The PULL framework | w/ Rob Snyder

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

Good, good, good. How are you?

I'm doing great. We are primed for a new Rob rage post at some point based on a recent university visit. But we're going to bring all that enthusiasm into the bread and butter of Rob Snyder. Like, this is— today we're getting deep into Pull, the The Substack is titled The Pull Framework Refined: Developing Your Intuition for Pull. I'm actually— Rob, I'm not going to let you talk in this one. I'm going to jump straight into a paragraph that I thought was awesome. You said even sales calls should be designed around pull is the little subhead for this section. And I just want to start with this. Because I suspect that our listener is going to feel some amount of identification with it. I definitely did. You wrote, I have found that most sales calls are wandering dumpster fires. We ask a set of questions following some sales framework, not quite knowing exactly what we're looking for. The potential customer spits out a demand hairball, which is confusing and disorienting to us. So we just say, We just say, well, thanks for that. Here's our product. Do you want to buy it? And proceed to drag them through an awful presentation and never-ending demo. I think, I think you are having, you've probably, you know, you've watched hundreds of videos, you've worked with dozens and dozens of founders. You're probably uniquely positioned to write that specific paragraph about the current state of like B2B sales. Rob, what's, let's just start with like what's going on. What was, why are we revisit, we're going to revisit some on really important frameworks related to pull. What's going on with you that, that, that's top of mind?

Yeah, so I've gotten a lot of people who have read the original pull blog post, and when I looked back at it, I was like, okay, cool. That was, it was like, I feel like it was like 40 words in total and like wasn't super deep in it. And I feel like it's also evolved a bit since then as I've tried to articulate it and tried to better understand it. That pull is a concept that like I I created, but also I'm just kind of finding, right? It's not, it's not something that like comes out of thin air. It's trying to describe. And so as I've been hitting my own head against the wall with pull and like realizing all the different places that it applies in, it's like, okay, it's time to try to rewrite that post in a way that if you read it, you should come out the other side with an intuition for like, okay, what actually is this thing? Where do I see it? And where does it apply in my world? Yeah.

And today we will try to make this as practical and as tangible as possible with our experiences. I would say before jumping in deeper, pull this post up to our listener. Like this one is worth, like, we're going to talk about concepts. For me, it was super helpful. To actually like read them. Rob incorporates more diagrams into this. The visuals I found very like helpful. It's basically, it's kind of like the dream team of your like demand, all of your demand work for like the last 18 months or, you know, 24 months or something.

Yeah. I feel like I got all the Infinity Stones and I'm just like, I love it.

Maybe before we jump into the specific content, who is, who is this? I actually think everyone, everyone, this is for everyone. This is for everyone.

This is for, yeah, like, so I've been watching sales calls from startups that are like companies that can no longer be called startups because they're in the tens, twenties, fifties millions in revenue. And it's like, they don't know what they're doing in the calls. They don't know what's happening in the calls. Even at that stage, people are buying despite. What happens in the sales calls and we, and it's just, there's no grounding. And so if you are a sales rep, if you're the founding AE, you need to understand pull. If you are the 400th sales rep at Oracle or whatever right now, like at, you need to understand this because this gets to the root of why are people buying things. If you are an engineer building, never talking to customers, which I think you should still talk to customers, you have to have an intuition intuition for what are people trying to accomplish and how, in what ways are they blocked so you can build something that makes sense. You're never going to understand this from just a requirements doc as an engineer. Like, it's just never going to make sense. And you're going to make a million, like, in, in all of our roles, we make a million decisions in, in a given week. Unless you have some sort of a ground theory on what customers are trying to do, how they are blocked, and where you fit in that world, you're going to make most of those decisions by some arbitrary standard, and they're going to not fit what customers need by default. We need this at the foundation.

Yeah, that's, that's super interesting. Like if, if anybody Or the folks that are farther removed from the customer are at greatest risk of taking a supply-centric view of, of what they're doing, because that's where, that's where their, you know, their world is. And that's what, you know, if you're, if you're not close to demand, that's a super interesting point, Rob. We're going to add any other thoughts before we jump into some of the concepts here.

No, but I think we should. I think like Can I just read through the way I described PULL now, like the literal words in the framework?

Yeah, let's hit it. Do you want me to pull that up or do you—

you got it? I got it. And so, so the PULL framework articulates 4 characteristics that if these characteristics are all true and you offer something that fits A customer will rip the product out of your hands. They will pull the product from you. You will not have to push. Those 4 characteristics are the, the customer has to be prioritizing a specific project on their to-do list. There needs to be a reason why they, they are prioritizing that specific project out of all of the possible projects they could possibly prioritize. As they prioritize that project, they consider, they look into a list of options. Maybe it's just one, or maybe it's multiple, maybe it's do it themselves, whatever. But that option doesn't fit. There are limitations that prevent them from accomplishing the project they have on their to-do list in the way they want to. They are blocked. And so we'll get into the components of this, but I wanted to start there because I need to articulate it in my own words. I find whenever I write it down, some of the meaning gets lost.

Yeah. I, and just to hit those, like the 4 elements and Pull Framework titled in part because it's an acronym, in part because just creative genius by Rob.

Like, no, this, the funny thing is that the origin of this was my friend Gorek, who's an author. He, a week before the book was due, he was like, hey, I think you should have an acronym for pull in there. And I was like, You're so right, you idiot. And then I had to rewrite the whole book in 5 days.

It's incredible. Well, shout out to Gorek. I think about the acronym frequently and I use, we'll talk about specific calls here. I'm literally just like going through in my brain the 4 elements, like checking them off basically. Like, do I understand their project? If not, keep pushing on that. And you know, but it's basically, again, to hit them one more time. There's a project on a potential customer's to-do list. There is a reason the project is urgent or unavoidable. Interesting that urgent made its way in there. Unavoidable, I think, was a little bit of the OG. And then they consider a list of options, list being the L there, a list of options for accomplishing the project, but the options they consider have severe limitations. And we'll talk about all of those, but Rob, let's, Making this super practical, I just, you know, mentioned how I use this. How do you tell founders to use this, like the pull framework and calls themselves? Yeah.

So, so there's a couple different angles on the pull framework, which we'll get into. The pull framework is upstream of your ideal client profile, your ideal customer profile. So whoever has pull is who you should focus on having calls with. In calls, you, like the first part of a sales call, which is called discovery, which is mostly a colonoscopy at this stage for the poor potential customer that they weren't ready for.

Let's figure out how many, uh, so we started with, I think, dumpster fire. Now we're at colonoscopy. Let's, let's find as many painful ways to describe the current state of sales calls as we can.

Yeah. Yeah. I've also used waterboarding, like just like, um, But like the point of the discovery part of a sales call is to fill out the pull framework, their pull framework. What are you trying to accomplish? Why this versus all the other things you could accomplish? What are you looking into? What have you looked into? What have you tried and why isn't that good enough? That's it. And only once you have those components can you then articulate what you're doing in a way that makes sense to them.

Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah.

Love it. And so this is, it's, um, do people, do you, do you find that founders actually like are right, are filling out a physical?

I have, I've actually, oh, so I've seen a founder who pulls up, screen shares a Google Doc that says the project you're prioritizing is blank. The reason this versus all others and fills it out live. I don't know that that's a good idea necessarily.

And How does, do you know how, did you watch some of those calls? Like how does the—

Customers are like, potential customers are like, cool. Yeah. I mean, like they, they just kind of go along with it. I don't know. Like I haven't watched enough of them to know if it's a good idea or not.

Yeah.

But I do know that like it creates an element of collaboration there and says, hey, you and I are working on this. I need to understand your context to know what to show you.

Yeah. That, that is super interesting. I mean, I've, I've felt some discomfort in calls recently, like, for example, yesterday, we're going to, we're going to talk about the colonoscopy I gave yesterday, which like I, I felt like I was pushing on, like I was trying to understand these dimensions and the customer. This was with a national tourism board in Latin America. And the, the customer was— they did not have pull. That became obvious. I was still trying to understand what, what their projects were, what they were prioritizing to figure out where in the ecosystem I fit. Basically, it turns out like agent, like they outsource a lot of this, these decisions to agencies, which is where I need to go. But I was having a really, really hard time getting the information. Out of them. Like they, um, I've had people straight up tell me like, I, I'm not gonna tell you what my priorities are. That like, they're just like that defensive. I don't know. How do you, uh, so the, the Google Doc like triggers this like light bulb that's like, okay, there, there must be other tactics to help get some of this information out and open up, uh, customers. Yeah.

Yeah. So, so what I tend to do is say, hey, why did you take the call? What are you hoping to get out of it? Ideally we get something useful out of that. Yeah. And if they're like, oh, well you just reached out to me. It's like, yeah, I know that. I know you also probably get a bunch of other messages that you don't, you know, follow up on. Why this one? What about this was interesting or relevant to you? Right. And so you're trying to get something there. If not, then you say, okay, cool. Like, as it relates to this kind of general space, what are you focused on right now? What are your priorities? What's on your mind? And if they still give you the middle finger there, then what you do is you say, cool, all right, you're useless. Let me pull up a slide of what I've heard other people say that they are prioritizing. Does this, do any of these projects fit what you are trying to do? And if they're like, if they're still like, listen, I just want to see the product. Like you say, okay, cool. You're not serious. And either I can end the call here. Like that's, that's one option, right? If they, if they're just like not gonna give you any context, it's not worth your time on a call.

Yeah.

Or you can just YOLO a demo and say, hey, cool, here's what we do. I don't know if this is relevant. I think you're kind of wasting my time. You tell me at any one point in time here, otherwise we'll just end the call and say, hey, that, you know, nice knowing you.

Yeah, that's interesting. Um, I love, I love it when you're like the YOLO demo, uh, tactic. That's one of my favorite things that you recommend. Yeah, I've— and on the, on the point of threatening to end the call, I've actually, I've done that a couple times and it's— I don't know why, but it triggers a very fast change in the demeanor of the, the person on the other side. I don't know if it's like they become aware of how unhelpful they are or that it's like, I don't know what hap—

I don't know why that works. I think most people view salespeople as people to be run over and told what to do. And so if they perceive that you're, you're a salesperson, they'll just like default treat you bad. What you can put, which would be funny, is if you just come in with that energy, I'm about to hang up the call unless you just preempt it. Like, whoa.

I don't know.

Yeah.

It's me. Let's just cut to the chase. I know what you're gonna say to me. But I'm going to pull out my, my aces up the sleeve real quick. All right. Hey, let's, let's get into some of this. I want to make sure, like, there's so many important concepts. We're not going to be able to go as deep as we should for all of them, but I want to hit as many of them as we can. We've just introed the pull concept. We're going to get into the base assumption, which is people don't care about us. I don't know who needs to hear that, but I think that's super important.

It's a very important starting point. Point. You have to have some sort of a default assumption about other people and like about why do people buy products? Why do people do things? You have to get to some level of ground truth here. And if we're honest with ourselves, most of us think that, or I'll just speak about myself and you can, you listeners can decide if they agree with this or not. Listener, listener, listener, listener can. Uh, my default operating model is like, what I'm building is awesome and everyone should want it. And so I need to that to be just like punched out of me, repeat, like constantly. And so the default assumption here is that nobody cares about us. They don't care about our product. They don't care. They care about themselves. They have a to-do list. They have things they are trying to accomplish, and we are only relevant to them if we help them accomplish what they are trying to accomplish. Anything outside of that, they would be crazy to care about us.

Yeah. Yeah. The, I, I think you hit like the, the nail on the head there with like, you spend all your time thinking about your product, about your, you know, and they spend none of, none, like zero. Of their time thinking about you and their life was like, you know, hopefully they've got a project that you can help solve and that you're well-placed for, but their life was fine without you before and it's going to be fine without you after. And like the greatest likelihood, if you haven't found Pol yet, is that you are a blip that will be forgotten within 6 hours.

Basically, their default state, by default, they care about what's on their own to-do list. And by default, they are totally indifferent to us. Yeah. You have to just start there because if you start anywhere other from there, you're going to engage in all this sort of wishful thinking and wind up doing moralizing sales calls. The reason we started this company is because we believe that all people should da da da. It's just like, what the hell is going on here?

Any, any outreach I feel, or most outreach that starts with the word I or we, like we built XYZ product. I have— I am trying to do X. I'm just thinking about my inbox in Outlook and just how many it's just like spam, spam, spam. Like it's, it's all instead of outward project-focused, service-oriented, like trying to serve the customer, it's here's the thing that I'm trying to do and it's like, do not care. Don't have time to try to figure this out. It's probably irrelevant and you're not focused on, on me anyways. Um, um, all right. We're going to hit what pull is. We're going to hit what pull is not, uh, which is super important. Like those reminders to me are super helpful every time. We're going to talk about what causes pull, who has pull. You mentioned the ICP. We're going to get deeper into that. And I thought your definition in this, um, uh, in this post was really good on that. It helped me understand it better. Um, and then along the way, and maybe at the end, we'll be able to hit it. Um, a couple things related to your specific pull. So we'll open up, pull back the curtain on Rob's business. All right. So let's talk about what is pull, starting with pull as blocked demand, which I think is a really good way of describing it. Let me— Rob, if it's okay with you, I'm going to read a little bit from your blog An easy place to build your intuition for PULL is by combining P and U, which is a project on your to-do list that's urgent or unavoidable. So take the P and U and combine it with the L and L, which is, you know, there's a list of options they're considering that are lacking in some way. There's a person who is applying force against their status quo, which is the P and U. But their existing options aren't good enough, which is the L and L. Note that P and U are demand, while L and L are supply options that are blocking demand. Pull is a state of blocked demand. Really cool. Like, very well, like, combined. I loved that. Like, the combination of concepts there. What more would you add here?

Yeah. Okay. So, like, think of it in terms of forces. Right? Like we're, we're in the physics realm. There is, they are applying force trying to accomplish this specific project, but their existing options are pushing back in favor of the status quo. They are not good enough. And so you can see that as kind of like two forces battling each other where the existing options are just pushing against what they are trying to accomplish. And in that state, you can see there's like, there's energy there that's, that's potential energy that can be unleashed. Blocked. And so that's what's happening in my head. That's what I'm looking for is where are people trying to accomplish something but blocked from what they really want to accomplish. They could, you know, they still could implement something that's not quite a fit, but that there's still this kind of sense of misfit. There's this sense of, they're still, they're still fighting.

Yeah. What is that? Can you think of an example? Where you like that, I love the idea of potential energy, like, uh, you know, just like applying like some of these physics concepts to it or engineering or whatever. Um, what does it look like when there is strong potential energy in the form of demand?

Yeah. So it's this, it's, you can kind of tell when somebody is struggling in the moment. So like in Jump's case, right? Like, uh, Jump does automating meeting notes for financial advisors. In like before Jump, financial advisors would take 45 minutes of notes before and after client meetings. Now you look at that from the outside and you can't really tell if there's a ton of potential energy. It's just, that's just what they do, right? But it turns out that there was a lot of potential energy there because that time those 45 minutes they could spend at home or golfing. And so every time they're in that situation where they're taking meeting notes, right, there's this project that is blocked on their to-do list, which is like, automate this, get this out of my— get this off of my plate, right? Such that when Jump showed up, and this is the critical thing, you often can't really see it until you offer something, you put something in front of them. That unblocks them or would unblock them. So what happens is when Jump shows up and says, hey, what if you didn't do that? People rip the product out of their hands and they grow super fast. But like, there's, there is another scenario in which they didn't have that project on their to-do list while they were doing the meeting notes. Like imagine if everybody Right? Like they took handwritten meeting notes and they felt like it was the, the, the kind of like most joyous part of their job. Yeah. Jump shows up, then there's no project on their to-do. There's no, there's no force. There's no potential energy there. They look at, they look at Jump and they're like, what the hell are you talking about?

Yeah. This one, Jump's, Jump's interesting in part because it is the hope for the future of golf courses, which have been, uh, you know, on, on, I like that we just like jump straight into the financial The planners are trying to, they're, look, they're, they're trying to get 9 holes before, before nighttime. So we gotta, we gotta help 'em get there. But jump is, jump's interesting because I think it, it makes me wrestle with like, okay, is this a pain point or is this demand itself? And how do we distinguish between the two? Go ahead, Rob.

Jump, jump in. Yeah, let's jump. Yeah. So, so pain points. So this is where we get into what pull is not. So we think we have to think of it in terms of these forces. There are like, for some reason we are in this deep intellectual and cultural malaise right now as a, as a world. And the, the center of this is the phrase pain points. It is the stupidest concept. That we just are all, we're all just satisfied with it. Cuz you know, everyone has set it up until now, so it must be true. And, and, and so what you'll often hear people say when they hear about POLA, they'll say, well, isn't that just problems and pain points? And it's, it's until you understand that problems and pain points and POLA are different things, you will hit your head against the wall. Repeatedly and not understand why. Look, so we have many problems in our lives. We have— yeah, go ahead.

For our listener who's on, uh, if they're this time consuming on Spotify or YouTube, they can see the video. If they're on Apple or they're just listening to audio, they won't be able to, but pull it. There's a Venn diagram. It's the simplest It's the simplest diagram you've ever created. It's literally, I'm sharing my screen right now. It's literally just two ovals that have a, like a smidget, like a very small amount of overlap. And one of the circles is problems and one of which could also be pain points. And then the other one is stuff we take action on, which is the, I think this is a helpful reminder for me that like, just problems are almost all, almost always like 90% of what you've got here is not overlap, almost always a red herring. And that is the wrong thing to be looking for.

Yeah. So let's, let's do this in the case of Jump. So you could describe Jump like the situation a financial advisor was in where they are, they would, they have this thing on their mental to-do list of like, I don't want to be doing these meeting notes, but I don't have good options to automate them. You could describe that as a problem, and you could describe the feeling in the moment as a pain point. You could, it's a totally plausible description, but the problem is that you could also describe a million other things as problems and pain points. That they're not going to do jack shit about.

Definitely not going to pay for.

Definitely not going to pay for.

They're not sure.

There's not, there's not. We care about when there is force behind these things. We don't care about things that are labeled as problems or pain points. Yeah.

What, so in, um, I hope it's okay if we're going, but Parker, if you're, if you're unfortunate enough to be watching this, sorry if we're like butchering anything in your business, but, um, Uh, so in this case, what, what would be an indicator that this is a problem that they are going to take, that if there's a solution, they're gonna rip it out of your hands, they're gonna take action against it?

Beautiful question. This is, so Parker actually wrote an article like a year or whatever ago on, on this that we like about how he figured this out. The only way to figure this out is by selling. That's the only way, because only when you show that there is a viable alternative to this thing that we think there is pull and see how they behave, can we know if the pull is real or not, or if it just is something that they'll talk about that makes logical sense, but there, there's no force behind it. It's the only way. And so I'll, uh, we should probably at some point link to that post, but his base, his basic take was, Hey, I spent like a year and a half doing a bunch of interviews and design partnerships and nothing worked until I tried to sell. And it was because of this. It's only, we can only tell if it's real when we put an option in front of them and it doesn't have to be real. It can still be a concept. It can be a service. It can be something that's minimum viable. It doesn't matter, but a viable fitting thing to the pull we think they have and see if they if it is real or not. And it's just, and it's like, we're not trying to convince them of anything. We're trying to observe how they behave in that situation to know if there really is this blocked force. Yeah.

Super, super interesting. Like the, the force is there. And I guess the, the list of options that they would've been considering is mostly like just DIY, uh, or there were dictation services.

There were gen— there were even generic AI note takers that some people were using, but they weren't a fit. They weren't a perfect fit for what they were trying to accomplish for compliance and integration reasons and all these other things. They wanted to, they were trying to, and that's a good signal, right? They're trying to use something, but like, that's not necessarily the clearest. That's not a, that is not a pure signal that it is true. The only signal that actually matters that is actually real is if they try to pull the option you put in front of them.

Yeah, that's super interesting. Let's, let's keep moving. Other— so we talked about what demand is not. It is not problems. It is not pain points. Get rid of those as much as you can. Get rid of those phrases or words from your vocabulary. The other thing it is not is desire for supply, which this one connects— there's a, there's a direct line to what— how we started the conversation about nobody cares about your product. But let me, let me read a little bit from a paragraph and then we'll get your take on it. Rob, Desire for Supply. The paradox only makes sense when you realize that demand is not desire for a product. To understand this, we have to separate demand and supply. Supply is what we build. Demand is what a person is trying to achieve in their life. Demand is supply agnostic and demand being supply agnostic as a concept is helpful for me because I can imagine a world where it's like I don't exist and the demand persists.

Yes.

And yeah, go ahead. Say more, Rob.

Yeah, that's, that's the core thing here. If you think that demand is desire for a product, or willingness to pay for a product, it is not an independent concept. It is a dependent concept. If it is a dependent concept, then you can't explain new products. You just can't. Like there was no demand by that definition for a car. There was no demand by that definition for a mobile phone, like anything that is new, there is no demand for it by definition. If demand is desire for a product.

Yeah.

You have to see demand as a separate thing that is not about products. It is about progress that people are trying to make in their lives. This is Bob Moesta's like classic jobs to be done. Quote, right? It's, it's about the progress people are trying to make in their lives. Supply is what, like, it's what they use to make progress in their lives. The progress they're trying to make in their lives is a totally independent concept from the products they use, and they just pick the thing that fits best that fits, that's available, that they're aware of.

Like everything that goes into— everything that goes into supply, which has expanded how I think about what supply is beyond just a product. So thoughts on supply, Rob, for ways that we can make it real, either with, with your business or, or mine or a founder that you're working with. Or desire, desire for supply. What is it actually here? How about this? What does it look like when you go into a, a call misunderstanding this and believing that demand or looking for desire for supply versus looking for demand?

Yeah. It's, yeah, there's a good, good point. It's super confusing when you're in a call looking for desire for supply. So in your case, right, if you're going in and saying, so have you ever wanted Spanish language podcasts for families?

We're bilingual now, Rob. So yeah, bilingual.

Hey, even shinier, right? It's just like, hey, I got some bilingual family podcasts that reach a big audience. Yeah. What's gonna be on their minds is like, I have never wanted a— like, that's just not a thing. That I have considered wanting. Yeah. And that's a, that, that puts the conversation on the supply side about what you offer.

Yeah.

And then you, then you are in a state of having to convince them that podcasts are good, that, that like all these things that they should want. Yeah. And, and it, it's just the totally wrong conversation to have where the right conversation is like, about who are they trying to reach with their message? What are the methods? Like, what are they trying to accomplish with reaching new audiences with da da da da da? And what are the methods they have tried and what have they liked and disliked? And oh, by the way, because you're trying to reach young families and you've exhausted traditional channels, maybe a way to reach families that is outside of traditional channels could be a good fit for you. And therefore there is something called podcasts for this, right? Like that's, that's how we separate demand and supply. They were always trying to reach families and they were always blocked by their current options such that you fit, but they never wanted a podcast.

Yeah, that's, um, one, I always feel a little bit silly talking about this. It's like I'm a grown dude who produces children's podcasts and who like is like massively just obsessed with family media. Um, but, um, exactly what you just said. Um, I, you know, for a long time before, you know, I think while your concepts were still developing and I was like Nobody wants this, which was true. Like, nobody, nobody wants this. And if you want to find something that people can move on in their life and be happy with without children's, like participating in children's programming is like super high on that list. However, what like the, the flip of, okay, if we position this as you are jockeying for attention of parents in a trusted environment that's super competitive and your ability to stand out in like long-form programming like that is a, that's a real job that human beings like that large, very large organizations with, you know, are trying to accomplish and struggling at, struggling with. And there's like the potential for not every organization has it. Not every organization or human being thinks about it the same way, but it exists like that's what, that's real demand. Yeah.

And let's, let's get to that in a second on ICP and sales process there. Yeah. But do we want to jump through the situation? We can skip the skip situation, the shape for supply if we want, or, or what do you think?

Yeah. I, the next thing I wanted to hit was what causes pull and I'm realizing you're probably moving us forward cause we got like 12 minutes. Yeah. I actually, I wanted, I made a mental note to hit this with jump. So you've got a really cool graphic in here, but basically I'm going to read from you and then let's talk about it. Basically a person's situation shapes their to-do list. While many people could be prioritizing a project right now, we want to focus on the situations that make it weird for someone not to be prioritizing a specific project right now. And we're combining a couple of your concepts. It would be weird if there's out there, you know, there's outbound here. There's a bunch of really, really practical things to take away from this. So, Rob, what would you add about what, you know, things that cause pull, maybe common mistakes or— yeah, your color.

Yeah, I think, I think like the common mistake is thinking about pull as a pro— when you think about pull as a project on somebody's to-do list, you don't realize that most of the time it's on their backlog. It is not their number one priority. And so if you reach out to somebody who has a project on their, on their backlog, you're going to have a nice conversation with them and you're gonna leave confused and you're gonna feel like you need to push. And so we have to understand, right? And then you might find that 1 in 10 people, like, they're like, oh, well, it's on my backlog, but you're in front of me now. So why not? Right. And so like, it's going to feel like slow progress if you, if you approach it that way. And so we have to say, okay, cool. If I, if I actually want to grow fast. I need to focus on the people who have this project as their priority right now. And we can define that in a way where it's like, okay, what's the situation where somebody would be weird not to be prioritizing this right now? And you, and so we, we, we think about like the way I think about pull is like there is a situation. That is forcing a project from the backlog onto the number 1 priority on somebody's to-do list. If I find a person in that situation, that's when they are struggling, they're actively struggling, trying to make something happen and blocked versus just kind of like, okay, cool. It, I'm just gonna ignore that for now. I have other fish to fry, which is like the kind of default state. And so we have to focus, like, I mean, we don't have to do whatever you want, but if you want to grow fast, you want to find people who rip the product out of your hands and it's defined around a situation that forces a project onto somebody's priority list. Like for example, um, you know, hey, we just, in your case, we just spent a lot of money on a traditional media buy and didn't really see the numbers move the way we needed to. Okay. In that situation, I'm going to be very open to hearing about alternative sources.

I think it's in my case. So we, the 2-second version of this is we produce children's programs that are listened to by children with their parents. I actually, I, my pull hypothesis now is that like a marketing agency needs to be able to pitch unique options to and to differentiate what they offer because marketing is like marketing agencies are super competitive. There's low barriers to entry, like there's a lot of competition. And so if we can, if we can help them stand out in their pitches to their clients, I think that's a more viable, like a stronger pull than metrics aren't working. So that's, I would describe that as with most marketing organizations I've talked with, a pain point. That's, but not something that they are like directly accountable for trying to solve. Immediately. That's like their, their number one priority. Yeah. I don't know. Rob, tell me I'm wrong about that. Fix my business right now.

No, let's keep, let's keep rolling. I wanna, I wanna talk about how Pull defines the shape for supply and then the concepts underneath this.

Okay. Why don't you, um, jump into the Pull defines, uh, shape for supply.

So the, the, this is a very important thing to understand, which is that, um, when, so if you just talk about like problems and pain points, What you wind up with is a, a shape of a problem, and then you have to find a shape of a solution that is not the, and, and the translation between those two is like wildly co— like difficult and complicated. And so you often get the problem wrong and then you get the solution. Then, and so that just doesn't work. And so what I found is that actually the unique thing about pull is that it defines the shape of supply. That fits. It gives a rough outline of what it needs to be. If somebody is trying to accomplish something, but their existing options are blocking them for X reason, supply just needs to be something that helps them accomplish that thing and gets around X reason. Like that's the highest level shape of the solution to build. And so I think that's a really, really powerful concept because In a sales call, you often want to just like start describing the teleology of your product, right? Or some nonsense about your product instead of saying, here's the reason we built it. Here's our theory behind it. It's like none of that matters. What matters is that it's a thing that can help you accomplish that without that. Yeah.

Yeah. And it simplifies everything. Like the way all your conversations get way shorter. Um, your product, the way you talk about your, your product gets It's much smaller, which is the like surprising thing cuz the project is defined, it's limited. And like the, it's, it removes all the unnecessary things that confuse the customer that aren't directly related to what they're trying to accomplish.

Yeah. I think of it as like it, Pull defines a shape. That's the shape of what they're expecting. You can just fit that shape.

Yeah.

If you, if you offer anything that doesn't fit the shape, it is adding wind resistance and it's confusing.

Yeah, I love that. Let's jump into ICP. You've got the bullseye in this. Can I pull up the bullseye or is there something you want to add before I pull up the bullseye? I love the bullseye. And yeah, I was, as I was reading this yesterday, I was like, yeah, I just had a conversation with a could buy who might actually, you know, that that might buy, but it's not, it's not the ICP. And I think you've, you just hinted at there's a difference between somebody who might purchase or who even sometimes does purchase, like versus somebody that rips the product out of your hand. And I like how clearly you articulate the difference between the two of those. Rob, can you go deeper into it?

Yeah, this, this is something that is like that a lot of people actually have a lot of problems with this, this part of the theory, which is that like If you just think about your ICP in a traditional sense, your ideal customer profile in a traditional sense, you're basically going to be targeting somebody who has a 20 to 30% close rate. And that's like considered pretty decent, but that's the wrong way to think about it, right? Like when you find people who actually have pull, they have roughly 100% close rate with very fast sales cycles and they're generally very happy post-sale. And what we're doing is by misdefining our ICP based on random characteristics of who we would like to sell to, we are blending people who have 100% close rate and people who have a 5% close rate or a 10% close rate. And we are defining our entire sales process, our product, everything downstream of the fact that we have mixed people who have real pull with people who don't really, haven't really prioritized this exact project. On their to-do list. And because of that, we have to push and we have to add all these sales tactics. And it's just like the ICP definition based on pull is a way to never have to sell again. Yeah.

Um, let's talk about how to find the ICP, but the way that it, um, I feel like the risk is mistaking a could buy, which is kind of like a wishful thinking. Like, I wish this person would see the value in this, or they may even see the value.

They may even say, yeah, this is great. Right. Which will often happen with people who are outside the bullseye is you'll have good conversations with them that don't convert.

Yeah. Yeah. Or, uh, uh, you know, the, or they do convert, which is actually like kind of a bad outcome in this case. Yeah.

It's like a slot machine. It's a slot machine conversion. Right. It's like, uh, every once in a while we can close these people. And so, right. Like, yeah, that, that's not, I, we, to grow very fast, you have to find people who pull. Pushing in kind of like some kind of hope that they close is a way to build a highly inefficient growth engine, go-to-market organization, and it's a way to build a bloated product.

Yeah. Yeah. Rob, what do you say to people that's like, all right, 100% win rate is not attainable. Rob is in fairytale land, um, you know, what, what do we do like in the, in the real world? You know, you, we've talked about great founders who are at 50% close rates. Is that, that's, is that a problem with, with outbound? Like what's, what do you say to, to that like question?

Yeah, so I'd say 100% close rate is the target from when somebody fits pull. Hmm. You might be talking to somebody who doesn't fit pull, in which case it would be weird if they bought, in which case you shouldn't include them in your messaging and you shouldn't keep pushing. Right? And so, or you can just kind of like YOLO it and see what happens. But, but yeah, like I just think we have too low of a bar and we have too, we're just complacent with like a 20% close rate and, and that leads to all sorts of downstream consequences and leads back to the cultural malaise point. We are at a, we are at a low point in human, in human civilization. And so I could go off on that for a while, but Well, we've gone full circle now.

The listener knows what the rage— the coming rage post is going to be related to the recent university visit. Rob, we're running up against time. We didn't get through everything. We got through a chunk of it. So hopefully that I— but I highly recommend pull up the— that we'll link to the newsletter in the, in the show notes. Read it, go through it. Think just at least I promise 100% promise at least one of the diagrams, at least one of the concepts will make you rethink what you're currently doing in sales, how, what your outbound looks like, how you talk about supply, confusing demand and supply, whatever it might be. Um, Rob, any other last thoughts before?

Yeah. So, so at the end of the post, I talk about where the theory is currently blocked, where I am currently not sure. I would like anybody who reads or listens that far, listens this far to help me there. There is a, I am missing something and it is about of the infinite potential permutations. How do you select? How do you, how do you even think about that? And so, um, I have read all the, I've read basically everything in business on, on like positioning and stuff like that. That's not sufficient. I need something that can help in this very abstractly defined task.

I love it.

All right.

I'll, I'll give that some thought and then be completely unhelpful to you, Rob, I'm sure. And if anybody, y'all get to watch Rob do, you know, lobotomies basically on me and how I think about— Paul, if you want to work with Rob, we'll have the links in the notes. He works with founders. It's booking out through the start of 2026. And so, you know, his calendar fills up fast. If you'd like to work with Rob, you know, reach out, fill out an application. Anyways, got to run. All right.

See you later.