Contractor Lead Generation in the Age of AI with Marcus Sheridan

I'm Ryan Bell of Isaiah Industries, manufacturer

of specialty metal roofing and other building materials.

Today my co-host is Todd Miller.

Todd, how you doing today?

You know, I'm doing great.

Well, actually, I may need to take that back.

So I woke up this morning to an email from my life coach.

She said I didn't make the team.

I. No, you would think after 61 years I would make the team, but anyway.

Okay.

That was my joke of the day.

Sorry.

Nice.

I am doing great, Ryan, and I hope you are too.

Yes, I, I am doing fantastic.

Looking forward to this episode.

Um, before we dive in, I do wanna mention we are playing our challenge words game.

So be on the, listen for some words that may sound like they're a little

out of the blue or don't fit in, and we will reveal those at the end.

You ready to get started, Todd?

Yes, I am.

Let's

go.

I'm looking forward to today's guest.

This will be a great show, so thank you.

Let's dive in.

Well, today's guest is world renowned communication expert, author and

keynote speaker Marcus Sheridan.

Marcus helps brands, sales teams, and leaders establish

more trust with their audiences.

With over 13 years of experience in the speaking industry in

23 years as an entrepreneur.

Marcus has honed his craft as a master communicator, helping individuals

and organizations transform the way they connect, engage, and influence

His bestselling book, they ask you answer is not just a methodology,

it's a movement that's reshaping how organizations engage with their audiences.

Marcus, it's great to have you on the show today.

Thank you for joining us.

Great to be here, Ryan.

It's gonna be a fun conversation.

I got a good vibe about this one.

Awesome.

Good.

That's a good way to start.

So, uh, we had one of your colleagues, Chris Dupre, on our

show back in 2023, a few years ago.

It's episode 94, I believe.

It was a great episode.

Um, I'll make sure to link to that in the show notes.

But, um, for any of our listeners who might not be familiar with you

or your book, could you kick us off by sharing a little bit about your.

Background and kind of how you stumbled into this world of inbound

sales and content marketing.

Yeah, I'll give the quick 1 0 1.

I started a pool.

Company, a fiberglass pool company with a couple buddies.

In 2001.

I was right outta college and uh, we literally started out a back of a pickup

truck and things were going okay, you know, we started to grow the company.

But then 2008, 2009 happened, we had the big crash and uh, a lot of

pool companies went outta business.

We thought we were gonna go outta business and, uh, we were literally

weeks away from bankruptcy.

But the cool thing about in this case, pain and suffering, is

it forces us to do that, which.

We've never done before.

Right?

It's that YOLO mindset.

Mindset when you have pain and suffering.

And that's what's funny too about tough times is they create

strong men, but they also create great marketing and innovation.

And so when you see dips in the market, that's when you see.

Innovation occurring because you're just like, I just gotta try this thing,

I gotta do this, I gotta send it.

I gotta do whatever it takes to save my business.

And that's when I really started to learn about the internet,

about inbound, about content.

And when I really took from what I was learning, Ryan was, you know,

if I just obsess over my customer's questions, fears, worries, concerns,

and I'm willing to address those online, I might save my business.

So I said to my two business partners, we're gonna become the Wikipedia of pools.

We're gonna be like the WebMD of what we do.

And, uh, we, we literally, I, I remember brainstorming one night all the questions

I had ever received as a sales guy.

'cause I was doing most of the sales for us.

And, um, I had like a couple hundred questions about fiberglass swimming

pools that I had written down.

And then over the next couple years I addressed those on online,

on our website, on YouTube, and we became the most trafficked

swimming pool website in the world.

Save the business.

We exploded.

We ended up.

Uh, starting to manufacture pools because we had so much growth

and we had so much lead flow from outside of our area in Virginia.

And so.

By 2017, we started manufacturing, um, fiberglass pools.

And, uh, then, uh, we became the fastest growing manufacturer

of fiberglass pools in the us.

We became the first franchise of fiberglass pools, uh, in the world.

And in 20 20, 20 21, I actually sold the manufacturing side of the business.

I still own the original, uh, river Pools in Virginia.

So essentially I'm a franchisee of the larger franchisor today.

And, uh, over the course of this entire journey, I wrote a book, uh,

called They Ask You Answer, which is, is is essentially a framework of how

you become the most known and trusted brand in your market by, uh, being.

Radically transparent and honest and giving buyers exactly what they want.

And it's a crazy ride.

And it came out in 2017.

It did very well.

A second edition came out in 2020, and now in 2025 we've got the third edition,

but it's called Endless Customers, which is the third, third edition of the book.

And it's whole purpose.

It's to show companies how to become the most known and

trusted brand in their market.

And I also today have a company that helps organizations.

Implement this system.

It's called Impact.

And uh, it's been a lot of fun.

So it's been a crazy ride, man.

Never dreamt, like, first of all, I never dreamt I'd be a pool guy and I

never dreamt I'd be speaking around the world talking about this stuff.

And I didn't know what the word serial entrepreneur even meant, right?

But this is, this is what's happened over the course of time.

That's the beauties of life.

You know, I have to throw something in here real quick, so I'm

not sure that a liar audience truly understands how revolutionary what you did

was, and interestingly, I was following you back with river pools even before

you wrote, they ask you answer and you, I was seeing things written about you.

I think maybe you had a blog, but there were some, some things going

on that I was reading about you.

And you know, what you were doing was pretty revolutionary because anyone who

typically does an in-home sales item, um, you don't answer those questions until you

get in the home, because that's your fear.

What am I gonna have to say?

Um, so I, I'm curious, I know Ryan's got a lot more questions here, but you

know, what is your first response to that person who does in-home sales and

says, well, I can't answer this stuff before I'm there because I'm gonna.

Spill all my candy.

I won't have anything to share.

Um, what, how do you respond to them?

Yeah, I think it's, I mean, it's a really

legitimate question and um, I am super familiar within home selling.

Obviously I did it for, you know, almost a decade of my own life and I taught.

Taught a lot of companies to do it, uh, as well.

And I'll tell you this, uh, a couple things that you

gotta understand about this.

Number one, to that person, I would say, do you believe in the golden rule?

Do you believe in it?

And of course, the golden rule is, is treat others as you yourself, would wanna

be treated to be a, a world class marketer and to generate more leads and more trust.

And anybody in your space has ever done, you have to become very self-aware.

In terms of how you buy, what drives, what drives you, what motivates you,

what inspires you, um, what makes you click on something, what makes you buy

something, what makes you fill out a form?

All these things.

And so one, someone becomes very, very self-aware.

I'm able to say to them, so if you had the choices, would you

want to understand these things before somebody came to your home?

Of course, the answer is, well, yes.

Yes, of course I would.

And so we'll talk about what those things are.

But, um, what we know is that when you ignore these things, you end

up eliminating just a mountain of leads and ultimately business that

you would've gotten, but you don't know you lost those because you.

You hedged, you refuse to give the buyer what they wanted because what we

know today is that the average buyer is 80% through the buyer's journey

before they reach out to a company.

And so what this, what this basically means is buyers, consumers, they're,

they're researching to death.

We're, we're all like info divorce at this point.

We can get whatever we want whenever we want, and we want that information and

we want it upfront as much as possible.

Okay.

And so because we're doing so much legwork, by the time we actually talk to

a salesperson, we're most of the way home.

Most of the way home.

Now, are there exceptions to that?

Yes, of course.

But generally speaking, we're most of the way home.

This is why everybody's listening to this right now, has talked to a salesperson

in the last year where you could tell you knew more than the salesperson knew

about the thing that they were selling because you had done more research than

they had done on that particular niche thing that you were interested in, right?

And so this isn't going away.

This is only going to grow, especially with AI and the immediacy

of answers and information.

That's where we're all headed.

And so I tend to go where the puck is headed, not to where the

person is holding the stick, right?

Because that's where we need to be as businesses.

And if you understand how buyers are becoming more informed than ever, then you

say, all right, I've gotta win the 80%.

I've got to become the most known and trusted while they're vetting and

researching online, whether it's with ai, whether it's with Google, whether

it's with their friends, whatever it is, I need to become that voice of

trust in that moment and get recommended by that friend, by that Google, by

that AI so that they come to us.

And so if you ignore these things, you will not be recommended by ai.

You will not be recommended by Google.

You may be recommended.

By a friend who has already worked with you.

That to me is not acceptable.

I'm not gonna take one out of three.

No, sir. And so that's why you have to say, we're gonna

own, we're gonna own that 80%.

And you can only do it by talking about the things that the buyer wants to know.

And what's cool about this is most businesses refuse to talk about

those things on the front end, which gives you an extreme advantage.

It's interesting that you mentioned ai.

One of the things I wanted to ask you about was, uh, you know, there's a lot

of talk in the SEO world right now about, well, SEO is dead, which I don't believe,

but how Google is, you know, replacing search results with an AI generated

response where they're pulling info from.

Where they find it on the web and giving it directly in search results.

Um, instead of a searcher needing to go visit a website, you know, for example,

and then finding a brand that way.

Um, any advice or insights on,

I got strong opinions.

I got very strong opinions on this.

okay, let's hear

Um, so let's just lay it out for everyone.

Is SEO dead?

No, of course.

It's not dead right now, but.

It is evolving dramatically.

Now, is Google dead?

No.

Is Google going to die?

There's a decent chance that Google, as we know it will die.

So let, let's talk about, uh, each one real quick.

Okay.

All right.

For 25 years, we have learned how to use this tool called Google.

And it was one of the most extraordinary marketing tools we've ever seen.

Absolutely extraordinary.

And for the most part, especially early on, if you talked about the right things,

if you used the right words, if you said the right things, you could show up.

Google, and the big goal was to be ranked number one in Google.

What does being ranked number one in Google mean today?

Well, 10 years ago, it meant that 82% of all people would

click on that first blue link.

That was number one in search engine results.

That's what it meant 10 years ago.

What does it mean today?

It doesn't actually mean jack squat, and I'll tell you why.

Because if you do a search today for, you know, best remodelers,

you know, like, uh, uh, Lafayette.

Or best remodelers, Richmond, Virginia, or whatever the

thing is, what's gonna happen?

Is the first thing you might see is an AI summary, which takes up a lot of the page.

Next thing you might see is a bunch of sponsor, uh, links.

Now of course, Google becoming desperate, uh, to drive revenue,

uh, and of course to be nefarious.

They've tried to make the sponsored.

Uh, links look like regular organic search results, right?

They're trying to trick everyone into thinking that's not a sponsored,

they're forced to say it's sponsored, but they're trying their hardest

so that you don't know really that that's a sponsored search result.

And then after that, you've got related questions, right, that

are gonna show on the screen.

And then after that, you might have your Google map.

With businesses on it.

And then of course, that's becoming more and more sponsored and less

and less organic, if you will.

And then after that you might have a few videos.

And then finally you've got the company that ranks first

for that particular phrase.

And this is a problem for a lot of folks, you've literally, if you're ranked

number one in Google search results, you've gotta scroll three times, almost.

Through.

In other words, you've gotta see the screen three times and scroll past it

before you get to that number one ranking.

Most of the time, of course there's exceptions, what the world, so that's

what's changed now because of this too.

What's happening is more and more companies are saying, gosh, we've

gotta, we we're, we're not doing as well with SEO as we used to.

And so, um, we've gotta put money into paid.

And every single contractor I've talked to this year that does paid

Google Ads is telling me we're we're spending more and we're getting less.

I. Which is obvious because what happens is you're seeing businesses

have to put more into it and see.

I think it's, I think it's wild to watch for me from, from my uh, point of view.

Because what's, what's happening here is, is, is Google is holding on to the past.

Their core business model is they make billions a year off of ads.

But if we're being really, really honest, do you think the future of search

is you being forced to look at ads?

The future of search is what we might call zero click.

And zero click is when?

Right now, 50% of all searches on Google, on Google alone end up with no click.

In other words, they're not clicking the blue link.

And so what's happening is you might say, I don't get it.

My search rankings are as good as they've ever been, and my traffic

is 60% what it was last year.

Guess what?

It's gonna be 50% next year.

Now, this doesn't mean that you don't pay attention to SEO.

This doesn't mean that you don't pay attention to Google.

What it means is the influence is gonna be less and less over time.

It also means that if you look at the ux, the user experience of of, of being

searching on Google versus I. If you are really familiar with some of these AI

platforms, like a chat GPT, I could tell you right now I got tons of friends that

have already moved over from Google to chat GPT, and the most ridiculous stat

that you hear from people is actually more people than ever are using Google.

That may be true, but I can tell you more folks than ever are leaving

Google right now, and companies are struggling to generate business more

than they have and a decade from Google because of everything that's going on.

And so what this means is your future is gonna be contingent upon your ability

to be recommended by three entities.

I mentioned them earlier.

You gotta be recommended by the customer.

That will never change, folks.

You've gotta be recommended by Google.

That will change because their importance to you is gonna diminish over time.

And I'm not saying exactly when, but I think there's a very strong

argument that within seven years that the number one revenue stream for

Google itself is gonna be YouTube because of course they own YouTube.

And YouTube is actually gaining in an importance as traditional

search is less important.

Oh, by the way, the AI can now, the AI can now.

uh, uh, search videos, not just the titles, but everything within

the video to show that just like a textual search result in the past.

And so no longer, that's a, that's a hindrance and I'm

sure we'll talk about more.

You know, with about video and, and YouTube here in a minute.

And so we do this, you've gotta, you've gotta be recommended by Google and

you've gotta be recommended by ai.

But so much of your success as a contractor in the future, as

someone that's in, uh, home services or in the trades, is gonna be

contingent on does AI recommend you?

And the only way AI is gonna recommend you is if you're sending a crap ton

of signals out to the marketplace.

Digital signals that essentially say this is a company worthy of being recommended.

And when we say signals, what we're talking about is everything that's

online produced by you or written.

Produced about you.

So every single review that is ever produced online by, let's say Google

in this case or some other review, that is gonna be a signal to ai, every piece

of content you produce, that's gonna be signal to ai, everything that's on social.

It's gonna be a signal to ai.

Everything that's on video, YouTube, it's gonna be a signal to ai.

The more signals you get, the stronger you are and the more you're

gonna be recommended by everyone, all three of those characters.

So that continues to be true, but Google is like building a house on sand,

and for 2000 plus years, we've known you do not build your house on sand.

So do not build your whole marketing on Google ads.

On Google search, and I'm not saying don't pay attention to it, but don't listen

to any SEO company that tells you that Google will not be affected and that SEO

is the same as it's always been because that person is being intellectually

dishonest and I would not do business with that person if I were you.

So, I mean, I have started switching over to searching, asking chat

GPT for something instead of Google.

Um, and I fi I get an answer quicker.

Um, if it's something like deep research, perpe perplexity is fantastic.

Um, and I'm really starting to see the value and how quick I

can get what I need by using ai.

So, and, and really, if I understand correctly what you just said, the.

The strategy behind SEO is creating content and putting information out there

so that you show up in search results.

That same underlying strategy is still there and what's

necessary to show up for ai.

Correct?

Yeah, that, that part has not changed

Yeah.

and what buyers wanna know has not changed.

Um, which is why, you know, if you take, they ask you answer my first book.

Written in 2017, it is still very foundational to what a content

strategy should look like.

But keep in mind there's content and there's signals, and we

can't just produce content.

We've gotta create signals, right?

So for, for example, you're not writing your own reviews, but that's content.

That's a signal.

That's a signal that we've got to, we've gotta drive towards, in other words,

uh, to get that recommendation by ai.

People listening to this right now have just can, it cannot even fathom the

influence AI recommendations are gonna have on their business in the future.

It's very hard because, you know.

A great phrase is you can't fit the future in the containers of the past.

And so the problem is you got folks that are thinking about their historical

perspective of what they've experienced with the internet over the course of the

last 25 years, and they're thinking that's gonna be the run rate for what AI is.

And let me tell you, I. Ha I more has happened since November of 2022,

which, you know, we're talking two and a half years now than happened,

like from a tech and from a marketing perspective in the previous 20 years.

I'm not exaggerating because I've been in this game for that long,

and I'm telling you, I've never seen the rate of change like this.

It is a full-time job just to try and keep up with the developments from day to day.

You can't possibly do it.

There's no way that you can possibly do it, which is why total tangent moment.

Right.

It's, it's why it's like.

Going to college today for marketing is the biggest waste of time in the history

of earth because as it was college taught antiquated marketing principles.

Now they're not even in the same like hemisphere.

I. Not even in the same universe because of the rate of evolution that's occurring

with the way that the buyer is changing, the way that marketing is changing, the

way that lead generation is changing.

All these things are changing so fast that if you send your

kid to college to learn this,

my what is wrong with you?

I, I agree completely.

Good point.

Um, so you mentioned lead generation there.

Um, you know, we keep hearing it's getting, you know, becoming

tougher and tougher to acquire new customers or generate leads.

Um, any insights into that or, I.

Does a bear poop in the woods.

Ryan, I have plenty of thoughts on lead generation today.

Let me, let me just give you a few Now, in, in my new book, endless

Customers, there's uh, four pillars I. That the book is built around the four

pillars of a known and trusted brand.

Okay?

And the third pillar is sell in ways others aren't willing to sell.

Now I share that because I. One of the greatest ways that you can generate

leads today is you meet the buyer where the buyer is, when it comes

to the way they want to buy, and therefore evolve the way you sell.

And so how can you sell in ways that no one else is selling in

industry, in in your industry?

Which by the way, folks in the trades love to say they sell differently.

Most don't at all.

I just, I mean, they just are so protective of their special

sauce that is their sales process.

And I watch it 'cause I've seen hundreds and.

Probably thousands at this point.

I'm like, you really think that?

Is that different?

So let me give you some, some examples of what's very, very different and

incredible for lead gen. So there's a stat, uh, from Gartner that they

sent me that is this, 75% of all buyers today say they would prefer to

have a seller free sales experience.

I'll, I, I'll repeat so that it

lands with your audience.

75% of all buyers today said they would prefer to have a

seller free sales experience.

Now, this doesn't mean we hate salespeople.

It just means we do not want to talk to a salesperson until we feel like we're

good and ready until we're comfortable.

Until we're confident, until we're.

Assured that, Hey, I'm not gonna make a mistake.

I'm not gonna be taken advantage of right now.

Salespeople or CEOs businesses will hear this and they're like, ah, I just

wish it was the way that it used to be.

Well, guess what?

It's not going back to that point in time.

And so you can either complain about the trend and say, I want it like it used to.

Was before, or you can say, you know what, here's an opportunity.

And the way I always see trends is okay.

It doesn't help to complain about it.

The only thing that I can do is take advantage of this particular trend,

this change in behavior in the market.

So if buyers are saying that I wanna sell our free experience, what they're

essentially saying is, I want control.

The way you can give them control is through this thing that we call

self-service and self-service.

Is when you provide interactive experiences or tools online that

allows someone to get answers that previously they would've gotten by

talking with a human, but instead, now they can get that answer and

feel like, ah, I'm more informed.

I'm more confident, I'm more comfortable.

And so in the book we talk about five five, what is self-service

tools that you can use to really revolutionize your sales process?

I'll just name a couple of them here.

So.

An example of one is a self-selection tool.

Self-selection is when someone is trying to make a choice.

And they need a recommendation.

So to give you an example of this, if you went to my River Pool's website

right now, um, you would find that there is a tool right there on the homepage

that helps you choose between fiberglass concrete and vinyl liner in ground pools.

And it's an interactive, uh, questionnaire essentially that.

It asks you a series of questions and then based on your answers, it

gives you a recommendation of a type of pool that best fits your needs.

What's crazy is every single day, we have dozens and dozens of people take

this, and we recommend to these dozens of people, many of them don't buy our pool.

In fact, you should buy a concrete pool, and here's why you should buy

a vinyl liner pool, and here's why.

Yeah, that's pretty gutsy.

It's pretty ballsy.

Nobody does it.

We do it because our obsession is to be the most known and trusted brand.

In the world at what we do.

So that's one example.

It's a self-selection tool.

So you could think of like, how often does somebody say to you, Hey, I'm

trying to choose between this and this.

So for example, you're, you know, like as a metal roofing manufacturer, there's

different type, there's different types of product that you sell.

And so there's different options that the homeowner or the

contractor could choose a smart.

Tool would be, Hey, what is the best type of metal roof for me?

And then through a series of questions, they get a recommendation.

Okay.

That's an example of what that would look like when it came,

when it comes to metal roofing.

Another powerful I. Example of, of a self-service tool

is a self-scheduling tool.

Now, I'm about to share some with you.

That's sounds like mind bendy, but it's incredibly powerful.

Now, what's not exceptional or what's not mind bendy is when, um, is, is

when you allow someone to schedule time with a salesperson on your website.

That in and of itself is not extraordinary, but here's

where it gets extraordinary.

So that's the scheduling part.

But when you offer this tool, a self-scheduling tool that allows

someone to, to choose time.

On your website to meet with someone.

They weren't forced to talk to a human.

They weren't forced to fill out a form.

They just chose the time to meet with a human.

But when you allow them a selection of humans to talk to, and then they

can choose their own salesperson.

Here's what happens every time closing rates double.

My team at Impact, we, we help build these tools and we've had some

crazy experiences with this and we keep seeing it over and over again.

Closing rates double.

So let's be hypothetical.

Let's say you had a, you had a, a successful home contracting business and

you've got four different salespeople.

And so you have a, this ability for someone to schedule time with

a salesperson on your website, and they go to this particular page

and they see the four salespeople.

They get to see their images, they get to read a bio about them.

They get to watch a video about each one of them, and then they get to

choose who they wanna work with.

Now, do you think when that person's walking up their doorstep.

They're more invested in that person.

Of course they are.

Are they more likely to buy from that person?

Yes, because there's this thing called the sunk cost fallacy,

which means the more time we spend engaged, invested in something,

the harder we try to make it work.

And so if someone chooses their own salesperson, guess what?

They try to figure out a way to buy from that person.

That's how it goes.

Now, this sounds crazy to folks, but it works and I've seen it.

Work in multiple industries.

Now, lemme tell you one more example of a self-service tool.

There's five total in the book, so make sure you get the book and read about it.

Uh, by the way, the book is@endlesscustomers.com Okay?

Endless customers.com.

If you're listening to this right now.

Uh, the the next one, and this is the most important for any home services

business and for manufacturers too, okay, is self pricing tools.

Self pricing tools.

Now.

We can go into the whole conversation of pricing here in a minute.

But the first conversation someone has, or the first question they have

when they enter the buyer's journey.

So let's say the buyer's journey starts the moment they say, I

have a need, I have a problem.

I need a new roof.

I need to add in addition to my home, I need new siding, whatever it is.

So the second they make that decision and they say, I need this, the first question

they have is always the same question

I. Do y'all have a sense of what it is?

What's it gonna cost?

it gonna cost?

And the way we ask that in that moment, Todd usually sounds something like this.

So like, what's this gonna set me back?

Like, what are we roughly looking at here?

So really what they want is they want a general feel for

how much am I gonna spend?

I. They don't need exact yet, but they need a general feel.

That's the first question, the buyer's journey.

Then they go through the research process, then they research companies.

They decide on who to reach out to.

Then they start to reach out to said companies.

Then they have a sales appointment, and then the final question they ask is, okay,

so exactly how much is it gonna cost.

So you start with the question roughly how much is it gonna cost?

And you end with the question as a buyer.

Exactly how much is this gonna cost?

And so what's crazy is businesses every year literally lose hundreds if

not thousands of leads because they refuse to address the most fundamental

question everyone starts with, hence the need for what I would call a, a

pricing estimator tool on your website.

Now, how does this work?

Well, um, my, uh, there's two different ways that you can do it.

You can build custom.

Custom estimators, uh, which are, are more, let's call it interactive and fancy.

Uh, example of one is you see river pools.

Okay.

Um, I built one for a company called Shasta Pools.

My company impacted Shasta Pools.

Lemme give you a quick stat on Shasta Pools.

This is Blow Your Mind.

So, Shasta Pools came to me, um, and they said, you know, Marcus, we.

We, it's we're getting ready to go into our bus busy season.

It's April, this was 2023.

They said It's April and the next 90 days we're gonna sell

75% of our pools for the year.

We gotta crush it.

Do you think we should do this?

They ask you answer thing that you wrote about, and I said, you should

do it, but it's not gonna help you very much in the next 90 days.

I said, but looking at your site, looking at your business, what would

help you dramatically in the next 90 days is a pricing calculator.

Estimator on your website.

They said, well, gosh, there's no way we could do that.

I said, of course you could do that.

They said like, nobody's ever done that with concrete pools.

I said, I'm telling you, you could do it and it's gonna just

revolutionize things for you.

Make a long story short, the year before they, uh, the May, the month

of May, the year before they had their, this estimator put up, they

got about 175 leads that month.

Alright?

May of 2023 was better for home improvement than May of 2024 was.

May of 2024, their, uh, calculator goes live.

Their estimator goes live that month they got roughly 750 leads,

so they went from 175 to hun to 750.

It, bottom line on their, on their business was well into the

millions, well into the millions.

That estimator cost them about 20,000 bucks.

20,000 bucks.

Okay.

Like I said, my company Impact built that.

Now so much is this gonna affect the entire industry, like all of

home services, any service based businesses, manufacturers too.

I said this is a mega trend and.

There's a void here.

So last year I created a separate software company called Price Guide.

Price guide.ai is the name of the company, and what Price Guide does, it

allows any service-based business, and it's especially focused towards home

services to create a pricing, a working pricing estimator in 30 minutes or less.

On their website.

Now, of course, it uses AI to help you build this estimator.

The whole thing, the whole experience.

It uses the AI and you can modify all the questions, the variables or the amounts.

You put those in, and then what happens is just like if I came

to you all right now, and I said.

Can, I'm getting ready to do a big metal roofing project.

Could you give me a rough sense as to what that might cost?

You would say, okay, well we got a series of questions for you, mark.

You might say, is this a commercial or residential?

You might say, alright, what's the square footage that we're looking at?

Then you might say, uh, you know, what are what?

Specific type of metal roofing would you want?

Like, you know, and then you might say, now there's some options

that you can get with this.

Would you want any of these?

And I would answer the questions.

And at the end you would say, okay, well based on that, Marcus, I mean roughly,

I think you're gonna be somewhere between, you know, uh, 50 and $65,000.

And I'd say, okay, I was super helpful, thank you.

Okay.

Now you can mimic that exact same experience with a pricing

estimator, using Price Guy.

So you build out those questions, you put in your variables, and then

at the end it gives you a range.

It's an estimate.

And so here's what we found, because now I've got hundreds of home service

companies that are using this.

Um, I think it's gonna be the HubSpot of pricing estimators.

And I believe within the next five years, 90% of all home service

companies are gonna have a pricing estimator on their website.

But here's what we found.

What I found is over and over again, what the data tells us is if somebody puts

this on their homepage, okay, and they use the phrase get instant estimate, okay?

That's the phrase, get.

Instant estimate, that's your call to action takes immediately to the estimator.

What we see every time is a three to five to 500% increase

in leads from that day forward.

So three to five x more leads.

So for example, if you're listening this right now and you're getting

five leads a week from your website.

If you put an estimator on there, like price guide, you're gonna start to get

15 to 25 a week is what you're gonna do if you're currently getting five a week.

It's extraordinary.

And uh, contractors love it, homeowners love it, and you

build way, way more leads.

Now, some of these leads.

Are not as qualified.

Some of these leads are actually more qualified, so you get the whole gamut

of leads for the ones not as qualified.

You can remarket them, you can nurture them for later, and you'll see a

year later they come back to you and they say, Hey, I did that thing.

Right?

Like for example, we had a lot of folks with Shasta experience, a lot

of, a lot of folks coming in saying, I'm working with you because you

were the only one that allowed me to get a sense for pricing beforehand.

I hear it all the time, and so this is the future of home services.

That's a self pricing tool and it's incredibly powerful.

That's why if you're listening to this, you should, you should, like you could

add price guide to your site tonight and start getting leads tonight that you're

not currently getting today and why anybody would not do it, I don't know.

But out of all the people listening to this right now, five to 10%

will do what I just said and the rest will say, that's wild.

I don't think we could do that.

So, so I'm curious, um, what your advice would be.

I, I understand how that, you know, price estimating tool works for, uh,

you know, the, the ultimate retailer.

What would your advice be for a manufacturer?

Um, who is wondering, you know, how transparent can I get?

Is a manufacturer,

right?

And so what our, our business, like many manufacturers, is B two, B2C.

So we sell to a business, a dealer or franchisee who then sells.

To a homeowner, and so we don't set the end price.

So how in the world can we have an estimator?

Well, it's called an estimator for a reason.

Now the estimate can be as big as you want it to be.

So it's not uncommon for someone to do the estimator on our website on river

pools, and they will get a range of, okay, so based on what you just said,

it looks like your pool's gonna be somewhere between 120 to $160,000 Now.

Um.

Somebody might say, gosh, that's a big range.

Yeah.

But that is way more than any other manufacturer is willing to

Absolutely.

So the homeowner really, really appreciates it.

And most of 'em understand like, oh, okay, now somebody might

say, well, are they gonna anchor themselves on the lower number?

Well, you got some people that might anchor themselves on the lower

number, but a lot of people are gonna realize, okay, we hear all the time.

Well, that's roughly what I thought it was gonna be because you said

this is roughly what it's gonna be.

Right?

I mean, you did the, you did the thing.

So it's great for salespeople.

They don't have shock and awe anymore.

I mean, there's, they don't experience that.

And the, and the, and you know, it's just, just way, way better, you know, for that.

For that reason.

Um, this is again, though, this is the future.

This is where every, everyone is headed.

I have a, a shed manufacturer in, uh, Scotland.

It's crazy.

They were doing, uh, they're called Gillies and McKay and

they manufacture the shit.

And they sell it locally and they sell it regionally through

through dealers as well.

And they had.

Like already so much cost content on their website.

They had a, uh, cost pages.

They explained the cost of their products.

They had, uh, pricing videos like we teach.

What they ask you answer now, endless customers.

Uh, they even had a price list on their website and they came to me and they

said, we want to add a, a, you know, a price, your pricing estimator tool.

And I said.

Okay, you can add it.

I'm not sure it's gonna make much of a difference, because you already have a

price list for your sheds on your site.

So I don't know if it's gonna make a difference.

Well, it made a 400% difference

and immediately, and here's what we found.

I think once again, it goes back to sunk cost fallacy when the person

was able to essentially feel like they were building out their shed.

They were invested more in it and they felt like they owned said

shed, which meant they converted and many, many of them bought.

So they're well over a million dollars in Rev from that tool, right?

Price Guy costs $200 a year, not a month.

A year.

I mean, that's a joke for the Legion that it produces.

And that's what's so amazing about technology and AI today.

You can, you know, you know, and again, my company builds custom ones.

My company Impact builds these, but if we're gonna build it custom, it's

probably gonna be about 20,000 bucks.

You can go price guide.

You can do one that's not fully custom, but it's still

a, like a powerful experience.

200 bucks a year, either one of the two you need to do, some

people should do the custom one.

Most people home improvement though, that are listening to this right

now, they should just do something like a price guide and, uh, it's

gonna make a huge difference.

Huge difference.

And I could talk about a bunch more examples of selling in way

o others aren't willing to sell.

And I'll mention one that we're doing right now.

Uh, with River Pools is what we know is that if you immediately call a lead

within five minutes versus waiting 30 minutes, so let's say you, you have

a standard of everybody gets a call within five minutes that, that reaches

out or you wait 30 minutes or more.

The chances that you have a conversation with the lead

increased by 900% if you talk to them within the first five minutes.

Now, most people listening to this right now, if I ask them, how quickly do you

call a lead that reaches out to your company, there's gonna be a lot of people

that say, well, usually within 24 hours, no longer is that acceptable in 2025.

So what we are now doing with River Pools, and this goes live,

uh, actually this week, and I've seen it work with other companies,

and I'm doing it with my own now.

So the moment somebody calls, excuse me, fills out a form on the site and

says, Hey, I'm interested in a quote, they immediately get a call from ai.

Now the AI sounds very, very human, but the AI says, hi.

I'm an AI assistant from River Pools.

You just filled out a form on our site, and my purpose for this

call is to schedule a time with you and one of our salespeople.

Can we quickly do that together?

I. That's what the AI does, and it sounds incredibly human.

It says that it's ai, so it's not nefarious, it's not dishonest, but

it's crazy how real it feels and its whole goal is to schedule that time

because 78% of the time when it comes to home services, the first contractor

they talk to wins the business, not the first contractor that emails them.

Not the one that leaves a voice message, it's the one they

have a full conversation with.

Roughly three out of four times they will go with you.

So the whole goal today is you have to be first, the first one they talk to.

So we want them to be the first.

They learn from during that 80% of the journey.

And then once they reach out to companies, we want them to

be first to talk to us and.

Have that full conversation with, therefore, we're gonna win.

Now the majority of the time, that's how you dominate, but that's also how

you use AI and create an incredible experience and sell in a way that

nobody else is willing to sell.

Folks today, you don't need to spend thousands of dollars on call

center employees if you want to be immediate with your ability to

return calls and get back to leads.

You could do this with ai.

You can do it at a fraction of the cost.

You could do it incredibly, incredibly well, and they can schedule.

The time with the salespeople and the homeowner loves it.

Good stuff.

I, you know, I'm sitting here thinking, you know, if, if people

just listen to this podcast, their businesses will never be the same.

And you have such tremendous insight and advice and folks

aligning themselves with you.

And I'm thinking a little bit about, I don't know if you've

heard about this thing, this baseball season called the Torp.

Peto bat, the Yankees started using it and now some other teams

are using it the torpedo bat.

Until MLB decides to outlaw it is gonna revolutionize baseball.

Just like what you're doing is revolutionizing sales.

The, and I don't know if you recall the, it was

the third, uh, game of the season.

The Yankees hit nine jacks that, uh, that day and like the, the rest of

the league was like grokking at them.

Literally

saying like, like how can I, how can I experience that myself?

Just like sitting there watching them, like, you're at dinner and you're

eating some great food, and your dog is looking at you, just salivating

saying, I really wish that I could have some of those biscuits right now.

The whole league was sitting there looking at the Yanks and saying, gimme

some of those freaking torpedoes.

Like right, like right now.

I want that in my clubhouse.

Right.

And of course, you know, it's like the tush push.

Now everybody's gonna try to outlaw it.

I'm saying make the bats fatter.

I want more jacks.

You know what I'm saying?

There

you go.

Yep.

I think it's only a matter of time before there's some tariffs

put on 'em, so we'll see.

That could happen.

That could happen.

But hey, you know, maybe we'll start building our own bats

then and be better than ever.

We'll see.

We'll see.

Um, let's, uh, I want to talk about your new book a little bit.

Endless Customers.

You mentioned it at the beginning.

Um.

I think it's version three, kind of, of, uh, from my understanding, can you

tell us a little bit about what's in it, how it's different from the other?

they ask you answer, uh, is been a book that has been

embraced deeply by those that are in home services, home improvement

manufacturers, um, because.

It's the most common sense marketing book you'll ever read.

I don't say it because I wrote it.

I say that because it's true and that's what other people say about it.

Hundreds of thousands of companies have read it and embraced it.

But you know, when Chachi BT came out in November, 2022, I knew

the whole world was gonna change.

And instead of like many SEO companies pretending like Google is.

Not gonna change.

And, and instead of pretending like everything that I wrote and

they ask you, answer isn't going to evolve, I said, time for part three.

Here we go.

And the world had changed so much that I said it was time for a new title to

the book as well, uh, because I went.

People to think endless, endless customers.

Long-term, biggest problem that people have today is, is getting

more leads, more customers.

And I wanted them to get an actual system that they could follow.

One that was built to last, at least for a decade.

Um, I'm, I'm not gonna predict longer than a decade right now,

it's impossible to do that, right?

But you know, like, how can you become, and the whole, this whole payoff of

the book is how can you become the most known and trusted brand in your market?

That's what it shows you how to do, and the way it shows you how

to do that is with four pillars.

And I mentioned those, one of them, but I'll tell you what the four pillars are.

Number one, you've gotta be willing to say online what other companies

in your space are not willing to say.

That's number one.

Okay?

Number two, you've gotta be willing to show what others in your space

aren't willing to show with video.

Number three, you gotta be willing to sell in a way that others in

your space aren't willing to sell.

We give a bunch of examples of that just now, and number four, you've gotta be.

More human than others are willing to be.

In other words, there needs to be a face.

That's recognizable that people associate with the brand.

You gotta get from behind the desk and from behind the camera and you gotta

get in front of the dang camera and you can't sit there and make excuses for it.

Because we buy from those we know, like, and trust.

That's never gonna change.

And generally speaking, with brand, becoming more and more important as

part of those signals here, folks.

Okay.

Again, signals are everything you need to build an extraordinary brand, a

personal brand as the leader of your organization and a business brand as well.

You need to build them Both.

People generally align much more with the person.

Than the business.

Do you think more people know about Marcus Sheridan or about Impact or

about Price Guide or about River Pools?

Those are three different companies of mine.

Way more people know about Marcus Sheridan because of the influence

that I have made on a personal level.

The dent that I've made on the world, my little dent, right?

And so that's the, that's the goal.

And because I'm a key person of influence as my friend Daniel Priestly

would say, that allows me to build these companies and use my brand to

funnel funnel energy into those brands.

And now they can grow and they can prosper.

And so you need to be willing to do that too, um, as a CEO.

And you need to think.

Big picture like that, but in terms of the first pillar, say what needs to be said.

Said.

Just, just really quickly, 'cause I know we're starting to run out of time

here, but I talked about this and, and they ask you answer, and it's still

very prominent in endless customers, and that is, there's basically five

subjects that every buyer wants to know before they reach out to a company.

The stuff that they research.

Every single time there's five subjects, and we've learned these five subjects

over the course of using the internet now for, you know, roughly 30 years.

And that is, as buyers and consumers, we wanna know cost and price.

All right?

That's number one we wanna know.

Problems slash negatives.

What could go wrong?

What are the issues with it?

Right?

For example, one of the number one questions when it comes to

metal roofing is, what are the problems of the metal roof?

It's one of the number one questions, right?

Because people that when they get interested in buying something, they

wanna know what could go wrong with it.

It's same thing with a fiberglass pool.

What are the biggest issues or problems with the fiberglass pool?

Right?

So anybody that's in metal roofing sure as heck better

own those conversations online.

Third one.

So your first one was cost and price.

Second one's problems slash fears or objections.

Third one is comparisons.

We love to compare stuff online.

Compare company versus company.

Brand versus brand.

Method versus method.

Option versus option.

Fourth one is reviews.

The thing about reviews, we don't just want good reviews.

We want good, bad, and ugly reviews.

That's how we surmise really as a company, the real deal.

And then, uh, finally we want.

The The best, the best the most.

Think about how many times you've gone online and searched for.

Right.

So these are, you know, these are what we call in the book, the big five.

They run the economy of search.

This is what people are searching now on ai.

Most companies don't talk about these five subjects, and we teach you in

endless customers exactly how you talk about cost and price, exactly how you can

talk about the fears that they have, the negatives that you're afraid to address,

exactly how you can compare yourself to your competitors and show up online for

those best of lists and things like that.

So.

It's very powerful.

That's the big five, and that is key to saying what others aren't willing to say.

Uh, it's really interesting that you, uh, the mention of people want

to know what's going wrong with, um, or what could go wrong with the metal.

Roof.

I was just doing some keyword research in SEM rush yesterday, and that was one of

the recommended pillars, content pillars, and it really kind of caught me off guard.

I wasn't on my radar, but it was like disadvantages of metal roofing, I

Yeah, I

and it really surprised me.

one of the best practitioners of they ask you answer,

and I'm sure you've heard of 'em, this company called Sheffield Metals.

They make, they make metal roofs and uh, and one of the first videos we

ever helped them produce was, um, what are the problems of the metal roof?

That video has over half a million views on YouTube.

A half a million views on YouTube simply because they were willing

as a manufacturer to address a core question that the marketplace has.

And you always have to say to yourself, do we want them to learn this from me,

or do we want 'em to learn from somebody

else?

And my feeling is I want 'em to learn it from me.

And if they're gonna get the, even if they're gonna get the answer

from ai, I want AI to have gotten that answer from me because then

I can influence the conversation.

So this is the way you gotta think, but this is why the companies that

have a more of an abundant mindset.

Abundance mentality.

They do much better with transparency, honesty, and gaining

trust online than those that are coming from a place of scarcity.

And they're saying, but, but if I mention my competitors, they'll buy from them.

What the heck is wrong with you?

If they, if they wanna know who your competitors are, they'll

find out in about two seconds.

Right.

It's like, gimme a break.

So it, it's like there's no secrets anymore.

Consumer ignorance is no longer a viable sales and marketing strategy.

Yeah, it was at one time.

It's not anymore.

So we gotta move past that and say, okay, let's flip the script and let's

give them exactly what they want.

Again, what you would want.

Golden roll folks.

Amen.

Very good.

Um, one last question here.

Um, any additional advice that you would give to any young entrepreneurs

and innovators that are kind of looking to disrupt the construction industry?

I'll tell you a couple things real quick.

Lemme give you just a big overarching one.

Uh, my mentor, Jim Rohn.

You should always say, and everybody should be watching

Jim Ronan on YouTube right now.

He's old school, but he's glorious.

He's wonderful.

He would always say, to have more than you got, you've gotta come more than you

are, and you gotta learn to work harder on yourself than you do on your job.

I about drove myself into the grounds of bankruptcy by working just hard

'cause I wasn't working smart.

It wasn't until I got really smart and started obsessing over

the buyer that we flipped the script and the company took off.

And ultimately it led me to this incredible place, a financial

piece, and, and I get to travel the world and teach people about it.

So to have more than you got, you gotta become more than you are.

You gotta work harder yourself than you do on your job.

So I would, I would.

Urge you that you know very, very strongly.

I would also say that as a company, you need to start

thinking we're a media company.

That's what we are.

I gotta show it.

I gotta show everything.

Pull out your dang phone and start recording.

I. Get over yourself.

Get over whatever issues you have.

'cause the problem is you ask people for money and the moment you said,

I'm gonna ask people for money in exchange for a good or a service,

you lost the right to say, I'm just not gonna do things like video.

Because video's what the market wants to see.

That's how they wanna learn.

And this is your future customers.

I can assure you if you've got teenagers, just watch them for

five minutes and that's who your customer is gonna be in 10 years.

You sure as heck better pay close attention to what's going on there.

So you gotta start to think like a media company.

But listen, we break it down to endless customers.

So make sure you get the book.

It's endless customers.com.

Make sure you connect with me on LinkedIn 'cause I'm a dang good follow over there.

And uh, that's where I put some of my like best stuff is that's where like.

Any thoughts that are coming to my mind, I test 'em out on LinkedIn

first, and so, uh, check it out there.

And I, I, I do hope that what we've said here really does have

resonance with this audience today.

Uh, because I know it changes lives.

It changed my life and it changes so many lives.

Just the other day, I was speaking at a conference, a couple comes

up to me, I, I've never seen them before that I can recall.

They said, Marcus, we heard you, uh, in 2018.

You made us a. Millionaires Marcus.

And I said, really?

Are you serious?

He's like, he and the guy, the husband leans in, they're

like, Marcus, listen to me.

I'm serious.

You made us multimillionaires.

Thank you.

You've changed our life.

And that was because they took action.

Most people don't take action.

They hear the thing and they say, that sounds nice, but they don't do.

So be a part of that three to 5%.

If you're listening to this right now, that actually does something.

Take action and you'll change your life.

Wow.

Great advice.

Thank you for sharing that.

Um, Marcus, really appreciate your time.

Thank you for being here.

Everything, all the knowledge you dropped, we truly appreciate it.

For anybody that wants to get in touch with you or learn more about the new

book, can you just say again, what's the best way for them to do that?

Yeah.

Again.

Uh, endless customers.com for the book and you can connect with me on LinkedIn.

You can message me there.

I'll see it.

marcus@marcussheridan.com is a simple email to remember

marcus@marcussheridan.com.

And keep in mind too, you know, I speak at conferences, at

events to companies individually.

And so if you're looking for someone that's just gonna like

rivet your audience, I'm happy to come out and change some lives.

Awesome.

And I will make sure to put those links in the show notes.

Um, one last thing.

We need to recap our challenge.

We were all successful at getting them in.

Marcus, your word was

Gro

Gro, which means to gaze at someone while they eat,

Mm-hmm.

uh, their food.

Uh, so,

um, I feel like I slayed it.

You did.

You nailed it.

You absolutely

Thanks to Todd for the setup with the torpedo

bat.

I was like, as soon as he said torpedo bat, I'm like,

ding, ding,

ding.

So torpedo was my word, which, yeah, that was awesome.

Yep.

And my word was tariff, which, uh, I think was kind of obvious, but, uh, maybe not.

Worked well.

Yeah, like, like, like the Yankees we had

back to back to back home runs,

uh, right there all together with our magic words.

So that was pretty

fun.

job guys.

It was such a serious and intense conversation.

I was really kind of thinking we just weren't gonna get to challenge

words, but I'm glad we did.

Well, thank you again, Marcus.

And thank you to our audience for tuning into this episode of Construction

Disruption with Marcus Sheridan.

Please watch for future episodes of our podcast.

We are always blessed with great guest.

Don't forget to leave us a review on Apple Podcast or give us a thumbs up on YouTube.

I. Until the next time we're together.

Keep on disrupting and challenging those in your world

to better ways of doing things.

Don't forget to have a positive impact on everyone you encounter.

Make them smile and encourage them.

Two, simple yet powerful things we can all do to change the world.

God bless and take care.

This is Isaiah Industries signing off until the next episode

of Construction Disruption.