The physics of startup sales | w/ Rob Snyder

Well, Rob, round 7, something, something like that.

I'm like, uh, yeah, it's only— I got, I got someone reaching out and they're like, listen, I, I think they were making a joke where they're like, I'm, I'm a proud one of your 78 subscribers or listeners to this. And they thought they were making a joke. And I was like, holy cow, we have 78 listeners. That's the greatest thing ever.

Right? Yeah. 78 accidental, uh, listeners. It's, you know, people that are trying to like learn language. Um, and so like us rambling for You know, indefinite amounts of times is like really helpful for that. People that accidentally had us lined up on their like YouTube autoplay, it just like is constantly rolling through videos.

Exactly. Yeah, they walked away a long time ago, but we'll take the stats.

It feels good. Yeah, that's right. Joe Rogan's racking up like 38 trillion views a day. We're at 108 and we're like, we totally have nailed this podcasting thing.

If anyone needs notes, I'm happy to, happy to share my wisdom.

Yeah. Podcasting prowess and expertise. Uh, dude, I'm so pumped about today's conversation. I, this is, I think my original, you know, red, red pill mind bending, whatever moment with the things that with your approach has been around. The difference between demand and supply and the way that you articulate it in this blog post. It's called The Physics of Sales and 11 Signs That You Got It Backwards. Like, not just me. I know it's not just me because I also see other founders that when they're communicating with you, they're like, this totally changed everything about how I thought about approaching sales. It makes business more fun. Like, it, it makes it way less just like mental slog being dragged through the mud of sales and much more dynamic and it makes so much more sense. So I'm pumped about like about jumping into this one with you.

This, yeah, this is awesome. This is one I've been kind of like noodling on for a while and writing in different ways, but I think, I think the graphic finally kind of put it together in my head. It's a stupid graphic that we can, we can pull up at some point, but It like finally was like, okay, this is the essence of the thing. And so I think that that led to a— I think it leads to an interesting post.

Yeah. And like, Rob, what happened where one day you were like, we have demand wrong? Or like, where did that thought originally come from? Or like, we don't understand demand. What was going on?

So the original point that I had this, and I'll actually write about this in a couple weeks, but, um, the original point was when I realized it as it related to product development, and that a feature request in itself seems like it is demand, right? But it is actually a request for supply, and demand is something else, right? And so when somebody requests a feature, it seems like they want that feature, but they're really just telling you what to build. And if— and like, demand exists as a totally separate thing to that. It's something that happened in their world. It has nothing to do with our product that caused them to request a feature. And then once— so basically, once I separated— once I had that space in my brain for saying, okay, supply is what we build, and demand is not desire for supply. It is something else. It's just something out there that we don't really control. That exists whether or not we exist, then it's like, oh my gosh, this has implications everywhere in startups, and it just liberates you in so many different ways from that tiny little realization that demand is basically supply agnostic.

That's, that's interesting. Can you put, can you put some specifics on that? Like, what— tell us about a feature that might be requested from like your previous life or your first startup?

Yeah, so people will request like an advanced settings feature. You'll get a lot of requests for advanced settings feature in your application. And when you ask them why they want an advanced settings feature, they'll give you a list of reasons. You know, I want to be able to tweak this, this, and this, right? I want to be able to change this for this person. Right? And, and all of those things makes it seem like they are— they have demand for advanced settings. But that's not quite right. And if you follow that path, you're going to wind up building a very complicated advanced settings thing that may or may not, quote unquote, solve their problem. That may, may not help them accomplish what they're actually trying to accomplish. And so when you zoom out and say, okay, let's go for a second, let's, let's put advanced settings on hold. What was going on in your world before you requested the advanced settings feature? You realize that they're like, well, I want to just be able to receive notifications. Like, it was basically, I was getting too many emails in my inbox and I couldn't keep up with them, and so I want to receive some sort of a digest email. And so I figured if you created an advanced settings thing that I could, I could manage it there. It's like, okay, so instead of spending 6 months building an advanced settings part of the application, I could just have a digest email that I send that takes me 2 hours to build. That's actually what you want, that like actually fits what you want. And so it's things like that where you can— if you think that basically demand is desire for a product or desire for a feature, you're never going to be able to see that. But if you see demand as something totally separate, then you say, okay, cool, you're requesting supply right now. I need to understand what's on the demand side.

Oh, that's super interesting, and it ties in a bunch of things that, you know, that you've talked about, like why roadmaps are, are typically like not useful, because you're just gonna, you know, you're gonna add things to your roadmap that are, you know, probably not valuable. You're not going to get to them, and like, there's like, that's not a great way to plan out products. But let's maybe, before we jump farther into this demand, let's define demand and supply, just for anybody that might be stumbling accidentally across this podcast for the side.

Yeah, so basically supply is everything that we build and we make. It's stuff that we control. And so you can think of supply as our product, right? It's— but it's also our messaging, and it's, it's kind of all of the things, a box of things that we can exert force over. Demand is not that. It's stuff that exists out there in the world, in our customers' worlds. And it's the way I think about demand is it's basically what they are trying to accomplish. The easiest way to conceptualize this for me to make it kind of more concrete is imagine that everybody has a to-do list in their brain. And that to-do list is not, I need to buy a CRM because nobody has ever wanted to buy a CRM, right? Like they are forced to buy a CRM because of circumstances. Um, the, the, the to-do list is I need to organize my sales data. I need to stop losing da da da, right? Like, and at any one point in time, they can only prioritize one thing on their to-do list because we're human, right? And so the thing they are currently prioritizing, they have demand to accomplish that thing. If our supply fits what they are trying to accomplish on their to-do list, they will pull it out of our hands. If our supply doesn't fit what they were trying to accomplish, it would be weird if they bought it.

Yeah, yeah. And another thing that you— I think this one's in your book and you talk about it frequently— demand exists whether or not you exist. It's like if your products just were to poof vanish from the face of the earth, that person would still need to do the thing on the top of their to-do list.

Yeah, exactly, exactly.

Um, well, let me— I'd like to jump into a couple of quotes that you have and just like get your reaction. Let's dive deeper into them. Um, like, I thought this was just awesome. Um, everything that you're taught about sales is downstream from seller push versus buyer pull. And those are in all caps just for anybody that might be curious. The fancy terms, automations, and methodologies only make sense and work in the context of pull. Um, all right, let's jump into the seller-push, seller-push side of this. At root, we all seem to think that the core force in the physics of sales is seller convincing buyer to buy. I read that and I was like, I'm so guilty. Like, that was 100% how I approached my, the first products that I was trying to sell. Um, I call— you said, and then you write, I call this seller push. Tell us about like, what does seller push look like? And I can add my perspective on that one too.

Well, yeah, well, like, like, there— what I'm trying to get to here is that there's this implicit assumption basically we, we all have, whether we are a salesperson or a founder who sells or a founder who avoids sales, right? We, we all have this implicit assumption about sales that is about, like, what causes a deal to happen? What causes somebody to buy something? There is a force there. There is something that is forcing it, causing it to happen, and that's what I call the physics of sales because we can think about it in terms of, like, physics terms— push, pull, force, accelerate— like, these kinds of things apply. What is causing somebody to buy, right? And so the implicit assumption we all have is that the seller convinces the buyer to buy, and that is what causes the deal to happen. And that takes— there's so many different ways that this plays out. This plays out in the messaging that you send to people when you're trying to convince them to talk to you. You're basically trying to persuade them to buy your product, right? Don't you have these pain points? Don't you have these problems? Don't you want this compelling ROI, right? It, it plays out there and it plays out in every single step after that too, from the moment you're on a call to the moment you end the call to your second call to like all the way through the sales process. It plays out basically in every second, every minute of every call.

Yeah. And psychologically, the way that that feels is like you're constantly failing because you're—

you're— what you—

I didn't realize I was trying to do was I was trying to create demand. And I thought like the right combinations of words, the right psychological approach, the right sequencing of questions, the— like you said, the right outreach, the right slides, whatever it might be. That was the thing that if I got it right, then people would start to buy the thing that I was selling. And I just kept, you know, for months was just like, this, it's not working. And it just totally sucks because it feels like you're failing because you are not saying the right things in the right way. Yeah.

And you think it's a messaging thing. That's, that's a really big— you think that, oh, maybe if I just structure the logic or if I add more persuasion or if I read sales books that tell me just work harder, right?

Or, you know, it's like you go down these like real, or at least I did, I can't talk for anybody else, but it's like you end up following like psychology influencers who are like these, I sold $400 million in whatever software last year. Here's the 3 hacks that are like I used every time I went into a sales call. And you're like, wow, like those are, I can't believe, like that's what caused people to buy. Then you try it and you're like, well, I just looked like a moron when I did that. Nothing worked.

I think I told this story before, but I like our biggest customer opportunity ever in my last startup, corporate fast food brand. I used one of these like tactics because I didn't understand this. I thought people were buying because I was convincing them. And so I used one of these tactics that I had read about in a very popular sales book. Book, by the way. And they were so offended that they took our presentation and gave it to our competitors and asked them to build the product, right? And so it's like, I wonder, it's like you do that enough times and you're like, okay, maybe I have this backwards.

How do you become the team that is so likable that companies start to tell you to build the thing that, uh, somebody else should be building or is trying to build?

Um, But, but okay, to your, to your story, you had two problems the way that you were talking, because you were trying to, in your mind, you were trying to create demand with the words that you were using, but you weren't actually trying to create demand as in the project on somebody's to-do list. You were trying, you misinterpreted demand. You thought demand was desire for our product. And so you were probably pulling together, and actually I know you were because I've seen them, right? The like highly logical Bain Consulting slide decks. It's like Did you know that podcasting is going like this? All right, got you there. Did you know?

Check. Duh, I'm about to buy this stuff.

Gotcha. Yep, yep. Okay, premise 1, premise 2, premise 3. Therefore, here is our product. You have no wiggle room and I've got you, right? And then they're like, yeah, I'm not buying this.

Yeah, actually it would have been nice if they would have said, "I'm not buying this." It was more like, "I'm not going to respond to anything that you say and I'm going to disappear off the face of the map." We ended up selling to 2 customers. I sold, I'm embarrassed by this, but they were my first sales, so it was something. We sold 2 week-long projects that I charged $150 for each. And it was like, I was, and I had a, there was a, there was a, We had a team of 3 people. I'm not sure how I was planning to eat after trying that for a while, but it was, yeah, we were really, we had to literally give away everything, and even that was not, typically not enough. But that's what it feels like. So let's maybe regrounding, that's what it feels like when you're doing supplier push. I have something I want to sell that I've gotta convince somebody to purchase from me. Let's jump into the buyer pull. All right, anybody, this is a new concept, like ready for mind blown moment. Instead, this is what you write. Instead, reality more closely resembles the buyer pull theory, which states that the primary force that closes the deal is a buyer trying to accomplish a project on their to-do list. Our job is to help this person accomplish what they're trying to accomplish. Our product needs to fit what's on their to-do list better than their alternatives, and when it does, they pull the product out of our hands. What is, what does that look and feel like?

Yeah, it's like way simpler. So instead of trying to convince somebody that they should want my product, it's literally like, oh, you're trying to do this in your life. What options have you considered? Option A sucks because of this reason. Option B sucks because of that reason. Huh, if we offered option C that didn't have the problems with option A and option B, would that help you get where you're trying to go? Like, yes, of course it would. Yeah, I'll rip it out of your hands, right? And, and so that it feels much more like we are collaborating with them to accomplish something they were already trying. We're going with their motion. They are in motion, they are trying to make progress, and we are just supporting them on their, on the progress they are trying to make versus trying to change their direction.

Yeah, and it's, it's hard to overemphasize how much better that feels. Like, between, like, the psychological experience of having a, there is demand out there, the buyer will pull when I have supply that fits that demand, versus I have supply that I need to to sell. Um, I, I think one way that we as founders cope with this is we avoid sales, or like we think sales is something that we don't do, or, you know, we can't do, or something. Or we just— it's the reason that we do tax forms instead of like jumping, like, you know, working on outbound or doing, you know, trying to get 5 to 10 sales calls a week because they're painful. But what, what is it If you're, if you're not all in, like, what is that telling you psychologically or about your approach here?

Yeah. So, so I think this misconception about what causes a deal to happen, what causes sales to happen is basically at the root of a lot of different product problems in startups from why we build wildly complicated products to why founders avoid sales like as much as they can. So if you feel like you don't want to do sales, right? Like you don't want to do outbound. It feel— it just feels gross to me to do outbound. It's likely because you think your job is to convince somebody to buy something that they might not want to buy. Right? And that's, that's what's at the root. Okay, or in each moment in a sales— like, if you are really, really stressed out in sales calls, you just like— you're— you think your job is to convince this person that they should buy your product. If in a moment it feels like you're persuading them, you're trying to twist their arms, or you feel defensive in one of these calls, again, this is— this is what's at root. Once you change your perspective here from, I— my job is to convince this person to buy, to this person's trying to accomplish something. If they— like, if I can't help them accomplish what they're trying to accomplish, it would be weird if they bought no matter how hard I pushed. You get like way more zen about it. You just— you like— and, and it actually lets you approach sales and like outbound and all the different parts of this with way less stress and without these associations of sales being pushy and persuasive, you know, psychology hacks and all this kind of stuff. And it just lets you be like— when that happened for me, I went from kind of dreading sales, just dreading every single day, every single piece of it, You know, doing cold calls was awful. Scheduling meetings was like a victory, but also terrifying. When people didn't show up to calls, I was like secretly relieved, right? When people no-showed, I was like, oh, thank God, right? And it— that was because I had this at the root of my belief system about what sales was. When I changed that, it's like, it's like not— it's not even stressful anymore. Like, doing outbound is fun. No, having sales calls, just fascinating, right? I just get to learn about what somebody's trying to accomplish, how they think about their options, and see how they perceive us versus the different options. That's really interesting. And when they pull, I understand why. I understand what they're buying. When they don't, I get to learn something new about the world and say, okay, cool, do we change something because of that? And it just lowers the stress level health so much that it allows me to build the right product, design the right, and like have my head on straight about the entire process.

Yeah, and, and the experience on the other side is totally different as well. Like, the— you go from somebody who's like, God, I gotta talk with this person that's trying to sell me something, I've got to figure out how to like navigate my way out of this, or there it's a total waste of my time, to a conversation that it like, it doesn't feel forced. You're actually kind of exploring what your demand is, and it's, it can be helpful in a way, even if you don't end up having demand for their product. Like, it's the pressure, the pressure changes, the tone of the conversation changes for everybody that's involved.

Yeah. 100%. 100%. And that's just like, that's just like the feel of the call and the feel of how, but each individual thing, like, what are you looking for in discovery? How are you phrasing outbound? Right. How are you describing your product? All of that changes as well. Once you realize it's not about convincing them to buy your product, it's about helping them accomplish something on their to-do list.

Yeah. You know, I was walking through a bazaar this, uh, this weekend and you like kind of walk through these aisles where everybody's shouting at you. That's like, don't you want to try my artisan chocolate coffee liqueur, or, you know, these like piercings for parts of your body that are not pierced and stuff, which is very much the "I have something that I want to sell you," like, approach to that. And there's, I mean, there's reasons they do that. There's different dynamic in that environment. But then you walk to something or you pass something that you're like, "Oh, that's a present that I want to buy for my brother," or "That's like something that I want in my life." And it doesn't— like, they don't have to say anything. Like, I bought a watch while I was there. The guy was just chilling. Like, didn't he— didn't— like, there was something that I was— that I wanted that I— that had immediately sparked and it resonated with my demand in a way that made that transaction like actually kind of fun, like learning about his business and stuff. And which was so different from 90% of the approaches that you see out there.

Yeah, I think like you can interpret this in two ways, that story you just told, and that's kind of interesting, right? The first way is, which is like the traditional Silicon Valley way, is, oh, he built a product that was irresistible, right? He built a good product and therefore you bought it. It's like, no, like that's, that's the inverse causality, right? You had something on your to-do list for which his product fit better than all of your other alternatives such that you ripped it out of his hands and you had a pleasant experience versus in the other cases, other people had products that were probably good fits for somebody's demands, but not yours. It would have been weird if you had bought— I'm not going to say where piercings, but it would have been weird for you to buy that given what's on your to-do list.

Totally. Yeah, I really like that. Some of those others were, they're probably great. It might have been the best liqueur that was ever designed by, you know, an artisanal craft liqueur shop. Let's, you know, you talk in this, in the blog post about, actually before we get into that, is there like a, I'm wondering if there's like a diagnostic that people can run on themselves to understand if they are doing a push, a seller push or a buyer pull approach to this?

Yeah. So the first one is just how do you feel when approaching sales? Do you feel like you're fighting yourself when you're selling? If you feel that at any point where it's like, I am forcing myself to do this work, I don't want to do it. It's holding me back. I feel uncomfortable. There's this kind of feeling inside of, right, like what you have to do is different than what you want to do. You just, you're like, this is at root, this, this is the thing at root of it, period, right? Like that's a signal. The second is based on the, the things that are happening in sales conversations or before sales conversations, right? If you're doing outreach that has a 0% response rate or like a 0% response rate except for all the out-of-offices you're getting or all the nos you're getting. You're doing this, right? This is at the root of it and you just got to break that. Or if you're on a sales call and you kind of feel like you're 10 minutes in and you're like, okay, so I've just been doing this thing called discovery, but it actually kind of feels like I'm waterboarding this person, right? And like, uh, And this is— they seem uncomfortable. I feel uncomfortable. And now I'm going to try to pitch like— or like that's a signal. Or if you're kind of— if you describe your product in a way that uses the word a broad platform, right? That's a signal. If you spend more than 2 minutes showing your product in a sales call, that's a signal, right? These are all signals. And like, if you, if like the best signal is if you get a lot of head nods, cool, I'll follow up with you on that. And then you never hear back from them. That is the best signal that, that, um, that you are pushing. And usually what happens is in your mind, you think, well, that sales call went well. I, I heard about their pain points and I learned about their situation. I pitched our product and all it's capable of. They said they would come back to me. And maybe I even got a second meeting scheduled. Like, that's what's in your head. What's in their head is, I have no idea what this person's selling. I don't understand this product at all. This, like, this may or may not help us. I don't know if it fits with what I'm trying to do, right? And so what happens is you'll wind up maybe getting them to show up to a second call, probably not, and you wind up following up with them and you just, you don't realize that this is what's at the root of it.

Yeah, whereas if they're, if you have a demand pull approach or a buyer pull approach, they're the ones that are driving the process and like you don't have to push it forward because you're like the project is not going away that's on their to-do list.

Yeah, there's way less difference between what's in your mind and what's in their mind when you're going from the pull. You know, oh, okay. It sounds like you're not prioritizing X, you're prioritizing Y right now. Okay, is there anything missing with the different options you have for Y? No? But it seems like you're gonna prioritize X in a couple weeks? Sweet! Should we just follow up then? And then we can discuss in more detail, right? It's— I have a way clearer understanding of what's going on in their worlds that's going to cause them to make a purchase at some point in time. Or that's going to cause them to prioritize something at some point in time. And so, right, it's, it's way more aligned to use the consulting term.

Thank goodness we're finally talking language that I understand.

There we go.

What happens? And so, you know, putting on my skeptic hat into this, one of the parts of your pull framework is that the options are lacking. What about when you're in a more competitive environment? Maybe it's, maybe it's you're entering a space that you have a different approach to, but there are other competitors that they're assessing. You're not the only option that they're like, I had no, you know, it's not the I'm breaking through a dam scenario. It's more like, okay, I'm evaluating different options. What is, does this still, you know, the seller push versus buyer pull still apply in that context?

Yeah, I mean, like, so what can happen is you can very clearly understand what they're prioritizing and how they think about it and the options they're considering, what they believe the pros and cons are of those options, which, by the way, that all exists out there in the world. That's in their brains. Your job is to get that out. You can't really shape that very much. You just help them understand it better, help them articulate it better, right? And then seeing that, you can say, "Huh, well, we kinda have a worse product based on their criteria here." Okay, cool. At that moment, you could do two things. You can say, one, screw it, I'm gonna try to get this deal and see what happens, and maybe I'll learn something in the process. Or two, you can just, you can play back to them and say, "Hey, listen, here's why people choose us versus other options. It does not seem like you're prioritizing that right now." If that changes, reach out to me, right? Either one of those is valid, right? If, you know, the first may lead to churn, may lead to unsatisfied customers, may lead to product bloat because they're going to have a bunch of feature requests that don't look like your other feature requests, right? And you're— it's going to make it hard to prioritize. But like, this isn't— the aspiration is always— I always want 100% close rate. I always want 100% satisfaction rate. I want to build the perfect startup, but the path there requires me to learn in a lot of uncomfortable ways, which could either be turning down deals that don't seem like they fit, or accepting deals that aren't perfect fits and pushing a little bit where it's not a perfect fit to learn the kind of grooves of reality, to, to see what we should actually build and what demand really is and what shape it takes as it complicates.

Yeah, I like that, the way that you described that second, um, approach of this is what I'm hearing from you or your priorities, this is where we stack up with one of the other options XYZ that you already mentioned. Um, I think that's like— I just, I, I don't think like we're hitting it as well as them. And they might actually respond to that and say like, no, no, no, no, like you missed this other thing that y'all have that I'm not happy with over there. And so you're still understanding which can also, or they might say like, yeah, like this, this feature is really important and y'all don't have that. So I think we're going to go with, you know, something else.

One example of a friend's company that, where that exact thing happened to was like they were pitching a kind of, we'll just say like a clean tech product, right? Software product to a potential customer who was considering another way more well-funded clean tech software product in the exact same category, way more well-funded, way more features. She, the founder, said, listen, like, they have these features that we don't have. It sounds like that's really important to you. We're going to be building those at some point, but like, if you need them right now, you should go with them. And the person played back and said, I appreciate that, but the real thing that we're going to be making this decision on is the expertise of the person that we're working with. They want me to work with a salesperson and people who have not been from the industry. You are from the industry. That's what matters to us. And so, right, like, and so she won that deal against a quote-unquote better product, better fit product, but that wasn't what the buyer's demand was. A little bit more nuanced than just stacking features against feature, right? And so, and so by doing that, she was able to to uncover what really mattered on the demand side that caused them to have a happy customer that paid them a ton of money.

Yeah, love that. Or, yeah, and she could have heard like, oh, okay, I keep losing because this is the thing, which makes it very clear like how she should be, you know, developing her product or changing her communication or the types of people that she should be reaching out to. Um, really, um, you know, moving into The second part of the blog, you go through— well, it's in the title, so I assume it's 11 ways that this manifests. I think we've talked about a bunch of them. Some of them are outbound, the sales call vibe, which we've gotten into. Urgency was actually one that I appreciated. If you're— you write, if you're asking, how do I create urgency, it's usually because you're having meetings unexpectedly canceled or postponed. Just like another part of that self-diagnostic we talked through earlier is like, how am I talking with myself or with my team about creating urgency? Like, you have 6 days to buy this product, which is actually like always available. It's an exploding offer. Group demos and call-to in your sales process, your mindset about sales, your approach to product, your approach to customer success. Are there, are there any of these we haven't, we haven't totally hit? Actually, and while you're doing that, I'm going to pull up the, um, the image so that we can also pop that up. But anything in that list that we haven't touched on yet?

Yeah. So I think, I think, um, the main things that I think are unintuitive here, let's focus, let's click on those. It's demoing your product and it's all the product stuff, right? So, so when we think that we are convincing somebody to buy. Our intuition is to show them either how to use the product or to prove to them that the product works, especially if we're early stage, or to just show them all of the broad capabilities in hopes that they see something that clicks in their brain and says, "Oh wow, I want this product now," right? Actually, when you realize that it's about whatever they're trying to accomplish on their to-do list, your demo is entirely different. It's 180 degrees different. Because instead of trying to show everything, you try to show the fewest things possible and only the things that help them accomplish their project on their to-do list, right? And everything other than that will confuse them and won't fit what they're trying to do. So it's— it is counterproductive. I have this, like, this saying where it's like, every additional screen you show Or every additional thing you click in a demo reduces your likelihood of closing the deal by 10% each. Right. And it's, and it's for this reason.

Yeah. Yeah. Every, every single time is at risk of confusing them. Um, it's also, you like that approach is I'm proud of my supply or you don't, you know, usually people don't think about supply. I'm proud of my product. Let me show you. All of the things that give me validation about the thing that I'm building.

Yeah, yeah, like, listen, it's really good.

It's really good.

But, but okay, but then this plays out in an even more insidious way before the call, which is basically people delay having sales conversations until they feel the product is quote-unquote ready by this seller push standard. And so the real way that this kills startups— yes, your sales, like, isn't good, it doesn't feel good for you, you avoid it, you postpone it, you da da da— but the real way it kills startups is that you spend way too much time and money building your product based on this push mindset because you have this thing about here's the product I, I want to try to convince the market. Here's all the features that it needs in order for me to be able to convince them. And all of those things wind up being something that takes 6, 12 months to build, and you're never quite done. You always need to raise more money and hire more engineers to get it done, right? And this is the way that startups die, is they die just pushing up the feature hill. When really, like, the thing that breaks every founder's brain when you go from zero to one is how little product you need. How little product you actually need, because it's all about fitting what's on their to-do list, not convincing them to buy and use a broad platform. And that, their to-do list, defines the shape of the product that is needed. It is almost always very, very, very small. And so again, they like this at root. If you can break this belief at root, it will make you so much more effective in sales, but it will make you so much more efficient in what you are building and what you are selling that like, I, I, it will save you millions to tens of millions of dollars in development. I swear to you.

And the benefits compound. Like if you think about two competing startups that are going after the same opportunity, one starts selling immediately with very little product, the other one builds some amount of time until they feel right. Like the one that starts selling early is learning about the product that they should be building. Even though they're investing more time in sales, they're building a better product that's more responsive to actual demand. Demand. And so in 6 months, in a year, something like that, they have very different products because they've been— one's been shaped by customers, another one's been shaped by what the founder wants to build, and they, you know, they're in a very different financial position as well. Let's pop up the— let's pop up the push versus pull, right, the framework that you have, and just like talk through this one. If anybody is on an audio-only platform, this one, just like click into the show notes and pull up the blog and you'll be able to see it. It's pretty simple, kind of like in the top third of the post. Rob, you wanna talk through this one?

Yeah, it's like the dumbest graphic I think I've ever made. I was trying to make it more complicated and then I realized actually this is all that's needed, right? Which is what is the primary force of closing a deal? On the push side, we believe it is us convincing them. On the pull side, it is them trying to accomplish something on their to-do list. So that's, that's it. That's what we're displaying here. And this is the force behind DEAL. If you, if you basically, you can either fight physics, which is not recommended because it does not work, or you can go with Physics. So the physics of sales is they are trying to accomplish something in their lives. And if we try to get them to accomplish something different, right, we are pushing them in a direction they are not already headed. Or if we're trying to convince them to buy something that they don't— that doesn't fit what they're trying to do, again, we are trying to push them off of their trajectory. They are in motion in a particular direction. If instead we embrace that they are in motion trying to accomplish something, something, but maybe blocked with bad options, and we offer an option that fits, it's headed in the direction they are going. They will pull it out of our hands, and we will have to do way less work of convincing, of persuading, of demoing, of all of these things, because we're not trying to drag them to buy something they don't want to buy. It's the exact opposite of that.

Love it. Love it. Yeah. Let's, Rob, I think we can probably wrap this one up pretty soon. Are there other topics or practical advice? We've hit a couple areas that I think founders can be thinking about. What else would you recommend founders do if they feel like they're, like maybe actually they've come to the realization, I have a push approach, like I'm pushing supply. What do they do? Like, what do you do differently?

Yeah, so you start— the way you start this is by saying, okay, cool, uh, most people, most of the time, given what's on their to-do list, would be weird to buy our product. Embrace that for a second. Sit with that. That sucks, but it's something you have to embrace. Okay, now Some people, some of the time, given what's on their to-do list, would be weird not to buy our product. It starts there. It starts with a hypothesis. Who do we believe, given what's on their to-do list right now, would be weird not to buy? That is what forms a pull hypothesis, right? It's about the project on this person's to-do list that they can't not do, where their options, existing options, are they perceive to be limited. Okay, you craft that hypothesis. I believe it's this kind of person for this reason. Cool. Now my job is to go talk to 5 of them. Talk to 5 of them, say, hey, here's my hypothesis. How are you different from this? What are you trying to accomplish? Like, and you're really trying to understand, like, what is, what are, what is their demand and does it fit fit what we think their demand is. And in the process of doing that, 5 calls, and we go back to the sales sprint thing we talked about a couple weeks ago, right? Have those 5 calls. It would, like, based on your hypothesis, it should be weird if they don't buy. So if they don't buy, if they don't pull, you've learned something. If they do buy, cool, send me a bottle of whiskey.

Rob's just gonna be flooded with whiskey. Your wife is gonna be like, we have a problem, Rob, we need to start requesting different things here. Yeah, we'll link to the Sales Sprint episode and blog post, that one's a good one. Maybe like tactically also, it's force yourself to stop building product. Like get yourself away from the thing that you're hooked up to like on life support right now.

Calendar audit, super valuable, right? Look at your calendar, think about how you spent your time, and say, am I, am I doing these things because they must be done? Or am I doing these things because I am avoiding sales? And most of the things, most of the time are just elegant and elaborate ways to convince ourselves that we are way too busy to prioritize sales right now.

Yeah. Yep. Um, awesome. Uh, well, we'll, like I mentioned, we'll, we'll link to this blog in the, in the show notes. Rob, anything else on your mind before we—

There was a mailbag. I remember telling somebody I will totally get to your question in the mailbag and I have forgotten what it is. So we will get to that next week.

Yeah, that's on me too. I forgot to check the YouTube comments and the stuff, but we'll get to it next week. Sorry about that. To our— wow, one of our listeners has mailbags. Maybe it's one person that just keeps changing their username that just like submitted.

I would not be surprised, but hey, we'll take it. We'll take it. It makes me feel like you people are listening. So awesome. That's the project on my to-do list.

Um, and folks, if you're enjoying the podcast, we'd appreciate a review if we could ask for it, or a comment. And Rob doesn't care, but I care about that. So, um, we need to send good vibes to the algorithm. Um, anyways, we will catch everybody next week. See y'all.