Demand-Side Sales with Bob Moesta — How Quitting Selling Helps You Create a Better Client Experience

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Transcript

The Kennedy Mighell Report

Demand-Side Sales with Bob Moesta –How Quitting Selling Helps You Create a Better Client Experience

10/09/2020

 

[Music]

 

Intro: Web 2.0. Innovation, trends, collaboration. Software, metadata. Got the world turning as fast as it can? Hear how technology can help. Legally speaking, with two of the top legal technology experts, authors, and lawyers: Dennis Kennedy and Tom Mighell. Welcome to The Kennedy Mighell Report, here on, The Legal Talk Network.

 

[Music]

 

Dennis Kennedy: And welcome to Episode 271 of the The Kennedy Mighell Report. I’m Dennis Kennedy in Ann Arbor.

 

Tom Mighell: And I’m Tom Mighell, in Dallas. Before we get started, we’d like to thank our sponsors.

 

Dennis Kennedy: First of all, we’d like to thank Colonial Surety Company Bonds and Insurance for bringing you this podcast. Whatever court bonds you need, get a quote and purchase online at Colonial Surety.com/podcast.

 

Tom Mighell: And we’d also like to thank ServeNow. A nationwide network of trusted, pre-screened process servers. Work with the most professional process servers who have experience with high volume serves, embrace technology and understand the litigation process litigation process. Visit Servenow.com to learn more.

 

Dennis Kennedy: And we want to mention that the second edition of our book, ‘The Lawyer’s Guide to Collaboration Tools and Technologies’, is available on Amazon. Everyone agrees that collaboration is essential in today’s world, but now more than ever before, knowing the right tools will make all the difference. As I like to say at the start of all our 2020 podcasts, “What a difference another week or two makes, and the unexpected just keeps rolling on.” In our last episode, we discussed the opportunities presented by “Low-Code/No-Code” approaches to app development. In this episode, we’re excited to be interviewing another very special guest as part of our goal of adding regular interview shows to the podcast. Tom, what’s all on our agenda for this episode?

 

Tom Mighell: Well Dennis, in this edition of The Kennedy Mighell Report, we are thrilled to have as our guest, Bob Moesta. President and CEO of the Rewired Group and author of a brand-new book, ‘Demand Side Sales.’

 

And as usual, we’re going to finish up with our parting shots that Onetip website or observation that you can start to use the second that this podcast is over. But first up, we are so pleased to have and to welcome, Bob Moesta, who describes himself as a founder, maker, innovator, speaker, and now a professor. Not a lot, not a lot of things there. Maybe most important for fans of this show, Bob is the pioneer of the jobs to be done theory something that, if you listen to this listen to us enough, we talk about in this podcast nearly every other episode. Bob’s brand-new book, ‘Demand Side Sales’ brings what we think is a really fresh and practical approach to probably, the least favorite topic for many in the legal profession which is, selling. Bob, we want to welcome you to the Kennedy Mighell Report,

 

Bob Moesta: Thank you, Tom. Thank you, Dennis. Great to be here.

 

Tom Mighell: So, Bob, from the way that you introduce your book, I think, you also originally came to the idea of selling from I guess, what I would call a somewhat negative perspective. How did that perspective change, and what maybe led you to write this book?

 

Bob Moesta: Well, so first of all, I’m an engineer. So, I actually hate to sell more than lawyers, right? So, I totally get it. But from my perspective, my second startup, I actually took a role as a head of sales and marketing, and taking a very engineering approach to it. I built a process, and you know, kind of figured out the features and benefits and I got the basics down, and then, I went and started the pitch.

 

And I started to you know, I pitched Home Depot, and I ended pitching Lowes and these different– But it felt like, I was just spouting things at people. And like at some point, I had to sell everybody all the time everything. And so, this whole aspect, it made me just feel the only word I could come up with was, “icky.” It was that pit in my stomach going like, “Okay, when do I turn off? When do I stop selling? When do I like?”

 

And then, at some point in time, I had a very good colleague who basically said, “Look, stop. You’re psyching yourself out here. What you need to do is help people buy.” I’m like, “Oh.” And so, the moment that I kind of made that flip to what I call the demand side, I started to actually realize it’s about helping people make progress, and how does my product fit into their lives. And so, that’s basically the premise of the book is, that we, you know, the subtitle if you will be, “stop selling and start helping your customers make progress.” And so, it’s this aspect of understanding, “Where do they want to go?” “What do they want to do, and how does your product or service help them make that progress?”

 

Tom Mighell: Well yeah. I think, you started to talk about it there. But let’s maybe, pull that apart a little bit more.

 

Bob Moesta: Yeah.

 

Tom Mighell: Or just to get the lay of the land for this discussion, we probably need to talk about the differences between and the distinction between supply side and demand side selling.

 

Bob Moesta: Yeah.

 

Tom Mighell: Kind of what, I think the difference may be obvious to some lawyers, for those who think that sales is a skill to be learned, they may not be so obvious.

 

Bob Moesta: Right. So, I grew up on what I call the supply side, which is, I work for a company and we produce a product, and we then would look at and say, “Who wants to buy this product?” And everything goes through this primary kernel, —

 

(00:05:00)

 

— this primary key of the product or the service, and like, “Who needs it?” So, you know, I make mattresses. So, “Who needs a mattress?” And, “how many mattresses can I sell?” And everything goes from a mechanical side, from the supply side.

 

But what you realize is, when you flip over to the demand side, which is you know, “Why do I buy a mattress? When do I buy a mattress?” What causes me to say, “today’s the day, I need a new mattress.” You start to realize that the supply side actually doesn’t even ask those questions. And so, you start to realize it’s like, you know, when I’m sleeping in the Barca lounge, or when I’m actually taking you know, “how many bottles of Zzzquil do you have?” Before you realize, “Hmm, maybe I need a new mattress, right?”

 

There’s all these other things and it’s about sleep, and rest. It’s not about a mattress. And so, what you start to realize is, “there’s context, and there’s outcome that people have when they want a new mattress.” But most the time we’re talking about a language of you know, hybrid and springs, and foam and all these features that actually, mean nothing to basically, the average consumer. And so, part of this is, the demand side is, really looking through the customer’s eyes. Hearing what they hear, feel what they feel, see what they see, and then understand what’s meaningful to them as the outcomes they’re seeking not the product they’re seeking.

 

Dennis Kennedy: So, Bob, this is Dennis. And I told you before the show, I’ve been a fan for a long time.

 

Bob Moesta: Yeah.

 

Dennis Kennedy: And I looked bac in some of your early podcast in 2013, where you kind of went through “Jobs to be done” and your interviewing technique of buyers were really influential on me. So, to go back to what you’re saying there with the mattresses, kind of interesting to me because you talk about, “We’re not buying the mattress, or in the case of legal, the services. We’re trying to make some progress in our life.

 

Bob Moesta: Right.

 

Dennis Kennedy: And if you come from the product side, like if you’re a mattress store, you’re like, “Well, people need a new mattress.” I’m going like, “The last thing I want to do is buy a mattress. If I could get like a white noise machine, there’s like a whole bunch of other things I would do.

 

Bob Moesta: Exactly.

 

Dennis Kennedy: Because I’m focused on sleep. So, could you kind of dive into like, what you do? This notion of, you’re hiring your product or service to make progress in your life.

 

Bob Moesta: Yeah. So, the fundamental premise is that, people don’t buy things, they hire them to make progress in their life. And part of it is that, and its cost. It’s not random. There is actually no such thing as a as a random or an impulse purchase. When you start to dig.

 

So, the first thing is, I actually back in the 90’s, I got trained in criminal and intelligence interrogation. And I learned how basically, how people lie to themselves about why they buy things. “Oh, I bought this because I got a deal.” Like, “I bought this car because I got a deal.” No, you bought a car for a whole host of reasons, and it’s not just the fact that you got a deal. And so, part of it is, to understand, “What’s the process you go through? How do you actually come to the conclusion, and how do you decide ‘Today’s the day, I need a new mattress, or I need to write a will.’” Right? Or I need to, you know.

 

There are certain things, certain dominoes that have to fall in people’s lives for them to realize, they need a lawyer, right? And so, part of this is to look past what they bought, but just to get down to why they bought it. And what it is, people will say well they have a problem right well it’s kind of a problem, but it’s also an outcome. When I say is, it’s the context and outcome together that describe the progress they’re trying to make, and so ultimately, and a lot of times we don’t actually have language for it. So, we reflect what we’re trying to do through the product or a feature. Right? Like I want a simple will. Why simple? It’s simple because you don’t want to spend money or simple because the people who have to understand it or I don’t have a bunch of stuff.

 

Like what’s the simple meaning. And so, it’s this notion of taking those words and unpacking what people mean by stuff and the intent behind it, and whether it’s pushing them or pulling them. And so, it’s that whole aspect of listening to not only what people say, but how they say it. So, coming back, you mentioned, “that nothing’s random, there’s a cause for everything.”

 

Bob Moesta: Yeah.

 

Tom Mighell: I think, you talk a lot in the book about the difference between correlation, which really is, kind of the bedrock of marketing.

 

Bob Moesta: Yes.

 

Tom Mighell: And causation, which I think you say is, “much more important”

 

Bob Moesta: Yup.

 

Tom Mighell: In fact, that, the term that you use is, “that that causation is the ‘night vision goggles’” which was really resonated with me because I’m thinking, that’s incredibly powerful. Can you, kind of – but I’m not sure I totally understand the difference between correlation and causation. Can you maybe go into that a little bit?

 

Bob Moesta: So, the thing is, I’m 55-years-old. I live in 4236. I you know, have a certain income. I’m in a certain profession, but that doesn’t cause me to buy the Wall Street Journal or the New York Times. It’s not what causes me to do it. And so, what happens is, we have demographics, we have psychographics. And a lot of people say, “Well, we know our customers really well.” And then my question is, “So, then what causes them today to say, “Today’s the day I need will or I need a new mattress.”

 

(00:10:00)

 

And what you realize is, they can’t answer it. And what you start to realize is, we end up creating differentiation of, “Well, I’m an X. I’m on the edge of a boom or X or right?  But I’m not a Gen Z, right? It’s like, “Well, I do things differently. I want to buy a mattress differently.” But the reality is, we actually struggle with the same things. And so, part of this is, you start to realize that when you get down to causality like, the dominoes of, “I don’t have much time. I don’t know what to do with my old mattress. The fact is like, I have these kinds of problems with it.” Like very specific. It doesn’t matter who I am. It’s more about the context I’m in, and that’s what actually drives me to purchase or to buy because I’m in that context with a desired outcome.

 

So, correlation is one of those things where, I had an internship when I was 18 years old with a gentleman by the name of Dr. Deming, and he was 85 at the time. And he would he’s hard of hearing, but I didn’t realize this at 18 that when he screams at you, is just, he can’t hear, so he’s not really screaming at me, but I thought he was. And so, he’d always say like, “Don’t ever confuse correlation and causation. They’re very fundamentally different and what causes somebody to do something is like, the bedrock of what we want to actually understand.” And so, that’s that was almost like, I felt beat into me by some of my mentors.

 

Tom Mighell: And so, it sounds like, if we’re focusing on causation, if causation is really where you can get to what you need from the customer, from the client, it’s a personalized process. Right? I mean, it’s not something you can just go to them and say, “I’ve got this for you to think about because I really need to learn more about them before I can propose what my service or product needs to look like.” Right?

 

Bob Moesta: That’s right. That’s right. So, I’ve used most of this method, and tools for almost 30 years on developing and launching new products. I’ve done about 3500 different new products. And the thing is, is that, what I started to realize is, the struggling moment in most businesses is sales. And so, “How do we go help people sell?” And what you start to realize is, it’s– you know, we don’t teach sales at business schools. Like there isn’t—there.

 

Bob Moesta: Like, 10 years ago, Clay and I are sitting around talk Lakers at the Harvard Business School as a colleague and he helped me co-architect the jobs to be done theory. We basically said, “Why are there no sales professors?” When you talk, like when you talk to anybody in business, and having done seven startups myself, I realized like, “Holy crap, like it’s the hardest thing of all.” So, why aren’t they teaching sales at any of the business schools and you start to realize it’s like, “Well it’s all technique. It’s all about product. It’s all about… “And so, part of this is to say, ‘Well, what are those foundational pieces we need to have?’” Because at some point in time, it’s not really an art. It can be a science, and if we understand the causation behind it, and the trade-offs that people make to get it, you start to realize, “it’s actually really– it’s much easier to both market and sell if you understand the progress they’re trying to make.”

 

Dennis Kennedy: I was thinking that many years ago, I used to do estate planning, and the one thing that I ended up calling it a “triggering event” but if people were going to sign their wills to actually sign them. Typically, the triggering event was both parents getting on the plane at the same time. And it almost immediately brought people in. It’s almost like, you could say, “Oh, I had a relationship with travel agents, I could probably get more wills done” because this was the actual point. But the one thing I want to go back to is, this notion of helping. So, instead of selling our help, you’re helping. And I love the notion of concierge. And so, I was in the buying mode yesterday because I had a broken blender.

 

Bob Moesta: Oh, yeah?

 

Dennis Kennedy: So, the why’s, you know, is — in some ways fairly straightforward. But there’s also a lot of complexity. But I realized, I just really to have somebody kind of talk me through the options, and help me pick the right one, instead of figuring it out myself.

 

Bob Moesta: And this is this is an important point is that like, if you’re just going to go buy the exact same blender you had before, that’s just, I call that restocking. That’s that that’s not actually kind of buying in my case because I’m trying to say, when people stop using one thing and start to use another, so the moment that you your blender broke, and you basically made the choice to say, “I’m not going to just go because the easiest thing is to just go buy what you had.”

 

But the reality is, the moment you say, “Well maybe I have to have something different.” That is the struggling moment of it breaking, and deciding not to take the same old thing. That’s when all of a sudden, this whole thing, this whole process unfolds in front of you. Like where do you go? How do you decide? What research did you, what language do you use? What do they talk about blenders for? What are you going to use the blender for? Like it just starts to come, right? And so, part of this is, there’s an underlying aspect of, “My current one doesn’t work.” Right? I have a certain place where I store it.” Right? So, I either have to throw the old one out. Did you ever, did you actually try to fix the old one?

 

Dennis Kennedy: No. I didn’t want do that and I also knew I wanted to in some sense upgrade. You know, for a couple of reasons: one is that, my wife thinks the old one is way too loud.

 

(00:15:05)

 

Bob Moesta: Too loud? What do you mean too loud?

 

Dennis Kennedy: What I mean is that, when I do a breakfast smoothie, and she has to put her fingers in her ears.

 

Bob Moesta: And do you do you not make a breakfast smoothie when she’s sleeping in?

 

Dennis Kennedy: I am very careful to make sure the bedroom door is closed.

 

Bob Moesta: Yeah.

 

Dennis Kennedy: And take extra precautions. Yes.

 

Bob Moesta: And then, are there — so this is part of the thing of why you don’t want to replace it. It’s too loud. Right? What else?

 

Dennis Kennedy: Right.

 

Bob Moesta: What else was wrong with the old thing?

 

Dennis Kennedy: It wouldn’t — I wanted something, I believed I wanted something that was more powerful because I didn’t think this smaller one kind of blended up everything that I threw into my smoothie.

 

Bob Moesta: So, this is a perfect example. So, you’re already talking about the product, and what I want to do is, I don’t want to say, “Okay, how powerful do you want to it?” Is it, like “What does power get you?  What can’t you do because you don’t have power?”

 

Dennis Kennedy: I can’t put… Well, actually my wife and I were talking about this yesterday. She said, “Why don’t you put vegetables into your smoothies?” I said, “What? This one?” The one I had is, I feel it’s underpowered, and would leave things kind of stringy, and wouldn’t get them all blended up in the way that I want.

 

Bob Moesta: Got it. And so, had you tried that before?

 

Dennis Kennedy: Yeah. There are a number of things that I like to put into my smoothies that I just didn’t feel it got off, you know, got it chopped out.

 

Bob Moesta: So, there’s thing that you want to add to your smoothie that you don’t feel you can because then you can’t drink it.

 

Dennis Kennedy: Right.

 

Bob Moesta: Got it. Okay. So, this is a perfect example of unpacking from powerful and saying like, “All right, we got to make the most powerful thing” to understanding, why I want it powerful? What is it actually supposed to do? Because in some cases, that’s actually more about the blades, and the blade design than it is actually about the amperage of unit.  Right? And so, what else? What else as you started to look, what else did you see? What else did you start to… Where did your eyes go?

 

Dennis Kennedy: I talked to my friend who’s like, the “blender master” who always goes top of line stuff. And I said, “Why would I … should I go to like the top of the line stuff or should I back off from that, and what are the reasons?” So, he told me like, what the trade-offs were, which didn’t seem like much of a trade-off. So, as I look out to a much lower price point.

 

Bob Moesta: What were the trade-offs?

 

Dennis Kennedy: Well, it does come back to this notion of power. You know like, and so, when you talk about the language of the product, seller like everything is watts. And you know like in – so, I went to Target yesterday and go like, “Hmm, I have no idea the difference between 900 watts, a thousand watts, 1100 watts, 1200 watts?” Like it has no meaning to me. You know?

 

Bob Moesta: More has got to be better?

 

Dennis Kennedy: To a point, and less it’s louder. Right?

 

Bob Moesta: Right. See, so this is exactly the point, right? So, at some point in time, there’s trade-offs that you have to make, and it’s like, “Oh, I want it really powerful, but I don’t want it to wake everybody. I want it too loud, so I don’t wake people up and I don’t have my wife putting her fingers in my inner ears, right?”

 

Dennis Kennedy: Right.

 

Bob Moesta:  So, the aspect here is, that we… so in the in the book, I talk about this process, and there’s first thought, there’s passive looking where you kind of, you’re going through your day, and you’re kind of like seeing things, but now you have a space in the brain and you go like, “Well, maybe I should think about blenders and now there’s a blender ad on tv, and you see it where before it was playing, but you actually never saw it.” Right?”

 

And then, there’s this active looking where you think about, “Well, I need power, I want to put more vegetables in it. I want it to be quiet.” Everything is really kind of single, orthogonal, independent things.  And then, comes deciding, and deciding is actually about managing trade-offs. And at some point, when you can’t connect the dots of, “Does this 1100-watt blender which will pulverize my vegetables, so they’re smooth enough I can drink them, but will it be too loud?”  Right?

 

Bob Moesta: And then, is it really overplayed? Do I need that much power, and is the bigger motor too big that it can’t store it? Or at what point, how much more money is the 1100 versus a thousand? And so, you start to actually make these trade-offs between it, and you start to realize that, the trade-offs sometimes are about power, but it’s multi-dimensional. And so, understanding what is more important than other things as you’re looking at buying this thing is like, okay. And what about price? Where was price in all this?

 

Dennis Kennedy: So, price wasn’t that much of a factor.  We noticed when we went to Target, there was one that was a candidate that was $20 off, but I would say, when it came right down to it between the two, I was looking at. It was the fact that the new one that I bought had two cups that you could put your smoothies into, you know, in addition to like, the bigger blender piece. And so, it had– the extra cup which I would say, and then the bigger blender made it attractive to my wife who was with me because then she could make salsa and soups and stuff like that.

 

(00:20:02)

 

Bob Moesta: Some other things.

 

Dennis Kennedy: She would become engaged and more engagement.

 

Bob Moesta: Right. And so, all of a sudden, in some cases you’re willing to pay more —

 

Dennis Kennedy: Mm-hmm.

 

Bob Moesta: –for something that actually has now a little bit more versatility. So, now it’s just not about power and it’s not about the stringy vegetables, it’s now about other things and applications. And so, —

 

Dennis Kennedy: Right.

 

Bob Moesta: –This is where usually, we start to realize, as simple you think is buying a blender is, the thing is, as most people just know like, “What’s the volume?  What’s the number of cups? How many like they’ll put these things out there?” But they have to understand as people are trying to upgrade, what are those things and what are the reference points to say, “What’s the next thing?”

 

Dennis Kennedy: Right.

 

Bob Moesta: And so, part of this is like, how does somebody decide to say, “You know, I have a will, but you know, it’s time to update the will.” Like what are the four or five different things that will make it, “Today’s the day. We have to update the will.” Versus, “We have to make a will” which is different, right?

 

Dennis Kennedy: That goes to your notion of struggling moment, but I looked at my own will and my dad’s will of the other day, and I think it plays into the struggling moment because I saw, I needed to get in my head what was there because of COVID times. And my daughter asking me a while back like, “What was going to happen?” And I looked at it, and I said, “It’s not exactly right, right now. But it’s close enough.”

 

Bob Moesta: It’s good enough.

 

Dennis Kennedy: Yeah. And it’s kind of a hassle to go to a lawyer. You know, so the typical things people have in a lawyer, and you’re thinking, “Do I really want to spend you know, like three thousand dollars to make a small change when as we as humans are, when it comes to estate planning,  you know, our plan is, we’re going to be immortal anyway.” Right?

 

Bob Moesta: Yup.

 

Dennis Kennedy: So, it doesn’t matter.

 

Bob Moesta: So, this brings up a really good example. So, one of the things I did is, I built a thousand homes here in Detroit, mostly for first-time homebuyers. You know, divorced family with kids, and then downsizers, think of like your parents, right? And what causes them to move, right? And one of the things we found was, this very awkward discussion when a friend of theirs either got very sick or passed away, and that they would literally go like, “Oh, my gosh. Like we need to move before you know, we can’t do this together. I don’t want to have to move without you and you don’t want to move without me and we really need to do this, right?”

 

And so, one of the things I found is, one of the underlying causal mechanisms is that, when one of their friends had passed or one of their friend’s spouses had passed, they look through the obituaries every single day. And so, I moved my advertising from the real estate section and talking about basically, my 1554 square foot, two bedroom, two and a half bath, first floor laundry ranch condo to saying, in the obituaries, I said like, “time to move, need help figuring it out, give me a call.” A 37 increase in my traffic, right? So, it’s this crazy thing where if you understand cause, there’s no correlation involved in it, That’s causing – when these things happen you now start to figure out where you actually, when you need to be in front of them as opposed to, by the time they’re raising their hand to buy a house, they already got it all down, right?

 

Dennis Kennedy: Mm-hmm.

 

Bob Moesta: And so, part of this is, there’s this early part of creating the space and educating themselves about what to do like the blender, that that’s where you want to be. And so, part of this is understanding, “How people do that and why people do that?”  Not just the product or service they’re buying.

 

Tom Mighell: So, before we go to take a break for our next segment, you started talking about the six steps, but we didn’t get all the way through.

 

Bob Moesta: Oh, sorry.

 

Tom Mighell: We got to first talk, the passive looking, active looking and deciding. But there’s two more: there’s onboarding and ongoing use. So, I want to ask —

 

Bob Moesta: That’s right.

 

Tom Mighell: — a specific question about those. Using Dennis’s example here, I would say, you would characterize buying the blender as the big hire, right?

 

Bob Moesta: That’s correct.

 

Tom Mighell: But then, there’s a bunch of little hires that are probably more important than the big hire.

 

Bob Moesta: That’s right.

 

Tom Mighell: Can you kind of give us an idea of what that means?

 

Bob Moesta: The way to think about the big hire, is buying the bottle of Windex and the little hire, is spraying the bottle of Windex, like where do you spray it? And where does it work? And where do you know it’s going to work? And where you’re not sure it’s going to work, but you’re going to try, right? And so, part of this is that, those expectations of what the blender is supposed to be doing and how well it works is set at the big hire. But the progress is actually made when he starts using the blender, right? And so, he made a smoothie this morning, right? So, how loud was it?

 

Dennis Kennedy: It was not bad, but my wife was at the dentist. So, we haven’t had done the acid test yet.

 

Bob Moesta: That’s right, but at some point, in time you know it’s quiet. So, here’s the other part. The reference point of better is the old one. It’s not all the five in the store, right? And so, that’s the first part. The second part is, to actually understand that though he wanted the right power, these other pieces what happens is that, because he had to make trade-offs, and oh, by the way, did you get the one that had the $20 off or not?

 

Dennis Kennedy: I got the one that was $20 off, yeah.

 

Bob Moesta: Yeah. So, we’ll talk about that in a little bit because again, people think that’s the reason and it’s more like, “I want to feel like I got more for less and it’s literally just a psychological trick at the end of the day.”

 

(00:25:06)

 

Dennis Kennedy: Right.

 

Bob Moesta: But the reality is like, the little hires is every smoothie that he makes and then, at some point in time there becomes a new struggling moment about this smoothie. So, he’s got he’s got three — the big vessel and then, he’s got two smaller vessels that he can actually drink the smoothies in. But now, where do you store all that stuff, right? And because the last one didn’t have it and I’m just kind of assuming your kitchen, it doesn’t have like, extra rooms if it’s like mine, it’s a Rubik’s cube where you got to put everything in an exact right way to make sure it all fits, right?

 

Bob Moesta: And so, part of it is, there’s new struggling moments. And so, the second half of this, and the little hires is that, when you start to use it, it’s every innovation, every solution basically takes care of one set of struggling moments, but usually then creates a new set of struggling moments. And so, part of it is that that it’s this kind of domino effect that happens. And so, you have to be able to understand, “What are the new struggling moments around the blender?” That now that he’s got the noise problem solved, and he’s got the grittiness and problem solved.

 

There’s now going to be some new struggles. What are they? And that’s the second half of the sale to me, which is, “Wow do we actually improve the product or give them suggestions or give them new recipes for salsa or how do we actually help them with those other things though because his wife talked about salsa, but has she ever made it before? Does she really want to do that? Like, where does she find a recipe for et cetera?

 

Dennis Kennedy: Which ties very nicely into talking about how this applies to legal services, which we are going to explore in our next segment, but before we get there, let’s take a quick break for a message from our sponsors and then we’ll be back with Bob.

 

[Music]

 

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Tom Mighell: And now let’s get back to the Kenned Mighell Report. I’m Tom Mighell.

 

Dennis Kennedy: And I’m Dennis Kennedy. And we are joined by our special guest, Bob Moesta, President and CEO of the Rewired Group and author of the great new book, ‘Demand Side Sales.’ Bob let’s turn to the legal profession and the potential role of demand selling. I actually see tons of potential here. I mean, your example in the book, business CEO to switch banks struck me as being extremely applicable in legal services. Especially a couple of things, but one is, how easy it seems to be that if you pay attention you can keep existing clients because they really don’t want to change because it’s difficult. Do you want to tell that story and maybe some of the lessons you drew from it?

 

Bob Moesta: Yeah. Yeah, yeah.  So, part of this is that, most people say like, you know, “There’s really no emotion in banking.” Like if you talk to people about banking, it’s like, “Well if they take my deposits. I pay out checks, they run my payroll.” Like there’s things that they do, right? And so, most people have no real emotion about it. But when you talk about people who switch banks, it’s nothing but emotion, right? And so, when you start to interview people and say, “Why, and what caused you to say, ‘today’s the day that you’re going to switch banks,’ they’re just wonderful stories.” Like what causes somebody to say, “Today’s the day, I’m switching lawyers.” Right? It’s not the same reason of like, what caused you to say, “I have to get a lawyer.”  They’re different. Right? And so, what you start to realize —

Bob Moesta: — is, in most cases, there’s the familiarity of the current bank for example. In this guy’s case is that, they helped him built the business and get to a certain point, but he was now getting to a point where he was trying to pivot and take the business from like, 20 million to 100 million, right? And as he starts, the thing is, as he starts to think about it, he doesn’t want to share that with the bank because at some point, the bank has basically agreed to the loan set or the set of loans that they had that were under certain premises. And as he’s playing this out, the fact is this, he’s starting to realize like, if he plays this to the bank, the bank actually can hinder him because at some point, they won’t either give him the money or the fact is, that they could think about basically, changing the terms on the on the on the account.

 

And so, as he starts to do it and they become more and more critical of the cash flow and how he’s running it because he’s actually doubling down and investing in it.

 

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And so, all of a sudden, there’s this this notion where it’s like, “I don’t know if I can actually trust my bank?”  And nobody in some cases, none of this is explicit, but you can start to see the fact is that, all of a sudden there’s another bank account that’s open then, all of a sudden, things are happening from a different bank, and then all of a sudden, it’s like, all right. And what they did is, they figured out a way in which to like go shop it to other people, and they actually never gave a chance to the current bank to even look at the loan because at some point they felt like they were in some cases too conservative or the way the process they put them through in the

first time, they would never buy into what they wanted to do the next time.

 

And so, part of it is that, they pigeonholed themselves and they didn’t actually understand the progress that the business owner, that CEO was trying to do. and so part of it is, by actually figuring out how you can help them make progress as opposed to sell your money sell your loans sell your services and only fit into your thing because at some point, if it’s not going to work for you, you’re better off actually sending them somewhere else because they’re going to go there anyway.

 

Bob Moesta: And so, part of this is, is when you flip the lens, and figure out how to help people make progress, you actually will start to realize like, at some point, like, “I wasn’t a builder. I was actually a mover. I help people move from one home to another.  And I actually thought about myself as that business. I stopped thinking about all the features I had to add to my houses, and the thing, the features I had to actually add to the entire experience which is, including moving as part of– when you bought a house from us, we included moving in two years of storage, right?

 

We actually included all these different things that actually help people make the house feel like a home. And so, all of a sudden you start to realize like, it was all those little things that were actually way easier to do than actually making very, very, unique houses. So, I think that’s, that’s the point.

 

Tom Mighell: I think, one of the things that resonates with me about that story is really when the new banks came in to pitch their business that, two of the banks were immediately excluded, where two of them sort of hit the nail on the head.

 

Bob Moesta: Oh, yeah.

 

Tom Mighell: Can you kind of talk about the differences in approach —

 

Bob Moesta: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

 

Tom Mighell: — that got to that point yeah?

 

Bob Moesta: Yeah, yeah.  Yes, and this actually had and comes true in a lot of cases, where you start to realize is the first thing is, so four banks came in two banks really walked in and said, “Look, this is who we are, this is what we do, this is who we work with, this is how much money we have, you know, we can do this for you.” And just basically said, “Here’s the menu of things to pick from us.” Right?

 

But two other banks, basically came in and said like, “We need to understand your business, what are you trying to do? Where are you trying to go? You know, why are you not doing this? Why are you doing that? And in some cases, stress testing to understand the business. And the CEO was like, I had two people who really cared about my business, or at least cared enough to ask questions about it, as opposed to

lump me in with a biotech firm, or with a you know, an engineering company or like, most people just put us in the wrong spot because they don’t take time to learn from us.

 

The second thing though was, you started to hear things like, “Well, you know, they were curious about the business and they gave me options.” What’s interesting is, in the process of how people buy is, options actually help them understand what they want. And when you don’t give options, it’s either, us or nothing, people will literally go find options, so they can actually bounce it against it, so they can make those trade-offs.

 

Bob Moesta: And so, these two companies came back and started to offer options and basically, do different things to help them get involved, but the bigger part was, you started realize, so how did you know, how did you pick this? Well, could I trust this person. I’m like, “Okay.”  You’ve been with this previous bank for 15 years and now you’re with this, you you’ve met somebody three times and you trust them. What happened? to cause trust? And they could really state it right straight out like, one is, they listened about my business, they gave me options, at some point in time they were responsive, but not too responsive. I said, “What does that mean?” They’re like, “Well, they’re not sitting around waiting for me, right?” And it’s like, at some point, and they got back to me within a reasonable amount of time, they always had an answer that that was there. And ultimately, they said, “No” to me on something. I’m like, “What do you mean?” It’s like, Well, I wanted to push the limits on a certain thing, and as well two or three things, and they said, “Well, no if that’s what you want to do, then we’re not the bank for you.” And the moment that they could tell me, no, I knew they were my bank. And I’m like, “Wow!” And it turns out that they paid a higher rate and a higher closing rate than anything anywhere else, but they knew that they could trust these people to actually help them grow the business.

 

Dennis Kennedy: A trade-off. Yup.

 

Bob Moesta: And they’re willing to pay for it. That’s the other part is, most people don’t realize like nobody takes — everybody takes the lowest load. Everybody’s trying. Of course, everybody wants the $20 off.  They’re like, if you’re going to offer 20, I’ll take it, right. But at the same time, the fact is, if I can’t tell the difference between this one, and that one, and I get $20 off, I’ll take it every time. It’s like, mom and apple pie. But that’s not what why you buy.

 

Dennis Kennedy: Yeah, it’s really interesting because I was in-house counsel at Mastercard for a good number of years. And so much of what you were just saying and in the bank example, just resonates with that. You know, like the law firms that come in, and they tell you what you what they think you need and how, and what their legal services, how they fit the Mastercard business, and they fundamentally misdescribe the Mastercard business.

 

Bob Moesta: Yup.

 

Dennis Kennedy: I mean like, they just show that they don’t understand it to the point, where you go, “I’m never going to hire them for anything.” And then, there’s these small things that add up, like over the 15 years.

 

Bob Moesta: Yup.

 

Dennis Kennedy: Like, it’s almost like they’re micro aggressions, you know.

 

Bob Moesta: Yes.

 

Dennis Kennedy: Didn’t return the call on time. I you know, I told them I only want to spend ten thousand dollars and they ran up a 50,000 bill.

 

Bob Moesta: Right.

 

Dennis Kennedy: Those kinds of things. So, I was just kind of curious. What you’ve seen if anything in the legal profession that you might want to share with our audience.

 

Bob Moesta: So, I think of it, so I always have weird analogies, but like, so one of them to me is like, if you think of Casper, which is the mattress maker, right?  They basically have come out of nowhere, and in less than five years, built a billion-dollar mattress company. A billion dollars. Right? And they have no showrooms, right? And for the most part everything was done online. They’re now moving where they have some stuff at some larger retail stores, but for the most part, it’s all been online. And the reality is that, at some point in time, they knew how bad it was to buy a mattress. To walk into an empty store with one person in it and 40 mattresses and go like, “Okay, we’re going to pick one.” And like, “I don’t know if I really need it. I don’t know like, how to pick, I don’t know what the — You know, and eventually, people just end up buying the one they can afford, the best one they can afford. But you know, Casper is asking questions like, you know, “Do you stick your leg out at night?” Right? Like, why is that relevant? Well, it turns out that you’re probably hot. So, when you stick your leg out, you’re actually trying to cool off. So, that means you actually probably need some cooling in the mattress.

 

Bob Moesta: And so, they can ask you questions because they understand the detailed causality of what causes you to do it. So, here’s the thing is that, my belief is that, for the most part, complicated law is for most lawyers I would think the fun law, right? It’s at the high-end of the market. Right? But this low end of the market where you’ve got people who can actually learn on their own or basically do things on their own, the fact this is like, LegalZoom, right?

 

Those kinds of aspects, the problem is that, they’re actually not helping people make progress as much as they want. And so, part of this is, actually realizing, “What does that low end really look like?” And how do you actually change your business model to actually service a little that low end because at some point in time, though you might, if you make mattresses, the fact this is now, most mattress companies are making mattresses and a bed or matches in a box and shipping. And so, my aspect to is, “What are the things that you actually — who are people who want to actually use a lawyer, but actually don’t even know how to engage?” We call that non-consumption.

 

Where do people want a new mattress, but they really don’t know how to buy a mattress. And so, you start to realize that most people wait way too long to buy a mattress my belief is people wait way too long to get a lawyer because they actually

don’t– they only think they need a lawyer when they’re in trouble, and they don’t think of lawyers as somebody who to prevent trouble or to actually organize the things before trouble happens.

 

Dennis Kennedy: There’s a stat out there in the legal profession that 80% of the people who need to use lawyers, and will say, “need to use lawyers” can’t afford them. But I think that as you just mentioned, I think a large, large, percentage of that is, people who don’t know how to, how or when to engage lawyers.

 

Bob Moesta: That’s right. And what I would say is, the majority– and this is just my experience is, most lawyers treat me like I’m a 10-year-old, right? And they try to explain, you know, I’m a pretty sophisticated businessman. I’ve done a lot of different things and the reality is like, they take my time so much. They don’t adjust their conversation to who I am. They just have a standard way of doing it.

 

So, I now have a lawyer that I’ve had for probably seven or eight years, but I probably would go through a new lawyer almost through every contract because it was just so painful. And so, you start to realize like, at some point, “I need a lawyer,” but the reality is like, “I need somebody who actually understands my business and understands what progress I’m trying to make and that though, I probably need a 47-page document,  you know, two pages is enough to get started. And then, this is how we’re going to proceed.”

 

And so, the aspect is, “how you actually understand the progress I want to make is more important” than the fact is, what is the correct legal response over the entire point of time versus like, I just want to get started. And so, it’s a very interesting thing where, I think, that there’s a lot of things where people should use a lawyer, they actually have a thought about a lawyer, but they actually don’t know what to do

with it.

 

Tom Mighell: And with that, we’re out of time.  So, I think there’s a whole access to a justice question there that we might –

 

Bob Moesta: Yes.

 

Tom Mighell: –want to invite, Bob back for another hour to talk about. But before we head on to the end, Bob we want to thank you so much for being on the podcast.

 

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Can you let our audience know where people can buy your book, where they can learn more about you get in contact with you if you want?

 

Bob Moesta: As everything it’s on Amazon. And it’s, Demand Side Sales 101 and it’s just the framework on helping stop selling and helping people make progress. It’s a hardcover, softcover Kindle and will be Audible by the end of October. You can find me on LinkedIn, Bob Moesta. M-O-E-S-T-A. You can go to bobmoesta.com or you can go to the Rewired Group. It’s the small design firm that I use or that I run where we develop products and help people build new markets.

 

 

Dennis Kennedy: So, thank you so much Bob. It’s great. Now, it’s time for our parting shots. At Onetip website, or observation. You can use the second till this podcast ends. Bob you want to start us off?

 

Bob Moesta: Yeah. So, I have – I was talking with Clay about five or six years ago and he talked about, “What was my greatest innovation?” And I’m like, I have no idea, like I don’t think that way. He goes, “Yeah.” But no. I got a context for you. You’re dead, you’re on the pearly gates, and there’s a list. What’s on the top of the list that’s going to get you into heaven? I’m like, “Oh, wow that’s hard.” And so, first thing, I’m like, “Well, the Patriot missile guidance system, it was amazing and it’s great. but like, I’m not sure that’s going to get me into heaven. And I worked on Pokemon, Mac and cheese and that’s really delicious. But I don’t think that’s good enough to get me into heaven. And I kind of searched around, and it all kind of went back to – back in 1987 to 1992, I worked for Ford Motor Company. And one of the struggling moments that I conquered was, I basically, every time I’d rent a car, I wouldn’t actually know which side of the car the gas tank filler cap was on. And so, I actually helped build or design the arrow on the gas tank. And so, half the people are like. “Oh, my gosh. I know what you’re talking about.” The other half are like, when you go to look at your gas gauge, there’s a little triangle that points you to the side that the filler cap is on, and that is where you basically know where to pull up for your car, so you don’t have to remember it.

 

Tom Mighell: And that is officially the best parting shot we have ever had on the show because I used that arrow constantly. And it’s just amazing. All right. So, my parting shot very quickly is, an update for our listeners on how I am using the Readwise app as part of my second brand project, and I’m going to use it and talk about it in terms of this discussion. I bought Bob’s book last week. I read it, I was highlighting, I was taking notes because it was connected to Readwise, all I had to do was open up, I’m keeping my notes now in Notion. I just had to open up Notion, all of my highlights, all of my notes had been automatically synced over there. I didn’t have to worry about the stuff. I wasn’t taking notes on. It was all there ready for me to then further highlight, to further summarize, to really drill down on what I wanted to talk, what we wanted to talk to Bob about during the podcast. It was so simple and easy, it was automatic, I cannot recommend Readwise enough as a note-taking and progressive summarization tool and I’ve gone to the eight – nine dollars a month subscription price to have it. I think it’s a fantastic tool. We’ll listen for it more on future podcasts.

 

Dennis Kennedy: Wow, so I’m a little bit self-promotion today. So I’ve put up my new mighty network site called the Kennedy Idea Propulsion Laboratory Community. And as part of that, I’ve created a new online course about personal quarterly off-sites, which we have discussed on this podcast before, would basically takes some time to yourself about, I just do a half a day one at the end of each quarter and spend some time on the important, but not urgent category. And so, I just did that and kind of set out my priorities for the rest of year, and came up with a really cool technique that I’m going to try to eliminate all these little tiny things that are always nagging me and on my list from time to time, and just see if I can knock out one of them a day as long as it takes 15 minutes to 45 minutes.

 

Tom Mighell: And so, that wraps it up for this edition of The Kennedy Mighell Report. Thanks for joining us on the podcast. You can find show notes for this episode on the Legal Talk Networks Page for this podcast. If you like what you hear, please subscribe to our podcast in iTunes or on the Legal Talk network site where you can find archives of all of our previous podcasts along with transcripts.

 

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If you’d like to get in touch with us, remember, you can reach out to us on LinkedIn or remember, we love to get voicemail for our second segment. So, that voicemail

number is (720) 441-6820. So, until the next podcast, I’m Tom Mighell.

 

Dennis Kennedy: And I’m Dennis Kennedy. And you’ve been listening to the Kennedy Mighell Report, a podcast on legal technology with an internet focus. If you like what you heard today please rate us in Apple podcast, and we’ll see you next time for another episode with The Kennedy Mighell Report, on the Legal Talk Network.

 

Outro: Thanks for listening to the Kennedy Mighell Report. Check out Dennis and Tom’s book, ‘The Lawyer’s Guide to Collaboration Tools and Technologies: Smart ways to Work Together’

 

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From ABA books or Amazon. And join us every other week for another edition of the Kennedy Mighell Report, only on the Legal Talk Network.

 

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