They Ask, You Answer

They Ask, You Answer (TAYA) is a business philosophy and content strategy framework developed by Marcus Sheridan. Its premise is simple but counterintuitive: if a business obsessively answers every question its buyers are asking — especially the ones competitors avoid — trust follows, and trust converts. The framework, first developed when Sheridan nearly lost his swimming pool company during the 2008 recession, produced a documented turnaround from $4millioninrevenue(2007)spending$250,000 in marketing, to $5.5millioninrevenue(2014)spendingonly$20,000 on marketing.

The philosophical core: businesses should see themselves as teachers, not sellers.

That day marked a new era for our little organization. We now saw ourselves as teachers, and understood that if we just listened well and were willing to answer, things would turn around.

— They Ask, You Answer, Marcus Sheridan

The Foundational Shift: 70% of the Buying Decision Happens Before the Call

TAYA begins with a data point that changes everything:

Today, on average, 70 percent of the buying decision is made before a prospect talks to the company. Yep, 70 percent. In other words, before the sales pro ever enters the fray, 70 percent of the buying decision has already been made by the consumer. And if you’re thinking this is a business-to-consumer study (B2C), you’re wrong. In fact, originally, this was a business-to-business (B2B) study.

If buyers have made 70% of their decision before contacting you, then the question becomes: who is educating them during those 70%? If it is not you, it is your competitor — or worse, a less-than-accurate third party. The company that answers the buyer’s questions first, most completely, and most honestly, earns the trust that closes the deal.

Inbound marketing, as I understood it, was simply the process of attracting (instead of chasing) customers. And content marketing was simply the act of teaching and problem solving to earn buyer trust.

The Big 5: Content Subjects That Move Buyers Most

After extensive testing, Sheridan identified five categories of content that drive the highest traffic, lead generation, and sales conversion — not just for swimming pools, but across every industry studied:

1. Pricing and Costs — Buyers want to know what things cost before investing time in a vendor. The refusal to discuss pricing destroys trust and sends buyers to competitors who will. The remedy is not a price list but honest education about what drives cost up or down.

2. Problems — Address what can go wrong, what limitations exist, what your product is not good for. Businesses avoid this out of fear; buyers hunger for it. The business willing to name its own elephants earns extraordinary trust.

3. Versus and Comparisons — Buyers compare options. Every comparison search query is a buying signal. Companies that produce “Product A vs. Product B” content — including honest comparisons that may favor competitors in specific scenarios — become the trusted guide in the buyer’s journey.

4. Reviews — Buyers read reviews obsessively. Producing “best of” content, honest reviews of your own category, and competitive landscape articles positions you as the industry authority.

5. Best in Class — “Who is the best [X] for [Y]?” is one of the most common buying-stage searches. Being willing to answer it — even when the answer is sometimes “not us” — generates enormous trust and traffic.

There is an interesting difference between how businesses and consumers approach The Big 5. As consumers, we often obsess over these five subjects when considering a purchase. As businesses, we generally ignore or even hide from these questions, hoping they’ll magically go away.

The Ostrich Problem

Sheridan names a common organizational failure the “ostrich” mentality: burying one’s head and pretending that buyer questions will go away if ignored.

Here are the facts about ostrich marketing: In the digital age, the ostrich does not win. The ostrich does not engender trust. The ostrich does not get the phone call, the store visit, or the online purchase.

Three reasons businesses give for not discussing pricing (and the TAYA rebuttals):

• “Every solution is different.” → Teach buyers what drives cost, not what the exact number is.
• “Our competitors will find out.” → Your competitors already know roughly what you charge.
• “We’ll scare customers away.” → You’re only scaring away the wrong-fit prospects, which is actually good.

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

Assignment Selling: Content as a Sales Weapon

One of TAYA’s most operationally powerful concepts is “assignment selling” — using content intentionally within the sales process to educate prospects before and during sales calls.

I define assignment selling as: The process of intentionally using information which you have created via text, video, or audio, that is educational about your products and/or services, with the purpose of resolving the major concerns and questions of prospects so they are dramatically more prepared for a sales appointment.

The data Sheridan presents from River Pools is remarkable: prospects who had read 30+ pages of their website before the first sales appointment closed at an 80% rate. Those who had not read 30+ pages closed at 25%.

We discovered that if someone read 30 or more pages of the website before the initial sales appointment, they would buy from us 80 percent of the time.

This transforms content from a lead-generation tool into a sales tool. The sales rep can assign specific articles and videos to read before the next meeting, changing the dynamic:

Every time someone consumes a piece of your content, the trust factor continues to rise. They are essentially “self-qualifying.” Every piece of content that someone reads or watches becomes the equivalent of another meeting.

The moment the rep becomes the teacher in the buyer’s mind, they earn the authority to make asks:

The reason we have such an approach to selling is because our focus on teaching gives us the right to ask for commitments from prospects. The rights of a teacher are greater than those of the person who does not teach.

Content as Scalable Sales Force

TAYA frames content as a perpetual sales force that operates with advantages no human salesperson possesses:

Content can teach 1,000; 100,000; or even 1,000,000 people at a time. Its scope and reach have no limits. Content never sleeps. It can work for you 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year. Content doesn’t need a commission and never asks for a raise. A single piece of content can continue to work for you long after you’ve forgotten about it.

River Pools’ ultimate result: 95 customers, on average, read 105 pages of their website before buying a swimming pool.

Disarmament: Honesty as Strategy

For comparison-type content especially, Sheridan introduces the concept of “disarmament” — voluntarily stating your bias before making your case. If writing a comparison between fiberglass and concrete pools, and you sell only fiberglass:

First stating that our company sells only fiberglass pools. Immediately admitting that fiberglass isn’t necessarily the best choice for everyone. Stating that concrete pools might, at times, be the better option. Explaining how the article takes an honest look at the pros and cons of each, allowing readers to decide the best choice for themselves.

“This person truly does have my best interests at heart.” That is the essence of disarmament.

The Visual Extension: Video Amplifies TAYA

In The Visual Sale, Sheridan and co-author Tyler Lessard extend TAYA to video. The human brain processes visual information 60,000 times faster than text. Video adds four dimensions text cannot:

1. Educational — faster to process, easier to remember
2. Engaging — holds attention through storytelling
3. Emotional — invokes trust, joy, connection
4. Empathetic — shows the human behind the business

Key TAYA-aligned video types:

• The 80% Video — Answers the 80% of pre-sales questions that repeat across every prospect
• Product/Service Fit Video — Explicitly states who the product is and is NOT for
• Cost and Price Video — Dedicated video on pricing factors and value (not a price list)
• Customer Journey Video — Before/after story: “They’re just like me”
• Bio Videos — Sales rep introduces themselves; builds know-like-trust before the call

Unless we show it, it doesn’t exist. Think about how much of your business is stated but not shown.

Connection to Referral Thinking

The Referral Engine (Jantsch) reinforces the TAYA philosophy from the referral side:

Authentic content that educates or is otherwise seen as valuable to the consumer is the new currency of marketing.

A business that teaches becomes the kind of business worth referring. The teacher is trusted, and trusted businesses generate referral momentum organically.

Organizational Implications

TAYA is not just a content strategy — it is a whole-company philosophy:

• Every employee contributes content — Novak made content production mandatory for all staff
• Sales and marketing must be aligned — Sales uses content; marketing produces what sales needs
• Bad fits are disqualified early — Honest content repels the wrong prospects and attracts ideal fits
• Pricing pages belong on the homepage — TAYA organizations put pricing front and center
• The Content Manager role is essential — Someone must own the editorial calendar and publishing cadence

Well over 90 percent of the time, even though they’ve been taught or shown how to do it, businesses won’t embrace They Ask, You Answer. They’re thinking like business owners, not teachers.

Related Concepts

• Permission Marketing — Godin’s parallel framework: earned attention vs. interrupted attention; both reject the spray-and-pray model
• Predictable Revenue — TAYA generates the inbound “Nets” leads that feed a sales machine’s Market Response Reps
• Customer Success — Post-sale education (video, content, onboarding) is TAYA applied to retention
• Sales Pitch & Positioning — Dunford’s pitch framework and TAYA share the insight that teaching buyers how to buy is more effective than selling them