The Physics of Startups
00:00:00 · S0
[00:00:00] S0: Rob, good to see you, man. Uh we are diving in today to almost a little bit of a pep talk. Like you're uh we're getting away from the from traditional like theory of what's going on into uh confidence, uh getting into how to approach sales, how to think about it. Um excited to jump in with that uh today. One quick PSA for folks. Uh Rob has something called PMF Camp. We've got a bunch of new listeners, readers, whatever from um Rob's talk with Lenny, which actually, come to think of it, I should link to that. If anybody's curious, uh Rob joined uh uh Lenny's podcast. I'll put the link in the in the description. Um but uh on November 9th, we have a PMF camp, which is the group cohort uh that the way that Rob works with founders in a group setting, um, did a bunch of teardowns around go to market. We really dig into all the individual startups that join. We cap it at a manageable number. So in every session, we're getting to the the outbound, the anecdote, uh, the demo, um uh pricing, things like that. Um, I'll include a link to information if folks are interested and uh don't want to spend too much on it. I'll extend the early bird pricing to uh Monday as well. Um and so if you sign up by next Monday, which is November 2nd, end of day, then uh we'll give you the early bird pricing. Um okay, don't want to uh spend more time on that. Rob, today we're talking about Zen of Sales. What's on what's on your mind with uh with Zen of Sales?
00:01:32 · Rob Snyder
[00:01:32] S1: Uh yeah, so it's it's actually interesting. Like um I have found a lot of people keep asking me the same questions. Um, and those questions are are often around like how do I build confidence in sales? And there was one person who asked this, and uh my jaw like hit the table when he asked this. Because he like probably the most confident seeming person I've ever met, um, with an awesome background and everything. And so I was like, okay, if he just asked me about confidence, then everybody is thinking about confidence in Sam's calls. Or a lot of people are. And um and I realized that if you're asking about confidence, you're not thinking about sales right. And and what likely is happening is because you're not thinking about sales right, you're doing it wrong, but you're also holding yourself back from selling. Whether that's delaying it or whether that's in the moment you're doing it, you're wanting to not be doing it. And so all of these things are going to make you very bad at sales. And when you're really bad at sales, you wind up either not selling or or more importantly, not figuring out what people really want so you can build the right thing. And so this is a um theory problem, really. It's it's it's less of a less of a pep talk in my mind, and it's more of a install the right theory in your brain that makes doing the right thing intuitive so that you don't feel like you're fighting yourself the entire time, or that you don't intuitively do dumb stuff.
00:03:29 · S0
[00:03:29] S0: Yeah. Okay, so maybe pep talk wasn't the right term for it. Um, and totally agree on that. But it's it's also, I mean, I find it personally uh kind of like liberating. We've talked about this in the past. Like sales, when I, you know, first launched my business, Cumbray, it was like I had this thing that I either had to convince the other person that they needed, I'd find either find the right presentation to give. Um it was like I was, I think there was this just like lingering thing of like, what do I do when they don't want this? How do I, how do I show them? How do I and it it was like it's this whole push mentality, which honestly, today it's it's actually a little bit even hard to access. Like, how did I used to think about it? It's hard to empathize with myself three years ago. Um, but I know the experience of it was a a bunch of presentation uh or a bunch of preparation that went into everything, feeling a lot of pressure, honestly, like sweating a bunch, like in the gulls, um, just being incredibly nervous. Um, you you write about it, uh and so like everything that you're saying about this founder that asked you about confidence, I was like, yep, yeah. I one been there. Um, and two, you know, I had a I had a conversation yesterday and I was like, I actually unrelated to this blog, I was I told somebody, I was like, actually, sales is now my favorite part of what I do. Like I just I enjoy figuring out if there's something that I can help with shaping it. It's like solving a puzzle dynamically that doesn't have that like doesn't have a like a defined outcome that you get to kind of like help shape with the customer. Um but you know, Rob, what are some of the uh you hinted at a couple of them, but what what are some of the things that let's just like get into the theory. You you said it's a theory problem. What is the what's the theory that you're hinting at there? Um how do what's the you know the implied theory that founders are bringing in? And then what's the way that we should be thinking about sales?
00:05:32 · Rob Snyder
[00:05:32] S1: Yeah, so the the implied theory in founders' heads is that sales is convincing. The reason you're going to buy something, the cause of you buying something is I convince you to buy it. And if you think that, and that's like a normal thing to think, if you're just kind of like new to it, or if you read literally anything that anybody writes on startups or online, you're gonna think that theory is um like it just makes sense. But if you think that you convince them to buy, what happens if they don't buy? It's your fault. It's because you didn't convince them, it's because you did something wrong and need to change, right? Like that's and and so that's like that that is kind of the or or like your product isn't good enough to convince them to buy, right? And so this sounds intuitive, like this, this like makes sense, but when we zoom out and ask the question, okay, why do people actually buy things? Which my frustration is it doesn't seem like anybody's ever asked that question. Um, when you zoom out and ask that question, you see the causal the causality here differently, which is people buy things when they are trying to do something and they are locked by their available options to them. So they are stuck. In that case, they will buy something that gets them unstuck. If that is your theory, you're going to approach sales entirely differently because you're gonna look for is this person in front of me trying to do something and unstuck? In which case, if they aren't, then nothing I say is going to convince them to buy. Yeah. And this like weight lifts off your shoulders of thinking that oh, I have to have the perfect script, I have to have the perfect tactics, I have to build my product more because people aren't buying, I need to add value, I need to poke harder. All of these things just fall away. And um, that's why I said once you actually get the physics, you get you you find Zen in sales. I actually don't know, just between you and me and the three listeners here. I actually have have no idea what Zen is. Like, I I like roughly know, um, but I don't actually know. And so, I mean, I kind of, but you know, like I know the way that like, you know, so um, so we couldn't get totally roasted on this this one that I have zen totally backwards. I did no reason.
00:08:31 · S0, Rob Snyder
[00:08:31] S0: Yeah, yeah. So like uh imagine a couple people that are definitely not Zen practitioners advising on uh on how to achieve Zen. But it's really, you know, for um maybe this is actually a moment where helpful to pause and like think about uh listener, um your experience with sales. Um like do you look if you're if you're honest with yourself, uh do you look forward to it? What is the experience when you're in the sales call? Like what is you know, where where is the anxiety that's um in there? If there's if there's like, you know, for me, um there were certain times that it was like people would schedule a sales call and I would look at my calendar and like there would be like this little pit in my stomach that's like, okay, it's got about to be showtime. And uh, you know, am I am I on for that? And or in a call, if it didn't, you know, if a person wasn't just like totally engaged, either that was very discouraging or um kind of un unmotivating. Um, or it would be like I would I had a hard time letting go. It was kind of like I had a clenched fist around like the thing that I had, and it was like, how do I okay, I'm not letting go of this thing, like how do I make this other person want this thing? Um, and so it's I it feels it's kind of like uh like there's a like a body signal that I I would get very tangibly, um, which was an indication. I didn't realize it. I thought it was just anxiety or introversion or something like that. [00:10:00] S1: It was actually you're not good at sales, right? Like there was that, there was that thought too, I'm sure.
00:10:00 · Rob Snyder, S0
[00:10:00] S1: It was actually you're not good at sales, right? Like there was that, there was that thought too, I'm sure. [00:10:05] S0: Yeah, exactly. Um and so there's probably there might be something in there that you know listener can identify in themselves. But you you write about a couple of these, Rob. Um, you know, founders delaying sales, uh performing, you know, the perception that you're performing poorly in sales calls and deals, um, the you know, taking rejection personally, struggling to get people to talk to us, um, you know, getting stressed and losing confidence. Uh Rob, how do these relate to this like kind of push, like trying to convince? Like, why why is that the core issue? And these are the symptoms.