Demand-Side Sales 101: Complete Summary of Bob Moesta’s Demand-Side Approach for Helping Customers Make Progress

Demand-Side Sales 101: Stop Selling and Help Your Customers Make Progress by Bob Moesta revolutionizes traditional sales thinking by shifting the focus from pushing products to understanding how customers genuinely make buying decisions. Moesta, a principal architect of the Jobs to be Done (JTBD) theory, argues that people don’t buy products; they “hire” them to make progress in their lives. This book equips salespeople, marketers, and even individuals in personal interactions with a fresh perspective, frameworks, and actionable strategies to sell by truly helping customers solve their struggles and achieve their desired outcomes.

This comprehensive summary will unpack Moesta’s groundbreaking approach, detailing the core principles of demand-side selling, the key frameworks for understanding buyer behavior, and practical applications through real-world case studies. Readers will discover how to move beyond outdated sales techniques and build a sales process that aligns perfectly with the customer’s natural buying journey, leading to increased sales, customer satisfaction, and organizational alignment. The goal is to transform sales into a noble pursuit of progress and problem-solving.

Introduction: What This Book Is About

Bob Moesta, an engineer by training and an entrepreneur at heart, details his journey from struggling with traditional sales to co-creating the Jobs to be Done (JTBD) theory with Professor Clayton Christensen of Harvard Business School. Initially finding sales “icky” and unnatural, Moesta discovered that obsessing over product features and benefits, or relying on nebulous customer personas, was largely ineffective. His breakthrough came from a simple yet profound realization: sales should mirror how people buy, not how companies want to sell.

This book serves as a “hack” for aspiring and struggling salespeople to develop the “super ability” of pattern recognition in customer behavior, without having to endure years of trial and error. It introduces demand-side sales, a methodology built around JTBD, which posits that people don’t buy products; they hire them to make progress in their lives. The core premise is that great salespeople don’t sell; they help. They are curious, listen intently, understand the customer’s unique struggles and desired outcomes, and then present their product as a solution to that progress. This transformative approach aims to change how individuals sell, market, and even buy in their own lives, fostering more purposeful and less wasteful decisions.

Chapter 1: Two Perspectives on the World: Supply and Demand

This chapter introduces the fundamental distinction between supply-side thinking and demand-side thinking, emphasizing that while both are necessary for business, traditional sales often err by focusing predominantly on the supply side. Bob Moesta highlights that the best sales processes are those that mimic the natural way people buy and the progress they seek.

Understanding Supply-Side vs. Demand-Side Thinking

Supply-side perspective focuses on the product or service itself, its features, and benefits. The primary question is, “How will I sell it?” or “Who needs my product?” This approach defines demand through the product, often relying on aggregated demographic and psychographic information to create an “imagined customer.” The goal is often to canvas the world for people who might need the product, leading to feature creep and a focus on profit within a specific cost structure. Moesta illustrates this with the example of drill manufacturers optimizing drill features when customers ultimately just want a quarter-inch hole.

In contrast, demand-side perspective centers on understanding the buyer and the user. The key questions are, “How do people buy?” and “How do they make progress?” This approach designs the go-to-market strategy around the buyer’s worldview, seeing value from the customer’s side. It’s about understanding the progress people want to make and what they are willing to pay for that progress. Demand-side selling begins with a “struggling moment”, recognizing that people only consider new solutions when they encounter a problem and think, “Maybe I can do better.” This perspective allows companies to create “pull” for their product by focusing on helping the customer.

The Tyranny of the Average in Sales

Moesta explains that traditional supply-side thinking often leads to a “one-size-fits-all” approach driven by concerns for efficiency and effectiveness. This pursuit of the “average” customer can harm customer satisfaction because it ends up pleasing no one specifically. Just as teaching styles should vary to accommodate different learning styles, sales approaches should adapt to varied buyer motivations. There isn’t one way to sell, but there are usually a few best ways (the Pareto Principle or 80/20 rule suggests 80% of consequences come from 20% of causes). This underscores the need to move beyond demographic data, as age, zip code, or income don’t cause someone to buy; their struggling moment does.

Casper’s Demand-Side Disruption in the Mattress Industry

The chapter uses Casper as a prime example of demand-side selling disrupting a well-established industry. Instead of selling mattresses based on foam types or spring counts (supply-side), Casper sold “sleep.” They focused on the customer’s struggle to buy a mattress, recognizing the anxieties of intimidating showrooms and confusing jargon. Casper simplified the purchasing process by offering fewer, high-quality foam mattresses, shipping them directly in a “bed-in-a-box,” and providing a 100-day risk-free return policy. This approach resonated with customers who wanted an easier, risk-free way to buy, leading Casper to capture 3.2% of the US market share and achieve a $1 billion valuation in just five years, while industry leaders struggled for growth.

Southern New Hampshire University’s (SNHU) Transformative Approach

Another powerful case study is Paul LeBlanc’s transformation of Southern New Hampshire University (SNHU). Initially, SNHU marketed its online classes like any other university (supply-side). However, after meeting Moesta, LeBlanc began interviewing online students to understand their true motivations for pursuing online education. He discovered that most online students were over 30 years old, working day jobs, and supporting families, seeking a better life and a career, not just a job. Their motivation was deeply emotional.

SNHU shifted its advertising to focus on this emotional struggle and desired progress, showing ads of single parents making sacrifices for a better future. This generated thousands of applications, vastly exceeding their capacity. Recognizing a new “struggling moment,” SNHU then streamlined its admissions process, moving from months to seven days, by verbally gathering information and collecting transcripts themselves (solving a functional barrier). When retention rates dropped, SNHU repurposed academic advisors into “life coaches” who monitored student progress and offered support, reducing dropout rates by almost 90%. This demand-side approach led SNHU’s online enrollment to skyrocket from 500 students to 130,000 in ten years, transforming a $100-million university into a billion-dollar institution.

The Struggling Moment as the Seed for All New Sales

Moesta concludes that “the struggling moment is the seed for all new sales.” People don’t think about a product unless it addresses a problem they have. When a customer is comfortably sleeping, they don’t notice mattress stores. But when they are “tossing and turning,” that struggle creates demand. Understanding this causation, rather than just correlation (like ice cream sales and drownings), is key. Demand-side selling focuses on how a product fits into people’s lives and helps them achieve desired outcomes, recognizing that only the customer can determine the value of a solution.

Chapter 2: The Frameworks for Demand-Side Selling

This chapter lays out the core frameworks for understanding how people buy, which forms the basis for demand-side selling. Bob Moesta emphasizes that these tools allow salespeople to see the world through the buyer’s eyes, moving beyond superficial product features to the deeper “why” behind a purchase. The goal is to understand the progress people are trying to make, not just the product they acquire.

The “Five Whys” for Uncovering True Causation

Moesta introduces the “Five Whys” technique, learned during an internship at Ford in Japan, as a method to quickly get to the root of a problem. Developed by Sakichi Toyoda, founder of Toyota, this technique involves asking “why” multiple times (not literally five, but enough to uncover deeper reasons) to move past surface-level answers. For example, a customer buying a drill might say they need a drill to make a hole. But asking “Why do you need a hole?” might lead to “to hang a lamp,” and “Why a lamp?” could reveal they want to “read better.” This line of questioning might ultimately show they need a Kindle, not a drill. This highlights that companies often sell “drills” instead of “holes” because they fail to ask “why” enough times to understand the true progress their customers seek.

The Three Sources of Energy: Types of Motivations for Progress

Moesta identifies three categories of motivation that act as the “fuel” for the buying process:

• Functional Motivation: This relates to the practical ease, time, effort, and speed of the purchasing process or product usage. For SNHU students, the laborious application process was a functional barrier. Reducing such barriers increases progress.
• Emotional Motivation: This encompasses internal thoughts, fears, frustrations, and desires driving a purchase. The SNHU students’ desire for a “better life” for their families was a powerful emotional driver.
• Social Motivation: This involves how a purchase affects how others perceive, respect, or acknowledge the buyer. SNHU students sought the pride and recognition associated with a diploma. The goal is to reduce negative functional, emotional, and social motivations (anxieties) while amplifying positive ones to create pull.

The Four Forces of Progress: Driving or Hindering Change

One of the most critical frameworks for unpacking causality is the “Four Forces of Progress.” These forces determine whether a person moves from their current state (A) to a desired future state (B), or if they remain stuck. Buying is never random; it’s a dynamic interplay of these forces:

• The Push of the Situation (F1): The problem or frustration with the current solution. For a mattress buyer, it’s the lack of sleep affecting daily productivity.
• The Magnetism of the New Solution (F2): The appeal of a new product’s potential to deliver desired progress. Seeing a friend rave about a new mattress creates this pull.
• The Anxiety of the New Solution (F3): Fears, uncertainties, and doubts about the new solution. Will the new mattress live up to its promise? What if I hate it?
• The Habit of the Present (F4): The inertia of sticking with the current, familiar solution, even if it’s flawed. You’ve learned to live with the old mattress.

Moesta explains that people only make progress when (F1 + F2) > (F3 + F4). Traditional business often focuses on adding features (increasing F2), but neglecting anxieties (F3) and habits (F4) can hinder sales. “The money is made on the anxiety side of the equation” – addressing what holds people back is often more impactful than adding more features.

The JTBD Timeline: Sequence of Events for Progress

The forces and motivations play out over a predictable six-stage timeline that buyers naturally follow:

1. First Thought: The initial realization of a problem or struggle, opening a mental “space” for solutions. Without this, there is no demand.
2. Passive Looking: Learning about potential solutions, often unconsciously or opportunistically, without dedicated effort. This is about “filling the space.” People can stay here for years.
3. Active Looking: Actively researching and planning for a solution, investing time and effort. Buyers start building an “ideal solution” and need options for comparison. A “time wall” (a deadline) often pushes buyers from passive to active looking, or from active looking to deciding.
4. Deciding: Making explicit tradeoffs between options and solidifying what they want. No ideal solution exists; buyers choose the “best way to make progress.” Expectations for satisfaction are cemented here.
5. Onboarding: The first use of the product or service, where initial expectations are measured against actual experience. This is the “big hire.” Dissatisfaction often stems from a mismatch between expectations set during “deciding” and actual delivery.
6. Ongoing Use: The continued, habitual use of the product or service, involving repeated “little hires.” This stage determines long-term satisfaction and often reveals new struggling moments that can lead to future “big hires” or product improvements.

Moesta differentiates “big hires” (buying the product) from “little hires” (using it daily), emphasizing that successful products must be designed for both. Salespeople often over-promise, leading to dissatisfaction in the onboarding and ongoing use phases. The goal of demand-side sales is to align sales, marketing, and customer support with these customer-centric stages, ensuring a seamless journey for progress.

Chapter 3: Solving the Customer’s Struggle

This chapter dives into a detailed, real-world application of the demand-side sales frameworks, illustrating how Bob Moesta and Greg Engle transformed a regional home builder’s sales process by deeply understanding customer struggles and aligning the entire business around them.

Rethinking the Home Sales Process through Customer Interviews

When Moesta joined a Detroit-based regional home builder in 2004, the sales process was flawed. Salespeople operated under the assumption that new home buyers never looked at used homes, and they used preplanned, feature-heavy presentations regardless of the customer’s needs. Moesta and his partner, Greg Engle, immediately recognized this disconnect and decided to interview homeowners who had recently purchased from them.

Their interviewing technique was crucial:

• Casual, documentary-style conversations: They created a relaxed atmosphere, asking customers to “tell us the story” of how they decided to buy their house, starting from the move-in day and working backward.
• Focus on the “why”: They probed deeply, asking “Why did you move?” “What was going on in your life?” and “What were you hoping to achieve?”
• Eliminating product focus: They explicitly tried to discuss the purchase without talking about their own house, to understand the independent forces at play in the buyer’s life.
• Probing for details: They sought specific emotional and social triggers, recognizing that “the devil is in the details.”

They quickly discovered that the preplanned sales presentations had little to no influence on purchases. A third of the presentation confused customers, and another third even amplified anxieties. This confirmed that a supply-side, feature-driven approach was actively harming sales.

Understanding the Pushes and Pulls: The Case of Downsizing Homebuyers

Through these interviews, Moesta and Engle identified clear patterns in customer motivations. For example, they found that a significant segment of their buyers were “downsizers” – older couples whose children had moved out, seeking to travel and reduce home maintenance.

• The Push of the Situation (F1): Downsizers articulated struggles like “house is too big,” “yard’s too much work,” “laundry room’s in the basement,” and “high taxes.”
• The Magnetism of the New Solution (F2): Their brand-new condos offered ideal solutions: first-floor living, updated features, and perceived safety for travel.
• The Anxiety of the New Solution (F3): Despite the appeal, strong anxieties surfaced: “How are we going to move?” “How will we sell the old house?” “Where will we put all our stuff?” This anxiety often overwhelmed the positive aspects.
• The Habit of the Present (F4): Strong emotional ties to their old homes (memories, friends, community) created inertia.

Moesta highlights that business school often teaches to add more features (increase F2), but their discovery was that the real leverage lay in reducing anxieties (F3).

Addressing Functional and Emotional Anxieties to Drive Sales

Moesta and Engle then designed solutions specifically to mitigate these anxieties:

Functional Motivation: The “Stuff” Problem

• Struggle: Downsizers faced the daunting task of sorting and moving a lifetime of belongings from a 3,000 square-foot home into a 1,600 square-foot condo.
• Solution: They increased the price of their condos, then used that revenue to build a storage facility across the street and hired movers to pack, label, and transport belongings. They even built a clubhouse with a “sorting room” within the storage facility for families to sort through items leisurely.
• Result: This single functional solution increased sales by 22%. It directly addressed a major barrier, making the move significantly easier. Competitors offering discounts and free upgrades failed to address this core struggle.

Emotional Motivation: The “Dining Room Table” Problem

• Struggle: Many downsizers initially claimed they wanted small kitchens and no formal dining rooms, eager to stop hosting holidays. However, through deep interviews, Moesta and Engle repeatedly heard customers talk about what would happen to their dining room table. The table symbolized family birthdays, holidays, and memories – an “emotional bank account.” Customers couldn’t move without knowing the table’s fate.
• Solution: Against conventional wisdom and direct customer requests for larger second bedrooms, they reduced the size of the second bedroom and created a small, dedicated space for the dining room table. This space was not functional for hosting, but it satisfied the emotional need for the table to have a “home.”
• Result: This emotional solution jumped sales by 27%. It showed that understanding the unspoken emotional needs was more critical than literal requests for features.

Understanding Time and Place: The Obituary Ad Breakthrough

Moesta and Engle also analyzed the buyer’s timeline to understand the specific “triggering events” that moved customers through the purchasing process.

• First Thought: Customers often had their first thought about moving during the holidays, feeling overwhelmed by hosting.
• Passive Looking: They’d then passively notice houses for sale or discussions about moving over months.
• Active Looking Trigger: The critical breakthrough came from repeatedly hearing stories of customers deciding to call a real estate agent after attending a friend’s funeral. The thought was, “If we don’t move now, one of us will have to move alone.” This was their “time wall.”
• Solution: They moved their advertising from the real estate section to the obituaries.
• Result: This bold move led to a 37% increase in traffic and a 70% reduction in advertising costs due to cheaper ad space. The leads were highly qualified because these buyers were already in “active looking” due to a profound life event.

Contrasting Supply versus Demand in Action

By flipping the lens from product-centric selling to customer-centric helping, the regional home builder’s sales process became dramatically more efficient. Instead of generic, 20-minute presentations, salespeople could quickly ask: “How long have you been looking?” “Is your house up for sale?” and “How’s your life going to be better by moving?” This allowed them to meet buyers where they were on the timeline and offer targeted help (e.g., helping list their old house, discussing financing). They became a “moving company” that also built houses, rather than just a builder. This demand-side shift allowed the business to grow from 7 homesites selling 100 houses annually to 14 homesites selling 300 houses annually.

Chapter 4: Seeing the World Through the Customer’s Eyes

This chapter emphasizes the critical importance of deep, empathetic customer interviewing to uncover the true causal mechanisms behind a purchase. Bob Moesta highlights that the “devil is in the details,” as these seemingly small factors often contain the social and emotional energy that drives a buying decision. He contrasts this approach with traditional market research, drawing parallels to criminal and intelligence interrogation methods to get past surface-level answers.

Finding the Set of Causes that Make Progress

Moesta asserts that uncovering causation in customer interviews is both an art and a science. It’s about moving beyond what people say they want to what actually caused them to buy. He emphasizes that customers rarely intentionally lie but often give simplified or rationalized answers (e.g., “to get healthy” instead of “I don’t want to die”). The goal is to get past these “cake layers of causality” to the truth.

The Five Key Principles for Interview Success

These principles act as “guardrails” for effective JTBD interviewing:

1. Humility: Assume nothing! You are not smart enough to instinctively know why people buy. Approach interviews as an investigator seeking causal events, not confirming preconceived notions.
2. Causality: Everything is caused; nothing is random. Reject the notion of random purchases or decisions. There’s always an underlying reason or sequence of events.
3. Tradeoffs: Everyone makes tradeoffs to make progress. Understand what a customer is willing to give up to get something else. Sales is about managing and packaging these tradeoffs, not just listing features.
4. Disconnected: Most people don’t know why they do what they do. They will simplify, rationalize, or call purchases “impulse buys.” Your job is to connect the dots for them by digging deeper.
5. Lies: Everybody lies, even to themselves. Do not accept surface responses. If someone says they bought something to “be healthy,” ask for three other recent actions to support that claim. Getting past these self-told “lies” is crucial.

The Top Ten JTBD Interview Tips

Moesta provides ten practical tips for conducting effective interviews:

1. The Setup: Create a casual, conversational tone. Frame the interview as “early research” to understand their language, not a Q&A. Ask for first names to build rapport.
2. Details, Details, Details: Ask specific, seemingly innocuous questions (e.g., “What was the weather outside?” “Who was with you?”) to jog their memory and trigger bigger recollections.
3. Context Creates Meaning: When answers seem irrational, it’s often due to missing context. Probe to understand the whole story. Accept “I bought pizza because our team won” over “I bought pizza because I like pizza.”
4. Contrast Creates Value: Ask why they didn’t choose an alternative. Use bracketing techniques (e.g., “Why do it virtually? Why not just drive to the doctor?”) to help them articulate their decision criteria.
5. Unpack Vague Words: Words like “fast,” “easy,” “healthy” are relative. Ask, “What does THAT mean?” or “Fast compared to what?” to get to specific actions and reference points.
6. Energy Matters: Listen not just to what they say, but how they say it. Pay attention to intonation, pauses, sighs, or emphasized words. These are cues to probe deeper (“Tell me more about that. Why is that important?”).
7. Play “Dumb”: When probing on sensitive topics or perceived knowledge gaps, frame questions as your own confusion or naivety (e.g., “I mean, what’s RAM anyway?”). This prevents the interviewee from feeling stupid and shutting down.
8. Set-Up Bad Questions: For personal or sensitive questions, preface them by acknowledging they might be “bad” or that the interviewee doesn’t have to answer. This disarms them.
9. Good Cop, Bad Cop: If interviewing in pairs, simulate disagreement over details to fuel the conversation and check what’s most important to the interviewee.
10. Use Analogies: When interviewees struggle to express themselves, use analogies (e.g., “How is buying a phone like buying a laptop?”) to help them build new language and thinking.

Case Study #1: Banking – Why a Bank Gets Fired and Another Hired

Moesta interviews Chad, a biotech company founder, about why he fired his original bank, “Bank A,” and hired a new one.

• First Thought: Chad’s business needed to restructure its capitalization table and secure future capital expenditures. He realized “Bank A” did not understand his business at all.
• Pushes: Bank A assigned him a “very green” third relationship manager in as many years, who repeatedly asked the “exact same questions” across phone calls, showing no understanding or desire to learn his unique life-science business. Chad felt he was wasting time.
• Emotional Energy: Chad’s frustration escalated when he tried to “elevate” his concerns to the bank president but was rebuffed, despite his company being one of their largest long-term loans. He felt they were “nickel-and-diming” him and not prioritizing his growth. He expressed his anger, saying, “If they wanted to understand our business, come see our freakin’ business.”
• Active Looking Trigger: After the third phone call where no progress was made, Chad was “done.” He unleashed his new VP of finance to find new banks.
• Deciding: Chad and his VP interviewed four banks. He immediately eliminated two banks that came with “pre-planned Power Point presentations” because they demonstrated a lack of understanding. The two finalists started with a “blank sheet of paper”, focusing on understanding Chad’s business first.
• Tradeoff: Chad chose the more expensive bank because it offered “much more flexible” financing structures for future capital expenditures.
• Trust as a Causal Factor: The winning bank earned his “trust” by being “upfront and honest,” even delivering bad news directly (e.g., “Nope. Can’t do it, and if that’s a deal breaker, we need to walk away right now”). The old bank’s “maybe” on his personal guarantee eroded trust, while the new bank’s direct “no” built it. This revealed that trust is caused by directness and honesty, not just positive assurances.

Case Study #2: Healthcare – Choosing a Virtual Doctor over Urgent Care

Moesta interviews Jen, who recently chose a virtual doctor for the first time over urgent care.

• First Thought: Jen had been sick for “four or five days” with a “barky cough.” Her coworkers repeatedly asked, “Are you okay?”
• Push: The social pressure from coworkers and the desire to avoid answering their questions on Monday were stronger motivators than her physical discomfort (“I feel bad but not enough to go by myself.”). She also felt behind at work.
• Passive Looking: Over the weekend, she sorted through home remedies.
• Active Looking Trigger: Waking up “still feeling crummy” on Sunday morning and knowing she had a “long week of work ahead” created a “time wall.” Her husband, Kyle, encouraged her to act.
• Deciding: Her options were urgent care (requiring getting dressed and driving 10-15 minutes) or virtual care (new, unknown technology, but from the “comfort of her home”). The deciding factor was being “in my bathrobe” at 8 AM and the perceived convenience. She figured if virtual care didn’t work, she could still go to urgent care.
• Anxiety Mitigation: She knew her tech-savvy husband, Kyle, was a backup if she struggled with the technology.
• Onboarding: The sign-up process for virtual care was “easy” (a couple of minutes), and the actual call was “neat and fast” (10 minutes total). The provider asked the right questions, renewed her inhaler, and sent prescriptions electronically to CVS before the call ended. Her husband picked up the meds, meaning she “didn’t even have to go.”
• Satisfaction: She was “very satisfied” because the virtual platform exceeded expectations by being “fast and easy to use,” especially compared to the alternative of driving and waiting while sick. This highlights that convenience (a functional motivator) was a key driver.

Case Study #3: Consumer Electronics – How Real Consumers Buy a Computer

Moesta interviews Rachel, a freelance writer, about her recent purchase of a Lenovo ThinkPad after using a Mac for six years.

• First Thought: Rachel had been frustrated by her Mac’s “glitchy” Windows application interface for months, but managed with “workarounds.” Her husband, Eric, “injected the idea” of a new computer six weeks before she bought one.
• Passive Looking: She became “more aware of every problem and glitch,” thinking about a new computer when issues arose.
• Active Looking Trigger: Her daughter’s sudden hospitalization created immense personal stress. Simultaneously, her Mac developed critical issues: internet connectivity problems, dying battery, and randomly not powering on. This created a severe “time wall” and pressure to deliver on deadlines. She “had it” and “would’ve lost it” if she had to figure out a new computer at Best Buy during this crisis.
• Deciding: She texted Eric, “Help! I need a new computer now!” Eric, a software sales professional, had already picked one out. Her criteria were simple: not a Mac, seamless Windows interface, video conferencing, and “decent battery life” (meaning two hours for a call, not eight).
• Tradeoff: She prioritized speed of delivery and simplicity over advanced features, relying on Eric to translate technical specs. She wanted “good enough tomorrow” over “the best in two weeks.”
• Onboarding: Eric delivered the computer the next day and spent two hours transferring files and explaining differences, providing crucial “tech support” that mitigated her anxiety.
• Satisfaction: Her satisfaction was based on the new computer’s ability to solve the immediate, high-stakes problems of her old one, fulfilling her lowered expectations (it just needed to turn on and last through a call).

Creating Real Growth: Beyond Competition to Solving Struggles

Moesta concludes that real growth doesn’t come from stealing market share with incremental features (e.g., Bluetooth 5 vs. 6). It comes from deeply understanding customer struggles and helping people who wouldn’t otherwise enter the market. If companies focused on solving anxieties and speaking the customer’s language, their market could be “twice as big as everybody else’s.” He stresses that companies often “over-engineer the product” because they fail to understand the true problem and the simple solutions customers seek.

Chapter 5: Mapping Demand-Side Buying to Supply-Side Sales, Marketing, and Customer Success

This chapter focuses on integrating the insights from the customer interviews into a cohesive business strategy. Bob Moesta emphasizes that sales, marketing, and customer support are not separate entities; they must learn to play together and align with the customer’s natural six-stage buying timeline. This alignment transforms traditional “push” selling into a process that “pulls” customers towards progress.

Building Progress on the Buyer’s Timeline: A Unified System

Moesta reiterates the six stages of the buyer’s timeline as the core framework for aligning business functions:

1. First Thought: Creating space in the brain for solutions.
2. Passive Looking: Learning, framing, and prioritizing.
3. Active Looking: Seeing possibilities, framing tradeoffs.
4. Deciding: Connecting dots, gaining buy-in, making tradeoffs, setting expectations.
5. Onboarding: First use, doing the job, seeing metrics of progress.
6. Ongoing Use: Building new habits, identifying new struggles, developing new features.

For each stage, the goal is to provide inputs that trigger desired outputs, ultimately leading to an ideal outcome for the customer. The key is to understand the customer’s unique struggling moments and then enable them to make their definition of progress. This also involves identifying tradeoffs customers are willing to make and recognizing that unfulfilled “little hires” can accumulate to cause a “big hire.”

How to Stop Getting Fired and Start Getting Hired: The Banking Case Revisited

Moesta revisits Chad’s banking story to illustrate how to apply demand-side principles to both win new business and prevent losing existing customers.

Sales and Marketing Alignment (First Thought, Passive Looking, Active Looking)

• First Thought: A bank trying to attract a customer like Chad would focus on creating questions in his mind, highlighting the problems he might already be experiencing but not fully recognizing (e.g., “Is your current bank truly understanding your growth needs?”).
• Passive Looking: This bank would show up in places where Chad might be open to subtle nudges. Moesta suggests “Lunch and Learns” to connect businesses, focusing conversations not on loan terms, but on “What could you be doing if you had more money?” and “How would your business grow if you had access to better capital?” This builds social and emotional energy around potential solutions.
• Active Looking: When a prospect asks for a quote, the demand-side bank would refuse a quick, generic one. Instead, they’d ask for 30-60 minutes to understand the business before offering a quote. In that meeting, they’d set clear expectations: “I’ll come back with three alternatives that will help you frame your situation better. From there, we’ll morph a fourth option by merging the best of three.” They would promise quick follow-up (within 24 hours) and direct, honest communication (“If it’s a no, I’ll tell you no”). This proactive, understanding approach, in contrast to competitors’ “pre-planned presentations” or generic “menu of options,” builds trust and frames the bank as a partner. This embodies the “Jeweler Effect,” where educating the customer on tradeoffs (like diamond cut, clarity, color) builds trust and increases sales.

Sales and Customer Support Alignment (Deciding, Onboarding, Ongoing Use)

• Deciding: The winning bank understands Chad’s unique value code, which prioritizes flexibility and trust over cost. They present contrasting options, allowing Chad to see why their more expensive, flexible solution is superior for his long-term growth.
• Onboarding: For “Bank A” (the fired bank), preventing Chad’s departure would have required a better onboarding process for new relationship managers. The first meeting with a new manager should be face-to-face, focused on learning the customer’s business. This addresses the functional motivation of efficiency and the emotional motivation of feeling valued.
• Ongoing Use: To retain customers like Chad, “Bank A” should implement regular, meaningful “wellness visits.” These aren’t sales calls but genuine inquiries: “Where is your business going next year?” “What big projects do you have?” The bank should then proactively offer helpful resources or solutions (e.g., new loans that save money, connecting them to industry contacts). This proactive engagement helps them identify new “struggling moments” and increase their “footprint” by offering services that genuinely help, not just pushing unneeded products. Moesta states, “the most vulnerable people in your portfolio are your current clients because you’ve learned to ignore them.” This emphasizes that the “big hire” is the beginning of an ongoing relationship, not the end.

Understanding How People Choose a Healthcare Provider

This section applies the frameworks to a healthcare company with urgent care, virtual care, and general practices. The goal was to understand how patients choose between these options for non-emergency care.

Sales and Marketing Alignment (First Thought, Passive Looking, Active Looking)

• Identifying Anxiety: Patient interviews revealed high anxiety when learning new technology while sick.
• Strategic Marketing: The healthcare provider began introducing their virtual platform during wellness visits for general practice patients. Patients were helped to schedule their next year’s appointment via the virtual platform, learning the technology while healthy. This “first thought” trigger normalized the platform.
• Targeted Advertising: Billboard ads were shifted from generic “virtual visits available 24/7” to those addressing specific struggling moments: “Feeling sick? Don’t put your plans on hold, stay productive.” This messaging resonated with patients in their “passive looking” phase, highlighting the convenience (e.g., fitting care into a 15-minute window between meetings).
• Context Creates Value: Ads also clarified when to use virtual care (e.g., for allergies, sinus infections) as many patients were unsure, thereby creating context and making the service’s value apparent. This quadrupled virtual visits.

Sales and Customer Support Alignment (Deciding, Onboarding, Ongoing Use)

• Identifying Patient Contexts: Interviews revealed three main contexts for choosing urgent care:
  • Complex Medical History: Patients feared forgetting critical details when seeing a new urgent care provider.
  • Known Condition, Quick Fix: Patients knew their diagnosis (e.g., sinus infection) and wanted fast, no-nonsense care.
  • Unsure but Minor: Patients couldn’t self-diagnose and sought quick reassurance.
• Process Redesign:
  • Medical Records: For complex cases, they began emailing patient summaries to regular care doctors immediately after urgent care visits, easing anxiety about fragmented care.
  • Triage Form: They implemented a five-question intake form (“Have you had this before?”, “Do you know what it is?”, “Any complications?”, “Medical records in our system?”) to quickly triage patients. This reduced doctor interaction time from 18 minutes to 5 minutes for many, while increasing satisfaction from 28% to 78%.
• Result: Patients who used the new system had a propensity to return four times as often. This demonstrates how optimizing the onboarding experience around patient anxieties and specific needs can significantly boost ongoing use and customer loyalty.

How to Sync Selling Computers to the Way People Buy

Moesta argues that computer companies fundamentally misunderstand how customers like Rachel buy, leading to ineffective sales strategies.

Sales and Marketing Alignment (First Thought, Passive Looking, Active Looking)

• First Thought Trigger: Computer marketing should focus on helping consumers recognize their existing computer problems (“What bothers you most? What’s better with a new computer?”). It should highlight their current struggles to create a “push” (“Life can be better!”).
• Passive to Active Looking Nudge: Rachel had problems for months but didn’t act until a crisis. Salespeople should ask questions that plant seeds of doubt (“What if it doesn’t boot up next time?”). Marketing should target moments of high frustration (e.g., at airports, hospitals, sports events) when people are “painfully aware” of their computer’s limitations.
• Active Looking – Shaping Options: When Rachel was in “active looking,” she focused on simple criteria (not a Mac, Windows compatibility, decent battery for a two-hour video conference). Computer companies, however, advertise obscure technical specs (RAM, CPU, 8-hour battery) that are irrelevant to her “job to be done.” Salespeople should act as translators, converting technical specs into understandable benefits that meet the customer’s actual needs.
• Tradeoff Prioritization: Rachel prioritized speed (“good enough tomorrow”) over perfection or advanced features due to her extreme time pressure and emotional stress. Computer sales should be equipped to offer tailored solutions that meet these specific, often urgent, tradeoffs, not just push the “best” model.

Sales and Customer Support Alignment (Deciding, Onboarding, Ongoing Use)

• Deciding – The “Translator” Role: Most people need help translating confusing jargon into meaningful benefits. Salespeople should provide this “translation service,” framing solutions in the customer’s language.
• Onboarding – The “Accountability” Service: Rachel valued her husband Eric’s “accountability” – he bought the computer and set it up for her, making the onboarding seamless. Moesta suggests customers would pay an additional 10% for this kind of service from a vendor (where someone “just tell them what they need and to produce it with a money back guarantee”). No one sells this way.
• Ongoing Use – Proactive Problem Solving: Computer companies should focus on ensuring the computer does not degrade in performance over time and proactively addressing future “struggling moments” (e.g., “What else could Rachel use this computer for?”). They should anticipate issues that lead to “buyer’s remorse” by setting clear expectations during deciding and ensuring frictionless ongoing use.

The Kano Model: Understanding Customer Satisfaction Categories

Moesta references Dr. Noriaki Kano’s customer satisfaction model to explain how different product attributes impact satisfaction over time:

• Threshold Attributes (Basic): Expected features that cause dissatisfaction if absent but don’t increase satisfaction if present (e.g., texting on a smartphone today).
• Performance Attributes (Satisfiers): Features where more is better, directly impacting satisfaction (e.g., website speed on a phone).
• Excitement Attributes (Delighters): Unexpected features that delight customers but don’t cause dissatisfaction if absent (e.g., Facetime when it was new).
  Understanding these categories helps in setting realistic expectations and identifying opportunities for delight in onboarding and ongoing use.

Meeting the Buyer in the Right Time and Place

Moesta concludes by reiterating the importance of seeing each phase of the sales process as a “black box problem” with inputs, outputs, and outcomes. The salesperson’s job is to provide the right input at each of the six stages to guide the customer’s progress. Success hinges on:

• Finding struggling moments: These are often not what companies assume.
• Thinking progress: Focusing on what the customer wants to achieve, not just product features.
• Identifying tradeoffs: Knowing what customers are willing to give up to make progress.
• Understanding “little hires” cause “big hires”: Addressing small frustrations before they escalate into a desire for a complete switch.

By doing so, sales becomes about “having night vision goggles,” enabling salespeople to see beyond basic probability and truly understand why people buy.

Chapter 6: Connecting the Dots Between Sales, Marketing, and Customer Support

This chapter explicitly argues for the integration of sales, marketing, and customer support, asserting that treating them as separate entities makes sales unnecessarily difficult and leads to mixed messages for customers. Bob Moesta believes that sales covers the entire customer journey, from the first thought to ongoing use, acting as the connective tissue between departments.

The Misconception of Sales vs. Marketing

Moesta addresses a common misunderstanding:

• Marketers are often seen as building brochures and advertising, working at a macro, abstract level. They create an “ideal customer” persona through data correlation (e.g., age, income), but this data doesn’t explain causation (why someone buys). Marketers are expected to “create demand,” and sales follows the “leads.”
• Sales operates at a micro-level, dealing directly with real customers. Great salespeople focus on causation, not correlation. They are compensated highly because they understand the entire business, the product’s nuances, customer motivations, and how to manage cashflow. Moesta provocatively calls marketers “a salesperson who can’t close” because they lack the in-depth, frontline knowledge of great salespeople.

This fundamental powershift, dating back to the 1985 sale of Nabisco where brand equity gained prominence over cash flow, has relegated salespeople to order-takers. However, Moesta asserts that demand is only generated by a customer’s struggling moment, something marketers alone cannot fully create. Salespeople are crucial in identifying and guiding these struggles.

Why Traditional Sales Is “Icky” and Under-resourced

Moesta explains that the “ickiness” of sales stems from:

• Lack of Frameworks: Unlike other disciplines with theories and tools (e.g., marketing with brand equity, features, benefits), sales largely lacks its own comprehensive frameworks, often being reduced to mere “leads.”
• “Church of Finance” Pressure: Salespeople face immense pressure to prioritize profit and budget forecasts over customer best interests, leading to “push” tactics that create failed expectations and buyer’s remorse.
• Horizontal Skills, Limited Tools: Great salespeople possess “horizontal skills,” understanding every department from CEO knowledge to frontline execution. Yet, despite being essential, they are often under-resourced with inadequate tools and theories, leading to a “tremendously hard job.”

How to Stop Getting Fired and Start Getting Hired (Revisited for Departmental Alignment)

Moesta re-analyzes Chad’s banking story to illustrate how integrated sales, marketing, and customer support could have prevented his bank from being fired or helped the new bank win.

Integrating Sales and Marketing for Acquisition

• First Thought & Passive Looking: To attract new business like Chad’s, the competing bank’s marketing should focus on Chad’s existing struggles (lack of understanding from current bank, need for flexible financing for growth). Their marketing could highlight the pain points of rigid, cookie-cutter banking.
• Active Looking: Sales then steps in. Instead of pitching a generic product, the salesperson should prioritize listening and understanding Chad’s unique biotech business. The “blank sheet of paper” approach, where the salesperson requests time to learn before quoting, is a powerful demand-side sales tactic. This builds trust by demonstrating genuine interest, directly contrasting with “Bank A’s” impersonal approach. This strategic approach aligns marketing’s awareness-building with sales’ in-depth understanding.

Integrating Sales and Customer Support for Retention

• Preventing Loss (for “Bank A”):
  • Customer Support: The core issue for “Bank A” was poor customer support, particularly the high turnover of relationship managers and their failure to understand Chad’s business. Moesta emphasizes that renewals are as hard as new business, if not riskier, due to existing history. Placing “lower-level people on renewals” is a mistake.
  • Onboarding for Internal Handoffs: “Bank A” needed a structured internal onboarding process for new relationship managers to genuinely learn client businesses during handoffs. The first meeting should be face-to-face, focusing on curiosity about the client’s business, not just data transfer.
  • Proactive Engagement (Ongoing Use): Instead of waiting for problems, “Bank A” should have scheduled regular, meaningful “wellness visits” to ask questions about future business plans and identify potential struggles. This allows them to proactively offer services that genuinely increase their “footprint” within the company, rather than just pushing services.
  • Trust Check: They should have policies for honesty and directness (“If the answer’s no, say no”). Eroding trust by waffling on issues like personal guarantees is a key vulnerability.

Understanding How People Choose a Healthcare Provider (Revisited for Departmental Alignment)

Integrating Sales and Marketing for Acquisition

• First Thought & Passive Looking: The healthcare provider’s marketing strategy correctly identified the “anxiety factor” of learning new tech while sick. Their solution: proactively onboarding patients to the virtual platform when healthy (e.g., scheduling next year’s appointment via the platform during annual wellness visits). This marketing-led “first thought” and “passive looking” phase made the technology familiar before a crisis.
• Active Looking: Marketing reinforced this by using billboard ads that specifically addressed struggling moments (“Feeling sick? Don’t put your plans on hold, stay productive”) and clarified when to use virtual care. This helped patients connect their struggle to the virtual solution.

Integrating Sales and Customer Support for Retention and Expansion

• Deciding: The sales/customer support role at urgent care should focus on triage and expectation setting. By using a simple five-question intake form, they quickly understood the patient’s context (e.g., complex history vs. known condition) and could direct them to the appropriate care pathway. This process reduced waiting times and increased satisfaction significantly, transforming the “onboarding” experience.
• Ongoing Use: The high satisfaction led to four times more repeat visits for urgent care. This demonstrates how a seamless, anxiety-reducing “onboarding” experience converts into strong “ongoing use” and customer loyalty. The customer support function became a key sales driver.

How to Sync Selling Computers to the Way People Buy (Revisited for Departmental Alignment)

Integrating Sales and Marketing for Acquisition

• First Thought & Passive Looking: Marketing should highlight common computer frustrations and pose questions that trigger “first thoughts” (“What bothers you most about your current computer?”). As customers move into passive looking, marketing could target them in high-stress, inconvenient locations (e.g., airports, hospitals) where their computer’s shortcomings are most acutely felt, planting the idea of a better solution.
• Active Looking: Salespeople need to act as “translators,” interpreting a customer’s simple needs (e.g., “decent battery life” for a two-hour call) into relevant technical specs. They should avoid overwhelming customers with irrelevant jargon. The focus is on understanding the customer’s tradeoffs (e.g., speed of delivery over ultimate perfection) and presenting solutions that meet those priorities.

Integrating Sales and Customer Support for Retention and Expansion

• Deciding & Onboarding: The salesperson (or a dedicated “concierge” service) should offer services like fast delivery and in-person setup/data transfer, as Rachel’s husband did. This “accountability” service could be a premium offering that addresses the high anxiety of new tech setup, and customers would gladly pay for it. This shows that the customer support aspect of onboarding is a crucial sales differentiator.
• Ongoing Use: Customer support should focus on preventing future “little hires” from escalating into a “big hire” (firing the computer). This means proactive maintenance, updates that genuinely improve user experience, and anticipating new struggling moments (e.g., “Will the computer slow down over time?”). The goal is to ensure the product “does not degrade in performance over time” and to continually exceed expectations, driving customer loyalty.

Conclusion: Collaborative Progress

The chapter concludes by reinforcing that sales, marketing, and customer support are not silos. When aligned with the customer’s buying timeline and focused on the customer’s progress and struggles, they become a seamless system. This integration moves beyond simply generating leads or closing deals to actively guiding customers through their entire journey, leading to higher satisfaction and sustained growth.

Chapter 7: Moving from Pushing Products to Creating Pull for Progress

This concluding chapter summarizes the core tenets of demand-side sales, emphasizing the shift from “pushing” products to “creating pull for progress.” Bob Moesta reinforces that understanding the “why” behind a purchase – the customer’s unique struggling moment and desired progress – is the key to transforming sales into a noble and effective pursuit.

The Snickers vs. Milky Way Example: A Demand-Side Revelation

Moesta opens with the iconic example of Snickers versus Milky Way. Traditionally, these candy bars are seen as competitors in the same “candy aisle” (supply-side thinking). However, demand-side analysis reveals they serve different “jobs”:

• Snickers: Hired when people are “running out of energy” and need a substantial boost. Its composition (nougat, caramel, peanuts) makes it feel like “food.” It competes not with other candy bars, but with sandwiches, Red Bull, and coffee.
• Milky Way: Hired for an emotional reward or comfort, sliding down easily. It competes with ice cream, brownies, and a glass of wine.

Understanding this, Snickers launched its highly successful “You’re not YOU when you’re hungry” campaign, featuring Betty White playing football. This ad directly spoke to the struggling moment of low energy, highlighting how Snickers satisfies hunger and restores one’s true self. This demand-side reframing propelled Snickers sales to over $3.5 billion in less than ten years. This is a perfect example of creating “pull” by aligning with the customer’s specific job to be done.

What’s Wrong in Sales Today? Addressing the “Icky” Perception

Moesta argues that the current “icky” perception of sales stems from systemic issues rooted in supply-side thinking:

• Focus on “What” and “Who”: Salespeople are often trained to focus narrowly on product features (“what”) and demographics (“who”), missing the crucial “when, where, why, how, and how much.”
• The Nabisco Legacy: The 1985 sale of Nabisco, which elevated brand equity as more valuable than cashflow, inadvertently shifted power to marketing. Marketers became responsible for “creating demand,” while sales became mere “order takers” following leads. Moesta contends this is flawed because demand is fundamentally generated by a customer’s struggle, not by marketing alone.
• Lack of Frameworks for Sales: Unlike marketing’s established theories and tools, sales often lacks its own distinct frameworks, leaving salespeople to rely on basic techniques (e.g., cold calling) rather than deep causal understanding.
• “Church of Finance” Dominance: The relentless focus on cashflow and budget forecasting often drives sales decisions that are not in the customer’s best interest, leading to “push” tactics, failed expectations, and buyer’s remorse.

The Unsung Hero: The “Horizontal Skills” of Salespeople

Despite these systemic challenges, Moesta highly respects great salespeople. They possess “horizontal skills,” meaning they understand every department of the company (like a CEO) but operate on the frontline. They are marketers who deeply understand real customers (not imagined personas) and their products. While marketers work in “features and benefits,” great salespeople “push beyond this, helping to reduce anxieties” and deal in causation, not correlation. They are “the man in the arena,” facing immense pressure with few dedicated tools.

Reframing Selling as Serving: The Demand-Side Salesperson

The core transformation advocated by Moesta is to reframe selling as “serving” and “helping others.” When embracing a demand-side paradigm, the salesperson becomes an advisor, coach, or concierge. Their role is to assist customers in shaping and framing their progress, guiding them down the “path of progress.”

• This means stopping the “push” of endless features and benefits.
• Instead, salespeople create “pull” by framing the context, desired outcomes, and tradeoffs for the customer.
• They become the “shepherds” who help customers navigate complex decisions and understand their options.

A Snapshot of Demand-Side Sales: The Car Salesperson Transformed

Moesta illustrates this transformation using the example of a car salesperson moving from a “cliché, icky” role to a helpful concierge, applying the six stages of the buying process:

1. First Thought: When a customer’s car needs a costly repair at 110,000 miles, the service person (a trusted advisor) could frame the situation: “Here are the next expected adjustments and estimated costs.” This creates a “push” towards considering a new car.
2. Passive Looking: Offer a complimentary loaner while the old car is serviced. This allows the customer to experience a new car without pressure, passively realizing its benefits. Upon return, the service person reiterates future costs, further strengthening the “push.” The salesperson then offers a free appraisal of the old car as a potential down payment, a low-risk entry into active looking.
3. Active Looking: Once the customer agrees to the appraisal, they are actively exploring options. The salesperson’s job is to ask questions that frame the customer’s definition of value (e.g., “Where do you drive? How long will you keep it?”). Crucially, they introduce contrasting options (e.g., an oversized SUV, a minivan, a slightly used luxury car at the same price as a loaded standard car). This helps the customer make tradeoffs and understand what they truly value, moving beyond initial preferences. Moesta cites Dan Ariely’s Predictably Irrational: offering three distinct choices helps people eliminate one and clarify what they want.
4. Deciding: The “time wall” (e.g., a sale or personal deadline) becomes a “pressure cooker” forcing tradeoffs. The salesperson, by having provided clear contrasting options, helps the customer make this decision. The competitive set for buyers is often different than what the industry assumes (e.g., a loaded Ford vs. a slightly used Audi).
5. Onboarding & Ongoing Use: Here, expectations for value and satisfaction are cemented. The salesperson’s role is to ensure expectations are realistic and that the actual experience exceeds the “old product they fired.” They proactively address potential “buyer’s remorse” by discussing practicalities like old car disposal, new car delivery, and maintenance. This sets the stage for a positive “ongoing use” experience, building habit and loyalty. If issues are not addressed, or expectations are mismatched, dissatisfaction and buyer’s remorse arise.

The Transformative Impact: Selling as Serving

Moesta concludes by reiterating that great salespeople are often remembered as “helpers” or “concierges,” not “salesmen,” precisely because they operate from a demand-side perspective. They listen first, understand the customer’s desired progress, and then guide them to the right solution. This book aims to provide the “hack” to achieve this “night vision goggles” perspective without years of trial and error, making sales a purposeful and valuable endeavor.

Conclusion

Demand-Side Sales 101 boils down to a fundamental shift in perspective: from pushing products to genuinely helping people make progress on their terms. This framework offers a clear path to transform sales from an “icky” transaction into a valuable service.

The Three Principles for Success

1. Principle #1: People buy for their own reasons. It’s always about the customer’s progress, not solely about your product’s features or your desire to “make a dollar.” Great salespeople prioritize enabling this progress, which naturally leads to sales.
2. Principle #2: Nothing is random; everything is caused. Reject the notion of random sales or “luck.” Every purchase is driven by a series of causal events and motivations. Understanding these causal mechanisms allows for pattern recognition and a more systematic, effective sales approach.
3. Principle #3: The struggle creates demand. The “struggling moment” is the fundamental trigger for all new sales and innovation. Your primary job is to identify these struggles and position your product or service as the solution that helps overcome them.

The Three Myths to Dispel

1. Myth #1: Supply creates demand; build it and they will buy it. This is false. No matter how good your product, it won’t create demand unless it fits into the customer’s life and helps them achieve their definition of progress.
2. Myth #2: Sales are random, the needle in a haystack mentality. This myth leads to ineffective “numbers games.” Sales are caused and systematic. You don’t just “find people” to sell to; you understand the drivers of demand and build a process around them.
3. Myth #3: Sales is about convincing people, and you can convince anyone to do anything. People convince themselves to buy, not the salesperson. The customer defines the value. Your role is to understand their value and how your product fits, not to manipulate or push.

Where to Start? Practical Application for Everyone

Moesta provides actionable steps to begin applying demand-side sales:

1. Analyze Your Own Buying Habits: Reflect on a recent significant purchase that took a long time. Discuss it with a friend or family member, explicitly trying to uncover the social, emotional, and functional reasons behind your decision. This low-risk practice helps you understand your own buying process.
2. Practice Helping Friends and Family: Apply the interrogation techniques from Chapter 4. Ask open-ended questions about their recent purchases or personal struggles (e.g., homework, sports). Practice guiding them towards a “new path” or solution using your newfound understanding.
3. Apply to Your Customer Interactions:
   • Interview Past Customers: Talk to someone who recently bought your product/service. Uncover their “struggling moment” and the causal events that led to their purchase (“Today’s the day…”).
   • Redesign Presentations: Approach your next sales presentation as a tool to help the customer make progress. Can you frame their context and desired outcomes? Can you proactively address their anxieties and clarify their tradeoffs from emotional, social, and functional perspectives?

Key Steps for Applying Demand-Side Sales

For each starting point above, apply the following:

• Articulate the buyer’s timeline and the four forces of progress. Identify the “dominoes” that led to the purchase.
• Summarize it into a meaningful story, highlighting the interplay of functional, emotional, and social motivations.
• Design a sales process that directly helps others in similar situations make that progress.

Recommended Resources

Moesta recommends several books to further develop demand-side sales skills:

• Never Split the Difference by Chris Voss: For advanced interrogation and negotiation techniques.
• To Sell Is Human by Daniel Pink: Explores the social science of sales and how everyone sells.
• The Sandler Rules by David Mattson: A foundational guide to sales language.
• The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey: A manual for professional and personal improvement applicable to sales.
• The Little Red Book of Selling by Jeffrey Gitomer: A pocket guide on selling yourself.

Transforming Selling and Buying

Moesta concludes with the hope that the reader’s view of “sales” has been transformed, much like seeing The Wizard of Oz in color for the first time. By framing sales as helping people make progress on their terms, it loses its negative connotation and becomes a valuable, positive endeavor. This approach not only enhances sales skills but also improves life skills, fostering deeper, more meaningful conversations and enabling individuals to make more purposeful decisions in their own lives. “It’s liberating to know that the only person standing in the way of your personal progress is YOU.”

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Appendix: The Top Five Tools for Serving Customers

This appendix provides a concise “cheat sheet” of forward-looking tools, designed for approaching new customers after having gained insights from interviewing past ones. These are practical “progress tools” to apply demand-side sales knowledge.

Progress Tools

1. Framing the Problem

This involves asking specific questions to understand the customer’s struggling moment, context, and desired outcomes from the perspective of the Four Forces of Progress and the Three Sources of Energy.

• Push Questions: “What are you struggling with?” “What’s not happening that you want to happen?” “Where’s your frustration?” “Why are you doing this now?” “What don’t you like about your current product or service?”
• Pull Questions: “What are you hoping for?” “What’s going to be different once you’ve got something new in your life?”
• Anxiety Questions: “What are you worried about?” “What’s your greatest concern about getting rid of the old product or service?” “What’s your greatest concern about putting something new into your life?” “How’s that going to impact everybody else around you?” “What are they going to say?”
• Habit Questions: “Even though there are problems, what do you love the most about your current product or service?” “What are you willing to give up in order to get something better?” “What are you not willing to give up?”
• Time Wall Questions: “When do you need to make this decision by?” “Why then?”

These questions aim to quickly understand the buyer’s situation, focusing on social, emotional, and functional motivations, and identifying their time wall.

2. Unpacking Language

This tool addresses vague words and concepts (e.g., “easy,” “convenient,” “fast,” “healthy”) by probing for concrete meaning and the customer’s reference point.

• Unpacking Questions: “What does THAT (e.g., easy) mean?” “Tell me what THAT is/is not.” “Give me an example of THAT/not THAT.” The goal is to get to the action level.
  • Example: If a customer says “it’s easy,” ask “Easy like what?” If they say “easy like a car,” probe: “In what way is it easy like a car?” leading to understanding that “easy” means a “known process” that can be learned and repeated, even if it wasn’t initially easy.
• Reference Point: Emphasize that concepts are always relative (“healthier than,” “faster than”). You need to understand the specific benchmark the customer is using (e.g., “healthier than Doritos and Cheetos” for kale chips).

3. Prototyping to Learn

This involves “let’s pretend” scenarios where you introduce contrasting solutions to the customer’s problem to help them learn their value code.

• Approach: Show the buyer three very different options, even if they’ve initially rejected one (e.g., show a rancher house to a buyer who said they don’t want one).
• Learning Value: Ask them to identify three things they like and three things they don’t about each contrasting option. This helps uncover their deeper value code (e.g., liking bedrooms close together, hating seeing bedrooms from the living space).
• Purpose: This is about fact-finding and scenario building to understand tradeoffs and design requirements, not to sell a specific option. It provides distinction and helps shape the ideal solution.

4. Designing to Decide

Once you’ve framed the problem, unpacked language, and prototyped, you present three well-designed solutions to facilitate the customer’s decision. Three is the “magic number” for effective elimination and decision-making.

• Structure: Present three options that meet the customer’s needs in varying ways, often with the same price point to highlight tradeoffs (e.g., a large SUV, a minivan, a compact loaded SUV, all at $45,000).
• Facilitating Tradeoffs: This approach forces the customer to choose and eliminate, understanding what they are willing to give up (e.g., despite saying no to a minivan, they might choose it when its convenience features are highlighted against other tradeoffs). This is how sales are closed.

5. Playing it Out

This final tool involves helping the buyer anticipate future scenarios and mentally prepare for the consequences and next steps of their purchase. It’s a test to ensure satisfaction and prevent buyer’s remorse.

• Proactive Questions: Ask questions in advance like: “How do you know you’ll be satisfied?” “What are your measures of satisfaction?” “What will make you realize you made the right purchase?”
• Anticipating Logistics: Discuss practicalities: “What are you going to do with the old car?” “When do you want the new one delivered?” “How will you handle maintenance?” “How are you going to pack up and move?”
• Setting Expectations: By bringing up these “corners,” you help the buyer mentally prepare for the next 60-90 days, setting realistic expectations and preventing dissatisfaction that arises from unforeseen issues.