S2 E4 | Reframing the Sales Process With Demand-Side Sales

As a salesperson, you actually need to be a therapist because you got to be able to understand the progress that the buyer wants and the progress that the user wants and understand the trade offs that, you know, you can't do both. So how do you get them to come to terms on the things that are not possible? You know, so part of it is that they have to actually unpack kind of the, the underlying causal mechanisms for each of the critical people in the process and then also understand that if they don't make progress for the buyer or, or they don't make process for the user, that their product will not be successful. And so they need to actually understand the constituents who are part of that process, but also understand that I need to satisfy, I need to help both of them make progress.

Welcome to the Circuit Breaker podcast where we challenge the status quo of innovation.

And new product development.

We'll talk about tools and skills and methodologies used to build better products and make you a better consumer. I'm Bob Mesta and I'm the co founder of the Rewired Group and I'm one of your co hosts and we're joined by Greg Engel, who is my co founder and chief, Bob Interpreter. Join us now as we trip the circuit and give you time to reset, reorganize and recharge your brain to build better products.

Hey, welcome to Circuit Breaker. Greg and I are on this podcast, talk about Demand side Sales. It's a book that came out almost two years ago and we've had some experience in kind of using it and implementing it as well as kind of some frustrations. And we walk through kind of like the, the essence of kind of what, how to make it very useful for you and kind of what the do's and don'ts. And so enjoy.

Hey, Bob.

Hey, Greg.

So today we want to talk about something that we've actually neglected for the first season. Oh, and it's something that you. While we had a project on over a year ago now.

Okay.

And we never talked about it. I don't know if we were afraid of it. I don't know if we.

I think some distance made it less painful.

We wanted to deflect it. I don't know what the reason was, but I want to talk about demand side sales.

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

So we wrote, we wrote a book about it. It launched, I don't know, a year ago or so.

Two years, actually two years ago.

So even more better. And I just want to talk about kind of why we wrote it. What Our takeaways are. And now that it's that far from us writing it, what did we think about it?

Yep. What did we learn? Yeah.

So first, I just want to want you to give a brief, like, why did you write demand side sales?

So couple things were going on. I think it was kind of right after Clay had passed. And so it was one of those things where I was. Clay and I had talked a lot, but it was reflecting on that relationship, if you will, with him. But I think the one thing that we always would talk about was the fact is, why are there no sales professors? Right. And it kind of came back to this notion of, like, why. Why are they not teaching sales in business school? Like, it's the having done multiple startups and the things that we do. Sales is usually the hardest of all the things, at least for me. Maybe not for you, but for me, it was very, very difficult. And how the frame of jobs to be done had helped me kind of realize, like, I don't need to sell my product. I need to help people buy my product and that frame and flipping that lens. Right. I think the other thing is you and I had the, you know, the experience of doing it at the home builder. And I think the fact this is, you know, sales is in. Is kind of near and dear to our heart because we know how hard it is. And so I think we wrote it from that perspective of being able to help people who don't even know they sell to realize that they do sell and that they actually. It's more. It's a better frame instead of thinking you're selling, but that you're helping people make progress. So like teachers and nurses, they're all people who sell like a lesson to a student, but the student has to make the progress kind of thing.

So thinking back, I know it's been a long time since. Since we wrote it, so but thinking back, what did you think was going to be the biggest challenge that people had trying to implement demand side sales?

I think the biggest thing to me was not having been in the space or like, there's a lot of sales training people, but it was more like, what's a foundational piece? And so I felt like the hardest part was trying to talk about the customer without the product. And so most people think of sales as a combination of psychology and product and process and kind of throwing that all together. And so I thought that people, from a mindset perspective, we're going to have a hard time kind of figuring out how to put those things into this mindset.

So I think one of the things we talked about a lot was, and it's similar to product development in a lot of things we do, which is most salespeople look at their. Look at the world through their product and then look at the customer.

Yep.

And changing that lens is actually very hard.

Yes.

Trying to look at what people are trying to get done and then look at how your product helps them get that done.

How to fits into that, fits in.

The world is a very, very hard.

Yep.

Everybody says, Everybody say, says they do it, but it's a very hard thing to do because you get infatuated, you get in love, you get so much data about your product, it's hard to actually do that.

You know, I think people like Ash Mayor and those people like in the, in the, in the startup world talk about life, the problem, not the product. But you realize, as I feel like as an engineer and being trained as an engineer, like they taught me how to love the product I created and I had to unlearn all that because at some point in time, it's not about the product I love, it's about helping people make progress and that the product they might build might not be the greatest product, but it actually is simple enough, people can use it. And so it's that aspect of really flipping that lens. I think the bigger thing is that most people look at their customer through their product. They see the product and then they say, well, who buys it or who needs it or who wants it? As opposed to talking about a body of people who are struggling and say, how do we design something to fit into their lives? Right.

And that's the flipping of the lens. Right. That's the looking, looking at it through the right side of the binoculars or the microscope, however you want to, whatever metaphor we want to use. And I think a lot of times what happens is salespeople. We are so eager to get to the yes. We're so eager to get to people seeing the value we see. Right. We, we're like eager children trying to get approval.

Approval.

Someone tells yes, right?

That's right.

But in your experience, is it more important to get to the first yes or is it more important to get to the first no?

No's are way more important than yeses. Nos are like, to me, this is the thing is the moment people say yes, it's like, okay. And you start to realize it's very hard for people to say yes. And when you really start to understand how people make decisions, they actually more eliminate things first. Before they actually choose something. And so part of this is to realize that no is actually way more important than yes in the process of buying.

And the way I look at it is the nos help you shape the playing field.

Yes.

The nos are the boundaries.

That's correct.

So as you get to the nose or you get to the, the. Even the. I don't knows, help you shape that.

Yep.

So you're, you're always trying to, as a salesperson, always trying to shape the field of play so that you know where you can go or not go, and then helping people make the progress they want to make. And I think that is a big thing that we have to. That I think we often say, but we don't actually tell people, what does that mean? So when we say the progress people want to make, what are we really talking about?

We're talking about, if you will, the new state, the new normal, the thing that they're trying to get to. So they don't, in some cases either have. They don't have the pain or they have the pleasure. And so part of it is being able to understand the combo of those two things and the role it plays in enabling people to stop doing one thing and start doing something new.

Yeah. So progress, if you follow Jobs redone, how is progress defined?

I'm not sure they would be listening to this podcast if they don't follow it.

Hey, there might be somebody that just stumbled upon it who knows.

They should listen to the previous one. There's no way that somebody randomly came across it.

So define, and I know you tried to just define it, but define progress in the way we talk about it in Jobs, you.

Progress is a, is a combination of. It's a set of things. So it's not any one thing. Most people are trying to say, people bought my product for one reason, but progress is a combination of a situation you're in some context that's causing you to feel some kind of struggling moment or some pain of, like this, what I'm doing is not working, or I can do better. And then there's the second part of it, which is the outcome. Right. Which is what is it like to be on the other side when you actually kind of make that progress? And then ultimately it includes progress has to have trade offs, it has to have pushes and pulls and anxieties and habits, and it has to have hiring criteria and firing criteria. And so as you start to look at that like how we make that decision, you realize that at some point, if I can't make Trade offs. I can't make the progress, right? If I don't have the push, I can't make the progress. If I can't overcome the anxieties, I can't make the progress. And so part of this is to realize it's a system and we need to understand the critical components of that system that enable people to say yes. And most of the time they have to say no first.

And so I think the way we talk about it when we're training people or talking to people about sales is most basic part of it is the forces of progress. And you said it right, you said it's the push. Why are they actually doing something? The pull. What do they expect to get done from doing this new thing or buying this new thing? The anxieties, what about the new things? Scares me. What about the new things make me anxious. What about the new things? What questions do I have about the new thing? All those things are that and then the habit of what do I have to give up? And the tricky part for salespeople is, is you often don't just sell one person, you have to sell multiple people. And not everybody at one organization, not everybody in one family is going to have the same problems.

Correct. Or same progress that they want. Again, we've done this for schools. What causes us to take a kid out of one school and put them into a new school? Well, two parents might have very different opinions or different views of the progress they're trying to make for their child. And so part of it is the alignment of those things. Right.

So what's the responsibility of the salesperson in helping people understand their progress?

Yeah, so the line I always use is that sometimes as a salesperson you actually need to be a therapist because you gotta be able to understand the progress that the buyer wants and the progress that the user wants and understand the trade offs that you can't do both. So how do you get them to come to terms on the things that are not possible? And so part of it is that they have to actually unpack kind of the underlying causal mechanisms for each of the critical people in the process. And then also understand that if they don't make progress for the buyer or they don't make process for the user, that their product will not be successful. And so they need to actually understand the constituents who are part of that process, but also understand that I need to satisfy, I need to help both of them make progress.

What's the problem with feature benefit selling?

Well, there's a, there's a lot where to start with that. I think, I think part of it is the fact is that when you start shouting features and benefits at people, it's about things that you think are absolutely true and that people want. But when people are in certain contexts they want some things and not others. And so a lot of times when people are negotiating for price, it's because you told them five features they really don't want, not because it fits. And so you start to realize that it's over engineered or overbuilt. And so they're like yeah, but I don't need this and this and this. How about a 20% discount? And so you start to realize that you end up one shouting things at them and the other part is half the time they don't know what that benefit really means to them because it's stated in the supply side terms, not in necessarily the demand side term.

And I think you hit on it. I just want to make sure we hammer this home is feature benefit sales. And I'm going to make a gross exaggeration most of the time a lot of if you watch a bad salesperson or a very new salesperson, they'll just spout out every feature and benefit that has it that the product has show.

Up and throw up.

And the problem there is more basic to me is with every time you give them a feature and benefit, you actually can cause a new struggling moment.

That's right.

Right. So every time you do that you can be. So you can actually be pushing yourselves back in the timeline by feature benefit sales, by a feature benefit sales approach. Now we still say you have to do features and benefits, but you have to tailor it.

Yes.

To the customer.

Tailor to, to their context and their outcome. Yes.

Right. Which means you have to understand.

And I'm going to say it point blank and you're going to, you're going to couch this and we're going to. We might yell at each other a.

Little bit but we keep threatening that. But I'm not sure we've really yelled at each other.

The first thing you have to know when you do demand side sales and this is we argued about this when we wrote the book. We argued about it when we try to sell it. We argue it about it all the time. Which is you actually have to understand the job to be done.

Correct.

You have. I mean it's a non negotiable.

Yeah, it's one of those things that.

No, no, take the point you always take.

I would say that in the early days, I would say that, that was not true. But I would say nowadays, having gone through several projects is without the jobs, without understanding the jobs, it's very hard for people to understand what to do with it. And so it's very dependent on understanding kind of the progress people are trying to make and realizing that again, the role that sales plays is helping them find that progress as opposed to pushing the product on them and closing the sale. Because just closing the sale, they don't make the progress. They make the progress when they use the product that you sold them.

They use it to solve a problem that they actually have.

Exactly.

Right. And that's the key. Right. Because you can use a product and it actually does solve your problem.

Well. And so the lesson that we've learned is that it's very, very hard to apply demand side sales to companies that have not done the heavy lifting of finding the jobs. But once you have the jobs, it's actually, I'll say a very. It's a much easier lift and end, to be honest, getting people and aligning both the product people and the innovation and the entrepreneurship with the salespeople. Because all of a sudden it's now, now they're, they're actually speaking the same language and using the same things, but without having done that heavy lifting. You know, we've, we've worked around several different ways to try to, if you will, build a shortcut, but they've all failed.

And I think, I think they failed or shortcutting it fails because it's the dap. We're still. Well, as salespeople, we have biases. And when we try to shortcut it, we don't actually go talk to the customer and we try to talk to the salespeople or we have biases of why. And that's the same thing of, of putting the lens the right way. Right. We have the biases. So spending the time of actually talking to your customers, spending the time of actually understanding the why divorce from your product.

Yep.

And that's the hard part for most people, that's why we get paid most of the time, is because trying to do jobs on yourself is very difficult. We couldn't do it.

We didn't. We hired somebody to help us.

Right. We actually hired someone to do it for us as well.

Yeah.

Even though it's what we do every day. But we have biases. We would do what, what our customers do to us, which is. Well, I know Joe, Joe didn't really mean that. No, Joe actually meant that.

Well, yeah. And we've again, but We've done it long enough to know that that's really hard for us to do. And at the same time, though, we've been able to kind of take what we've learned from it and modify our sales process and actually build a marketing process around it and do some other things with it. And so, you know, so the point, part of the point of demand side sales is when you have jobs and you know, it's not just for product and that you can use it for sales and that it's more about an extension of how this, this work around understanding the job that your customer's trying to get done can be utilized not only for, you know, product, but for sales and for marketing and for strategy and for a whole bunch of other things. And so part of it was to actually show the breadth of kind of the power of it. But the thing we didn't anticipate or the unintended cause was those people who weren't interested in product and just wanted to do sales. The first lift is to be able to understand what, what progress your customers are really trying to make. And again, Drucker said it best is that, you know, what companies think they know about their customer and why they buy is mostly wrong. And the reason why customers buy. The reason what the product, I'll say the reason why customers buy is rarely known by the company. And so that to me is really what we're learning. And the other part to me is this aspect of most salespeople have been set up to be order takers. And so they're used to kind of giving features and benefits, doing a demo, being able to close. And it's like, how do I get past the gatekeeper? Right. And so without the lens of jobs, it makes it like, how do I, you know, all these other barriers come to play. But the fact is, if you understand the struggling moment, getting past the gatekeeper is actually kind of easy when you actually understand those struggles that they have.

Yeah. And I'm going to do a shameless plug here and it's going to actually force Bob's hand because we've actually developed two courses about demand side sales that we have not launched yet, but we'll be launching. But I want to give a big caveat. It is not going to tell you how to find the jobs we done of your customers.

Right.

It's going to help you. One of the offerings is going to be a very simple offering and it's going to be kind of a rehash of the book and it will give you a couple steps to do, but it's going to be really rehash the book. The second one is going to give you some exercises to practice. But you have to understand your demand side. There's no way I can teach you how to do jobs, be done in a way that you're going to get to true demand through a course like that. That's right.

But if you do know the jobs and then you take this class, it's going to be very, very powerful.

And even if you don't know the jobs, it's going to. It will help you understand some of the principles that we talk about and we'll give you exercises to do those principles. But I suggest that you try to figure out how to get to the jobs of why people are buying as well. But it will give you some of the strategies that we use in each step of the process of job of demand side sales. It will give you those types of things. It will give you practices to do. It's a good thing to do if you believe you have some good empathy of your customer. Because I'm not saying you have to have the exact jobs to be done, but what I'm saying is you have to understand you have to have good empathy of your customer. It's much easier for us from the jobs we done aspect of it. There are people that can do it as long as you have really good empathy. But know that you probably need to go deeper. And my suggestion from you would be to partner with somebody that you go talk to customers of theirs and let them go talk to customers of yours and then kind of figure it out from there. But the best way to do it is to. Unfortunately, another shameless plug is to hire us to help you with jobs redone or hire someone to help you with, with doing jobs redone would be the best thing. But if, if your salespeople are fairly seasoned, they understand their customer, this is a good program for them to go through to just reset that, making sure the lens is correct, that you're looking through the people, then you're looking through your product and not the other way or services. Yep, that's our shameless plug for the. We don't normally do that, but that is our shameless plug for the. For the season. Hopefully it will be once and then the other thing that I want you to do for homework and it's, it's, it's somewhat more difficult for homework for this. But just I want you to stop and think about if you're in sales or you're in marketing and you're in those types of things where you're dealing with customers, are you just throwing up all your features and benefits or are you actually helping people figure out the progress they want to make? And remember, the progress is at the most basic level, the forces of progress and the trade offs they're willing to make.

That's right.

And so when you look at your sales pitch, I want you to look at your sales pitch, I want you to look at your marketing. Does it really help people make progress or does it just throw up all these things that they have to now make a thousand decisions on? So look at your stuff, figure it out.

So the interesting part is a lot, a lot of, a lot of the presentations create anxiety, is right, anxiety force because you bring up all these other things. So just look at your, your pitch or your demo and try to understand it from their perspective. And as you start to what, what concerns come up, what forces are you creating, what, what pushes and pulls you're creating and understand that. So I think that's a really good exercise.

All right, so go out to do that and hopefully we'll catch you on the next episode.

All right, thanks.

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