Bob Moesta | Demand-Side Sales 101

Hi everyone, this is Catalan and I just want to make a quick intro for today's guest, which is Bob Muesza. Bob Muesza is one of the founders really of the jobs to be done theory, which is a revolutionary way to think about the way we, about products in general, even if we are on the supply side, creating them or even if we're on the demand side, buying them. I find Bob really insightful and clear-headed and throughout his journey, he's now over 50 years old, he's been working on this for his entire life really and he helped build over 3,000 products, build and launch 3,000 products in all types of stages from seed startups all the way down to multi-billion dollar corporations. So we're talking in this podcast, in this interview, we're talking about his new book, which is Demand Side Sales 101. And this is a very insightful book and it's a very interesting way to think about sales basically reorganizing the business around the customer and around their outcomes and the things that they want and need. So I hope you're going to enjoy this interview. I really much enjoyed Bob's time in our conversation. He's an absolute all around interesting person and it has a great story. So in this interview, you will learn about what jobs to be done is, what demand side sales is and how that's a great way to think about your sales, how this makes sales less icky and how it actually makes sales desirable because it's aligned with how people actually are buying and also you're going to learn how to be a better consumer after you kind of understand all of this stuff. So hope you enjoyed the interview with Bob. Thank you so much and feel free to share this with somebody if you feel it would be a benefit to them. Thank you. Bye. So Bob, thank you so much for being on the show. Really appreciate your time and we just have a brief conversation. You kind of explained to me, your camera setup and everything that I found, it kind of cool. So first of all, thank you so much for taking the time and have a conversation. We're really much enjoying looking forward to our conversation. I'm happy to be here and happy to share and and always willing to help entrepreneurs. That's my that's my that's my bread and my passion, if you will. I've been a builder for a long time and to be honest, I know how hard it is to build business to create something from nothing and so to me, anytime I have an opportunity to help that community I do. So happy to be here. Thank you so much. So one thing I think might be really interesting. A lot of people resonate with and I think you talk about this in your in your book, but before we go into the topics there, you talk about in your book about how you view the world from a different perspective and a lot of people know you from the jobs to be done theory and obviously that's something very much established at this point in time as as as the way for for how things are are done in a lot of places, but you obviously view the feeling I'm getting when I'm reading your stuff and leading your methodologies and looking what you do is this clear headedness structures that work in resource scarce environments that work that work in real life. And I don't get that a lot in a lot of the things I read a lot of people I talk to. So what would you say were some defining moments or the context or environments in your life that develop allowed you to develop that that way of looking at the world. So, so I you know, again, I'm an engineer and I've been building things for a long like I think I said it before, but I've been I've been breaking things for 50 years. I've been fixing things for 45 so I don't get in so much trouble and then but I've been building things for 30 years and as a builder, you you you you you end up being scrappy. You like the whole aspect of having access to too much is is actually I actually don't do well in those environments. And so the notion of having constraints and and letting if you will, the struggling moments guide where I should work and what I should do is is really then kind of put I'll say ingrained into me from a very young age. And so I took that whole notion and also then flipped it to consumers like as consumers or as people who are buying new products, whether it's businesses or individuals, we are creatures of habit and we will do what we did yesterday because at some point it changes hard for us. And so the reality is is that it's the struggling moment that's the seat of this. And so to me, in a very resource constrained environment like a startup, it's it's these notions of where like where are the things that I like what are the unknowns that I have? What do I actually have to go figure out? And like what causes something to happen? And so to me, it's this notion of cause and effect and being able to frame the unknowns and having having what I call empathetic perspective from both your side, from investor side, from employees side, from the customer side and being able to see the world kind of in this like like objectively around it. And though it becomes emotional, it's how to see the world you try to do it as empathetic as you can. Yeah, absolutely. And for the people listening before, because I want to ask you what was the main motivation of writing this book? So can you tell us about that? And then if you can set the frame of just like roughly speaking what jobs have been done theories that everybody's the same page? Let me talk about jobs be done because it's one of those software. So as a kid who got in a lot of trouble and built a lot of like I built a parachute and jumped off my roof. I didn't work broke, broke my leg, right? That's the kind of by the time I was seven, I had three close head brain injuries. I been diagnosis like dyslexic. I struggled to read into right. And I think of that as actually one of the greatest gifts I ever got because it forced me to learn in a very different way. And and jobs be done is this whole notion of for some reason we end up seeing things and and and talking about things at a almost like a very high abstract level. Like we talk about personas like and personas when you actually understand how people usually make them there, there are an amalgamation of a bunch of attributes that make up what to give people a notion of what a person would be like who's buying your product, right? But but it just tells you who they are. It doesn't tell you why they buy. And so jobs to be done is this this this quest to understand what in the world caused you to say today's the day I need a new mattress or I'm buying a new CRM or and the one thing for sure is is that it's not random. And people treat sales and these other things like it's random. Like well if I just make 100 calls and I get like 20 appointments and I get eight eight proposals, I'll get two closes and it's like they treat it like it's probability theory and like I was lucky enough that I have but these are this is my office. I have four mentors. The mentor who's in position number four is named as Dr. Deming. I met him when I was 18 years old. He was 85. He is the I call him the grandfather of lean, but he's the one who basically taught me to say that don't ever confuse correlation with causation. And so to me jobs to be done is about understanding the underlying causality of what causes people to say today's the day they're going to buy your product. And I've been using that to innovate by for almost 30 years and I've been using that that premise in a whole bunch of other tools. But jobs to be done is the primary frame by which if I can't find a struggling moment and I can't find a place where people want to make progress, then I don't build a product because it's almost impossible to get anybody to actually there's so many things in the world that the fact is it's hard to get people to see it let alone basically without them having a struggling moment. So then and then the book is literally a derivative off of that saying like why why is sales so hard and why don't we teach sales like at business school. There are no sales 10 years ago there were no sales professors like of all the things that teach at business school you'd think sales would be somewhere at least in the curriculum if not at the center of it right but it wasn't there. And so I spent the last 10 years kind of understanding why in the world are there no sales professors why when you go to why combinator do they not teach you sales they teach you how to raise money they teach you how to do lean they teach a agile they teach you all this others up but they don't teach you sales and I've done seven startups and I would tell you this the hardest part of any of the startups with sales just absolutely bar none and and so and I'm an engineer is I think you can see by the geekiness of me but the reality is like in a million years I never would have ever thought I wrote a book about sales but the reality is is what I really wrote a book about is buying and and the thing that I did to make sales less eaky for me is to flip the lens and say how do I help people make progress and what products do I build to fit into their lives to do that and so it's called demand side sales 101 and it's it's looking at sales from the demand side which is the customer side of the world and say how do I help people buy as opposed to how do I take my product and figure out who should who should I sell it to and it it changed the way in which I fundamentally look at both my startups as well as as as building product but like I think of when I'm hiring employees what progress do they want to make by coming to my company right I all so this lens of progress has been permeating my my my brain for such a long time that I can't not see it. - Yeah, that's very interesting, 'cause when you said like you would never imagine yourself writing a book about sales, this stereotype most people have, and this is a pure assumption, but it might be roughly correct, is that this is sales, it's a matter of extroversion, people being overly extroverted, or being overly pushy and feeling uncomfortable about doing things. And the way what I find really, I mean, relaxing in your book, and that's, I think, the best feeling I can grasp is it's truly relieving to me. When I'm reading, like, I'm actually helping them. I didn't feel bad about doing it. I should actually feel great about doing it. And that's, I think most people have that intuitive feeling of how great sales should happen, in which it's really what you're explaining, like you're actually helping them buy, you're not really selling to them. So can you briefly go through on some of those assumptions people have and how you tap on that, yeah? - Yeah, and it's not really, I think of buying as part of the process, right? So like when you buy a mattress, you're actually probably rearranging the bedroom, you're getting into, you're getting, you're doing something, there's something else going on. And so it's like, what's the context that's wrapped around what you're trying to do? And how do I help make sure I understand what you're focused on trying to do? And ultimately, I have to connect what you're trying to do to the product, but we usually start with the product, right? And we try to then say, if I make mattress, well, who needs a mattress? And everybody becomes a prospect. And so you're selling all the time, trying to find people who need mattresses or need CRM or it doesn't, just anything. And so you start to realize like, ultimately what you want to do is find people who want to make progress. Because not everybody who needs a mattress wants a mattress. And at the same time, the fact is, is at some point the moment that they realize that the thing that competes with a new mattress is actually Zquill, which is a sleep bait. It's like, how many bottles of Zquill do you need before you realize you need a new mattress? Too many people are talking about the features and benefits of the mattress as opposed to the behavior of what they're doing to compensate for the mattress. Yeah, that was a funny. I think I've heard Ryan Singer from Basecamp talk about alcohol being competition to a great mattress. I would never have thought of that. That's quite hilarious. What are my favorites? I did an interview where I heard people going like, yeah, I moved my routine from sleep, from working out in the morning because I was so stiff and so uncomfortable, that I literally did it so it would be later at night so I'd be tired enough so I could sleep. And so that, so the competition to basically helping them make progress is not just the product category they're in, but it's the workarounds and the things that they do on top of it. And so in a lot of cases, we could actually find places where people are ready to buy a mattress way before they actually are going to buy a mattress because we can see the causality of like they say this and then they do this and then they try that. And then oh, by the way, and finally they get to like, God, I guess I should get a new mattress, but we can get in their way way earlier and help them way or if we actually talk to them the right way. Yeah, absolutely. So can you, cause one story that really explained to me like supply versus demand side selling was the Casper story. Yeah. Can you maybe explain? Well, yeah, the concept with that story where because it's one of those things everybody usually has to buy at some point in time, but it's like, if you think about it, when you go to buy a mattress, you have to, the way the way it worked before Casper was, you had to walk into a store. There would be anywhere from 20 to 100 mattresses in the store. They would all more or less look the same. They might have a little bit different color on it, whatever. But the way I was like, all you know is that you're not sleeping or you need a, like you just, your mother-in-law is coming to visit and she can't sleep on the bed you had in college. Like there's certain contexts wrapped around it. But the rail is like, people would just start to talk to you about like, well, do you want a foam mattress or do you want a spring mattress? And you go like, well, what does that mean? And you start to realize like you have to get so educated around the spring and foam and hybrid and cooling and density. And you're like, you almost have to get an engineering degree to buy a mattress. And you start to realize like people have to do this when they buy cameras, when they buy all these other things. And what you start to realize is people actually don't want to engage in the process. They'd rather actually figure out how to buy a topper and live with the pain longer because the whole notion of walking into this store where I don't really know what I'm trying to buy. I don't know how much it's really going to cost. I know, to be honest, it's like, I don't know how to choose. And I'm the only one there and somebody's trying to sell me the most expensive thing I can and most people walk out with the most expensive one because they don't even know what they're buying. And Casper walks in and says, like, look, let me ask you five questions about kind of why you're not sleeping. And they did it in a very kind of clever way. They didn't say, hey, are you hot at night? They asked the question, so do you stick your leg out in the middle of the night? Because that's what you do when you're hot. And it's that notion of like, God, do you know me? How do you know? I do that. It's this notion of being able to understand. And then being able to connect to say, like, well, this is why you do that. And here's what happens. And it probably means you probably need some cooling or you need to make the temperature of your room different. You don't mean like all of a sudden you start to realize, okay, they get me. And I haven't even talked to anybody. And so and the other part they did is they simplified the choice set. It's like, you know, size and then good, better best. And it's one of these things of like, this is what this is for. This is what that's for. Let's make sure we can actually match you to the right measures. And so they eliminated all the fancy language and the engineering degree to figure out how to buy. And there are a billion dollar mattress business where everybody would say the mattress business is mature. There's no growth in it. We should actually stop. You know, it's like it's a point that it's consolidating like strategically. There's just no reason why somebody should be able to walk in out of nowhere. And like, carve a billion dollar business out of it. And you start to realize that the mattress itself is only part of the solution. Buying the mattress is actually another part of the solution. Getting rid of the old mattress is another part of the solution. So you start to realize like there's these pieces that have to go together to help them make progress. And as you start to understand that part, you start to realize how to bundle the services together. Besides just the mattress. So if if I'm understanding correctly with deeper into that, it's really about looking outside of the immediate short term motivation. People have just to sell people on stuff and looking like what is the outcome they're trying to get? What is the progress they're trying to make? And then actually helping them achieve that with or without your product, or including your product around it or whatever it is. And that can guide your decisions. So you're basically saving people the time, the effort and the energy to have to learn all that stuff to identify their own problems, identify their own solutions. Well, it's actually asking them questions so they can actually see the problem at the right level. So for example, when you put a new software, they'll talk about all the things that you actually will, that it can fix for you that your old software can't do. But nobody actually spends enough time talking about like, well, how much training do I have to do? How much time is not money? How much time do I have to invest to actually rip the old system out and put the new one in? And this is where most people say, oh, don't talk about that part. We'll talk about when they're ready. We'll give them that information. But the real is no matter what they do, by helping them see like what, here's what we can do with the old data. Here's the trade-offs you have to make. Every sale has trade-offs. And most people don't understand that helping the customer make trade-offs is actually what a great salesperson does. Right? They actually, when you ask somebody who's had a great sales experience, you say, oh, who is your salesperson? They'll say, they're not a salesperson. They were my concierge. They were my guy. They were my muse. They were like, and so what you realize is really good salespeople focus on buying already. So this is like, I think in the first, like in the introduction, I say something like, if you're a seasoned, successful salesperson, you already know all this. You don't even need to read this book. But it's for all the other people who think it's all about product. And the way that we are taught or thinking about it is everything from the supply side, which is, tell me about the product. What are the features and benefits? Let me abstract it to a market segment or to a persona or whatever. And what you realize is like, everything that we're talking about is almost like, it's aggregated at this level that is just also soft and mushy, and that there's no causality to it. It's like when you drop it down into the reality of the real world and say, what had to happen for somebody to say, yeah, I'm going to spend $100,000 for a new CRM system. You're like, you know, well, they were just ready. It's like, no, they weren't just ready. They had this happen and they had this happen and they wanted that to happen and they wanted these other things. Like, there's a wrapper around it that actually makes it valuable. I would say that context creates value, right? Sometimes having the right product, having actually, to be honest, the wrong product and the right context, people actually will pay more for it than having the right product and the wrong context. Yeah. So 50% of the time, I believe that you can add, like, you can add, you can have more value to your product by making sure people see it in the right context. Absolutely. So can you give an example? So let's say, because the first thought I have is, if I'm going to talk to 100 customers and understand the context around their buying process and their then making progress, I'm going to end up with 100 different solutions. I'm assuming that you end up with five, six pattern type structures and then you can start problem solving around that. What do you think? Perfect. So what happens is you end up talking to people about like why did they buy it? So like if I'm in the middle of buying a or building a an app around kind of the CRM process, right? And what I've done is I've gone and interviewed people who have already bought CRM process and said like what was going on for you to say today's the day we're going to move from Excel or we're going to move from, you know, I'll say high rise or something to Salesforce or I went from Salesforce to, you know, some local version of some industry specific version. And it's literally what causes them to move. And what you can start to see is everybody's story is different. But there's this notion of like there are patterns when you kind of abstract it up just one level to the cause added like when I'm growing like crazy and the system won't actually handle all the things I need. And so there are when at some point there's a there's data that's getting lost between when we have the sales system and we actually have the customer support system and we're missing data between it and we're actually, you know, we're actually having satisfaction go down because we're not following up with customer. Like there are very, very specific things that have to happen. And what you do is you start to listen just at the very, very every story. We do an interview and then what we do is we act when we're done. We talk about what push them to move to a new thing. What pulled them to a new thing? What anxieties do they have and what habits? And so and we do that 10, 12, 15 times. And we start to see the dominoes that have to play in people's lives to see to basically say today's the day they need a new CRM or a new mattress or anything, right? But when you start to then see the path then once you have all those interviews, you start to see patterns like these things go these pushes and these pulls this situation and these outcomes, they value this and then this other situation and they have different outcomes and they value something else. And so you start to see the patterns between it and to realize that I don't have a hundred different stories. I've probably have four or five or six really different unique pathways or jobs that people are hiring products to do. And so from that, then we can actually see how we actually have to either market differently, position differently, develop new features, etc. Yeah, because from a marketing perspective, all I'm thinking is especially people have intent. So if early on in that context they have some sort of intent. You can get on and help them earlier. Like you said, by maybe they search for different types of things in that early stage process and you can be there for them at an early stage. So that's the type of action items that you can do after you understand these types of stories. The thing that I did is I built houses. One of the people I basically built for were first time home buyers, divorced family with kids and then downsizers, think of like your parents. And it's like what causes your parents to say, today's the day we're going to sell the family home for 20 years and go into something else. And one of the things we found is as you heard the pattern, it was that one of the things that caused people to go from what we call passive looking to active looking is that one of their close friends would either have a health concern or they'd have a they'd pass away or they'd be something where like that your mom and dad would look at each other and go like, oh my gosh, we got to move because we don't want to have that happen. Like I don't want to move without you and you don't want to move without we got to get this going, right? And seeing that pattern and seeing the dominoes that fall around that, I move my advertising from the real estate section, which is like when everybody's actively looking, it's like, oh, I moved it to the obituaries. I moved it to because what happens is your parents turn through the obituaries and say like, who, you know, what, who passed away? And I would literally say like time to move needs some help. I got a, I got a 37% increase in traffic and I got a 70% reduction in my, in my, in my advertising because nobody wants to advertise in the obituaries. But I knew that that was actually one of the triggers that got people moving in the process. Yeah, that's, that's a rather, that's rather crazy example. So would you, would you maybe explain a bit of the timeline for progress that you outlined in the book and kind of the forces that, that moved people from one, from one to another? So the interesting part is that, that when you start to look at how people buy, there are these phases that people like behavioral phases that they're in. So one is called a first thought. Like this is where like they, they, they literally didn't actually think about it the day before or the minute before. But then there's, there's, there's, there's a point where they create a space in the brain, the way clay, whose clay is number three up there. Yeah, Clay, Clay, Clay, Christian said he'd say it, he said it best. He said, questions create spaces in the brain for solutions to fall into. And so this whole notion of first thought is like, how do we, how do people create a space for them to start to go like, hmm, I, you know, we need some new CRM. And the thing is is what they start to realize is they don't know much about it. And so the second phase is really what we call passive looking. And this is where people learn, they learn about the problem, they learn about the solution. They're not really looking. They're just trying to actually understand the language. They're trying to see if it's big enough. They're trying to figure out whether they need to get other people involved. And so passive looking is where they go through life. And now where they didn't see stuff before, now they do. And then, and then they move to the next phase, which is three, which is really active looking. This is where they're like, oh my gosh, okay, we're, we got to fix this. We got to do something about this. And this is where they, they're almost like the kid in a candy store. Like they were, they think about all the features that way want. They think about all the possibilities. And, but they don't connect the dots. It's like, oh, it can't do this. Oh, yeah, can it do that? And this is where they get all excited. But like, when you think about people buying a house, they all say the stuff they want. But, but rarely do people actually buy all that stuff. And so part of it is, is that's where you get to phase four, which is from active looking you go to deciding. And deciding is actually about making trade-offs. It's about framing alternatives. It's about deciding where to start. And so one is, so active looking is almost divergent in thinking like, oh, we'll think of all these things. But, but, but deciding is about convergent thinking. It's about helping them actually get it down to two, three, four alternatives. And then being able to weigh the decision and also bring the element of time. If you don't do it now, when are you going to do it? And so you start to realize like without what we call a time wall, people actually can't make decisions. If it's always there, they're like, well, I can make that decision later. And so part of this is being able to help them frame the decision they're trying to make, the progress they're trying to make and how one, whatever one thing they pick is, has the best fit. And the moment that they decide is when they lock in the metrics of satisfaction and progress. So everything before that is all wish. But the moment that they say, I'm going to buy this is like, yep, though I wanted this other thing before I know now I'm not buying that part. It's like, yeah, but I expect these things. And so that's where to be honest, you end up being able to understand how to drive satisfaction. So stage five is about first use and metrics of progress. And then stage six is really ongoing use where every new innovation causes a whole new set of struggling moments that are very different that causes people to actually think about another innovation. And so you have to actually pay attention to your current customers for where are those struggling moments so they don't leave you. And across across this timeline that they have to make progress, there's from my understanding there's a number of forces. There's also a number of motivations that move them from one place to another. And I'm assuming that if we get those things, so the you say this in the book that our goal is really as in the sales process to make the negatives as low as possible. And to make the positive as big as possible so that they move in this in this process with the lowest maybe with the lowest friction will be we wait to look at it. That's not that's not necessarily true because here's the thing is I want at least for me, what I've learned is no friction is actually bad. People have a hard time valuing free things. So sometimes the friction might have to be time or effort, not money, other times it might be money and an easier. But part of it is to actually design meaningful friction because my experience says that creating some level of effort to actually get something done makes people actually feel more satisfied than not. Wow. Right. And so this is where where like if you pay too little for something that you value a lot, you don't think it's going to work. This actually implies value like a satisfaction. Yeah, absolutely. So can you maybe talk a little bit about the forces and the motivation types that are around this process? Yeah. There's four forces that enable people to make progress. There's a push of the situation, right? There's something that's going on in a life that says today's the day I have to do something different. And those have nothing to do with your product. Have everything to do with their current arrangement or current solution or current work around. And it's like it's the things that have been building. It's the bugs on the windshield. It's all the death by a thousand cuts. It's there's a whole bunch of stuff there that this is the stuff people will complain about. And a lot of times because they don't know where to go, this is where you get people who complain, but they don't do anything. The moment that they see a new solution, there creates a pull force, which is, oh my gosh, you can do that. You can do this. And so there's the second set of forces called pull pull of the new solution. And what you want to do is you want to make sure you unpack it down to the action or to the outweigh. that they're really looking for. So they'll say, oh my gosh, that feature is so cool. I love that feature. And what you have to do is say, like, it's not what about the feature. It's like, why is that? What will that feature do for you? What do you think that feature is gonna help you with? And so part of this is to actually use the feature to reflect into them, where most of the time we take the feature and reflect it into the product. Like, how does the feature work? And this is what the feature does. And here's what you can use the feature for as opposed to asking them what they think they'll use the feature for. So those are the two forces that promote progress. But there's these two other forces that hinder progress. One is the anxiety of the new. As I have a push and I then see some pulse to this new solution, there's anxieties like, well, what do I do with all this old stuff? What do I do with my old data? I can't break my contract. Whatever it is, there's anxieties that actually are holding them back. And then there's habits of the present, which is the things they love about their current product that they would have to give up if they were to move to this new product. And so it's looking at the world through these four forces and to realize like what I was taught in business school was the best way to get people to move is to add more features. But what you start to realize is when you add more features, you actually create more anxiety. Like, do I need all these features? Do I have to have all this? And so most people don't understand that feature creep. Like, how can a product that has half the features be better than a product that has twice the features? And nine times out of 10 is because like, it's what I wanted. I don't need all this stuff. And oh, by the way, they feel like they're paying for all these features they're not gonna use. And so they're going like, I think I should get a discount. It's not because they want to deal, it's because they feel like they're overpaying 'cause if this is $100 a month and it's got all these things, I only need 30, I think I should pay $30 a month. Yeah, that's incredible. And when I think about what you're saying, the, 'cause I'm trying to think like, if I own a business and I would try to do this myself and try to take this approach and start implementing it in my company, the way I feel is like, okay, so I have the sales and the customer success, which are really interacting with the customer and getting these inputs from them. Maybe there's other functions, but just top of mind for me right now. So there's those functions that are taking those inputs and bringing them inside the company, and you talk about it in the book, but if you can touch on it, like how, 'cause you really talk about orchestrating the company around those inputs and then allowing these revenue operations like called marketing, sales and customer success, allowing them to collaborate so that they transfer information with each other, but it's really like a complete different perspective, 'cause you reorient the entire company from those inputs that mostly sales and customer success bring in. Can you talk about that a little bit? Yeah, yeah, so I said it earlier, but nothing is random, everything is caused. I feel like randomness is one of those concepts that I understand it mathematically and I understand how we use it, but the real is like, from a product perspective, it's a very, very bad concept because it forces us just to sit and wait. If sales are random, I just have to wait for random to happen to me. Random is like luck, right? I just, it's just a bad concept. The second thing though is that we can't convince people of anything. They convince themselves. And so let's understand how they convince themselves and how context and outcome influence what proof they need to actually decide today's the day I'm gonna buy this or do something with it. And so to me, the first step is an entrepreneur and I give this advice to almost everybody that I end up talking to, doing a startup is like, number one is if the product doesn't exist, I want you to go and find the people that are fine, find the product that literally, when your product is launched, people will then fire that product to be with yours. And it's like sometimes it's in the category, sometimes it's outside the category, but like nobody has any more time or money. And so it's one of those things like they're gonna have to give up something, right? And so talk to people who recently bought that product. So for example, we're building a product for something to be used in the home to help your grandmother basically keep her company and reminder to take her medicine so she can stay in the house longer, right? And so what we did is in the product at the time didn't exist at all. And so we went and talked to people who did first alert, which is a necklace you wear around your neck or the home healthcare where they hire a new home health card has come into the house. And out of that, we were actually able to figure out what caused people to say today's the day that mom or grandma or grandpa and grandpa need help and then position the product to fit in those moments, right? The other product that was if you've already got sales, take the time to do a post mortem. What, like sit down with them after they've bought it, go like what caused you to say today's the day? And oh, by the way, you can't talk about your product at all. If you talk about your product, you're out. You gotta talk about them. So if they say, you know, your product was so convenient, you're gonna say what was convenient about it? And you're out. It's like, why is, what do you mean by convenient? Can be an example of convenient? Why is that important? What else is, what's not convenient? Like you want to use your product as a mirror to basically use it to reflect them in their mentality and their context and their outcome. Don't, they don't know anything about your product. Nothing. And don't pretend that they do. That's the other part. (laughing) - I'm a little bit of a die try, I apologize. - No, that's lovely. - No, that's amazing. That's amazing. So last question, Bob, and 'cause I'll tell people about the book in the intro and I'll have people links for everything and all that stuff and I'll have an introduction for you and all of that. So that all that is settled. Only one question and I love you if you would like to have any types of links or anything that you'd like people to go to, obviously we're gonna have the book and everything. But one question I'm thinking, 'cause I love this feeling that customers have, like they get to me. So a lot of people think of this, like, oh, that's my customer experience or whatever. But if I'm looking, for example, I have, I think it's not the same process, but I'm looking at, okay, people are aware of their problem, people are aware of the solution, people are aware of a product for that solution and then they're buying it and then continue to using it. It's probably different words and the same thing. I, for example, if I'm thinking of, let's take marketing services. If I know somebody's data, like if I know somebody's company's data, like product marketing, financial data, I would be able to basically know, the strategy for marketing is basically 75% data points. If I have that information, I'll be able to know what their problem is before they know what their problem is and the solution is before they know what the solution is. The problem is people don't trust you. If you, like, if you just tell them, like, he's exactly what you need. So just curious, if you've seen situations like that, 'cause it seems like, yeah, go ahead. - It's 90% of the work, like so what I would say is this is that, that if I believe that we have what I call a demand side innovation problem, most people don't even know what their problem is, let alone the solution. Like, when we helped Intercom, one of the things that Intercom did is they kept talking about all the solutions they had. And the moment we just said, no, let's talk about the problems that you help solve. And we just moved it from a solution space to a problem space. They grew almost 500% in leads. And so part of this is to realize, like, they actually don't know their problem. And they're peeling back the onion just like everybody else. They're like, oh, I have a turnover problem. And it's like, oh, we don't have enough compensation. Well, that didn't work. And it turns out that the real problem, they find out three years later, is they have a leadership problem that the managers, their managers suck. And nobody wants to work for a bad manager. And so part of this is helping them actually understand what is the data say? So there's a different, and again, I go back to Deming, number four up there. He always say, you've got to find the root causes. Not the symptoms. Turnover is a symptom, right? Trust is an effect, not a cause. How do you actually understand the underlying causality of how your business works? And so that, and how people buy, and what you start to realize is that, that you just telling them that they have a problem doesn't make it a problem. The better thing to do is to ask him a question and don't give him the answer. Why in the world do you spend this much on marketing and you don't get these many leads? Shut up. Don't say anything. You might have all the data to tell them why, but until they can actually respond to it, because if they can't, they won't be able to hear one word you're saying. So the process of making them aware of the pain and making them look at it in the eyes is what creates behavior change. So you're creating that struggling moment in them with that question. Create the space. So here's the thing is, demand exists inside people, your customers. You do not create demand. You uncover it. You actually help people, but it's all inside them. They have it. And you have to actually help them manifest it. And you need to create the space. Nobody has any extra space in their head. You got to create a question that literally creates the space. You go like, God, that's a really good question. Like, why does that happen? I don't know. And then to be honest, for the next week, they can do nothing but see it. Because it's like something that's fermenting or festering in their stomach, they're like, oh my god, this is a bigger problem than I thought. But we think we should be able to go from the question. to close in 10 minutes. It's just crazy. Like I'm actually convinced that the sales process has been made up by the accountants in the finance department. Because this is the way we should have cash flow happen, as opposed to we actually understand how people really buy. And those people who basically buy in different ways, and we've had financial innovation, because at some point in time, somebody listened to how people want to buy, and they realized like, well, I'd rather do that. But I'll pay you more to actually not have to pay you this way. Yeah, fantastic. So Bob, to be respectful, if you're time I'm going to let you go, where do you want to guide people in any place? They can learn more about you, what you do, everything. Oh, yes, go ahead. I want to say one more thing about the book. Yes. Number one response I'm getting from the book is not just about sales. And everybody says this, the part of it, like, oh, you're making sales feel less sticky, all that kind of. But the one thing that I did not anticipate about the book that I think is just kind of so cool is that people go like, I'm a better consumer now. I actually think about the purchases that I make, and I think about what's pushing me, and what's pulling me, and where am I in the timeline? And I feel like I'm a 10 times better consumer now that I read this book. And so to me, that's actually a sign that, like, if you can't get it out from the sales perspective, you can at least understand this from the buying perspective, and literally stop buying, just crap. Just stop buying it. You'll start to realize how much time, money, and knowledge you're wasting, because you're not thinking through what progress you're trying to make when you buy something. So you can find the book on Amazon, Demand Side Sales 101. It's, let's see, it's by Bob Mesta, MoE-STA. You can follow me on Twitter @BMesta, MoE-STA, and LinkedIn, that's the other place to find me. Yes. And thank you so much. I appreciate it. It's three different schools. So if you're a student somewhere, or you're in, I do tech stars, wide combinator, I do a lot of the-- I volunteer to help a lot of those kinds of organizations as well. Yes. Thank you so much, Bob. Thank you for your time and really much appreciate the conversation. Thank you.