Hey, Rob, welcome back. Good to see you man.
Yeah, good to be back. Yeah, and I'm speaking with a
world champion weightlifter. I hear that's what that's what
rumors on the startup street are.
Yeah, I know, I know. I hit my three first £300 squat
over the weekend, which to a person who doesn't lift weights,
it's like, wow, 300 lbs sounds sounds like a lot of weights.
And then to anybody who lifts weights, they're like, wow, I
can't believe you've never done that before.
That's all right. So we'll when we advertise this,
we'll try to get exclusively the part of your audience that is
not into weightlifting to listen to this one.
We'll, we'll all like nod our heads and be like, wow, that's,
that's probably impressive. I don't know.
I don't think I could do that. Yeah, yeah, exactly.
We, we need, yeah, I need to be around the people who have never
lived. Well, we, I, I met a friend out
in Utah and he told me yeah. I was like, oh, we have been
lifting. I've been like getting a lot, I
feel like a lot getting a lot stronger.
And I was like, by the way, like you, you lift weights too.
He's like, yeah, squat 450 or I've squatted 450 before.
And I was like, OK, cool. I'm going to just never talk
again so. Yeah, exactly.
I need I need to be around people that make me feel better
about myself constantly and are very impressed by my minor
accomplishments. Exactly.
Well, that's that's why you hang out with me.
Well, today we're jumping into customer language.
One O 1 is the name of the sub stack.
We'll link to it in the in the show notes is a translation
guide. We're diving deep into demand
hairballs into basically, you know, we've talked a lot about
like what or last week we talked about what's the sales script?
How do you go through a structure of sale early in the
call? You are almost certainly on mini
calls, you're going to run into a demand airball like which is
basically why did you take this call or what's you know, it
comes after an open-ended question about what's what it
what's the project they're working on?
And then they you know, they vomit out something and it's
your job then on to like live interpret.
And this this week's post is helping us understand how to do
that. But why don't Rob?
Is there other contacts on why this is on your mind and who
this one is best suited for? Yeah, this, and this is for
basically any time a customer talks, you have to interpret
what they're saying. And it seems like a thing that
you should be able to do fairly easily because you've been
talking to people for like your entire life and you've been
interpreting what other people have said your entire life.
And So what tends to happen is we think we understand what
they're saying and we don't. And so I basically had to create
this new I, I'd previously called whenever a customer
talks, you know, they often like do this kind of like long
monologue. I'd called that a demand
hairball, which is funny because it is like a they're just kind
of like hacking up a hairball. I was like, oh, that's, that's
gross. But the word demand in there
implies they're just talking in demand language as if they're
they're literally just on the demand side, which is never the
case. That is never the case.
And so I don't like the term demand hairball.
I don't, I'm going to stop using that.
It's just a hairball and it's customer language.
And so this post is hopefully going to be your translation
guide to or the start of your translation guide to how to
interpret the things that customers are saying and of the
things they are saying, what do they mean and what should you
trust and what should you not trust?
Yeah. OK.
Well, rest in peace, demand hairball.
You've evolved into your, your second, your second version,
which is just the customer hairball or the hairball or
something like that. Let me, I'm going to, I'm going
to read something today. Kick us off.
I think that was a really good intro right there.
But this is what you wrote in the in the blog.
Customers do not speak demand language.
They speak customer language. Customer language spans demand,
supply and random nonsense. The scary part about customer
language is that it sounds like our language.
Imagine a foreign language that uses all the same words and
grammar that we use, but the meanings of the words of the
words and sentences are wildly different.
Sometimes that's customer language.
Let's maybe Rob, like when you tell us a little bit about this
translation that you're talking about or like, why is this?
Why is it not as simple and straightforward as listen to
customer understand their demand?
Like what's? What's complicated about it?
Yeah, the so I really, really like the the idea of two totally
different languages that use all of the same words and sentences
because then what's going to happen is you're speaking those
languages to each other, but and like you're both forming some
picture in your head of what is happening in the conversation
and the pictures in your heads are totally different.
And so I think the challenge is that customers will talk about
things that they're trying to give you context, they're trying
to tell, they're trying to communicate things and they
don't have very precise ways to communicate what they're trying
to communicate. And so and sometimes they don't
feel comfortable communicating what they're trying to
communicate. And so they speak in a way that
is kind of hard to decipher. It is it is seems to outwardly
make sense if each sentence is logical, the whole thing seems
kind of logical when you look at it.
But when you were trying to interpret it and like, OK, what
do they actually want? What would they pay me for what?
What are what are they saying here?
There are a million ways to look at it based on what they
literally say that could lead you to, and quite often lead us
to try to sell them the totally wrong thing that makes them feel
like we weren't listening at all.
Yeah. Or there are and and like that
can lead you to build the wrong thing.
And so it's just we we we kind of like see what they are saying
and interpret it our own way. And that is usually in my
experience wrong because it misses the nuances of customer
language where, you know, as an example, if they're talking
about like, I want ACRM, right, what I'm looking for is ACRM or
an alternative to Salesforce that is like that.
I don't trust that. Yeah.
So like we can, we can get into it, but like, certain things
they say are not the are not actually what they mean.
They're just using the closest words to them to explain
something. And if you take what they say at
face value, you're going to be wrong.
That it's, it's making me reflect a little bit about like
relationships. And it's like you, you go
through this like period of okay, when, when she or he says
this thing, this is the way I interpret that.
And you're like, the first way that you inter, you react to it
is, is wrong. It's just like it's always wrong
and there's confusion and chaos and that's it.
It's a different dynamic, obviously, one, because we're in
a relationship with them, and two, because it's repeated.
And so you can refine over time. And this is an art that you have
to hone. How do I interpret live get it
right the first time that I interact and maybe the last time
that you interact with like with a with a customer?
But I think the interesting thing there is like each kind of
like each person. I thought about going the like
dating direction, but I was like, I don't think I can.
I don't think I could do that. A long time since you dated her,
but. Yeah, or or the spouse direction
too because you still but like that's a one to one kind of
thing. I think there are there are
commonalities across all customer language.
So every time a customer speaks, they all kind of speak the same
language or they they're the same structures underneath the
language they speak. Oh, interesting, interesting.
We'll we'll get into that structure here in a moment.
Rob, do we want to ground in the example that you embed in the in
the sub stack? Yeah, so.
Want me to I can I can read it for context maybe just so that.
Yeah, I think I think that makes sense.
So what what I wanted to do with this post is I wanted to give
you an example that is it's kind of it's it's kind of a real
example kind of not. I tried to kind of blend it so
it's a little bit less less obvious what company it is and
all that kind of stuff. But this is also in the book,
not very blended. And so by the book you'll see
the whole thing. And So what I wanted to do is I
wanted to give you this example. And what I want you to do is I
want you if you're reading the post or if you're listening
here, I want you to pause before we get into the translation
guide. I want you to answer the
questions what does this person want, if anything?
Yeah. And is do they actually like, do
they actually, are they going to buy something?
If so, what do they want to buy? What should we pick based on
this? You know, I was, I did that
exercise. I've seen you do this, like tear
this down. I don't know, five times.
I've like a bunch of times at this point.
And I was thinking about this one while I was reading it and I
was like, I know the answer to this.
And I still have a hard time like identifying in like there's
so much information that's in it that it's, it's, it's hard to
find. But let me, let me, I'll go
ahead and read this. So this is that imagine that I'm
yeah, what was the question that preceded this?
Like why did you take the meeting or like what's the
context or something like that? And this is the potential
customers response. Yes.
So we've been struggling with Salesforce ever since I've been
here, which is wow, going on like 5 years now.
Crazy out, time flies. Anyways, we're obviously a
mission driven nonprofit and Salesforce doesn't feel like
it's built for us and what we need to do, managing volunteers
and whatnot. I know other people who are in
sales roles obviously and in tech or whatever, and Salesforce
seems like a great fit for them. But for us, we've had to get a
bunch of consultants to come in and try to clean it up.
And we've had multiple rounds of that in my time here.
But it's, it's just not reflecting our work to funders.
And now that we're fundraising and the and, and the current
environment is what it is, we need to fix that.
So basically my boss, our CEO, asked me to look into
alternatives to Salesforce sometime in the last year or
two. I haven't talked to anyone yet,
though. There's so much that's going on
going on in this right now. And there's, you know, that one
of the things about this is there's some words in there that
we're like our brains are like triggered to, to naturally like
latch onto. For example, my boss, the CEO
has asked like that sequence. As it, as it turns out, we'll
get into that. That's not that's not really
where the where the gym is in this.
But Rob, why don't you, you know, or if folks want to pause
and like think about it or Rob, if you want to give a quick
reaction, how you would approach untangling this one?
Yeah. So this is this is interesting.
This is a shortened version of what is usually a much longer
and much kind of I tried to condense it a bit here.
But the interesting thing if you just think about this, this
paragraph and how we usually approach paragraphs and things
is like there is some sort of almost like sequential structure
you should expect, but you don't get in customer language like I
would expect, right? If they're, if they're trying to
say, hey, here's what I need, you would expect a person to
communicate that clearly we are looking into this kind of thing.
And here's the details of exactly what we are looking into
and why we are looking into it. And instead what you get is you
get this basically paragraph of text where it's not clear what's
relevant or isn't in it, and it's not clear what the
sentences mean. Some of them are helpful, some
of them are counterproductive, which means you need a
translation guide for it. And, and I don't feel like
there's been really good translation guides put out there
for for what customers say, which is where we get started.
Yeah, what? Rob, can you help me understand
when you say translation guide? Yes.
What? What do you mean?
Like what is it like at at that? Explain it as if I were like a
dingo, you know, Said Michael Scott's words.
Explain it to me as if I were a 7 year old.
But like what? What do you mean by a
translation guide here? Yeah.
So, OK, there is a paragraph there.
It is in customer language, which means it looks like and
sounds like something that you understand but you don't
understand. You need to translate that into
your language. And to translate it, you need a
there's, there's this paragraph. Then there is some machine that
you put this paragraph through, and out the other side of that
machine comes something that makes you understand what this
person wants to buy, if anything, and what you should
pitch. Gotcha, perfect.
So we we've got what was it in the Enigma machine for World War
2? If that's what we're developing
right here. Amazing.
Well, you've and and basically using your frameworks this.
So we, we input the customer hairball, we run it through the
translation guide and we output the structure here that you have
is demand supply and irrelevant. Can you, you know, maybe
breakdown like what are you looking for in each of those?
Yeah. So it turns out big shock, the
pull framework and the concepts of demand and supply can be that
machine in the middle so that you can take customer language,
translate it into something that is actionable and that you
actually understand. And that what's in your head is
the same as what's in the potential customer's head, which
is cool. But like the way I get there is
I, I find it's very useful to separate the world into demand
and supply stuff. Supply stuff is stuff about
products and solutions and tools and methods and all that kind of
stuff like the, the means by which we do things.
So it would be things like for example, Salesforce is we've
been struggling with Salesforce, right, That's right.
Supply that I don't, that's not working for me.
That's on the supply side, on the demand side.
It's not about products at all. It's about what are they trying
to accomplish in their job, in their life, What are they trying
to do? What are they trying to
accomplish? And it must not have anything to
do with supply. Yeah.
What would what would they be trying to accomplish if no
supply basically existed? Or if you didn't exist?
If yeah, like what's what's going on agnostic to supply?
Yes, exactly. I'm gonna.
And so, so we have to, yeah, what you pull that up while
you're talking is like we have to separate this so that we can
know is there any demand here at all.
And then there's like also what I put in the irrelevant
category, which is stuff not related to demand or supply.
Yeah, so let me. Crazy how time flies.
You know, sales force is for sales people.
It's great for sales people, right?
So it's like, OK, cool. That's not yeah.
And it also, they also might talk about somebody else's
project. Like there's, there's a sort of,
you know, things that are are not or an irrelevant could be
like 5 year plan. Like they're, you know, there's
all these other red herrings that can be irrelevant.
They're actually and are easily mistaken sometimes for demand.
What you've got here. I've pulled it up for those on
Spotify or YouTube and maybe someday we'll migrate to Apple
video on Apple podcast. That's a new thing.
I've got to figure that out. But basically from the from the
sub stack, Rob's broken down demand, supply and irrelevant
and the supply column. Let's talk about that before we
get to demand. You've got struggling with
Salesforce for five plus years. Seems like it's not built for
us. Had a bunch of consultants.
That's another one they brought up.
My boss asked me to look into an alternative.
I'd like to get your thoughts on this one.
My boss asked me to look into an alternative to Salesforce
sometime in the last year or two, but I haven't talked to
anyone yet. Why is that last one, that one
to me, I would have put that one in demand as kind of like a weak
demand, but I don't, but I you've got it over here on
supply. So what's what's going on there?
Yeah, it's it's it you could put like boss pressure.
Yeah. Under demand, but that's not,
that's not a clear like thing I'm trying to accomplish
necessarily. I felt basically the boss told
me to look into an alternative to Salesforce.
Alternative to Salesforce is like the key thing for me there
that keeps it on the supply side.
It's about a product, it's about a tool.
And So what I'm what I'm doing here is I'm trying to basically
separate them talking about supply.
They do or don't like or do or don't want is like one huge
category of like things that they will say in customer
language. But just having them complain
about supply is like there's the classic Bob must quote, which is
bitchin ain't switchin. They can complain in the supply
category all the time and not have demand.
Yeah, yeah, that's that's a super interesting and I think
that one, having watched you interact with founders around
around this or a similar example that wasn't wasn't edited the
way this one was the my boss asked me to is always one of the
ones that basically like flags as OK, this person has a
responsibility. But the the second-half there is
sometime in the last year or two, but I haven't talked to
anyone yet. And you had an interesting
commentary about the way that you characterize that in this
post was like if they haven't talked to anybody in the last
year, they can continue basically I think it was on
this, they can continue not talking to anybody about this.
Like what it's not, you know, this is that there's a, there's
a flag for like almost potential demand, but then they negate
that because it's obviously not something that is urgent.
If it's lasted, you know the search has lasted somewhere
between a year or two. Right, right.
Yeah. And if they've struggled for
sale with Salesforce for five years, they can struggle with
Salesforce for 50 years. Yeah, like it's not, it's the
default. Say they could be in equilibrium
just disliking Salesforce and that's fine.
Like that's, that's just an equilibrium state.
There is no need to change. They can complain about it all
day long, but they're like default is they're not going to
change necessarily. And so the question is, and
before we move on from here, right, like if you just take all
the stuff in the supply category that we're talking about, we've
been struggling with Salesforce. Seems like it's not built for
us. Had a bunch of consultants come
in and try to make it better. My boss asked me to look into
alternatives to Salesforce, right?
If you just take that column and say, what do they want, you're
going to come up with something that sounds like, well, it's an
alternative to Salesforce for nonprofits.
Yeah, and. You're going to be wrong.
Yeah, and build, literally build a CRM like, you know, a huge
investment based on an incorrect diagnostic of what demand is.
Why don't we, why don't we jump into supply?
Just flip the screen here. Rob, do you want me to read this
one? Yeah.
I mean, we just, we basically just added demand right where
it's. And so it's like, OK, cool.
We've, we've now that we have this translation engine, we've
been able to put most of what this potential customer says
onto the supply side or onto the irrelevant side, right?
And, and, but we didn't fill out anything on the demand side.
And that's the important side because that says what's the
shape of the thing they're trying to do?
What's the, what's the thing, what's the project on their To
Do List? What's the priority?
What's the, what's the content of what they're trying to
accomplish? And well, it turns out there is
one sentence hidden in that monologue, like towards the end.
And it is. It was basically like we're
trying to raise money and our current reporting for donors or
funders is not cutting it. Yep.
And is that a, is that something common that you see, Rob, that
demand is hidden like that in the in the middle or even toward
the end like what you would, you would think real demand would
surface first, but that didn't happen in this case.
Like why, why does that happen? Is that common?
Like how? How should we think about that?
Yeah. So sometimes it is like,
sometimes it comes out the, the like first minute of the
conversation and they lead with it and they walk through exactly
why. Sometimes it shows up just
somewhere like somewhere random. And the challenge is like they
are under no obligation. They don't understand this
framework. They're trying to communicate
stuff to you and they're going to just use their own language,
their own way. And so we like each, each person
could be different in the way they structure their sentences,
in the way they structure their paragraphs.
And so they're not by default going to lead with here's the
thing I'm trying to accomplish in my life here.
Why my existing options like that sometimes happens.
And I saw a call like that yesterday where the founder
heard that filled out the whole framework in their mind.
And then just like they're like, I don't know what to do because
you just filled out the pull framework for me.
I did like this is like a 5 second pause while the founder
was just like racing through everything.
Like all right, I guess we're checked off all the boxes here.
But by default that won't happen.
And so This is why we need this kind of like translation engine
because throughout we basically have to do a search through the
conversation, through through all the words they're saying to
pick out, to pull out that one line, which might be at the very
beginning would be great. Not going to happen by default.
Or it could be at the very end or it could be, you know,
somewhere buried in the middle. And it's like, OK, cool, I need
to pick out the demand type things because that's what they
are literally trying to do right now.
Like what are they trying to do right now?
And then on the supply side, it's like, OK, why aren't their
existing options or methods or tools good enough?
OK, cool. I need to understand those two
things. And if I understand those two
things and kind of like the rest is kind of context or or totally
irrelevant, but I like I have to understand those two things in
order to fill out the poll framework and then be able to
sit like play that back to them and offer them something that
they will actually pull out of my hands.
Yeah, why don't we, I'm, I'm pulling up your your post here
just so that we can look at the the paragraph and I'll, I'll
highlight. Let's see.
So we've got supply here. The it's literally if you're if
you're watching the video, I'm highlighting where it where it
falls. It's it's a fragment of a
sentence. It's not even the, you know that
like the the full sentence there at like 4/5 of the way through
this one. Rob, what is it in this?
What did you hear? What what flagged to you like
demand is, is right there in that in that moment.
Yeah. So like what, what am I looking
for? I'm looking for what are you
trying to accomplish right now? What?
Oh, and and, and not related to supply, not related to
complaining about existing options, like I'm just putting
those in a different category. Like what's the thing that you
are trying to do? And so right, like you can
complain about supply, but I need to know why do you need to
change? What it, what's different?
What are you trying to do? What's going on that's causing
you to need to change? And what kind of change do do
you need to make? And so here it's like, OK, I, I
specifically wrote it this way too, to make it feel like a
throwaway con, like a throwaway comment, because it often comes
across as a throwaway comment where it's like it's, it's just
not reflecting our work. The blunders now that we're
fundraising and the current environment is what it is.
We need, we got to fix that. Yeah, right.
And So what you can see there is, oh, OK, wait.
Now they are fundraising right now and it's hard to fundraise.
It's not reflecting their work to funders.
They need to fix that now. Like there's a there's this
thing. It's like there's something
they're trying to do right now that has made their existing
options no longer just good enough.
We can cope enough with them. We need to fix that.
That's what's happening on the demand side, trying to fix our
reporting. Yeah, yeah.
And and and then the the customer sort of layers
camouflage onto it by saying, you know, look into our
alternatives to Salesforce in the last year or two, which is
actually a separate, it's an entirely separate thing like
fixing the reporting again agnostic of supply could be in
Salesforce, could be, it doesn't really matter where it comes
from, but fixing reporting for fundraising that is going on
right now is the immediate priority.
Supply is the sort of secondary consequence of that.
Yeah, Yeah, it's, it's. And so this is where it gets
confusing, which is they're saying on the supply side, we're
looking into an alternative to Salesforce, but on the demand
side, they're saying we're trying to fix our reporting so
fundraising gets easier. What you might say is, OK, we
are an alternative CRM to Salesforce because it sounds
like you want to look into an alternative CRM to Salesforce.
We are an alternative CRM to Salesforce with better
reporting, right? That is an option here.
But when they're saying an alternative to Salesforce, that
doesn't necessarily mean we want to RIP out Salesforce, which
sounds crazy. It sounds like they're saying we
want to RIP out Salesforce, but that's not they're just saying
like sales for we can trust more what they're saying on the
demand side, on the supply side, it's we can't trust it quite as
well. We can trust what they don't
like, but but the supply they want is way less clear.
So if they say right, like I don't like Salesforce because it
doesn't reflect, it doesn't it's reporting isn't good enough for
our funders, right, That is supply.
I don't like the thi the thing I don't like about supply, if
they're saying we are looking into an alternative to
Salesforce, an alternative CRM that is supply I want and they
don't get to they're like basically they, they don't
really get to shape the supply they want.
We shouldn't trust them there. We actually have to discount
that part because if you remember from forever ago,
customer comes in and requests a specific feature, a permissions
feature. They don't actually want the
permissions feature. They want something on the
demand side, which is I want to stop people like I, I want, I
want to stop people from archiving projects.
And also we should, we should ignore when they say here's the
supply I want, we should pay attention when they say on the
demand side, here's what I'm trying to accomplish right now.
And then on the supply side, here's why I can't do that with
my current options. Here's why my current options
are not good enough. Then they jump into like telling
you what product they want. That is, that is basically where
you customer language having this translation thing is you
just discount all of that. So let's I want to get into that
what to trust and what not to trust.
What I think is a very practical framework that you gave.
What happens as a result of this?
Maybe like you've painted one picture, which is the the
founder that's on the other side selling this could have said, I
need to design an alternative to Salesforce that's for a
nonprofit and has good reporting.
Play that out. How does you've seen that?
Not in this iteration, I don't think that's what they did, but
you've seen that direction where you follow the customer's
request on supply. How would that have played out?
And then what actually happened and how does like how does the
situation go? Yeah.
So remember, what they're trying to do is they're trying to fix
their reporting. So if you say we are an
alternative platform to Salesforce, an alternative CRM
to Salesforce that has better reporting design for nonprofits,
even if you nail that, but you get the supply slightly wrong,
what's going to happen is they're going to go back and be
like, oh gosh, that reporting would be useful.
You'll have good sales conversations.
But the idea of ripping out Salesforce is like this massive
new project you're putting on their To Do List that they're
generally just like not going to do.
It takes a ton of work and it's not real.
Even though they say they want an alternative to Salesforce, we
know what they really want is on the demand side.
They just want the easiest possible way to fix their
reporting so that their fundraising gets easier.
And So what winds up happening is you wind up having sales
conversations that go, well, they're like, wow, I ideally
it's that they go, well, I'll give you kind of like a, a
couple different gradients of this, but they go the, the most
frustrating one is you have a bunch of sales conversations
that go well, they seem like they get it.
And then the sales cycles drag on forever.
And worse, your pricing, because you're competitive with
Salesforce is tied to sales forces pricing.
And so you have very long sales cycles, pricing at sales forces
level and you have a massive mountain of features to build to
get to feature parity with Salesforce.
And then you have a bunch to maintain and all of that kind of
stuff. And that just doesn't like that
is a total grind. The worst version of this though
is that you totally, you miss the demand piece of it.
And so you will have sales calls it what you'll you'll just hear
the supply side. You'll just hear that Salesforce
isn't build for built for nonprofits.
And so then you're going to say, well, we're building Salesforce
for nonprofits. And you have sales calls where
people like seem to get it, but because their demand is I'm
trying to fix my reporting and you're showing them all the
different parts of your CRM. At the end, they're going to
say, cool, that's really, that seems really useful.
But I don't know why I would use it.
Like, I don't know why I would. It's, it's not clear to me.
It seems, yes, it seems like it is built for nonprofits.
But like, that's great in theory.
I'm trying to fix my reporting and they're never going to say
this out loud. It's just like minute 27 of the
sales call. You're just going to get a weird
question and it's going to be confusing.
Yeah, yeah, so true. It's like that the that, that's
probably another translation guide.
What, how, what, how to translate weird questions later
on. It's almost never about the
feature that they're asking about.
It's there's something else that's going on there.
Let's talk about what, OK, what's the consequence of
recognizing, correctly recognizing what is demand in
this case? Like what do you build?
What happens with the customer? How is that different from
redesigning Salesforce for nonprofits?
Yeah. So, OK.
So if you if you just focus on the demand side, it's I want a
better, I need better reporting for funders on the supply side.
It's I don't like like Salesforce hasn't worked despite
us getting a bunch of consultants and spending a lot
of money on consultants. So what you would sell then is
not something that replaces Salesforce.
You would just sell something that fixes their reporting for
funders that probably plugs into Salesforce.
And so your, you know, your like, feature area is way small.
You're really just focused on, you're basically like a donor
reporting service or kind of like a tool or, or whatever.
And maybe it's custom, maybe it's whatever, but it's, you're
offering a reporting tool specifically for nonprofits for
fundraising. Surface area is smaller.
They no longer have this project to I have to RIP out Salesforce
to get the reports that I want out of this.
And then the pricing options here are like way different
because they're not comparing it versus Salesforce.
And so it's right like it's what did you spend on consultants?
Well, this is the same cost as a consultant per year, but it
works. But it actually works, right?
And so instead of it being $5000 or whatever a year for a
nonprofit, for a normal sized nonprofit, right, like it's
$40,000 per year and they buy faster.
Yeah, that's super interesting how the you're actually you're
promising less and able to charge more like in in many ways
like you've at the same time reduce your complexity and of
implementing of selling and increase the like the price
range that you have. Yeah, this is and this is the
physics of start-ups. Just like this is like the
perfect example of the physics of start-ups.
They are trying to accomplish something.
If we fit that well, they will buy faster and the pricing is
determined by the value of the thing they are trying to
accomplish versus the alternatives there, right?
Like this is just, again, another lesson in the physics of
start-ups, which is your product breadth is not relevant to the
pricing. You're that's a, that's kind of
a push mindset. The pull mindset is the pull
dictates what they want to buy, what they're willing to pay for
it, and the bounds that you need to fit so that they will RIP it
out of your hands. Yeah, fascinating.
You know what on it in my little company where we're I'm running
into this with this week, it's been like, oh, OK, I've been
actually framing it from or improperly defining it.
Like what at what the demand is much closer to is storytelling
that involves our products so that it is embedded.
What I've been thinking it was was your product in front of
customers and that's they're they're very they're separate
approaches with a similar media product.
It's just a slightly a different way of talking about it that I'm
I'm seeing like much faster, shorter time to light bulb goes
off and head to like, oh, that's something that you can do that
feels natural in your in the context of your media and.
So here's the here's the frustrating thing about this,
because this is this is the thing that bothers me and
bothers I think everyone, which is that the unlock is almost
always a messaging unlock. But if you approach it as a
messaging problem without this translation guide, without this
kind of foundational framework, without the the physics of
startups, you wind up just playing whack A mole with
different messaging options and they are all guaranteed to not
work. You know.
Because there are infinite words you could use, all of which will
make a logical sentence, but they have to connect to demand
in the customer's mind. And that you need that way of
thinking about it to have any chance of getting the right
words and concepts that will unlock that are so simple.
Make that light bulb go off in their brain.
Yeah, I love that. Let's hit Rob before we wrap the
what you write about what you can trust and what you can't
trust. And you've alluded to this on a
couple, but I do want to make it more explicit.
Yeah, here, I'm just gonna read this and then Rob would love
your would love your commentary on it.
Now that we have a translation guide for customer language, but
we need one. Or, excuse me, now we have a
translation guide for customer language, but we need one last
step as we interpret the things they say using this framework,
what should we trust on the demand side?
Trust they kind of know what they're trying to do or
accomplish, but often need help articulating it concretely.
They often use vague language, like our donor reporting isn't
landing on the supply side. Trust that they can complain
about existing tools and methods they don't really like.
But don't conflate disliking supply with having demand and
then you go on, don't trust when they say supply they want
because that will lead you astray.
For example, looking into an alternative to Salesforce will
literally steer you into the iceberg.
Rob, what would you, what would you add maybe on the on the
demand side to like what what to trust when they say it?
Yeah. I mean, what I've generally seen
is that somewhere in the hairball is somewhere in the
monologue. They actually do convey demand.
It is actually just and they convey it roughly often.
If they say, like our donor reporting isn't landing, you
need to unpack, as Bob Melissa would also say, like you need to
unpack the word landing because I don't know what landing means,
but they'll often convey it and it's more of a finding it
problem for you. And you should trust it because
they kind of know what they're supposed to be doing in their
job. They kind of know what they have
like a rough sense of what they're trying to accomplish and
they often need help just kind of explaining it a little bit
more to us. So that is pretty good.
They also are pretty good on the supply side of knowing why their
existing tool isn't good enough for that thing they are trying
to accomplish, why their existing options aren't good
enough. And the yes sale, like
Salesforce, the reporting doesn't really work.
We've tried consultants to fix that and they haven't worked
either. And like, yeah, that's pretty
rough. But we can say like what does
work mean? They're like, what does it, what
do you mean it hasn't worked? But that's roughly right.
Like being kind of trust that that's them pushing against
their existing supply. We need to and we need to take
those two in combination though, because if we don't, then we get
a laundry list of complaints on the supply side without
understanding which of those are actually relevant that they are
that fit what they are trying to accomplish.
So those are the pieces there. And then the danger zone is when
they talk about supply they want, that is a note.
You can say what I don't like about my existing options.
That's the negative I don't like about my existing options XYZ.
That's OK. That's roughly OK.
You have to just connect that to the demand side.
When they say here's the supply I want, absolutely.
Like, no, that is don't trust that at all.
Take that as actually probably likely to steer you in the wrong
direction. And that's just because like
they don't they this is where it comes where customers don't know
what they want. That's what they're, they don't
know about the specific instantiation of the supply that
they that fits their demand. That's your job as a founder is
to design supply that fits the pull that they have.
They're going to just, they're basically just going to kind of
they're throwing concepts because that's the best they
have. They're trying to articulate
this thing that's fairly complex for them to articulate and they
have no idea if you're picking it up or not.
So they're just throwing out things at you.
But that that piece in particular is the dangerous
piece. Yeah, fascinating.
Rob, what should founders do with with this now?
Like what's the actionable next step?
Use it. Translate.
That's it, right? This is a translation guide.
This is your Rosetta Stone to what customers are saying.
Yeah. And it's the start of it.
It's not, it's not complete. It's not complete.
There's a bunch of other things that I need to include in the
translation guide and all that kind of stuff.
But maybe that's another book in the future.
Yeah, I I love it. I'm going to run the a recent
call through the translation guide and see what comes out on
the other end. So I suspect it's going to be
different. I think I may have been feel
like nearing or being attracted by the song of the sirens, which
is this is the supply I want. And there's, there's probably,
it's really hard to resist that because it feels so simple and
clear and straightforward in some ways.
And sometimes, Rob, tell me if I'm wrong, sometimes they
actually might be right. Like the thing like there's,
there might be some customers that can actually articulate the
supply that you should build in order to satisfy that.
Yes, but unless you understand the demand and basically pull
framework, yeah, you won't know what success looks like to them.
So you won't actually know what to build.
You'll know like roughly what to build maybe, but you won't not
won't know why. You won't know what it needs to
accomplish for them. And so you just wind up in this
awful state with a product you're there on boarding to.
You don't know what success is. They may or may not know what
success is. And so that's a terrible
situation to be in. Yeah, good point.
I like the drawing it back to the system approach there of
thinking about a startup, the replicating case study and the
factory and the way that it's not just the cell, it's what you
deliver afterward and the clarity that comes from knowing
what demand is. Why don't we hit one mailbag
real quick? This one came from Dominic
Dominique. I'm sorry if I'm mispronouncing
that, he said. Hey Rob, been listening to your
podcast, reading your blog. After going through the Harvard
Innovation Labs, the path to PMF slide deck, a light bulb went
off. Suddenly I could grasp the the
difference of the demand framing, which was incredibly
valuable. I of course also made the
mistake of building first, but with the demand framing and
emotional shift happened, instead of trying to sell my
product, I checked. I check if the prospect has
demand. The key difference for me is
that when trying to sell supply, prospects can only say no to
your product, which sucks. But by seeing if they have
demand, they're not rejecting you or your product, they're
simply telling you about their reality, which I find easier to
deal with. What what?
What jumps out to you? It's not not really a question,
but would love your reaction to that.
Yeah, I think it's it's an awesome point and it's one that
I think when you understand the physics of startups this the
sense that if you are just pushing your supply, if you
think it's all about the product, then they're just
rejecting the product or rejecting you.
Which means you're going to wait to sell, you're going to suck at
sales, and then you're going to have an existential crisis when
people don't know, when people don't buy and you're going to
misdiagnose why they're not buying.
And it's just this terrible, terrible loop.
We're all down because we're not doing that separation between
demand and supply. Yeah, I as a the delicate flower
that I am, this is definitely hit home on just how it like
emotionally painful selling and rejection can be.
But how it's it's almost like an out of body experience a little
bit because you're no longer, it's no longer about you.
It's about understanding them. And that is?
I have not felt bad in a sales conversation in a long time
because I actually like embrace. Like I just don't care.
It's they're telling me something why should I take it
personally? But it's not about me.
I love it. I'm gonna turn someday, you
know? My aspiration is to be an
emotional robot in some ways, but squat. 300 and you'll get
there. Just a body of muscle for there.
There's no more room for emotion than there.
Well, also, Rob, anything we want to add founders and another
way of doing the translation, if you know, if you're working on
that running into a wall, Rob helps founders with that
translation and he's got a bunch of practice at it.
Rob, anything you would add on working together or anything
like that? No reach out, I got to run.
All right. I have a good one, Rob.
Later.