The Most Interesting Entrepreneur In The World, Bob Moesta

January 12, 2021

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