I have seen very few sales calls that are total trainwrecks, with both founder and potential customer leaving after a shouting match, weeping, and gnashing of teeth.
Founders tend to come to me with sales calls that feel good, productive, promising… yet, for some weird reason, they have abysmal close rates, lots of ghosting, and sloooooow sales cycles. And they’re not sure what’s going on: Is it a problem with the product? The pitch? Am I weirdly bad at sales?
Usually when I watch their calls, I find something deeply wrong - one of three sales pathologies that is causing the call to seem productive, when it’s actually massively counterproductive. These prevent you from selling, and worse, they prevent you from finding your signals of demand. I call them the “helpful”, “smart”, and “noble” pathologies.
The “helpful” pathology
When founders would reach out to explore bringing me on as an advisor, I used to jump on a call with them, ask them what I could help with, then try to solve it live with them. If I prove value, they’d be crazy not to work with me, right?
Similarly, a consultant friend was telling me about his sales process: In a 30-minute working session, he would collaborate with his potential customers so they could see what working with him would be like, see how helpful he is, and therefore would want to work with him.
I see this play out in a bunch of founders’ sales calls: They try to problem-solve live with the potential customer in order to “prove value”, or to prove they’ll be a good partner to work with, or… something.
The result is a sales call that feels productive to the seller, and maybe even to the potential customer, but it fundamentally misunderstands the purpose of the conversation.
Remember: In a sales call, the potential customer is almost always trying to accomplish something. This is true whether the call was scheduled inbound or outbound. They have something on their to-do list, and they’re taking this call for a specific reason.
In this situation, if we are helpful on any vector other than what’s on their mind… it’s irrelevant!
They need help understanding the project on their to-do list, or help evaluating you versus their other options. Instead of that, we spend the call proving that we are helpful - when we do this, we’re providing an answer to a question they didn’t ask, and probably weren’t ever going to ask!
After these calls, we feel like we’ve provided a ton of value, and then wonder why we get ghosted. This is the “helpful” pathology: We feel we are being helpful, and we are, but it’s on a vector that is irrelevant to the progress potential customers are trying to make.
The “smart” pathology
I got to watch one of my sales idols’ recorded sales calls… and one thing that struck me was that he was asking the stupidest questions. Things like: “You seem quite busy, why did you agree to talk to me today?” Or: “Wait… why isn’t your current system good enough?”
As I reflected on it, I realized that he made zero logical leaps. His goal was not to come across as smart, not to persuade, but to understand where the customer was and where they wanted to go.
We often feel like we need to seem smart on sales calls. We need to demonstrate that we’re experts… or, more precisely, avoid any indication that we might not be experts. This comes through in a variety of ways:
We set an agenda up front based on what we believe they want (without asking them what they want, because that would make us potentially look stupid)
We ask them well-researched discovery questions based on what we infer their problems should probably be (“I saw in your 10k that your company is going AI-native; I imagine that is causing you to look into evals right now?”)
We think we need to demonstrate we are smart by walking them through an educational presentation and showing them “gotcha!” statistics
With any question potential customers ask us during the call, we assume we understand their question, the reason they asked it, and their next 17 questions - and we answer all of them to look smart.
We jump into a demo without understanding what they want to see - obviously they want to see everything, right?
This winds up in the same cul-de-sac as the “helpful” pathology; it feels like we managed the call well, and yet something in the call caused them to ghost us, usually a combination of:
We had the wrong agenda
We didn’t figure out what their PULL was, we simply pitched what PULL we thought they had at them, and they nodded along but didn’t agree
We answered one of their questions the wrong way, causing them to have more questions and deciding it wasn’t a fit
We showed them something in our pitch or demo that confused them or seemed like it didn’t fit their needs
We miss what matters by optimizing for seeming not-stupid… and we just wind up feeling much more stupid a few days later.
The “noble” pathology
A sustainability startup talked me through their sales process: They focused on their decarbonization mission in their sales pitch, which deeply resonated with their potential customers - all sustainability leaders.
Likewise, when founders ask what makes me so weirdly effective as an advisor, I want to talk about my noble mission: I am actually trying to understand the physics of startups!
The “noble” pathology believes that potential customers should buy from us because we’re on a noble mission - we’re good people, we Start With Why, we’re solving a global crisis, etc.
When we do this, we turn a sales call into a weird moralizing lecture. Even if customers agree with our “why” - our “why” is totally irrelevant to what’s on their to-do list. By focusing on our why, we’re making it about us, not about them. We tend to go on long pitches about why the world is broken and we’re here to fix it, and frame our product and vision as “the thing that’s saving the world”. Potential customers usually nod along, and may even leave the meeting feeling inspired, saying “this is exactly what the world needs” - and then they get back to work and ghost us, because they have sh*t to do.
So, what do I say instead of rambling on about the Physics of Startups when people ask, “what makes you weirdly effective as an advisor?” my answer needs to be closer to: “I have done this like 5x in your specific industry, I have more reps with this than anyone else from both the founders’ seat and advisor seat, I’ve analyzed more startups’ sales calls than probably anyone else on Earth.” Then, to avoid the “smart” pathology, I should ask a dumb question: “I know you’re evaluating a few different options, does that answer make me fit what you’re looking for better than others?”
Reality
There are many other pathologies, but these are some of the most common ones I see. They all reflect an uneasiness with sales - because we forget the physics of sales.
Instead, we just have to remember: Potential customers are people who are trying to accomplish things on their to-do lists, and sometimes their existing options aren’t good enough. Their to-do list is what’s going to cause a deal to close.
They agreed to talk with us for a reason; there is some progress they are trying to make. This is the purpose of our conversation. If we focus on anything else, it’s a road to nowhere.
To that end, the structure of a sales call is:
Intro / why did you take this call? (Figure out what progress they’re trying to make for this call)
Demand discovery / understand their PULL (Literally - fill out the PULL framework with them)
Supply / fit their PULL (Offer something that fits better than their alternatives)
Next steps
This is how to have sales calls that feel good and work.
Again, amazing read. I think each of these pathologies is more present depending on the sector. Like "helpful" = most consultants, "smart" = most tech companies, "noble" = most impact-led companies, from experience.