How to Win Customers in the Age of AI [Endless Customers Podcast Ep. 157]

This transcript has been generated by AI and not checked for accuracy. 

00;00;00;02 - 00;00;15;24

Bob Ruffolo

What the heck is endless customers? And what does that team impact will you guys do over there? Even if you've been listening to this podcast for a while, you might be asking these questions. So we're going to go right back to 101. What is on this customers? What do we do and how do we help businesses just like yours?

00;00;15;25 - 00;00;18;25

Bob Ruffolo

Let's dive in.

00;00;18;28 - 00;00;37;16

Stephanie Baiocchi

You're listening to the Endless Customers podcast, brought to you by the team at impact. Endless customers is the proven system to become the most known and trusted brand in your market. If you want to learn the principles of endless customers and how you can implement them in your business, pick up a copy of Endless Customers, a national bestseller wherever books are sold.

00;00;37;16 - 00;00;59;03

Stephanie Baiocchi

Ready to start implementing endless customers in your business? Talk to impact about how our coaching program can help you implement endless customers to success. And if you want to experience endless customers in person, don't miss our upcoming event! Endless customers lived in Hartford, Connecticut October 5th through the seventh, 2026. Registration is now open. And now on to the show.

00;00;59;05 - 00;01;01;20

Stephanie Baiocchi

Here's your host Bob.

00;01;01;22 - 00;01;25;09

Bob Ruffolo

Welcome to Customers podcast. All right. We have a great episode today because if you're listening to the Endless Customers podcast, you may or may not be fully aware of what endless customers is. And we've done well over 150 episodes. We've talked a lot about a whole bunch of different elements in this customers, but we thought today, why don't we get back down to the basics, not only just the basics of endless customers, but the basics of endless customers?

00;01;25;09 - 00;01;46;15

Bob Ruffolo

Today was endless. Customers mean in an AI first world where we've got cloud code and we got all these crazy things going on. People are rapidly producing content, but how do we still win customers and are the same principles that we've been teaching with? They ask you answer for decades now. Does that still apply? Spoiler yes, it does, but we're going to go over all of that.

00;01;46;15 - 00;02;04;03

Bob Ruffolo

And we have a great guest today. One of the best endless customers coaches in the world on the planet. My very good friend Allison Bellis, who is an executive coach here at impact. And welcome to the podcast you've been on here before. People know who you are. But welcome back to the show.

00;02;04;06 - 00;02;12;06

Allison Belles

Hey, Bob, thanks for having me here. And I'm just giving paw like pre warning here right? I'm bringing the horns today y'all. Let's go let's go.

00;02;12;08 - 00;02;17;01

Bob Ruffolo

Yes. It's not that is not a virtual background that's actually in her house.

00;02;17;03 - 00;02;25;06

Allison Belles

Yep. This is actually in my house. And this is my absolutely terrible wallpaper. So we'll just go ahead and call that out now y'all. So but but here we go.

00;02;25;09 - 00;02;30;19

Bob Ruffolo

Now, Allison, just for context, you've been at impact now for what, about seven years?

00;02;30;22 - 00;02;47;22

Allison Belles

A long time, Bob, which is a cool thing though, because I think in to your point, right, when when you started off here is like that evolution. Like what does it mean now in today's world. And so I've been able to really firsthand see how we've taken the principles of they ask you answer turned them into endless customers.

00;02;47;22 - 00;03;05;11

Allison Belles

But now that we're applying them in the world of 2026, going into 2027, how do companies need to shift and change and be able to see that firsthand with our clients in home services within the B2B space? It's been a really exciting journey.

00;03;05;11 - 00;03;21;27

Bob Ruffolo

And there's no one better to talk about this because you've worked with probably well over 100 companies now and seen as as shifts have happened and how we've implemented those shifts when working with business and learning from different businesses and seeing how things apply. Again, we couldn't have a better guest on today to help go through all this.

00;03;21;27 - 00;03;36;29

Bob Ruffolo

So let's just start from the real, real, real basics for those of the audience that don't, maybe you've heard of this but don't really know what it is. So how would you define endless customers? What is endless customers in your own words?

00;03;37;01 - 00;04;18;01

Allison Belles

Oh my gosh Bob. Wow, what a loaded question there in my own words. And I think in my experience not only working with clients but also being a consumer myself is leaning into transparent, open conversations that start with education first in any type of buyers journey. So Endless Customers truly leans into what do you folks need, want, and should hear any sales process in order to make the best buying decision for themselves.

00;04;18;01 - 00;04;42;22

Allison Belles

And so when companies embrace that transparency and truly lean into trust, that's what leads to consistent leads higher flows rates, even higher ticket prices. That's a big thing that we've seen as well. Right. And so there is a qualitative and quantitative experience that we want customers to have. And that's how we provide it through in the customers.

00;04;42;23 - 00;05;06;03

Bob Ruffolo

You know, there's a lot of things that I think businesses often get wrong when they approach their marketing. And they think, obviously they have to just run ads and just try and capture attention. But I think what most businesses get wrong is they underestimate how much research a buyer is actually willing to do and actually does before ever reaching out to a company.

00;05;06;05 - 00;05;30;13

Bob Ruffolo

And we all, as buyers, go through very long journeys before we ever say, okay, have all these possible companies I could reach out to, I'm going to select these 1 or 2, and I'm going to talk to them. And there's a lot that we do to get there. So talk through what how endless customers and the content you just talked about as educational content applies to these different stages of doing our research before we ever reach out to a company.

00;05;30;15 - 00;05;40;11

Allison Belles

Yeah. Well, do you want me to lean into how is it, how is it changed from like our original philosophy over to, to like to now in the AI age.

00;05;40;16 - 00;05;46;21

Bob Ruffolo

I had both hit both. I mean, for people are hearing this for the first time or people have known us for 15 years. Yeah.

00;05;46;23 - 00;06;09;10

Allison Belles

Now true. And this is actually a beautiful point, Bob, that we talked to a lot of clients about is what we call the curse of knowledge. Right. And so the curse of knowledge is on a scale of 0 to 10, we as experts will lean into that eight, nine, ten range. And so there's times where we can speak over our potential customers heads, because we are so ingrained in our day to day, and we know all the acronyms.

00;06;09;10 - 00;06;31;18

Allison Belles

And I think that's even how salespeople felt for a very long time. Right? As we were almost like gatekeepers, we wanted to feel like we wanted to feel smart, we wanted to feel valuable. And the way that we did that was holding our cards against our chest until clients came to us, right? Like we needed them to get super up close with us before we were willing to share all of that information.

00;06;31;20 - 00;06;52;18

Allison Belles

And so in the world of they ask, you answer, it was, hey, throw that out the window, start to answer questions, start to provide the education that folks need in order to make their purchasing decision, whether it's with us or not. It was really kind of like throwing aside that we have to be the best. We have to close every single deal, even if it's not the right fit.

00;06;52;18 - 00;07;17;14

Allison Belles

It really leans into, hey, we want to show up as a trusted voice, as an educator, as a coach, helping somebody make some of the biggest decisions that they could be making for themselves or their business. And so leaning into that, you know, that educational piece and using it in our process is we have to slow all the way down to the very beginning of that research process.

00;07;17;16 - 00;07;42;28

Allison Belles

What not only are the questions, but what are the pain points that they're feeling? Yeah, right. Because sometimes you don't even know what what what the solution to search for is you're just searching your problems. You're searching the issues. You're asking those initial questions like, why can I hear that my AC unit is running, but there's not cold air coming through, right?

00;07;43;00 - 00;08;15;05

Allison Belles

That is the very beginning of a buyer's journey to potentially replacing their hack unit. Yes. And so if we if we lived in the world of okay, all we're going to do is just talk about ourselves and our products and our services. We're not capturing those folks who are entering the journey from the very beginning. Yeah. And so that's where it's like when we say leading with education, you got to go all the way to the beginning to answer the most basic, the most common questions that people have in order to capture their attention.

00;08;15;07 - 00;08;38;04

Allison Belles

Show them that you know what you're talking about. That's then where you map out. Okay, well, then what's the next question? What's the next problem? What's the next thing that they're going through. Right. And then that's how you leave them down this journey to where they finally reach out to us. Then we're not only creating content that's continuing to answer those questions, but we're creating content that helps us in our sales process.

00;08;38;05 - 00;08;38;29

Bob Ruffolo

That's right.

00;08;39;04 - 00;08;58;26

Allison Belles

Right. I tell folks all the time, don't just create content that is going to help them, but also was going to help you as a salesperson. Yeah. What would be something that you feel like if your potential client or customer knew before they showed up at your appointment, how would that not only help them, but help you as a sales person?

00;08;58;26 - 00;09;24;22

Allison Belles

Yeah, right. And so this is where that journey of content, journey of answering questions, leaning into trust is so incredibly valuable for companies. And I know I'm getting a little long winded here, Bob, but the reason I wanted to make a difference, right? The difference between what we were doing before is, you know, even two years ago when when people were researching and they were leaning into Google Will still King, right?

00;09;24;23 - 00;09;49;29

Allison Belles

YouTube was number two. People were willing and more able to get to your website first. Yes, right. Search results were web pages. They were all different types of web pages, whether those were articles, whether those were service pages, whether those were pricing pages. And so landing in your search engine results pages was the number one way to get folks to come to your website.

00;09;49;29 - 00;10;16;09

Allison Belles

So you needed to answer all those questions. So you did that. Now this shift is still creating that content that is transparent, that's open, that is answering all of these questions. But it's built to land in AI overviews, right? I don't care what you call it, whether it's generally vision, whether it's AI overview. Right. But the goal is to now provide these AI agents robots, right.

00;10;16;10 - 00;10;26;23

Allison Belles

Whatever it is that you want to call them. Now, we have to provide them with the education so that they can serve the right information to the right folks at the right time.

00;10;27;00 - 00;10;51;18

Bob Ruffolo

Now, this is this is all great. And you had mentioned they ask you answer at the beginning of this. And that might be a new term for some people watching. They ask you answer was the previous name of endless customers. And it's the philosophy that Marcus Sheridan came up with, which is your buyers have lots of questions. When you simply answer the questions honestly and transparently online, they will be surfaced.

00;10;51;18 - 00;11;12;03

Bob Ruffolo

When the buyers do their research, you're going to capture their attention before anyone else and they're going to get to know you. They're going to learn from you. You're going to control the conversation. They're going to start trusting you and preferring you just by simply answering their questions, asking and transparently. And just that alone was the greatest SEO tactic of all time.

00;11;12;03 - 00;11;38;19

Bob Ruffolo

And that book never even had the term SEO in it. And it is the greatest EO tactic that still exists, because how did these AI platforms learn how to answer questions? By surfacing any education you could find on the internet, and it learns from that. And that's what it basically repeats back when people are asking questions. And it could be your website, could be your perspectives, it could be the way you would answer it.

00;11;38;19 - 00;11;55;10

Bob Ruffolo

And that's that's how you start winning the digital marketing game for the next 3 to 5 years, when everyone is now shifting to AI platforms. So that same hats that worked, you know, 15 years ago is still the right tactic to to do today and beyond.

00;11;55;12 - 00;12;17;20

Allison Belles

Yeah. And this is I joke around with clients all the time, and you've probably heard me say this on the podcast before, but we create education and we create information for two entities, the humans and the robots. Yes. Okay. Ultimately what it is. And guess what? These two entities lean into this same exact thing. Trust.

00;12;17;21 - 00;12;18;25

Bob Ruffolo

Yes.

00;12;18;27 - 00;12;46;13

Allison Belles

Humans want to trust the content. They want to trust the results that they're being given. They want to trust that those answers are correct. And guess what, y'all? The AI agents are the exact same way. They are pulling those results from trusted sources. That's what they're trying to do. They're not just pulling any and everything. They are really trying to be that person alongside you, that that entity alongside you that is helping you get the best information.

00;12;46;18 - 00;13;04;18

Allison Belles

Right. Because they know when they're providing these resources. We as the consumer using that tool, whether it's a ChatGPT or a clod, are relying on the answer and relying on the tools itself to give us what we need. Right. And so it's going to try to do its darndest to give us the absolute best.

00;13;04;19 - 00;13;30;03

Bob Ruffolo

Yeah, I'm loving with this conversation is going, you know, one of the things I've been saying to recently, endless customers, is such a great solution for businesses that are trying to get more customers and get more visibility and all that. But, you know, one of the things I'm really realizing with the shift in AI right now is great businesses are going to be the ones that we're in the future because they're going to be the ones that have the experience.

00;13;30;03 - 00;13;48;22

Bob Ruffolo

They're going to have data, they're going to have things that they could put in their content that makes that content validated. And now you're going to teach them, you know, that's what Ali does. She she talks about how do you get this all the stuff out of your head into a format of great content that will make customers fall in love with you and make AI want to recommend you?

00;13;48;23 - 00;14;11;04

Bob Ruffolo

That's where Ali and her team specializes in. But you still have to have a great business. So this is I don't want to overshadow that because as we start talking about AI visibility and who's going to be recommending Ali was right before. What used to happen was you go to Google, you type in something and you see a whole bunch of blue links, and what you do is you go in and out of blue links, and when you found something you liked, you stayed.

00;14;11;04 - 00;14;29;23

Bob Ruffolo

If you didn't hit the back button, you went to the next page. That's where everybody got website traffic from. Let's all go in away. Now you're going to to AI and you're skipping all your research. I mean, the research is still happening, but as the buyer, you're skipping it. You're just going to AI and say, who is the best roofer near me?

00;14;29;29 - 00;14;50;10

Bob Ruffolo

And all the stuff that we just talked about your brand, your reputation, your educational content, your insights, your videos, that's all the stuff that is required that's making AI say, based on all my research, I think you should reach out to this one company and you're not. That company is being recommended. That's not a good place to be.

00;14;50;12 - 00;15;02;26

Allison Belles

Yeah. Well, and Bob, you mentioned it like what our team does. And I think this is the most important part that that people might, may have like a misconception about is we don't just tell people to write content.

00;15;02;27 - 00;15;03;11

Bob Ruffolo

Yes.

00;15;03;14 - 00;15;09;23

Allison Belles

Okay. Let's be super clear on that. This is not just a go right? Blog articles and your problems will be solved.

00;15;09;24 - 00;15;16;28

Bob Ruffolo

No, those is Rover. That was 2015 and some companies got away with that in the last 3 to 5 years. That's done. That's over.

00;15;16;29 - 00;15;37;28

Allison Belles

No it's long gone. And so what we help people understand and do is how do you build that trusted source for your company as a whole? Meaning what does that look like from your NAF directories? What does that look like from your YouTube channel? Are you, you know, do you have a better Business Bureau rating? Are you accredited?

00;15;37;29 - 00;15;58;12

Allison Belles

We take all of these what we're calling trust signals, right. That AI needs and humans. Right. AI is not just pulling these things out of thin air, thinking like, oh, this is what people want to search for, right? It's truly based on what they have learned and seen that people need to hear, can know before making a decision.

00;15;58;19 - 00;16;20;25

Allison Belles

And so we take this holistic approach to how does your company show up as that trusted source for the humans and the robots you work on your company brand, your company educational stance as a whole? Yeah, right. That's where, you know, I think people get hung up on this whole like, well, you just tell us to write articles and we're just answering questions.

00;16;20;25 - 00;16;50;16

Allison Belles

You're doing it in so many different ways, right? How are you showing up on socials? How are you showing up in your local communities? Guess what, guys? Press releases and community involvement is coming back. Yeah, okay. Because that's a trust signal to AI. They see man. They're like they're involved. They are actually in this geographic location. Right. Like there used to be the days where you could create a Google a Google business profile and not actually have a physical location.

00;16;50;20 - 00;17;19;17

Allison Belles

No, no, no more. That's we're cracking down on that kind of stuff, y'all. AI now has the ability to put out thousands and thousands of feelers into the world to truly help people make the best decision for themselves, and we either have to get on that bandwagon or don't. And that's okay if you choose not to. Right. But exactly what you said, Bob, is, is there's like a future proofing to this, right?

00;17;19;18 - 00;17;36;29

Allison Belles

Just like the folks that were writing content in 2016, 2017 are still somewhat winning that game. The folks that embrace the the way that consumers are utilizing AI tools in order to help them make buying decisions is completely different. And we've got to get on board.

00;17;37;05 - 00;17;59;27

Bob Ruffolo

You know, and Ali, you just said something that that really landed with me. You know, we're entering a world we're already in the world where creating blog articles is not that hard. Any company within an hour could put 15 blog articles on their website. Yeah, and that is not what's going to work in the future. It's not working right now.

00;17;59;29 - 00;18;17;19

Bob Ruffolo

AI is going to recommend or is is going to appreciate. And what buyers are going to appreciate. Is marketing done really well, education done really well. At ten out of ten there's technical things that go with it. It might be interlinking, creating a learning experience that you're building, that AI is not going to just do on its own.

00;18;17;19 - 00;18;44;26

Bob Ruffolo

But the videos, that's probably one of the things that we teach and we preach a lot, is consistently putting out videos where people get to see your your people, your customers, your projects, your work, your process, everything and say can really trust it and believe it. So let's talk about that a little bit and just how you're working with teams to go beyond just publishing articles, what are some of the things you're working with them and things that you've seen are working right now that goes beyond that?

00;18;44;27 - 00;18;51;04

Bob Ruffolo

That again, you mentioned it's not just telling the publish articles, it's creating a great experience.

00;18;51;07 - 00;19;15;15

Allison Belles

Yeah. So a lot of things that we talk about when we mentioned, like let's just go with like local home services or local businesses. But this works very well with B2B as well. Yeah. But you do you know, you've you're working on your Google My Business page, getting reviews, getting open honest reviews. Right. Having those on Yelp like that is a what's the right word I'm looking for here.

00;19;15;20 - 00;19;48;27

Allison Belles

Like brand management is a big piece of this. Right. And ensuring that not only are we going out and seeking the good reviews and seeking people that are willing to help us get to that 4.9 star rating on Google, but we're also taking the negative reviews. Yeah, we're taking those as opportunities to say, well, one is there is there an issue with our product or our process or our people that we need to address, and then how do we solve that and then turn that into a a way that we show how our brand responds?

00;19;48;27 - 00;20;11;04

Allison Belles

People, when we talk about authenticity and trust, right? People make mistakes. Businesses make mistakes. It's how you stand up after that mistake that makes a difference. And people will trust an organization that's willing to say, hey, we made this mistake, we have this issue. But here's exactly what we did to not only fix it, but future proof it in the future.

00;20;11;05 - 00;20;34;24

Allison Belles

Exactly right. Right. So like, we talk a lot about like, the brand management and reviews and like I said, like map directories. We talk about socials, we teach people not well, we do maybe a little bit of some viral videos in here. Right. We can't have promise viral videos. But there's trends, right, that people can lean into because, you know, I my dad's been in business for a very long time, and he and I work very closely together, even still now.

00;20;34;24 - 00;20;49;05

Allison Belles

But he taught me that it doesn't matter if you show up at McDonald's or you show up at a fortune 500 or a fortune 50 company, you are still working with people. Yeah, and people buy from people.

00;20;49;08 - 00;20;51;02

Bob Ruffolo

So how do you like and trust?

00;20;51;08 - 00;21;14;23

Allison Belles

They know, like and trust. And so how do you build that? That being known, liking and being trust is you are out there. You are promoting yourself and your education, your expertise, your thought leadership, research, market research that you've done research within your own organization that you've seen, and then you're sharing that with the world freely.

00;21;14;24 - 00;21;16;03

Bob Ruffolo

Yeah, right.

00;21;16;04 - 00;21;41;22

Allison Belles

The days of gated content and gated guides are gone too, right? So how do we help people build this when we say like a content strategy or a trust strategy, we we do teach them that the reviews, the socials, how you get your your team faces out there. We teach them how to build websites that are easy to navigate, that people can find the information that they're looking for incredibly easily.

00;21;41;22 - 00;22;00;06

Allison Belles

Right. They're looking. And when we talk about the things they're looking for, we're not just talking about you're about us page or where you're located or your phone number, although those are great things to have. But how much does it cost to work with you? What are the different services that you have? How do you compare to other services or service providers?

00;22;00;06 - 00;22;22;21

Allison Belles

What are the differences maybe between two similar services that you provide? Right. So being able to create a hub once again your website built for the humans and the robots, how do they find that information easily. And then how do they know that it's trustworthy. And it's because you removed as much bias as possible. Okay. And another piece about bias.

00;22;22;21 - 00;22;41;17

Allison Belles

Do not confuse being biased with showing what you've earned. If you've got awards, if there are accolades, are there. If you've got phenomenal reviews, showcase those on your website. Show it right. Show the people that have won awards inside your organization.

00;22;41;20 - 00;22;46;01

Bob Ruffolo

So in Boise, Idaho, five years in a row, put it on your homepage, right?

00;22;46;02 - 00;22;48;14

Allison Belles

Oh, wait. Yeah, kids aren't doing this anymore, Bob. They're doing this.

00;22;48;15 - 00;22;49;27

I think.

00;22;50;00 - 00;22;52;14

Bob Ruffolo

Right on trend.

00;22;52;16 - 00;23;13;25

Allison Belles

Okay, well, that far right. But but these are the pieces, right? It's like, think about yourself. I think long gone are those days of being a business owner or being a salesperson in particular, and thinking to yourself, all I have to do is just say and do the things that I want them to do and really flip that point of how do I want to purchase?

00;23;13;25 - 00;23;34;03

Allison Belles

How do I want to be treated in a buying experience? Yeah, right. And that's how we start to lean in with transparency. Openness, right. We we talked about websites, but even like in videos like how do we also show up that way and like our tone and our facial features. Like people get to see you and hear you in this.

00;23;34;09 - 00;24;04;05

Allison Belles

And then one final thing to talking about salespeople is we don't just lean into what we call like the proactive side, which is typically marketing, right? The reactive side of when folks come in, that is where you can lean into education in your sales process. That's where you show up more human. You're using tools like Quick Page and Loom and Vid jarred, and they get to see you and hear you, and you get to educate them before they even show up for their sales appointment.

00;24;04;10 - 00;24;12;16

Allison Belles

You're giving them some of that information that they need ahead of time, not just on the buying decision, but knowing that you're the right person to help them.

00;24;12;17 - 00;24;30;21

Bob Ruffolo

So we have about maybe ten minutes left of this episode. I want to make sure we get to a few really key things. I want to talk about the system. Now that is endless customers. And I want to talk about how you work with clients. So you mentioned a whole bunch of parts of the system. So let's put this whole thing together, endless customers.

00;24;30;21 - 00;25;00;27

Bob Ruffolo

What it does is it helps you strengthen five key areas of your sales and marketing, helps you strengthen your content, which we talked a lot about. It's going to help you strengthen your website. It's going to help you strengthen your sales activities. Like Ali was just talking about. There's a technology component which obviously optimizing for AI, but how you get all your customer data organized because you can't really take advantage of AI unless you have great customer data and information as well organized, and probably most importantly than anything, it creates a culture of performance inside your business.

00;25;00;27 - 00;25;20;00

Bob Ruffolo

And that's by getting everybody in the same page, on the same strategy go in the same direction, working well together. And that's the endless customer system. And the system is built up of a handful of frameworks. So we got the big five, and we're not going to go deep into the big five. But Ali at a high level the big five does what.

00;25;20;02 - 00;25;38;23

Allison Belles

Oh, I mean, it answers the most common question, the five most common topics that people are researching in their buying decisions. That's right. That's a key point. Right. So we developed the big five based on conversion data, not just based on most common questions. That leads to traffic, right? When we talk about cost okay. That's a huge one.

00;25;38;25 - 00;26;08;24

Allison Belles

Yes. When we're talking about comparisons. Right. Almost everybody is comparing different products. And they're also can comparing businesses. Right. Best dubs. Right. We know that those are incredibly important reviews. And then you're going to kill me Bob, if we're not remembering the fifth one but you're going to problems. There we go. I said it before. Right. The problems that they're having or the problems with your product and service, because that's the biggest piece that people forget, is that most people aren't looking for the things that are going to go right.

00;26;08;24 - 00;26;10;17

Allison Belles

They're almost always looking for the things that are going to go.

00;26;10;17 - 00;26;18;11

Bob Ruffolo

Wrong 100%, like fiberglass pools. Are they going to just pop out of the ground? Right. Address that. If you sell fiberglass pools, just lean into it, right?

00;26;18;18 - 00;26;37;16

Allison Belles

Yeah. I mean, we were talking about HVAC units before, right? But like the problems that you can potentially have. And then let's get even more specific. Right. And this is what we coach and train clients on is don't just write the problems of HVAC systems. I want to know the problems of a specific brand in a specific region.

00;26;37;16 - 00;26;38;13

Bob Ruffolo

That's right.

00;26;38;15 - 00;26;44;27

Allison Belles

Right. Your geographic region. I need to know what's the best HVAC unit for me here in Florida?

00;26;44;28 - 00;26;47;11

Bob Ruffolo

Yeah, right here in Connecticut.

00;26;47;17 - 00;26;55;06

Allison Belles

Totally different. Right? We're fighting humidity. We're fighting rain. We're fighting alligators. Like all of these things. We got to keep into consideration.

00;26;55;07 - 00;26;57;17

Bob Ruffolo

I've seen an alligator once, by the way.

00;26;57;19 - 00;26;59;06

Allison Belles

Hey, like I said, I brought the horns.

00;26;59;06 - 00;27;00;13

Too, right?

00;27;00;15 - 00;27;11;17

Allison Belles

But, like, these are the types of things when we talk about, like, the big five is how do you do it the right way based on your company and the type of audience that you're reaching out to.

00;27;11;19 - 00;27;26;07

Bob Ruffolo

And the one thing about the big five two is that these are not only the five topics that buyers care about most, it's also the five topics that all businesses avoid actually writing on their website. But it's the things that buyers care about most. It's this weird thing that buyers want to know we don't want to talk about.

00;27;26;07 - 00;27;27;28

Bob Ruffolo

It makes no sense. So that's a big fight.

00;27;28;03 - 00;27;28;20

Allison Belles

That goes.

00;27;28;22 - 00;27;43;02

Allison Belles

Yeah, but that goes back to like the gatekeeping piece, right? Bob is like we wanted them to like have to reach out to us. And I think if anybody remembers, you know, at a recent event to somebody mentioned they were like, but but if I write about it, then what about my what if my competitors write about it?

00;27;43;03 - 00;27;48;01

Allison Belles

Okay. Well, what would you rather do? Would you rather be ahead of your competitors or would you rather be trailing behind?

00;27;48;02 - 00;28;09;27

Bob Ruffolo

And I think one of the most important things that if you're going to win in this digital environment, you got to see what your competitors are saying and then you have to address it. And maybe you do things differently. They do and they would do. And chances are, you do and help the buyer make the best decision for them by saying, well, you know, if this is important to you, then maybe you don't want this and maybe you want this instead.

00;28;09;28 - 00;28;29;00

Bob Ruffolo

So yeah, that's the big five. A couple of other frameworks I just want to hit really quick because a really important to the system. We talked about sales activities, assignment selling. Now that is a very powerful tactic that when we start implementing this where we actually get the quickest wins when we work with clients. So high level assignment selling it.

00;28;29;00 - 00;28;34;25

Bob Ruffolo

You teach this at our conference. So go ahead and give a quick two minute rundown. West I'm selling this.

00;28;34;28 - 00;29;08;08

Allison Belles

All right. So the best way to describe assignment selling is how are you setting yourself and your potential customers or clients up for success at every stage of your sales process? Meaning, what are the things that you need to either get ahead of or educate people on before whatever appointment that is or whatever stage that is? And then you use assignments which can be, at this point, anything that you have found to work really, really well.

00;29;08;11 - 00;29;27;01

Allison Belles

If it is it it a guide, is it a blog article? Is it a YouTube video? I recently had a client that put together a series of shorts, short form videos that they sent to clients ahead of time because instead of making them watch a really long 15 minute video, they saw that most people were watching the first minute and 30s.

00;29;27;01 - 00;29;43;19

Allison Belles

So then how do we turn that into quick wins with a quick series of shorts? So assignment selling is providing the education and the information in different formats to your potential customer at the different stages of your sales process.

00;29;43;20 - 00;30;06;23

Bob Ruffolo

Yeah. And Simon, selling helps speed up the sales process and increases close rates because buyers are more educated. They understand going to these calls and because they're more educated than you're having faster calls and their stats, a show, you know, just the maybe sometimes the number of appointments go down because people don't do the assignments, but the close rates and the overall winds go dramatically up.

00;30;06;26 - 00;30;07;14

Allison Belles

Yeah. And so.

00;30;07;14 - 00;30;30;03

Allison Belles

You're still building revenue. I think that's another misnomer to a lot of times that people think like I just need more leads, right. More leads does not always equal more revenue. Now sometimes more leads can actually lead to less revenue and more issues within your internal teams because they're having to process so many bad fit people that they're getting burnt out.

00;30;30;03 - 00;30;32;21

Allison Belles

They're not spending enough time with the qualified people.

00;30;32;21 - 00;30;33;01

Allison Belles

That's right.

00;30;33;01 - 00;30;54;22

Allison Belles

So it's another important part of assignment selling is that you are almost like setting the stakes, right? You're setting the table for exactly what needs to happen in your sales process. And this also works incredibly well when we say assignment selling. And maybe you're going to get there, Bob. But I also know we're on time crunch to right is we talk about 1 to 1 videos right I mentioned quick page and vineyards and looms earlier.

00;30;54;22 - 00;31;01;14

Allison Belles

I have a client in the home services space that when they started to implement 1 to 1 videos alongside their assignment selling.

00;31;01;15 - 00;31;01;23

Allison Belles

Yeah.

00;31;01;27 - 00;31;24;25

Allison Belles

Meaning they sent a video that said hey Bob Ali here from X, Y, Z HVAC company. We're coming out later today. I'm really looking forward to our appointment. But hey, I'm sending you over an article that's going to walk you through the most common issues that we see with X, Y, Z. Spend three minutes reading that article. It's going to save us about 10 to 15 minutes during our appointment.

00;31;24;25 - 00;31;29;01

Allison Belles

It's going to help you be a little bit more educated before I get there. I look forward to seeing you later today.

00;31;29;01 - 00;31;29;13

Allison Belles

Bob.

00;31;29;14 - 00;31;30;08

Bob Ruffolo

Love that.

00;31;30;10 - 00;31;30;29

Allison Belles

Love that.

00;31;30;29 - 00;31;55;24

Allison Belles

That client that implemented that one has almost a I think it's like a 95% open rate to that video. And in reading the article, that sales person that is leading that initiative has one of the highest close rates at the organization above 60%. Okay. Not only does he have a higher close rate, but he has the highest average ticket than any of his other sales.

00;31;55;24 - 00;31;57;08

Allison Belles

Folks because.

00;31;57;09 - 00;31;58;18

Bob Ruffolo

What they're buying.

00;31;58;21 - 00;32;00;12

Allison Belles

Knows what they're buying, but they've already showed up.

00;32;00;12 - 00;32;19;25

Allison Belles

With trust. Yes. Right. Like you're going to buy from somebody that you've already seen. You've got to hear them. You've got to know them. They're walking up to your door and like, oh, it's Ali. I know her already, right? But you've already started to build this trust that when they sit there and they give you these options and they look you in the eye and they say, hey, I know it's a little bit more money, but it's going to be the better option for you.

00;32;19;25 - 00;32;21;19

Allison Belles

That's the person that they're going to go with.

00;32;21;20 - 00;32;22;06

00;32;22;12 - 00;32;41;11

Bob Ruffolo

You know there's other frameworks here. We're not gonna go through all of them. But we have obviously the selling seven, which are the videos that help drive more sales. We've got self-service, specifically self-service tools, because we know most people want to go as deep without talking to a human until they're good enough, ready to talk to humans. So we've created we have a series of tools we help companies implement.

00;32;41;12 - 00;33;08;24

Bob Ruffolo

So, Ali, talk about your job here. You've been doing this job now for seven years. You could you look very excited, but it's a big smile on your face. I think you love what you do. And I know it's challenging at times because you're helping people get through some very, very tough times in their business, but fulfilling because you help them accomplish something so beautiful and talk about what exactly you do.

00;33;08;24 - 00;33;14;29

Bob Ruffolo

And when you start with clients, what you work through with them, how you work with your team and where do you get them to?

00;33;15;01 - 00;33;19;24

Allison Belles

Yeah, I mean, you saw that big smile on my face because I really do love what I do.

00;33;19;26 - 00;33;20;21

And we love you.

00;33;20;21 - 00;33;22;00

Bob Ruffolo

Doing what you do.

00;33;22;02 - 00;33;22;19

Oh, well.

00;33;22;21 - 00;33;51;02

Allison Belles

Thank you. The biggest piece for me is, you know, teaching people how to do this. So there's a lot of work that we do internally, right? Like we're not going to just say like, oh, here you go. Go and do it by yourself, right? We're coaching and training and teaching your teams how to become like us, how to be on the cutting edge, how to implement endless customers best practices at the absolute highest level so that you get all of those results that we talk about.

00;33;51;06 - 00;34;10;05

Allison Belles

And so that's it for me, is I really love being able to come in and work with an organization that is willing to learn and grow. Yeah. That is that is a huge thing when you are a business owner or an organization and you say to yourself, one, we're either struggling and we need to fix it, like, hey, we're doing really well and we want to continue to get even better.

00;34;10;06 - 00;34;30;21

Allison Belles

Yeah, right. The system works in in any and every business. And so what we do, and the reason I like it so much is that we get to come in, we get to evaluate where the organization is at, help them to be transparent, help them to be a trusted voice, help them to really lean into their community and be themselves and bring out that expertise.

00;34;30;26 - 00;34;31;02

I mean.

00;34;31;02 - 00;34;43;06

Allison Belles

That's a big, big, big piece of this is that you most companies have this already internally. They're just not sharing it in the way that they should. So when we first come in with the client, right, we always start with an alignment that is helping your whole team.

00;34;43;06 - 00;34;44;05

Make sure that.

00;34;44;06 - 00;35;01;11

Bob Ruffolo

Before we go into alignment here really quick, you know, one thing that's come up since I've been doing the podcast here, I've heard from different, different customers that we worked with. It's like what this is doing, what we're doing with these clients is that we're starting to help them separate from the competitors, right. They're starting to gain market share.

00;35;01;11 - 00;35;17;19

Bob Ruffolo

They're starting to get more AI visibility, more awareness than in comparison. We're helping them separate that. And then the term I've heard a few people say, and then they're starting to put a moat around that, which I think is really cool because one, because this is a journey. This is not something like, oh, here's a tactic we turn on and we forget about.

00;35;17;20 - 00;35;44;04

Bob Ruffolo

Right? It's you're constantly to your point, learning, improving and getting better and strengthening, strengthening, strengthening strengthening your strength. Those five components. And then you start building this moat that people can't penetrate because you've already are the leader in AI visibility. And you just keep getting better and better and better and better. And that's where I think you and your team do such an amazing job, because you're always pushing the clients that to not.

00;35;44;06 - 00;36;04;29

Bob Ruffolo

We talk about the pride cycle not get complacent but like remember like you're here now, but you should be here and you got to protect yourself. So you got to continue to invest and do new things, try new things. YouTube, short form video. Just keep going. And that's, you know, you make sure no one gets comfortable, which I think is a beautiful thing too.

00;36;05;02 - 00;36;26;19

Allison Belles

Yeah. Well I think it's like the biggest things when you're implementing a framework like this is that you not only have to learn it, but then how do you continue to optimize and improve and and truly and protect it? And exactly with the moat. Right is we talked about it before, you know, when when people leaned into content marketing and we had all those memes that were like, content is king and all of that, right?

00;36;26;20 - 00;36;32;21

Allison Belles

The folks that did that are still winning, most of them, if they're doing it well because they've adapted and evolved.

00;36;32;23 - 00;36;32;27

That's.

00;36;32;27 - 00;36;52;15

Allison Belles

Right in the way that content and marketing has needed to based just on everything that's been thrown our way. But, you know, coming in as a coach and not only teaching people how to do it, but help hold them accountable, they'll give them the metrics that they need to be measuring to be able to, to see, okay, when do we need to steer left?

00;36;52;15 - 00;37;15;04

Allison Belles

When do we need to steer right? And then like like I said, leaning into their team members and helping them grow and shine as an organization. But it is it's it's pushing. Right. Because this is this is also change management. And so it's easy to do the easy things. It's easy to do the low hanging fruit. But just like you said before with the big five, it's typically the topics that people aren't writing about.

00;37;15;05 - 00;37;40;24

Allison Belles

Right? Well guess what? You need a coach that's going to teach you how to do the the right things and and be alongside you. Yeah, right. Like that's a piece of it. And so our team not only helps you hire train stabilize but then optimize right. Your endless customer journey internally. But we are walking alongside you right. We're not leaving you alone like we are pushing.

00;37;40;24 - 00;38;01;07

Allison Belles

We are driving you. We are holding not only you accountable to doing the right things, but we're also holding you accountable to learn and grow on your own. Yeah, right. So when folks are asking me and they create, we don't want to dependency. I don't want people always relying on me constantly. Am I always a good voice of reason and an outside party and always there for them, right.

00;38;01;07 - 00;38;08;25

Allison Belles

Whether that's like once a month or once a quarter, but in those moments where it's like, hey, what should we do? Sometimes I'll push back.

00;38;08;26 - 00;38;11;04

What? You're the coach. What? The player.

00;38;11;07 - 00;38;30;09

Allison Belles

Exactly right. Like what? What should we do at least? Like, what have you learned? What have you researched? Like, what are you seeing? Like what data have you leaned into? Because the goal is to help to create those types of like that muscle memory for, for our clients. And so that's yeah, making them better. And so we do that with content managers.

00;38;30;09 - 00;38;54;01

Allison Belles

We do that with videographers. I work with, you know, hundreds of salespeople, executives that that come in and have that growth mindset, but also know that the world is changing. How we reach people is changing. They want to get on that that boat sooner than later, but they want to do it the right way. Right? There still are black hat tactics that you can do.

00;38;54;06 - 00;39;02;20

Allison Belles

There's still the wrong way to go about it. So how do they do it the right way? And how do they build those long lasting relationships that brings credibility to their business as well?

00;39;02;24 - 00;39;19;14

Bob Ruffolo

You know, it's also interesting because as we're talking about this, there's different phases that we work with when we're with clients, when they're first getting started. And this is all new to them. And then when they've gone through this journey, we've worked with them for a while. Things change. And you got under arching all that is AI, and you can go to AI and ask questions, what?

00;39;19;14 - 00;39;39;25

Bob Ruffolo

What should I be doing to improve my business, my marketing strategy? Get more visibility, get more customers? It'll give you a whole bunch of ideas. I think, where our coaching is very special mixed with that, because I think AI plus our coaching is like 100 x, right? The two of them together go beautiful because we help you make sense of what AI tells you, what you should do.

00;39;39;28 - 00;39;57;15

Bob Ruffolo

AI might help you prioritize it, but we come with experience of like, okay, this is what we actually seen work. When we when companies have implemented this, we hold you accountable to doing the things that you need to be doing, even when it's uncomfortable. We get your team there because knowing what to do is one thing. Actually making sure you have somebody getting you there is another thing.

00;39;57;15 - 00;40;19;09

Bob Ruffolo

And then on the other end of the journey, well, a lot of that is still happening. Accountability and the pushing, the pushing, pushing. You got to be better. You got to be better. You got to be better. Keep going, keep going. It's the fact that you work with so many different businesses and the world is changing. We're seeing, hey, we just saw this one company over here do this thing, built this tool with AI, and it's going gangbusters.

00;40;19;10 - 00;40;31;13

Bob Ruffolo

And we think this will work for you too. So BML share all that. And that's why some clients you've had have stayed with you for 4 or 5 years or longer, because that's the other part of what you're bringing to the conversation.

00;40;31;15 - 00;40;36;21

Allison Belles

Yeah I mean it's it's seeing what works. And even if it's not the same industry. Right. Is there.

00;40;36;22 - 00;40;37;13

There are the best.

00;40;37;13 - 00;40;50;03

Allison Belles

Right. Like, exactly. I love that because it helps us think outside of the box. It gives us tactics that are even can be even cutting edge in, in that new industry. So like, oh, we don't do that. That's not like what our industry does. Okay. Well then why not.

00;40;50;03 - 00;40;50;11

Yeah.

00;40;50;12 - 00;40;55;02

Allison Belles

Why not be the one that does it gets the results and changes your industry for the better.

00;40;55;03 - 00;40;55;17

Yeah.

00;40;55;18 - 00;41;12;15

Allison Belles

Right. So like these are the types of things with coaching in particular is you know, and there are stats out there all over the place on the different types of success routes that you can go when you have a coach versus when you don't. And it's not to say that you're not successful, right? You can you can definitely.

00;41;12;15 - 00;41;37;15

Allison Belles

But if we're talking about fast tracking, if we're talking about the like the quality of work that you're able to produce, like why not have an expert walk alongside you and make sure that you're doing it right and building long lasting relationships to like, we've had some businesses go through some really hard times, and we've gotten through it together, and we've come out on the other side with better processes, better people.

00;41;37;18 - 00;41;56;24

Allison Belles

But even my companies are doing really well, right? The goal here as a coach is to also be transparent and open and to to move the needle forward together. And that's why I also smiled, you know, before is I absolutely adore my clients, I love them, I tell them I'm like, hey, I'm sitting on your leadership team with you.

00;41;56;24 - 00;42;09;20

Allison Belles

I'm sitting on your board with you. I'm here to help make sure that you're making the best decisions every step of the way. And that's where we've seen some really incredible results with some really incredible companies.

00;42;09;26 - 00;42;28;02

Bob Ruffolo

You know, and we're going to talk about Lima Day here. We're going to wrap up shortly, but talk about what we're doing from an audit and recommendation standpoint. Now to so anyone's listening to this and they're saying, hey, listen, I really like what Ali's saying. I would like either Allison or somebody like Allison to evaluate what we're doing and help us shape up our plan.

00;42;28;02 - 00;42;39;06

Bob Ruffolo

I went to AI, told me I should be doing all this stuff. Cool. But like, somebody should help me make sure I'm doing this right way. How can they work with you and at least get started with something right now?

00;42;39;08 - 00;42;54;28

Allison Belles

Yeah, well, I said it before, right is we have all that come in that are in a slump and need to be pulled out of it. And then we have companies that are just looking to pour more fuel on the fire. The first thing that people should do is, is have like run through our diagnostic. Let us run an audit for you.

00;42;54;28 - 00;43;15;02

Allison Belles

Yeah, right. We want to be able to give you the playbook of here are the areas that you're doing well. Here are the areas that you need to have improvements. Right. And guess what. Spoiler alert the reason that we also run through these types of assessments is because this is what people want in your business, okay. So we're we're playing the playbook here y'all.

00;43;15;03 - 00;43;33;21

Allison Belles

But what you need is like start off like we'll run through your sales process. Right. Like I actually called a client the other day on their business line and had a whole conversation with their CSR and they had no clue. Right. But it gave me the insight going into their audit, going into their sales process of like, hey, here are the things that we're even getting from the beginning.

00;43;33;21 - 00;44;01;04

Allison Belles

So what you need is you need that, I think not just the audit in itself, but also like, how do you then turn this into the digestible chunks? What do you prioritize? When do you do it? Who is the right person in your organization to execute on this and even to optimize it long term? So so that audit is so important to gauge where you're at and what exactly you need in order to be successful.

00;44;01;05 - 00;44;18;18

Bob Ruffolo

That's great. That's awesome. And then, you know, after the audit, I know a lot of what you guys will do is you'll say, okay, well, what we have to do over these next few months and it's, you know, not everyone's ready to jump all in doing less customers. Some people are, but not everybody is. But there's a lot of things we can do to start fixing things, right?

00;44;18;19 - 00;44;34;03

Bob Ruffolo

If it's a website thing or if it's a HubSpot data thing, or, hey, let's get some content up and going. There's a lot we can do there. And then you start mentioning about Alignment Day when it's time to kick off the whole thing. Talk about why Alignment Day is so important.

00;44;34;05 - 00;44;34;13

Man.

00;44;34;14 - 00;44;59;09

Allison Belles

I love Alignment Day so much because when you get a group of like minded, excited, passionate people together to learn something new and to drive an initiative forward, there's just magic in the room. And so what we do in Alignment Day is we bring your whole organization together, as many people as humanly possible, into one room to learn not only about endless customers, but how does it apply to the organization and what role do they play?

00;44;59;11 - 00;45;00;07

Yeah, right.

00;45;00;08 - 00;45;20;02

Allison Belles

So even if I'm talking to installers that are out in the field, right, they're helping us create short form video. Oh yeah, they're helping right there. The subject matter experts, they're helping us create content. They're helping the the whole organization lean into that trust and transparency. Right. So the alignment day gets everybody together. It educates them on endless customers.

00;45;20;04 - 00;45;29;08

Allison Belles

It gets alignment. It gets them excited. It gets them on board of being a part of this initiative. And then we get to go and have some marching orders afterwards.

00;45;29;14 - 00;45;45;29

Bob Ruffolo

And it's you know, the coaches go in and it's instead of you being the bad guy and saying, I need you, installer, to be doing this, I need you doing that. It's Ali knows and her team has a beautiful way of getting everyone to say, oh, we should be doing that. I should be in these videos, we should be writing about that.

00;45;45;29 - 00;46;04;19

Bob Ruffolo

And then all of a sudden everyone leaves Aurora ready to go. And the person there be like, if I had written this meeting, everyone would just rejected me. Well, you bring that outside voice and it's amazing how everyone gets in the same page real fast. And then that is when you really kick off endless customers. Then everything else is you get a really great personal lead in your content efforts, and you get everyone in the same page.

00;46;04;20 - 00;46;08;22

Bob Ruffolo

Everything, everything there really just falls into place after that with great coaching.

00;46;08;25 - 00;46;29;11

Allison Belles

Yeah, it's really amazing too. And it also it goes back to, like I said, when we like play, our playbook is I get to show up as a subject matter expert in my field in the exact same way that I want them to show up as a subject matter expert in the in their field. Right. They're excited to work with me because I'm at I'm that outsider that's coming in just like they show up as the outsider in the same.

00;46;29;11 - 00;46;30;17

Way now.

00;46;30;19 - 00;46;31;05

Allison Belles

So I.

00;46;31;05 - 00;46;31;18

Love that.

00;46;31;19 - 00;46;49;10

Bob Ruffolo

I know you don't have unlimited time. You can handle a handful of audits yourself. You'll fill up fast. But we have another great team. You know, you can pass it around to to Vin, Brian, Mandy, you go around the whole the whole crew. Right? We have John. We have such a great group of coaches. But that is really the first step.

00;46;49;10 - 00;47;11;26

Bob Ruffolo

So if anyone wants to learn more about how endless customers might work for them, or if they're saying, hey, listen, I'm having challenge getting customers right now and something's broken, how do I fix this? Reach out to us, go to our website, click on talk to us impact. Go to talk to us and thought that form and you'll get connected with Ali or a member of our team.

00;47;11;26 - 00;47;23;05

Bob Ruffolo

And we'd be happy to help you. So Ali, what do we miss today? Is there anything else that we need to mention that we haven't hit yet? We talked about AI. We talked about the frameworks, the systems, the coaching, what? An episode is jam packed.

00;47;23;07 - 00;47;32;04

Allison Belles

It's a lot. I think the biggest thing that is really important, whether you work with us or not, is lean into the uncomfortable.

00;47;32;06 - 00;47;32;14

Yeah.

00;47;32;16 - 00;47;46;26

Allison Belles

Like that is the best thing that any business owner can do is if you're sitting here and you're thinking like, but I don't know, like, that seems like a lot, or I don't want to hire somebody to do this. Like, there's going to be so many things that tell you that it's not comfortable. Just lean into the uncomfortable.

00;47;47;00 - 00;48;05;24

Allison Belles

Try being transparent. Try doing things differently. Lean into education like it is one of the most freeing things. When you let go of that gatekeeping and you just openly start to share that information with your customers, I think you'll see a huge difference in the type of relationships that you build in your communities.

00;48;05;26 - 00;48;21;02

Bob Ruffolo

Excellent. Well, that's unknown that this has been a great episode. Ali, thank you so much for coming on. And this has been another episode at the end of this podcast. Great episode. If you didn't know what Endless Customers was, now you do. And until next time, we will see you at the next episode.

00;48;21;04 - 00;48;22;09

Stephanie Baiocchi

If you liked this episode.

00;48;22;09 - 00;48;27;10

Stephanie Baiocchi

Please take a minute to leave us a review. Thanks for checking out the Endless Customers podcast.