The aerodynamics of sales

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

It is cold, like really cold. I should not be able to count the temperature on one hand.

Um, that's not good. Yeah, big, big— I read, uh, cold front storm rolling through like upper Midwest over to the Northeast.

Yeah, apparently, apparently we already got— we got 8 inches of snow over the weekend, and so, uh, Apparently there's like 20 coming or something. I don't, I don't know. I try not to pay attention to that and just let it hit me when it hits me. So we will see.

That's sending shivers down my spine. I'm terrified of that. This delicate flower from Texas does not venture to the north and between the months of approximately October to April. What else is going on? What's, how's, how are things with clients? How's the business?

Good. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Nothing, nothing too crazy. It's, it's, it's been really cool watching. It's just, it's, I have like the coolest job ever, which is that I get to kind of like figure out why startups take off. I get to help startups take off and I get to watch when they do take off, how things come together. And it's just, it's really neat. And so I've had a couple cool examples of that recently where it's just like, you know, they, they kind of show up and there's kind of something there, but it's not quite clear what it is. You just, tweet, you have to have a theory of like, okay, how does the world work? Demand really, really helps say, okay, the sales problem versus product market fit problem we recorded, I think last week or two weeks ago or whatever. Um, that's a, that's been really helpful to be able to say, okay, it's this, not this. Therefore we need to do this. And we very quickly have been shipping fixes and like, I've started seeing things like come together Even faster. And so it's just, it's like super fun to watch.

Yeah. Any, uh, anonymized examples of a tweak that made a difference lately?

Look, it's just like the same, it's, it's the same pattern of ones where I'll get into a call. I'll, I watch a sales call. Did you, have you seen the memes of the Indiana head coach at all?

Of like online of just like this guy who's like, just like looking left and like, right.

Like, yeah, he looks like a, uh, I, I described this to, to my wife. This way is like, he looks like a dad who is like really obsessed with something stupid, like, like lawns, right? And he looks like a dad who is just like his entire, his like 80% of his, his brain function is just thinking about lawns and he's, he sees a lawn and that like looks good and like everything stops and he's just like, like, you know, and so that's how I feel when I'm watching sales calls is like, that's, that's the best thing. And so when I, what I see so often is a sales call where it's, you know, 40 minutes of demo. It's like an hour-long call, 40 minutes of demo. And at the end, the customer has no idea what they saw. They don't get the bounds of it. They don't get the shape of it. And it is the perfect thing for them, but they just don't know. They don't know. And the founder doesn't know how to frame it in a way that meets them where they are. They can't describe it in that way. And so I just see, like, I see that pattern happening so frequently and it's just this kind of like magical thing where you take a kind of expansive pitch and demo and just condense it to only what matters. And then the sales call is just like magical after that. It's so cool.

Well, that's a very appropriate lead-in for this week's conversation. Today we are talking about the aerodynamics of sales. Evolving and Compressing a Sales Process, which that's the name of this week's Substack. I'm going to start by reading a snippet that it's actually— I pulled it, I think, from the end of what you wrote. But you write, this is the method by which you go from a clunky, high drop-off process that isn't pleasant for anyone to a highly aerodynamic process that fits buyers' pool. I have seen sales processes go from less than 10% close rates with months-long sales sales cycles to greater than 70% close rates with week, weeks-long sales cycles. I've been practicing reading lately to try to get better at—

it really shows.

It shows you're doing really good. But Rob, I think, you know, in this one, we're basically— I love this. I feel sometimes I probably shouldn't say this to you, but I feel lucky to be close to your ideas and get to explore some of this stuff with you and to get to every week be thinking about these parts. This was one of them after reading it that I was like, there's so much that is immediately practical. And it, it's like, it's like after reading this particular post, you can almost jump forward 6 months and be like, okay, what are the things that I would already be eliminating from my calls, eliminating from my script, improving right now, um, in order to like skip a lot of that pain, which if you don't have a guide for it, It's, you just, you just kind of wade through a bunch of stuff slowly that you don't know why it's not working, but it feels uncomfortable. Um, but Rob, why don't we start with why, um, you know, what's, what's on your mind and, or why is this particular topic on your mind and who's this one for?

Yeah, this is, this is basically for the founder where stuff is kind of working. But it's not smooth, right? You might have some customers— actually, I've done this at startups. Another reason this is interesting is I've done this at startups with like zero customers, but they've got a concept that like should conceptually resonate and isn't, right? Like it's, it's clear buyers are trying to accomplish something and, and just, it's not converting and they're just not sure why. All the way to like $20+ million ARR companies. Where they are established companies with established sales teams that have grown over years, if not decades. And it just doesn't feel right. It's not super predictable. It's not, it's, it's, we're doing things, we have a process, but it's not, it doesn't feel good. It doesn't feel like buyers are pulling the product out of our hands and the results are showing, right? There are long sales cycles. There are low close rates. And so it's basically for anybody who, where customers are not pulling the product out of your hands and, and, and we're not sure how to, how to evolve towards that.

Yeah.

This is not for you if you have no idea, if you don't know what your product is yet, you don't have an idea. Yeah. You don't have like anything, right? This is, this is one step after. That.

Yeah, fair, fair point there. That one, um, probably like your post and the, and the podcast on where do startup ideas come from, like that's, um, that's more of like go, like going, getting firsthand experience. This is about you've got something and, and you're selling it and trying to make it better. But even, you know, the, on the, you made a comment on if they're not pulling it out of your hands, you make a really interesting observation that sometimes they're actually trying to pull it out of your hands, but you're in, you're in your own way and like you, you found pull and the pull will get you so far. But here's, here's the analogy that you kicked this off with. You know, this podcast is called The Physics of Sales and this is how you apply kind of like that framework to it. I think you write, I think of sales process, I think of sales process design as aerodynamic engineering. Any element of a sales process that does not fit their demand causes drag, slowing down or killing the purchase. At first, because we don't actually understand customer demand, we can't be aerodynamic. If we want to win at scale, that must change. Tell us more about what is drag in the content, in the context of like of a sales cycle.

Yeah. So there's— you'll hear a lot of things is like You need your sales process. You need your onboarding process to have no friction, to be friction-free. But the question is friction from what? Like, what, what, like, what is the thing that it is, it is rubbing against? Well, it turns out the only way to understand any sort of friction is in relation to demand. Demand is the force. That a customer is applying against their status quo. They're trying to accomplish something. They're trying to move in a direction. That force has a vector, a direction, and it has a shape. It's basically like, here's the thing I am trying to accomplish, and here's why my existing options are not good enough. Right? I'm, I'm applying force and I am blocked. Okay. Given that we know these factors, we know what progress they're trying to make. We just have to help them. Like, our job is not to just convince them of some new random thing. It's like, did you know AI agents are the future? Like, no, shut up. Right? I'm trying to get from here to there. I'm trying to move in this direction. Anything we add to our sales process, to our pitch, that is outside of that, that is, that is not in line, does not help them move in the direction they are trying to move, adds wind resistance. They have to, you know, if, if they're like, hey, what I'm trying to do, I am trying to fix my reporting so that I can raise more money from nonprofit donors. Right? If you, if your description of your product, for example, is anything other than this is a way to fix your reporting for, so you can raise more money from nonprofit donors. Like, let's say you say, and there's a whole suite of CRM-related functionality that can do, that is the future of da da da da, right? Like that whole piece that I added there is more things for them to understand. That adds wind resistance. It adds drag and it makes them less likely to buy from you because they just have to understand more and like, okay, I want this reporting stuff, but like CRM, oh no, do I have, I have to think about that now. That doesn't quite sound like it fits.

Yeah. Yeah, I like the, I like the visual of— and I think there's implications for the way that you build your product, like how expansive is the product that you've, that you've put together? Is it aerodynamic in that way, targeted at the customer pool, but also the way that, as you mentioned there, the way that you present it, is it, you know, hyper-aligned to the thing that they are trying to accomplish or is it, you know, something that you're really proud of that you're presenting much more expansively?

Yeah. And you're trying, are you trying to impress them with your product or are you trying to help them with it? And it's, uh, uh, the, the difference there of, of orientation is a, is a difference in a theory of the physics of sales, which we talked about before, right? This all comes back to sale. Someone buys something, the reason, the cause of a person buying something is because they are trying to accomplish something in their life. That's the force behind the purchase. It is not because we show up and convince them of something.

Hmm. Let's, uh, with the way that you structure, uh, you structure this post is you walk through, this is how I often see it start, like the clunky, awkward, everybody's first sales call when they're getting started. And then you walk through the iterations that you frequently see, um, you know, and there's and we're going to, we're going to talk about each one of them briefly. Maybe before we jump into this, Rob, one question I have while I was reading it, like you go, this is version 0, version 1, version 2, version 3 until, you know, version 8 is like the, the streamlined version. Is it, is this a specific sequence you see or are these examples that you see that people kind of choose like based on where they're at?

Yeah, these are, uh, this is a common sequence that I have seen, but it is not the only sequence that is out there. And the, the reason is you usually start, there's usually a first realization that you have. And that first realization is like, wait a second, we're like the people who have bought look like this and are trying to do this. What, like, okay. And then, and then the question is, what do we do about that? And it's kind of, where do you start in the process from there? And what winds up happening is your entire sales process winds up being redesigned and your pitch winds up being redesigned around that person trying to accomplish that thing. And it's just about like what do you do? Where do you start? What do you do differently? And like, but the goal is for it to be entirely redesigned around that.

Amazing. I want to start with like the point of departure, but maybe as a preview, I think there's, there's got to be something in here for almost all of our listeners. There is, you know, we're going to talk about how targeting evolves, how discovery, you know, evolves, how the pitch improves. The evolution from call 1 to call 2, running a proper demo, you know, the plan to buy and onboard or the sense of urgency that's, that's built around that. So there's— I think this one has basically something for everybody. Like if listener thinks about what is the part that I, I feel friction, like you can kind of like sense when there's like something's not working there. Like maybe it's like the demo just doesn't— like you're getting blank stares or your discovery, you don't really know what you're probing for or what you're trying to identify. Like there's something in this post that's, that's gotta be helpful. Rob, but why don't we, I'm going to share my screen for anybody that's on Spotify. I'm going to try to share my screen if I can figure out how to do that. Anybody that's on Spotify or YouTube, you'll be able to see this. Anybody that's on Apple Podcasts or like just listening to audio, you can just pull up the, the Rob's Substack, which I'll link to in the notes. Rob, this is where, this is where we start. Why don't you give the, uh, you see a first call, um, this is probably a, a, or a first sequence of calls, um, you know, kind of a sales cycle. You've got call 1, call 2, post-call 2. What's going on? Like how, how are most founders like, uh, what's their point of departure?

Yeah. So, so the typical structure that, that when I come and see something, it is usually because we've, uh,, uh, the founder, the sales team, whoever it is, has started with a pitch or a sales process that they have pulled from a template online from a company that probably had such intense product-market fit that it literally did not matter what their sales process was. And so, um, the template sales processes you've seen are kind of like the best practices you hear about or the things that sound right online tend to look like, right? Like the first part of a sales call is, of the first call is discovery, which is in theory, a list of questions that we ask. Just kind of like a, it's a kind of random list of questions that is kind of like spearfishing for problems and pain points. You know, I think of it as kind of like an interrogation by Finding Dory, right? Where it just, it just seems like not like totally confusing. Then there is, then, okay. So then what happens there? Do you like the Finding Dory piece?

I'm imagining Dory running a discovery process and like just consistently forgetting what's going on. I'm sorry, go ahead.

That's actually what it, that's what it feels like. I'm in the call and I'm like, whoa, where'd that go? Where'd we come from? And so, and so then because it's not clear what we're looking for and it's not clear what we've found. You've checked the box on discovery. All right. I got through my questions. Now it's time for me to convince you to want our product. Right. And then, and then there's a pitch and the pitch is often like 17 slides or whatever. Right. And it's this, uh, it's basically, let me convince you that you have this problem. Let me tell you how the, how big the problem is that leads to our unique solution that da da da da da, which is Um, which is it, it makes logical sense, the pitch, and it is impressive as a pitch. It just doesn't touch reality. It doesn't touch what buyers are trying to accomplish. And so buyers sit through it, like nod through it, might ask a polite question or two. They are totally confused at this point. At the end of this, like, we don't know, we don't know what they want. They don't know if we, we can help them. It seems like it might be interesting. And so what we've been told is like, at the end of this, offer a demo as the next step. And so we offer a demo as the next step and they say, yeah, sure. I guess I could bring my team too, or something like that. Maybe, maybe, you know, AI seems important. Maybe I should bring the team. We could do a lunch and learn around this. And in their minds, it's like, I don't, I like, this is an interesting, seemingly impressive AI product that I don't quite understand if it fits for us, how we would use it, how it would work. Like, I don't quite understand. And in your head, you're like, bagged the demo. This one's going to the moon. Here we go. Got them. Got them right where I want them. Right. And so that's call 1. Hmm. Guess what happens in call 2?

If you get a call to frequently disappear.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Totally.

Totally.

Let's say, hey, Sean. Yeah, let me, let me, yeah, it could be like a kind of, you know, let me circle back. Let me, let me talk to the team. We'll circle back with you and da da da da. Like that's, that's pretty common. If call 2 happens, when call 2 happens, it's often a group demo, but it could be an individual demo. And the demo is, it just, the call starts and it's like, great. So it sounds like you wanted to see the demo. Was there anything in particular you wanted to see? Today? And they'd be like, I don't know, features. And then you just kind of like jump in. And when you jump in, you just give them a tour through the entire product. You know, like there are 17 user roles. You just jump back and forth across all of them to try to like make the product seem impressive. Like it can do a lot of things. I, the reason I'm saying this is I have done this. Everybody has done this. It's, it's, it's, and then when you know, when you know what you're looking for, you're just like, oh my gosh, this is, this is just an absolute dumpster fire. So you go through that and like what you, you might pause and say, what do you think about that? And then you'll be like, oh, very interesting. And then you might get questions and like, but at no point in this call, do you know if somebody is actually, if they, if, if they actually want it, if they actually are going to buy it, right. If it fits. And so at the end you have space for Q&A, you say, hey, next steps. Why don't we schedule next steps? You've been told to schedule next steps. And they say, yeah, well, we'll, we'll follow up with you., and maybe they do, and then you follow up with them multiple times. Sales process extends. If they come back to you, it like, it kind of seems random when somebody decides to buy from you. And, uh, and that's how most sales processes work today.

Yeah. My, uh, my, I want to know maybe like, what does this feel like from the founder's shoes? Um, having done something that's slight, uh, it wasn't this exact sequence. Um, But for me, the, when I was running something not so dissimilar to this, it was very inward focus there. I, I thought I had something that people should want. And so I just needed to show them the thing that they should want and then, and then show them more of that. And the more I showed them of that, the more they will be like desiring of it basically. And that, that would cause, there was you know, your concept of demand really did not insert into the way that I was thinking about approaching this. But how does this feel when you were found— either you, Rob, were running through this, or founders, like how are they feeling when they're running this cycle?

Yeah, I'd be curious how you felt in this. When I was running this, I was super nervous for calls 'cause I thought they were super high stakes. And then I never felt, I never felt like there was a real aha on their side. It just, it felt like they were kind of like, it was a nice conversation, but there wasn't an aha. And it didn't ever feel like they were really leaning in no matter how much I presented and showed and no matter how big I made the description of it, how, how kind of ambitious I went. And it just always felt like, okay, do I need— I need to up the game here. Do I need to like, do I need to show more? And that was just like a symptom of me feeling like I needed to push. But I don't know, what did you— what do you think?

That's a really great point. Everything feels very personal. It's like when they don't— what's actually going on is they don't have demand or your supply doesn't fit the demand that they do have. But what it feels like is I'm screwing up sales and I'm, you know, it's very confusing. Rejection hurts a lot for delicate flowers like me. And so it's, yeah, I think it's, I iterated extremely slowly through these calls. I think because I'm actually not sure why it was like I kept having very similar conversations over and over thinking that I was going to find like the person where the light bulb like went off, but it was, but it, you know, that wasn't happening. I wasn't, I wasn't evolving.

That's interesting. So it, the feeling though was that the light bulb is not going off. Like that was the, like it's not clicking for them. And so, and so the theory was, well, maybe I just need to talk to more people.

Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. And what typically happens is that you actually like some, there's some, something that fires in your brain where it's like, wait a second. They actually said at the beginning of the call that they wanted to do, they're trying to do this kind of thing. What am I like? Or it's, you know, someone's like, you know, I've been looking at all of our successful customers up until now. And they always seem to have like this kind of thing in common. They showed up to us trying. And that's the first— there has to be a first insight, a first spark, because otherwise you just kind of like stuck in this mode forever where it's like, maybe this is just how things work and maybe we need to, maybe I need just more sales tactics. Right. And yeah, I don't know.

The toxic version of it for me was my product isn't good enough, which for, in my context was my audience isn't large enough in the context of like family media, which turns out was never going to be big enough until I'm like NPR, basically. And but also, you know, thank goodness I don't need to be NPR to sell our product. But as long as my frame of mind was this is not working because I need— in my case, it's I need to build more, I need to grow more, and in a, you know, a tech founder's case, it's probably like, I need to complete the product before I can sell it. Like, that's, that's where there's no, like, there's no iteration. So I got stuck in that. You helped me break out of that one and do the more helpful thing of like, okay, who are you talking to? But let's let you— you're the first or the version 2. So that version 1 is everything's like sort of broken. It's clunky, like, whatever.

I'd say this is basically like 90% of sales. Process. This is 100% of things that I see, um, at, at day one. And it's unclear to me if this is ever not the case as a sales process. I assume some places, I just, I would love for somebody to reach out to me and say, hey, I actually have really, really good sales process, sales calls. I want to see them because I have yet to see one that on day one is like really tight and flows really well with, with, with demand that has, is not somebody who's just I just kind of like self-administer my stuff. I want somebody, I want somebody, I want ramp sales process. I want like, I want some fast-growing startups sales calls that have never heard about me and I want to see them.

Yeah, that's fascinating. So let's move into version 2, which is, I'm going to read here. The epiphany is, Wait a second. All of our successful customers showed up after XYZ happened, which forced them to prioritize DEF on their to-do list. Your first evolution is subtle but meaningful, and as a result, you end up disqualifying a lot of people who aren't a fit. I think, I think this part, this really resonated with me. These are people you were previously pushing to try to get them to buy, and you were just wasting, wasting time on them. Talk, you, you hinted at this with, um, uh, you know, actually I think you were more focused on pipeline, what, what, what you were responding to me for, but what is the kind of like discovery process evolution that you see happen as often a first step?

Yeah. So, so what tends to happen is this realization that, wait a second, people only buy from us when they're trying to do this. Like this is basically 95% of our customers. Were all in this situation before they bought. Or like the real customers did this. Everybody else does not have this, this kind of like set of common things that they are trying to accomplish, things that have happened to them. And so you look at your list of discovery questions, your 17 questions, again, the like Finding Dory interrogation thing. And you're like, wait a second, could we just ask about these things? And basically, could we just do kind of poll-based discovery to see if they have poll? And you start there and if they don't have pull, then you don't keep pushing. You don't push, you don't try to convince them. It's just like, cool. It doesn't seem like this is something that you're actively prioritizing right now. Here's what we do. Is that right? And then they, and then you can just disqualify them, follow them, follow up with them later instead of wasting all of that effort, bringing them to a demo in hopes that they might want it or, and continuing to follow up with them. You just realize that those people will not buy right now.. And so you just kind of, that's step one is discovery. And that disqualifies people who do not have demand.

And that's disqualifying people who are already on a call with you or like it's disqualification. And so that is to like save the effort, like call 2, like you're probably still going through like some kind of aversion. Early version of like call 1, like the pitch and the explanation and stuff.

Yeah. Yeah. Every, let's, let's assume that everything now, what I, what I can do is I can fix the whole thing. I can try to ship a whole new version at once. What most people I tend to see do is they'll just fix one thing at a time and each thing you fix leads to the next realization. And so when you, yeah. So when, when you're now like disqualifying a bunch of people who don't have demand, then you ask yourself, Why are we talking to these people in the first place? It'd be way easier if instead of having 30 meetings a week, of which 5 are actually relevant, what if we had 10 meetings a week of which 10 are actually relevant? How do we change that? And so then you kind of like start from there and then you, you, you kind of go upstream into pipeline and say, okay, how do we change our targeting? How do we change our pipeline approach so that we basically only get people who actually have demand?

And there's, there's a bunch of ways to do that. What, uh, is there an example that can make that tangible? Like what is a change that improves pipeline that you've seen?

Uh, yes. Uh, so the simplest one is you, if you're doing outbound, you narrow your targeting for outbound and say, okay, actually when I have been targeting people, it's been this kind of big pool of, let's say, early stage founders. But actually when people have bought, it has been an early stage technical founder. And so you find some way to like filter out non-technical founders, right? That's a, that's like a characteristic based one. Um, there are a variety of other ways to do it. And I'll say like pipeline is super freaking hard to get right once you understand demand, but like, uh, you know, another, Another example is, hey, we know that people only buy from us after they have raised money, right? Or like this, when people raise money, then they need to do XYZ and they, or when they get a grant or whatever, they need to do XYZ. Then it's like, okay, cool. We need to get a data source that tells us who is getting grants. Actually, really good example of this. I got outreach from a PR company that does PR for nonfiction books. They got a data source that said, hey, new, new author, new book is on Amazon for pre-orders, everyone listening.

And, um, yeah, you work this in seamlessly. We're gonna, we're gonna, we're just gonna weave your book into every version of this as it, as it turns out. So buckle up.

Yeah. Yeah. So, so, but they got that, they have some sort of data source and then they just sent me a targeted email. They, For them, that helps them narrow the universe so much that it's like we're only targeting people who are likely to have demand right now.

Yeah, that's, that's fascinating. How about— so that's the improve your, improve your pipeline, which can be, can be, you know, you're, you're, you've got a new data source, you're narrowing the filters on LinkedIn, you're, you're adjusting messaging is another one that you often talk about that resonates directly with the demand that you saw in the, in the second version. Let's go to version 4, which is focused on the pitch. So you, you've improved to some way discovery, which is a little bit more aligned to what their actual pull is. You're now bringing in more frequently the type of person that is going to resonate with, with that demand or who's going to have that pull. And now you turn to the pitch. And what you write is your pitch slims down. I've seen 28 slides seriously slim down to 2. Potential customers immediately get what you offer. So what is— whether it's that example or something else, like what are people cutting out of their pitch or how does their pitch get more streamlined?

Yeah, the common pitch is like, I need to convince you of our vision, our The problem that we solve, the kind of why this problem is important, right? That's 4 slides right there. Then our solution at a high level, how it works, right? And so you can see how all of these kind of like slides and components of a pitch stack up. These all exist in a universe in which there is not— no such thing as pull. And we don't need to fit Paul. They are, they exist to convince somebody that they have a problem. I'm like, this is not, not how the world works, it turns out. Right. And so, so once you take, you basically just take all that and trash it, you throw all of that out. All you have to do is say like, Here's what people are trying to accomplish when we work with them. Here is what we offer and how it works that fits what you are trying to accomplish. And that's it. That is like, those are the two slides. Hmm. And then you pause and say, does that seem like it fits what you are trying to accomplish better than your other options?

When it's your first time doing the slimmed-down pitch, it feels insufficient is my— I have so much, I have, you know, I have 37 bullets in the chamber. Why am I only using one of these? But it turns out like it's kind of like, you know, the early question of why did you take this call, which feels weird to do. The first time I did a pitch that was so much more like compact. It felt odd. Like it just, it didn't, it didn't. But then the conversation goes in such a different direction versus I've lectured at you for 15 minutes and now, you know, I'm ready to receive the accolades that I expect you to like shower on me. What are, what's the experience of like, you know, how does, how does the sales call maybe in Rob, in your experience or with other founders, how does it feel like before and after? Maybe, you know, you've, you've described before, but how does it feel after?

Yeah, like the first time you do it, it literally feels like you're naked. Like, it feels like you are just like, all right, and here's the swimsuit edition. There is nothing here. Like, we're, we're like, um, and so it's super uncomfortable because you have 2 slides or less, right? You might just have one and you have to, you have to just give them a concept that fits their demand. And say, does this fit your demand? And you see where the conversation goes from there. Yeah. So it's, it's, yeah, it's uncomfortable, but you see what happens is like, they'll ask a couple questions. They might not quite understand it, but the conversation is infinitely better.

Yeah. What do you, and in the case that they don't have demand, what do you like, what do you do with that?

Like you've, you've sort of down— Yeah. So you generally know that before you jump into the pitch, right? You've already, you've already discovery. And so it's like, hey, it doesn't sound— what you could do is, I call this like YOLOing a demo or, or kind of like YOLOing a pitch, which is like, it doesn't sound like you have demand. Here's what we offer. Has any synapse fired in your brain?

Right?

Yeah. No? Cool. Come back to me when X, Y, or Z happens. I can give you your time back. Right? Like, it's just fine. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Um, and, and sometimes it's there and you just have it. Rebecca, I had a conversation a couple of weeks ago where I was like, I don't think there's anything here. This is what we're doing. And then they brought in other context of other stuff that was going on that actually made our, made our product relevant. But that I, you know, probably just hadn't run the, hadn't run the discovery quite right. But sometimes you'll get interesting stuff there.

Yeah, yeah. Sometimes you just have to show them something, right? There's kind of like a sequence here that we talked about before. It's like, why did you take the call? Ask a poll-based discovery question, use like a, well, this other person was like, use a case study. Well, this other person was trying to do this. And then fourth is just like YOLO, this is what we do. Anything happening in that brain of yours?

Yeah. Let's get into the demo. So version 5 is what I'm going to call a demo diet. I'm going to read here because demo is one, Rob, you talk about a lot and that I think a lot of people struggle with. You write, you look at the demo, it walks them through all of your integrations and each feature of your Agentic workflow platform. Platform. I'm going to, I'm going to stop. I feel very exposed. They come away understanding exactly how it works and then it clicks. We are demoing to convince them of the value of our product. What do they actually need to see? One screen, maybe two. You cut the demo down significantly and demos get much better. People stop leaning out and asking random questions during the demo and they are much easier to run. So what is a— anything to add on what a starting point demo is? I think we've hit this from maybe a little bit, but anything else that you'd add there?

Yeah, it's just like, it's like I need— it's like, how do I teach? How do I show you how the product works? Right, is the starting point. The demo is to show you how the product works and prove to you that it actually works and is real, right? And, and when you do that, you think, okay, I need to explain it from the ground up. You need to start from the dashboard or start from the integrations page. And like, I, we have to trace how all of the different pieces work together there, which is it like theoretically makes sense and in practice is wildly confusing to them. They just like, for that, for me again, like if it's, I need to fix my reporting so fundraising gets easier, right? Like if that's what they are trying to do, you don't need to say, okay, so here's the dashboard. On the dashboard, there are 4 different pieces here. Why don't we click into integration? So this is where you set up your Salesforce integration where, uh, what happens is it's a one-click integration and It enables you to very quickly pull all your data in. Now let's look at the modeling that's deep underneath here. And the way that the product takes the information from Salesforce is that it does da da da, right? Like what we're doing here is we're building up from the ground to an understanding of this. Instead, an actual demo is like, here's the kind of reporting you get. Is this the kind of reporting you want? This all happens automatically.

Yeah. Yeah. And I think this is maybe the best or most powerful example of friction, you know, tying it back to the aerodynamics. Like there's so much potential to just unnecessarily— like if you're flying an airplane, like you're just bolting on pieces of sheet metal in every direction in the, in the demo here.

Yes. Yeah, yeah. And that's, that's how all of these demos go, right? Like I watched an hour 40-minute demo call yesterday that could have been maybe 10 minutes.

Yeah. Rob, we're going to run up against time here. I'm going to run through the remaining 3 real quick. The version 6 is that you bring the demo forward from sales call 2 to sales call 1. Version 7 is you improve the buy plan, often like eliminating free stuff. I read that and I was like, I'm doing this too much and I've known I've been doing that too much. And so I appreciated you writing it, but it's basically like you stop doing the, you know, proof of concept, proof of value trial.

Yeah. Or you constrain the next step. Yeah.

For us, it's I get locked in, let's produce an episode together and then we'll think about it. And later, 4 months have passed and we've like forgotten that we were going to buy anything. And then the version 8 is a forcing function. Any, any— again, like highly recommend pulling this one up and like reading, reading it for our listener. But Rob, anything anything you would add on the version 6, 7, and 8?

Yeah, I think, I think basically all of these things are now like, okay, we know the core components here. We've gotten them to the point where they have expressed their demand. We offer something that fits and we show them something that makes it click in their brain that, yep, this is exactly what I want. Everything after this is just how do we compress and fit the way they purchase something they want to purchase. And how do we, how do we just make that happen repeatedly without having loose ends? And so you just see this and there are like, you go even further than this. Hey, could we automate pieces of this? Could we have this happen async? Could we do that? Like there's all these different things that you can do here. This is the kind of, but, but what I want to focus on is this is an evolutionary process and this is an evolutionary process. By which something that doesn't fit demand becomes something that does fit demand. And you just have to know what demand is and you can basically deduce how the rest of your, how your process should work to fit demand.

I love that, Rob. Yeah, that's a, that's a great reminder. Any practical steps that you would recommend before we, before we shut this one down?

Again, it just comes back to watch your sales calls, watch them closely. Don't just feed them into AI, watch them closely and see, is each piece of it fitting demand? Where is it not aerodynamic? Where it isn't aerodynamic is where things are gonna fall off. And you can often radically improve your conversion rates and really shorten your sales cycles. Even if you're selling enterprise by doing this.

I love it. Well, with that, Rob, anything else to add before we, before we wrap?

Yeah, we got a couple of big ones coming. Couple, couple of big posts coming.

This is your appetizer. For people who are not on my private Slack with, with Rob, I get a message at least once a week, which is like, I just solved startups or something along those. This, this week's version was the third infinity stone has like been identified. And so stay tuned to our 6 listeners who have accidentally made it this far. Rob has an upcoming PMF camp. Just quick reminder, starts February 9th. We'll drop the link in the bio. Rob also has a book coming up that's ready for preorder. And so we'll have that info. I've preordered mine. Highly recommend y'all do the same. Rob, anything else?

No, that's it.

All right, cool. We'll catch y'all next week.