Marcus Sheridan's Big 5 from They Ask, You Answer describes the five categories buyers consistently search for and companies systematically avoid: pricing, problems, comparisons, reviews, and best-in-class options. Every question you refuse to answer, a competitor answers. The buyers who leave at 11pm don't come back.
11pm. Someone types "how much does [service] cost" into Google. They're not browsing. They have a budget meeting in the morning and they need a number, or at least a range, before they walk in.
Our website said: "Pricing varies depending on your requirements. Get in touch."
They left. They found a competitor who'd published a transparent pricing page with a clear explanation of what drives the cost up or down. They went into their budget meeting with that competitor's framing in their head. By the time they called us, they already had a preferred option. Our call was a box-tick.
I didn't know any of this until I read They Ask, You Answer by Marcus Sheridan. By the end of the first chapter I was doing a very uncomfortable audit of our own website.
What buyers search for and companies refuse to say
Sheridan built the Big 5 from years of tracking what buyers actually search for online before making a purchase decision. The list is consistent across industries. Buyers search for these five things, in some form, for almost every significant B2B purchase.
Pricing and cost. Problems with the product or service. Comparisons with competitors. Reviews from real customers. And best-in-class options, meaning "what's the best [type of solution] for someone in my situation."
Then he tracked what companies publish. The mismatch is stark. These are precisely the five categories that most companies refuse to address. They won't publish pricing because it might put people off. They won't discuss problems because it might create doubt. They won't compare themselves to competitors because it might send traffic elsewhere. They curate their reviews rather than letting buyers read unfiltered feedback. They won't say who their product is wrong for because they're afraid of giving away a sale.
Every question you refuse to answer, a competitor answers. The buyer doesn't stop looking. They just look somewhere else.
The logic behind each refusal makes sense inside the building. It falls apart the moment you consider what happens outside it.
Pricing: the question every buyer already has
The argument against publishing pricing is usually that it's too complex, or that it depends on too many variables, or that a number without context will scare people away. All of those concerns are addressable on the page itself. The complexity is an explanation, not a reason to say nothing.
Pricing varies depending on your requirements. Contact us for a bespoke quote.
Our projects typically start from X. Here's what drives the cost up, what drives it down, and what a standard engagement looks like. Still want to talk? Here's how.
The buyer who leaves because your starting price is too high for them was never going to convert anyway. The buyer who stays because you've explained the value alongside the cost is now better qualified than any cold lead. They've already done the work of deciding you might be right for them.
Publishing a pricing framework doesn't mean publishing a fixed price list. It means giving your buyer enough context to know whether a conversation with you is worth their time. Most businesses are terrified of this. Most buyers find the absence of it exhausting.
Problems: the counterintuitive trust builder
Writing honestly about what can go wrong with your product or service, or what your product is wrong for, is one of the highest-credibility moves a company can make. Sheridan calls the avoidance of difficult questions "Ostrich Marketing." Head in the sand, hoping buyers won't find the hard questions anywhere.
They find them. Every buyer searches for "[product] problems" or "[service] complaints" or "[company] negative reviews." If you haven't written that content yourself, they're reading someone else's version of it. Usually someone with an axe to grind.
Ignore the criticism and hope buyers only read your own marketing
Write the honest version yourself. Address the real limitations, explain the context, and let buyers make a well-informed decision.
When you write honestly about the limitations of your own product, something shifts. Buyers who aren't right for you self-select out earlier. Buyers who are right for you arrive at the conversation already trusting you, because you told them something a company trying to manipulate them would never say.
Comparisons: the traffic you're sending away anyway
Buyers compare. That's not a behaviour you can prevent. The question is whether they do their comparing on your site or on someone else's.
A well-written "us vs. competitor" page, or a "which type of solution is right for your situation" guide, captures buyers who are actively in the evaluation stage. These are high-intent visitors. They've moved past awareness. They want specifics. If your site doesn't provide specifics, they leave and find a site that does.
Buyers in the comparison stage are the highest-intent visitors you'll ever have. If your site doesn't help them compare, they go somewhere that does.
The objection is always: what if we recommend the competitor? Sheridan's answer is direct. If a competitor is better suited to a buyer's situation, acknowledging that doesn't lose a sale. You didn't have that sale. What it does do is build trust with every buyer who reads that you were honest enough to say it, and that trust compounds across everything else on your site.
The audit that changed how we write
After reading Sheridan, I went through our site with the Big 5 as a checklist. Pricing: deflected. Problems: unmentioned. Comparisons: absent. Reviews: a curated selection of three glowing quotes. Best-in-class guidance: entirely missing.
We'd built a site that answered every question we were comfortable answering and none of the ones buyers actually had.
The rewrite took months. The pricing page alone required four rounds of internal debate. But the quality of inbound conversations changed almost immediately. Buyers arrived having already done the evaluation. First calls became substantive discussions rather than information-gathering exercises. Our close rate on qualified leads went up, because leads were better qualified before they ever arrived.
The 11pm buyer is still searching. The question is whether they find your answer or someone else's.
