“Buyers don’t want to get pitched. They want to know they can trust you. They want to know that you understand what’s going on in their environment. They want to know that you actually can solve their thing, and they don’t want to make a mistake.”
Chris Duprey, Chief Customer Officer at Impact
Vulnerability and transparency are hard traits to display for all of us, much less a for-profit business. We typically sell our strengths and explain away our weaknesses, avoiding objections like the plague. Tough customer questions create awkward situations, even as salespeople miss the point of selling.
Chris Duprey of IMPACT enthusiastically proposes a buyer-centric vision for sales. Why not meet objections head-on? Why not get ahead of the curve on price, quality, and common objections? Buyers ruthlessly research products and services ahead of time, and they should. We all want to make the right investment of time, money, and convenience.
In this episode, Chris introduces a concept, They Ask You Answer, and dives into his journey to today as he leads IMPACT’s business coaching division.
Topics discussed in this interview:
- What does IMPACT do, and how did it start?
- How does They Ask You Answer apply to contractors?
- Which roles does Chris play at IMPACT?
- How does IMPACT differ from a traditional inbound marketing agency?
- The journey from Army officer to executive
- The benefits of meditation
- Challenging existing thinking for greater success
- The power of knowing your market
- The evolution of buying behavior
- Positioning yourself as the expert
- Answering the hard questions as a business
- Transparency with customers
- Buyer-centric sales
- Rapid fire questions
For a check-up on your sales team, send a blank email to sales@impactplus.com. Also, visit impactplus.com for assessments, information, and more on They Ask You Answer.
For more Construction Disruption, listen on Apple Podcasts or YouTube
Connect with us on Facebook, Instagram, or LinkedIn
This episode was produced by Isaiah Industries, Inc.
Intro/Outro:
:Welcome to the Construction Disruption podcast, where we uncover the future of design, building, and remodeling.
Ethan Young:
:Yo, yo, yo. It's your boy, Ethan Young, a content writer at Isaiah Industries and a manufacturer of specialty metal roofing and other building materials. Today, I'm joined by Todd Miller, my co-host. How are you doing, Todd?
Todd Miller:
:Hey, I am doing fantastic. And that was a wonderfully unique intro there. I love it. So I do have to you know, as I get older, I start to think about things. And I was thinking there day, you know, when I was younger and I was more creative, more flexible. I used to play piano by ear, a few years ago I started using my hands. Works a little better. So that's one of my jokes. I really, you know, I, I would love to tell you a joke about construction. Would that be okay?
Ethan Young:
:Yeah, that's fine. Yeah.
Todd Miller:
:Well, unfortunately, you're going to have to wait because I'm still working on it.
Ethan Young:
:Too true there.
Todd Miller:
:So one more quick story. This is a story, so everyone, I think every kid goes through this. For me, it was in second grade. They sent us out and we had to collect the leaves and create a leaf collection. Did you? I mean, you're a lot younger than me, but did you have to do that too?
Ethan Young:
:I can't remember that. I don't know, maybe it was more a bug collection for me, but.
Todd Miller:
:Well, I had bugs, but that was seventh grade. Second grade was leaves. Yes, I was the kid who went out and collected poison ivy leaves, not knowing what I was collecting. I was completely covered head to toe. I mean, head to toe with poison ivy. But, you know, one of the things we used to do with leaves, did you do this when you collected, maybe didn't collect leaves? We used to put them between pieces of wax paper and run an iron over them. And the wax paper would kind of melt into the leaf and kind of preserve it and make it shiny and all that stuff. So that was kind of a cool thing we used to do. But one thing I learned through that was you never wanted to do that with a four leaf clover because you sure don't want to press your luck.
Ethan Young:
:Oh, geez.
Todd Miller:
:I'm good to go now. I got those all out of my system. Yo, yo, yo.
Ethan Young:
:Now we can make it to the rest of the show. Before I introduce our guest, I do want to bring up that we're doing challenge words this episode. So if you haven't listened in before, each of us have chosen a unique, kind of interesting word that we're going to fit it in the conversation. So keep an ear out for those, you know, and then we'll let you know at the end of the episode if who is successful in fitting it in and who missed it. But it's always a good time. So I do want to say today we're joined by our guest, Chris Duprey, Chief Customer Officer at IMPACT, which is a sales and marketing training company that helps businesses grow. So, welcome to Construction Disruption, Chris. How are you doing?
Chris Duprey:
:I'm good. I'm good. Thanks for having me, Ethan.
Ethan Young:
:Thanks, yeah. So I wanted to start by diving into like a little bit what... How does IMPACT help businesses grow? What is your, how do they kind of, you know, get things going?
Chris Duprey:
:Yeah. So the shortest answer is we help companies leverage a framework called They Ask You Answer.
Ethan Young:
:Okay.
Chris Duprey:
:Which is a book that my close friend Marcus Sheridan wrote based on his experience as a pool guy. There you go.
Chris Duprey:
:So, like many others out there, we used to be, I don't know that many others used to be, but we were one of the original HubSpot partner agencies.
Ethan Young:
:Oh, okay.
Chris Duprey:
:We were an inbound marketing agency with all the things that that is. And then over the years, we found that that wasn't really working the best way, and what was, was They Ask You Answer. So we partnered up with Marcus and merged his company with ours. And now IMPACT helps companies bring They Ask You Answer to life in their organizations. And on top of that, we also will help sales leaders and leaders in general communicate more effectively, work through their sales processes, work through sales communication, the way that really you interact with your buyer. So those are the types of training and coaching that we do.
Ethan Young:
:Gotcha.
Todd Miller:
:So one thing I want to throw in here real quick if I can, Ethan, so They Ask You Answer is a book that I had bought right at right when I came out of the gate. And one of the things that impressed me was, and I wasn't aware that Marcus was a friend of yours, but, you know, was that he was a swimming pool contractor.
Chris Duprey:
:Oh, yeah.
Todd Miller:
:And, you know, it was such real world stuff and very applicable, I think, to our audience members, which is made up of a lot of contractors, home improvement contractors, GCs, architectural design firms. So, man, I tell you, when you read this book, you just, all over you capture nuggets and glimmers that are like, Gosh, that's me. That's something I can utilize right away. So, cool stuff.
Chris Duprey:
:Yeah. Now, here's the thing, though, for some of your audience, right? And so in a past life, post- army and pre-IMPACT, I ran business development and growth for an architecture firm.
Ethan Young:
:Okay.
Chris Duprey:
:And we started trying to do this because I was there and my friend Bob had introduced me to Marcus and I'm like, Yes, we got to do it. And they decided they didn't want to do it anymore. That, by the way, is when I went to go work at IMPACT.
Todd Miller:
:Wow.
Chris Duprey:
:But here's the thing. If you're an architect, you likely say to yourselves, well, my work speaks for itself. Trust me, that's not the case.
Todd Miller:
:Mm hmm.
Chris Duprey:
:All buyers want to know those things that They Ask You Answer tells us that we want to answer. Because it's true when we buy stuff. We want to know those basic, fundamental, what does it cost or what's my budget? We can go into They Ask You Answer if we want. But the idea is, for a home improvement, for a remodel or for construction. You're going to read it and go, Duh, this is perfect. Designers and architects, might be like, Oh, well, they're selling products, I'm a service. And I'm telling you, it works with those. And I personally have coached an architecture firm to do this, and it's been game changing for them. More on the customer journey part than on the acquisition part, but it's just helped their whole, you know, design process actually be more, you know, client-centric and simpler for them to do. Yeah. Like truly being customer-focused versus not and it's made their communication so much better. And by the way, everybody finds them.
Ethan Young:
:Yeah.
Chris Duprey:
:Because they're actually answering questions that, that you have as an architecture firm. So I just because you brought that up, Todd, I want to be clear. Like it works in all these different scenarios because it's not about the industry, it's about people buy stuff. It doesn't matter what the stuff is, we're going to buy it, right?
Ethan Young:
:Yeah. And I can see, especially with architecture, you know, we talked about and in past episodes, sometimes people aren't sure like whether they need an architect for their project or whatever. There's a lot of confusion, a lot of like uncertainty, a lot of people that maybe haven't used an architect before. So someone who's using those kind of principles and is giving them all that knowledge, like that's a massive, massive benefit for them.
Chris Duprey:
:Yeah.
Ethan Young:
:Before we, and I think we'll touch on They Ask You Answer a little later, but I did want to touch on what you do at IMPACT first. So in your LinkedIn bio, it has you as Chief Customer Officer, but you also are coach, speaker and co-creator of the Mastery and Certified Partner program. Can you touch on a little bit of what you do in each of those roles?
Chris Duprey:
:So again, my journey has just been, I'm sure that everybody says their journey has been unique, but I fell out of airplanes for a living for a while and, you know.
Ethan Young:
:Definitely unique.
Chris Duprey:
:Like I was an Army officer for a decade and then I then I came out, came into business. Right? And so when I started IMPACT, I was actually the Chief Operating Officer.
Ethan Young:
:Okay.
Chris Duprey:
:And we were about a 30-person company doing traditional inbound stuff. And over the last few years, we converted, changed, grew the company, and I moved into more of an internal coaching role.
Ethan Young:
:Gotcha.
Chris Duprey:
:And then built the Mastery program, which is, so our mastery programs are They Ask You Answer mastery, right? How do we teach folks to do that? So I built that, and then after you build something, you have to be the person that does it first, right?
Ethan Young:
:Mm hmm, test it out, yeah.
Chris Duprey:
:Yeah. So I coached, I've probably coached 50, 60 companies through They Ask You Answer in sales. And so I still coach, I coach about five companies at a time now. Go out and speak, do workshops, all that stuff while also running the entire customer journey at IMPACT. So from the moment that you're aware of us, how do you get into a conversation? How do you learn from us? How do you get into a conversation with us? How do my coaches take you through and get you to be a member with us? And then how well do our coaches execute that? All of that, it falls under me as the Chief Customer Officer. So what do I actually do? I spend a lot of time watching sales calls, client calls, giving feedback, coaching folks, and doing things like this.
Ethan Young:
:Okay, interesting.
Todd Miller:
:So I spend most of my time in my office watching Netflix, so I admire that. It's good.
Ethan Young:
:There you go. I did want to, that's interesting that you bring that up, too. I mean, I was researching the website, of course, for the episode here, but I even noticed that They Ask You Answer in terms of you guys had all the I think it was a page specifically about how IMPACT differs from a traditional inbound marketing page. And I found that really interesting to kind of dig into. And so even just seeing you guys use that on your own site, I think that's a cool layer, you know, where you're using it on your own site and helping other people implement it too.
Chris Duprey:
:Well, it's that whole thing, you know, you've got to eat your own dog food. You got to drink your own champagne, right? Like, it'd be really hard to coach people on a system if we didn't do it. Yeah, because it'd be really hard to to coach a sales team on how they should sell and communicate with their buyers better if in our sales process we didn't do that.
Ethan Young:
:Absolutely, yeah. Next I wanted to touch on, and you mentioned again your military service. How has that experience kind of affected, because I know you've been in a couple of leadership roles with IMPACT. How has that affected that and then kind of where you ended up?
Chris Duprey:
:Yeah, So I think I definitely wouldn't be doing what I'm doing if I hadn't done what I had done. So like I said, I was an infantry officer. I was an advisor to the Iraqi army in 2002. And then, you know, I commanded the company in the 82nd Airborne Division. And the the funny thing that sort of comes together is the problems I had as a company commander are the same problems that I had as the chief operating officer in my role today. These are all human problems. They just show up a little bit differently, right? And so then you add in marketing and all this stuff and it's like, so how does marketing or sales fit in? Everything's about influence, right? And educating and influencing. Well, it was the same thing I did as an Army officer. But, you know, if I was to say, like, what's the biggest takeaway for me, though, is, you can't. To be successful as an army officer, you have to have initiative. And I would argue to be successful at anything, you have to be proactive and have initiative. And so, you know, I got like a you know, a doctorate in that. Being in the 82nd and and now I try to bring that to you know, civilian life, which is not always exactly like. You don't always have folks that are as driven. But luckily, you know, the companies we work with are full of leaders that have that same gene. Folks that I get to work with at IMPACT are filled with that same gene. And so, you know, while I'm not wearing a uniform anymore, like I've still got that same team mentality here with the crew.
Ethan Young:
:Yeah, no. That's really powerful, especially for what you're doing now.
Chris Duprey:
:Yeah. And it's tough, I'll tell you, I was lucky and had two people really take a risk on. You know, at the time it was like a 33-year-old, just out of the Army guy and then another that was like a 35-year-old, just out of the Army guy. These business owners that took a risk to say, hey, you don't have a ton of experience. We're going to bring you on. And that's allowed me to to get all of that and and be where I'm at today.
Todd Miller:
:Yes. Thank thank you for your service to our country.
Ethan Young:
:Absolutely, yeah.
Todd Miller:
:Appreciate that greatly.
Ethan Young:
:One more thing I want to touch about on you before we get into more of what IMPACT does is, I thought was interesting in your intro video on your bio page, you mentioned meditation. Is that something that's kind of affected your life and been a part of it?
Chris Duprey:
:Oh, yeah. I mean, Army officer, high-strung. I used to say quick flash to bang. So when something doesn't work, you're right there.
Ethan Young:
:Yeah.
Chris Duprey:
:Yeah, that doesn't work so well. Well, it didn't work well when I was in the Army, but it doesn't work well leading teams or just being an individual contributor. And so, you know, this was back before my days at IMPACT, but I was really struggling to make the transition, really struggling to understand how to take everything I knew, but like, move it forward.
Ethan Young:
:Yeah, kinda translate it.
Chris Duprey:
:I listened to a podcast. Somebody talked about meditation and how they used an app or whatever, and it helped them. And so I downloaded that app. I sat in my office that morning and I did it and I went, Wow, this is crazy. And from there I went on this whole journey that we don't have to get into. But long story short is, I've been on some silent retreats. I've done all this stuff. And what it has allowed me to do is separate or almost slow down what's happening. That sense of everything happening to me doesn't really exist anymore. It's like it's all happening and it's allowed me to not lose my mind, but to put. There's some anger, frustration or a bad thing over here. Okay, I can't make it just magically go away. So how do we attack it to get to what we actually want to get to? And so that's where that has helped me do it instead of freaking out and, you know, being at 10 all the time.
Todd Miller:
:I'm kind of curious, and I think that is a really interesting juxtaposition, you know, from military officer and now meditation and working in business. But what does that meditation look like for you? I mean, is this every day? A couple of times a day?
Chris Duprey:
:Yeah, good question. So, when I first got into it, it was like 10 minutes a day.
Todd Miller:
:Mm hmm.
Chris Duprey:
:That then led into 30 minutes a day, that then got to an hour. And at the peak of, I was going through other things in life as well. But there was about a year that I did 2 hours a day. And so it would be an hour at about 4 in the morning and an hour and about 9 at night.
Ethan Young:
:Hmm.
Chris Duprey:
:And now today, it's, you know, 10 minutes here or there. And it's a lot more living the practice than sitting on the cushion over and over and over again. But I say that, but when life is getting hard, I am right back to being like 30 minutes every day on the cushion because it centers me. But, you know, as everything evolves, like I'm not dedicating as much time to it as I had.
Todd Miller:
:Say, 2 hours a day is going to cut into my Netflix in the office time.
Ethan Young:
:Got to be careful with that.
Chris Duprey:
:Yeah, I was wasting a lot of time between midnight and five back then.
Ethan Young:
:One last thing I wanna touch on real quick, and then we'll move on. So is it more of like a, you like you got it yourself or there's no like Master Yoda, you know, like that you had to learn from. It's just you kind of learn it on your own or?
Chris Duprey:
:Yeah. So I used some apps back in the day, then I read a whole bunch of books, and I did actually work with a teacher for about a year and a half. And she's actually, the teacher I worked with is the teacher that's like Apple Meditation. Her name's Joanna Hardie. I used to do an hour with her every other week or something like that.
Todd Miller:
:Wow.
Ethan Young:
:Very cool.
Chris Duprey:
:For a bit.
Ethan Young:
:Okay. So now, kind of switching gears a little bit, touch on more what IMPACT does and I want to ask what, and I kind of highlighted a little bit already with that page on your website but what is it that makes IMPACT special for clients? What is it that kind of makes you guys a different than a normal?
Chris Duprey:
:So here's what I'd say is I don't think there's anything special about what what we are, other than to say, we are coaches and guides that are going to hold the mirror up for you. So the folks that we aren't, like, if you want somebody to do all your stuff for you. That's not us.
Ethan Young:
:Okay.
Chris Duprey:
:But the thing that you're going to get is incredibly frank guidance and coaching from our team that is embedded in the They Ask You Answer world. And so, you know, we've spent hours and hours and hours training. I mean, days and weeks training our coaches not only on how to communicate, but on They Ask You Answer with Marcus as the head coach of our coaches. And so we are constantly thinking about how does that apply, how do the principles apply? And so what we're going to do is go into a business and work with the CEO, work with those folks and say, what are you like? Where do you want to be? What needs to be true to get there? And how are we going to do it? And then we hold them to that as they go, right. Because, you know, you don't have to be a mathematician to know that there's only a couple of ways that you can grow a business, right? You can sell more, and that's really it. You can sell more.
Ethan Young:
:Yeah.
Chris Duprey:
:But how do you do that? Okay. And so when it comes down to it, it's like, especially founders sell a certain way. But guess what happens when you get to a certain point where the founder is not selling, you have other people that come in that try to sell the way that the founder did. Well, guess what? It doesn't work. Because they're not the founder. And so you have to be educating at that point, and for a lot of folks, it's really tough to see that. And so as we go through, we make leveraging They Ask You Answer easier because you're not going to make the mistakes that say if you did it on your own, you would make. And then, you know, you get grumpy. Not grumpy, but you get, you know. Bald dude from Connecticut that's sitting there saying, Hey, why didn't you do this this week? Well, we had all of it. Well, no, that's crap. Like you're either doing it or you're not. You know, so for folks that have read the book. I'll talk to people that are like Chris, I read the book. I'm such a fan of They Ask You Answer and I'll say, Great. Have you written an article about the best you know, x, y, z in the area? No. Have you written your price, your cost and price? Well, no. But then you don't love They Ask You Answer, you love the idea of They Ask You Answer.
Ethan Young:
:It's a good distinction to make.
Chris Duprey:
:So back to like what makes IMPACT special? Like, that's what we do.
Ethan Young:
:Mm hmm.
Chris Duprey:
:Now, we have a community of people that are doing it. We have like, we have all this stuff, but it's really to get like-minded folks doing the right things and trying to induce more trust, build more trust with their buyers, because we all know that that's the business that we're all in if we actually want to succeed.
Ethan Young:
:I think to me it comes across as I hate to, you know, reduce it to this simple analogy, but it's maybe the traditional inbound marketing agency is giving someone a fish and this is teaching someone how to fish. I think that's how I was looking at it.
Chris Duprey:
:I mean, it's not oversimplified.
Ethan Young:
:Yeah.
Chris Duprey:
:That is the thing.
Ethan Young:
:Gotcha.
Chris Duprey:
:So it's like you're, I mean, you're a content writer, right?
Ethan Young:
:Yeah.
Chris Duprey:
:For your organization. Well, check it out. You're you will always be better than outsourcing it to somebody else to write about your company.
Ethan Young:
:Yeah.
Chris Duprey:
:There's just no, there's no way that an outsourced copywriter can be better. Same thing happens with video.
Ethan Young:
:Mm hmm.
Chris Duprey:
:Same thing with sales, like. One of the things that blows my mind is how we have companies today that do sales outreach for you and guarantee meetings like, I don't get it. I don't know how that works. I mean, I get what their models are. But unless you're selling stuff that's just a commodity, you're never going to like, those aren't ever going to work. Like they're just not because they just hit you with the problem and they don't actually understand the buyer, nor do they know how to talk about the product or the service.
Ethan Young:
:Yep.
Chris Duprey:
:And so this is the types of things that companies need to own. If you want to be successful, thinking that you can outsource any part of your growth and development as a company is the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard in my life.
Todd Miller:
:Good point, I love it.
Ethan Young:
:Yeah. I do want to touch on it, if you don't mind. Can we kind of go into a little bit of They Ask You Answer and how that applies to companies?
Chris Duprey:
:Yeah. So in a nutshell, right, so there's a couple of things we should talk about. The first is buying behavior has changed over the last 20, 30 years, right? I mean, I remember as a kid, my mom and dad walking into a big box store and I don't remember what it was. Maybe it was Circuit City back in the day. I'm not sure what it was, but we're going to get a new TV, right? And because I remember growing up, we had one of those that had the push button like on and off, and then that it was now time to get a real TV, right?
Todd Miller:
:I remember crank-start TVs.
Chris Duprey:
:Yeah, there you go. There you go, right.But my dad had no idea what he wanted. He had, like, the newspaper clipping, you know, he had, like, the circular from the store walk in, and there's the sales guy on the floor. And I remember watching my dad talk to this guy for, like 45 minutes about what TV we should get or whatever. And then we bought a TV. But think about today.
Ethan Young:
:Oh, yeah. It's way different now.
Chris Duprey:
:We talk to everybody about what TV you want to get, right?
Ethan Young:
:Yeah.
Chris Duprey:
:You do all your research. You know exactly what you want. And most of us don't even leave our house to go get the TV. Most of us just have it sent to us.
Ethan Young:
:Yeah.
Chris Duprey:
:So some of you might say, Well, that's a product, Chris. Yeah, but don't let that just be the thing. Everything we do now, we research because we have much more than the Yellow Pages, which for the younger folks that was the thing that had companies in it. But today, no matter what it is, we are researching stuff on the Internet and we don't find what we want. What do we do, Todd? We hit the back button, right, brother?
Todd Miller:
:Yep.
Chris Duprey:
:And then we go find something else, right?
Ethan Young:
:Yep.
Chris Duprey:
:So whether you want to accept it or not, each of us goes to the Internet. Because here's the deal, if we don't know the answer to a question, the first thing that we're doing is picking up our phone and asking, you know, the Google machine, what's up? Okay. So that's a premise that we all just have to accept. Whether you're an architecture firm, a roofing company, a design/build company, whatever you are. People are eventually going to type in a question, but they would normally, 20, 30 years ago have asked you, they're going to ask a computer. Fact.
Ethan Young:
:Yep.
Chris Duprey:
:So, we have a choice. We can answer those questions or we can pretend that the world hasn't changed.
Ethan Young:
:Hmm.
Chris Duprey:
:If we pretend the world hasn't changed, we're not going to grow. So then the next thing I talk about with folks is like, what is Google's main mission in life other than generating revenue through ads? So take that off.
Ethan Young:
:Yeah.
Chris Duprey:
:But, Ethan, what is Google's prime reason for existence?
Ethan Young:
:Well, they deliver information to people that are looking for it, yeah.
Chris Duprey:
:Right, and here's the thing. They answer people's questions, so they want to give you the best answer to the question that you ask it.
Ethan Young:
:Mm hmm.
Chris Duprey:
:And so when you answer those questions and people go to that site and then they actually stay there and read the thing and then click on other things there, Google is like, Ooh, I gave them the right answer.
Ethan Young:
:Yep, exactly.
Chris Duprey:
:By the way, this is in idiot's way of breaking down search engine optimization, okay. But so, then what is They Ask You Answer? It's saying, Okay, well, what's the stuff that we all care about as buyers?Now, Marcus didn't start this way. He started by just go and I'm going to answer all the questions because his company in 2008, 2009, when the market crashed lost almost all their money. They were about to go bankrupt. So he found HubSpot, he heard about content marketing. Dude was like, You know what I'm just going to do? I'm going to answer every question that ever gets asked of me. So we did that. And he would go home at night after a day of sales calls and just write, write, write, write, write, write, write. And then he started looking at the data. Well, what were people finding him for? How much does a fiberglass swimming pool cost?
Ethan Young:
:Yep.
Chris Duprey:
:All kinds of things on cost and price. Well, let's take a minute to say no matter what we're buying, we care about what it costs.
Ethan Young:
:Absolutely.
Chris Duprey:
:Or at a minimum, we care about the budget. And we want to understand how pricing works in the industry or the service that we're getting. All of us, we all fundamentally want to know that. Well, we call that number one on the Big Five is cost and price. The next thing he found is people wanted to know what are the problems with his swimming pools?
Ethan Young:
:Okay, interesting.
Chris Duprey:
:So think about what do we want? You don't type into Google, How awesome is a BMW? You type in, What are all the things that are going to go wrong with a BMW? Right, that's what we do. Yep.
Ethan Young:
:Absolutely. I've done that with my car.
Chris Duprey:
:Because we don't want to make a mistake when we buy something or we want to know. And here's the thing is somebody is going to tell you, like an American car company is going to say BMWs are way too expensive to maintain. Boy, wouldn't you rather BMW told you that if you were interested in buying a BMW.
Ethan Young:
:I think it would be kind of refreshingly honest, yeah.
Chris Duprey:
:Right, and so we have to talk about the problems inherent with our product or service and inherent in our industry, because people are looking for that,rRight? So problems articles are the second part of what we call the Big Five.
Ethan Young:
:Okay.
Chris Duprey:
:Then we naturally like to compare and contrast stuff, right?
Ethan Young:
:Oh, yeah.
Chris Duprey:
:You know, Todd, you're talking about back in second grade or fifth grade with leaves. Like I just remember when we learned how to write essays. It was compare and contrast these two things, right? Well, guess what? When you go to buy something and you have options. I bet you everybody listening has done this search query. If you're going with two things, A versus B.
Ethan Young:
:Yep.
Todd Miller:
:Sure.
Chris Duprey:
:Right, like it just happens.
Ethan Young:
:Oh, yeah.
Chris Duprey:
:Metal roof versus asphalt shingle. But insert whatever those things are. What we naturally want to know because again, we don't want to make a mistake.
Ethan Young:
:Yeah.
Chris Duprey:
:Marcus found for him, and this is all in the book. But like people wanted to know the difference between fiberglass versus concrete versus liner from a swimming pool standpoint. So he has a choice. I can write about it or I can let somebody else do it.
Ethan Young:
:Yeah, wow.
Chris Duprey:
:But we know people are comparing these things, right? So comparisons are there and then we have best of. Think about when you think of like you travel to a city, like what are the best restaurants near you?
Ethan Young:
:Yeah, best spots to visit, yeah.
Chris Duprey:
:Yeah. You do that with everything. What are the best guitar companies? What are the best guitars? What are the best X? It doesn't matter; we always ask that stuff. And so we found that you got to talk about that and you have to do it in an unbiased way, which means you can't put yourself on the list.
Ethan Young:
:Oh.
Chris Duprey:
:Right. This is, by the way, one of those parts where people are like, I love They Ask You Answer, but I'm not willing to do that. Then you don't get They Ask You Answer. So we got to educate people on their other options and we've got to be above it. And then you get into ratings and reviews. And an a great example is, if you've ever searched for an appliance, like you've likely come across Yale Appliance, which is a brick-and-mortar site in Boston, Massachusetts. But they've written most serviced, least serviced. They've written all of these ratings and reviews on all the stuff that they sell because they service it as well. And it's helped them grow exponentially. But those are the big five, right? So, cost and price, problems with your industry, comparisons, versus, best of ratings, or reviews.
Ethan Young:
:Gotcha.
Chris Duprey:
:So that's the basics of like the content that you need to produce. And we found that when you write those articles, people start to gain more trust because that's the stuff that we all look for.
Ethan Young:
:Yeah.
Chris Duprey:
:And if you think about your Amazon app that we all have where we buy stuff from all day, every one of those categories is on a product page in Amazon. It is every single thing. So it's naturally what us buyers want to go after, right? So those are those are some very tactical pieces of They Ask You Answer. But the bigger part is, we as businesses have to realize that we have to tell people what they want to know. We have to show them what they want to know. We have to sell them in a way that they want to be sold to, right?
Ethan Young:
:Otherwise, they'll move on.
Chris Duprey:
:It's all about educating and it's all about inducing more trust, because we know that foundationally, there's so many options out there for everything that we give our money to people that we trust. Right? And so by answering buyers questions, you, A, are building more trust. And B, you're showing up in Google because what question I'm going to ask you, I've already asked the machine. So I want to be found by answering all those things and really being the educator. So that's in a nutshell, right? They Ask You Answer philosophy, but it's always about building more trust. So you're going to sit there and say, Well, I don't want to talk about this. And the question that you've got to ask yourself is, will that induce more trust with my buyers? If the answer is yes, then you have a responsibility to talk about it.
Ethan Young:
:Yeah, I find that really interesting, especially if it's something that, you know, maybe you consider a weakness or, you know, maybe something that you don't want to highlight. But if you think about it, I mean, maybe it's a little counterintuitive, but if you address that, people are like, Oh, okay, well then now I know.
Chris Duprey:
:It's the idea, of the best time to address a concern is before it becomes a concern.
Ethan Young:
:Mm hmm.
Chris Duprey:
:Right. I want to sit there and go, Here is my big white elephant. Not like, don't look over there. Oh, no, over here. You got to just say, like, Hey, listen, we are going to do the work for you. Hey, listen, we are going to kick your butt when you don't do the things that you need to be doing. If you don't like that, you're not a good fit for us. Here are some other folks to go talk to.
Ethan Young:
:Gotcha.
Chris Duprey:
:And I'm going to tell you in the home services industry, holy smokes. You want to talk about? Think about this, whether it's your roof, your kitchen, anything home service-related. We as homeowners are going to do the research because we do not want to hire the wrong person. And how many stories out there are there of the contractor that just has a pickup truck, Oh the project went on forever and he just like all of those horrible stories. So we do the research. The same thing applies on the business to business side, because, while those homeowners and consumers were worried about our thing, we don't want to get fired when we're the employee that's making our decision. So you better believe that the B2B buyer is doing as much, if not more, research into their buying decisions today.
Ethan Young:
:Gotcha. Yeah, no, that's.
Chris Duprey:
:That's what this philosophy and this framework does to help folks, is getting ahead of it. The craziest thing, gents, is there are still industries that they don't do this in.
Todd Miller:
:Mm hmm.
Chris Duprey:
:And so there is a huge opportunity for tons of folks, no matter what industry you're in, there's tons of opportunity to do this, whether you're a local business or you can do things nationally or internationally. Like it just works.
Ethan Young:
:Yeah.
Todd Miller:
:I love that because you're right. You know, the one company that can grab hold of that truth, that can really do something with it is always the one that ends up being the disruptor and the game-changer.
Chris Duprey:
:Yeah, and then let's say that you're a, you know, a local company, like a local design/build company, let's say, does remodeling. Well, if you become the answer, if you become that Web M.D. for remodeling, you could be opening up new revenue streams of you could maybe turn into a franchise that sends leads to other design/build folks. But like, like there are things that you might not even be thinking about. When you go and execute this, you won't be executing it for just to grow your current business, but the options that it has. So if you take Marcus's story, they did it as a last-ditch effort to save River Pools and Spas. Since that day, River Pools and Spas became a pool manufacturer and then sold the manufacturing business. So there's an exit that Marcus has had because of that. Then they franchised River Pools and Spas. And so now there's River Pools and Spas all over this country.
Ethan Young:
:Wow.
Chris Duprey:
:And in 2008, they thought they were going to go under. But because they became the most trafficked pool site in the world they've had all kinds of opportunity and good choices to make, good options to have. That can be possible for anybody that does this well and really leans into this idea.
Ethan Young:
:I guess my next question then is, after having heard all that, is there one thing that you would tell listeners who, like, you know, there's this one thing, right away, do this, like that's going to change. Is there one piece of advice you have for people with this?
Chris Duprey:
:So it's going to end up being two, because the first one is simple as like you've got to go read the book. It's not hard, it's quick. You can even listen to it on Audible. Marcus read the second edition, but go read the book and you're gonna have one of two reactions. You're going to go, Duh, this is exactly what I should be doing and get mad at yourself for not doing it, or you're going to be that outlier that's like, This won't work for me. I'm different. If that's you, then disregard all the rest of the advice. But you're likely not listening to this if you're that person. Right? But what's the one thing that they can do? God, there's so many. But I would say is, go think about what questions do you get asked in your sales process because this is not some marketing thing. This is a growth thing, right? It's a sales thing. And it's a culture shift thing, but you want to sit there and go, What questions do we get asked in the sales process? Why don't people buy from us? What are the fears, worries, concerns, or issues that come up? Write all of those things down and then start addressing them.
Ethan Young:
:Yeah.
Chris Duprey:
:Because the idea is if you lose mostly on price, it doesn't mean that your pricing is off. It means you are not educating people about how pricing works in your industry. You're not educating them on what you actually do and why it costs what it does. And you're probably telling them price after you've already spent 4 or 5 hours working on that deal. And then they're like, Whoa, that's too much.
Ethan Young:
:Yeah.
Chris Duprey:
:No, no, no, no. Start bringing that stuff to the front. Bring that to your website. Don't put your price list up, but talk about 80% of that article needs to be about pricing in your industry. 20% is how you do it. But that's what you need to be doing, is figuring out one of those things and then using that content in the sales process and and winning more deals. And then the shameless plug is, go talk to somebody in IMPACT if you have no idea how to get going, because that's what we do, is help you not make the mistakes that most folks make.
Ethan Young:
:Gotcha.
Todd Miller:
:Yeah, and I just want to play off that a little bit. So I love what you're doing by taking this book that is a great concept and then helping companies, you know, live into it and holding them accountable. I'm a great fan also of a book called The E-Myth that was written by a guy by the name of Michael Gerber. But same experience there, you can read the book and say, Yeah, I ought to do that. I need to do that. But until you engage his firm to actually hold you accountable, make you do it, none of that stuff's going to happen. So I got to encourage folks, get the book, figure out what some of your questions are that get asked all the time, go to IMPACT and let them guide you through that process of making it a reality in your business.
Chris Duprey:
:Yeah, it's, there are some that can do it on their own. But the majority of our case studies, like companies that we've coached through, started that way. And then when this isn't working, it's frustrating. I don't know where I'm going wrong. And they worked with us for 12 to 24 months and have these amazing stories that have come out of it all. So that's what I would tell people to do.
Ethan Young:
:Got you. Yeah. Well, thanks so much, Chris. We're getting close to wrapping up here. Is there anything that we haven't covered that you kind of like to tack on here at the end, close to the end?
Chris Duprey:
:Yeah, I think. I think the last piece that I want to tackle. So this is my personal mission in life right now, is to make buying suck less.
Ethan Young:
:Yeah. Okay.
Chris Duprey:
:Okay. So, I at IMPACT have have sort of taken on this, I'm going to be the sales guy, the sales coach, the one that talks about sales the most. Because I'm just so sick of having really bad experiences. So just think of, if you've ever, if you bought furniture in the last few, last year or two, just think about that experience. You walk in, somebody greets you, cool, but then they follow you around, They tell you about the financing, they tell you about all these things, and they just won't leave you alone. Even when you tell them that, Hey, I'm just looking. I want to end that stuff. And what I've seen is the way that people sell, even with everything out there that tells you not to. Everybody sells with, Hey, look at us, we're super great and you should buy from us. Here's every feature of our product or service. Isn't this great? And then they wonder why people don't buy from them.
Ethan Young:
:Yep.
Chris Duprey:
:And so I implore business owners and leaders to go watch your sales calls. And if you aren't recording your sales calls, start recording. And then go watch them, because I'm going to tell you, you will be horrified, most of you, at what your sales folks are doing. And it's not their fault. It's yours because you aren't coaching them correctly. Because we aren't teaching them how to ask great questions. We're not teaching them to be the educator. We're not teaching them to actually find what is wrong or what problem the people have, so that we can then find the right solution or educate them the way that they actually need to. We are not buyer-centric in a sales process. We are us-centric and that has to end. And so that is the mission, on top of getting people to do They Ask You Answer. Then the next mission for me at IMPACT is training companies to make buying not suck. It's very close to my heart.
Todd Miller:
:Good stuff, and you know, I love that too, because how often do we see that salespeople get asked a question? And it's one of those what they consider sensitive areas and they just start dancing. They don't just give the answer to it.
Chris Duprey:
:Well, and they don't say things like so, this is in the book and this is this is how you can leverage some content. But the idea of when some and everyone has experienced this. Well, Chris, I like what you guys are saying, but why should I choose you over somebody else? At that moment, most sales reps go right back into their pitch, right? Don't do that. Say something like, Well, listen, if we're this far in and you're still asking this question, maybe we're not the right fit. You should definitely go talk to some other folks. Here is an article that talks about who we consider the best of the best. Guess what happens then? They're like, No, no, We think we're a good fit. Here's all the reasons why we are a good fit. Let's go. But people don't do that.
Todd Miller:
:Yep.
Chris Duprey:
:They go back to, Look at how great I am, look at all the shiny things that I got. All these awards, all these logos. Buyers don't want to get pitched. They want to know they can trust you. They want to know that you understand what's going on in their environment. They want to know that you actually can solve their thing and they don't want to make a mistake. And yet we're like, Look at this pen. It's so beautiful and shiny and it does all the things like, No, man, and that's not the way to do it. And yet there are sales gurus that sit there and go through the same bad stuff that all of us see every day. That drives me insane. So that's my add-on.
Ethan Young:
:That's a great point.
Chris Duprey:
:So that's, if you want to if you want to hear more of my rantings on this and know how to defeat the cycle, that's what I talk about on LinkedIn, is sales stuff.
Ethan Young:
:As we close out here, we do have a tradition on Construction Disruption. We call it rapid fire questions. So these are seven short questions, some are silly, some are serious. Would you be interested in doing rapid fire?
Chris Duprey:
:Of course.
Ethan Young:
:Okay, great, great. I will start with the first one and then we'll kind of alternate, go back and forth between me and Todd. So. Okay, question one, if you could take one person with you in a zombie apocalypse, who would it be?
Chris Duprey:
:The Rock.
Ethan Young:
:Okay, That's a good answer.
Todd Miller:
:Good answer. Question number two, Are you a night owl or a morning person?
Chris Duprey:
:Depends.
Todd Miller:
:Depends. What's it depend on?
Chris Duprey:
:If there is a band playing at night, then I am a night owl. Every other day I am an early bird.
Todd Miller:
:Great answer.
Ethan Young:
:Alrighty. Question three. I guess this kind of works with that. If you were a wrestler, what would your entrance song be?
Chris Duprey:
:You know, because it just jumped into my mind. I got to go with classic Hogan, I'm a Real American. Just because I grew up there, right. And there's too many great songs to pick from. So I'll go with that.
Todd Miller:
:Very good. Hey, what IMPACT do you hope to have on the world?
Chris Duprey:
:I hope that people can. So my hope is that people can just get out of their own way and find their own happiness. That would be the IMPACT that I want to have.
Ethan Young:
:Yeah, it's very admirable. Question five, If you had to delete all but three apps from your phone, which would you keep?
Chris Duprey:
:Spotify, Songster, which is a guitar tabs app, and Google Chrome.
Ethan Young:
:Good picks.
Todd Miller:
:Okay, next to last question, is there a game-changing product you have bought recently, something that just was a disruptor for your life or a real life-changer?
Chris Duprey:
:I'm going to give you two. I'm going to say business-wise, Chorus as a recorder of calls, an AI that gives you detailed notes and all that stuff. So as somebody that watches sales calls and Gong is in the same category, we just happened to buy Chorus. Those types of tools are game-changing for sales leaders and leaders. For me personally, game-changing. I just bought a Fender Precision bass. And the funniest thing is, so I'm a guitar player that has transitioned to a bass guitar player, but also played piano and all this stuff. And the transition to bass guitar unlocked the fretboard for me. And so now, because I'm playing bass in my band, I actually know where all the notes are on the fret board so I can transition the guitar and play more lead that I've never done before. I'm mostly a rhythm and a chords guy. And so to that, that one purchase, wow, has just made me a better musician, which is really cool.
Todd Miller:
:Good stuff. We should have had Seth on the show. He's our resident guitar player and band leader. So anyway, you guys will have to get together sometime.
Chris Duprey:
:Awesome.
Ethan Young:
:All right, last question. What would you like to do when you retire?
Chris Duprey:
:I mean, I think that's a funny word for me because I don't know that I'll ever really do it. But I think I just want to keep writing music, like so I would write I would spend most of my day doing music, but I still think that I'm going to have this itch to help folks grow. And not grow in a dollars and cents perspective. But going back to that whole, be happy, like really help folks get out of their own way. Because when I'm helping you with sales, I'm helping you with marketing. It is sort of in that aspirational goal of just helping people be happier because when things are working, you generally have it right. So I would probably still do all those things. I would likely work less. But I don't see myself retiring and playing golf every day or any crap like that. Like I it's probably just switching out the amount of work I do and like the music-to-work ratio, you know, music more than work.
Ethan Young:
:Got you. Yeah. Alright. Well, I do want to, before we close out, recap our challenge words. So, Todd, if you want to go first, what was your challenge word, and did you get it in?
Todd Miller:
:My challenge word was juxtaposition. And yes, I did work it in.
Ethan Young:
:Yeah, I do remember that, I think so. And then, Chris, what was?
Todd Miller:
:I kept thinking of times I could have worked it in a second time too.
Chris Duprey:
:Sure. Yeah.
Todd Miller:
:I'm not, I'm not much of an overachiever. I just do what I gotta do and then go back to my office and watch Netflix.
Chris Duprey:
:Right, Right. So mine was mathematician. Definitely got that.
Ethan Young:
:I remember hearing that, yeah. Good stuff. And then mine was Yoda, which I kind of had to ask another question there, but I got it in alright. So yeah, that was a fun one.
Todd Miller:
:Good job.
Chris Duprey:
:Chris, thanks for the interview. What's the best way for listeners to get into contact with you to kind of take the next step here?
Chris Duprey:
:Yeah. So best way to find me is to go to LinkedIn, Chris Duprey, and just connect with me there. Follow me, you know, start a conversation. That would be great. If you're interested in knowing how your sales team is doing, you can send a blank email to sales@IMPACTplus.com and it's going to give you a sales assessment. Or you can just come to IMPACTplus.com and check us out. We got some assessments, we got plenty of information to help you understand if They Ask You Answer is right for you.
Ethan Young:
:Alright. Thanks, and thanks to our listeners for tuning into this episode of Construction Disruption with Chris Duprey, Chief Customer Officer of IMPACT. And please keep an eye out for future episodes. We always have a lot of great guests, and if you enjoyed the show, please leave us a review on Apple Podcasts or YouTube. Until next time, stay curious and open to innovation. This is Isaiah Industries with Construction Disruption.
Ethan Young:
:Intro/Outro: This podcast is produced by Isaiah Industries, a manufacturer of specialty metal roofing and other building products.