Rob's B2B Sales Call Script (finally)

Hey Rob, good to see you, man.

How's it going? Good. How are you?

Doing great. I really enjoyed the conversation last week with Palash. Do you have any reflections on, on that kind of a week later?

Yeah, it was just really interesting to me. I, I don't know. I, I mean, you, you were there, you had bad internet, so you could, you couldn't join into, into the conversation, which would've made it a lot better. But, uh, but I think the thing that stood out to me, and I don't know how you felt about this, was just how nuanced the difference was of what he was describing as a big evolution from a virtual events and webinars platform for B2B marketers to a video content platform for B2B marketers, right? Those, if you just like squint at it, you're like, yeah, that's the same thing that it like literally the same thing, but he described it in a way that it was actually a very significant change in every part of the business and required a ton of pain and just like gnashing of teeth to make it work. And I think that is actually quite true of, like, I think we, I think we underestimate how subtle these things actually wind up being when they, when they wind up working.

Yeah, that's fascinating. And it's, and it's hard to know. I think the way you've said this in the past is you don't know if you're on your own 2-yard line or if you're on like the 2-yard line, like about to punch into the end zone. Like in, in that case, they, using that analogy, it's like Palaszczuk was on the 2-yard line about to get into the end zone, but even like you're just totally blind about where you are. And so, you know, it might've been, he was trying to convince an entire organization to change the way that they thought about serving the customer. And it was a, a big lift, a scary lift for, you know, his employees, his co-founders, probably his investors as well. And yeah, I thought that he did a particularly good job of articulating like in the moment, what is it like to wrestle with that uncertainty and to make really hard decisions as a founder. I did find myself wondering while I was listening to it if he would've had your playbook, how would he have maybe approached some of those things differently around, like he was seeing demand signal, but maybe if he would've had some of that vocabulary early on, if that would've like changed some of his tactics.

Yeah, I think by the time actually he made that decision, he did have some of the like demand thinking stuff, which is, which is good. And you know what, I'm happy to take credit for, for the acquisition. He didn't, he didn't give me credit, but I'll, I'll totally happy to, happy to take that palács. No, but, but I think that's, I think that's right. The other thing that like stuck out to me again in that, in that kind of transition that was really the like thing that made them, them really grow and eventually get acquired was there are basically infinite different words that could have been used in both situations. Like that's the hard part. It's not that like this is a subtle, it's not just that it's a subtle change, it's that there are infinite different things, sequences of words that could, that all would have sounded logical, but only one or like a small number of those actually works in practice.

Hmm.

Yeah. That's just so interesting.

Yeah. Yeah, totally. I feel like I've been bouncing lately with my business between things that sound similar, but make a huge difference for responses and whether it resonates with people and literally Say, uh, even using a sub— the thing that's been interesting lately with mine is I've been doing outreach, uh, for a campaign we're doing with PBS Nature coming up. And, uh, I took words out and that's what, like, it's literally a subset of the original words that I was using and that's what helped it click.

Um, you know, it's just, I love that so much too, cuz that's this thing that we're gonna get into this in a second that, that actually ties really, really well into today's podcast, which is that we often think more words are better because we think more words gives more opportunity to convince them that they should, whatever, they should buy our product, they should talk to us. When more words actually give them more reason, every additional word gives them another reason to object, to say no, for it not to fit, for it not to be aerodynamic. And so, um, Yeah, that is a constant thing. And it's, it's this art of shaping down, cutting down the number of words, number of slides, number of concepts, just to what is essential. And there's only one way to know what is essential.

Yeah. Yeah. For, for me in that case, I was just, you know, doom scrolling LinkedIn and somebody had done a post that, that was like, I receive, you know, something like I receive hundreds of, uh, like inbound. Here's the ones that work for me. And it wasn't actually the content that came after that. It was the reminder that I send into an inbox that is flooded with other messages. And I'm, I might get like one line basically. Like they, they're, it has to be so concise that, um, that it, It needs to not sound like a pitch.

Yeah. I remember reviewing your messages too, where you like the original one put PBS Nature at like the very end, like the coolest thing was like 4 sentences down at the very end. And it's like, dear sir or madam, I hope this message finds you. Yeah. It wasn't exactly that, but it was, it was like basically that. It's like, okay, the cool thing here is this, like, let's not put it at the very end of the message.

Yeah. Yep. Totally. And also the, you know, I made another mistake and we'll move on from this in a second, but it was like we have 3 federal agency partners. One of them really matters. The other 2 of them matter much less. And so instead of being like exhaustive, it's just like, just put the one that everybody cares about.

Right, right. It's like saying, yeah, I work with Andreessen Horowitz and the, you know, Kentucky Farm Bureau Venture Fund or whatever. Right. Like, like nobody just, just say Andreessen. Yeah.

Yeah, exactly. Well, hey, let's get into, let's get into today's, the Substack is called My B2B Sales Call Script. And if you are just like putting into the open what I think might be the most, most requested and most immediately applicable resource that you've published, like you've done a lot of big drops in the past of like, here's actually what's going on, the physics of sales, like this is what pull is, this is what demand is. What you've done here is actually publish like, if you're struggling with sales, use this script or even like if your sales are going okay, but you want to make it better and more streamlined, like here's the script and having read through the script, it's not super long, you know, it's like 3 tabs in a Google Doc. We'll link to it in the show notes. And it's also in the Substack. But it's, it like really distills if you've got questions about What do I say? How do I structure? What's the order do I go in? What are the questions I need to be asking? You just give it away. So, like, Rob, why don't you tell us a little bit about, you know, why is this on your mind? Who is this useful for? And we can go from there.

Yeah. So I am, uh, I'm honestly sick of, of reviewing sales calls done the traditional way because basically the way we currently approach sales Convinces people not to buy from us. That is the way that we traditionally approach sales. Now, I have written about different parts of this, all like in all the different Substacks. I was like, all right. And I keep seeing, by the way, I keep having people come to me saying, I think I'm implementing it. Can you look at my calls? And I'll review their calls and they're like, not quite, or they're getting it like backwards. And so it's just like, all right, this is the script that you should use for a sell. Like, there are variables where you're going to input slides or your own words, but there are not very many variables here. And if this is not working for you, then it is like, it's not that it's your sales execution. That is going wrong. It is something about who you're selling to or what you're selling or how you're describing the product, right? This is what I'm trying to do here is make your sales script not be the reason you're not selling.

And so it's for the founder who is implementing your approach, maybe not, and they're struggling to understand Do I, do I have a PMF problem? Do I have a sales execution problem? Um, or there's just a, maybe a part of their call that they're, they're having a hard time fixing. And, and like, this is the, if, if you don't have one-on-one access to Rob, like read this and it's, it's gonna be a pretty close distillation to, to the feedback that they would get.

Yeah. And like the main parts, the, the main error modes on a call are like, we have the wrong person here. We don't figure out what their pull is. Um, we don't describe our product in a way that makes any sense to them, or we describe our product— this is actually quite often— in a way that is offensive to them. Um, and then our demo is just ridiculously confusing. Uh, and then within that, in the product description part, there's also the like We try to convince them there's this big problem out there. Like, wait, it's just the entire theory and execution of calls today I have seen is, is just counterproductive. And so this is a script that is minimum viable. It works. I have seen it work in a bunch of startups. When you implement it, it, it, the, the call will feel way better. It still might not quite work for reasons that can be debugged, but they are like, it makes those reasons quite visible to you.

Yeah.

Yeah.

The way that you wrote about that early in, um, uh, early in this, uh, Substack was many startups think about sales backwards, which causes them to think about startups backwards, which makes finding product market fit virtually impossible. Can, what is, uh, can you help me with the connection between they think about, I think what, what you're just talking about, um, with they think about sales backwards that you're basically saying they think about, um, I have a product I wanna sell to the customer rather than the customer has a demand that, uh, they will look for supply to solve. Is that, am I understanding that part correctly or how would you articulate it?

Yeah, it's basically they think that I or my product causes you to buy it. Hmm. When in reality, the thing that causes a sale is you trying to accomplish something on your to-do list, but not having good enough options. If you think that you or I, if I think I am going and my product are going to convince you to buy it, what am I going to do? Well, I'm going to try to convince you, right? I'm going to try to show you how awesome our product is. I'm going to try to convince you that you have a problem. I'm going to try to write like it's, I'm going to push. And when I am pushing, I'm taking up more and more of the airtime. I am like, like trying, I'm kind of like trying to twist your arm in all of these subtle ways. And I'm, I'm separating the fact, like in my mind, I'm separating, okay, I'm building an awesome product. Now I have to get people to want it right now. I have to convince people to buy it. I'm separating product and selling. As two separate activities. So this is how you wind up building the wrong product and then being terrible at sales and not getting the feedback loop so that you can actually find product-market fit. It's a philosophy problem. It's a theory problem because it's, I believe that I and my product will convince you to buy. I believe that's the cause of a purchase.

Yeah, that's super interesting, Rob. And it, and it leads you to build a very impressive product that nobody actually like needs or wants.

And a, like, I, so I see all the time these amazing sales decks, amazing, put, put together probably by, like, I, I've, I've started kind of like working with companies from $5 to $50 million ARR and they hire, they get like these really expensive consultants to come in and like craft the vision deck, the sales deck and all this kind of stuff. And it's, 50 slides with all these different things. And the function of the sales deck in a sales call is to convince somebody who is a good fit that they shouldn't buy the product. It is, that's how it hits the buyer because it has this underlying theory that's like, what I'm gonna do is I'm basically gonna waterboard you with all of the problems that you actually don't have, why our solution is differentiated in ways that matter to you. And like, it, it just comes at it from the totally wrong angle.

I suspect, I mean, I've never hired a consultant to build a slide deck like that. I suspect that originates with, you know, the first conversation with the consultant is, tell me about your product. Tell me about why customers buy. Tell me about what you want to communicate. And, um, you know, and, and the head of sales or whoever it is, is probably leading with, You know, here's a, it's like a product-first vision of like what they are selling rather than a pull-first vision of why the customer is, you know, what they're trying to accomplish.

Yeah, I think, I think that's entirely right. It's, it's just like there's this missing theory, there's this missing, I think of it as I've, I've been working on a very long lecture that I'm gonna drop at some point on this. But the concept here, like demand and thinking about like what actually causes people to buy, just like imagine that we are all here, bear with me. We're all riding on elephants and we don't realize we're riding on elephants and the elephant's going where the elephant wants to go. But we think that we are causing, like that we are moving. We are thinking that we are, we are picking the direction and heading in that direction. And in this case, we're just like, we, We're just not seeing the elephant. It's, it's, and it's, the elephant is on its way. And, and so when you don't see the elephant, you are going to come up with a lot of strange theories and a lot of strange approaches to things, to the world, to your business, to, to your pitch, to your product.

Yeah.

That just will, don't make any sense.

Yeah.

Yeah.

The David Foster Wallace, like, kind of famous thing about how's the water between the two fishes, but that, yeah, you don't realize you're, you're in the water. You don't, you don't realize the assumptions that are like underlying the way that you're operating and where you're going. Well, let's, let's do two things real quick. You outline in this post what, what causes a purchase and the push theory versus the pull theory. I think a lot of our, our listeners will be already familiar with that, but why don't we give like the really quick download and then we'll actually jump into the, uh, into the document and maybe do a quick dive. And I highly encourage people to be pulling it up as well. But why don't we, why don't we start with, um, uh, you've already given the what, what causes a purchase. Anything you want to add, Rob, on push theory, which is the, uh, the direction the elephant is headed, to continue with that, versus the pull theory, the direction that the elephant should be headed if it were actually going to the oasis in the desert?

No, no, no, no, that's, that's not how that, that's not how the analogy works. Well, we'll hold the elephant analogy for the longer lecture, but it's, it's basically, so the difference between pull theory and push theory is that push theory assumes that I or my product cause you to buy. Therefore, what I'm sup— what everything I'm doing in sales and product building is to convince you to buy it. It's to push it to you. Right. And that is, you know, that's everything from if you have longer than a 30-second description of your product, if you have longer than a minute or two demo of your your product, right? You are showing more things. You are describing it bigger because you are trying to convince them to buy it. You are pushing. Pull theory, on the other hand, says the reason they are buying exists whether or not I exist. It exists independent of me because it is them trying to accomplish something on their to-do list. But not having good enough options. Therefore, all I need to do is show up with something that unblocks them, that unblocks them. That's all it has to do. Something small that fits, that unblocks them, and they will rip it out of my hands because they're trying to go somewhere, but they're blocked. And so the demo, the pitch, everything gets much smaller because all we're trying to do We're not convincing them of anything. They are convinced before they get there. They are trying to accomplish something and blocked, and we just show up offering something that fits.

It's crazy how, I mean, I, we've spent, you know, 8 months or whatever it is doing these podcasts and I still need to hear stuff like that. Like I, Literally while you're articulating that, I'm thinking about a meeting I have later this week and I'm like, the way I've been thinking about that meeting is how do I present my product rather than the very obvious pull that this organization is experiencing. And so if there's any other dingoes out there like me, maybe it's helpful. A quick recap on what is pull for those of us who tend to have the memory of a goldfish like me. P is for project. There's a project that the customer is trying to— or the human being is trying to accomplish in their life. U is that it's unavoidable or it's something they have to do right now. L is that there is a list of options that they have considered or that they are considering, or maybe that they're currently purchased or something like that. And then the second L is that there's limitations or that the options are lacking in some important way. Before we get into the structure of Rob's B2B sales script, anything you want to add on, on that, Rob, or just jump in?

No, let's actually, sorry, zooming out. Who is this for? This is something that you can implement if you have no customers, have no product. Because what, what this will do is this will help you figure out what they have pull for. And so it works early on, like what, what will they buy? I've had plenty of startups do that and sell and grow very fast as a result of starting with this. But as I mentioned before, this will also help you if you already have a big sales team and you, or, you know, a small sales team, whatever. If you already have sales, if you're at millions in ARR or whatever. And you're finding that your sales calls are a lot of you talking or your sales reps talking. You're finding that deals are extending, they're long, and it's not quite clear what you can do to grow a lot faster.

Yeah. And that might manifest in, like you said, you're talking too much. You're, it's taking multiple meetings and you're like, how do I, how do I shorten this? Maybe there's, um, one thing you've brought up is like, there's customers that weirdly pull very fast and you're trying to like diagnose the difference between, um, those. Anything else that would be an indication?

If you can't, if you don't know basically within the first 10 minutes of the first call, whether with 80, 90% certainty, whether someone is going to buy or not. You need this.

Yeah, that's a, that's a really good litmus test. All right, let me pull this up real fast. So, Rob, can you see, can you see that? So here's the structure of Rob's B2B sales call script. And again, this, this will be linked to in the, in the show notes and in the Substack. So I encourage you to pull it up. Rob, why don't, why don't you give us the overview of the 6 steps? Uh, real quick, and then we can maybe dive into one or two of them.

Yep, totally. So there's basically two big parts of a sales call. There's the demand part and there's the supply part. The demand part is where we figure out what their pull is. The supply part is where we offer something that fits their pull. And if that succeeds, then they pull to either buy it or for whatever the next step in the sales process. Looks like. Cool. So those are like the, the big components. What you have to do is you have to add pieces, you have to add structure around those big components so the big components work. And so what the way I structure a call is there is an intro. There's like a way you start the call because if you show up and just start saying, what are you trying to accomplish on your to-do list? They think you're interrogating them. So you need to earn the right to ask discovery questions, to learn from them. What their pull is. Once you've figured out what their pull is, then you need to— and so there's that section, which is discovery. So intro, discovery. The third section is when you transition from the demand side of the conversation to the supply side of the conversation. There needs to be some way for you to kind of say, cool. So it sounds like you're looking for something that will help you do this without this. Is that right? Okay, great. Let's jump in. Cause da da da da da, right? Like you have to kind of jump from Demand language to supply language. Then in the supply language, we have to describe what we do in a way that makes sense to them with the fewest extraneous concepts possible, because every additional concept or thing we add will confuse them and cause them to be like, huh, maybe this isn't a fit for me. And so I have two parts of the supply. Description pitch. You can think of it as the description of the product, the concept, which comes first. Then there is the, what I call the how, which can be a demo. It can be a visual, it can be a workflow diagram. It doesn't, but it's, it's basically like, what is the thing? And then how does it enable them to accomplish what they're trying to accomplish and overcome the limitations of their other options? What is the how? Give me, give me some of the depth there. So that's the supply side. And then finally, there is a transitioning out of supply into like what happens next in theory, right? Or what, what you would expect is that if they have demand and if our supply fits, then they either can buy it right away and you schedule an onboarding call or they have some more questions and want to do a deep dive into it or right. Like they're sold. They're like, yeah, this fits. This is kind of what I get. Yes, but I need to bring in somebody else, or we got to talk about pricing, or we got to do, I got to go through procurement, right? What we've covered here is basically the first call. There are some variables we can tweak, but, but by the end of this, if you've found demand fit and supply fit, they should roughly want to buy, maybe with a couple remaining questions. And then it's like basically project management from there to purchase.

Yeah, that's interesting. And, and Rob, how do we, before we maybe deep dive into, uh, intro and discovery and then, um, I think the concept and how distinction that you're pulling apart there, um, would be good for us to hit, uh, briefly. How should people use this, like use this document?

Yeah, so I would say make a copy of it. Do not try to edit the main doc. Do not request edit access from me. Some people keep doing that. It's really annoying.

Um, uh, they've got ideas, Rob.

They've got, they've got, uh, yeah, I just want to, I just want to adjust production. Um, and so, uh, yeah, make a copy of this and obviously read through it and you're going to make a couple of changes to it yourself. There are places where it's highlighted of like, hey, you should make a change here or hey, you should make a slide here. Read through it, maybe practice it with a co-founder, practice it with another person, or just ship it and, and like go through this in your next call.

Hmm. Yeah. Yeah. That's how I was thinking about it basically. Just like, I've, and I've got most of this in my head at this point, but having it up, being like, okay, do I, do I, am I ready to move from discovery into transition? Have I, uh, you know, answered the, the pull components? Um, uh, yeah. Uh, why don't we talk a little bit about intro and discovery? We've talked about, um, this kind of like magic first question a couple of times on the intro part. Why did you decide to either schedule the call or why did you accept this call? I'm sure you get a lot of invites. Anything to add on, on that one? I think that, I think your discovery question section is really good, but anything you wanna hit on, on intro here?

Yeah, on the intro. So, okay. So what that typically gets you, if you say, why'd you decide to take the call today? They will give you a lot of history and they'll say, yeah, so XYZ is happening, da da da da da, right? And that's, that's like useful. And then what I've found is if you add, oh great, that's super helpful. And then could you maybe tell me what were you hoping to get out of today's call? Like, what were you hoping we would accomplish in today's call? They will then say like, yeah, so I specifically wanted to understand your service because it— we're thinking of it versus this other. And so they'll often start to fill out the PULL framework. For you there. So I actually have started recommending, why did you schedule the call as question 1? And then, great, what were you hoping to get out of today's call as an optional, uh, second question to follow, follow that up? Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Um, let's hit, um, so you've got, uh, agenda setting, you know, what, what they want, um, talk through a couple examples of customer case studies, uh, and then next steps. Is that, is that just so that they have a sense for like where the conversation's going?

Yeah. So the structure, so the way to handle one of these calls, the beginning of the call is to basically say, hey, what are you hoping to get out of this conversation? And then to say, great. That's exactly what we're going to cover in this conversation. That's what I thought would be the agenda too. Here's what I was thinking for the agenda. Does that sound good to you? Great. Okay. What that basically means is we have agreed together that this is going, this is what the call is about. This is what's going to happen. They're going to get what they want to get out of the call. Yeah. Now that we have that, I can put that here and say, okay, we're gonna get to that. Before we get to that, that thing you want, can I ask you some questions to get a little bit more context? That is what I call earning the right to discovery. Because it's like, look, I, I earned the right to discovery because I promise you that you are gonna get out of this call what you want to get out of this call, and I'm putting that Kind of like holding that hostage for a second.

I love, I love that, Rob. The transition has always been something I felt kind of clunky at, or, um, or I find that I'm, you know, a couple minutes in, I've been asking a lot of questions and they're starting to get anxious about it. But, um, uh, which can lead them skipping or like pushing to skip important contextual elements of pull. Um, or like if you're still pushing on it, it's like a kind of, it can be kind of like an awkward back and forth, but I, I hear what you're saying on if you earn the right to it by demonstrating that you're gonna get to what they do, it's just like, help me to get to the thing that you want to talk about with this, these foundational elements.

Yeah. Yeah. Just help me. Yeah. Help me get context so that, that I can be prepared for that conversation basically.

I love it. Let's talk about the discovery flowchart. Um, which I, I found like really insightful. Um, Rob, What, what can you give us the, maybe the context and the overview of how to, how to think about this?

Yeah. So, so first what I want to do is separate in your mind two things. There's discovery and there is qualification. Qualification, you've probably heard of frameworks like BANT, MEDIC, MEDPIC. I don't know. There's probably others that I'm, that I'm forgetting now. What qualification generally does is it says like, are you buyer qualified to buy our product? Are you worth my time? Those questions are fine to add in. And those frameworks that I mentioned often have like BANT, for example, has the N is the need, right? Like what's, what's the need here? So think of what discovery is doing is Getting the need right. It's like, what is their pull? The goal of discovery is to fill out this person's pull framework. And then you can pepper in, or anywhere around it, you can pepper in qualification questions just to make sure, hey, are you actually able to buy this? Do you actually need this right now? Like what, like those kinds of questions, but don't mix up the two because if you start with just qualification questions, They're gonna feel like they're being interrogated. They're like, I don't even know what you do yet. What are we doing here? Right. And so what we're doing in the discovery section is mostly focusing on filling out the PULL framework. Now, the flowchart is, is basically like 3 or 4 lines of defense for you to fill out the PULL framework, because what I found is that there is not a guaranteed way to get them to give you the pull framework that like their pull framework in a useful way. And so ideally when you say, hey, why'd you take the call? What are you hoping to get out of it? They say something, they, you know, maybe they say, yeah, we had just tried this other tool. I saw yours. It looks simpler. Would love to chat. Right. In that case, what they've given you is the first L and maybe the second L. And then you can come back and say, okay, cool. Tell me more about that. Help me fill out the L's here. And then tell me like, okay, let's, let's fill out the P and the U. Like what? So what are you actually trying to accomplish with this? And why now? Like, what's the timeline on this? Right? And so ideally that's the case, but often they will say, I don't know, you reached out to me and then they won't give you anything particularly useful there. And so in the case where they haven't given you anything useful, I've given you multiple fallbacks, multiple fallback approaches. The first one is just to ask kind of a relatively open-ended discovery question. So you can say like, hey, as it relates to blank, what are you prioritizing? What are you focused on right now? You can ask that kind of question. You can kind of poke around there, but if you don't get anything useful there, Then you can jump to like what I recommend is having a slide, which is, okay, you've been unhelpful thus far in filling out your own Polar Framework, not explaining to me why you are here. Here's what I'm hearing from other people. What, what other CISOs are trying to accomplish, what other CTOs are trying to accomplish whenever I talk to them. Does this resonate with you or, or not? Like, tell, tell me more. Why is this relevant or not relevant to you? And you might get to the end of that and get nothing. Yeah. At that point, you can either end the call or you can do what I call like YOLO a demo, like YOLO the supply side of a call because you haven't gotten anything and just see if anything fires in their brain. So the flowchart is basically the sets, the like different tactics that you have if the previous tactic doesn't work to fill out the pull framework.

Yeah. And it's the slide that you're talking about with the, when I talk to people in your situation and your, or your position, it's literally this as simple of a slide as our listeners probably imagining. It's like there's a headline in like 3 quotes or like something like that. And how do you know? So I've had 2 experiences with that, Rob. One of them is something immediately jumps out to the person and the other one is they read it and they say like, yeah, that's, you know, these are all like, you know, in familiar. I, I like this. Sounds, uh, you know, it sounds like you really understand this industry, like whatever.

How do you—

what's the difference? Like, how do you know when you've actually found the thing that you're looking for? Like, what their pull is versus it's a, you know, it's not pull, it's just recognition or lip service or something?

Yeah, yeah. So, so on the first tab, I described the difference in what it feels like between pull and not pull.. And the difference is pull is I am trying to accomplish that right now. Hmm. Not pull is anything other than that. And so if you're hearing them say, oh wow, this is exactly what the industry needs. Wow. You really get it here. Wow. You are handsome. Right? Like whatever it is, whatever it is, that's not pull.

Well, that, that, that might be pull, Rob. You just said it's a different type.

That's a different kind of pull. Yeah. Different, different flavor of pull. Whenever you hear that, then it's like, okay, cool. I'm putting a big question mark on the pull framework and I'm actually going to go back to them and push back and say, oh, that's interesting. It doesn't actually sound like that's important to you to accomplish right now. Do I have that right? Do I have that right? Or do I— right? Like, is there something else? That is, that you are trying to accomplish right now and, and kind of are blocked with. Yeah.

Yeah. Um, why don't we, um, jump forward a little bit to, okay, here's the transition. Anything you wanna add on transition or should we get into like more the supply part? Yeah.

A really important part of the transition is to just confirm that you have their pull right. So in your mind, you've been filling out the pull framework. The pull framework is gonna dictate everything that comes after this. And if you have misinterpreted it, you are going to just pitch something and they're gonna be like, yeah, swing and miss basically.

Yeah.

Yeah. Totally swing and miss. And so I recommend that the call structure suggests, recommends, requires you to play it back to them and get their thumbs up. Thumbs down, which allows you to then transition to the, here's the supply. It sounds like you're looking for.

Yeah. And the thumbs up, is it a passive thumbs up? Is it a, does it have to be like an, oh my gosh, like, or like, what is it? What does it sound like when you're like, how do you know that you really got it?

Yes. That is what I am trying to accomplish right now. And why my current options are not good enough. That can be said shouting. That can be said weeping. That can be said whispering, but it It just has to be, I now, like that, that those are the important things.

Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Let's get into supply. Rob, I think I still struggle a little bit with the differentiating the concept and the how. Can you give us the good and the bad version, maybe the bad version and the good version of like introducing supply, starting with the concept?

Yeah. So what most people will do when they jump into the, what I call the supply side, what they don't think of it as that, they think, might think of it as the demo or whatever, is they will literally pull up the product and they will say, so here's the dashboard. Let me walk you through how this works, right? Which is putting the how first. They don't have a way to understand what the thing is yet. And so we have to start with a concept because most dashboards look pretty darn similar. And so it's like, okay, cool. This seems to be a dashboard. I don't know if I need that part to it. And so immediate objection. And most people, by the way, do not want a dashboard. Nobody has ever wanted a doubt. So you're slapping them with probably the least exciting thing. Yeah. Without first framing it for them and saying, here is what it is. Now, the concept is a mechanistic translation from the demand side to the supply side. There's basically no, there, there's almost no wiggle room for you to go off-road and say, we are the future of agentic workflows, right? No one cares. That's never like, and so what happens is first you say, cool. So what we offer is an AI workflow platform that unlike just using Claude Code or ClaudeBot or whatever, this plugs into da da da and does da da da differently. Mm-hmm. Right. Which allows you to, or, and it's just a, so from that basically 30-second description of the thing, they understand the, what it is and the bounds of it. And so that's where we go back to Turbo Pump, right? Which is, um, actually there's really funny, a YC company is literally gonna be launching using the Turbo Pump, uh, commercial structure. Really?

And so Uh, yeah, we'll, we'll link to that.

Could go well, could totally flop.

Could totally flop. It's a commercial that, uh, Rob, uh, did a teardown of a couple weeks ago. We'll, we'll put the link in the, in the notes, but go ahead, Rob.

And that, that basically, that post describes the difference between the concept and the how, right? And so the concept is them saying, this is an automatic cordless powered liquid transfer pump. I think that is actually verbatim from, from the infomercial, which I'm very excited about, which what that does is that makes you understand what the thing is. Then there's the, like, how does it fit the pull that you have? Not how does it, how is it architected? Not how do all the pieces work together? It's how does it fit your pool. So you just click the button and water transfers from point A to point B. Liquid transfers from point A to point B. Yeah.

Yeah. Fascinating. It's, um, so the, the concept is continuing the conversation. Like, um, one criticism you've had in the past is like, you know, you ask discovery questions and then you basically, you know, experience amnesia, forget all of those. You can say, that's great. Here's the product I want to pitch you. The concept is making sure you don't do that because it connects back to the pull. And then the how is narrowly defined in the context of the pull that they're trying to accomplish, how it contributes to that specific project. Am I articulating that right, Rob?

Yes. And what this does, as you're identifying, is what I'm doing here is I'm minimizing the surface area on the supply side. Which is doing a service to your potential customers, because what we typically want to do in a push world here is we typically want to explain it as a bigger thing. We typically want to describe it as a big platform. We typically wanted to explain all the theory behind the big platform, why we built it, why da da da, right? Like all of these things, then we want to show all of the capabilities of the platform. Yeah. Which again, makes sense if you think that that's what convinces people to buy, but that's, that, which is a push theory. Yeah. However, when you think, wait a second, this person's showing up just trying to secure their coding agents. So maybe I don't need to show them the integrations page. Maybe I don't need to show them all of these different pieces of it. Maybe I don't need to describe this as this massive thing. Instead, all I need to say is this is a way to secure your coding agents in one click, aligned to all the different standards, unlike da da da da da. And then what do I show them? Well, I actually wanna show them the smallest possible thing there, because if they're just trying to secure their coding agents with no real work, for them with no extra work. Well then what's that need to look like? Oh, that just needs to look like your coding agents are secure and da da da da, like it's some checkboxes or whatever. It's not, it's not clear that we need a long demo there. And so that's what I'm trying, I'm minimizing the surface area of the concept and the how, the pitch and the demo to literally just be what they want to hear and see. Because if we add any scope outside of that, that often compounds. It adds questions, it adds objections, it adds more people who need to be involved. It adds steps in the sales process. It adds minutes to the demo. It adds, and it, it like every additional thing that doesn't fit PULL reduces your close rate and breaks everything about your business. Yeah.

Yeah. And now, um, Rob, we're going to run up against time. I love that description of it. Anything you would like to add on the next step before, you know, they get in there?

No. So, so next step is an important thing. At some point, I'll probably do something on sales process design. I haven't really done too much on that. If you think that you are pushing, the next step is often, let's do a full demo with the whole team, which is a terrible idea. If instead, if they have demand and your supply fits and they believe your supply fits, then all that needs to happen after that is let's build a project plan to purchase this thing for you to purchase and implement this thing. Let's execute that plan and let's watch out for reasons why that plan might not work. And so it becomes project management after this, not, and that's the, the kind of like the right way to think about that stage.

Yeah. Love it. Well, I'll look forward to digging into that one in more detail in the future. Um, any, uh, other thoughts, Rob, on, um, like, like I mentioned, I found it highly useful, even as somebody that's super close to all of your thinking to just like go through this and think through in my sales process, like which of these am I doing?, uh, uh, like the right way? Which parts am I skipping? There were like reading through this that you've given very specific questions and prompts for people to use that I think are super helpful. Anything else you had to add on, um, you know, getting into it?

Yeah, I think like the reason you're not gonna want, not going to use this, right? Like why are people going to hear this, see this and say, yeah, that's not for me. And I'm gonna, I'm just gonna try to destroy those really quickly. One, we have a new category of product. They don't, they won't know until they see it. That's the dumbest thing on earth, right? That's the dumbest quote ever. The category is on the supply side. They still have to have demand. And if you're like, oh, they're going to want it when they see it, that's basically saying my product is gonna convince them to buy, which good luck. Talk to me in 6 months. Second is like, stuff kind of works now, right? We've got maybe a 15% close rate. Yeah. Sales cycles are 3 to 6 months, but they're pretty big contract sizes. Stuff kind of works now. What I would suggest is looking through your calls. I just did this with a company, uh, uh, where looking through your, your calls where you won and where you lost. And when you look at the calls where you won, Fill out the PULL framework, watching the call over again. And what you'll realize often is that the majority of things that you talked about or did in the call had nothing to do with their PULL. They bought despite your sales pitch and process. Give that a try and report back. And so those are the two main reasons I see. People will not implement this and still, and like, those are the people who especially need to implement this.

Yeah. And when, uh, when Rob, do founders work with you or heads of sales or whoever, whoever it might be, like when, when is that the right option?

So some people reach out when they're like trying to implement this, trying to figure this out themselves. Right. And it's like, hey, yeah, I'd just like help putting this into place. Maybe early stage, maybe whatever. Or people reach out as they're implementing it and they're like, hey, I keep running into this objection, or I keep, right, like the light leaves their eyes around this moment in the call. What's going on here? And they kind of bring those calls to me and I can very quickly break what is, is, is is break down what's going wrong and fix it from there and ship a new version.

Yeah. And that, and that could be early stage startups or it could be, as you mentioned, you know, folks that have millions in ARR and they're trying to shorten sales cycles or something like that.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Or it's like, hey, I, you know, I want you to, I, I've even had people say, hey, come, we'll fly you out, come train my sales team in how to see, see pull in sales calls and how to to like respond based on poll.

Yeah, that's cool. That's cool. Um, well, Rob, why don't we, why don't we wrap? Any, anything else on your mind?

Be like, get ready. Cause I am, I am working on a, a big, big lecture that I think, uh, it's gonna be sick. So just prepare yourself.

Well, if our, if our listener made it this far, they're, they're not gonna—

I also had two, I had two people reach out this week claiming to be our listener. And so I, I have gone back and I think one of them is lying. And so I have to go figure out who it is.

Otherwise that 100% audience growth. All right. Well, hey, cool. Thanks, Rob. We'll catch you next week and see everybody.