How to run a pre-PMF sales call
Rob's guide for overthinking founders
Guess what?? My book’s final draft is due in 7 days! **curls up in fetal position and dies**
—
“How do I run my early sales calls?”
This is one of the top 2 questions I get from founders. (The other is: “How do I get people to talk to me?”)
Most resources I’ve found on sales are good for POST-PMF:
Founding Sales is amazing for the tactical pieces on sales process
Demand-Side Sales 101 is amazing for “why people buy things”
Everyone raves about the Mom Test, so I’ll put it here so people don’t angrily comment for me leaving it out, though IME open-ended discovery interviews are generally counterproductive
These things aren’t, however, as useful when you’re pre-PMF, trying to figure out what your repeatable case study is.
You have a person in front of you in a sales call and you don’t know:
How to figure out if they have demand… do you ask questions? show a demo? show slides?
How to know if they’re just being nice or not
How to describe your product to them
What - if anything - to show them
Here’s a not-so-short guide to pre-PMF sales calls! (Yes, I know this is somewhat high-level, it’s based on material I built for PMF Camp, more info here)
Pre-PMF Sales: A Theory
Most of the time, we suck at sales because we think it’s about pushing and persuading. We just have the wrong mental models about what sales is and isn’t.
My foundational beliefs about sales:
It’s *weird* for anyone to buy anything; the default state is that people are in equilibrium and don’t need / want to change. Our job is to figure out who is in disequilbrium and is trying to change. In this state, they have “demand.” More concretely, they have a “project they’ve prioritized on their mental to-do list” that’s going to translate to some sort of action.
We can’t force anyone to do anything they don’t want to do; we mostly can’t even convince or persuade them. When someone is trying to change, we need to offer them something that THEY PERCEIVE fits what they’re trying to do better than their alternatives options.
When we embrace these two things…
Sales feels different. We stop thinking it’s our job to educate, evangelize, persuade, pitch. Instead, we find people who are trying to accomplish something and see how we can help them.
AKA: We go out looking for pull, versus trying to push.
We realize we aren’t *really* selling a product, we’re selling *something that helps them accomplish their project.*
This is really important, because it means we can sell WITHOUT a product, without lying about us having a product or apologizing for not having a product. In many cases we can just sell a service that gets their project done, and they’re willing to pay MORE for that than they would pay for a product.
Ok, now that we’ve got the theory down…
What’s The Goal Of The Call?
There are three things that need to happen to get to a sale:
Demand-fit: This is what salespeople call “discovery”; really it’s about figuring out what the “project they are prioritizing on their mental to-do list” is and saying we help with that.
Supply-fit: When we know what their demand is, we see if our supply FITS their demand better than their alternatives (e.g., direct competitors, DIY)
Collaborative plan to get the deal done: When they have demand and feel like our supply fits, our job is to help them come up with the “plan” to buy it! (AKA: Mutual action plan)
These three things may all happen in one call. Or they may happen across 17 calls, 3 in-person visits, and 2 romantic walks on the beach. The point is - they need to happen.
Importantly, they need to happen IN THIS ORDER… because you won’t know how to describe or demo your “supply” in words or screens that make sense to them without understanding their “demand.” And they won’t collab with you on a plan to get the deal done unless THEY have demand and feel like your supply is a good fit.
How to Run a Demand-Fit Call
The goal for Call 1 is, at VERY minimum, to achieve demand-fit. We can shoot for supply-fit and collab-plan too, but if we DON’T find demand-fit, they probably won’t show up to a Call 2.
What is the structure of a call to find demand-fit?
Intro / discovery
Maybe a slide or two as additional discovery
Demand recap
Intro/Discovery
Everything we’re doing is trying to uncover their demand. What exactly is the project on their to-do list that we can help with?
Pleasantries: “You’re in Miami? Cool, I’m in New Hampshire and haven’t been outside since November. Literally a frozen tundra here. I don’t know if I’ll ever see the sun again. Anyway…”
Why are you here: “Thanks so much for taking the time to chat today. What caused you to take the call?”
Additional follow-ups you can ask:
“What were you hoping to get out of the call?”
“What priorities you were hoping this call would be relevant for?”
Basic agenda-alignment: “Awesome, that’s exactly what I was thinking we’d cover today. Rough agenda is _____, and if it feels like a fit we can schedule another call to do a deeper dive. That work for you? Ok - mind if I ask a few questions to get to know you better?”
2-3 discovery questions:
Note that you’re going to THINK you need to ask questions like, “Tell me about your process and pain points today.” These are questions about their frustration with their current state, but remember: “Bitchin’ ain’t switchin” (Bob Moesta’s classic quote). You’ll learn interesting things, then ask them if they need to change and they’ll say, “no.” Then it will be awkward.
Instead, you want to ask questions about what they’re trying to accomplish and why they need to change. Questions like, “What’s your priority in the next quarter? What’s holding you back?” These are questions about change - helping them understand what they’re trying to accomplish.
These eventually get very specific - you’ll have 2-3 killer questions eventually that give you 80%+ confidence whether someone will buy.
A Slide or Two
This isn’t to present - it’s to better understand what they’re trying to accomplish. So you could show a slide like this, that I call the “demand slide”, which is basically saying: “Here’s what people with demand are telling me - how are you different?”
The second slide is often what I call the “options” slide - which says, “When they are trying to accomplish the thing from the last slide, they consider a few different options. How are you thinking about YOUR options?”
This second slide helps you understand exactly what you’re competing against - are you competing against DIY? Or a consultant? Or something else? This helps you differentiate based on what matters to them. It leads you to say:
Ok, sounds like you’re trying to accomplish X right now because Y, and considering Z option. Maybe I’m wrong here - what am I missing?
And if we offered something that is faster and cheaper than Z, would that be worth exploring further? (This is a HINT of supply)
Which brings us to the demand recap:
Demand Recap
The most important thing - the whole point of everything we’ve done above, is to ALIGN on demand with the potential customer. Two ugly slide explainers:
Then What?
As I hinted above, then we tease our supply, and either dig into it or schedule the next call to find supply-fit. If we’ve done this well and they have real demand… they should pull for the next step.
Realizing this is very long now, so I’m going to leave it here. Feel free to email me any questions! If you find this helpful, share with other founders!!
—
PS: