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The buyer-pull and seller-push theories of sales

howtogrow.substack.com

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Re: The buyer-pull and seller-push theories of sales

#51

Post by AbrahamParangi »

jagged-chisel wrote: post #45
AbrahamParangi wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s not how it works, you structure the comp such that the sales person doesn’t get paid out in this case.

Is it fair for the company to have received three months of payments from a customer but the salesperson doesn’t get commission at all? How will you retain sales staff when word gets out? What’s the period length over which if the deal dies the salesperson doesn’t get their commission? Do you roll back commission payments later when the customer stops paying?

These are all great questions which people have answered and it’s the standard solution to the problem of misaligned incentives between the company receiving recurring revenue and the sales person receiving an upfront commission.

Re: The buyer-pull and seller-push theories of sales

#52

Post by gwd »

lukestevens wrote: post #31
ungreased0675 wrote: post #19

This is not a very helpful post, because it doesn’t provide many clues on how to do buyer-pull sales. It’d be nice if you could just build something useful and have people beat a path to your door, and most of us would probably prefer that, but it’s not reality.

They followed up with another post to answer that question: https://howtogrow.substack.com/p/the-physics-of-sales-part-2

So "push" and "pull" as English verbs are basically opposite; and he's describing them as opposites in the previous post. But in this post he describes "push" this way:

> We are taught to do “discovery” to find their “pain points” and “problems.” So we waterboard potential customers with a series of questions to try to understand their current state... then try to surface their problems + pain points

And PULL this way:

> What are you trying to accomplish right now, or this quarter? Why this project now, vs. all the others you could prioritize? What options have you considered or tried, and what do you feel like is lacking with your existing options?

Those sound very similar to me.

Re: The buyer-pull and seller-push theories of sales

#53

Post by BobbyTables2 »

nlitened wrote: post #47
hedora wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would you be paying a bonus for deals that die? Sales incentives need to match business incentives or you’re completely screwed. Also: “Coffee is for closers”

You can’t make sales people responsible for the entire company, that’s CEO- and board-level responsibility. If you don’t give sales bonus for clients that later canceled due to engineering or tech support fuck up, do you expect regular sales people also to do engineering and tech support management in your company?

As a counterpoint, my company pays engineers a bonus only if sales brings in enough revenue…

I’ve always hated “team objectives” as such tend to be far outside an individuals control.

Re: The buyer-pull and seller-push theories of sales

#54

Post by wavemode »

jampa wrote: post #23

I remember working at a company where we used a vendor extensively in their mid-tier plan. We wanted an enterprise plan with more features, so we reached out to buy it. So, their salesperson was shooting a penalty with no goalkeeper: All they needed to do was send an offer, and we would negotiate and close the deal. Instead, they called my CTO multiple times, all at awkward times, like during his lunch. When he didn'…

The main cause of this phenomenon is the simple fact that, many B2B startups are going to try their hardest to charge you the maximum you can afford, rather than a standard price. So their first job is to figure out how deep your pockets are.

Another cause is that, a lot of B2B startups are building the plane while flying it - they don't actually have all of the enterprise features they claim to have (or at least, the features aren't yet generalized enough - think "if customer.name == 'BigCo' then DoBigCoThing()" type of code). So they need to figure out what your needs are, and thus what things will need to be cobbled together by the time the deal closes.

Re: The buyer-pull and seller-push theories of sales

#55

Post by nlitened »

BobbyTables2 wrote: post #53
nlitened wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can’t make sales people responsible for the entire company, that’s CEO- and board-level responsibility. If you don’t give sales bonus for clients that later canceled due to engineering or tech support fuck up, do you expect regular sales people also to do engineering and tech support management in your company?

As a counterpoint, my company pays engineers a bonus only if sales brings in enough revenue… I’ve always hated “team objectives” as such tend to be far outside an individuals control.

It is only a counterpoint if you claim that this compensation scheme works well. If you don't think it makes sense, then it actually proves my point that bonuses should only involve things that directly depend on employee's own performance.

Re: The buyer-pull and seller-push theories of sales

#56

Post by Joel_Mckay »

skeezyboy wrote: post #49
Joel_Mckay wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For B2B, there are often close relationships with client interests. If a small firm signs a non-compete and NDA with a competitor, it can cost a lot more than a single sale to chat. Also, in niche industries everyone already knows one another for decades. People looking to fragment that market are seen as a problem even if they don't know they are a problem. It is rude to "ghost" people, but it is unfortunately a mod…

> If a small firm signs a non-compete and NDA with a competitor, it can cost a lot more than a single sale to chat. this has nothing to do with not answering emails. > People looking to fragment that market are seen as a problem even if they don't know they are a problem. you mean customers? > It is rude to "ghost" people, but it is unfortunately a modern pop-culture trend no its not. ignoring people is as old as tim…

> this has nothing to do with not answering emails.

For you maybe, sometimes the entitled do not recognize the liability their antics bring to other business dynamics.

>you mean customers?

You mean your potential 1 sale is worth more than years long account activity your competitors have shown? Some customers are just not worth the grief, and you make more profit not selling to them... Too-big or too-small some people are just are not worth the risk... You'll be out of business if you ignore this...

>> It is rude to "ghost" people,

>no its not. ignoring people is as old as time.

Hence the mystery is solved, some companies won't want that kind of contradictory business relationship liability. People often can't get away with that behavior unless they are running a fast food outlet with low value stakes. lol =3

Re: The buyer-pull and seller-push theories of sales

#57

Post by milesvp »

wavemode wrote: post #54
jampa wrote: post #23

I remember working at a company where we used a vendor extensively in their mid-tier plan. We wanted an enterprise plan with more features, so we reached out to buy it. So, their salesperson was shooting a penalty with no goalkeeper: All they needed to do was send an offer, and we would negotiate and close the deal. Instead, they called my CTO multiple times, all at awkward times, like during his lunch. When he didn'…

The main cause of this phenomenon is the simple fact that, many B2B startups are going to try their hardest to charge you the maximum you can afford, rather than a standard price. So their first job is to figure out how deep your pockets are. Another cause is that, a lot of B2B startups are building the plane while flying it - they don't actually have all of the enterprise features they claim to have (or at least, th…

It doesn’t even have to be as nefarious as trying to maximally charge. Very often what seems like a simple product offering can actually be quite nuanced with services or goods bundled or unbundled. I’ve listened to many sales calls where the buyer was asking for the wrong thing, and giving a quote for that thing doesn’t really do anyone any good. In my experience the best sales people are really trying their best to tailor their offerings to the needs of the customer even going so far as pointing them at cheaper products or even another company if it fits their needs better.

Re: The buyer-pull and seller-push theories of sales

#58

Post by drewrbaker »

jampa wrote: post #23

I remember working at a company where we used a vendor extensively in their mid-tier plan. We wanted an enterprise plan with more features, so we reached out to buy it. So, their salesperson was shooting a penalty with no goalkeeper: All they needed to do was send an offer, and we would negotiate and close the deal. Instead, they called my CTO multiple times, all at awkward times, like during his lunch. When he didn'…

Love that goalkeeper line. 100% my experience with so many SaaS companys.

@netlify I hope you see this. You are terrible at the buyer-pull. We want log shipping, but to get that, we have to go into the "enterprise" tier... We are a startup with very little money, and what is log shipping worth to us? Not hundreds a month. Honestly it's worth a little less than whatever the cost of us moving to Vercel is (where log shipping is not part of enterprise).

So now I've now been through multiple sales emails from them trying to get me on a call to "discuss how we can help you" which I know is just going to be Netlify trying to upsell me into a bunch of "enterprise" features we don't need. Just tell me the price and let me click a button to enable it!

Re: The buyer-pull and seller-push theories of sales

#59

Post by manveerc »

lukestevens wrote: post #20
manveerc wrote: post #17

Is there any data that you can share beyond anecdotal claims? For starters would love to see following - Close-rate differences between push vs. pull strategies. - Win rates for deals where urgency was “created” vs. “aligned with existing urgency.”

I don't mean to be rude but this idea that there's some decisive, authoritative data vs. sketchy anecdotal claims kind of drives me up the wall. What data would or could exist in this case beyond the hundreds of calls the author is apparently basing their observations on? That seems like a reasonable qualitative data set to me. On the other hand, what you're asking for doesn't make much sense. Any push/pull strategy…

Your comment hits on a broader tension I see a lot, not just here but in business strategy in general. It's the divide between compelling, experience-based narratives and empirical evidence. I think both are essential.

The author has presented a fantastic and intuitive narrative with the "BUYER-PULL" model. Your analogy is spot-on: you can't sell 16 meals a day to someone who only needs three. The qualitative insight is powerful.

My request for data comes from the next step. How do we know this narrative is not just a "just-so story"? How much does this effect matter on the margin? In the complex world of B2B sales, where needs aren't always as clear as hunger, can "push" tactics sometimes be effective at helping a buyer crystallize a latent need?

Asking for metrics like close rates isn't meant to demand an impossible standard of scientific proof. Instead, it's an attempt to test the boundaries of this framework and understand its real-world impact. Great insights often come from quantifying the effects of a powerful story.

Re: The buyer-pull and seller-push theories of sales

#60

Post by lukestevens »

manveerc wrote: post #59
lukestevens wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't mean to be rude but this idea that there's some decisive, authoritative data vs. sketchy anecdotal claims kind of drives me up the wall. What data would or could exist in this case beyond the hundreds of calls the author is apparently basing their observations on? That seems like a reasonable qualitative data set to me. On the other hand, what you're asking for doesn't make much sense. Any push/pull strategy…

Your comment hits on a broader tension I see a lot, not just here but in business strategy in general. It's the divide between compelling, experience-based narratives and empirical evidence. I think both are essential. The author has presented a fantastic and intuitive narrative with the "BUYER-PULL" model. Your analogy is spot-on: you can't sell 16 meals a day to someone who only needs three. The qualitative insight…

Please don’t pollute HN with AI slop.
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