4 Common Misconceptions About They Ask, You Answer

You've read They Ask, You Answer and are excited to get started. You make a list of tasks: write a few articles weekly, make some videos, and you're done. Right?

Unfortunately, it's not as simple as it seems. As head coach at Buzzlytics, I regularly see companies viewing They Ask, You Answer as a list they can tick off. Because of this kind of misunderstanding, they miss the essence of the philosophy and risk disappointing results.

In this article, I take you through the four most common misconceptions about They Ask, You Answer. I explain why they are so tricky and how to avoid them. After reading this article, you'll understand why They Ask, You Answer is more than a marketing ploy. You'll know exactly what it takes to successfully implement it in your organization so you can truly become the most trusted advisor in your industry.

"I've read the book and I know the weekly tasks that my company needs to do consistently. To be successful, I need to make sure we write two to three articles every week and produce two to three videos. As long as we create those and find ways to use them in our sales processes, we are on our way to success."

It's easy to learn about They Ask, You Answer and only get a list of to-do's from it. Many people who read these types of books are looking for a quick cheat sheet or a Lego manual of tasks to accomplish to grow their business.

I get that on the surface it can seem like a list of tactics, but if you want to achieve success with They Ask, You Answer, you have to understand that it's not just a project to be implemented - it's a culture.

TAYA is not just a project to be done - it is a culture.

If your organization is concerned with checking off boxes instead of becoming the most trusted advisor in your industry, it's easy to get off to the wrong start. Why? Because this daily tactical thinking causes you to be focused on "vanity metrics," meaningless statistics, which means you're pursuing the wrong results.

These are the questions you should ask your team members to determine whether your company only adheres to the superficial tactics or is ready to adopt the framework as its culture:

• What is our real goal?
• What do we actually do to get there?
• How do we know when we have achieved it?

Generally, you will get answers that fall somewhere on the spectrum tactical - strategic - cultural, and most will end up somewhere between tactical and strategic.

Here are a few examples of tactical and strategic answers you might hear.

• We write articles and produce videos to answer our customers' most common questions.
• We learn how to sell in an unbiased way.
• We create content that builds trust and drives traffic, leads and sales.

• We try to rank organically in Google to be more visible online.
• We are working to become the most trusted online advisors in our industry.
• We learn to give our prospects the information they need so they contact us more often.

Because They Ask, You Answer advises all these things, these answers may seem right. But to succeed, your company must understand that the focus must be much bigger.

Your company should see They Ask, You Answer first and foremost as a permanent cultural change.

So what do the cultural responses look like?

• We recognize that our sales and marketing teams have the same ultimate goal: to increase revenue.
• We are transforming our organizational structure and internal communications to focus primarily on teaching our industry.
• We align our long-term business goals with the They Ask, You Answer goal of building trust through education.

The reason we advise companies to focus on implementing They Ask, You Answer as a culture rather than as a project is that projects are implemented and forgotten, while cultural changes are permanent.

To run They Ask, You Answer long and well enough, cultural philosophy must be woven into the way your company sees and operates itself.

This may sound like nitpicking, but in my experience as head coach at Buzzlytics, this shift in perception is the difference between success and failure - especially in the long run.

This is what it looks like when a company has properly implemented this cultural shift within the organization:

1. All team members feel they are part of the initiative - this applies to everyone from your marketing team members to your content experts.
2. Your staff has the belief that They Ask, You Answer is not simply an extra task to be added to their weekly checklist, but a strategy to be developed and honed.
3. The marketing department is not the only team leading the They Ask, You Answer initiative - everyone is part of the company's mission to educate prospects.
4. The company's vision, mission and annual goals all point toward becoming the No. 1 educators in your industry.
5. Management has a clear role in communicating the goals of the They Ask, You Answer culture.
6. Content creation is the main focus and should never fall off anyone's plate when they are busy - the other tasks should be secondary to content creation.
7. There are many shared goals and regular meetings between sales and marketing teams.
8. Everyone helps create content, especially sales and your content experts.

"I understand what needs to happen to make They Ask, You Answer a success and it seems that this will be mostly a reallocation of time from our marketing team. I think this is the right priority for them to be at the forefront and they will call on the rest of the company if they need help creating something. We are all willing to help with their work."

You'll find that much of the regular They Ask, You Answer work resembles the work that marketing has always done. After all, They Ask, You Answer is about creating content and generating leads. It's basically inbound marketing, and you're producing information that will be your online magnet for people to find you and contact you, right?

No, not really.

I get that They Ask, You Answer could easily be seen as a marketing initiative, but its purpose couldn't be further from that.

The goal of They Ask, You Answer is not just to increase brand awareness, generate leads or improve organic traffic. It is a sales initiative. This means the real goal is to use all of these tools to increase sales.

Traditionally, companies view the marketing department as a cost center, while the sales department is viewed as a profit center. It's time to throw that idea out the window, and it's because of the Internet.

Let me explain.

TAYA's real goal is to increase sales.

Twenty years ago, the average customer contacted a company when he had completed about 20% of the purchase process. The concept looked something like this: "Marketing is responsible for bringing our company to the attention of prospects. Once a prospect has found our company, he calls us, and then sales does its best to take the buyer from 20% to 100%. Way to go, sales. You made those sales possible!"

But now the Internet has given the buyer almost all the power, and most of the "prospect education" must happen long before a prospect reports himself to the organization.

The average prospect does not report to a company until they have completed about 80% of the buying process. The idea now is more along the lines of:

"Marketing is responsible for providing information online so that a prospect knows exactly what he needs and who to get it from. Then, if he only has one or two more questions, he reports to the organization by filling out a form, participating in live chat or calling the company. Then the sales department is responsible for completing those sales and answering the very last questions specific to that customer."

What happens if you don't have enough information online to get your prospects to trust you enough to contact you?

Your leads are drying up.

The bottom line? The traditional responsibilities of "marketing" and "sales" have merged. They are both responsible for informing the buyer during the buying process, and it is up to the prospect to decide when to contact them.

In most industries, marketing departments are now doing more selling than their sales departments, and this trend is only increasing as more information becomes available online.

The average prospect does not report to a company until they have completed about 80% of the buying process.

Sales and marketing departments should always have the same goal: generate revenue for the company.

And absolutely nothing strengthens this alignment more than incorporating the philosophy of They Ask, You Answer into your organization - provided your sales and marketing departments actually believe they have the same goal.

How do you properly implement They Ask, You Answer in your organization?

1. Educate your sales and marketing teams so they realize they have one common goal.
2. Introduce They Ask, You Answer into your business as a sales initiative, not a marketing initiative.
3. Clearly show the sales team how this sales initiative will benefit them personally and ultimately make them more money.
4. Teach your sales team how to use content in their sales process to make their job easier.
5. Create a turnover team within your organization that meets regularly to reinforce this goal alignment.

"My team is fully behind They Ask, You Answer and we can clearly see how this will benefit everyone. We are a smart organization and I am confident that we can all work together to make this work without changing the corporate structure or expanding the workforce."

This is the fallacy that makes me feel most like a game changer.

Why? Because this misconception is not only due to a lack of understanding of the philosophy of They Ask, You Answer but is also an overestimation of one's own team and ability to get things done.

Companies with this mindset tend to be most enthusiastic They Ask, You Answer. Many turn to Buzzlytics for coaching, but try to avoid new hires.

I do understand the thinking: when your team is all set, you want to sprint, work with a Buzzlytics coach like me, and use only the people you already have.

It feels like slowing down the process by first hiring people, introducing them to the company, getting them used to They Ask, You Answer and then rolling out the philosophy "the right way."

Other companies do not want to restructure and hire people because it is too expensive for them in the short term and they "want to see the value of They Ask, You Answer first" before investing in people.

But what happens when something belongs to everyone?

Right, then it belongs to no one.

Again, you must create a permanent cultural change, one that requires the restructuring of your organization. It's designed to align your sales and marketing departments, to transform corporate goals so they are rooted in the mindset of educating your industry - including your employees, prospects and competitors.

So, who do you need and what is their responsibility?

• First, you need a content manager. He or she is usually the leader of the sales team and acts as a liaison between the sales and marketing departments. He is responsible for writing and publishing two to three articles a week and owns the internal communications needed to create the right content that can be used in the sales process.
• Second, you need a videographer. He or she is responsible for your entire video production plan. This includes planning and writing scripts, filming and editing, and making sure you publish two to three videos per week. The videographer is usually hired 3 to 6 months after starting with TAYA Mastery. This depends on your goals and ambitions.

This list is somewhat simplified, but should give you an idea of the work required to become the educators of a given industry. Without these two roles at the heart of a 'They Ask, You Answer' initiative, chaos will ensue, responsibilities will fade into the background and the company will not be able to They Ask, You Answer persevere.

And this leads to my final misconception, one that is usually only discussed after a company has been trying to implement They Ask, You Answer for a while.

Without a content manager and videographer, chaos will ensue, responsibilities will fade into the background and a company will be unable to push through They Ask, You Answer.

"Once we create content that generates high traffic to our website, turn our website into a high-conversion self-selection tool and map all the content we can think of into our sales process, we will complete our They Ask, You Answer initiative. I think that will take about 500 articles and 500 videos."

Everyone starts a They Ask, You Answer initiative with goals in mind, whether it's organic web traffic, new leads or more sales thanks to content - and those are all smart metrics to measure and set goals for.

But if you begin the They Ask, You Answer initiative without understanding that there is no end date, you run the risk that your business will fail.

Again, this is about setting a precedent that this is a permanent change. Why would you hire people for something that you don't plan to still be doing five to 10 years from now? And why would you create processes and update the communication and structure of the organization? You probably wouldn't.

Besides, why put so much work into doing everything if you don't plan to maintain it?

You need to consistently update your content to stay relevant in organic search results. You also need to keep updating sales enablement content because the questions your prospects have will change over time.

There will always be a newer, clearer way to answer previously covered questions, and there will always be more questions to cover for each industry. In fact, each article raises new questions. The mindset you need is to become the Wikipedia of your field: someone looking for answers to questions about your products or services should see your Web site as the most valuable resource.

Knowing that your industry is always changing and that the Internet is always improving, everything you do to become the most trusted teacher in your industry should be permanent, continuous and indefinite.

If not, then you're not trying to do what Buzzlytics teaches companies to do; you're trying to do something different. "Different" is absolutely fine, but you need to be honest and specific with both your team members and yourself about exactly what it is that you are trying to accomplish.

Personally, I think anything less than "all-in" makes organizations feel like they have failed when they try to do They Ask, You Answer.

First, keep in mind that it's never as black and white as complete failure or complete failure. Companies that ultimately fail to permanently implement They Ask, You Answer have almost always had measurable success.

Companies have gained a huge ROI by trying They Ask, You Answer without ever achieving the ultimate goal of becoming the most trusted advisors in their market.

Sales enablement content has been used to close deals that otherwise would not have closed, and many consider content creation a great training exercise.

So this article is not intended to convince you not to do "They Ask, You Answer" but to help you better understand exactly what it means to do it, because almost everyone who applies it actually wants to implement it properly and completely.

But here is the (somewhat) frustrating ending.

There are more companies that have failed to become the most trusted advisors in their market than those that have succeeded. In my opinion, this is because many firms do not clearly state exactly what they want to achieve when they "do" They Ask, You Answer.

So my challenge to you is that before you do anything, you need to be clear and specific to both yourself and your employees about exactly what you want to accomplish.

Would you like to spar about this? Then schedule a free, no-obligation consultation with me or one of my colleagues.

If it were my organization, I would describe it as a permanent cultural change, a sales initiative aligning the goals of our outdated sales and marketing departments. The initiative is tied to long-term company goals and requires several new employees focused on producing and using content in the sales process.

The ultimate goal of They Ask, You Answer is to make our organization the most trusted advisor in our industry by continuously creating unbiased content that helps you grow in a sustainable way.

And if you fail to become the most trusted advisor in your industry? Then you can still achieve excellent results.