Demand-Side Sales

Bob Moesta's demand-side approach to sales, product, and innovation — distilled from Demand-Side Sales 101 (2020, w/ Greg Engle), Learning to Build (2022), Job Moves (2024, w/ Ethan Bernstein + Michael Horn), the earlier work with Clayton Christensen culminating in Competing Against Luck (2016), the Re-Wired Group's client work, The Circuit Breaker podcast (w/ Greg Engle), dense podcast appearances including Lenny Rachitsky (2023, 2025), Intercom, Business of Software, and INDUSTRY 2025, plus the canonical JTBD method library at jobstobedone.org (w/ Chris Spiek).

This skill helps you do the thing Moesta spends most of his airtime insisting on: flip from supply-side ("how do we sell better?") to demand-side ("why do people buy?"). The method centers on understanding the forces that cause someone to switch from their current solution to a new one — not features, not demographics, not funnels. Forces, timelines, struggling moments, and the progress the customer is trying to make.

When this skill activates

Use this skill when the user is:

• Trying to understand why customers buy, switch, churn, or stay — the causal story, not the correlation.
• Designing or redesigning a sales process around how people actually buy (not how you want to sell).
• Planning, running, or analyzing Switch Interviews to reconstruct a purchase timeline.
• Mapping the Four Forces of Progress on a real buying decision or product adoption.
• Wondering why customers aren't switching to a superior product (usually: Anxiety and Habit are winning).
• Evaluating whether to add features (which often increases Anxiety instead of Pull).
• Redesigning marketing, onboarding, or customer success around the buying timeline stages.
• Trying to identify the real competition (which is rarely who you think — Casper vs. ZzzQuil, not Casper vs. Tempur-Pedic).
• Running demand-side analysis for a new product launch without existing customers.
• Applying JTBD to career decisions, hiring, or talent management (Job Moves territory).

Do NOT use this skill when:

• The user wants quantitative unmet-need scoring, job maps, or outcome statements — that's Tony Ulwick's Outcome-Driven Innovation (ODI). Different lineage, different tools. Suggest ODI resources.
• The user wants a Hypothesis Canvas or Frame/Discovery process — that's Jim Kalbach's JTBD Playbook. Compatible but distinct. Suggest the Kalbach approach.
• The user wants supply-side strategic JTBD ("what business are we in?", disruption analysis) — that's Christensen's strategic-mindset variant. Point them to Competing Against Luck.
• The user wants a technique-first sales method (objection handling, closing moves, discovery questions) — that's Challenger Sale, SPIN, Sandler territory. Moesta insists on theory before technique. Suggest the Challenger Sale skill if technique is what they need.
• The user asks for a summary of the book. Point them to the book.

If the situation is ambiguous, ask: "Are you trying to understand why people buy (demand-side), or how to sell better (supply-side)?" The answer determines whether this skill fits.

The framework at a glance

The Four Forces of Progress

The equation: Push + Pull > Anxiety + Habit = Switch.

1. Push of the Situation — friction, frustration, a broken moment with the current solution. The status quo must become unacceptable, not just inconvenient.
2. Pull of the New Solution — the vision of progress the customer imagines. Not features — the improved life. Marketing's job is to make this vision vivid.
3. Anxiety of the New — fear of the unknown, learning curve, social risk, data risk. The most underestimated force in business. Mitigated by guarantees, social proof, onboarding — not more features.
4. Habit of the Present — comfortable inertia. Why great products lose to mediocre incumbents.

The asymmetric insight: organizations obsess over increasing Pull (add features, louder marketing) and ignore the other two. Reducing Anxiety and Habit is often cheaper and faster. Adding features frequently increases Anxiety instead of Pull.

The Buying Timeline — six stages

1. First Thought — "what we're doing isn't good enough." The seed.
2. Passive Looking — learning the language, no urgency. Sales role: teach, don't pitch.
3. Active Looking — exploring, wishing for features, playground mentality. Sales role: expand possibilities, don't close.
4. Deciding — trade-offs. Present exactly three options. Never one, rarely two, never more than three. Design one "albatross" (obvious eliminate).
5. First Use — must feel progress fast. Early wins matter more than feature completeness.
6. Ongoing Use — new struggles restart the timeline.

Struggling Moments

The seed of all demand. People don't buy products — they hire them to make progress. The trigger is a "struggling moment" where the current way of doing things breaks down. No struggle, no demand. And: eliminating the struggle is not progress — customers overcoming the struggle is progress.

The Switch Interview

A 30-60 minute structured interview with recent buyers (not prospects) that reconstructs the causal chain of their purchase decision. The output is a Forces diagram + timeline + verbatim customer language. The debrief with the cross-functional team takes equal time.

How to use this skill in a session

1. Flip the lens. If the user is thinking supply-side ("how do we sell this?"), redirect: "Let's start from the other side — what progress is the customer trying to make? What made today the day they started looking?" Load references/method.md for the full method.
2. Identify the struggling moment. Before talking about features, competition, or pricing, find the struggle. "What's broken about how they're handling this today?" If there's no struggle, there's no demand — and no amount of marketing fixes that. Load references/heuristics.md for how to distinguish real struggles from surface complaints.
3. Map the Four Forces. For the customer's situation, identify all four: Push (what's broken with the current), Pull (what progress they imagine), Anxiety (what they're afraid of with the new), Habit (what keeps them comfortable where they are). The equation must tip. Load references/method.md "Four Forces" section.
4. Locate the customer on the timeline. A "demo request" from someone in Passive Looking means something completely different from one in Deciding. The same action requires a different response at each stage. Load references/method.md "Buying Timeline" section.
5. Find the real competition. Moesta's most counterintuitive move: the real competition is rarely the obvious category competitor. Casper's real competitor was ZzzQuil. McDonald's milkshake competed with bananas and boredom. "What would they hire if your product didn't exist?" Load references/examples.md for the cases.
6. Design around the timeline, not the funnel. Different content, different demos, different conversations at each stage. AutoBooks built three demos — one per stage — and cut the sales cycle in half. Load references/examples.md "AutoBooks" section.
7. Speak in Moesta's voice — blue-collar, story-heavy, allergic to supply-side thinking. Use "progress" (not "needs"), "hire/fire" (not "buy"), "struggling moment" (not "pain point"), "the Forces" (not "pros and cons"). Load references/voice-and-tone.md.
8. Cite sources. When you introduce a specific device (the Forces, the timeline, a case), name where it comes from: DSS101 chapter, jobstobedone.org, specific podcast, specific BoS talk. Load references/sources.md.

Deep references (load as needed)

• references/method.md — the Four Forces, Switch Interview, buying timeline, struggling moments, and demand-side vs. supply-side distinction in Moesta's own terms.
• references/heuristics.md — do's, don'ts, gotchas, anti-patterns, interview micromoves, common misapplications of JTBD, all with attribution.
• references/post-book.md — material after Demand-Side Sales 101 (2020): Learning to Build (2022) and its five bedrock skills, Job Moves (2024) and the Four Quests, recent podcast refinements (INDUSTRY 2025, Digestible Deming 2026), how the method has expanded.
• references/author-live-sources.md — index of every place Moesta publishes (Re-Wired Group, jobstobedone.org, The Circuit Breaker podcast, LinkedIn, dense podcast episodes, Stern Strategy keynotes). When the user's situation matches a specific episode/article, consult this index.
• references/voice-and-tone.md — how Moesta actually talks. Blue-collar-scientist. Detroit design-firm. Story-heavy. "Context makes the irrational rational." "Bitchin' ain't switchin'." Manufacturing metaphors and aphorisms-then-stories.
• references/applications.md — where the demand-side lens fits, where it doesn't, adjacent frameworks (Ulwick ODI, Kalbach JTBD Playbook, Christensen strategic JTBD, Challenger Sale, Continuous Discovery Habits) and when each is the better tool.
• references/examples.md — worked cases Moesta uses publicly (milkshake, mattress, Snickers vs. Milky Way, dining room table, Basecamp calendar, Casper vs. ZzzQuil, AutoBooks, Facebook Marketplace, SNHU, InVideo anti-example).
• references/prompts.md — invocation templates for common tasks.
• references/sources.md — complete traceability.

Non-negotiables

• Fidelity to Moesta. This is his method, not a generic JTBD skill. Don't blend with Ulwick's ODI or Kalbach's synthesis unless the user explicitly asks. If the user is asking about outcome statements or job maps, redirect to ODI. If they want a Hypothesis Canvas, redirect to Kalbach.
• Demand-side before supply-side. The single most important distinction. When the user starts with "how do we sell this?", redirect to "why do people buy?" Every session should start from the customer's struggling moment and progress, not from the product's features.
• The Forces are in tension, not a checklist. Push/Pull/Anxiety/Habit are forces that interact — increasing Pull without reducing Anxiety often makes things worse. Never present them as four boxes to fill.
• Timeline matters. Jumping to the Forces without reconstructing the timeline loses causation. The sequence of events is where the insight lives.
• Interview recent buyers, not prospects. The Switch Interview reconstructs a real past purchase. Interviewing people who haven't bought yet is not a Switch Interview — it's a different research method.
• Attribution. When quoting Moesta, cite. When paraphrasing, name the source. Distinguish DSS101 (2020) from Learning to Build (2022) from Job Moves (2024) from podcast appearances. Credit Chris Spiek as co-inventor of the Forces diagram when relevant.
• Explicit uncertainty. When Moesta's position on something is unclear or when the method doesn't cover a case, say so. Don't extend beyond what he's actually said.

Attribution and acknowledgement

Bob Moesta — Co-creator of the Jobs to be Done theory (with Clayton Christensen). President & CEO of The Re-Wired Group (Detroit). Builder, practitioner, teacher. Dyslexic, trained as an engineer, learned by doing — developed 3,500+ products and services. Fellow at the Clayton Christensen Institute. Adjunct lecturer at Kellogg (Northwestern). Mentored by Christensen, Taguchi, Deming, and Willie Hobbs Moore.

Chris Spiek — co-inventor (with Moesta) of the Forces of Progress diagram. Co-created the Switch Interview method. Runs jobstobedone.org.

Greg Engle — co-founder of The Re-Wired Group. Co-author of Demand-Side Sales 101. Co-host of The Circuit Breaker podcast.

• Buy Demand-Side Sales 101: Amazon
• Buy Learning to Build: Amazon
• Buy Job Moves: Amazon · jobmoves.com
• The Re-Wired Group: therewiredgroup.com
• JTBD method library: jobstobedone.org
• The Circuit Breaker podcast: therewiredgroup.com/circuit-breaker-podcast/

This skill is not endorsed by Bob Moesta. It's Marcos Sponton's structured reading of Moesta's public work. If Moesta himself wants to correct or endorse anything here, PRs welcome.

• Skill maintained by: Marcos Sponton. Feedback, corrections, and PRs are welcome. See the repo's README for how to contribute.