The Physics of Startups How to start a sales call ("Discovery" that doesn't suck)
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Dec 19, 2025 Rob Snyder, a three-time founder and Harvard Innovation Lab fellow, dives into the often-misunderstood art of sales discovery. He explains why many calls fail and introduces his PULL framework to identify buyer demand effectively. Listeners learn to ask the critical question, "Why did you take this call?" and how to listen for key signals within customer monologues. Rob shares strategies to avoid irrelevant pitches and demonstrates the importance of being concise, ensuring that founders maximize their chances of making a genuine connection.
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Discovery Fails When You Lack A Target
- Most sales discovery fails because teams don't know what they're actually looking for.
- Without a clear target, founders pitch randomly and calls waste time.
Startup Scaled By Selling To Pull
- Rob describes a startup that shifted from product-first pitches to pull-based discovery and rapidly scaled.
- The team found top-priority projects and sold solutions that matched urgent needs, driving fast ARR growth.
Pull Explains True Buying Urgency
- 'Pull' is the set of conditions where a customer will rip a product out of your hands.
- It centers on a current top-priority project that is urgent and lacks acceptable solutions.
