The Most Interesting Entrepreneur In The World, Bob Moesta

Bob Moesta

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Entrepreneur Tips you'll learn today on The Sales Podcast...

• Bob Moesta is a lifelong innovator and co-architect of the “Jobs to be Done” theory who has developed & launched over 3,500 products and sold everything from design services, software, houses, consumer electronics, and investment services as well as launching seven startups.
• He’s also an adjunct lecturer at Kellogg School at Northwestern University, and lectures on innovation at Harvard and MIT.
• In his new book, Demand-Side Sales 101, he details his success by flipping the lens on sales.
• Instead of reciting a product’s benefits and features and pressuring customers to close, Bob advocates for salespeople to be a steward for their customers and help people in their purchases to make progress in their lives, finding their “struggling moment” and the outcome they seek.
• Enjoy this conversation with Bob about how to be a more effective and innovative salesperson by really seeing what your customers see, hearing what they hear, and understanding what they mean.

• Uses Scribe Media to break down his ideas to write his books, which he needs because he's dyslexic and cannot read due to several head injuries before he was seven
• Intern for W. Edwards Deming
• Great at math, but reading and writing remains difficult
• Has a small design firm
• Helps people innovate but sales is never taught
• His challenges have made him more empathetic and great salespeople have great empathy
• He learns through questions
• Listen to what and how they answer
• You need to understand the context
• He has been breaking things for 50 years, fixing them for 45 years
• People hire people to help them make progress, not to solve things
• "Why is today the day?"
• The prospect has all the energy to make the progress
• What is going on? Why now? What are the changes they're willing to make to bring about the results they seek?
• What makes you trust someone?
  • Good questions
  • Present valid options
  • They admitted their limitations
  • Trust is an effect, not a cause
• We're supposed to mistrust one another, but when you make them better they'll trust you
• Be responsive, but not too responsive, which makes you appear desperate
• People buy for a set of reasons, not just one
• Criminal and interrogation-type questioning
• Find the context
• Chris Voss, "Never Split the Difference: Negotiating As If Your Life Depended On It"
• Set them up for a bad question...
• We're all in sales...teachers must sell their students on why to pay attention
• We must understand the demand side
• If you build it...they don't come
• A persona is just a soulless person
• Correlation is not causation
• He had "big trash day" in Detroit growing up
• He learned by doing and building
• His mom was a teacher and helped him learn how to learn
• Has great pattern recognition
• Learned through questions
• Without questions, you have no theory
• Think of the dominoes that have to fall for a customer to buy
• People don't buy because of a deal
• They'll pick you
• Two frameworks
  • Push
  • Pull
  • Anxiety that holds them back
  • Habit
• The timeline
  • First thought, without it you can't even hear what they're saying. Questions create spaces in the brain for solutions to fall into
  • Passive looking, learning about the problem and the solution language. People often search for problems, first.
  • Active looking,
  • Decide, more about tradeoffs vs. the deal, so give people three options
  • First use,
  • Ongoing use, when you solve one thing you create new problems so there are always struggling moments
• He looks at the last 10 sales to help his clients find the patterns
• Be genuinely curious
• The customer usually doesn't know what they want
• Have them unpack the language
• You have to help them make progress
• Ethics come into play
• Follow the patterns to find great prospects
• Great salespeople at new, small companies can be the most well-connected person in the company
• No sale is made that is random. Every purchase is caused.
• Active, passive, or deciding?
• "Why do people buy?" What happened in their lives and what were they hoping for?
• Technology-agnostic requirements of the customer
• What outcome are they seeking?
• Take the product out of the picture
• Patterns help you sell easier and faster

Links Mentioned In The Sales Podcast

• Get his book, "Demand-Side Sales 101: Stop Selling and Help Your Customers Make Progress"
• Connect with him on LinkedIn at Bob Moesta