How to start a sales call ("Discovery" that doesn't suck)

Well, Rob, welcome back, man. How you doing?

We are live. How's it going?

Going, going great. I'm here at corporate headquarters, which is a.k.a. my parents' house. I'm— I keep having problems with the employees in the mailroom here, but we're— I had to come do QA like in person. Now back for the holidays. How about, how about you? What's going on? We're middle of December. What do you have coming up for the holidays?

Middle of December. Yeah, we got, we got a quiet holidays ahead. I think this is probably our last podcast recording of the year. I don't know if that's, I think we're taking 2 weeks off. We have not confirmed the official schedule. So yeah. Yeah. All good here. Like the, the kind of big news is that the book is available for preorder on Amazon now. And so we should probably put a link to that. And I wanted to share, I thought you would appreciate, uh, I have not yet told you this, a story about what I've been doing this week as it relates to the book, the specific argument I'm getting in with my copy editor, uh, which—

for those, for those unfamiliar, this has been a journey, like the, the publishing, editing, designing, everything about it. Rob, what's going on this week?

Okay. So this week's argument is, is, um, so In the book, I try to make like egregious examples of things just because it like making a ridiculous example helps make a point. And so one of the points that I make, I don't remember how I got here. It doesn't matter how I got here is, you know, it's basically like your go-to-market strategy is going to be different if you're selling to SVPs and Fortune 500 versus if you're selling to raccoon breeders. Right. And obviously that's a good— it's a good contrast. Well, it turns out, it turns out big publishing thinks that I shouldn't include raccoon breeders because apparently breeding raccoons is illegal in the US. And so I'm having to fight to include raccoon breeding in a stupid business book here. And, and they're like, they're like, well, can we change it to mink farmers? It's like no one knows what a mink is. It sounds like a slur for someone from Michigan. Like what the heck? They call themselves farmers. I don't care. It has to. So anyway, that's, that, that's what my life's been recently.

It is. It's apparently a very busy time of the year. If, if we've got energy that we are, we are pouring it, honestly, fight the good fight, Rob, fight the good fight, fight, stick to, stick to your guns.

Absolutely insane.

Well, today we are talking about your latest Substack, How to Start a Sales Call. I would put this in the category of practical, very— and should be immediately applicable for our listener. We're talking about, you know, you've railed against for a very, very long time against discovery and discovery, I think, has a bunch of different applications that you find that it's actually avoiding sales. That's not really what we're talking about here. Here we're talking about discovering demand in the context of a sales call rather than avoiding sales calls. But why don't— Rob, why don't you just get us started with why is this on your mind and who is this for?

Yeah. So, so it's a good kind of framing here. In this post, we're talking about the sales call. We're not talking about open-ended discovery interviews, which I have previously said and stand by that they are generally a waste of time. This is, and whenever you do a sales call in any sales book, any sales playbook, there is like this thing that's like how that they're, that's like, this is the most important thing. Discovery is the most important thing in a sales call. And then what we learn from that is, okay, I'm supposed to ask questions and they're supposed to answer. Those questions and based on that, I'm supposed to do something like that's the, that's the rough shape of discovery.

Yeah.

I think it's supposed to be important, but like, it's unclear what exactly we are looking for in those questions. Are we looking for pain points? Are we looking for their current state? Are we looking for them wanting our product? Like, what are we actually looking for? So we're not clear what we're looking for, which means we don't know what to ask, which means we don't know what to pitch. And so like, as a result, when I watch startup sales calls, which I do quite frequently, and basically everyone should have me watch at least, or you should at least watch me watch one sales call at least. Basically what you find is that roughly 80, 90% of the sales call is wasted. Be, and it, it comes down to the fact that we don't really know what we're looking for. So we don't know what we've found. And so we just pitch whatever the hell we want. And this is the default state. And I've, I've seen, I've even watched sales pitches from startups at $10 million, $50 million ARR. In a lot of cases, people are buying despite what is happening in the sales call, not because of it. And so it's just like this really interesting thing. So we have to, and so the reason I pulled this together is because I've developed over the last like 6, basically since the PULL framework, since, since that kind of like came into being, I've been developing a new approach to the start of sales calls. And so I just kind of wanted to ship this to production. I've, I've done it with a couple startups. One of them apparently just went $0 to $6 million in, in under 3 months. Technically they said 7 weeks, which is just mind-boggling to me. So we need to like come back to that.

Go, go start at zero and then add almost $1 million in ARR. A week. A week.

Like that's— no product to start, but without a product yet.

Yeah.

Or like—

how does that— can we pause on that for like a, a, a hot second?

That's—

we're not gonna spend all of our time talking about that case study, but I do think it's a good example of why this matters. Uh, maybe that's already obvious to everybody, but what— draw, connect the dots between startup that's going, you know, asymptotic and doing discovery correct.

Yeah. So, so, um, well, so I'm just going to like get to the chase of the thesis here. Turns out pull is a discovery framework. It happens to be what we are like, what we are looking for. We are looking for pull. When you find pull, you essentially find someone's top priority that they are blocked on right now. Okay. If you happen to find that for people who are senior decision makers at important companies, they will tend to rip the product out of your hands. And so in this case, what they basically did, they, they kind of had started by going and showing like, here's our product, here's what we want to build, da da da, here's all the value props of it. And they scrapped that and instead said, like, they used this to say, what's that number one thing on your to-do list that you are blocked with? Found what that was and just sold something that fit that. And they benefited because they got a ton of intros. Like that's, that's a, that's a separate thing. But right. Even if you get a bunch of intros to senior decision makers and you pitch something that is not their top priority that they are blocked on, they're just going to like, they're busy people. They have stuff to do. Anything other than that, that pull, that top priority where they are blocked. They're not going to move on and the default is they're not going to buy it. So that's why this is so important.

Yeah. Yeah. You know, folks can on that second point, I think I'm sure a lot of our listeners has had those calls with like they've had the introduction and it's gone nowhere and you realize the introduction like, you know, the door is open, but it's a guarantee of exactly nothing. And sometimes actually kind of the opposite. If they— if the person being introduced feels like they're doing you a favor by even talking to you. So you have to immediately, uh, like identify, connect with the demand that's behind whatever is going on in, in their world.

Yeah, 100%. 100%. Like, yeah, you, you might look, you look at like, there, there's a certain kind of person who's gonna look at a story where someone gets intros and they're like, oh, they only succeeded because they got intros. Yeah. Which is a, just a terrible philosophy, right? Like, it's just a terrible way to look at the world. Everyone else's success is luck. Mine is gonna be earned, right? Like just, just nonsense. So, so yeah, no, so I think like zooming out, talking about sales, the, the critical thing in discovery is we actually have to know what we are looking for. And what I have found is that founders generally don't know, but also sales reps don't generally know.

Yeah.

It's really, and your prospects sure as hell don't know, like how, like why would they know what you're, what you're looking for? Um, but like what you'll find is that the way that we approach approach sales calls is frustrating in, in ways that our prospects can't articulate, but it comes down to the fact that like they're here for a reason. They're trying to accomplish something in Blockt and we're just poking and prodding at pain points and nonsense.

Yeah.

Then pitching something totally random. So of course they're frustrated, but it's hard for them to articulate why they're frustrated. And so as a result, you kind of have a nice seeming conversation. That, that, you know, just descends into nothingness.

Yeah. Let's, let's jump here in a moment into the PULL framework to discuss, you know, what, what you discuss as the, or you describe as the framework to use and the process to use it. I think that gets super practical. Maybe to linger one moment longer on current state. You've watched a bunch, hundreds or thousands of, of calls. Here's the way that you describe what you see now as discovery and sales calls. It's either one, a checkbox, a checkbox exercise we're supposed to do before we demo our sales. So our sales coach is happy and/or a blind search for something problem-shaped we can pitch a solution to. Can you add color, Rob, to like, what do you observe for in the first call that you watch, or what do you anticipate you're going to observe from almost any, any founder that's gonna come to you and, and give you a sales call that you're gonna look at?

Yeah. So, so what's interesting is I've now watched, I think, 3,000, 3,000, 4,000 sales calls. We just did the math on that. I have seen one startup do this well in all of that, and it's a startup that I've just seen this week, like And it's, it's kind of confusing to me that it's, it's surprising to see it done well. So what I typically see is the way a sales call starts is it's kind of like, great. Yeah. Thanks for taking the time. Thought we'd start with intros and then we can talk to you more about our product and ask you a few questions.

Right.

Starts there, which is already going in the wrong direction. Um, you start with intros, they give a little intro and you say, cool. Can you tell me a little bit about your organization?

Cool.

Tell me about this part of it. Okay. What are your problems and pain points here? Right. And then have you looked into solutions? It's generally like a sequence of questions that, that look like that. And we learn something. Maybe. It, best case scenario, they're like, yeah, this process is like, it's pretty frustrating and, and, and difficult and time-consuming. Yeah. And we take that and say, great. Okay, cool. I have something. Now let me pitch you our thesis on that problem or a problem relatively like that. And we have a sales deck that we've put together that kind of evangelizes the problem, talks about the big problem, the $50 trillion problem where, uh, and here's why you should care about this problem and here's how, what we do and why it's different. And all of this, right? Like what, what's happening? It's crazy. What's happening is in our founder brains, it's like, it feels like this is going well because I got a problem that was roughly in our ballpark. I pitched our thesis on the world and I got nods and I got questions out of it. And I might've even secured a demo after this. Like a second call, but none of that is useful. Like literally none of that is productive. There's probably one or two useful things a potential customer says at the beginning of a call that's like, yeah, what I'm really focused on is XYZ. And we never, and it's, it like, they give us a hint of what they're trying to accomplish and the ways in which they are blocked. Which is where demand is. And then we spend the entirety of the call on something else.

Yeah. What do you, what did it feel like in the example that did it correctly? Were they, were they specifically applying the pull framework? Are we just, okay. Why don't we, why don't we get into that then? Let's, let's say we're going to start with the discovery framework. You, this is, I'm going to read a little bit from your, from your blog. First, we need a discovery framework so we know what we are actually looking for. Then we need a discovery process. So we fill out the framework by default in every call. We're going to start with the framework. As a, as a quick recap, this is applying the pull framework. For the listener who's brand new, pull is the series of conditions that if they're met, the customer will rip it out of your hands. There's a project on their to-do list. It's unavoidable or urgent for some reason. They've been looking for options and the options are lacking in some important ways. And that's where your supply fits in. Rob, why don't we, why don't we talk about why or how does pull apply in discovery?

Yeah. So, so pull, what I, what I found is in your mind, you can just have the pull framework and be trying to fill it out. With them, because if you understand their pull, you know what to offer them. They're like, hey, yeah, I'm trying to do X, but my current options aren't good enough because of Y. Okay. That's interesting. So it sounds like you're looking for something that'll help you accomplish X without Y. Is that right? Well, we offer X, or like, like we offer this thing. And it, and it does that. Does that sound like it fits what you need? Like, it's a very tight— it essentially gives you their requirements.

Let's talk about each element of the pull. What are you, what are you listening for? What kinds of words do they use for, uh, you know, very rarely is somebody going to say, here is my project and here is why it is unavoidable. So, or maybe they do, I don't know. Like, where do you, what kind of things are you listening for? To understand each of the elements.

Yeah. So usually, like we've talked before, I think about the concept of the demand hairball, where if you let a customer talk, they will just, they'll talk for like 2 or 3 minutes and they will include all sorts of things in there. They'll include, you know, where they were for dinner last night. They'll include like, oh, this super annoying person in the company, or, oh, we tried this. And And in that hairball, there are usually the elements of pull, or at least one or two that we could, if we knew, if we, if we knew to look for them, we would basically in our minds be filling out and saying, okay, cool. 80% of that monologue seemed extraneous, seemed, yeah, but it sounds like you're trying to accomplish this because this thing is going on right now. Is that? Is that right? Okay, cool. What have you looked into? What have you tried and why haven't, why weren't those good enough? Why aren't those options good enough? Right. And so it's almost always given to us on a platter and we just say, yeah, no thanks.

When you, and when you say given to us on a platter, like it is, if it is actually the project that is in that is most important to them, they'll mention it, but it might not be the only thing that they mention.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. They'll mention it in a, in a 3 to 5, like I have one in my mind where a customer just talks about the like history of Salesforce for a while. And I think you've seen this one too, where they talk about the history of Salesforce and Salesforce is for like salespeople. We're not salespeople and da da da da da, and it's like, It's like in that monologue where there's just kind of like random digressions, kind of like it, there are elements of pull in there if you know to look for them.

Yeah. Yeah. Uh, take a step back. What I have to wrestle with when I'm in these calls is that I feel like they're telling me the things that they think I want or that I'm expecting to hear from them. So they actually contextualize the call to my product. More than what is actually going on as soon as the call is over in their life and they get back to what's, what's really important to them. How do you like reboot their brain or like what, how do you approach it in a way that actually drills down to what's important in their life rather than what's important in the context of your work?

Yeah. So I think we get that can be on the second part here where we're getting into like what's the process that you use to surface pull and make sure that it actually is their top priority, the thing they're actually trying to accomplish. What we first have to embrace is that, like, all you are looking for in the call is pull. That's what discovery is trying to fill out. If you can learn infinite other things, that sound useful and are irrelevant. They'll tell you about how their team is structured, how the work is split up, what the process is like, right? Like what, what pain points they have in the process. They'll tell you about, I don't know, the history of their company. They'll tell you about their theory on the world. They'll tell you all of these things that you can find out that all feel useful and aren't. They're actually wastes of time because you are not helping them make progress on the thing they're trying. You're asking questions, getting, and you'll say, if you find yourself saying, wow, that's really useful information, right? That's a sign that it's actually not useful information. It's, you're learning random history facts. Yeah, not what are they trying to accomplish. So that's the first look for pull. You like, you're specifically filling out this person's pull framework right now. That's the point of discovery.

Yeah. Like, and actually on a sheet of paper or on a Google Doc or something like that, or in your brain if that's where, where you track it.

Yeah. Yeah. And you just like, you feel you, I've, I've even seen people, uh, there's one founder I know who now just shares a Google Doc and says, you are trying to accomplish blah, and just like types it out. This is important. You have to focus on this because of this reason. Yeah. Right. Like, and it just like types this out on the call. I don't know that, like, he swears by it. I don't know that I recommend that generally as a practice, but I'm, but it's like, essentially that's what you are doing.

Yeah. Yeah. And then thinking about how pull is divided, P and U being demand and L and L being supply, like really avoiding the temptation to get into supply until you have a really strong sense of demand.

Yeah. Yeah. So what you, what you, so I mean, what will happen is they will just monologue on something and there'll be something in there that is like interesting or relevant and it could be Yeah, we've been trying to, we've been trying to do X, right? We've been trying to reach families, da da da da da, right? And that's a, that's a like demand-shaped thing. Or they might say, yeah, we tried advertising on this other thing and it just, it wasn't a good fit for our audience. Right. And what you're getting in the first case is you're, you're, you're starting to fill out the P and the U. In the second case, you're starting to fill out the L and the F. Does it— doesn't really matter where you start, you just have to fill out the others.

Yeah, yeah. Well, why don't we, uh, I'm having to, I'm in unsuccessfully resist the temptation to jumping into the process. Um, and so why don't we just—

yeah, yeah, I know, I can see you're just like, okay, but how do I do this? How do I do this?

How do I do that? Exactly.

Yeah.

Um, you, you lay it out, Rav. I could walk through— you laid out in 4 points that I super helpful and I found interesting and provocative. Okay, if I, if I just run through those 4. And so this is essentially like— so the framework is filling out essentially the pull framework in order to understand their demand. The process for doing that one is start at the beginning, beginning of the call and ask them why they took the call and what they are hoping to get out of it. Like, literally, we'll get into that question, why it's so powerful. Two is if they don't fill out some piece of the pull framework for you from that question, ask a couple discovery questions, one or two, trying to get them to explain some piece of their pull to you. If that gets you nowhere, step 3, talk about what others have said and see if that rings a bell. And if that gets you nowhere at the end, or you can either end early or YOLO a demo. So let's start with the probably the most important piece, which is why did you take this call? Why does that question work? And yeah, what happens?

Yeah. So I think we talked about this before, but like people join a call for a reason. They're not like, oh, you know what, Tuesday, 12:30, nothing to do. Why not? Right. Like, and so they often show up and they may or may not explain it to you, but like, If, if you don't ask why they took the call and what they're hoping to get out of it, you're missing a massive opportunity for them to just say, yeah, I actually looked at your website. I thought about XYZ and it seems relevant to us because of this reason. Right. Right. Like that's, that's a, that could be waiting for you there. And instead what we tend to do is like, cool, let's do intro. Let's just skip that, that part. Cause that feels like an uncomfortable question. Why don't we do intros and then I'm going to give you a colonoscopy with questions.

Right?

And, and, um, and we don't figure out why they're here. And so that's question 1. And I'm sure you're super busy. I'm sure you get a ton of outreach. Why'd you decide to take this call?

Yeah. Yeah. And the things that you'll hear there are actually, so sometimes I've, it's gone both ways. Like one, it's like, okay, pretty clear there's actually no demand here. Like they're just sort of curious. Um, or I, what do you do with the response of, I always, you know, I'm always open connections and always looking to meet people. Like, what do you do with a response like that?

So, so, okay. So let's, let's zoom out from, from here and say, what is the discovery process that I suggest here? Like, what is it doing? What it's doing is it's basically creating, it's like a, a, a tree diagram, right? Where it's like, it's like, If we get some pull from here, cool. Let's double-click on that. If not, if we get nothing useful, here's what to do next. Right. And so there's a chance, then like half the time someone's like, well, I'm always open to making connections. It's like, cool, Jim, not helpful.

We're going to move.

We're going to move to the next, like, we're going to, I'm going to move. So I've moved down the like not happy path. Part of this flowchart and it's like, cool, I'm moving to the next step, Jim, you've been unhelpful.

Yeah. Yeah. There, um, there's probably some people that actually do that, that just like, they're excited. They appreciate the attention that outreach gets and they're—

Yeah. I just like being invited to calls.

Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Um, okay. So you open it up. What, and—

Sorry, sorry. One other thing.

Yeah.

So somebody, someone will say, well, you reached out to me, right? And that's, that's the question that we're always worried about getting. And it's like, yeah, but you decided to take the call, right? You don't have to take the call. Was there anything in particular you were hoping to get out of it? I'm sure you don't take every single call from everybody who reaches out to you.

Yeah.

Yeah. I've even had, I've even had one, one person that I know they have that like an 80% close rate from cold outbound. It's insane. They, they do this religiously to such an extent that they, that if the person's like, oh, I don't really remember why I took this call. They're like, well, could you pull up the message that we sent and look through that and talk to me about like what stood out to you about that? What, why you felt like it was relevant to meet?

Yeah.

Which feels like an intrusion of privacy.

Kind of invasive.

Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah.

But it, but like it works and they do it, they do it and it works.

Yeah. That's super, that's a, that's a really cool, cool tactic, but it's basically avoiding that gnawing part of you that's like, get out, alleviate the discomfort that everybody's feeling right now because the gem is probably hidden in this, in this first question.

Yeah. And it's like, it, it feels like a, so you can pad the question. I'm sure you get a bunch of outreach. I'm sure you're super busy. Why'd you decide to take the call with me today? Like, what did you feel like this was relevant? And then like, what can I help you get out of it?

I like that second question. I haven't heard that one from you before. What can I help you get out of it? Yeah, I'll ask, try to like use humor on it sometimes. Like, why did you accept a, you know, a LinkedIn request from a rando or, you know, something like that. And they'll laugh and then they'll, open up and just try to break down.

Was there any reason other than the fact that I'm just devilishly handsome that you got on a call today?

Yeah. Oh gosh. Sorry. Sorry, ladies and gentlemen, I am taken if that's the reason that you're on this call. Okay, let's— so we've, we've started the call off with What you're hoping to get out of it or why you took it, what you're hoping to get out of it. Let's say that they give you an incomplete picture of, of demand. Like, how do you, how do you run it from there?

Yeah. Okay, cool. So there's a tree diagram where do they give you something useful or not?

Right. Yeah.

If in any of these scenarios they give you something useful, you are contractually obligated to fill out the rest of the poll framework by asking. So if they, They say, yeah, we, we tried advertising and this other thing and it wasn't really, it didn't really work for us. What you now have is you have, okay, you've tried your, your first L, which you've tried, which you've looked into, which you've done is this other thing they advertised and that limitations, the, the doesn't fit lacking piece is, uh, it didn't quite work for you. Now that's too abstract for me. So what I need to do is I need to double-click and What do you, when you said you tried this and it didn't quite work, could you give me a little more, like, what does not work mean?

Yeah.

Right. And, and so you're filling out that second L and then you zoom out and you say, okay, cool. I've got the, I've got the L's here. I don't have the P and the U. Maybe tell me, like, what were you hoping to achieve based on, like, why, you know, when you prioritize this, why, like, why that over all the other things you could have focused on? Yeah. Right. And that, that's filling out the pull framework and like, that's what you do. You don't, you don't just go down the unhappy path for no, you don't just ask a, a set of canned discovery questions.

Yeah. And what do you, what do you do, Rob, when let's say that you fill out the pull framework and your supply doesn't match it, or maybe let's, let's discuss both of them. You've, you get a sense, you know, you've, you've listened, you understand their project, why it's urgent, the options, et cetera. Let's say that it does, your product does fit it, or your supply does fit that. And then let's say that your supply doesn't. What do you do in both of those circumstances?

Yeah. I mean, it's going to, so if it does fit it, then you just, then you're done with discovery basically at that point, you might add some qualification and we don't need to talk about that. That's a, that's a separate thing. That's a separate blog post maybe. But, um, but like, do you have budget? Like those questions you might You might eventually do, or you will eventually do what, whatever. But like at that point you say, okay, cool. So it sounds like you're trying to accomplish this, blocked for this reason. And, and like, that's, and like, that's what you're really trying to focus on. Do I have that right? And then you like earn the right to jump to the supply side. So it sounds like what you're looking for is something that would help you accomplish this without this. Okay, great. That's what we do at a high level. What our product does is this. I'll pause there. It's like a 30-second overview of supply. Does that sound like it fits? Yeah. And that, that is something that you could— so that's, this is the happy path, right? Like we figure out demands, we figure out pull and what we offer fits.

Yeah.

We just kind of explain it to them at the highest conceptual level for them to say, yeah, that sounds like it actually fits exactly like what we're looking for. How does it work? What they're doing is they're pulling for the second level of information, right? They, they're, uh, oh, that's, that's interesting. We'll, we'll come back to that at some point.

Um, taking a step back, let's say that they're not being helpful now. Let, let's get off the happy path. Um, uh, one thing that you recommend is talk about what others have said. How, why do you do that? What are you trying to do?

Um, in that way? Yeah. So the, so the sequence of things are, why'd you take the call? I don't know. I take every call. Okay, cool. Not helpful. Like, what are you trying to accomplish as it relates to XYZ? Uh, no, nothing really. I think we're pretty good in that realm. Curious to hear what you have to do. Um, curious to hear what you do, right? Like, it's like, okay, cool. I, the, I'm not getting much out of discovery here. So maybe what I'll do is I'll say, well, I was just talking with a CMO at a similar organization and they were talking about, they had tried to do this, but were, but it didn't work for, for this reason. And I heard a couple other thing priorities that they have like this, this, this. Does anything there stand out to you? I wanna make sure this is relevant. To your organization, to, to like, that I can describe what we do in a way that fits, right? And so, so that's why you, you're basically, you go from like, okay, you, like, you prospect, tell me what you're focused on, what matters to you, to, okay, I've tried that in two different ways. I've gotten nothing here. I'm going to show, essentially show you a case study, the demand side of case studies. And see if anything rings a bell as being relevant to you.

Yeah. Yeah. And the way I'll do this part of it is, you know, what I typically hear when I talk with marketing organizations is they're trying to reach young parents and they're having a hard time standing out on social media. They don't feel like they're, you know, their current media platform is reaching the right demographic. They're having a hard time holding attention. You know, there's like there's a certain set of objectives or it's like they're really focused on driving foot traffic in international tourism. And so this, you know, they're looking for creative options that resonate authentically. Like there is— I'll run through a list of things that I've heard from a couple different folks that are in a similar position as what I, what I think. And then sometimes a light bulb goes off and sometimes it doesn't, in which case you just go to your like YOLO demo kind of a Uh, moment.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. Like, and, and what I would recommend here is you don't start with that slide. You don't say, hey, thanks for taking the call. Here's what I hear from other organizations. That's what people interpreted my Harvard Innovation Labs thing from, from 2 years ago as telling them to do. And that's it. I don't think that's what it said, but I don't remember what it said. And so don't do that. This is like the third. Double-click down the not happy path. Yeah.

Like it's, it's most powerful if they volunteer it without prodding.

It's— yeah. Here's why I thought this would be real. I saw what you do. I saw that you reach young families. We've been trying to find a way to reach young families. We tried this other thing. Like if they say that, then you don't have to show that slide at all. Yeah. Then you just say, great. So it sounds like you're trying to reach young families. Block this way. What, uh, do I have that right? Yeah, that's exactly it. Okay. We talk to organizations like that all the time. Here's what we offer. Does that seem like it's a fit? Right. And, and, and so that's kind of how, how the process works.

Yeah. Why don't we, um, maybe I think Bant and Medpick, I don't know. I think I'm mispronouncing that one, are what you were referring to that we'd, we'd have to double-click on at a, at another date. Is there anything else here that we You wanna hit on the, on the process, Rob, that we haven't?

No, I think, I think viewing it as I'm, it's the goal is to fill out the pull framework and it is a binary tree or it is, it is like a tree diagram just will solve so much for you.

Yeah.

And it will make your calls way better. The, the art here is then taking that and how do you craft a pitch that fits right? And so, um, right, like once you start to get good at this, you can kind of get your, get into it there, but then there's, okay, how do we get to repeatability? How do we, right? There's all these kind of second order, uh, questions, but this is the kind of foundation to earn the right to do those things.

Yeah. One, and one thing that's been super helpful for me is having you look at my stuff. You'll be like, ah, this was, this was a moment that you didn't pick up on that they were trying to talk to you about their demand. Because, you know, it's hard. Like, this is why you— thank goodness with technology you can record virtual meetings now and you can go back and look at them. And it's helpful if you've got a founder friend, a co-founder. Sometimes, you know, Rob obviously does this with a lot of folks, just somebody else to give a perspective on what they are interpreting. Because it's hard to get, uh, for me, it's hard to get out of my own context of I'm jumping to conclusions. I'm making logical leaps about what they're saying. Whereas somebody that's not 100% invested in your own business, uh, can say like, actually, I think this is what's going on as a third party that's not, you know, solely focused on, on your product.

Yeah. Yeah. It's, it's, yeah, it's the, this is the like foundation, right? The, the pull framework. And then there is execution components. Are you actually hearing, are you filling it out right? Or are you like, are you pitching some— usually what people will do the first time they try to implement this is they will fill out the pull framework and then pitch whatever they want to pitch. Yeah. And so there's a, there's muscles to be built here.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But starting with the, starting with the framework, running a process that is, I'd say like patient. That was one of the things that came out this week in the, in Founder Slack, uh, group was just like, oh, like slowing down feels uncomfortable the first time, but then you see how effective it is and, uh, it changes the, the whole tone of, of calls.

Yeah. And what winds up happening is you think you're like, okay, cool. I need to get discovery done with fast so that I can spend 20 minutes walking them through everything they need to know about our product. But it's actually, when you understand pull, the product pitch becomes maybe 90 seconds. The demo becomes maybe a minute max, if you even need to do one. And it's like, this is just hard to conceptualize for all the reasons we've talked about previously, but like, that's what good feels like.

Yeah. Anything else tactical, Rob, that you'd add for the listener? What they should do? Um, or we've covered it. Use the pull framework, fill it out in your head, follow a decision tree. Yeah. Even some, you know, print it, have it up on your, on your screen when you're on these calls.

Um, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Pre-order the book. I don't know. Uh, sweet. Don't breed raccoons.

Yeah. Oh gosh. Well, awesome. Um, I think we're gonna run up against time. Um, there's a couple mailbags we, we might hit at the start of the year. Maybe one last question, Rob, how should people be thinking about these last couple weeks or start, start of the year? Like what are you seeing from founders? Like how does sales change around now?

Yeah, so it's gonna depend on your end customer. Some, sometimes end customers totally unplug at this point in time. Other times They are at family gatherings desperately trying to not be at family gatherings. And so they're quite responsive. So, um, I've, I've kind of like kept my outreach going for my, for my startup throughout, and I have not seen any change in response rates. And my hunch is that will basically continue throughout the holidays, if not get better. Um, and so I'm continuing doing outreach, but like if mid next week I might turn it off on Christmas. I might contend like, um, there, there's this hunch that you need to like take off, take your foot off the gas over the holidays. I've seen a lot of cases in which like you can get a lot of, lot of stuff across the line over the holidays because everything else is quieted down. And so, um, I don't know, my default is never take your foot off the gas. And so I will stick with that.

Yeah. Love it. That's cool. Not what I expected to hear. Awesome. Well, Rob, one other thing is Rob has a, his next PMF Camp coming up in February. Look, we're not going to say that if you join PMF Camp, you'll go from $0 to $6 million in 7 weeks, but somebody did. So it's, you know, and attributes the success.

Attributes that to this plus a bunch of intros.

Well, we, we'll, uh, drop the links in the bio if you wanna learn more about either joining PMF Camp or, or working with Rob. Um, otherwise, Rob, Merry Christmas. Happy holidays.

Merry Christmas. Catch you after the holidays.

All right. Sounds good.

See ya.