The 3 sales pathologies (Helpful, Noble, Smart)

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

Good. We're here.

That we are. What's going on in life? How's the bootcamp coming?

Oh, it's good. It's good. Getting a lot of really good feedback on it. We have adjusted a lot of the content. Basically each time I run it, I kind of do a refresh on the materials. 'Cause my goal is not just for people to be like, oh yeah, this is helpful. My goal is for people to implement, like, implement it basically immediately, see the world differently, and just start seeing results. And I think we are, I don't know, I always feel like I'm getting closer and, and the slope is just extreme to, to get there. But I, I don't know, I think it's awesome. And I've got a lot of people in it who are like, you know, they, they've gone through every startup class at HBS and Stanford and whatever, and they're like, wow, This is, this would have been more useful than all of those combined, which is awesome to hear. It's still, it's just still not perfect and it never will be, but it's, it's nice to have that as the goal.

If anybody's curious what it's, or if our listener is curious, uh, what it's like to work with Rob, it's kind of like a border collie, uh, when it sees a tennis ball, it, and it just like obsesses over it, just like it literally, it only stares at the tennis ball and the tennis ball moves and its entire body moves. That's like you with designing experiences for founders a little bit, watching you. And so when you talk like, I think this is like, this is probably version 10 or something like that, or rep, rep 10. And they're, they're not, I, I think you're narrowing in on like the right, right formula, but everyone does change, uh, a little bit, but glad to hear it's, Glad to hear it's going well. Rob, I think we have a, we have a really fun conversation to tee up today. The post is called Helpful, Noble, Smart... and Poor: Common Sales Pathologies for Nice Founders, which this one, yeah, you frequently write things that I'm like, oh man, this is going to hurt. And when I read that title, I was like, we're about to enter like an emotional pain cave and it of, of self-reflection. Um, what's— let's start off with like, what's on your mind? What's been going on that led to, led to this one?

Yeah. So, so this has been kind of brewing for a while since we've started talking about the physics of sales and, and getting to like the operating philosophy concept of just like, we, in our minds, we have this sense of how the world works and that, uh, kind of like generates how we, what we do and how we act in any given moment. And so I was talking to an HBS friend who's a consultant. I'm not going to name drop him here because he's going to be so pissed. But I was talking to him and he was explaining to me his sales process. And I was like, that's not right. That's not right at all. And it was geared towards being helpful. And you'd have a conversation with somebody who would come inbound. He would be helpful and he'd have like a 10 to 20% close rate. On that, on somebody who came inbound. And so I was just like thinking about it. I was like, dude, no, you need to like stop doing what you're doing. Think about it this way. And then I just kept like processing in my mind, why do we, I've done the same thing where I try to come across as helpful and it doesn't work. It doesn't convert. You feel good afterwards temporarily. And then you feel like garbage later on when it, when, when you get ghosted. And so I was just kind of like processing why, what the heck is going on in our minds that is causing us to try to be helpful, to try to say we're changing the world, to try to seem smart in these, in these conversations. And so, yeah, that's, that's where this came from. And I figured, I figured it would trigger you.

Yeah. Yeah. As like the, the principal person that this is designed for, for probably the noble and occasionally the helpful one. Definitely not the smart one, but, or actually I do think probably consult— we'll get into this later. I think consultants are probably frequently in the SMART pathology. But let's talk first about— so you talk about sales pathologies. Can we define that for a second? How should— you have 3 pathologies we'll get into: the helpful pathology, the noble pathology, and the SMART pathology. What is a pathology? Like, how should we interpret that?

Yeah, I figured I should have— I like, I had an item on my to-do list to research what pathology means. I actually, I think I know what it means.

It's, it's kind of like, uh, so pathology could be like a disease, like frequently in a, like a medical context. Um, but I, I also, I was like, hey ChatGPT, like, like what, what is Rob thinking? Um, in this, but anyways, what maybe maybe not zeroing in on the word pathology, but what do you, what, how should we think about these 3 categories?

Yeah. So, so I would think of them as basically philosophies that we act on that are counterproductive to us that are, that are, you know, they cause us to do bad things while thinking we're doing good things.

Yeah. Yeah. I, I think about it as Or when I was reading through it and trying to wrap my brain around them, I was like, it's kind of like your default, the most fun, your favorite distraction from demand or from like actually understanding and serving the customer. It's like the thing that you go to, which is, you know, you talk— we talked in our last conversation about direct and indirect routes. These are the end— it's the indirect route that you default to in order to sell rather than the direct route that actually serves the customer.

Yeah. Yeah. I think that's right. I think it's basically these are things that are happening in our brains that are distracting us from focusing on demand while also thinking we're doing the right thing.

Yeah, totally. Totally. Let's— we're going to go deep into each of these, but let's start out real quick. Just give the listener a chance to say, like, are you— identify if they're helpful, if they're noble, if they're smart, if any of these resonate. What's like rapid fire? What is, how would you characterize a helpful, the helpful pathology?

Yeah. Helpful is just if someone shows up to a sales call and you, in your mind, you're thinking, okay, I'm going to prove that I can add value here. I can prove that I can solve a problem for them here.

That's helpful. How about, let's do SMART next. What is, what is the SMART?

Uh, smart is I am going to basically guess what they're going to say next, and I'm going to try to not look stupid. Yeah.

Yeah. Smart and impressive maybe, uh, as, as well. Um, how about noble?

Noble is I am going to start with our why and our mission. And try to get them to buy into that because if they buy into that, then they will buy.

Yeah, totally. All right, perfect. And hopefully one or more of those sound interesting and it's not, you know, you start this off with, or the subtitle is Common Sales Pathologies for Nice Founders. I agree with that, with the exception that the smart, the smart founder in this case doesn't, it's not a one-to-one overlap or it's not 100% of smart founders are also nice founder. So it can also be like, yeah, you can be like cutthroat, but you're just doing— you're saying the wrong things. Like your approach is actually wrong. But let me— let— I'm actually going to— I'm going to start here with something you write in the intro that, that resonated with me as well. Founders tend to come to me— talking about you— founders tend to come to me with sales calls that feel good, productive, promising, yet For some weird reason, they have abysmal close rates. So this is similar to the, the, uh, HBS peer of yours. Lots of ghosting, slow sales cycles, uh, and they're not sure what's going on. Is it a problem with the product, the pitch? Am I weirdly bad at sales? I really liked that last one because the default is just like, I'm not good at this. Um, rather than I misunderstand what's going on in the, in the conversation.

Yeah. Yeah, I think, I think that's, um, it's really interesting when people come to me, they generally think their sales calls are okay, but you know, their tip, the typical thing that they will self-diagnose is we're having good calls. They're going well, but urgency isn't there. And it feels like that is right because you'll have a call where you exchange words, and like there are smiles and there are nods and there are oohs and ahs and, uh, you know, like whatever. And then the person disappears. And so you'll come away from that and thinking, okay, I just must not be good at sales. And specifically I need to create urgency. And it's like, it's like, that's a total misdiagnosis. When I watch the calls, they're just They are polite train wrecks, usually polite train wrecks.

All right. We're gonna add that. We're gonna add that one to my favorite list, which includes would be weird if, but polite train wrecks. Gosh, that kind of actually hurts my soul a little bit. Anything else you wanna add, Rob, before we jump into the helpful pathology in greater detail?

No, what I would say is if you're a founder listening to this, what I would be trying to do is say, okay, is this what's going on in my brain? And therefore, is this causing what I am experiencing in the sales process right now? And usually if you just change your mind slightly on this, like all these things just go away, but sometimes you need, you know, somebody, me, a friend to like look at your sales calls and say, listen, what are you doing? Right? Like the, you're making nice words and it seems like a nice conversation, but you're missing the whole point here.

Yeah. Let's, let's talk about what's at stake. Uh, you, you DM'd me about, uh, an example of a founder before we jump into the individual ones, but what, what happens when you go from being stuck in one of these pathologies to being like demand-oriented or to—

Yeah, it is. So, so these pathologies basically make it weird if somebody does. They, they must have such intense demand and put up with your nonsense where you're basically wasting 90 to 95% of the time of a conversation.

Yeah.

They must have such intense demand that they're like, cool, we just went on a very like, but I actually need help. Desperately right now. And you are the only one who seems to be able to do this. So I'm just going to grin and bear it for however long it takes because, right, like you, I need help so much. And so those are the only people who buy in this situation when any of these are true. When this, like when you actually, uh, kind of get rid of these pathologies and focus on demand, we've seen like a friend went, uh, I mentioned earlier, he was 10, 20%. We just changed his approach to a sales call. They shrunk in terms of time. They shrunk in terms of effort and his sales and his conversion rate went to like 50% or higher. Last I checked with him where it's, it's, it's just little tweaks in your mind specifically on the helpful pathology, especially, but across all of them where it's just like, these are all causing so much self-inflicted damage. You would be, you would be lucky to find product market fit if you, if you were operating in any of these. Yeah.

And it's like the, the customer that, uh, you described that has that intense demand, it's even possible for them to totally miss that you address that by taking the, the wrong approach to this. I know I have, I am super guilty of that, having in retrospect taken the noble pathology into a bunch of conversations where I think I just, I think they just didn't understand. Like they, they like their brain turns off in the first 3 minutes. But let's, let's get into the helpful pathology. So we, you, I'll read something here that's from yours and then I want to hit a couple things with each of these. Like let's make sure that we make it clear what it is, you know, how, how these founders behave when they have that pathology and get an example of it. And then like, what should you do? So the result— you write this— the result is a sales call that feels productive to the seller and maybe even to the potential customer, but it fundamentally misunderstands the purpose of the conversation. They need help understanding the project on their to-do list or help evaluating you versus other options. Instead of that, we spend the call proving that we are helpful. When we do this, we're providing an answer to a question they didn't ask and they probably weren't ever going to ask. I think, I think the key for this one to me, get stepping out of reading to you, uh, reading from your, your work. Um, we spend the call proving that we are helpful. What I think that's like the essence of this.

Yes.

What does it look like to prove when we, when we try to prove that we're helpful?

Yeah. So I used to do this where I would basically founders would reach out to me. Mm-hmm. And, uh, they'd say, hey, we want to get you as an advisor. Can we talk? And what I would do is I'd get on the call. And I'd say, okay, cool. You want, you want, you maybe want me as an advisor. Let me do this. If I help you make a ton of progress on your business in the time we have together now, you're going to work with me. Like that's what was going on in my brain. And so I was like, all right, 15 minutes. I'm going to fix your business right now. Right. And it's like, if I can prove that much value to them, they'd be crazy not to work with me. And That seems right until you realize they scheduled a call with me for a specific reason that is in their heads. And it is probably not to assess if I am going to be valuable or not. They've probably already figured that out cuz they've, so they have questions that they are trying to answer and I should just say, what questions are you trying to answer? And then answer them instead of designing a sales call, sales process around, I don't know, me proving that I'm valuable and helpful. And, and this is just my example, but this is basically what I've seen in almost every founder's sales call where it's like, hey, if I can help you on some vector, if I can prove that I'm helpful, in some way, shape, or form, whether it's just giving you advice on your deployment process, giving you advice in this, this realm, then you're going to say, wow, they're helpful. I'm going to work with them. And it just misunderstands, like that misunderstands the entire purpose of the call, whether it's inbound or outbound. It's like there's something on their mind. They're trying to make progress on something. They have some questions in their head. We just, all we have to do is show up and say, hey, What are you hoping to get out of this conversation? And design around that versus coming in and saying, all right, I know what you need, right? Without even asking you, here's what we're going to do.

Yeah. Yeah. And it feels these, I think you end up doing a lot of free work, which makes it 10x more infuriating when you get ghosted because when I don't, Rob, does this fall into it? I, one time I did like a, like I planned a workshop for, for like an organization. I was like, we're going to— I'm going to involve them in the process. You know, we did— there was like a Miro board that I set up. We had a brainstorming session. I sent materials in advance, and this was all leading up to like the end I had hoped. Yeah, well, we'll just cut to the chase. Did not happen. I hoped it was like, okay, if we co-design this together, that will lead to the, you know, I do project-based work. It will lead to like a sale that's a project and they, they basically just said, hey, thanks. And then yeah, we don't, you know, nothing ever came of it. It was just like, is that, is that the helpful pathology at work?

Yeah. Oh, there's so, there's so much that's like that where it's, where you, so in their mind, they're taking a call for a reason. They have a question, right? It could be, hey, we're trying to assess if this is the right marketing approach given our target audience. And you're like, okay, cool. I'm just, just shut up. You stop talking. Daddy's gonna walk us through here a workshop.

Including homework for them to do.

Yeah, exactly. They're like, they're like, they're like 2 hours into a, like a Bain and Company workshop saying, what the, like, Yeah. I feel like I'm doing work. Like, this is kind of useful, but what the heck is going on? We kind of lost the way somewhere here.

Yeah. What are some other examples of, uh, like the helpful pathology that you've seen? Like other things that, you know, you see specific founders do?

It's just like, it's, it's all things of, of the agenda is we have— is designed by us. If we design the agenda, it's going to be wrong. And it's, and it's the agenda is usually with this underlying hypothesis that if I prove value, yeah, then, um, then you're going to want to work with me and I need to make, like, I, I need to convince you, I need to do all this kind of stuff and it's just totally irrelevant. And so, yeah, it's like workshops. Um, you know, like actually most steps in the sales process, um, are unnecessary. Like we will call to, for example, is usually the title of it is like a deep dive demo. Now nobody has ever wanted a deep dive demo of anything, but because somebody, some at some point said call to was a demo call, we're like, all right, I'm gonna give you more than you could have ever asked for and prove everything to you. Right. And I'm gonna show you everything you should know. And, and in doing that, I'm going to prove how much value we can create for your organization because it's going to click. And what typically happens is we're like, uh, I'm trying to do this thing and I have this specific question.

Yeah.

Which could have been answered in 30 seconds.

Yeah. Yeah. That's— I hadn't made that connection. I really liked that. Like back to your, most of your like sales decks are way too complex. I know my process is like write the sales deck and then eliminate half of it. Just like extract everything that's like, I want to say this because I think it's important to say versus I need to just shut up and get out of the way. And how do I, if I'm going to use materials, how do I use materials that help extract like information about the project that they're trying to accomplish?

Yeah, there's another, which is kind of between helpful and smart. Um, which is the, uh, sponsored this absolute train wreck. And it's, it's, um, they show up, they like ask a few questions. They're like, all right, cool. Shut up. I know what you need here. And they pull up a presentation that has like 40 slides. And it's like, did you know that since 1994, da da da, like has been going on? And person's like, what the heck is going on? They go through like a 20-minute like interesting, probably interesting lecture of sort. And they come out the other side and they're like, uh, cool. That was weird. I have this specific question.

Yeah. It's, it's confused like that on that one. And I think this is actually kind of a nice transition into the, um, into the smart pathology. Um, but it's like you, I went through all these sales calls where I was, you know, focused on like industry statistics and, you know, like you bring in like outside case studies, like, and I kept having these calls where I was like, none of this is clicking and I don't really understand why. And I think that's it. Like, it just totally missed the point that no, like nobody buys based on an industry, like, you know, report. They buy based on a specific thing they're trying to accomplish.

Yeah. Yeah. And any time you spend on other stuff is opportuni— it's like at best opportunity cost, but usually it is actively convincing them not to buy.

Yeah. Oh, that's interesting. Can you give 3 more or 2 more sentences on that actively convincing them not to buy?

Yeah. Like, um, so let's say I come to you and I'm like, hey, I am trying to expand my reach to young families. For our tourism board and da da da da. And, uh, and that's what's on my mind. But what I really want to know is I actually have some specific questions about the process of producing media with you. That's where I enter the conversation. And then you come in and say, did you know that city? Like, you just start with that. What's happening in my mind is like, it's like, okay, this is interesting, but I'm frustrated because you're not like, I can't articulate why I'm increasingly frustrated, but what's underneath it is, yeah, I'm, I have a simple question that I want to get answered and I'm getting waterboarded by help that I don't want.

Yeah. Yeah. That's a great, that, um, it's a If you think about when you've been sold to, you'll start to see these on the other side of the table as well. And when somebody comes in to a call with you about a product you're interested in and they immediately lead with this stuff, you'll start to recognize it. Okay. I don't know if that makes me a better or worse customer, but it does make me more self-reflective. Let's get into the, the SMART pathology. Reading like one quick thing and then Robert, I'll ask you to define it and add color and depth. We often feel like we need to seem smart on sales calls. We need to demonstrate that we're experts or more precisely, and I like the inverse here, more precisely avoid any indication that we might not be experts. Putting my like recovering consultant hat on, like that's like what you were trained, we were trained to just not look stupid. And so, you know, you would do all these like inventive things to avoid that. But anyways, Rob, tell us more about the, the smart, uh, or help us understand the SMART pathology.

Yeah. So like what, what it basically leads to is us doing a lot of independent processing and connecting dots that shouldn't be connected so that we make like 4 logical leaps in a conversation. And like, basically we're, we're, we're doing autocomplete for them. And our autocomplete is wrong. And so as a result of that, it just, the conversation just feels weird to them. And so like an example of that is they're gonna ask a spec— this is like, I see this most often in Q&A, um, where they're like, so what kinds of systems do you integrate with? And you take that question and you're like, okay, here's what they're really asking. They're really asking these 14 additional questions. And so what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna just run through all all of the questions they, they probably maybe were thinking and all the ones they might not have known they should have asked. And then I'm gonna spin it back on them and like, I don't know it. And then 4 minutes later they're like, all right, I had 3 other questions, but clearly I'm not getting to any of those. And this didn't even answer the question I had, which I couldn't articulate well. And so, and so what, what's happening is In our desire to seem like an expert, we're just avoiding asking stupid questions. And stupid questions are the, like, foundation of figuring out, like, a sale. Like, it's, it's, why did you take the call? What are you hoping to get out of it? That question, if you, like, if, if you just force yourself to ask that question at the beginning of a sales call, you're going to feel like an idiot. Asking that the first time. Because it's like, well, of course I know why they took this conversation. And then they're going to say something where they're, where it's like not what you expected. And then it's going to lead to an entirely different conversation. You're like, okay, cool. I get it now. They show up with a variety of different contexts, goals for the conversation, yada, yada, yada. And I should just design around that. And so asking the stupid question up front. It, it is a way to seem stupid in the moment and then seem smart when the contract gets signed. And everything else we're doing is we're trying to seem smart in the moment and we look stupid weeks later when they've ghosted. And so it's, it's there. It's when they ask a question like, what systems do you integrate with? It's flipping back a stupid question to them and saying, uh, why, why is that question relevant? Like, tell me more.

Yeah. Yeah. Uh, diagnosing this one, um, in, in me, it's like, if I ever feel excited that I have a page that I could flip to when they say something, it's like, that's, that's the SMART pathology at work. It's like, oh yeah, I'm like ready for this thing. Like, here we go. Um, I, I, let's spend some more time on asking the stupid, uh, questions and you write in the, in the blog, which I encourage people to, to to check out about a founder that actually just tells about the successful founder that asks stupid questions. Yeah, give us that story.

Yeah, it's just, there are some people that in your mind are like, okay, this person is like so good at sales and I just wanna watch their call sometime and just like see how the masters do it. And I was just struck by the, the very basic questions they asked. And they, my, my sense was that it was so effective, not because they were like, because basically they did no independent processing themselves. They took no extra steps on their own. And so I was like, oh, why'd you take the call today? What were you hoping to get out of it? And they got an answer and it's like, oh, interesting. Let me play that back to you. And make sure I understand it. Right. And it's just like very simple step by step at each way. And I realized what it's doing is it's making the customer feel heard where us being smart and trying to like, like kind of corner them, right? Essentially it's like, oh, I got you, got you on this one, is making them feel stupid.

Yeah. And it probably shifts. Is this true, Rob? It shifts the amount of time you're talking versus them talking. Like, I feel like if you take the SMART pathology, you run the risk of spending 80% saying 80% of the words, whereas the stupid questions, people will frequently open up, like, really, like, really let you into their, their business, their priorities. And because they've got— if it's true demand, like, they have something that they're actively trying to solve. That it's like finally somebody that might have the solution to this thing.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And I've seen it go both ways where like, you know, like basically what you're doing in the background as they're talking, you can let them talk for a while, but you're like trying to formulate the perfect next question versus just playing back to them what you heard. And the next question to them feels like a non sequitur because you've just gone through a like massive list of logical things in your brain that don't actually reflect their reality.

Yeah. One thing, another thing I want to hit on this one, I like the, I like the takeaways of like zero logical leaps, asking stupid questions. You talk about just, this is maybe a diagnostic that people can run that you include. I'm going to read here again that the end of the smart pathology winds up in the same cul-de-sac as the helpful pathology. It feels like we managed the call well, and yet something in the call caused them to ghost us. Usually, usually a combination of— and this is the list— we had the wrong agenda, we didn't figure out what their pull was, we pitched, we simply pitched pull we thought they had, we answered one of their questions the wrong way. Like that, if it's like the nuance in some of this, we, we showed them something in our demo that confused them. Uh, like those kinds of things. Uh, the second one has the word pull in it, but they tend to be, if those sound, is the right way to think about this, Rob, if those sound like familiar refrains on confusing ghosts, then you might be like, this might be the thing you're doing.

Yeah. What I would say is it's actually often hard for you to see this in your own calls.

Hmm.

And so again, What I've found is that most of us will misdiagnose what's actually happening in a call. It will feel like it goes well. It feels like we nailed their questions and then they just disappear. 'Cause they're not gonna say on a, they're not gonna like raise their hand and say, uh, excuse me, Rob, shut the f— like, shh, shut your mouth. This is the stupidest thing I've ever heard. That's not what happens when it's a bad call. What happens when it's a bad call is it feels like a good call. Yeah. And so these are the underlying things that are actually happening. And you can tell when you, you like give an answer to a question, for example, and you see them just kind of like say, okay, I think I get that. And it's like in the background, what's going unsaid is that is totally not what I asked, but I'm too polite. I'm going to be too polite and like not double-click into that because there's 7 minutes left on this call and I'm just going to really, like, I'm just going to cut my losses.

Yeah. Yeah. And not, not redirect, like their job is not to redirect you and help you like have a good, good sales call. Um, if this is, uh, what should the smart founder or the smart pathology founder, how do they course correct?

Yeah, no, like Be curious about what their pull is. Ask stupid questions and like no logical leaps.

And probably like have a friend or like get, get another founder to watch your calls after, you know, with this context.

Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Like it's, it's kind of hard to diagnose this in yourself, but watch your own call and like pay attention to the facial reactions of your potential customers. Cause those will often, they'll like, the mask will slip. And when the mask slips, you can see that there's some rage underneath there, some frustration or something underneath there of like, okay, we need to, like, we need to circle back and see what caused that. And it's usually, you know, I, you know, I tried to get 10 steps ahead of them and they were confused.

Yeah. Yeah. All right. Let's jump into the noble pathology. Let me— I'm going to, I'm going to read here and then Rob asked for color from you. The noble pathology believes that potential customers should buy from us because we're on a noble mission. We're good people. We start with why we're solving a global crisis, etc. When we do this, we turn a sales call into a gosh, It just hurts. When we do this, we turn a sales call into a weird moralizing lecture. Even if customers agree with our why, our why is totally irrelevant to what's on their to-do list. Rob, what more do you want to add on this one?

This one is, this one is the one that I've realized pisses me off the most. That this is a, yeah, this one, what this represents is something I hate in myself. Honestly, it's like, I hate, like, I hate this part of me and I hate that this has been, this is something that we are told to do or that we are, that we think is the way that the world works. And so, um, whenever I find myself doing this, I just like have to go and I don't know, like lick sandpaper or something to put myself in timeout. It's just, it's the worst thing ever. It's, it's this, this sense that we are the main characters in this, this noble like path that we are on. You should be, you know, you should vibe with our mission. You should bow to us, right? And we're not saying those words literally, but that's what's actually happening here.

Yeah. And what is— so there's some— I think with, with yours, the noble mission was founders are mistaught, misled, wasting time, frustrated. There's low productivity, like there's so much potential that's untapped because we misunderstand demand. You know, with, with mine, we produce children's and family media and it's like families deserve media that's, that's safe, that's educational, that expands the world. Um, what about founders who are like, do you see this in, in other sectors where it's not necessarily like a, you know, social, uh, socially beneficial enterprise or something like that?

Yeah. So this is like super common in like sustainability startups. You watch those calls and it's kind of like you're at a sermon in like a, in, in a church and it's like, yeah, it's like, cool. Keep that in, like, keep that, that's, there's a place for that and it's not here. Um, but it's also like, um, it's also common in just like normal startups things. Like I, like what I'd like to do first is I'd like to tell you about why we're building this company.

Yeah. It's like, what's behind that?

I mean, probably book Start With Why, probably, probably the sense I think actually that we are, uncomfortable with the idea of sales. We are uncomfortable with it. And so we think that they, that by, by saying that we are good people and showing that we are good people, good things should happen to us. They should want to work with us. Yeah. And I think that's what's underneath it. And I think that's kind of when I do it, whenever I've, I've done this in the past, where it's like, Yeah, the reason, right? Like, you know, when people are like, why, wait, why should I kind of like work with you versus XYZ? Right? Like, as an advisor, it's like, well, I'm working on the physics of startups. Like, I actually care about this stuff. It's like, nobody cares about that. I'm just effective, right? Like, I'm a founder, I've been effective, and I've worked in your situation like a bunch of times versus like, hey, I'm gonna, let me just talk to you about why the world is broken and how I'm personally fixing it. Like, that's just, that's split. A ridiculous infusion of ego into the, into the conversation where it's not necessarily and not helpful.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You, you personally, like we, I, you gave me feedback on a presentation last week. I think that was like, your first page is wrong. Cut out, like you're, you're, you've lost them within 5 minutes. And it's because, and my, my calls, they felt like they were slow. Like it felt like I was slow to get into it. Even if it's like one page that's on the mission, like in this case, it was like 3 minutes that was just dead space. And, and then, and leading with the mission actually, I think, confused the customer because it distracted from the value proposition for their specific job. And it just, you know, it led in a way that, that turned a sales call into not a sales call, actually, in a, you know, in an odd way.

Yeah, because you were leading, if I remember right, like you were leading with like, here's our impact, right? Here's, here's our impact. And, and people are going to be like, and that, and that time they're going to be like, okay, cool. This is not about me. This is about you.

Yeah.

This is about the things that you are, the good things that you were having happen in the world. I'm going to lean back and listen because apparently this is a lecture and like a seminar on Ed or a sermon. Right. And so, yeah, I mean, I think like I haven't read the book Start With Why because I, I like, I don't want to suffer that much, but I, my sense is that this, this is at the root of it. It's like, it's like, it's all about us.

Yeah. Yeah.

And so it's, it's just like nonsense. It's about what customers are trying to achieve. Anything outside of that. That is like our ego playing into it is just, it's like not going to be effective. That's like the first thing. It's not going to be effective.

Mm.

Because it's not about what they are trying to achieve.

Mm.

Also, it's insufferable.

Yeah.

And that's a separate problem that I have with it. It's, it's annoying. It's moralizing. It's like, it, it's, it's just intellectually offensive. Yeah.

And it's, it, in my case, like maybe this is me just trying to navigate or avoid like it as an existential crisis. Like it could be the reason you get up in the morning, like, you know, building, building your business around reducing carbon emissions or, you know, in our case, like producing family media, whatever it is that you're trying to solve, making software that makes people's jobs easier, makes them better people. Like these are things that can, that you can bring that can help push you and motivate you, but it's not the right place for that is not to like lecture your potential customer.

Yeah. They, what, what these things do is they enable you to serve them better in the things they are trying to accomplish. A sales call needs to be designed around what are they trying to accomplish and what do they want to do with the time you have together? It is that simple. Anything that is outside that realm is nonsense. It is counterproductive. And so the structure of a sales call is, why did you take the call and what are you hoping to get out of it? Okay, cool. Let's generate an agenda based on that. And I probably need to understand your pull and describe my offering, my product, my service in a way that humbly but perfectly fits Pol. And that's it. And then we see what happens. And if they rip it out of our hands, great. Awesome. If not, then we can have a stupid set of questions for them where it's like, huh, that's interesting. Like, it sounded like you're trying to accomplish this. Maybe something I said doesn't fit. What's going on here?, and you can actually start to kind of course correct and you have calls that also feel good, but you get to ground truth in them versus what's happening when you have these 3 pathologies, one or one, one of 3 pathologies or all of them in your heads, that's just gonna prevent you from figuring anything out.

Yeah. Yeah. I, I love it, Rob. I find this super helpful in reflecting. I've actually, I've got a call in, in 13 minutes. And it's with a Central American tourism board that I'm thinking of. How do I, how do I apply? How can I like further refine my, uh, my message? Let's do that.

Let's do that. Okay. So the first part of your call, the first thing you should say is not like, hey, how's the weather in Costa Rica or wherever, uh, Colombia? Uh, uh, it's like, hey, thanks so much for taking the time. I'm sure you're busy. Uh, what, why'd you take the call and what are you hoping to get out of it today? And see from there. And then based on what they say, they might say, yeah, it seems like you are working on something really interesting that could be relevant to us. We'd like to learn more. Okay, great. Do you mind if I ask you a few questions to get to know what you're trying to achieve a little bit better? And then you just go and ask questions to figure out what the project is on their to-do list. Why this versus all the others? What options have they tried? What are they considering? And why aren't those good enough? Okay. Those are the poll questions and say, okay, great. Based on that, it sounds like you're looking for a way to reach families across this geographic for a price point that is lower than what you've seen from your other options. Am I hearing you right there? Okay. Based on that, we offer a way to get in touch with families for a lower price point than traditional things. That is the right kind of fan, perhaps the right kind of family for your demographic. I'm gonna pause there. Does that seem relevant to you?

Right.

And that's the structure of the conversation. Anything more than that is just additional details that they are going to double-click on after that.

Yeah. I love it. Rob, would you, would you introduce materials like just tactically? That sounds like a conversation you could entirely have without slides, without anything? Like, when do you introduce them?

Yeah, I would, I would basically introduce them as supporting actors as needed in a conversation. If you're, so if you're like, what are you trying to prioritize? If they're like, I don't even know what you're talking about. Like say, okay, cool. Here, when I talk to other people in your situation, they're trying to prioritize these kinds of things. You show a slide with like a list. Of potential priorities and like, is this what you're trying? Is anything on here ringing a bell?

Right.

It's kind of like I increasingly use it as on the demand side of a call as the break glass in case of emergency thing where it's not, it's not, I'm showing up and presenting to them because then they lean back. It's like, I'm going to try to have a conversation first and then I'm going to show a project slide or I'm going to show an options slide based on where we are in the conversation to try to solicit or elicit some like clarity from them on what exactly is on their to-do list. And then when on the supply side, when I'm describing what we do, I like to have one slide that I show that just explains it and gives a shape to it so that it's not just my words. They can kind of understand as I talk in very simple terms. It's just like, this is what it is and how it fits into your world.

Yeah. Yeah. Super helpful for me. Um, uh, hope maybe, maybe for others. I actually think some of those are, are broadly, uh, applicable on, uh, you know, I like the break, break glass in case of demand approach to materials and like just having a real conversation with a, with a human being on the other side that wants to be heard and understood.

My mind has, by the way, changed on this. I used to say, hey, let's have a conversation around the slides. Let's use, let's both, let's have it feel like we're both on the same side of the table looking at things and talking about them. I've just found that like by default, when I, when I tell founders to do that and when they, when they try to implement it, they just go straight to presentation mode and it's not a conversation. And so I've kind of, so I still use them in mine, but I no longer recommend them as like the first thing to do. I recommend them as a kind of like, you know, as a kind of later resort type thing.

Yeah. Love it. Rob, um, I think we're gonna run up against time here in a moment. Any, any other things on your mind? Any, I, I feel like we've kind of intermingled, uh, like practical steps that founders can take as a result of this. Anything you'd wrap up with, uh, for like, go, go do this founder XYZ.

Just like, watch one of your own sales calls and ask yourself, why are you doing the things you are doing in it? Like what's really underneath, what are you trying to do? And what does that say about your view of the world and sales? And if you just watch one of your calls and are uncomfortably honest with yourself about it, and then say, okay, This is how I'm currently acting. This is how I'm currently acting. This is what I currently believe based on how I'm acting. This is what I actually believe. How would I change my approach to these sales calls? You're, you're basically, you're going to solve your, your stuff through that.

Yeah. And if, if I can jump in with a quick pitch, if it, as Rob has mentioned a couple of times, it's helpful to get an outside perspective. Rob's watched a couple hundred thousands maybe of, of like sales calls, like a bunch of 'em. And so, uh, you know, if you're looking for, uh, for another set of eyes, uh, that's something Rob does. We'll, we'll put the information in the, in the description. Yeah.

I am actually just book— starting to book out for January. It is currently November. So, uh, reach out if you just shoot me an email or whatever.

Yeah. Perfect. Um, all right, Rob. Anything else? Bills playing this weekend?

They didn't play last weekend. They got destroyed by the Dolphins. And yeah, God, I hate myself.

On, on good news, the, uh, the Aggies are, uh, number 3 in the nation right now. Um, just to jinx it, jinx it all, we've got 2 games. We got South Carolina coming up, and then we've got the Texas Longhorns. Um, so it's usually at this point all of A&M is completely depressed and totally resigned to looking at next year. But surprising times, uncommon times.

Hey, glad you're happy. It must be nice to be happy after, after decades of suffering.

All right, Rob, we'll catch you, catch you next week.

See you later.