PSA: There’s now a companion podcast! We go into way more detail on YouTube / Spotify!
I have now watched hundreds of founders’ sales calls. And in every single founder’s call, I find the same foundational error playing out in a thousand different ways. It causes the founder (and the potential customer) a world of pain. If you feel uncomfortable selling, or if your sales calls don’t feel smooth, this is probably why.
We all seem to have the most basic misconception about sales, a backwards idea of what causes someone to buy something, or what causes a deal to happen. I think of this foundational thing - what causes purchases - as the physics of sales.
At root, we all seem to think that the core force in the physics of sales is “seller convincing buyer to buy.” I call this the SELLER-PUSH theory of sales. At first glance, this theory makes sense. It fits with the (not-so-nice) image of a pushy salesperson in our brains, and the (not-so-real) image of a successful seller portrayed online.
But the SELLLER-PUSH theory is dead wrong, for a simple reason: Nobody is going to say, “You know what? You’ve convinced me. Let me drop all my priorities and projects to buy your product.” This could happen, sure… but it’s so rare that you would be crazy to bet your startup on it.
Instead, reality more closely resembles the BUYER-PULL theory, which states that the primary force that closes a deal is a buyer trying to accomplish a project on their to-do list. Our job is to help this person accomplish what they’re trying to accomplish. What we’re selling needs to fit what’s on their to-do list better than their alternatives, and when it does, they pull it out of our hands.
BUYER-PULL is both more efficient and effective than SELLER-PUSH. Why? In a BUYER-PULL world, our job is to support and facilitate their motion, not to drag them to a purchase. This takes much less effort for us, and is much less annoying for them.
A simple visual of the difference:
Everything you’re taught about sales is downstream from SELLER-PUSH vs. BUYER-PULL. The fancy terms, automations, and methodologies only make sense and work in the context of pull.
This is easy to nod along to but extremely difficult to embrace, because we are so hard-wired to think “sales is about convincing” that it infects how we approach every aspect of our startup.
Here is a list of 11 signals that you are operating under a “SELLER-PUSH” mindset. These are very common things that seem right, but largely backfire.
In “discovery”: What are you looking for? If you’re looking for a buyer’s pain points and problems, you’re looking for these in order to pitch / push your solution to them.
Describing your product: Are you explaining it as a “big” thing like a platform, or describing many use cases, or describing it like you’d describe it to a VC? If so, you’re trying to impress them, rather than “fit” their pull.
Demoing your product: What do you show? If you find yourself walking them through multiple screens and features, you’re approaching the demo as a way to convince them it works and is valuable.
In outbound: What’s your messaging? If you’re sending traditional “salesy” messaging, you’re assuming that it’s your messaging’s job to convince them to buy, or at very least to convince them they have pain points so you can then convince them to buy. (This usually leads to 0.1% response rates; add a bunch of fancy AI personalization to get to 0.15%.)
Sales call vibe: If you feel like you’re trying to convince the potential customer of anything, if it feels like you’re on opposite sides of the table, that’s a signal you are pushing. Sales calls should feel like you’re on the same side of the table, helping them assess whether your product can help them accomplish the thing they’re trying to accomplish.
Urgency: If you’re asking, “how do I create urgency?”, it’s usually because you are having meetings unexpectedly cancelled or postponed, or getting ghosted. The idea of “creating urgency” is a seller-push approach. Urgency is found on their to-do list, not created by a seller.
In group demos: Are you the primary person presenting in a group demo? If so, you think it’s your job to convince the group. It isn’t: It’s the champion’s job to convince their peers (champion = person with the project on their to-do list), and it’s your job to support the champion.
In call 2 in your sales process: Does your agenda say, “deep-dive demo”? You’re designing it around pushing your product benefits on them, vs. designing it surgically around what the potential customer needs to know in order to pull.
Your mindset about sales: If you feel hesitant about doing outbound, or don’t like doing sales calls, and find yourself prioritizing product development instead of sales, it’s almost certainly because you feel like you’re supposed to be convincing potential customers to buy, which is uncomfortable.
Your approach to product: If you are building more product in order to be able to sell, rather than building product as a response to sales, it’s probably because you think your job is to push a product onto potential customers that’s so feature-complete it overcomes all their potential objections. (It won’t.)
Your approach to customer success: If you’re finding that you can’t predict whether a customer will be successful or not, that’s a sign that you didn’t understand demand at sale-time, likely because you’re pushing your product.
Until you change your mind about the physics of sales, you’ll keep fighting yourself - and your potential customers - to sell. Unleash yourself.
UPDATE: There is now a “part 2” - see here.
PS: I run a “product-market fit + sales” course & do 1:1 work with B2B founders to figure out 0-1 sales. Both are booked through September, so if you’d like to potentially work with me in Q4, reserve time on my Calendly for mid-late Sept HERE - more info about working with me is HERE.
Gorgeous - thank you
I think this is missing "and what to do instead" under each "sign that you've got it backwards"... would you say the answer is covered completely in your Harvard Innovation Labs "Path to PMF" slide deck, Rob?