I’m just a construction worker, but when I had a plan and we were working together, we could build a skyscraper. Now you’re Master Builders, just imagine what could happen if you did that. You could save the universe.

—Emmet Brickowoski, The Lego Movie

Back in 2010 I discovered something surprising. It turns out that it’s possible for an average person to save a struggling business and inspire a major culture change throughout an organization. This book is about how.

How is that possible if you’re not the CEO? How do you do it if you work remotely, like more than 1,000 miles away from headquarters? What if you are the youngest person on the management team? And a woman just returning from maternity leave? Do you have to mandate it or is it possible to inspire that sort of change?

How does an average person cut budgets, bring in more sales, shorten the buying cycle, increase profits, get other people to market for you, improve employee engagement, and dramatically grow the business with a simple four-word strategy? Impossible, you say. Or is it?

What if I told you that it is very possible because that’s exactly what happened.

Let me share with you a little bit about my journey.

The truth is I couldn’t have accomplished any of those things without the help of the ideas, stories, and strategies shared throughout this book with Marcus Sheridan as my guide. Here’s how it began. . . .

It started with an urgent problem. Sales were down. Way down. So much so that the company was shrinking. Budgets were dramatically cut, product lines were being abandoned, and team members who were dear friends were let go. It was devastating.

On top of that, the industry as we knew it was changing and buyers were increasingly more difficult to reach. E-mails weren’t getting through. Trade shows had half the number of attendees. Mailers weren’t bringing in any calls. And don’t even get me started on fax blasting (can you even believe there was an era when that worked?). To top it all off, somehow even the smallest of our competitors were showing up higher in online search rankings.

Where had all the buyers gone? How were we going to grow with all this stacked against us?

And who was I to think that I could do anything about it?

At that time, I was the marketing manager at Block Imaging, a B2B that buys, sells, and refurbishes used medical imaging equipment; everything from MRI and CT scanners to digital X-ray equipment. Pretty unique niche, right?

It bothered me that we were a worldwide business and yet only 5 percent of our sales were attributed to online inquiries. This became the single statistic that I set out to change immediately.

This focus led me to discover a concept commonly referred to as “inbound” or “content” marketing. I was quickly convinced that this was the answer to our most urgent problem. So we signed up for the software and it was going to be a game changer. Marketing automation and blogging were going to change everything, right?

I was wrong.

We needed more than just software. We needed information worth sharing. And we needed a lot of it.

So I set out to connect with people in other departments to collect information worth posting and sharing. How hard could that be?

As enthusiastic as everyone was, here’s the gist of how most of those conversations went: “Krista, this all sounds very exciting and I cannot wait to see what you do with it. Because I’m in sales, I’m going to go back to selling now. Good luck with your marketing thingy.”

New hurdle. Buy-in.

I spent the next six months trying to get buy-in and participation. I gave presentations, offered workshops, invited senior sales leaders to attend social selling conferences with me, unveiled scary statistics as often as I could. Even after all of that effort, the best traction I could get was about two blog posts a month. And I was sad. Sad because I knew the information we were posting was more brand-centric than customer-centric. Sad because it was taking so much effort to produce sub-par content. Sad because we were running out of time to do this half-assed.

So that’s when I made the call. It was the call that would change everything.

I needed reinforcements and knew just the person for the challenge.

Marcus Sheridan had been on this exact same journey of saving a struggling small business with inbound marketing. Even better, he had figured out the most simple and compelling strategy imaginable that resulted in millions of dollars in sales: They Ask, You Answer. His story and examples were just what the Block Imaging team needed to hear. And they needed to hear it from him directly.

It was one of the most important phone calls in my life.

“Marcus, you don’t know me or my company yet but you’re my guy. I need you to come help me convince the entire Block Imaging team that going all in with inbound is urgent, important, and that with their participation, it is going to be the very best thing that ever happened to our business.”

As a result, we began co-designing a two-day workshop to teach, inspire, and jump-start a new culture of inbound companywide. Everyone from sales, engineering, leadership, human resources, administration, project management, and general counsel and the entire accounting team were there.

Did it work?

Without a doubt. What I had just spent the entire previous year trying to rally people around, Marcus accomplished companywide in less than six hours.

He simplified the complex.

Everyone understood.

Everyone bought in.

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.

We left that two-day event with 700 blog ideas and inspired content generators in every department. More important, we had a unified team with a clear plan for writing a better future, both for the organization and for ourselves. Sharing information and empowering buyers became embedded in our culture.

As a result, we have gone from 5 percent of sales attributed to Web leads to 40 percent of sales from Web leads. In those first two years alone, we could directly tie more than $9 million in sales to inbound website leads.

It feels like we’ve been given a second chance at life.

We are able to serve more people in our industry than ever before with less stress. We have more time and energy for our families and friends. We have fun instead of fear and frustration. We have hope instead of helplessness. We are proactive instead of reactive. We have a mission instead of a position.

This is why we are so excited that Marcus is now sharing his wisdom in this book so that others like me may be inspired and equipped to lead this same type of transformation in their own organizations. Because it is time.

It is time to disrupt the status quo and lead change. It is time to grow an organization that you can be proud of and that buyers trust. It is time to inspire growth in meaningful ways while protecting time and space for the ones you love most. It won’t be easy, but with this book you will surely push through the challenges faster and I guarantee it will be worth it.

—Krista Kotrla, CMO, Block Imaging