Marcus Sheridan, speaker, author of They Ask You Answer, and partner and co-founder of several forward-thinking tech and consulting companies, including PriceGuide, AI Trust Signals, and Question First Group, joins Brendon Dennewill to challenge why companies and franchises still refuse to talk about pricing, even when the data is overwhelming. Marcus breaks down how AI-powered agents are about to reshape the buyer journey entirely, and why brands that withhold pricing information will be algorithmically penalized within 18 months. If your franchise, dealership network, or multi-location brand is watching leads slow down and ad spend climb, this episode is a direct explanation of why and what to do about it.
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Marcus Sheridan | Co-Founder, Keynote Speaker & Author | Marcus Sheridan International, Inc., Priceguide, AI Trust Signals, Question First Group, & IMPACT
Marcus Sheridan is a globally recognized communication expert, international keynote speaker, and the USA Today bestselling author of the landmark book They Ask, You Answer and his latest release, Endless Customers. Marcus first made waves in the business world after saving his swimming pool company, River Pools, during the 2008 financial crisis. By leaning into radical transparency and answering the exact questions his competitors avoided, like cost and pricing, he turned a struggling local business into the most-trafficked swimming pool website in the world. Today, Marcus is a partner at IMPACT and the co-founder of several forward-thinking tech and consulting companies, including PriceGuide, AI Trust Signals, and Question First Group. Known for his practical, no-fluff approach to modern revenue growth, Marcus helps franchise brands and B2B organizations align their sales and marketing teams to build unbreakable trust with the modern, AI-empowered buyer. |
Brendon Dennewill: Welcome back. Today I'm joined by Marcus Sheridan, globally recognized speaker, author, and entrepreneur, best known for his books and frameworks around Endless Customers and They Ask, You Answer. His methodologies have reshaped how companies approach sales, marketing, and customer trust. Marcus's business learning journey began during the 2008 global financial crisis when his company, River Pools, was facing severe decline. In response, he shifted away from traditional marketing and began answering every customer question online, openly and honestly, including topics most companies avoid, like pricing, problems, and comparisons. This approach not only helped save his business but evolved into a widely adopted framework for thousands of businesses to drive trust, pipeline, and revenue. Today, Marcus is a partner and co-founder at a variety of companies across multiple industries, including PriceGuide, AI Trust Signals, Question First, Impact, and River Pools. What they all have in common is Marcus's passion for helping business leaders and their teams align marketing and sales around buyer education and trust. He's widely regarded for his practical, no-fluff approach to modern revenue growth. Marcus, welcome to the show.
Marcus Sheridan: Brendon, it's been too long. I'm so glad we get a chance to catch up. I have a feeling this conversation is going to be valuable to your audience. My promise, as always, is you'll have stuff to do and stuff to take away.
Brendon Dennewill: I have no doubt. You and I go back a long way, I'm guessing probably 12 years. In the early days when we were both HubSpot partners, I learned a lot from you. You actually spoke at our Denamicon in 2017, which seems like a lifetime ago, but I guess it is nine years ago. Your success has been really quite incredible. You've gone off and started multiple businesses. We're still plugging away here, trying to help, and where we've evolved is increasingly helping franchise brands and multi-location organizations with the systems that drive their growth. But let's go back to the beginning for a second. You turned a struggling business during the 2008 recession into a global framework. What was the turning point when you realized this approach was working?
Marcus Sheridan: The beauty of downturns is we see a lot of innovation, because companies are forced to innovate. Generally, most companies are always running on what I refer to as the pride cycle. When everything is good, we tend to be less innovative and we don't do many of the little things we should be doing to stand out. But when things are bad, that's when we turn it up and start to say, 'What do we have to lose?' We do those things we should have done a long time ago. It was during this period, when I thought I was going to lose my company, that I started really learning about what was a novel concept at the time: inbound marketing, content marketing. In my simple pool-guy mind, what I heard was: Marcus, if you just obsess over your customers' questions, worries, fears, issues, and concerns, and you're willing to address them online through text or video, honestly and transparently, and you do that a lot more than anybody else, you could save your business. And so that's what we did. I didn't think it was very innovative at the time, Brendon, but we ended up becoming the most-trafficked swimming pool website in the world. That meant we were getting about a million visitors a month during the summertime, for a little pool company in Virginia. The demand was so great that we had to expand, otherwise we were just throwing potential revenue away. So we became a manufacturer in the 2016 to 2017 timeframe. We started manufacturing fiberglass pool shells and getting dealers around the country. We went on to form the first fiberglass pool franchise in the world, called River Pools. In 2020, I sold the manufacturing and franchise side, but I'm still a franchisee of the company I sold to. Today I'm still very involved with River Pools. I'll actually be there next week teaching all the franchisees and dealers.
Brendon Dennewill: I didn't know that. The River Pools story, going back to 2008 and 2009, you were essentially a local installer of fiberglass pools in Virginia.
Marcus Sheridan: Yeah, we were a little Virginia company. But what was interesting is we became a digital David in a land of Goliaths. Because of the trust, traffic, leads, and sales we started to get, I was like the original influencer when it came to swimming pools. Except I don't like the word 'influencer,' because influencers essentially say, 'Hey, look at me.' What I was saying was, 'Hey, look at this.' My friend Daniel Priestley would call that a key person of influence. That's actually what most businesses are trying to become: a key brand of influence, teaching the market, known as a thought leader because you're constantly giving helpful information people can apply to their lives or their businesses. A lot of companies have done that at this point, but most don't do it at the transparency level needed to really stand apart, drive trust, and ultimately drive the pipeline of revenue.
Brendon Dennewill: That's interesting. Whenever I think about educating your audience and customers, people here in Minnesota often use the Geek Squad analogy. Essentially, what both of those businesses did, and what so many others have started to do thanks to you and the Geek Squad model, is just help your customers figure out as much as they can on their own. Then, if they need more help or don't have the bandwidth to do it themselves, they'll call you to come in. That's how they drive their business.
Marcus Sheridan: The issue is that to do that, you've got to have an abundant mentality. A lot of people come from a place of scarcity with their business. That's caused conflict for me multiple times over the years. When I get misaligned with someone, it's because they're coming from a place of scarcity, and I just don't think that way. When it comes to the Geek Squad, they did their own form of They Ask, You Answer: they produced a lot of content to teach people how to fix their own IT and computer issues. Somebody once asked their CEO, 'Aren't you afraid you're cutting off your nose to spite your face?' And he said, 'Don't you realize my number one customer is the person who tries to do it themselves?' That's somebody who gets it. That's what it's supposed to look like. This goes back to one of the biggest things I'm known for: I've been teaching pricing transparency for the better part of 16 years. I was the first swimming pool company in the world that openly talked about pricing on their website. I was the first swimming pool manufacturer in the world that had a pricing estimator on their website. Everybody said you can't do that with dealers and franchisees. I said, 'Of course I can. Watch me.' And it's become a cash cow for us. Just for my little Virginia location, by talking about cost and price, and because of analytics through HubSpot, we've done over $35 million in sales from one article talking about cost and price. $35 million from one article I wrote in 45 minutes at my kitchen table.
Brendon Dennewill: It's so interesting to hear you say that. When I was in the room when you were talking about this, maybe 10 years ago, I was like, 'Within a few years, everyone's going to be doing this.' It's really fascinating to hear that the numbers really haven't improved all that much.
Marcus Sheridan: You still have the majority of companies refusing to talk about pricing whatsoever. If you ask a company, 'Do you believe in the golden rule? Do you believe in treating your customers as you yourself would want to be treated?' They say yes. 'Would you appreciate it if somebody at least roughly addressed the question of how much is this going to cost?' Yes, I would appreciate that. 'Do you do that for your customers?' Well, not exactly. So you're not following the golden rule at all. When I started talking about They Ask, You Answer, about 98% of companies were not addressing cost and price online for B2B services. To this day, that number is still about 94%. Most companies still don't address it. And they're going to be in serious trouble, because based on what I've learned from running a software company focused on AI visibility, you will be significantly penalized in the very near future if you're not willing to address pricing online. You're just going to get hit.
Brendon Dennewill: Which again comes back to what you were talking about earlier. It all seems so clear, and it's really interesting to hear that the numbers really haven't improved all that much.
Marcus Sheridan: They haven't improved much, but there's a quantum leap coming. And I have data behind this. I've got one software company called PriceGuide, which helps organizations quickly and cost-effectively build pricing estimators for their websites. I've got franchisors using this for their franchisees. And I've got another software called AI Trust Signals, which measures the likelihood that AI will recommend you, why it wouldn't, and what you need to fix. One of the best indicators of where we're headed is that Google recently came out with a new feature in search. When somebody does a 'near me' search for a contractor or anything to do with home improvement, like 'roofer near me,' you now see a button at the top of the page that says 'online estimate.' Google is funneling people searching for contractors toward their online estimate tool, because they know the primary question everyone has when they begin the buyer's journey is: roughly, how much is this going to cost? Can I afford this? Google is rewarding companies that have estimators on their website. If they're built with the right schema, Google will show them in that feature. They also have a new feature they're testing called 'have AI check prices.' When someone does a localized search for a home service, they'll sometimes see a button that says 'have AI check prices.' Google asks a few questions about the service you're looking for, their agent goes out to get that information, and then sends the homeowner an email a day or two later: here's what we found, here's the answers we got, and here are the companies we're going to recommend. This is 100% a precursor to agentic search. Within about 18 months, I believe we'll have mass adoption of people searching with an agent. Think about how we adopted search engines, then social media, then AI-based search. Each time, once people experienced it, they quickly used it far more than the previous tool. The same is going to happen with agents. You'll say to your agent: 'I need a new roof. Go find the best roofers near me and come back with a recommendation.' Instead of vetting three or four companies yourself, it vets all 47 local companies, reads every review, visits every page on every website, and expects to find some type of interactive estimator tool. Then it comes back and says: here's who I recommend. Here's why, based on these trust signals. What would you like me to do next? I'll set the appointment if you'd like. Eventually, it says: I'll get the quote if you'd like. The agent for the homeowner communicates directly with the agent running the shop for the roofing company. Blue links are going to die. There is no future in blue links. The future is getting immediate answers and having AI take immediate action, removing friction and fear. I'm sure of it. And so if something is aligned with that direction, you can safely predict that's where we're headed. Furthermore, tools like ChatGPT are already starting to penalize companies that don't discuss what buyers want most, and pricing information is chief among those things. That's why PriceGuide has started to explode, particularly with franchising companies.
Marcus Sheridan: If you look at the home improvement space alone, the number one complaint I'm hearing from franchisors is: generating leads is harder. Traffic is down. We're spending more on Google and Facebook ads than we've ever spent and seeing fewer results. This trend is playing out across all types of franchisors, not just home improvement and home services. You have a lead problem, fundamentally. People are slower to give their information and fill out forms than they were in the past. Downloading an ebook just isn't working anymore, certainly not at the scale it worked 10 years ago. So you have to give more to get those same results. What do you have to give? Better experiences and answers through interactivity, what we call self-service tools. One of the primary self-service tools is a self-pricing estimator. And let me be clear: you're not giving an exact price. It's not a quote tool. It's an estimator. What we're saying is it's your duty to address the fundamental question buyers have: can I afford this roughly? How much is this going to cost? When you do that and give them a range, you see an immediate 3x increase in organic leads. And you see a 3x to 4x increase in conversions for paid ads. If you could spend $5,000 a month on Google and get results that are 4x greater than the day before, why would you not do that? And yet, companies say: we can't do that because we're a customized solution, or our dealer network will push back, or franchisees won't like it. That's not how you run a franchise. There are certain times as a franchisor when you have to say: this is the way we're going to do it. I was the first manufacturer and franchisor of fiberglass pools to have a pricing estimator on our website. Everybody said it was impossible. We turned it on, made it a range that works for at least 95% of situations, and the result? Every franchisee and dealer has said it's the core of their entire marketing strategy and lead flow. Not a single one has ever said, 'Stop sending me leads.' With over a thousand contractors now using the PriceGuide tool, I've never had a single one say it doesn't improve their business. That's why the churn rate is below 1%, which is remarkable for SaaS.
Brendon Dennewill: Yeah, I wish I'd spoken to you two weeks ago, because that's exactly when I started this process myself. We bought a hundred-plus-year-old house that we moved into last August, and we realized the lower level had no air conditioning. We need to get split units put in so people can actually be down there. I did it the old school way: contacted the HVAC company that had done previous work in the house, and going in, I figured it would be maybe $10,000. When the quote came back at $13,000, I thought maybe I need to get another quote. So I went to Google, did the 'near me' search, took the highest-reviewed contractors, and ended up with three quotes that are essentially all the same. But now I've wasted 10 days and a lot of my time.
Marcus Sheridan: That's not the future experience. What you just described is not where we're headed. The smart HVAC company would have an assessment tool that gives you a grade on your home's heating and cooling systems, along with recommendation tools. In your case, you had to decide: split unit, heat pump, or something else entirely. A smart HVAC company would have a tool on their site that asks a series of questions: older house, how many stories, what are the problems you're having? Through the interaction it tells you: based on what you described, we recommend this route and this specific unit, and here's why. Even better: the tool gives you general price ranges for the different sizes. 'Installation, of course, will depend on what we find when we come out, but here's the range you're likely in.' That homeowner is thrilled. They are so enlightened. And the chance they go with that company is dramatically higher. Every single one of your listeners just said to themselves: yeah, that's a better experience. And yet, at least 80% of the people listening right now are justifying in their minds reasons why they cannot offer that type of experience. That's stunning to me.
Brendon Dennewill: Which comes back to what you and I were talking about earlier: it comes down to leadership. It's not about the tools. If you have franchisees saying 'we're not getting enough leads,' the answer isn't just do more of what you did last year. You have to take a step back.
Marcus Sheridan: Here's what I've learned is absolutely true about being a successful franchisor, manufacturer with dealers, or any multi-location business: if you are not occasionally frustrating your franchisees, if you're not annoying them at times, you're not innovating like you should. Full stop. Do you know how many times McDonald's has frustrated their franchisees with new campaigns? 'You all need to revamp your stores. I know it'll cost money, but this is where the brand is headed. We're launching McCafe, going directly against Starbucks.' Every single time, a percentage complains. But if the world is going in a direction, your job is to skate where the puck is going to be, not where it is now. Is the trend of pricing estimators going to reverse? Are people suddenly going to say they don't want a sense of pricing before they reach out? Not going to happen. If you have to even think about that, you're not being intellectually honest with yourself. Our dependency on AI is only going to grow. The blue link is going to die. That's not our future. The future is immediate answers, AI taking immediate action, removing friction, removing fear. I'm sure of it. And it is quite stunning how far behind I see a lot of manufacturers and franchisors. When a franchisor says to me, 'I'm just not sure how my franchisees are going to take this,' my response is: that should not be your litmus test. Your litmus test should be: I know this is what we need to do. Now I need to figure out how to get buy-in as quickly as possible. You have to live in the solution.
Brendon Dennewill: When we were at IFA in February, one of the things I was discussing with a lot of people was a flooring franchise that's becoming somewhat notorious because they know that in order to maintain the standard they want, they need to raise the level of all their franchisees. That means helping certain franchisees exit the system who aren't performing. When I asked other franchise leaders about that, some were hesitant. But it's really the only way: if you truly want a growing, scaling franchise brand that gets better and better with every franchisee added, then you also have to be willing to move on from those who aren't a good fit.
Marcus Sheridan: It's no different from having a team member who's highly underperforming. You work with them, and if it becomes very clear they're never going to become the performer they need to be, both sides are hurt by holding on too long. But with franchising, when one franchisee really messes up, everybody loses, because it hurts the brand for everyone. You're allowing one entity to affect the financial peace and wellness of all the other operators who share that brand. You have to protect the brand, protect the culture, protect the perception in the marketplace. And you should be raising the standard all the time. I find that the more stringent you get, the better the type of franchisees you attract going forward.
Brendon Dennewill: This ultimately comes down to strategic leadership. Franchises hit ceilings just like any other business: revenue ceilings, team size ceilings. We often have to qualify this by saying: if you don't want to grow, don't worry about any of this. But what you're describing is a situation where, if you're not growing, you're actually going to start going backwards. For franchise brands looking to scale from 50 to 100 units, or from 100 to 300, or 300 to 1,000, the first thing they have to accept is that things will change. Things will break. You need to know what's going to break before it does. It all starts with leadership: what are we going to do when this thing breaks? And we often see a leadership group come to us saying they want to set up the HubSpot CRM and integrate it with all their tools. We have to make sure they don't believe that putting in a new CRM will solve problems it won't solve, which are typically leadership issues or a lack of strategic capacity. They haven't accepted that certain processes need to change because they've added another layer of management to support their growing number of franchisees. All of that has to be mapped out and agreed upon first.
Marcus Sheridan: Let me give an example of that contrast. I spoke to two large private equity-owned home improvement companies in the same week. One of them heard the pitch and said immediately: 'We're crazy if we don't do this. It's so inexpensive. Let's just roll it into the franchisee fees and cover it.' That was their response. The next company's response was: 'I'm not sure if we're going to be able to get buy-in for this, and I'm not sure how to cover the cost.' The cost, by the way, was $25 a month per franchisee. We're talking dirt cheap. That was the difference in leadership between two private equity-owned home improvement brands with multiple brands in their ecosystem. Stunning.
Marcus Sheridan: I've been a business owner since 2001, exactly 25 years. I can tell you right now, I've never seen change at this rate or this speed. And sunk cost fallacy is killing a lot of companies and brands. It's the mentality of: 'We've been doing this thing this long, we've been investing in it this long, so let's just keep doing it. We can't change.' This is why people sometimes stay in relationships longer than they should. This is why franchises sometimes continue doing things the way they've always been done, even though they're being bypassed. If you're doing SEO today the way you were doing it five years ago, there's something seriously wrong with you. If you're not selling differently today, and your sales system hasn't evolved from five years ago, there's something seriously wrong with you. What's wrong is you've stopped leading. You've gotten complacent. The pride cycle has caught up with you. Remember: it's the rule breakers who always end up becoming the rule makers, and everybody else ends up following. If you're not breaking rules consistently in your space, even rules you originally defined, you will be the one being replaced. Most companies, because of that pride cycle, have leadership teams that become too in love with their IP, with the ways of the past, with what has always worked before. That's when they get into serious trouble. That's exactly what we're seeing right now with companies that refuse to lean into AI, that refuse to acknowledge how the modern buyer is changing. You can't think like that and expect to remain in front of the pack.
Brendon Dennewill: So Marcus, as we start to wrap up: as AI reshapes search and buyer behavior, how does this philosophy evolve without losing trust?
Marcus Sheridan: It just goes back to the golden rule. Can and should you use AI to help you produce content? Absolutely you should. But if the content doesn't sound like you, if I could read it and it doesn't match the person or the brand or the salesperson I'm going to be meeting with, then we have a problem. If you're reading any of my content, it should sound like me. You should read it, meet me in person, and think: you're exactly as I thought you would be. You sound just like you write. That's what matters. And too often we think that if we're embracing AI and technology, we're somehow not increasing the human element of our business and our brand. I don't think that's the case at all. Here's a really simple example: it is easier than it's ever been to send one-to-one videos in place of text-based email. Every salesperson should be doing it before they go on a sales call. They should send the prospect a one-to-one video introducing themselves so the prospect can see their face, hear their voice, and know who they're going to be speaking with. What percentage of salespeople from the teams listening to this are sending one-to-one video as a standard before a sales appointment? I can tell you right now: it's less than 3%. We've been sending email the exact same way since 1997. For about 30 years, we've been sending text-based email almost exactly the same way. And yet we say technology is the problem. No: technology gave you the ability to send a very personal video beforehand, and yet you're choosing to continue to be text-based. That is laziness and lack of leadership, if we call it what it is.
Brendon Dennewill: And it's a perfect example of the golden rule. How has your experience improved when one of the salespeople you've dealt with has sent you a personalized video ahead of the actual meeting? Has that improved the meeting itself? Everyone is going to say absolutely yes. So then why aren't you doing it yourself?
Marcus Sheridan: That's right. And that should be a standard of the brand. 'This is what we do.' Once again, if you have a franchise, you have to have standards. The whole thing is built on standards. And it shouldn't just be standards for your product or service. It's the process by which you sell and market. You should have the same focus on standards in those areas as well. And the standards shouldn't be cast in stone from 15 years ago. A standard is a guiding principle: this is the standard because of what it does for us as a brand. As things evolve, update the standard so there's no confusion. We evolve with the times. That said, there are absolutely times when standards should not be optional. Chick-fil-A is going to be red, not purple, even if that's your family's favorite color. Some things are non-negotiable. And another area that should not be optional? Recording your sales calls. I worked with someone recently who said, 'Yeah, we just don't want to record our sales calls.' You're telling me you don't want to have better data than you've ever had in the history of your business on what your sales team is and isn't doing right? You don't want to know which members are asking world-class questions? I just can't understand it. The core theme is this: we have to lead right now. The world is thirsty for great leaders. Leaders who are not afraid of the future, who are not afraid to say: 'We don't have it all figured out, but we know the buyer is changing, the market is changing, the world is changing, and we are going to evolve with it. And we are going to make sure you, dear franchisees, are in tune with what those changes need to be.'
Brendon Dennewill: Marcus, the sales training you were alluding to there, that's the work you're doing through Question First, right?
Marcus Sheridan: Yeah, I've got a company called Question First Group, and it's a phenomenal company focused on sales and leadership training. We have a whole system of communication that we teach, and it's very powerful. We work with different franchisees and franchisors. One of the areas where franchisees significantly deviate from each other is in the way they sell. You see extreme variation in sales styles, processes, questions asked. There are rarely good standards around selling, especially in home services and home improvement, where so much of it happens offline. We invented a system of communication for selling and leadership, similar to what EOS is for solving business problems. We call it the Pathfinder System. It's remarkable. You can learn more about it at questionfirstgroup.com. We've got books and resources on there as well.
Brendon Dennewill: We'll put a link to that in the show notes. So to wrap up: with the work you're doing at Question First Group, PriceGuide, and AI Trust Signals, as you leave the audience with one last piece of advice, what are you most excited about and what can people do this week to make a big impact on their business?
Marcus Sheridan: I think it's never been easier to stand out and create trust, despite what you hear. You can be an incredible multiplier of talent and productivity today because of AI. But you've got to get in the sandbox as a leader. You can't be counting on your team to teach you about AI. You've got to get in there yourself, and you should be building. You should be building apps yourself as a leader of your company. I'm the most non-technical person I know. I don't know a line of code. And I'm building apps all the time now. If I were you, I'd go to AI today and say: I've never built anything. Help me build something. Help me build a tool. Ask me whatever questions you need. Let's get this party started. And then just let the magic happen. I'd build on Claude. That's the tool I'm going to recommend to you today. Could be different in three months, but right now: get in the sandbox. Start building.
Brendon Dennewill: Awesome. Marcus, thank you so much for joining me today. It was great to catch up.
Marcus Sheridan: My pleasure, my friend. Take care.