Bob Moesta-Demand-Side Selling

Welcome to the Selling from the Heart podcast, your home for authentic, effective and socially integrated sales strategies to help you master the art of selling. Join your co hosts, Larry Levine and Darrell Amey, along with some of the world's best sales thought leaders and practitioners as we explore ways to help you grow your sal.

Hello and welcome back to the Selling from the Heart podcast. Your co host, Darrell Amy, here today with Larry Levine. What's going on, Larry?

We're in the middle of all kinds of things. I mean, where do we even start?

Darrell it's an incredibly exciting time. Happy holidays to everybody. And this is, you know, I know for so many of us. First of all, I know everyone's working hard to close this year out and I just say keep at it. We're almost ready to turn the page on this calendar. And one of the reasons I'm most excited about turning the page on the new Calendar is the 2021 Authentic Selling Challenge is coming your way in January. And I am so excited about the roster of people that are going to be involved in this. Larry, it is just pure dynamite.

We will tease it up this way. If you've been an avid listener of the Selling from the Heart podcast, then these names are going to be awful familiar. And it's just, it's so humbling that the community has risen together. Our podcast guests have come together and everyone's waving their flag that the really the key to all this is authenticity. As we roll into 2021, being your.

Genuine, real self, it's going to be fantastic. And if you want to check it out, it is going to be 10 days of pure inspiration, innovation, motivation, all the shuns. It is going to be fantastic. The roster is incredible. You have probably seen it dripping out on social media. If you want to get involved, go to our website. We'll put it in the show notes as well. Sellingfromtheheart.net challenge or just text the word heart to 21,000 and we'll make sure there's a link on that page as well. And you want to get registered. It's free, it is fantastic and it is going to be full of just great stuff. It's going to run from, let's see, it's 12 to 1 every day Eastern, right, Larry? So all the details are on the site. And if you can't come live, I know you can't be there every day, but you can get the video every day. And so it's going to be phenomenal. I'm really excited about the 2021 authentication selling challenge. We are just grateful as we, as we're in this holiday season. I just. Larry, along with you, I want to say a huge thank you to everybody in the Selling from the Heart community. In particular this year, the Selling from the Heart Insiders group has been a bright light in the middle of a challenging season. A group of authentic sales professionals that have gotten together and said we want to help each other excel. And just a huge shout out to our insiders today.

Now, I concur in, you know, 20, 20, 20 has been, to say the.

Least, it's kind of been challenging. It's actually been massively eventful for the Selling from the Heart community. I'm grateful, I'm honored. It was, you know, we all have choices. The choice that Darrell and I made was to double down on selling from the heart. And in doing so, we've created such a heartfelt, genuine community. We're thankful. I'm thankful, Darrell. I know you are. It's just been through all the troublesome times of 2020. What's been the shining lights been the selling from the Heart insiders group. The message is resonating and it's spreading. It's humbling. And I personally thank everybody.

Yeah, absolutely. If you want to dive into that, you can actually come join us for free for 30 days@sellingfromtheheart.net and yeah, this has just been, you know what, this has been a challenging year, but in some ways this has been a very memorable year with the relationships that have formed. And this has certainly been a year where we've needed to be innovative. I think Word of the year is, I don't know what it's going to be from the Oxford or Merriam Webster dictionary, but I bet one of the candidates for Word of the year is going to be Pivot. And today's guest, Larry, is right at the heart of innovation. And we're going to get a lot out of this conversation today. So I'm really looking forward to it. Why don't you introduce Bob and let's dive in.

Sure.

We're leading right into it.

When we say innovation, you all figure this out really quick. My very first discussion with Bob, I just really didn't want to get off the zoom call because it was just, just, it was full of what, 30 minutes of fast filled education. I go, we got to take this to the Selling from the Heart podcast. I can't wait to dive into the books that he's written. He's most noted for writing his latest book. It's demand side Sales which is about how to really stop selling and helping your customers make progress. So without further ado, we're in for a treat. Darrell. Bob Mesta. Welcome to Selling from the Heart.

Hey, guys, thanks for having me on. Excited to be here.

It's going to be so much fun today. Bob, you know the question that every guest to the Selling from the Heart podcast answers? That is, Bob, what does it mean to you to sell from the heart?

Selling from the Heart is, at its core to me, about basically you being comfortable about helping people make progress and that you're actually somebody to help navigate. So most people think about selling a product or a service, but I think of sales and Selling from the Heart as how do we actually help people? And our products and services either fit into people's lives or they don't. And so part of this is to actually really focus on helping people make progress in their lives. And so that's one of the core reasons why I wrote this book, is that when I learned sales, it felt so icky, and I felt like I had to push my product to everybody all the time. And the moment that I kind of flipped the lens from how do I sell to how do I help people buy? It literally changed the way in which I kind of approached it. And to be honest, it gave me energy as opposed to sucked energy from me. So Selling from the Heart means it's about actually helping people.

It's so good, Bob, because this is the. Hey, Darrell, this is the first time we've heard the word help. A lot of times we use it. But what I really appreciate what Bob just said is helping people make progress.

Progress.

I think that's good. But from the perspective of, as you said, that, you know, progress is a lot of times it's uncomfortable. Right. Progress requires change. Progress requires new ways of thinking, new ways of doing things. And as sales professionals, we're actually leading people through a lot of discomfort sometimes.

Yeah. But I think that's at the very core of it. So the way I talk about is the struggling moment is the seed for all innovation. And the fact is, customers actually have to have struggling moments to buy something new. And so the reality is, like, if you're not leading them through a struggling moment, then my belief is they're not going to buy anyways, because we are creatures of habit, and we want to keep doing what we've always done. And so it gets back to, what are the struggles? What progress are they trying to make? What do they want to stop from happening, and what do they want to Start happening. And so it's not about your features and benefits, but it's about the context and the outcomes that they want from your product.

That's really good. You know, as we get started today, Bob, one of the things I think would be really helpful is to give. Give our listeners some context, because you are a unique bird in the selling world. I don't know that. In my 27 years of sales, I've had the opportunity to talk to a sales guru who is Frank Deming and Clayton Christensen. You've had quite a journey here to get to this place.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I guess I never thought in a million years that an engineer, mechanical, chemical, and electrical and somebody who likes to build products would want to write a book on sales. Yet I did. And so it's one of those things where. And there's some really good reasons for it. Primarily one is, why are there no sales professors? How do you go to business school and not learn sales? Right. I've literally had to sell my ideas. I've built seven startups, built them, and sold them. I've worked on over 3,500 different product launches. I've worked on things, just everything from the guidance system to the Patriot Missile to Pokemon Mac and Cheese, to Base Camp. Across the board, I've worked on so many things, and one of my first sales jobs, I realized just how icky I felt when I had to sell. It just felt like I had to sell everybody. And the reality is, when I flipped the lens and we used what we call the jobs to be done theory to kind of understand what job are people hiring your product to do? People don't buy products. They hire them to make progress in their life. And the moment that I could see the world through that lens, I all of a sudden realized, like, I'm just a helper. And the other part of writing this book was that there's a lot of people who sell who don't even know they sell. A teacher actually sells a letter to a student.

Yes.

They have to help the student make progress. And though teachers would say, I'm just delivering the knowledge, it's like, no, you have to help motivate them. You have to actually help them frame the context. You have to help them understand what they can do with this knowledge when they have it. A nurse or a doctor basically has to sell a diagnosis and a rehab program to a patient. These are part of the problems is I think that, like, most universities are pushing content, most doctors are pushing things. Like, we need to actually help people make progress and have them pull these things into the lives. So how do we actually understand pull? And the more we can understand pull, then we can actually make it. It makes it 10 times easier to sell.

So here's what. So here's what's. Boy. Hey, Darrel. I know you. Hey. Just so all our listeners know, I think this conversation is going to go geek really fast, but before I'm alright.

With it or goes geek.

Right. Hey, by the way, Bob, right. If we pulled my dad on this call. My dad was a retired rocket scientist.

Oh, that's awesome.

You guys can just.

Where was he? Was he a jpl?

Yeah, he was a jpl. But nevertheless.

Yeah, so I worked on the. I worked on the space shuttle main engine. I worked on the rocket boosters. Like that. There's some. Just some.

Of course you did. Of course you did.

But no, in all seriousness, on all seriousness, though, you know, I think in order to invite people in, it gets back to asking really great questions. And what really intrigued me, and maybe we can expand upon this, Darrell, because I think this is a great time is I think inviting people into conversations. It's all about the art behind the questions. And Bob, you talk about the whys all the time. I think this would be a great time to peel this back before Darrell and Bob geek a little bit.

Yeah. So let me, let me start with this as questions, you know, like, so there's so much about. So I think Clay said it best. Questions create spaces in the brain for solutions to fall into. Like, this is at the very core of who I am and what I'm about. And the way Clay has framed it is like nobody's going to buy anything unless they've asked themselves a question. And so we talk about how do you create the space in the brain for your solution to fall into? How do we help them create the space in their brain? Like, I, I can't sell them anything. They actually have to convince themselves. And so part of this is questions is the way you do that and it's empathetic questions. And it's. So Clay was 6 foot 9. He was a very massive. He's the kind of guy when you went to. Clay Christensen is one of my mentors that I worked with. And you go to shake his hand and you know how your hand disappears and you're like, holy crap. Like, that's a large man. And he was the most humblest of all giants. Just humble. He would basically say, like, I really don't understand. Let me ask you a few questions. So anytime anybody would pose a question, he would be always back to, like, hold on a second. Of all the questions you could ask, why would you ask that one first? Like, to get priority, right? It's like, that's the first version of why that question. And you're like, oh, my God, that's just a great question. And I've learned over the years that. And to be honest, I studied both criminal and intelligence interrogation because I realize it's not just what people say, it's how people say it. It's what people don't say. It's what they say but don't do. Like, how do you actually piece all of that together? And so it's the listening skills. It's not only the questioning skills, but what I wanna say is it's the listening and the observatory skills that help you actually understand the context that your customer or prospect is in. Context creates value, right? And so it. Like, my product or my service in one context is worth way more than in a different context. And so I want to actually know what are the contexts where my product or service can actually create the most value for people, and how do I perceive it and how do I help people understand it? So to me, questions are about creating the space in the brain for solutions to fall into.

Hey, that's tweetable, Darrell.

I mean, that's a really powerful, powerful, powerful concept. Because nothing happens in sales until there's. Until there's that space opens up for someone to conceive a solution.

So think of me. I'm an engineer, and I've been told my whole life to build it, and they will come. Just make the product and they will come. And to be honest, I built my first time, you know, my first couple times of building product, like, oh, my God, is the greatest thing in the world. And I was like, yeah, I don't need that. You're like, wait a second, what do you mean? And they'll say, well, what do you want? Oh, I want this and I want that. And you make it like, yeah, well, that's not what it meant. And you literally go back. Like, as an engineer, you just keep going back, going, like, they don't know what they want. They don't know what they. They don't even know what I could make. And you start to realize, like, yeah, but they don't know the product, but they know the outcomes they want. So when I went to Japan with Deming and Taguchi, one of the things they would talk about is this notion of, how do you identify the technology agnostic requirements from the customer. And I looked at them and I did my tilted head of like a cocker span and you go like, what in the world did you just say? And what they were saying is like, I want you to understand the customer so well that you understand both the context and the outcome they want that have no technology required, no technology limitations in it. And so how do I actually understand where people want to go and why they want to go there and be able to get past whether they want it to be this way or that way. Like my thing is once I can frame the job that people hire products to do, I can actually come up with a thousand ways to solve that problem technologically. And so how not to actually limit yourself from what the customer says, but more what the customer means.

So is this the jobs to be done theory? Yeah, so explain the jobs to be done theory because this is fascinating.

So this is where again, being dyslexic marketers would give me all this information about a Persona and who they were and what they were about. And we'd know everything about the target audience. And somehow the target audience was always built on the product that we made, wasn't actually based on kind of like the situation people were in. And so I started to realize that people don't really hire or buy products, they hire them to make progress in their life. Right. And so when I look at it that way, because it starts to realize like I understand the function of something, how do I understand the function that the customer is using this for? And so it's more or less taking that engineering view and throwing it at the customer and saying like, what in the world are you trying to get done and why are you trying to get it done now and what are the important things that you're trying? What are the trade offs you're willing to make and what are the things you're willing to do and not do? And you start to realize, like I can look at the customer as a system and understand the forces that are applying to it and understand the trade offs they make. And when I do that, I end up with a specification of, to be honest, technology agnostic requirements of what they're trying to get done. And once I have that now, I can actually put a whole bunch of different solutions in there that literally can actually do the job. And you start to realize I don't end up over engineering the product, I don't put too many things in it. A friend of mine I work with, his name's Jason Free. Jason talks about it is like you're better off with a kick ass half than a half asshole, right? And so it's this notion of how do you actually figure out the small things you're supposed to deliver on.

I think from a sales perspective this is, you're articulating things that I have expressed felt for decades. But the eloquence with which you articulate them is fantastic. And that is, you know, I mean, I'm a firm believer that buyers don't buy products, they buy outcomes. Tip of the hat to good Theodore Levitt, father of modern marketing. But this is true from an engineering standpoint, but it's true as a sales professional as well. We get enamored with our product, we get enamored with our features and we go in, but we have not created, we don't understand the job that the product is interviewing for.

So that's the second part about good questions. I want to go back to Larry's, I want to circle all the way back to. His point is like questions and how do we ask good questions? Humility. Humility to know we don't know. So one of the greatest gifts I've got is what I would call is dyslexia. Because what it did is it forced me to realize like I really don't know the answers and that I always started a D and the only way I get better is by iterating. So every time everybody would have to write maybe one or two drafts, I might have to do 50, right? And I never expected that I actually understood anything. I always started with a D and got better. A lot of people just can't. They actually do more research in this way to prove their hypotheses. Where I would say like, look, I have no idea why people do that. Let me just go talk to them. And the reality is like, I would have be like Taguchi would always say, you got to have an empty mind and let it be filled up by their knowledge. And so the whole notion is I'd be like, I have no idea what caused you to buy a new mattress today. I have no idea. And the reality is like at some point, once you do enough of them, you start to see patterns in it. And so the aspect here is most people know that to buy a mattress is actually really difficult. You don't buy it often. They use all this unfamiliar language, you don't know what you're really trying to think. And they actually, you walk into a room with 50 mattresses and they want you to lay on one and say, like, okay, which one do you want? Holy crap. How do you make progress there? Right? And so these are the kinds of things where you have to. If you understand the context of am I actually buying a mattress to fill a room that's empty? Am I buying a mattress because I'm redoing the bedroom, or am I buying a mattress because I can't sleep? Three different contexts.

Yeah. There was something that I want our listeners to really key in on, something that Bob said. And I think it's so critical. Now I'm throwing my. Now I'm throwing my sales nerd hat on Darrell.

That's all right.

But it was all around empty knowledge. Imagine how great salespeople would become, how better they'd become. Excuse me. If they walked into situations with empty knowledge and asked better questions, what could they learn? Think about that for a second.

Right? I think that's the thing. The other part to me is as a sales. As a salesperson, as somebody trying to help somebody make progress, I have to know whether I can actually help them or not. So they actually have to earn the right to. For my time and energy and effort. So this is the other part, is if everybody's a prospect and I got to just convince everybody to buy my product, dude, I am. There's not enough energy in the day to do that, like, shoot me. But when I start to say, like, how do I find people who need my help? What are the conditions by which I can help them the most, where they can value me the most? And then literally, I'm not saying no to people who can't. But it might not be the right time. They're not in the right context for them to value me. And so part of this is that the two big frameworks we talk about is the forces of progress. What are the things pushing you and pulling you and hindering you and the anxieties you have. And then there's the timeline, and it's the set of forces. It's the set of things emotionally, socially, and functionally that cause you. There's dominoes that have to fall in people's lives. To say, today's the day, I'm going to buy a new mattress. Nobody does it randomly. Everything is caused. And the moment we start to think of sales as random is the moment we become, I'll say, consigned to the process, and the process is not the goal.

I want to go back to what you were talking about earlier, about a core attribute of an authentic sales professional, which is humility and even Tying that into what Larry was saying. I think as sales professionals, we're anything but humble much of the time, and we walk into situations with anything but a blank sheet of paper. We already think, oh, we know exactly what they need. We understand. Yet, Larry, it reminds me of the times when, with my marketing hat on, I've done case studies and success stories. I'll ask the sales rep why the prospect of our client bought. Sales rep tells you one thing. Interview the client. They tell me something totally different. And then it makes me think of the folks in the cohort that we're working with this week that are out asking their clients, why did you buy from our company? And that simple, curious, humble question yields answers that you're like, I didn't know that.

But it goes back to the grandfather of modern management, Peter Drucker. The company is rarely selling what the customer wants to buy.

Yes.

And so this is again, one of those mantras like, I know what I would want. So my next book working on is called Learning to Build. And it's the five skills that these people have taught me around it. And one of them is called empathetic Perspective. And the reality is, like, how do I actually see it from their eyes? Because to be honest, I'm humble enough to know. Like, I really don't know. And let's be clear, I've done tens of thousands of interviews. I've worked on thousands of products. I've like. And somebody go like, well, you know, do you know what's going to happen with this thing? I'm like, nope, but let me talk to five people. And I can tell you what's going to happen because you can see the underlying causality. So the thing about Clay Christensen and kind of his underlying mantra was all about cause and effect. And that a lot of times, for example, people will say, oh, I need to. I really trusted these people. Right? And so some people will say, is trust an input to the sales process? Or is trusted output of the sales process? And if it's an output of the process, one of the things I have to do to cause trust. And you start to realize you have to actually dig really deep to understand. Like, somebody who's only met somebody four times trusts, they trust them more than somebody they've known for 20 years. Like, how is that possible? I can tell you the exact prescription of what it takes to do that in telecom, right? Because it's these things that you have to do. And to be honest, how do you go study those people who are really successful salespeople and understand what caused them to actually get that sale. Because at some point don't worry about what the salesperson says, worry about what the buyer said or the customer said because that's actually they know how to read the customer to know the progress they're trying to make.

Amazing.

We can't describe it. So my thing is it's the phenomenon and being able to understand what people can do from that perspective. Sorry about that.

No worries. This is incredible and I am really looking forward to diving into Demand Side Sales 101.

I can't wait for you. My thing is you're going to call me at some point, go like, all right, I need an hour. We need to talk about this. I want to get on the Clay.

Christensen bandwagon with our.

Yeah, well, it's just one of those things where the fact is like this is the thing I'm finding is that because I'm not necessarily from the industry, right. And I dug into why do we have no sales professors. I dug into why. How do we get to the non consumption of people who are selling that don't want to learn how to sell. I've dug into it. It's like you said, it's not anything new. I don't believe that it's new. I just think it's a different set of language that is describing things that all of you intuitively know but have not heard before. Like my favorite is, I think one of my very first podcasts. Somebody said like, so like what are you going to bring to the oldest profession? This is the oldest profession and like there can't be anything new at it. And I literally go like, well I'm just trying to talk about the progress that customers are trying to make. And they're like holy crap, that's new. And I'm like, it's not. It's just that we've become so wrapped up on product that we can't we forget that this is a two sided world?

That's right.

And it all starts struggling moments cause demand. And there can be people who struggle for a very long time who literally don't have supply. So economics tells us that supply and demand are connected, but my belief is real growth comes from non consumption people who want to make progress but can't. And so how many people are out there struggling to make progress but they can't even find you? Right. This is where Paul LeBlanc took SNHU from 500 online students to 200,000 online students in 10 years because of how many people want to go back to school, but can't figure that out.

Yeah. Amazing. I am so excited, Bob, about this. And I'm really grateful we got to share some time with you this afternoon. And I have a feeling, Larry, this isn't going to be the last time we hang out with Bob.

Neither do I. Because at one point we're gonna have to have Bob back on. Because I really like these why questions, because I ask why questions all the time. And that'll be part two of this, Bob.

So. Yeah, but here's the thing is, Darrell, I wanna, I want one of them where I can interview you about something you bought. Because here's the thing is you're gonna tell me, oh, I bought it for this and this and this. And then we're gonna go through the process of extracting it.

Okay.

And it's gonna have nothing to do with what you talked about. Oh, I got, I bought this new car company. Cause I got a deal on it. It's like, no, I've been thinking about it for this long and I did this. And it's the lie you told yourself of why you bought it. But the reality is this is why you bought it.

Okay, so I'm going to clue in everybody right now. So, Bob, so for all of our listeners out there, my dear friend, who I love immensely is just an iPhone. Apple geek for everything. So Bob and I want to listen to this conversation. You have to interview Darrell on why he buys everything that's Apple right then and there.

So here's the thing. So here's the thing is the best interviews, like, it's hard when people have a habit. It's almost like, it's like the reality is you can't do it. What I want to know is the one thing they bought that was an Apple.

Okay, you could ask me when we talk. We'll have to just do a lot. We'll just go live on LinkedIn on this one. You could ask me about my select comfort mattress.

You're going to laugh. But these are the things where you start to real, like, how do you get good at this? You start reflecting on yourself. You start realizing, why do you buy what you buy? And if you actually can start to understand that and you realize you have jobs, you start to realize your customers have jobs.

Yeah.

So my thing is, if you really want to start to think about this is like, take a minute to reflect, why did you buy what you bought? Why are you satisfied or not satisfied? Like, what are the trade offs you had to make? Right? Like, why Not a sleep number, man. Like go for the top.

Well, that's what I got. I did I say. I meant to say sleep number. Sorry for the people.

Oh, dude, so you went to the top. Like why spend so much.

We don't have time for this right now. And since I got up at 3:30 this morning, I'm looking forward to going visit that sleep number.

I hope it wasn't for the bed, but that's all right. Anyway, my thing is nothing is random. Everything is caused. Go find the causes.

That's so good.

Wow.

Bob, I just from the bottom of our hearts and really on behalf of the whole selling from the heart community, because I know this is just like light bulb moments happening all over the place here, I just want to say a sincere thank you for all you're doing and for the investment you've made in the oldest profession that you brought something new.

That's right. Well, I don't know if I did that. It's just one of those things where most people think about sales as that push side. So anyway, happy holidays. I'm sure we'll talk after the first year if you're. If listeners have questions. My thing is start to collect them and we can do an interview. We can do. I'm willing. I'm now taking the role of how do I actually pass on what people have taught me. And so I'm doing everything I can to teach and mentor and be there to help kind of everybody make progress.

Fantastic. Well, thank you, Bob.

Hey Darrel, can I just ask one more favor of Bob? Just because I can listen to Bob all day long and then we'll wrap this up. Bob has to throw one more quotable quote out there. I'm sure you got a ton, but you got to leave us, Bob, with one more just tweetable quotable quote for salespeople out there.

So here's the thing is that my belief is when you're trying to help somebody make progress, you need to actually give them contrast. So in most cases we try to give them one thing to choose and so the choice is to do nothing or to do something. But my belief is that contrast creates meaning. And when you give them two options where the first thing they do is they'll throw out the one they know they don't want and then they take the two that are left and they compare it not to each other but to the one that they've already eliminated. So people actually don't buy what the. They don't know what they want. They actually eliminate what they want, what they don't want.

Beautiful.

And so my thing is contrast. Contrast creates meaning. So the phrase I usually say is context creates value and contrast creates meaning.

There we go.

That's wonderful, Bob. Thank you. And this is awesome.

I'm asleep, Darrel.

Yes, I will. Absolutely. I'm looking forward to it. I'll look forward to talking to you about my sleep number bed. And to everybody in the Selling from the Heart community, just thank you to you. Go grab a copy of demand side sales 101 by Bob Mesta. We'll put that in the show notes. If you get involved in the 2021 Authentic Selling Challenge, just text the word heart to 21,000, visit us at sellingfromtheheart.net or click the link in the show notes. You will not want to miss this and you'll definitely want to be a part of the challenge. And some of the we got some fun stuff coming into that that is just going to be great. And for all of it, we just want to say from the bottom of our heart, happy holidays. I hope you have a great time this season enjoying family and what matters the most. And as always, keep being genuine, keep being authentic, keep adding real value, find jobs to be done, and most of all, sell from the heart.