Hey, Rob, good to see you, man. How's it going?
Good. How are you?
Doing great. I really enjoyed the
conversation last week with Palash.
Do you have any reflections on on that kind of a week later?
Yeah, it's just really interesting to me.
I, I don't know, I I mean, you, you were there, you had bad
Internet, so you could, you couldn't join into into the
conversation, which would have made it a lot better.
But but I think the thing that stood out to me, and I don't
know how you felt about this, was just how nuanced the
difference was of what he was describing as a big evolution
from an A virtual events in webinars platform for B to B
marketers to a video content platform for B to B marketers.
Right? Those, if you just like squint
at it, you're like, yeah, that's the same thing that it like
literally the same thing. But he described it in a way
that it was actually a very significant change in every part
of the business and required a ton of pain and just like
gnashing of teeth to make it work.
And I, I think that is actually quite true of like, I think we,
I think we underestimate how subtle these things actually
wind up being when they, when they wind up working.
Yeah, that's fascinating and it's and it's hard to know.
I think the way you've said this in the past is you don't know if
you're on your own 2 yard line or if you're on like the 2 yard
line, like about to punch into the end zone.
Like in in that case, they using that analogy, it's like Palacio
was on the 2 yard line about to get into the end zone, but even
like you're just totally blind about where you are.
And so, you know, it might have been he was trying to convince
an entire organization to change the way that they thought about
serving the customer. And it was a a big lift, a scary
lift for, you know, his employees, his Co founders,
probably his investors as well. And yeah, I thought the the he
did a particularly good job of articulating like in the moment,
what is it like to wrestle with that uncertainty and to make
really hard decisions as as a founder?
I did. I did find myself wondering
while I was listening to it, if he would have had your playbook,
how would he have maybe approached some of those things
differently around like he was seeing demand signal, But maybe
if you would have had some of that vocabulary early on, if
that would have like changed some of his tactics.
Yeah, I think by the time actually he made that decision,
he did have some of the like Dominican thinking stuff, which
is which is good. And you know what I'm happy to
take credit for, for the acquisition.
He didn't he didn't give me credit, but I'll I'll happy to
happy to take that Polage. No, but but I think that's I
think that's right. And the other thing that like
stuck out to me again in that, in that kind of transition, that
was really the like thing that made them them really grow and
and eventually get acquired, was there are basically infinite
different words that could have been used in both situations.
Like that's the hard part. It's not that like this is a
subtle, it's not just that it's a subtle change.
It's that there are infinite different things, sequences of
words that could, that all would have sounded logical, but only
one or or like a small number of those actually works in
practice. Yeah, that's just.
So. Interesting.
Yeah, yeah, totally. I feel like I've been bouncing
lately with my business between things that sound similar but
make a huge difference for for responses and and whether it
resonates with people and literally say even using a
Sutton. The thing that's been
interesting lately with mine is I've been doing outreach for a
campaign where TBS nature coming up and I took words out and
that's what it like. It's literally a subset of the
original words that I was using and that's what helped it click.
You know, it's just. I love that so much too, because
that's the thing that we're going to get into this in a
second that that actually ties really, really well into today's
podcast, which is that we often think more words are better
because we think more words gives more opportunity to
convince them that they should, whatever they should buy our
product, they should talk to us. When more words actually give
them more reason, every additional word gives them
another reason to object, to say no, for it not to fit, for it
not to be aerodynamic. And so, yeah, that is a constant
thing. And it's, it's this art of
shaping down, cutting down the number of words, number of
slides, number of concepts, just to what is essential.
And there's only one way to know what is essential.
Yeah, for for me in in that case, I was just, you know, doom
scrolling LinkedIn and somebody had done a post that that was
like I received, you know, something like I received
hundreds of like inbound. Here's the ones that work for
me. And it wasn't actually the
content that came after that. It was the reminder that I send
into an inbox that is flooded with other messages and I'm I
might get like one line basically like they there.
It has to be so concise that that it it I.
Remember reviewing? Yeah, I remember reviewing your
messages too, where you like the original 1 put PBS nature at
like the very. And like the coolest thing was
like 4 sentences down at the very end.
And it's like, dear Sir or Madam, I hope this message
finds. Yeah, it wasn't exactly that,
but it was. It was like basically that It's
like, OK, the cool thing here is this, like, let's not put it at
the very end of the message. Yeah, yeah, totally.
And also the I made another mistake and we'll move on for
this in a second, but it was like, we have three federal
agency partners. One of them really matters.
The other two of them matter much less.
And so instead of being like exhausted, it's just like, just
put the one that everybody cares about.
Right, right. It's like saying, yeah, I work
with Andreessen Horowitz and the, you know, Kentucky Farm
Bureau Venture Fund or whatever. Right.
Like it's like nobody just just say Andreessen.
Yeah, yeah, exactly. Well.
OK, let's get into, let's get into today's the sub stack is
called my, my B to B sales call script.
And if you are just like putting into the open what I think might
be the most most requested and most immediately applicable
resource that you've, you've published, like you've done a
lot of big drops in the past of like here's actually what's
going on, the physics of sales. Like this is what pull is, this
is what demand is what you've, what you've done here is
actually published. Like if you're struggling with
sales, use this script or even like if your sales are going OK,
but you want to make it better and more streamlined, like
here's the script. And having read through the
script, it's not super long. You know, it's like 3 tabs and A
and A and a Google doc will link to it in the, in the show notes
and it's also in the in the sub stack.
But it's, it like really distills.
If, if you've got questions about what do I say, how do I
structure, what's the order? Do I go in?
What are the questions I need to be asking you?
Just give it away. So we're like, Rob, why don't
you tell us a little bit about, you know, why is this on your
mind? Who is this useful for?
And we can go from there. Yeah.
So I am honestly sick of of reviewing sales calls done the
traditional way because basically the way we currently
approach sales convinces people not to buy from us.
That is the way that we traditionally approach sales.
Now I have written about different parts of this all like
in all the different sub stocks. I was like, all right.
And, and I keep seeing, by the way, I keep having people come
to me saying, I think I'm implementing it.
Can you look at my calls and I'll review their calls and
they're like, not quite they are or they're getting it like
backwards as those are like, all right, this is the script that
you should use for a sell. Like there are variables where
you're going to input slides or your own words, but there are
not very many variables here. And if this is not working for
you, then it is. It's like it's not that it's
your sales execution that is that is going wrong.
It is something about who you're selling to or what you're
selling or how you're describing the product, right?
This is what what I'm trying to do here is make your sales
script not be the reason you're not selling.
And so it's for the for the founder who is implementing your
approach. Maybe not and, and they're
struggling to understand do I do I have a PMF problem?
Do I have a sales execution problem?
Or there's just maybe a part of their call that they're, they're
having a hard time fixing. And the, and like this is the if
if you don't have one-on-one access to Rob, like read this
and it's, it's going to be a pretty close distillation to to
the feedback that they would get.
Yeah. And I like the main parts.
The the main error modes on a call are like we have the wrong
person here. We don't figure out what their
poll is. We don't describe our product in
a way that makes any sense to them or we describe our product.
This is actually quite often in a way that is offensive to them.
And then our demo is just ridiculously confusing.
And then within that in the product description part,
there's also the like we try to convince them there's this big
problem out there, like ways. It's just the entire theory and
execution of calls today I have seen is is just
counterproductive. And so this is a script that is
minimum viable. It works.
I have seen it work in a bunch of starts.
When you implement it it it the the call will feel way better.
It still might not quite work for reasons that can be
debugged, but they are like. It makes those reasons quite
visible to you. Yeah, yeah.
The way that you wrote about that early and early in this sub
stack was many startups think about sales backwards, which
causes them to think about startups backwards, which makes
finding product market fit virtually impossible.
What is, can you help me with the connection between they
think about? I think what what you're just
talking about with they think about sales backwards that
you're basically saying they think about I have a product I'm
going to sell to the customer rather than the customer has a
demand that they will look for supply to solve.
Is that am I understanding that part correctly or how would you
articulate it? Yeah, it's basically they think
that I or my product causes you to buy it when in reality the
thing that causes a sale is you trying to accomplish something
on your To Do List but not having good enough options.
If you think that you or I, if I think I am going and my product
are going to convince you to buy it, what am I going to do?
Well, I'm going to try to convince you, right?
I'm going to try to show you how awesome our product is.
I'm going to try to convince you that you have a problem.
I'm going to try to write like it's I'm going to push.
And when I am pushing, I'm taking up more and more of the
airtime. I am like like trying.
I'm kind of like trying to twist your arm in all these subtle
ways and I'm I'm separating the fat.
Like in my mind I'm separating. OK, I'm building an awesome
product. Now I have to get people to want
it right now I have to convince people to buy it.
I'm separating product and selling as two separate
activities. So this is how you wind up
building the wrong product and then being terrible at sales and
not getting the feedback loop so that you can actually find
product market fit. It's a philosophy problem.
It's a theory problem because it's I believe that I and my
product will convince you to buy.
I believe that's the cause of a purchase.
Yeah, that's super interesting, Rob and it and it leads you to
build a very impressive product that nobody actually like needs.
And a like so I see all the time these amazing sales decks.
Amazing put put together probably by that like I, I
started kind of like working with companies from 5 to 50
million AR and they hire, they get like these really expensive
consultants to come in and like craft the vision deck, the sales
deck and all this kind of stuff. And it's 50 slides with all
these different things. And the function of the sales
deck in a sales call is to convince somebody who is a good
fit that they shouldn't buy the product.
It is, that's how it hit the buyer because it has this
underlying theory. That's like what I'm going to do
is I'm basically going to water board you with all of the the
problems that you actually don't have.
Why our solution is differentiated in ways that
don't matter to you and like it. It just comes at it from the
totally wrong. Ankle, I suspect.
I mean, I've never hired A consultant to build a, a slide
deck like that. I suspect that originates with,
you know, the first conversation with the consultant is tell me
about your product. Tell me about why customers buy,
tell me about what you want to communicate.
And you know, and, and the head of sales or whoever it is, is
probably leading with, you know, here's it's like a product first
vision of like what they are selling rather than a pull first
vision of why the customer is, you know, what they're trying to
accomplish. Yeah, I think, I think that's
entirely right. It's it's just like there's this
missing theory. There's this missing the I think
of it as I've been working on a very long lecture that I'm going
to drop at some point on this. But the concept here like a
demand and thinking about like what actually causes people to
buy just like imagine that we are all here, bear with me.
We're all riding on elephants and we don't realize we're
riding on elephants and the elephant's going where the
elephant wants to go. But we think that we are cause
like that we are moving, we are thinking that we are, we are
picking the direction and heading in that direction.
And in this case, we're just like we, we're just not seeing
the elephant. It's, it's, and it's the
elephant is on its way. And and so when you don't see
the elephant, you're going to come up with a lot of strange
theories and a lot of strange approaches to things, to the
world, to your business, to your pitch, to your product.
Yeah, that just will don't make any sense.
Yeah, yeah. The date with Foster Wallace,
like kind of famous thing about how's the water between the two
fishes, but that, yeah, you don't realize you're in the
water. You don't realize the
assumptions that are like underlying the way that you're
operating and where you're going.
Well, let's let's do two things real quick.
You outline and, and this post what what causes a purchase and
the push theory versus the pull theory.
I think a lot of our, our listener will be already
familiar with that. But why don't we give like the
really quick download and then we'll actually jump into the
into the document and maybe do a quick dive and highly encourage
people to vote to be pulling it up as well.
But why don't we, why don't we start with, you've already given
the what, what causes a purchase?
Anything you want to add, Rob, on push theory, which is the the
direction the elephant is headed to continue with that versus the
pull theory, the direction that the elephant should be headed if
it were actually going to the Oasis in the desert.
No, no, no, no. That's, that's not how that,
that's not how the analogy works.
We'll, we'll hold the elephant analogy for the longer lecture,
but it's, it's basically so the difference is between pull
theory and push theory is that push theory assumes that I or my
product cause you to buy. Therefore, what I'm, what
everything I'm doing in sales and product building is to
convince you to buy it. It's to push it to you, right?
And that is, you know, that's everything from if you have
longer than a 32nd description of your product, if you have
longer than a minute or two demo of your product, right, you are
showing more things, you are describing it bigger because you
are trying to convince them to buy it.
You are pushing pull theory. On the other side hand says the
reason they are buying exists whether or not I exist.
It exists independent of me because it is them trying to
accomplish something on their To Do List but not having good
enough options. Therefore, all I need to do is
show up with something that unblocks them, that unblocks
them. That's all it has to do.
Something small that fits, that unblocks them and they will RIP
it out of my hands because they're trying to go somewhere,
but they're blocked. And so the demo, the pitch,
everything gets much smaller because all we're trying to do,
we're not convincing them of anything.
They are convinced before they get there.
They are trying to accomplish something and blocked and we
just show up offering something that.
Fits. It's crazy how, but I mean, I,
we've spent, you know, 8 months or whatever it is doing these
podcasts and I still need to hear stuff like that.
Like I literally while you're articulating that, I'm thinking
about a meeting I have later this week.
And I'm like, the way I've been thinking about that meeting is
how do I present my product rather than the very obvious
pull that this organization is experiencing.
And so if there's any other dingos out there like me, maybe
it's, it's helpful. That may a quick, quick recap on
what is for those of us who tend to have the memory of a goldfish
like me. P is for project.
There's a project that the customer is trying to or the the
human being is trying to accomplish in their life.
You is that it's unavoidable or it's something they have to do
right now. L is that there is a list of
options that they have considered or that they are
considering or maybe that they're currently purchased or
something like that. And then the second L is that
the there's limitations or that the options are lacking in in
some important way before we get into the structure of Rob's B2B
sales script, anything you want to add on on that Rob or just
jump in? Now let's actually sorry,
zooming out, who is this for? This is something that you can
implement if you have no customers, have no product.
Because what what this will do is this will help you figure out
what they have pull for. And so it works early on.
What, what, what will they buy? I've had plenty of startups do
that and sell and grow very fast as a result of starting with
this. But as I mentioned before, this
will also help you if you already have a big sales team
and you or you know, small sales team, whatever.
If you already have sale, if you're at millions in AR or
whatever and you're finding that your sales calls are a lot of
you talking or your sales reps talking, you're finding that
deals are extending they their long and it's not quite clear
what you can do to grow a lot faster.
Yeah. And that might manifest and
like, like you said, you're talking too much.
You're it's taking multiple meetings and you're like, how do
I, how do I shorten this? Maybe there's one thing you've
brought up is like there's customers that weirdly pull very
fast and you're trying to like diagnose the difference between
those. Anything else that would be an
indication. If you can't, if you don't know,
basically within the 1st 10 minutes of the first call
whether with 8090% certainty whether someone is going to buy
or not. You need this.
Yeah, that's like, that's a really good litmus test.
All right, let me pull this up real fast.
So, Rob, can you see, can you see that?
So here's the structure of Rob's BSB sales call script.
And again, this this will be linked to in the in the show
notes and in the sub stack. So I encourage you to pull it
out. Rob, why don't, why don't you
give us the overview of the six steps real quick and then we can
maybe dive into one or two of them.
Yep, totally. So there's basically two big
parts of a sale call. There's the demand part and
there's the supply part. The demand part is where we
figure out what their pull is. The supply part is where we
offer something that fits their pull.
And if that succeeds, then they pull to either buy it or for
whatever the next step in the sales process looks like.
Cool. So those are like the the big
components. What you have to do is you have
to add pieces. You have to add structure around
those big components. So the big components work.
And So what the way I structure a call is, there is an intro.
There's like a way you start the call because if you show up and
just start saying, what are you trying to accomplish on your To
Do List, they think you're interrogating them.
So you need to earn the right to ask discovery questions to learn
from them what their pull is. Once you've figured out what
their poll is, then you need to and so that there's that section
which is discovery, so and driller discovery.
The third section is when you transition from the demand side
of the conversation to the supply side of the conversation,
there needs to be some way for you to kind of say, cool, so
sounds like you're looking for something that will help you do
this without this. Is that right?
OK, great. Let's jump in because right,
like you have to kind of jump from demand language to supply
language. Then in the supply language, we
have to describe what we do in a way that makes sense to them
with the fewest extraneous concepts possible, because every
additional concept or thing we add will confuse them and cause
them to be like, huh, maybe this isn't a fit for me.
And so I have two parts of the supply description pitch that
you can think of it as the description of the product, the
concept which comes first. Then there is the, what I call
the how, which can be a demo, It can be a visual, it can be a
workflow diagram. It doesn't, but it's, it's
basically like, what is the thing?
And then how does it enable them to accomplish what they're
trying to accomplish and overcome the limitations of
their other optional what, what is the how?
Give me give me some of the the the depth there.
That's the supply side. And then finally there is a
transitioning out of supply into like what happens next in
theory, right? Or what what you would expect is
that if they have demand and if our supply fits, then they
either can buy it right away and you schedule an onboarding call
or they have some more questions and want to do a deep dive into
it or right like they're sold. They're like, yeah, this fits.
This is kind of what I get this, but I need to bring in somebody
else or we got to talk about pricing or we got to do, I got
to go through procurement, right.
What we've covered here is basically the first call.
There's some variables we can tweak, but but by the end of
this, if you found demand fit and supply fit, they should
roughly want to buy maybe with a couple remaining questions.
And then it's like basically project management from there to
purchase. Yeah, that's interesting.
And and Rob, how do we before we maybe deep dive into intro and
discovery? And then I think the concept and
how distinction that you're pulling apart there would be
good for us to hit briefly, how should people use this like use
this document? Yeah, so I would say make a copy
of it. Do not try to edit the main
dock, do not request edit access for me.
Some people keep doing that as really annoying.
They've got ideas, Rob, that they've got, they've got.
Yeah, I just want to, I just want to adjust production.
And so, yeah, make a copy of this and obviously read through
it and you're going to make a couple of changes to it
yourself. There are places where it's
highlighted of like hey you should make a change here or hey
you should make a slide here. Read through it, maybe practice
it with a Co founder, practice it with another person or just
ship it and like go through this in your next call.
Yeah, yeah, that's how I was thinking about basically just
like I've, I've got most of this in my head at this point, but
having it out being like, OK, do I?
Do I, am I ready to move from discovery into transition?
Have I, you know, answered the the pool components?
And yeah, why don't we talk a little bit about intro and
discovery. We've talked about this kind of
like magic first question a couple of times on the intro
part. Why did you decide to either
schedule the call or why did you accept this call?
I'm sure you get a lot of invites.
Anything to add on on that one? I think that I think your
discovery question section is really good, but anything you
want to hit on on intro here? Yeah, on the intro.
So, OK, So what that typically gets you, if you say why did you
decide to take the call today, they will give you a lot of
history to say, yeah, so XYZ's happening, right?
And that's that's like useful. And then what I found is if you
add oh, great, that's super helpful.
And then could you maybe tell me what were you hoping to get out
of today's call? Like what were you hoping we
would accomplish in today's call?
They will then say like, yeah, so I specifically wanted to
understand your service because it we're thinking of it versus
this other. And so they'll often start to
fill out the pull framework for you there.
So I actually have started recommending why did you
schedule the call as question one and then great.
What were you hoping to get out of today's call as an optional
second question to follow? Follow that up.
Yeah. Yeah, yeah.
Let's hit. So you've got agenda setting,
you know what, what they want and talk through a couple
examples of customer case studies.
And then next steps is that is that just so that they have a
sense for like where the conversation's going?
Yeah. So the structure, so the way to
handle one of these calls, the beginning of a call is to
basically say, hey, what are you hoping to get out of this
conversation? And then to say, great, that's
exactly what we're going to cover this conversation.
That's what I thought would be the agenda too.
Here's what I was thinking for the agenda.
Does that sound good to you? Great.
OK. What what that basically means
is we have agreed together that this is going, this is what the
call is about. This is what's going to happen.
They're going to get what they want to get out of the call.
Yeah, now that we have that, I can put that here and say, OK,
we're going to get to that. Before we get to that that thing
you want, can I ask you some questions to get a little bit
more context? That is what I call earning the
right to discovery because it's like I earned the right to
discovery because I promise you that you were going to get out
of this call what you want to get out of this call.
And I'm putting that kind of like holding that hostage for a
second. I love, I love that the
transition has always been something I felt kind of clunky
at or, or I find that I'm, you know, a couple minutes and I've
been asking a lot of questions and they're starting to get
anxious about it. But which can lead them skipping
or like pushing to skip important contextual elements of
pull or like, if you're still pushing on it, it's like a kind
of, it can be kind of like an awkward back and forth.
But I, I hear what you're saying on if you earn the right to it
by demonstrating that you're going to get to what they do.
It's just like, help me to get to the thing that you want to
talk about with this, these foundational elements.
Yeah, yeah. Just help me.
Yeah, help me get context so that that I can be prepared for
that conversation basically. I love it.
Let's talk about the discovery flow chart, which I I found like
really insightful. Rob, what, what can you give us
the maybe the context and the overview of how to how to think
about this? Yeah.
So, so first what I want to do is separate in your mind two
things. There's discovery and there is
qualification. Qualification.
You've probably heard of frameworks like Bant Medic, Med
pick. I don't know.
There's probably others that I'm that I'm forgetting now.
What qualification generally does is it says like, are you
buyer qualified to buy our product?
Are you worth my time? Those questions are fine to add
in. And those frameworks that I
mentioned often have like BAPS, for example, has the N is the
need, right? Like what's what's the need
here? So think of what discovery is
doing is getting the need right. It's like what is their pull?
The goal of discovery is to fill out this person's pull framework
and then you can pepper in or anywhere around it.
You can pepper in qualification questions just to make sure,
hey, are you actually able to buy this?
Do you actually need this right now?
Like what? Like those kinds of questions,
but don't mix up the two. Because if you start with just
qualification questions, they're going to feel like they're being
interrogated and like, I don't even know what you do yet.
What are, what are we doing here?
Right? And So what we're doing in the
discovery section is mostly focusing on filling out the poll
framework. Now the flow chart is, is
basically like 3 or 4 lines of defense for you to fill out the
pull frame. Because what I found is that
there is not a guaranteed way to get them to give you the pull
framework that like their pull framework in a useful way.
And so ideally, when you say, hey, why'd you take the call?
What are you hoping to get out of it?
They they say something they you know, maybe they say, yeah, we
had just tried this other tool. I saw yours.
It looks simpler. Would love to chat.
Right. In that case, what they've given
you is the first L and maybe the second L and then you can come
back and say, OK, cool, tell me more about that.
Help me fill out the LS here and then tell me like, OK, let's
let's fill out the P and EU Like what?
So what are you actually trying to accomplish this and why now?
Like what's the timeline on this, right.
And so ideally that's the case, but often they will say, I don't
know, you reached out to me and then they won't give you
anything particularly useful there.
And so in the case where they haven't given you anything
useful, I've given you multiple fall backs, multiple fall back
approaches. The first one is just to ask
kind of a relatively open-ended discovery question.
You can say like, hey, as it relates to blank, what are you
prioritizing? What are you focused on right
now? You can ask that kind of
question. You can kind of poke around
there. But if you don't get anything
useful there, then you can jump to like.
What I recommend is having a slide, which is OK.
You've been unhelpful thus far in filling out your own pull
framework, not explaining to me why you are here.
Here's what I'm hearing from other people.
What what other CSO's are trying to accomplish?
What other CTO's are trying to accomplish?
Whenever I talked about does this resonate with you or or
not? Like tell me more why is this
relevant or not relevant to you? And you might get to the end of
that and get nothing. Yeah, at that point you can
either end the call or you can do what I call like Yolo a demo,
like Yolo the supply side of a call because you haven't gotten
anything and just see if anything fires in their brain.
So the flow chart is basically the sets the like different
tactics that you have if the previous tactic doesn't work to
fill out the pull framework. Yeah.
And it's the slide that you're talking about with the, when I
talk to people in your situation and your or your position, it's,
it's literally the as simple of a slide as our listeners
probably imagining. It's like there's a headline in
like 3 quotes or like something like that.
And how do you know? So I've, I've had two
experiences with that, Rob. One of them is something
immediately jumps out to the person.
And the other one is they read it and they say like, yeah,
that's, you know, these are all like, you know, in the familiar.
I I like this sounds, you know, sounds like you really
understand this industry, like whatever.
How do you? What's the difference?
Like how do you know when you've actually found the thing that
you're looking for, like what their pull is versus it's a, you
know, it's not pull, it's just recognition or lip service or
something. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
So, So on the first tab, I described the difference in what
it feels like between pull and not pull.
And the difference is pull is. I am trying to accomplish that
right now. Not pull is anything other than
that. And so if you're hearing them
say, oh, wow, this is exactly what the industry needs, wow,
you really get it here. Wow, you are handsome, right?
Like whatever it is, whatever it is.
That's not that that might be pull Rob you just it's a
different. There's a different kind of
different flavor of pull. Whenever you hear that, then
it's like, OK, cool, I'm putting a big question mark on the pull
framework and I'm actually going to go back to them and push back
and say, well, that's interesting.
It doesn't actually sound like that's important to you to
accomplish right now. Do I have that right?
Do I have that right Or do I write like?
Is there something else that it that you are trying to
accomplish right now in the in kind of are blocked with?
Yeah, yeah. Why don't we jump forward a
little bit to, OK, here's the transition.
Anything you want to add on transition or should we get into
like more of the supply part? Yeah, a really important part of
the transition is to just confirm that you have their
pull, right. So in your mind, you've been
filling out the pull framework. The pull framework is going to
dictate everything that comes after this, and if you have
misinterpreted it, you're going to just pitch something
literally. Yeah, swing and miss, basically.
Totally swing and miss. And so I recommend that the call
structure suggest recommends requires you to play it back to
them and get their thumbs up, thumbs down, which allows you to
then transition to the here's the supply it sounds like you're
looking for. Yeah, and the the thumbs up, is
it a passive thumbs up? Is it a, does it have to be like
an Oh my gosh, like or like what is it?
What does it sound like when you like?
How do you know that you really? Yes, that is what I am trying to
accomplish for right now and why my current options are not good
enough. That can be said shouting, that
can be said weeping, that can be said whispering, but it just has
to be. I now like that, that those are
the important things. Yeah, Yeah.
OK, let's get into supply. Rob that I, I think that I still
struggle a little bit with the differentiating the concept and
and the how can you give us the good and the bad version, maybe
the bad version and the good version of like introducing
supply starting with the concept.
Yeah. So what most people will do when
they jump into the what I call the supply side, what they don't
think of it as that, they think might think of it as the demo or
whatever is they will literally pull up the product and they
will say, so here's the dashboard.
Let me walk you through how this works, right, which is putting
the how first. They don't have a way to
understand what The thing is yet.
And so we have to start with the concept because most dashboards
look pretty darn similar. And so it's like, OK, cool, this
seems to be a dashboard. I don't know if I need that part
to it. And so immediate objection.
And most people, by the way, do not want a dashboard.
Nobody has ever wanted a dashboard.
So you're slapping them with probably the least exciting
thing without first framing it for them and saying here is what
it is. Now the concept is a mechanistic
translation from the demand side to the supply side.
There's basically no, there's almost no wiggle room for you to
go off road and say we are the future of agentic workflows,
right? No one cares.
That's never like and So what happens is first you say, cool,
So what we offer is an AI workflow flow platform that
unlike just using clawed code or clawed bot or whatever, this
plugs into da da da and does da da, da da differently, right,
which allows you to and it's just a so from that basically
32nd description of the thing they.
Understand the what it is in the bounds of it and so that's where
we go back to turbopump right which is actually there's really
funny AYC company is literally going to be watching using the
turbopump commercial structure really so.
Very well, we could go. Well, Could totally flop.
Could totally did. It turned on a couple weeks ago.
We'll have a week in the notes, but go ahead and run.
And that that basically that post describes the difference
between the concept and the how, right?
And so the concept is then saying this is a automatic
cordless powered liquid transfer pump.
I think that is actually verbatim from from the
infomercial, which I'm very excited about, which what that
does is that makes you understand what The thing is.
Then there's the like how does it fit the pole that you have?
Not how does it how is it architected?
Not how do all the pieces work together, It's how does it fit
your pole. So you just click the button and
water transfers from point A to point B, liquid transfers from
point A to point B. Yeah, yeah, fascinating.
It's so the, the concept is continuing the conversation,
like 1 criticism you've had in the past is like, you know, you
ask discovery questions and then you basically, you know,
experience amnesia. Forget all of those.
You say that's great. Here's the product I want to
pitch you. The concept is making sure you
don't do that because it connects back to the pool.
And then the how is narrowly defined in the context of the
pool that they are trying to accomplish how it contributes to
that specific project. Am I articulating that right,
Rob? Yes.
And what this does as you're identifying is what I'm doing
here is I'm minimizing the surface area on the supply side,
which is doing a service to your potential customers.
Because what we typically want to do in a push world here is we
typically want to explain it as a bigger thing.
We typically want to describe it as a big platform.
We typically wanted to explain all the theory behind the big
platform, why we built it, why didn't it like all of these
things. Then we want to show all of the
capabilities of the platform. Yeah.
Which again, makes sense if you think that that's what convinces
people to buy. But that's that.
And which is a push theory, Yeah.
However, when you think, wait a second, this person's showing up
just trying to secure their coding agents.
So maybe I don't need to show them the integrations page.
Maybe I don't need to show them all of these different pieces of
it. Maybe I don't need to describe
this as this massive thing. Instead, all I need to say is
this is a way to secure your coding agents in one click,
align to all the different standards, unlike da, da, da,
da, da. And then what do I show them?
Well, I actually want to show them the smallest possible thing
there because if they're just trying to secure their coding
agents with no real work for them, with no after work, well,
then what's that need to look like?
Oh, that just needs to look like your coding agents are secure
and like it's some check boxes or whatever.
It's not. It's not clear that we need a
long demo. Yeah, there.
And so that's what I'm trying. I'm minimizing the surface area
of the concept and the how the pitch in the demo to literally
just be what they want to hear and see.
Because if we add any scope outside of that, that often
compounds. It adds questions, it adds
objections, it adds more people who need to be involved, it adds
steps in the sales process. It adds minutes to the demo.
It adds and it it like every additional thing that doesn't
fit. Pole reduces your close rate and
breaks everything about your business.
Yeah, yeah. And now Rob, we're going to run
up against time. I love that description of it.
Anything you would like to add on the the next step before you
know they get in there? No, so, so next step is an
important thing. At some point I'll probably do
something on sales process design.
I haven't really done too much on that.
If you think that you are pushing, the next step is often
let's do a full demo with the whole team, which is a terrible
idea. If instead if they have demand
in your supply fits and they believe your supply fits, then
all that needs to happen after that is let's build a project
plan to purchase this thing for you to purchase and implement
this thing. Let's execute that plan and
let's watch out for reasons why that plan might not work.
And so it becomes project management after this not.
And that's the the kind of like the right way to think about
that stage. Yeah, love it.
Well, I'll look forward to digging into that one in in more
detail in the in the future. Any other thoughts, Rob on like,
like I mentioned, I found it highly useful even as somebody
that's super close to all of your thinking to just like go
through this and think through in my sales process, like which
of these am I doing like the right way?
Which parts of my skipping they were like reading through this
that you've given very specific questions and prompts for people
to use that I think are super helpful.
Anything else you need to add on, you know getting into it?
Yeah, I think like the reason you're not going to want not
going to use this, right? Like why are people going to
hear this, see this and say, yeah, that's not for me and I'm
going to, I'm just going to try to destroy those real quickly.
One, we have a new category of product.
They don't. They won't know until they see
it. It's the dumbest thing on Earth,
right? That's the dumbest quote ever.
The category is on the supply side.
They still have to have demand. And if you're like, oh, they're
going to want it when they see it.
That's basically saying my product is going to convince
them to buy, which good luck to talk to me in six months.
Second is like stuff kind of works now, but we've got maybe a
15% close rate. Yeah, sales cycles are three to
six months, but they're pretty big.
Contract sizes, stuff kind of works now.
What I would suggest is looking through your call.
I just did this with a company. We're looking through your, your
calls where you won and where you lost.
And when you look at the calls where you won fill out the pull
framework, watching the call over again and what you'll
realize often is that the majority of things that you
talked about or did in the call had nothing to do with their
poll. They bought despite your sales
pitch and process. Give that a try and report back.
And so those are the 2 main reasons I see people will not
implement this. And still and like, those are
the people who especially need to implement this.
Yeah. And when, when Rob, do founders
work with you or has a sales or whoever, whoever it might be
like when, when is that the right option?
So some people reach out when they're like, trying to
implement this, trying to figure this out themselves, right?
And it's like, hey, yeah, I just like help putting this into
place, maybe early stage, maybe whatever.
Or people reach out as they're implementing it and they're
like, hey, I keep running into this objection where I keep
right, like the, the, the light leaves their eyes around this
moment in the call. What's going on here?
And they kind of bring those calls to me and I can very
quickly break what is, as is is breakdown, what's going wrong
and fix it from there and ship a new version.
Yeah. And and that could be early
stage startups or it could be, as you mentioned, you know,
folks like have millions in, in ARR, they're trying to shorten
sales cycles or, or something like that.
Yeah, yeah. Or it's like, hey, you know, I
want you to. I've even had people say hey,
come, we'll fly you out. Come train my sales team in how
to see see poll and sales calls and how to to like respond based
on poll. Yeah, that's cool.
That's cool. Well, Rob, why don't we?
Why don't we wrap any anything else on your mind?
Be like get ready because I am I am working on a a big, big
lecture that I think it's going to be sick.
So just prepare yourself. Well, if our if our listener
made it this far, they're. They're, I also had two, I had
two people reach out this week claiming to be our listener.
And so I, I have gone back and I think one of them is 1.
And so I have to go figure out. Who it is otherwise, that 100%
audience growth. All right, well, hey, cool.
Thanks, Rob. We'll catch you next week and
see you everybody.