Building Inbound Buy-In with Marcus Sheridan

Marcus Sheridan owned a swimming pool company, River Pools, that nearly went under in 2008. A 17 out of 100 on HubSpot’s Website Grader pushed him into blogging, River Pools became the most trafficked pool website in the world, and writing about how he did it turned into The Sales Lion, his agency and coaching business. Andrew Dymski hosted this episode, number 63 of Inbound Agency Journey, on his own. It covers who Marcus refuses to work with, why every engagement starts with a workshop the sales team has to attend, and how he hires content managers.

Who The Sales Lion works with, and for how long

Marcus said he’s turned down millions in potential business to avoid becoming a larger agency, and tells far more people they’re not a fit than he invites in. His filter has three parts.

The type of business that I want to work with is somebody that has a teacher’s mindset. They love to teach and they want to be the thought leader of their space. That’s pretty much the first qualification… Number two, I look for a company that has buy-in or is willing to do what it takes to get buy-in across the board, especially with the big three, which is leadership, management and sales teams. If that isn’t there, I don’t play.

(Listen at 10:20)

The third is a company that wants to own inbound as a culture, where the sales team can define it and leadership can explain why. He called that the extreme minority, and admitted that doing all the work for the client is probably the stronger financial model. His average retainer runs eight to twelve months by design: he teaches people how to fly, then pushes them out of the nest. The Sales Lion produces zero content and does nothing without the client in the room. What it sells is a year-long coaching program with one to two required training meetings a week.

The workshop is required, and the sales team is the target

Andrew asked what the client journey looks like.

We pretty much require everybody to have a workshop to start an engagement, and in that workshop, sales team is required to be there, leadership is required to be there… What’s required is sales and leadership, and if they’re not there, again, we don’t play.

(Listen at 17:09)

From there the client puts a content manager on staff and starts pushing content into the sales process immediately. Marcus thinks the usual advice to expect no results for a year is dumb: a content manager who interviews a salesperson on video about the questions prospects ask has made that salesperson better on a call the same night.

What we find is 80% of the questions they answer on the first call or pitch are the same questions. It’s the 20% where the magic occurs… Our goal with inbound is to get the sales team fired up, excited and jacked and engaged. We don’t really care about the marketing department.

(Listen at 21:04)

When the sales team is in the workshop, he said, the agency gets respect instead of resistance.

”This is a religion. It’s like payroll on Fridays.”

Andrew admitted that in GuavaBox’s early days he’d let a CEO skip a call to protect the deal. Marcus’s answer: stop right there and send the message early that leadership has to be involved. He tells at least half his prospects that HubSpot and inbound aren’t a fit, because the tool is only as good as the person swinging the hammer.

I tell people all the time, I really don’t think you’re ready for this, and it offends people a lot, right?… You’re asking me a lot of questions that denote that you have a bunch of other priorities. You don’t get it yet, and until you get it, this ain’t gonna fly.

(Listen at 14:36)

He has told clients that missing a third coaching call in a month means he’ll let them go.

This has to be religion, and that’s the phrase I like to use with people. This is a religion. It’s what we do. It’s like payroll on Fridays. We don’t miss it.

(Listen at 24:49)

The payoff is how engagements end: almost every time, the client is the one who admits they weren’t ready to do their part. Nobody writes a bad review over that.

Hiring the content manager: skills over personality, then a 48-hour test

Asked for a recent failure, Marcus pointed at the content manager role he often helps clients fill. He targets recent journalism graduates (they can write, interview, shoot video and handle social) and looks for writers and communicators ahead of marketers.

There’s been times when I failed to help choose the right content manager. That is a challenge, because at first I would fall in love with personalities over skills, and I realized that was a huge, huge mistake. They got to be a freaking awesome writer. But not just a great writer, they’ve got to be really great at turning work over quickly.

(Listen at 26:39)

The vetting process now has a second round the candidate doesn’t expect.

What they think is an interview, they have to interview the person that’s interviewing them for a story… You take the notes however you want to take them, and you’ve got 48 hours to bring back a 700 word article document that addresses this conversation. And that got rid of a whole bunch of my problems. That weeded out a bunch of people.

(Listen at 27:49)

He does the same with video. His other admitted mistakes: basing pay on what someone earned at a big corporation instead of what their skills merited, and not giving his team enough constructive feedback.

The episode closes with the Hubcast, a podcast for HubSpot users doing about 5,000 downloads a month and bringing in six figures a year through workshop sales.