Demand-Side Sales 101
By Bob Moesta
I picked this up for a dollar when it first came out and it changed the way I think about sales by describing the process through a Job-to-be-Done lens. This book helped clear up some misconceptions I had about JTBD, and gave me plenty of ideas for how to position features and interview customers.
View on AmazonSupply-side vs. demand-side thinking
Traditional sales are not in sync with the way people buy, and we need to flip the focus from the supply side to the demand side:
Supply-side: The focus is on the product or service and its features and benefits. How will I sell it? Who needs my product? You define demand through the product. In this scenario, the consumer is usually nebulous—an imagined, personified version of the customer—an aggregated set of demographic and psychographic information. You aggregate and triangulate the consumer around the product through correlative data. When operating under this model you canvas the world for people who need your product, adding features and benefits along the way, to reach the widest audience. With supply-side thinking the focus is on the profit—the product must make money inside a specific cost structure. Everything you talk about goes through the lens of the product or service. You push your product. The supply-side does not see how the product fits into people’s lives. It’s the fishbowl analogy: you cannot see the whole picture swimming on the inside, only what surrounds you.
Demand-side: The focus is on understanding the buyer and the user. How do people buy and how do they make progress? What’s causing them to make a purchase? You design your go-to-market strategy around the buyer’s worldview, not the product. You are looking at the world through a real buyer’s eyes. It’s understanding value from the customer-side of the world, as opposed to the product-side of the world. Demand-side selling is understanding what progress people want to make, and what they are willing to pay to make that progress. Our product or services are merely part of their solution. You create pull for your product because you are focused on helping the customer. Demand-side selling starts with the struggling moment. It’s the theory that people buy when they have a struggling moment and think, “Maybe, I can do better.”
Understand the demand without your product or solution
Supply-side and demand-side together make a business work. The key to synching these two world views starts with understanding demand without the product or your solution—just the context and desired outcomes, tradeoffs, and hiring requirements.
On the importance of asking questions
Questions are places in your mind where answers fit. If you haven’t asked the question, the answer has nowhere to go. It hits your mind and bounces right off. You have to ask the question—you have to want to know—in order to open up the space for the answer to fit.
You can't design how your customer makes progress
You cannot design the way your customer makes progress; you need to understand their definition of progress and design your process around it. People don’t buy products; they hire them to make progress in their lives.
Push and pull dynamics
The push of the situation and the magnetism of the new solution need to be stronger than their anxieties and habits before they will buy.
Salespeople as helpers
Unfortunately, most salespeople are not taught to think of themselves as a helper.
Reference
Moesta, B., Engle, G. (2020). Demand-Side Sales 101: Stop Selling and Help Your Customers Make Progress. United States: LIONCREST PUB.