Sales Pipeline Radio, and so

1:01

super excited for the impact we've been able to have for people over the years.

1:04

Every episode. Of this podcast, past, present, and future available always

1:09

at SalesPipelineRadio.com. Super excited today to have Marcus Sheridan joining us today.

1:15

He is a keynote speaker. I've seen him speak.

1:18

He's phenomenal. If you're looking for a keynote, definitely look him up, author

1:21

of the books, The Visual Sale, They Ask, You Answer, and his

1:24

newest book, Endless Customers.

1:26

Marcus, thanks for being here. Marcus Sheridan: All right, brother.

1:29

Let's do this man. I am fired up today.

1:31

Matt Heinz: You are fired up. Well, I wanna get right back into it. We'll talk about the book in a minute, but like you were, we started by

1:36

talking about AI and just how I'm not even gonna steal your words,

1:40

just so like human reaction to AI.

1:42

I will just call it irrational and let you go from there.

1:44

Marcus Sheridan: Yeah, it's very irrational for, you know, in my opinion.

1:47

And this is the type of thing, this is subject that gets people just going.

1:51

I did a post recently on LinkedIn and I got a lot of traction.

1:56

Essentially it came from my daughter who works with me.

1:59

She's traveled with me around the world. I mean, she is, she gets my brain.

2:03

Yeah. She comes to me and she says she's 24 years old.

2:06

She says, dad. I've come to realize that I just enjoy talking to AI customer service

2:12

more than human customer service.

2:14

And then she lists the reasons why. Yeah, she's like, they're patient.

2:17

They're not grumpy. The only goal is to try to help me solve my problem.

2:21

Now she's smart enough to know the difference, by the way, between AI.

2:25

And some like really cheap chat bot assistant that has no value in life.

2:30

Right, right, right. Which sometimes people, well, not sometimes, lots of times we see

2:35

people that are skewing their previous interactions with some you know, automated

2:40

telephone system or some really bad chat bot and they're calling that AI and the

2:47

reality is that we don't have to talk to humans and we don't really care.

2:54

What we want fundamentally Yeah.

2:56

Is our problems to be solved quickly.

2:59

We wanna find what we want and we wanna find it fast.

3:02

And there's all these reasons and data that shows this, but this idea that the

3:08

amount of comments that that post got. Yeah.

3:11

First of all, the amount of people that said you never had that

3:13

conversation with your daughter, which. What the heck, what is wrong with you people?

3:17

Yes, I, yes, I had that conversation with my daughter.

3:21

Secondly was the amount of people that said, I've never

3:23

had a good interaction with AI. And truth be told if you haven't, you probably haven't used any

3:30

modern AI tools because if you'd used one that had been trained

3:33

properly, it's pretty extraordinary.

3:36

Some of the conversations that you can have with it, and all you have to

3:38

do is have a voice conversation with Chat GPT right now on your phone.

3:42

And you're not gonna say, that's terrible.

3:45

You're gonna say, wow, that's actually really, really impressive.

3:48

So you can see that the battle lines are starting to be drawn, Matt,

3:52

yeah. In terms of the clinching of the fist.

3:56

Whenever anybody says, you know, AI does this pretty well.

3:59

Matt Heinz: Mm-hmm. Yeah, no I literally this morning was looking at a CMOs sort of an

4:05

org chart, but it was really more of an accountability chart of the

4:08

work that they need done to drive a successful marketing organization.

4:13

And it wasn't as org chart about where people are, as much as it was an

4:16

accountability chart, here's the functions I need done, here's the work I need done.

4:21

And the top half were managers sort of owning strategy and the

4:23

bottom half were a bunch of agents. Right that own different components.

4:27

That would've been people, that would've been junior people in

4:31

the organization and now you've got agents that can do that work.

4:34

It's not replacing the people. I think it's upgrading what we allow people as humans to do in that process.

4:40

But our lizard brains, Marcus, think that's really scary.

4:43

Our lizard brains think that like movies are becoming reality and I think

4:47

sometimes it clouds us from seeing the potential that we can now accelerate

4:52

ourselves into to have the job that we ultimately really want anyway.

4:56

Marcus Sheridan: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, at this point, if you're not feeling somewhat superhuman, you're

5:00

probably not using AI the right way, and you're probably not using

5:03

it nearly as often as you should. Of course, the big debate is where's the entry level jobs at, right?

5:08

It's like, what does entry level mean today? And maybe that's gonna evolve, you know, over the course of time.

5:13

But it's fascinating to me. I do know this.

5:17

That the market is gonna do what the market does.

5:20

And I've learned that in business, Endless Customers talks about this, the

5:23

how we try to fight against the tide.

5:26

Mm-hmm. But the tide always comes up and then it goes down.

5:29

It comes up, it goes down. It doesn't matter. It doesn't care if you move your lounge chair or not.

5:34

It's gonna do what it does. Right. And so we have to understand that when it comes to the market.

5:40

Matt Heinz: Yeah. Talking today on Sales Pipeline Radio with Marcus Sheridan, author of the

5:43

new book, Endless Customers, famous for saving a swimming pool company in 2008.

5:48

Do you have a two minute version of that story? I know some people have heard it.

5:51

Yeah, sure. Some people have not. Marcus Sheridan: Yeah so I started as pool guy, 2001.

5:55

Grew the business slowly, then 2008.

5:58

Nearly knocked us out, thought we were gonna file bankruptcy, and the

6:01

beauty of pain and suffering is that it forces us to think outside the box.

6:05

I started learning a ton at that time. I was trying to save the business and I said, okay.

6:09

Sounds like the way we save it is if we become the best teachers in the world

6:12

when it comes to fiberglass pools online. That's right. And so we said we're gonna answer every single question

6:16

that anybody's ever asked us. And we became the Wikipedia of fiberglass pools, the WebMD, if you will.

6:22

And within a couple years we had the most trafficked swimming pool website in the world.

6:26

And I started to write about the success we were having.

6:29

And that led to a book called They Ask, You Answer, and now over a

6:32

hundred thousand people have read that book, applied it to their business.

6:35

We've seen extraordinary results, but times have changed with AI and so we

6:38

said we have to do a new iteration and with a new name and there you have it.

6:43

Endless Customers. Matt Heinz: Yeah. And I think people, that used to focus a lot on content for search engine

6:48

optimization are starting to think about that as sort of GPT optimization,

6:52

making sure the language learning models understand what they're doing.

6:54

Yes. I don't think it changes the fundamental need for original content and ideas.

6:59

And I love the idea that you took, like just questions you're getting

7:02

from customers and prospects. Turn that into content.

7:04

I think. I dunno if you know and Andy Crestodina at Orbit Media, if he gets a question

7:08

in a biz dev process, he will turn that into a 1500 word blog post.

7:12

And now he not only has the answer for other prospects, but

7:14

other people's searching for him online have that as well.

7:18

Marcus Sheridan: Yeah. 2000. Go ahead. Everything's about signals today, right?

7:21

And we gotta please three fundamental parties if we're

7:23

gonna be successful going forward. Number one, we gotta please customers, we gotta be known, we gotta be

7:28

found and recommended by customers. Number two, we've gotta be recommended by search engines.

7:33

We gotta be known, found, recommended by them.

7:35

And then number three, we gotta be known by AI.

7:38

Mm-hmm. And that's not necessarily an order of importance, by the way.

7:41

Yeah. And, your ability to send out signals to the market that says this is a

7:47

known and trusted brand is gonna become everything to your success going forward.

7:52

And along those lines, because we're talking about it, you cannot build your

7:56

house on Google and think that house is gonna be built to last, friends.

8:00

Right? And I don't care what SEOs tell you that have been in the game and are afraid

8:04

to lose your business, you cannot build a long-term company on Google alone.

8:10

It's not gonna work. Matt Heinz: Well, it's not gonna work in part because like

8:14

you don't own the algorithm. It's rented land versus owned land.

8:16

It's not a land you control.

8:19

And so you start to think about like, what do you have control over?

8:22

You have a control over what you say. Where you say it, especially if you can plant that on own land versus rented land.

8:28

And how do you start to get into the hearts and minds of those

8:30

customers if the platforms go away? Yeah.

8:33

The relationship in someone's brain doesn't go away.

8:35

And even in B2B, we focus a lot on sort of account based, and we focus a

8:39

lot on the target accounts we want to go to, but the account doesn't have a

8:42

soul, the account doesn't have a heart. So your ability to actually sort of live there with your

8:47

customers I think is critical. And , I think we could probably both rant a little bit on sort of the short

8:53

term mentality of a lot of marketers saying, I gotta hit my number tomorrow.

8:56

How do I get leads this afternoon? Which yeah, you can go do some performance marketing to increase

9:01

your conversion rates, but that usually does very little to build

9:05

long-term equity with that audience.

9:07

Marcus Sheridan: Yeah. You know, in the book we talk about what we call the four pillars

9:12

of a known and trusted brand. Mm-hmm.

9:14

And, Things are gonna change a lot in the coming years, as we've already stated,

9:18

platforms are gonna come and go, right?

9:21

You don't wanna make big bets on platforms as a forever thing, right?

9:24

You wanna put big bets on our principles because they're always built to last.

9:28

And so whether you know, we're talking today or in 10 years,

9:32

or in 20 years, trust is gonna be fundamental to your business.

9:36

Yes. So you've gotta become a known and trusted brand.

9:39

Well, how do you do that? Well, here's the four pillars.

9:41

Number one, you gotta be willing to say what others in your

9:44

space aren't willing to say. And we got a bunch of frameworks for that.

9:47

But you know, most companies essentially follow the rules they've been given by

9:51

everyone else and do not address what buyers really want to know online.

9:56

Mm-hmm. Okay. Mm-hmm. Number two, you gotta be willing to show with video what others in

9:59

your space aren't willing to show. Most aren't thinking like a media company most having gone all in on video like

10:06

they should, even though many industries are now video first, tech second, and.

10:10

Three. You gotta be willing to sell in a way that others in your

10:13

space aren't willing to sell. Most aren't willing to do that even though they think they've

10:16

got a unique sales process. As you know, Matt, they do not.

10:19

And finally, number four, you gotta be more human than others are willing to be.

10:23

When I say be more human, I mean make the human connection with

10:27

someone on a very deep level. And there's ways that you can do that, especially using AI in technology

10:32

more than we ever have before. So those are the big four.

10:34

Most don't follow. Matt Heinz: Yeah, I think you, you mentioned sort of how things are changing

10:39

and I think, you know, I've been alive for a while and I've been in business

10:42

for a while and I've heard things are changing rapidly for a long time and

10:45

they continue to, but I think a lot about Pascal Finette and he's like, he

10:48

calls himself a futurist and he talks about this thing he calls the innovation

10:51

paradox, and I'm probably gonna paraphrase this poorly, but he says, the innovation

10:55

that has happened in the past of fears. Appears far shallower than it actually was.

10:59

Right. You think about, this incredible computer that we take for granted

11:03

all the things your phone can do. Mm-hmm.

11:05

That literally just 16 years ago, like mostly didn't exist.

11:09

And now as we take it for granted, right? Like wifi on an airplane, that still kind of bogs my mind, right?

11:14

Innovation in the future will not be nearly as steep as it

11:19

feels like it will be today. And that has almost always beared out as well.

11:22

And people say, well, AI may break that and go faster, but we've been

11:25

talking about, sort of a post chat GPT AI world for almost three years now.

11:29

And yes, things are advancing, but our ability to think of those as the new

11:33

normal, our ability to normalize those things in our lives just like the phone

11:37

is happening and will continue to happen. D o you buy that?

11:41

Marcus Sheridan: Yeah the quote that I like the most is you cannot fit the

11:46

future in the containers of the past.

11:48

Mm-hmm. And it's really powerful because what happens is somebody might say,

11:54

well, you know, I mean, when websites came out, you really didn't have

11:59

to have a website for 10 years. Mm-hmm. And you could get away with it, but eventually you had to have a website.

12:04

Matt Heinz: Right, right. Marcus Sheridan: But it's like, today, what I've seen, I don't know

12:07

if you feel this way, Matt, but I feel like the rate of change.

12:12

Since Chat GPT came out is faster than the rate of change from the previous decade.

12:17

It's like we're seeing with each new iteration of the tech,

12:21

you're like, it's son of a gun. This is extraordinary.

12:23

Like deep research comes out. Yeah. A lot of people are sleeping on it and I'm like, holy freak.

12:28

This is extraordinary. Right?

12:31

Yeah. And you know, like agents, right? It's like, oh my goodness, are you kidding me right now?

12:36

The problem is there's still so much ignorance in the market.

12:40

That people just don't realize what's possible right now and really only

12:45

like there's only a couple percent of people that are really into it saying.

12:49

Oh my goodness. And reality is they're gonna just create, this is why you're gonna

12:53

see billion dollar businesses that have a couple of employees.

12:56

Yeah. I mean, it's just gonna happen. It's inevitable.

12:58

Even though that's hard for people to understand. Can't fit the future in the containers of the past.

13:03

Matt Heinz: I remember years ago, and I don't even know if she still does

13:05

it, but Mary Meeker, who I think she was at Kleiner Perkins at the time,

13:08

would do her like internet report. Right? And there was one year where she says we are not far away from for mobile

13:13

being the primary platform versus like laptop or desktop and I'm not

13:18

at all a futurist, so in my brain I'm like, there's no frigging way.

13:22

Yeah, right. Mobile usurps like us looking like I'm on a laptop and, but there's

13:27

no way that happens and now you kind of take it for granted.

13:29

That's right. And so it taught me that like whenever I think something is not possible

13:33

or if it's outside of my frame of reference, I'm like, that might happen.

13:36

Right? You can't say that's not gonna happen. Now.

13:39

You don't wanna sit here and say every flash, every fly by night,

13:41

every idea, every fad is gonna stick.

13:44

So I guess I ask you like, how do you identify the things that are

13:47

going to have some staying power? And how do you start it?

13:50

You don't need to be necessarily at the very crest of the wave, but

13:53

if someone's listening, if they're in business of an entrepreneur,

13:56

if they're a go to market leader. How do you try to separate the wheat from the chaff there?

14:00

Marcus Sheridan: The way that has worked for me, the best far and away, Matt,

14:04

is becoming very, very self-aware.

14:06

And this really started for me in 2008, 2009 when I was struggling and I

14:09

thought I was gonna lose the business. It's becoming very self-aware of your own behaviors online.

14:14

Okay? Mm-hmm. Because I knew that I was shifting away from traditional media and I was

14:19

starting to learn everything from.

14:22

Online, like from websites. Mm-hmm. And so I'm like, well, if I'm going this way, obviously this is the world.

14:29

It makes sense that the world would go in the same direction because this is so

14:32

much easier, it's so much more effective. It's just a better UX overall in terms of learning, in terms of shopping.

14:38

So I said, let's go all in on this thing called our website and

14:43

not do any of that other crap. That's a distraction.

14:46

And of course, you know, that decision just changed our business forever and

14:49

if you become very self-aware, you start to notice things like, okay, how

14:53

much more am I. Using my phone today than I was using it five years ago.

14:57

How much more video am I watching today than I was watching five years ago?

15:01

Like, how much stuff am I renting today versus owning five years ago?

15:05

It's like there's all these trends that you represent, but you're not.

15:09

Paying attention, right? Yeah. It's like, okay, how often are you not going to Google now and going to Chat GPT

15:15

or Claude or something like that instead, right? See if this is happening, it means, oh, guess what?

15:19

You're gonna do that more in the future, and eventually you're probably not

15:22

gonna be using Google at all because you can get exactly what you want in a

15:26

better answer, in a better form, in a quicker way with a different platform.

15:30

Matt Heinz: And I do, I agree with you and I do think that, you don't

15:33

have to wait till that 10 year point. Oh no one's gonna need a website for 10 years.

15:36

Well, you don't have to wait 10 years and you don't have to start on day two, right?

15:39

If you think about like innovations that came out, if you were hot to trot on

15:43

YouTube from the beginning, good for you. If you did the same thing with Google Plus, well maybe

15:47

that didn't work out right? LinkedIn. Awesome Clubhouse.

15:51

Maybe not so much. Not so much. Right. And so you don't have to be there at the very beginning, but as things

15:56

start, I mean, and I would say like a realtime example of that right now

15:59

might be like Bluesky I dunno, maybe the jury's still out on Bluesky.

16:02

Does that actually become a real Twitter alternative, or is that

16:05

gonna be like this year's Clubhouse? I don't know.

16:08

Marcus Sheridan: I'll tell you the answer. No, just like I said with Clubhouse, that was such a mega No, I could tell

16:13

so quickly that was just a spur of the moment thing, and I'll tell you why.

16:16

And by the way, I would call myself a futurist, but I'm really

16:19

good at looking about a year and a half to two years like ahead.

16:23

And with Clubhouse, it was so stinking obvious because I'm like, there's no way

16:26

someone is going to spend this much time listening to people that they may or

16:32

may not enjoy liking because it's never gonna create a consistent experience.

16:36

And if you can't create a consistent experience, it's not gonna fly.

16:39

And I was dogging Clubhouse and everybody's like, Marcus,

16:41

it's gonna be awesome. I'm gonna place all my money on the one that says that

16:45

platform is gonna, and it did.

16:48

So, yeah. But that's why, but that's why it's, we want to be principle centric.

16:53

Not platform centric. Yes. And what's gonna continue to matter?

16:57

Transparency. Right? Disruption.

17:00

Not following the rules that you've been given. All these things.

17:02

And of course, that's what I'm trying to drive hard.

17:04

So home and teach so clearly with Endless Customers

17:09

. Matt Heinz: So we're running out of time with our guest today, Marcus Sheridan.

17:11

Definitely wanna make sure you check out his new book, Endless Customers.

17:15

You can check that out by going to EndlessCustomers.com.

17:17

Before we run out of time, if people that are not proud mountaineers

17:21

from the university or from West Virginia University may not know

17:26

about the pepperoni roll, can you explain the pepperoni roll to people

17:29

that may not be from West Virginia?

17:32

Marcus Sheridan: Yeah, I mean, it's just like one of the great inventions of

17:35

West by God, and the way that it works is you've got this, what feels like a

17:39

homemade roll, but inside of it you've got pepperoni and cheese and they sell it.

17:44

at these different convenience stores. If you throw in the microwave for about 20 seconds and then it starts to change your

17:50

life and you're never the same and you take it with you the rest of your life.

17:53

So if you haven't had a pepperoni roll, you haven't lived your

17:56

fullest existence just yet. Matt Heinz: Can you get a decent pepperoni roll like outside regionally?

18:01

I mean, you're not that far from home where you are, but I'm in Seattle?

18:04

Is it even possible? Marcus Sheridan: Maybe Pittsburgh. Maybe Pittsburgh.

18:06

That's about it. Yeah, that's about it.

18:09

Matt Heinz: The other thing before we go, so I had, until this summer,

18:12

I had never been to a Bucky's. Okay, so we did a family reunion in the Smokey Mountains.

18:17

We flew into Nashville and then we drove east to to Pigeon Ford.

18:22

And we started to see these billboards.

18:24

Yep. And the one that got me was, it said Bucky's, 45 minutes.

18:29

We understood the assignment and I still didn't know anything about Bucky's.

18:32

And we get there and I'm like, boy, howdy. Did they, that's one of those things that you kind of like, I wish that it was one

18:37

closer, but I don't think it would work. I think it's a, it's just a southern institution,

18:41

Marcus Sheridan: but lemme just say this and this is gonna sound self-serving.

18:43

'cause somehow I'm gonna find a way to bring that back to my book.

18:46

And that is this Sally Hogshead says something that I just love so much, which

18:50

is different, is better than better. Now Bucky's is clearly better.

18:55

Yeah. But they're very, very different.

18:58

And it's the reason why they have a phenomenal following is they didn't

19:02

follow the rules they were given by everyone else in their space.

19:05

Mm-hmm. And so if you're looking to do something extraordinary as Bucky's

19:08

has done, and they're gonna just, that's a brand that's built to last.

19:11

And God bless Bucky's in Texas, right? Yeah.

19:13

If you're gonna build extraordinary brand, you can't follow the

19:16

rules you've been given. That's why. I invite you to go to EndlessCustomers.com.

19:20

Check out the book EndlessCustomers.com.

19:22

You want to get it because it's gonna give you a system that you

19:24

can follow to become the most known and trusted brand in your market.

19:29

Matt Heinz: Marcus, you're a busy man. Thank you so much for your time today.

19:32

Everyone. Check out EndlessCustomers.com.

19:35

Some great content insights there. Thank you everyone for joining us.

19:37

Another episode of Sales Pipeline Radio.

19:40

We'll see you back here in a couple weeks. Until then have a good rest of your week.

19:43

We'll see you soon.